Author: potus

My father spoke only once to me about why he wanted to be president of the United States. It was the night of his inauguration in 1981. I had been assigned to one of the inaugural balls and was supposed to wait there for my parents to arrive. After sitting onstage, on a metal folding chair with a crowd of people staring up at me for what felt like an hour, I broke the rules and left. Lying awake in the Lincoln Bedroom, I hoped Lincoln’s ghost would visit me, as he has been said to have visited others in…

There is a certain tension in the way that American conservatism looks at Europe. On the one hand, Donald Trump and his allies insist that European countries need to step up, behave like serious world powers, and take on much more military responsibility.On the other hand, many American right-wingers display contempt for a continent they regard as impotent, decadent and basically doomed. And they have a special contempt for the current structure through which Europeans act in concert, the bureaucratized pseudo-confederacy (see, I’m expressing contempt myself) of the European Union.As a consequence, American conservatives tend to sympathize with European parties…

Between the U.S. tariff “psychodrama,” or, per Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s quip, “Thursday,” and the growing evidence that President Trump’s threats of Canada’s sovereignty are quite serious, it’s been a stressful time for Canadians who are looking for stability.That may not come quite yet. Even as Liberal Party members overcome registration problems to vote on Mr. Trudeau’s successor at the helm of the party and the country, a federal election looms.The protracted instability — one that could yield three Canadian prime ministers in one year — is reflected in opinion research, where voters’ views on who is best to manage…

Russian strikes killed 20 people in the war-torn eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk on Friday night, a sign that Moscow is stepping up bombardments of cities critical for Ukrainian logistics and support and taking advantage of Washington’s decision to pause military aid and intelligence sharing with Kyiv.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Facebook on Saturday that Russian forces had fired two ballistic missiles into the small city of Dobropillia, and that after emergency services arrived, another Russian attack had rained down on the rescuers. The strikes killed 11 people in the city, according to Vadym Filashkin, the head of…

In early 2017, American intelligence agencies delivered an unequivocal judgment about why President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had ordered a sprawling effort to sabotage the recent American presidential election.Mr. Putin wanted to cripple the faith Americans have in their own elections, they found, and to undermine a United States-led “liberal world order” that the Russians see as a threat to their security. As a way to achieve this goal, the assessment found, Russia worked to help Donald J. Trump win the election.Eight years later, Mr. Trump sat in the Oval Office for a blustery meeting with President Voldymyr Zelensky…

Evangelical Christian leaders who delivered votes to President Trump are now pressing him to declare that Israel can claim ownership of the West Bank, based on a promise God made to the Jews in the Bible.They are seeking a way to pave a path toward annexation of territory that is widely viewed internationally as intended for a future Palestinian state. Israel seized the territory from Jordan in a war in 1967 and has occupied it since. In recent years, the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been encouraging Jewish settlers to build homes there at an increasing rate.Prominent…

Inside President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, the populists and politicians are starting to take swings at the plutocrats — namely billionaire White House adviser Elon Musk.In a tense Cabinet meeting Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy excoriated Musk for firing their employees without giving consideration to whether letting them go would improve or harm their agencies.A day earlier, Republican senators, concerned about the human and political costs of Musk’s legally murky budget cuts, appeared to secure an on-the-spot commitment from the billionaire to let Congress vote on those cuts rather than having the White House…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans in Congress have long been intent on countering America’s rivals and spreading U.S. influence abroad. But when President Donald Trump spelled out a sharp turn from that approach in his recent address to Congress, lawmakers in his party couldn’t help but stand and applaud.Moves toward a neutral position on the war between Russia and Ukraine. Tariffs on trading partners and allies. Cuts in foreign military and humanitarian aid. More is sure to come as Trump sweeps Washington with his “America First” agenda. “We’re going to protect our citizens like never before,” he told Congress.Those ideas have…

Warning that a “profound change of American geopolitics” had put Poland, as well as Ukraine, in an “objectively more difficult situation,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland on Friday said his country must drastically increase the size of its military and even “reach for opportunities related to nuclear weapons.”Mr. Tusk, in a detailed speech on security to the Polish Parliament, did not explicitly propose developing a nuclear arsenal, but said that “it is time for us to look boldly at our possibilities of having the most modern weapons” and explore options for nuclear and “modern unconventional weapons.”He added that his…

Panamá liberará a 112 migrantes que habían sido deportados de Estados Unidos el mes pasado y estaban recluidos en un campamento remoto en la selva, dijo un ministro el viernes, luego de que abogados y defensores afirmaran que las condiciones violaban las leyes panameñas e internacionales.Los migrantes proceden de países a los que Estados Unidos no puede deportar fácilmente, a menudo porque esas naciones no quieren recibirlos.Panamá estaba expidiendo pases humanitarios temporales de 30 días a los migrantes, para darles tiempo de organizar el regreso a sus países de origen o a otros países dispuestos a acogerlos, dijo el viernes…