Trumpism

Europe

Trump prepares grab for Ukraine’s lithium

As Trump and Hegseth explicitly broach the surrender of Ukrainian territory to Russia, a poorly positioned Zelensky is acceding to demands that he turn a large portion of his country’s strategic mineral wealth over to the US in compensation for military aid. Especially at issue are Ukraine’s significant reserves of lithium—critical to de facto “co-president” Elon Musk’s e-vehicle interests. In announcing a new lithium refinery in Texas, Musk called the mineral “the new oil.” The premium on Ukraine’s strategic minerals is elevated by China’s perceived design to establish control over the planet’s rare earth elements. However, as Zelensky is quick to emphasize, nearly 20% of Ukraine’s mineral resources are in areas under Russian occupation. (Map: ResearchGate)

North America

Nevada lithium permit violates indigenous rights: HRW

Human Rights Watch (HRW) charged that the US government’s decision to permit Lithium Americas company to mine at Thacker Pass in Nevada violates indigenous people’s rights by failing to obtain free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) in accordance with international law. The report determined that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) permitted the lithium mine without the FPIC of the Numu, Nuwu and Newe peoples. In the 2021 BLM decision to approve the mining project, the agency stated it had been in contact with tribal governments since 2018 and that “no comments or concerns have been raised.” HRW challenges that assertion, claiming there was no meaningful consultation, and that US courts have rebuffed all efforts by affected indigenous peoples to challenge the adequacy of the consultation process. Thacker Pass contains one of the largest known lithium deposits in the world. The project sprawls over 18,000 acres of Numu, Nuwu and Newe ancestral lands. (Photo: Protect Thacker Pass)

Watching the Shadows

Trump signs order sanctioning ICC

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order sanctioning the International Criminal Court (ICC) for issuing warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant. The order imposes significant sanctions on ICC officials and their immediate families, including the blocking of property and assets and suspension of entry into the United States. The order asserts that the ICC has improperly claimed jurisdiction over the US and Israel, and that the ICC’s actions endanger US personnel and threaten US sovereignty and national security. (Photo: OSeveno/WikiMedia)

Mexico

Mexico launches ‘Operativo Frontera Norte’

Mexico has launched a massive deployment of 10,000 troops to cities and towns on the border with the United States. Videos and photos posted on social media by Mexico’s Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA) showed military and National Guard troops lined up boarding transport planes and rows of army trucks rolling out from bases in Mexico City, Tlaxcala and other cities. The response—dubbed “Operativo Frontera Norte”—is part of an agreement reached between US President Donald Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum postponing trade tariff threats for a month. (Photo: SEDENA via Peninsula360)

Africa

Trump’s first air-strikes hit ISIS base in Puntland

US fighter jets launched from the USS Harry Truman in the Red Sea struck a hidden base of the local ISIS franchise in the interior mountains of Somalia’s northern autonomous enclave of Puntland. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the “initial assessment is that multiple operatives were killed” in these first US air-strikes under the new Trump presidency. The strikes were carried out with the cooperation of the governments of both Puntland and Somalia, whose President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud expressed his “deepest gratitude.” The Puntland Dervish Forces have for some five years been fighting the self-declared “Islamic State Somalia” in the enclave’s Cal Miskaad mountains. (Photo via Garowe Online)

North America

Podcast: Is it fascism yet?

In Episode 263 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg deconstructs the moves by the unconstitutional Trump regime to consolidate a dictatorship over the United States—attempting to seize autocratic control over the bureaucracy, and (in a case of fascist pseudo-anti-fascism) weaponizing concern with anti-Semitism to suppress free speech while institutionalizing indifference to (and consciously enflaming) all other forms of racism. And this as Elon Musk (a private-sector oligarch given extra-legal power over government functions) tells a rally of the Nazi-adjacent Alternative für Deutschland that Germany has “too much of a focus on past guilt.” It took Hitler mere weeks to establish a dictatorship after coming to power, whereas with Mussolini it took some three years. We shall soon find out how long it will take in the United States—unless the country can find the wherewithal to resist. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo via CEPR)

Watching the Shadows

Trump orders expansion of Gitmo migrant facility

President Trump has ordered the construction of a 30,000-bed facility to hold migrants at the notorious US naval facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as part of his mass deportation campaign. The US base has been used to house terrorism suspects since 2002, becoming synonymous with torture and unlawful imprisonment. The US has secretively detained refugees and migrants intercepted at sea at Guantánamo Bay for decades, but the facility has not previously been used for people apprehended on US soil or at this scale. (Photo: Spc. Cody Black/WikiMedia via Jurist)

North America

Quakers sue to stop ICE raids on houses of worship

Five Quaker groups filed a lawsuit to stop immigration agents from conducting raids on houses of worship. The complaint alleges that the new Department of Homeland Security policy that allows Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to conduct searches and arrests at schools and religious institutions violates the First Amendment to the US Constitution. The lawsuit claims that the new policy has forced certain congregations to cancel worship services due to fear of ICE enforcement. On the first week of the new policy’s implementation, a church in Georgia said it had to lock its doors to prevent ICE agents from conducting an arrest in the middle of a service. Pacifism is an integral component of Quaker beliefs, and the lawsuit asserts that the possible presence of armed agents in Quaker meeting houses is a fundamental violation of “a founding principle of their faith.” (Photo: Wikipedia)

East Asia

Podcast: South Korea and MAGA-fascism

In Episode 262 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg contrasts the intransigent resistance to the attempted power-grab by would-be right-wing strongman Yoon Suk Yeol in South Korea (and Robert Fico in Slovakia) with the craven capitulation to the consolidating Trump regime in the US—despite the unconstitutionality of his very presidency, the fascist stench from his team of oligarchs, and despite the emergence of evidence that points to actual hacking of the vote to effect his victory. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo of Seoul protests via Twitter)

North America

Trump rushes out hardline migration agenda

During his first days back in office, Donald Trump rapidly started implementing his hardline migration agenda, including by declaring a state of emergency at the US southern border. The move allows his administration to access billions of dollars to expand the building of a border wall and to deploy the military and national guard to the area. Around 1,500 active duty soldiers are already being deployed. Trump also reinstated the controversial “Remain in Mexico” program from his first administration. This policy, which requires people to wait for asylum appointments in Mexico, helped to create a now-perennial humanitarian crisis in northern Mexico. The Trump administration has also shut down CBP One—a cell phone app for scheduling asylum appointments—leaving thousands of people stranded in Mexico, and suspended the US refugee resettlement program, as well as cancelling travel plans for refugees who had already been approved to enter the country. Trump’s promised mass deportation of millions of undocumented people has yet to get underway, but his administration has begun laying the groundwork for expanded immigration raids—potentially including on schools, churches, and hospitals—and has threatened to prosecute any local officials who don’t comply. (Image: White House)

North America

AGs challenge Trump bid to end birthright citizenship

Attorneys general from 22 states filed a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship. Central to the lawsuit is the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which states that “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens of the United States…” The clause was last interpreted by the Supreme Court in 1898 in United States v. Wong Kim Ark as granting citizenship to all babies born in the country. The coalition of attorneys general, representing states including Massachusetts, Illinois and New York, argue in the lawsuit that Trump’s executive order undermines constitutional principles and threatens to create a class of stateless individuals born within the United States. (Image: PressBooks)

The Caribbean

Will US-Cuba deal survive Trump?

Outgoing President Joe Biden informed Congress in his final days in office that he would lift the US designation of Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism (SSOT), as part of a deal facilitated by the Catholic Church to free political prisoners on the island. The Cuban government announced it would release 553 prisoners who had been jailed in connection with the 2021 protests on the island. However, the durability of the deal was immediately cast into doubt. Just one day after the policy change, Republican Senator Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, said during his Senate Confirmation hearing that Cuba belongs on the SSOT list. (Photo: Falkenpost/Pixabay)