The 47th President and the Post-Biden World

Vance said that the courts acted "illegally" in recent rulings restraining Trump.
I do hope that in the USA it's the courts that have the final say about what is legal and what is illegal, not Vance.

Unfortunately for us (and by extension, the rest of the world) a huge number of Americans today are courting what a huge number of Germans courted in your country back in the 1930's.

‘Each of us is afraid’: Guinea’s junta leader tightens grip as opposition lies low
Mamady Doumbouya has led the country since a 2021 coup. Some fear he has no intention of relinquishing power

Across Guinea’s capital, Conakry, billboards and posters proclaim the people’s loyalty to the vision of Mamady Doumbouya, the general who has led the west African country since a coup in September 2021.

The iconography is omnipresent. Along the Fidel Castro highway, the posters hang on poles that rise out of piles of rubbish. Near the grand mosque, one poster is accompanied by the gnomic inscription “Your silence is precious, your eyes reassuring”. Another, bearing an image of him shaking Xi Jinping’s hand at a meeting in Beijing in September, has the caption: “Welcome back Mamady Doumbouya, our pride.”

For many in Guinea’s political opposition and civil society, the reverential messaging is a distraction from the junta’s increasingly authoritarian exercise of power and an ominous sign that Doumbouya has no intention of relinquishing power.

“Each of us is afraid for his own safety,” said Abdoulaye Kourouma, the head of the opposition Rally for Renaissance and Development party. “Whether you are a scientist, a university scholar, a leader of opinion, a very good journalist, no one speaks today.”

Many people initially welcomed the coup that deposed Alpha Condé, who had controversially altered the constitution in 2020 to enable him serve a third five-year term. Under international pressure, the new military leaders initially pledged to hold a constitutional referendum and hand power to elected civilians by the end of 2024. But neither promise was fulfilled, and in the meantime a steady flow of opposition figures and civil society members have been detained or brought before the courts.

The coup was one of multiple military takeovers that have taken place across central and west Africa since 2020. In Gabon and Guinea, the military acted after civilian leaders discarded term limits or manipulated elections. Across the region, junta leaders have either delayed promised elections or, as in Chad, compromised polls to ensure their own transformation into civilian presidents.

‘No will for return to constitutional order’

In his new year’s address, hours after the junta’s own two-year timetable for holding elections expired, Dombouya said 2025 would be “a crucial electoral year to complete the return to constitutional order”. A few days later, the junta’s spokesperson, Ousmane Diallo, said the referendum and elections would possibly happen in May and December respectively.

However, last Thursday Diallo said it would be “impossible to hold all the elections in 2025” and that the process would start with a constitutional referendum that would take place “before the end of the first half of the year”.

Joachim Millimono, a spokesperson for the main opposition, the Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea (UDFG), said the junta was unwilling to even talk about the text of the referendum, or update the electoral list from 2020. “There is no visible will of the transitional authorities for a return to constitutional order,” he said.

The lack of clarity over the transition triggered a protest in the middle of January, during which one person died in the course of a crackdown by security forces.

In the aftermath of the protest, the junta has further militarised the city. Checkpoints have been set up along the road running between the airport and the parliament building, where the military transition holds fort. In opposition strongholds such as Bomboly neighbourhood, where protests against the junta and the soaring cost of living have previously taken place, police officers stand on alert at major intersections.

Even though Doumbouya has not said whether he will contest the presidency, many expect him to. His critics speculate that he is strategically removing any opposition to his path through trumped-up charges and detentions. The UDFG leader, Cellou Dalein Diallo, for example, lives in exile after corruption charges were brought against him from his time as transport minister two decades ago.

Other actors “have automatically joined the [junta transition council] or are afraid to take positions, precise and clear, on the transition,” said Alseny Sall, spokesperson for the Guinean Organisation for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights.

Local people say the muzzling of Guinean voices since 2021 has been masterminded by the defence minister, Aboubacar Sidiki Camara (widely known as “Idi Amin” (after the late Ugandan dictator) and another Doumbouya ally, Col Mouctar “Spartacus” Kaba, who heads an elite military unit.

More than 50 parties were dissolved last year by the junta and several media licences revoked. The activists Oumar Sylla and Mamadou Billo Bah have been missing since July, when they were arrested after calling for protests; their colleagues fear they may no longer be alive. Habib Marouane Camara, an investigative journalist abducted in December, has not been seen since. In January, a Kaloum court handed a two-year sentence to another opposition figure, Aliou Bah, for “insulting and defaming” the junta leader.

“Sincerely, I won’t be able to tell you if we can have elections in a country where there is no dialogue between the [junta] and [political and civil society] actors,” said Sall.

Propaganda campaign

The posters hailing Doumbouya are just one aspect of a state-backed propaganda campaign that has been ratcheted up.

One foreign journalist told the Guardian anonymously that officials had offered him a bribe to do PR work on behalf of the junta and that some of his local colleagues had been co-opted to do its bidding.

While opposition rallies have been banned, events endorsing Doumbouya have gone ahead without impediment. In December, 56 people died during a crush at a football tournament in Nzérékoré, the country’s second largest city, that was being held in honour of him.

The same month, the dancehall star Singleton thanked the junta on Facebook for a late Christmas gift – a brand-new Ram truck worth an estimated $40,000 (£32,000) – after he had released a song earlier in the year in praise of Doumbouya. Since then more artists have entered studios to record songs insulting Doumbouya’s critics.

Meanwhile, corruption, which the junta promised to stamp out, is still an issue. The central bank chief and the head of the goldminers’ union are under investigation after 4 tons of gold worth an estimated $400m (£323m) went missing in December. A dozen customs officers are also in detention over a 700bn Guinean franc (£65m, $81m) corruption scandal.

The developments in Guinea have somewhat flown under the radar. Regional attention has instead focused on Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger’s acrimonious split from the Economic Community of West African States, and France’s military departure from those countries, as well as from Chad.

Unlike many of its neighbours, Guinea has kept its criticism of Paris muted. Some local observers speculate that this is in part because Doumbouya is married to a white, serving member of the French National Gendarmerie, and reportedly has French nationality from his own service in the French Foreign Legion.

Rather than huddle with his regional counterparts, Doumbouya has aligned himself with the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame. Since April 2023, when Guinea named a major road intersection in Conakry after Kagame, there have been state visits and cooperation deals signed between both countries.

Many in Conakry say they expect more of the same, and little international intervention when dates are finally confirmed for the parliamentary and presidential elections. And they believe that the junta – far from returning power to the people, as it initially promised – has become increasingly focused on securing it in the long term for one man.

“There are a lot of movements supporting Doumbouya’s candidacy, and members of government are campaigning for it,” said Millimono. “All this is worrying. These people are fighting for their own interests. They want to have vehicles, villas, diplomatic passports and to live a good life … we encourage him to resist bad advice.”

New US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says Ukraine becoming a NATO member or regaining all its pre-2014 land is not realistic.

Speaking at a NATO meeting in Brussels, Hegseth also stressed that Washington would not deploy troops to Ukraine under any peace deal.

"To be clear as part of any security guarantee, there will not be US troops deployed to Ukraine," he said.

The defense chief went on to say that Europe must provide the "overwhelming share" of future aid to Ukraine, and that the US would not tolerate an "imbalanced relationship" in NATO.

"Safeguarding European security must be an imperative for European members of NATO," Hegseth said.

He called on members of the military alliance to donate more arms, step up military production and spend more on defense. He gave 5% of GDP as a minimum goal for NATO countries' military spending.

The US is currently the biggest provider of aid to Ukraine, followed by Germany.

[...]
His [Hegseth's] remarks will create political difficulties for President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and are likely to please President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who since 2014, and especially with his all-out invasion three years ago, has occupied about 20 percent of the country.

Mr. Putin has demanded that Russia keep its occupied territories, that Ukraine not join NATO, that its military capacity be limited and that NATO enlargement should halt. He has said he is willing to join negotiations on a settlement with Ukraine, but only on his terms.

To help bring Mr. Putin to the negotiating table, Mr. Hegseth urged lower energy prices, “coupled with more effective enforcement of energy sanctions.”

The United States “remains committed to the NATO alliance and to the defense partnership with Europe, full stop, but the United States will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency,” Mr. Hegseth said.

So Europe must step up to take responsibility for its own conventional defense, he said, while implying that the American nuclear umbrella that helps protect NATO and Europe would remain in place.

The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, was heckled during a visit to a US military installation in Germany as military families protested against the Trump administration’s rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

About two dozen adults who live at the military base chanted “DEI” and booed at Hegseth as he arrived to the US European Command headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, NBC News reported.

Separately, a group of students attending the Patch middle school, also in Stuttgart, held a walkout, according to a letter from the school obtained by the Washington Post. ...

Protests led by military families are generally uncommon. A spokesperson at the Department of Defense did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment about the protests.

The actions were in response to a spate of anti-DEI initiatives Hegseth implemented. Since his confirmation last month, Hegseth has banned Black History Month celebrations and similar events. He has also restricted access to several books in defense department schools that children of US military families attended.

Hegseth heckled and booed by military families at pro-DEI protest in Germany

Quote:

The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, was heckled during a visit to a US military installation in Germany as military families protested against the Trump administration’s rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

About two dozen adults who live at the military base chanted “DEI” and booed at Hegseth as he arrived to the US European Command headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, NBC News reported.

Separately, a group of students attending the Patch middle school, also in Stuttgart, held a walkout, according to a letter from the school obtained by the Washington Post. ...

Protests led by military families are generally uncommon. A spokesperson at the Department of Defense did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment about the protests.

The actions were in response to a spate of anti-DEI initiatives Hegseth implemented. Since his confirmation last month, Hegseth has banned Black History Month celebrations and similar events. He has also restricted access to several books in defense department schools that children of US military families attended.

February 12, 2025

“This morning, my financial team shockingly uncovered that President Trump and his crony Elon Musk illegally executed a revocation of $80 million in congressionally-appropriated FEMA funding from New York City’s bank accounts late yesterday afternoon. This is money that the federal government previously disbursed for shelter and services and is now missing. This highway robbery of our funds directly out of our bank account is a betrayal of everyone who calls New York City home.”

“New York City cannot take this lying down. I call on the Mayor to immediately pursue legal action to ensure the tens of millions of dollars stolen by Trump and DOGE are rightfully returned. If instead Mayor Adams continues to be President Trump’s pawn, my Office will request to work in partnership with the New York City Law Department to pursue aggressive legal action.” source

Yesterday afternoon, in a bizarre performance, President Donald Trump hosted reporters in the Oval Office, the formal working space of the President of the United States. As Trump sat quietly behind the Resolute Desk, a gift from Queen Victoria to the United States as a symbol of international friendship, billionaire Elon Musk held center stage. Musk talked to the reporters, wearing a jacket over a T-shirt, and a “Make America Great Again” ball cap—a likely violation of the Hatch Act, which Trump’s people routinely ignore—while his young son X wandered around the room, at one point exchanging a look with a downcast Trump that observers immediately captioned: “You’re sitting in my daddy’s chair.”

The event was Trump signing another executive order, this one essentially putting Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) in charge of the U.S. government. The executive order, titled “Implementing The President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative,” provides for an operative from DOGE to be assigned to every agency, where that operative will be in charge of all hiring and firing. It also puts downsizing in DOGE’s hands and establishes that only one new employee can be hired to replace four who leave.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo noted that these operatives report to Musk, who is “clearly operating here as an independent actor whose actions the President blesses after he’s found out what’s happened. This is a parallel overlaying of authority over the entire structure of the U.S. government.”

Trump said that Musk had found “billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse,” but in fact they have produced no evidence of such waste. Today Representative Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) said Congress has had no information from Musk or DOGE, and when asked to produce evidence of fraud, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt simply listed things that seemed to be “against the president’s policies and his America-first agenda.”

As both the New York Times and the Washington Post reported today, the big winner from all the cuts to the government has been Musk himself, who has eliminated the agencies that were scrutinizing his businesses.

On the floor of Congress today, Moskowitz pointed out that Musk’s claims to have uncovered waste, fraud, and abuse present a problem for Congress. Led by House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), the Republicans have not yet managed to fund the government for 2025, but rather than trying to pass the 12 appropriations bills necessary before the March 14 deadline for a government shutdown, Johnson is hoping to pass a continuing resolution that will extend funding as a comprehensive package. Moskowitz pointed out that if, in fact, the government is full of waste, fraud, and abuse, Congress should debate each appropriations bill in detail rather than use a continuing resolution that would perpetuate what the Republicans say is billions of dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse.

Long gone is any pretense that the administration will work to lower prices for ordinary Americans. The Consumer Price Index report out today from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that inflation surged in January, gaining a half a point as the cost of gas, rents, and groceries went up. Egg prices rose 15.2%. On Monday, Trump levied a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum, raising concerns that prices for cars and trucks, as well as appliances and rebar for construction, will also rise.

Today Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) published an op-ed in the Louisville Courier Journal warning that “Kentuckians can’t afford the high cost of Trump’s tariffs,” which could cost the average Kentucky resident $1,200 a year. “[P]reserving the long-term prosperity of American industry and workers requires working with our allies, not against them,” McConnell wrote, and he called for “strengthen[ing] our friendships abroad.”

Trump responded to today’s report by posting on social media: “BIDEN INFLATION UP!”

The Republicans submitted their budget resolution for funding the government today. It called for cuts of $2 trillion to mandatory spending, a category that includes Social Security and Medicare. Two Republican lawmakers told Meredith Lee Hill of Politico that Republicans expect to cut food aid for more than 40 million low-income Americans; Hill’s colleague Grace Yarrow reports the House Agriculture Committee is eyeing about $150 billion in cuts to supplemental nutrition programs. The proposal also calls for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and an increase of $4 trillion in the debt ceiling.

Today saw a landmark shift in the foreign policy of the United States. Since World War II, the U.S. has stood behind the international organizations that worked to stabilize the globe by creating spaces for countries to work out their differences without resorting to war. Among the principles of those organizations was that bigger countries couldn’t simply take over other, smaller countries, and one of the ways countries enforced that principle was through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the collective security agreement in which signatories agreed that an attack on one would be an attack on all.

In 2016, Trump’s people weakened the U.S. stance against Russia’s incursions on Ukraine by softening the language of that year’s Republican platform, and Russia worked to help Trump get elected, apparently because Putin believed Trump would look the other way as Russia took not only Ukraine's Crimea but also significant territory in eastern Ukraine. Then, in his first term in office, Trump often took Putin’s side and threatened to take the U.S. out of NATO.

President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken worked hard to strengthen NATO and pulled together a strong coalition to back Ukraine when Russia launched a full-scale invasion in 2022. But when he took office just three weeks ago, Trump alarmed observers by suddenly talking about taking over other countries like Panama and Canada, and Denmark’s territory of Greenland. Such moves would directly undermine the post–World War II international organizations the U.S. has always championed. They would destroy NATO and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), a joint U.S.-Canadian organization that protects North America from aerospace threats, and would also rip apart the Five Eyes intelligence alliance that has joined Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States since World War II.

Today it appears Trump is making good on this threat to turn away from the longstanding policy of the U.S. and toward the foreign policy advocated by Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Trump has been talking about demanding $500 billion worth of Ukraine’s mineral resources in exchange for continued U.S. support, but today, at the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a group put together under Biden to coordinate assistance to Ukraine, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth suggested a new U.S. position. Hegseth echoed Putin’s demands, saying that “returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective” and that the U.S. will not support NATO membership for Ukraine, thus giving up two key issues without apparently getting anything in return. He said that Europe must take over assistance for Ukraine as the U.S. focuses on its own borders. He wanted, he said, to “directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe.”

Trump’s social media account—it did not sound like his own words—posted today that he “just had a lengthy and highly productive phone call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia…. We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations,” thus offering a White House visit to Putin, who has been isolated from other nations since his attacks on Ukraine. And, the post said, they had agreed to start negotiations over Ukraine, although it also specified they had not included Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in their talk. The post said that Trump “feel[s] strongly, [the talks] will be successful.”

The Russian government’s readout of the call added that “bilateral economic relations between Russia and the United States were also brought up during the conversation,” language that almost certainly means Putin wants Trump to lift the economic sanctions imposed after Russia invaded Ukraine that have wreaked havoc on the Russian economy.

The Trump administration also swapped U.S. teacher Marc Fogel for Alexander Vinnik, a kingpin of Russian cybercrime who operated one of the world’s largest currency exchanges, facilitating drug trafficking, ransomware, and money laundering. When announcing Fogel’s release, Trump was asked if Russia had given anything in exchange. He answered: “Not much, no. They were very nice. We were treated very nicely by Russia, actually." Russia refused to include Fogel, who was wrongfully detained in 2021, in the large prisoner swap of June 2024.

Today, the Senate approved Tulsi Gabbard, who has often made comments sympathetic to Russia and who has defended former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, who fled to Russia after the Syrian people ousted him, as the U.S. director of national intelligence. All Democrats voted against Gabbard and all Republicans voted in favor of her, with the important exception of Senator Mitch McConnell, who said: “The ODNI wields significant authority over how the intelligence community allocates its resources, conducts its collection and analysis, and manages the classification and declassification of our nation’s most sensitive secrets. In my assessment, Tulsi Gabbard failed to demonstrate that she is prepared to assume this tremendous national trust.”

Tonight, France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom released a joint statement vowing to protect Ukraine’s sovereignty and making it clear that “Ukraine and Europe must be part of any negotiations.”

Trump’s disdain for South American allies is China’s gain
Tiago Rogero
South America correspondent
The US is targeting its own allies and its withdrawal from the region has left a power vacuum for China to fill in

While Donald Trump and his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, were engaged in a very public row over the deportation of migrants last month, China’s ambassador to Bogotá was enthusiastically tweeting that diplomatic relations between China and Colombia had reached their “best moment”.

After Petro refused to receive a plane from the US carrying handcuffed deported Colombians, Trump retaliated by doubling tariffs and revoking visas for Colombian government officials.

Petro was quickly forced to back down, but while tensions were still high, Beijing’s ambassador, Zhu Jingyang, posted 38 tweets celebrating ties between China and Colombia, including photos and videos of a lunar new year celebration in Bogotá.

“We are experiencing the best moment in our diplomatic relations,” he wrote, linking to an interview he had given a local newspaper published a day earlier. Asked about the timing, Zhu said “it had nothing to do with what is happening today, and I do NOT have the magic to predict or anticipate”, he posted, adding two laughing emojis.

“The ambassador’s posts that day are an example of how nimble, reactive and quick the Chinese might be thinking in this era of rapid changes in US foreign policy,” said Ryan C Berg, director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Berg and other analysts argue that Trump’s protectionist measures – and the suspension of almost all US foreign aid – could push South American countries even closer to China, which has already overtaken the US as the region’s leading trading partner.

“The US is going after its own allies,” said Carol Wise, professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California (USC), pointing to additional tariffs Trump has threatened for Mexico and Canada. “So really, do the math: if you’re going after your friends, your friends will merge with your so-called enemies, right?” she said.

On Monday, the US president announced a new round of 25% tariffs on all foreign steel and aluminum. Brazil is the second-largest steel supplier to the US, behind only Canada.

In 2023, South American countries exported $91.2bn (£73.7bn) to the US, and double that amount to China, $181bn (£146.2bn). The US is still the largest trading partner for countries like Colombia and Ecuador, but 20 years ago, it was for all of them except Paraguay.

“The US has not had a policy for South America for several administrations, since Barack Obama took office [in 2009],” said Monica de Bolle, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “It was a very long period during which the US completely withdrew from the region, except for issues related to migration, Venezuela and drug trafficking … A vacuum was left that China has filled,” she said.

For many analysts, the most significant symbol of China’s current and future strategy for South America is the Chancay “megaport” in Peru, a $3.5bn project inaugurated by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, himself last November.

Last week, the Colombian government announced a new shipping route that will pass through Chancay. The Brazilian government has also reportedly admitted that, due to Trump’s protectionist measures, it is fast-tracking the launch of its operations at the port – which would cut shipping times by 10 days compared with Atlantic routes.

The most significant immediate potential beneficiary, of course, will be the host country itself. “It puts Peru in a position that was unthinkable 10 years ago,” said Wise.

But using the port could also draw unwanted attention to countries that have escaped Trump’s tariff hikes so far. The US president’s special envoy to Latin America, Mauricio Claver-Carone, has already argued that any South American nation using Chancay should face additional tariffs of 60%.

“The US is demanding a level of loyalty, allegiance and respect that it squandered decades ago,” said Wise. “I hope that, in time, these Latin American countries will be able to just say: ‘Sorry, too bad, you know, a tariff is fine,’ because they’re selling so much to China.”

The port of Chancay is also an example of how the terms of the deal with China could change over time, Berg said. “Peru thought it was getting a Chinese-built port. Now it’s ended up with a Chinese-owned and operated port [by the state-owned Cosco Shipping],” he said.

Antonio José Pagán, a researcher at the Center for China and Asia-Pacific Studies at the Universidad del Pacífico in Lima, said the increasing rapprochement between China and the region also raises the risk of growing dependent on Beijing.

“But we must also not forget the agency of these countries,” he said. “As they want to improve economically, what matters to them is being able to cooperate with both sides and not be forced to choose between one or the other.

“But this may be impossible if the rivalry between the United States and China continues to worsen.”