bannork

Didn't stop the Ukraine War in one day Didn't inflict tariffs on Canada and Mexico Didn't ban TikTok as promised

Thank God for sanity "Judge blocks Musk team access to Treasury Department records - BBC News" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjw4g2q62xqo

Russia, China and Iran must be laughing MAGA Republicans and allies of the Trump Administration are demanding access to sensitive data — including data systems at the U.S. Treasury Department, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other agencies. Warzel and Bogost, reporters for 'The Atlantic', explained: "we spoke with four federal-government IT professionals — all experienced contractors and civil servants who have built, modified, or maintained the kind of technological infrastructure that Musk's inexperienced employees at his newly created Department of Government Efficiency are attempting to access. In our conversations, each expert was unequivocal: They are terrified and struggling to articulate the scale of the crisis." A contractor who has worked on "classified information-security systems at numerous government agencies, told The Atlantic, "This is the largest data breach and the largest IT security breach in our country's history — at least that's publicly known. You can't un-ring this bell. Once these DOGE guys have access to these data systems, they can ostensibly do with it what they want." Most of the IT professionals The Atlantic interviewed requested anonymity, including a federal agency administrator who warned, "I don’t think the public quite understands the level of danger." Scott Cory, former chief information officer for the Administration for Community Living with the HHS, told The Atlantic, "The longer this goes on, the greater the risk of potential fatal compromise increases."

Car buyers sick of Musk. Tesla posted lower sales across five European countries in January, including the UK, as competitors with newer models gained on the electric vehicle maker and polls show public opinion souring on the controversial CEO. China's BYD for the first time on record sold more EVs in Britain than Tesla over a month. In January it recorded 1,614 registrations compared to Tesla's 1,458 units. And a new poll of drivers found that three in five now say that Musk puts them off buying a Tesla. Both current EV and potential EV buyers are turning away from the Musk megalomania, and are instead considering Chinese options, the study by EV website Electrifying.com found.

FILE PHOTO: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk speaks during a rally on the inauguration day of U.S. President Donald Trump's second P

Rubio accused of talking garbage. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was heavily criticised by Dr Craig Spencer today over his disparaging claims that employees at the U.S. Agency for International Development have a "rank insubordination" problem. "I’ve spoken to MANY folks in USAID over the last week. And many just today," wrote Dr Craig Spencer on X, who has spent his career on humanitarian health causes overseas and survived Ebola while fighting to contain the outbreak of that disease in Africa. "There is no rank insubordination. There is rank chaos, crying, and confusion." "People who’ve spent DECADES of their life responding to health and humanitarian crises all over the world so we could be safe here don’t know whether they’ll be fired for good tomorrow … or asked to remain with a skeleton crew to try and respond to the numerous crises spinning out of control," Spencer continued. "People with kids who’ve been in schools for years abroad on behalf of the U.S. government are now being yanked out and pulled home. This is profoundly disruptive to so many people’s lives, and to pretend it isn’t only means he doesn’t care and isn’t listening." Already, he warned, the paralysis of USAID is having devastating consequences. "The clinics don’t run. The medications don’t get distributed. Today, children were likely born with HIV who otherwise wouldn’t have been, all because of how this administration unnecessarily yanked support so rapidly. We are demonizing some of the most amazing and selfless Americans who’ve committed themselves to a profession that often pays them less and works them more. They do it because they care. And by doing it they make us all safer." "So these statements by Rubio are not only embarrassing and pure garbage, they defile the commitment of so many incredibly committed people who’ve done more for this country than so many of us," Spencer wrote. "Countries have been calling the White House to inform them of disease outbreaks and ask for support…and no one is there to answer the phone. Maybe focus on that first? Disgusting."

Consequences over President Donald Trump’s plot to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development are emerging as the agency’s stop-work order has left thousands of people with experimental drugs and medical devices inside of their bodies – and nowhere to turn. Dozens of unfinished clinical trials around the world that relied on USAID funds have suddenly shut down, leaving patients abandoned and in a state of limbo as their access to researchers is abruptly withdrawn by Trump’s executive order freezing foreign aid grants for three months.

Authoritarian regimes around the world cheer on dismantling of US Aid Donald Trump’s shutdown of US Aid has already had disastrous effects on humanitarian aid and development programmes around the world, but it has also ceded ground to the US’s chief rival, China, analysts have said. “[The US is handing] on a silver platter to China the perfect opportunity to expand its influence, at a time when China’s economy is not doing very well,” said professor Huang Yanzhong, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. “What Trump is doing is basically providing China a perfect opportunity to rethink, to renew soft power projects, and get back on track to transglobal leadership.” More than one analyst described the shuttering of US Aid as a “self-inflicted wound”. Global dynamics have been dominated by the ongoing US-China competition and a key battlefront is in the development sector as Washington and its allies vie against Beijing for influence in the global south. In 2018, the Chinese government created the standalone China International Development Cooperation Agency, or China Aid, to streamline China’s spending, including its foreign investment programme, the belt and road initiative (BRI). Beijing doesn’t disclose foreign aid budgets but a study by William & Mary’s Global Research Institute found China lent $1.34tn to developing nations between 2000 and 2021, mostly through the BRI. The new agency would “further the effectiveness of aid as a key foreign policy instrument”, according to a government press release at the time. While China Aid operates differently to US Aid, by focusing more on loans and highly visible infrastructure projects rather than partnering with local organisations, both agencies have similar objectives – spreading their respective government’s soft power and influence. It’s particularly focused on the Pacific, where the US, Australia and other allies have been trying to counter China’s efforts to make security deals with the small but strategically located countries. China, like Russia, is trying to advance an authoritarian world. The total opposite of the interests of the West. There was now also likely to be greatly reduced bargaining power for recipient nations. With US Aid gone, programmes which previously reaped the benefits of two superpowers competing to fund their projects might just have to take what they can get. They don’t have to significantly increase funding of the foreign aid levels in order to replace the US as leader in this field. Conley Tyler said the impact of the US Aid suspension is far worse than what’s being reported because many programme workers are hoping if they keep quiet, funding might be restored at the end of the 90 days. But even if it is, broadly, the trust is gone. “Who is going to allow themselves to become dependent on US assistance if it’s fickle, if it doesn’t distinguish between allies and adversaries, if it could just be turned off on a political whim?” she said.

Panama refuses to grant USA free access to the canal The Panamanian government on Wednesday slapped down claims being made by the Trump administration that it had agreed to grant free passage for United States military ships through the Panama Canal. The Wall Street Journal reports that Panama is denying the State Department's claim that American ships would have access to the canal "without charge fees, saving the U.S. government millions of dollars a year." The issue, according to the Journal, is that giving American military ships a free pass through the canal would likely violate treaty commitments that the government made in the past. ''Panama still needs to find a way to allow free passage without breaching a neutrality clause banning preferential treatment for any country, people familiar with the discussions said," reports the Journal. "The canal’s administrator, Ricaurte Vásquez Morales, told The Wall Street Journal last month that breaching the neutrality treaty would lead to chaos."

Trump's freeze on foreign aid helps the Islamic hardliners in control in Iran. The decisions will halt funding for opponents of the country's Shiite theocracy — pro-democracy activists and others supported through programs as part of U.S. government's efforts to help democracy worldwide

No, he's making enemies of all the Palestinian people plus a considerable number of Arabs too. He's an idiot, as are all his foreign policy announcements, making enemies wherever he goes Putin and Xi are laughing.

Trump is very keen to build up enemies all over the world. Canadians are united in hating him. Greenland don't want the US to invade. Mexico, The Gulf of America sure as hell don't like him. Europe hates Musk And now the whole of the Middle East except right wing Israelis. "Donald Trump just openly committed American arms, honour, and credibility to forcibly expel Gaza’s Palestinian population and redevelop the territory into a glittering tourist hub," wrote Rick Wilson, former GOP strategist.. "Yes, it sounds entirely unhinged, and it may torpedo any remaining hope of an enduring Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. It also hands every Islamist militant group an airtight propaganda victory: proof, in their eyes, that the United States is indeed the 'Great Satan.' It’s sounds insane because it is. It sounds manic because it is. It sounds deranged because it is." One of the most telling reactions to Trump's Gaza proposal, said Wilson, came from his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, a long time GOP strategist with a reputation for whipping those around her into ruthless discipline; she looked on at Trump, her eyes bulging and her expression astonished. "The widely photographed look on Susie Wiles’ face spoke volumes: even insiders realize nothing and no one controls Trump. He is a man who is, by all appearances, is both mentally unstable and cognitively unable to process reality beyond his own mental architecture," wrote Wilson. "The damage is mounting, and even red-state leaders are slowly waking up to the danger of entrusting government after government function to the most extreme and least capable loyalists."

Reminders of Trump's broken promises.

Yes, that information came from other sources. Shows people's tendency to jump to conclusions when details are incomplete.

Sweden mass shooter named as ‘loner with social phobia’ Rickard Andersson, 35, who always ‘walked around with hood up’

Not very bright thinking seeing the building was to teach adults Swedish language and other skills, in other words teach migrants. More likely to be a white loner.

More on why drill, baby, drill ain't happening, at least this year. American producers aren’t looking now to boost supply, and likely won’t be enticed to “drill, baby drill” until prices reach an average $84 per barrel, which is close to 15 percent above current prices, according to the Kansas City Federal Reserve. U.S. crude prices fell close to an additional 2 percent on Tuesday as U.S. tariffs on China took effect and China imposed a 10 percent tax on American crude oil. But Trump is nevertheless looking to lower prices. After a phone call last month with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman he said that he planned to ask him to lower oil prices. The president called on all OPEC countries to do the same in a recent speech at The World Economic Forum at Davos. Trump argued that it would put pressure on Russia to withdraw from Ukraine as its income from oil would sink amid the dropping prices, making the war too expensive. But that’s not likely to happen, according to Business Insider, and wouldn’t please American producers who would also have to compete with lower prices. OPEC members have held back output in the past two years to increase market prices amid oil’s price slide, but is expected to gradually roll back production curbs. Whatever OPEC does, analysts expect a major supply glut to weigh down prices through 2025, according to the Insider.

"Trump got played. Canada *already* has 8,500 frontline personnel at the border," wrote former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan. "We also announced the $1.3 billion in December. lol," replied Canadian journalist Jordan Heath-Rawlings.

He doesn't know what he is doing,lol. President Donald Trump spoke to reporters from the Oval Office on Monday about his trade tariffs and his talk with Canadian and Mexican leadership. It started when he asked a staffer which executive order he was signing. Then he was bombarded with questions including what he thought of markets tanking after he announced tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China over the weekend, and about Elon Musk's closing of the office housing the U.S. Agency of International Development. He was also questioned over Musk's accessing the personal data of government employees. Those who watched couldn't help but ridicule as the president struggled to answer — and they fact-checked his statements. Journalist Aaron Rupar called out a Trump claim that 300,000 Americans die annually from fentanyl overdoses — even though Trump's own executive order on tariffs to China cites 75,000 deaths from the drug. "This is a lie," he wrote. "Trump is again doing that weird thing where he signs executive orders that need to be explained to him just before he signs them," pointed out Rupar. On tariffs, policy director Ned Resnikoff pointed out on BlueSky, "Neither the mainstream press nor our political system seem to have digested the fact that the U.S. president is trying to illegally annex a NATO ally using economic coercion." And on Musk's activities, legal analyst Bradley Moss said it's clear: "He has no idea what Elon is doing. He let loose Elon to go wild." Ex-conservative columnist Jen Rubin replied, "Musk is running the government. Trump is a feeble figurehead." "Donald Trump just criticized the existing trade deal, and asked, "Who the hell came up with some of these trade deals?" I'll just leave this here," wrote author and activist Majid M. Padellan, better known as BrooklynDad on X. The screen capture he posted showed Trump was the one who signed the "new NAFTA" trade deal during his first term. Trump, dumb as a rock.

The ignore button can be a blessed relief.

The unpredictability and hostility of the US under Trump to both allies and adversaries could lead to the formation of new alliances. "Trump sows uncertainty - and Xi Jinping sees an opportunity - BBC News" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c78xj7j719jo

More good news Pro-Russia paramilitary leader killed in Moscow blast - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0rqj171zzvo Link added by Admin

Canadian reaction.