Arizona Legislators Are Immune From Traffic Tickets During Session. A New Proposal Wants To Change That.
Under Arizona's Constitution, state legislators are immune from traffic tickets during and around legislative sessions. But after several legislators used the law to get away with reckless speeding, a new proposal is looking to change the law.
The resolution, HCR2053, would amend the part of the Arizona Constitution that gives lawmakers immunity "from arrest in all cases except treason, felony, and breach of the peace," by adding "and all traffic violations" to the list. If approved by the very legislators it targets, the proposal would go before Arizona voters in the 2026 election.
"Elected officials should not have special privileges that allow them to break the law without accountability," said state Rep. Quang Nguyen (R–Prescott Valley) in a February press release. "The people we serve are expected to follow traffic laws, and legislators should be no different. If a lawmaker is caught speeding, running a red light, or committing any other traffic violation, they should face the same consequences as everyone else."
Under the current status quo, legislators have used their immunity to get out of a range of legal issues. According to The Washington Post, state Sen. Mark Finchem (R–Prescott) used the law to get out of a ticket for driving 18 mph over the speed limit in January. Last year, another state Senator invoked the law to try to avoid a citation for driving more than 71 mph in a 35 mph zone. Once the legislative session ended, she was charged with criminal excessive speeding.
While the measure seems like common sense, it's unclear whether it will pass. The bill passed the House 37-20 earlier this month and now heads to the Senate. "There's no way it will ever be repealed," former state Rep. Paul Mosley (R–Lake Havasu City)—who himself used the constitutional immunity provision to get out of multiple speeding tickets—told the Post. "It's kind of like a perk or a benefit. That's like saying to legislators, 'Hey, will you take a pay cut?'"
While supporters argue that this kind of immunity prevents law enforcement from retaliating against state legislators, in practice, it allows legislators to escape basic accountability under the law.
"The only justifiable reason that I can think of is that they fear prosecutors would be using speeding tickets to try to get lawmakers to do what they want them to do," Paul Bender, an Arizona State University law professor, told the Post. "I'm not aware of that happening."
The post Arizona Legislators Are Immune From Traffic Tickets During Session. A New Proposal Wants To Change That. appeared first on Reason.com.
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New York Post
34 minutes ago
- New York Post
How Poland's new President could change Europe — and America
'We won!' announced Rafał Trzaskowski to an ecstatic crowd of supporters. It was just after 9 p.m. this past Sunday, and the exit polls had declared the dashing mayor of Warsaw the winner of Poland's hard-fought, high-stakes presidential race. Trzaskowski's rival, Karol Nawrocki, is a conservative historian with a past that would make notorious 'Red Scare'-era Washington lawyer Roy Cohn proud. Weeks before the election, President Trump had invited Nawrocki to the Oval Office and blessed him. Then, just days before the vote, his homeland secretary, Kristi Noem, traveled to Poland to deliver a florid endorsement of his candidacy. 9 In early May, Karol Nawrocki met with Pres. Trump in the Oval Office, weeks before the conservative upstart was elected President of Poland in a move that affirmed Trump's transatlantic political potency, while dealing a blow to liberal-minded European integrationism. White House European mandarins who had watched the Trumpian encroachment with impotent rage welcomed Trzaskowski's triumph as a much-needed middle-finger to MAGA. Their exultation, alas, was premature. Two hours after Trzaskowski's proclamation of victory came a more comprehensive poll that put his opponent ahead in the count. As the hours passed, his numbers rose. And by 1 a.m. this past Monday, it was clear that Trzaskowski had lost and Nawrocki — the Trump proxy — was on course to become the next president of what is unquestionably the most successful post-Cold War country in Europe. The Polish presidency, though largely ornamental, matters because it is endowed with the power to paralyze the government. But the outcome of Sunday's election is more than a domestic triumph for Nawrocki and the populist-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party that backed him; it has serious implications for Europe and the transatlantic relationship. To grasp its significance, consider Poland's astounding transformation over the past quarter century. 9 Rafal Trzaskowski , the Mayor of Warsaw and former candidate for the Polish presidency walking in a Warsaw Pride LGBT Pride March in 2021. Such bold-face political gestures are part of the reason Trzaskowski lost to his more tradition-minded challenger. Getty Images Just over two decades ago, when Poland joined the European Union, it was a grim place that belched out emigrants and workers. Warsaw was a drab reliquary of communist architecture whose centerpiece was a Stalinist tower. Today, Poland's GDP is approaching $1 trillion. The living standards of its people are the envy of the world. Its army is larger than the armed forces of Britain or France. Central Warsaw is clustered with glass-clad skyscrapers. Those who emigrated abroad in search of opportunity are gradually returning home. Poles who value the EU's role in their nation's modernization view Nawrocki as a peril to Poland's democratic gains and European alignment. When the PiS party was in power, between 2015 and 2023, it tightened Poland's already severe abortion laws, packed the constitutional tribunal with loyalists, drifted toward 'legal exit' from Europe and invited retaliatory sanctions from Brussels. 9 Map of Poland and surrounding countries. Mike Guillen/NY Post Design PiS was supplanted in the 2023 elections by a motley coalition led by Civic Platform, which has since been locked in a stalemate with the incumbent president, Andrzej Duda, also of PiS. A Trzaskowski triumph would have unshackled the more liberal-minded Civic Platform to pursue its legislative agenda, including the legalization of same-sex unions. Nawrocki's win has thwarted this prospect. Much like in MAGA-world, Nawrocki presents himself as a 'family-first' conservative for whom marriage is 'a union between a man and a woman.' Is he a danger to minorities? 'Nawrocki holds strong political views, but he is certainly not an extremist,' explains Mikołaj Wild, an erstwhile high-ranking official in the prime minister's office and one of Poland's most respected civil servants. 'He represents the views of the majority of Poles, which may appear radically conservative in some other European countries.' 9 Karol Nawrocki and his family react to the release of election results last week. Nawrocki's win came as a surprise following initial indications that he had been defeated by his more liberal-minded challenger. REUTERS Nawrocki is not so much an aberration in Poland as a product of a politics torn by clashing visions of identity. Poland's success has reactivated religious, cultural and national impulses that had long been dormant. Flush with an economy their grandparents could scarcely dream of, Poles now fight over what it means to be Polish and European, Christian and modern. The presidential race has shown just how deep these divisions run. The loser, Trzaskowski, is a Polish hybrid of Adlai Stevenson and John Kerry: A polished career politician who speaks half a dozen languages, he is well-meaning, well-bred, liberal, competent and admired in Brussels. He is also way more progressive. As Warsaw's mayor, he didn't stop at marching in Pride parades. He also ordered the removal of Christian crosses from government buildings — an overreach that, while earning him the adulation of Poles in the big cities, infuriated conservatives in the hinterlands who see their history as being inextricably bound up with the Catholic Church. 9 Nawrocki met with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, in Rzeszow, Poland in late May — another endorsement from MAGA world. via REUTERS And their champion is Nawrocki. He was born into poverty in the port city of Gdansk. Ports, particularly in destitute places, draw organized crime, and Nawrocki was exposed to this world at an early age. He sought purpose in athletics, became a boxer and occasionally participated in football brawls. Working as a security guard at a hotel, he is alleged to have procured prostitutes for guests. This is not the curriculum vitae of a defender of Christian values. Nawrocki, however, became a beneficiary of a deepening resentment among Poles who — believing their social values were being eroded and their sovereignty endangered by liberal elites pandering to Brussels — were willing to overlook supposed defects in his character in favor of his commitment to put 'Poland first.' He spoke for a people who, as Wild puts it, 'are conservative and disagree with the socially progressive agenda of Rafał Trzaskowski.' This attitude is particularly strong in places such as Radom. An hour's train ride from Warsaw, Radom was once a proud center of Polish political life. Today, it is an object of mockery in the cities, 'a national joke,' as a filmmaker in Warsaw called it. Its people are dismissed as gauche and gaudy. 9 'Nawrocki holds strong political views, but he is certainly not an extremist,' explains Polish politician Mikołaj Wild. Wikipedia Radom voters I met seemed fed up with the condescension that comes their way. The owner of a café and bar there told me that nowhere else in Poland or Europe did she feel the same sense of community. Radom has a great deal in common with Rust Belt America. And what galls its people — like in the US — is the knowledge that so many of their own compatriots view them as inferior beings when they see themselves as a repository of so much that is worth preserving about their country. 'A lot of Poles in the cities want to be British, French, or Italian,' one Radom resident told me. 'We are proud to be Polish.' He was for Nawrocki. Trzaskowski, for all his liberal theatricality, proved disconcertingly flexible in the final days of the campaign as he attempted to court Nawrocki's voters by speaking their language. Rather than win them over, however, his flip-flopping alienated his own voters. 'Poles saw through the hypocrisy,' says 29-year-old entrepreneur Filip Krzewski. 9 'Poles saw through the hypocrisy' of the campaign's political flip-flopping, says 29-year-old entrepreneur Filip Krzewski. Courtesy of Filip Krzewski Nawrocki profited too from a growing frustration with Ukraine in a nation that is still intensely hostile to Moscow. Since Russia's invasion of 2022, Poland has sheltered more than a million Ukrainian refugees. It has granted them the same privileges as Polish nationals. Three years on, there is a tincture of outrage among Poles. As one Warsaw banker complained to me: 'Some of them drive Lamborghinis, but what are they contributing to Poland?' As a nationalist historian Nawrocki is alert to Poland's unresolved history with Ukraine. But he is emphatically not pro-Russian. In fact, he is on a list of wanted men in Russia for ordering the demolition of Red Army monuments in Poland. He has, however, refused to endorse Kyiv's admission into NATO in a departure from PiS's earlier position. And his pledge not to send Polish soldiers to fight in Ukraine has worked to his advantage. 'One million Ukrainian men have fled Ukraine,' a student at Warsaw University told me. 'Why should we go and fight for them?' Nawrocki's win is a gain for Trump's 'peace plan.' 9 The glass-and-steel skyscrapers dotting central Warsaw reflect Poland's almost miraculous economic expansion. FilipWarulik – Domestically, Nawrocki's victory cements PiS's chokehold on Poland's governance. His great luck as he takes office is the unwieldy nature of the government itself. Poland's ruling coalition is a brittle alliance of ideological antagonists led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Barring a miracle, Nawrocki will almost certainly obstruct legislation. Polish democracy is alive. Its health, however, depends on its democratically elected leaders' ability to work together. Abroad, Nawrocki's Euroscepticism, combined with his alignment with Trump against EU integration, is certain to impair relations with Brussels. His posture toward Ukraine could strain NATO's eastern flank and push more responsibility onto Western European states—though, to be sure, Poland's NATO and EU commitments should limit the extent of any drastic shift. And his election, reviving the MAGA movement following the demoralizing defeat of Trumpist candidates in Romania, Australia, Germany and Canada, will also revitalize populist movements across the continent and beyond. Trump has already heaped praise upon himself for Nawrocki's victory. 'TRUMP ALLY WINS IN POLAND, SHOCKING ALL EUROPE,' he posted on Truth Social after the result. 9 The Old Market Square in Radom, a town still struggling to catch up, but whose residents are traditional, proud, strongly Catholic and decidedly Poland-first in thinking. Sebastian – Going forward, Warsaw's relationship with Washington — a nonpartisan concern until now — looks destined to degenerate into a partisan sport. Democrats will console Tusk; MAGA luminaries already see Nawrocki as a missionary of their brand of nationalism. And what of Trump, who has long nursed his own grievances against Europe's political masters in Paris, London and Brussels? Well, he has just become equipped with a powerful weapon to wield against them for his entertainment.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Now is the time for all Americans to come to the aid of their country
(Photo: Brandon Kingdollar/NC Newsline) So, I was at a protest last month in Cleveland, where I was visiting my dying mother. I told her I needed to leave her to go downtown for the protest on that damp, windy spring day. She understood. The turnout was okay. My reporter's eye would have put the crowd at around a thousand. I usually attend protests in Raleigh, and the one a couple weeks previously hit around five thousand, though I'm told the protest I missed while I was in Cleveland was somewhat smaller. A little more recently I went to another protest, and that hit a nice crowd of maybe 500 or more in downtown Durham on a Thursday afternoon. Then I was going to join the one in Raleigh on the same day but a friend said don't bother, it's ending and had only a few hundred people. So, I have a single question, a question for the folks of Cleveland and Raleigh and North Carolina and everywhere else: Where the hell are you people? What are you waiting for? Illegal deportations? Check. Anonymous secret police grabbing people up and disappearing them regardless of rights or status? Done. Wholesale refusal to respect the Constitution, whether that means abiding by judicial rulings and the emoluments clause or simply respecting citizens' first, fourth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendment rights? Already there. Nothing is lacking; all the signs and actions are there. The current regimes — both in North Carolina and Washington DC — do not respect the courts, the ballot box, the people, or the rule of law. And here came nationwide protests and you — you personally! You! — where the hell were you? What, did you have errands to run? Yoga? The lawn looked like a mess? You had the sniffles? 'I was GOING to stand up to fascism,' we will say in the future, 'but I had an orthodontist appointment.' We laughed scornfully about Trump's refusal to honor World War I dead in France because of rain. Well, where the hell are we and what's keeping us away? You guys: we don't have time for this bull. I mean we don't have time for all the protests, sure; that's part of the plan. If we're exhausted and poor and worn out, we're less likely to protest. But just like you never have time for a doctor's appointment until what the doctor could have quickly solved puts you in the hospital or the grave? We either protest now like our lives depend on it — spoiler alert — or we let them do as they please with our lives. Those are the only options. Nobody is coming to help us; those who can, like corporations (with the usual few noble exceptions: Penzeys, Ben & Jerry's, Costco) or political leadership, won't. Those who wish they could (the entire rest of what we once called the free world) can't. It's us or nobody. And just the way more than a third of our population looked at a choice between trying to solve our problems on the one hand and electing a vast new and terrifying parcel of much worse problems on the other, said 'So sorry, busy, can't be bothered,' you — You! You personally! — are going about your business. Dude. Your business is saving your life. You may love the game you're playing on your phone, and you should play it and enjoy it — but if you fall into the sea while you're playing it, don't keep playing: swim for your life. You may need to work out for your health, but if someone tries to kidnap you while you're jogging by, you don't get to say, 'I'd love to fight back, but, you know: leg day.' You have to inconvenience yourself. A meme went around during the first Trump administration that said, 'I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people.' It was a wonderful symbol of the great divide among us. Now we're in the same place, only I'm talking to my fellow non-Fascist Americans. I don't know how to tell you that when someone is trying to enslave you, you fight: you fight and you do not stop fighting, because it's now or never. I'm told that if we get 3.5 percent of the people in the streets, we're going to win. What are we telling them if we don't? My wife tells me she has been taught that if someone has her in their control and plans to rape her, the calculations are complex. If I choose to go along, will that let me live through it? Should I run? Can I keep him talking? Will fighting make things worse? It's unimaginable but correct: whatever keeps you alive, do that, and live to work through the horrible consequences. But if in that situation your captor tries to pull you into a vehicle? Fight for your life: you won't come back out. Once he gets you in that car? You're as good as dead. Fight. You guys, they've got us, and they're trying to pull us into the car. I personally am fighting for our lives. What do you plan to do? June 14th there's another nationwide protest, scheduled for the same day as the idiot birthday parade. You guys, it's now or never. Fight or die.
The Intercept
2 hours ago
- The Intercept
Top U.S. General in Africa Paints Grim Picture of U.S. Military Failures in Africa
President George W. Bush created a new command to oversee all military operations in Africa 18 years ago. U.S. Africa Command was meant to help 'bring peace and security to the people of Africa.' The Trump administration now has AFRICOM on the chopping block as part of its sweeping reorganization of the military. According to the general leading the command, its mission is far from accomplished. Gen. Michael Langley, the head of AFRICOM, offered a grim assessment of security on the African continent during a recent press conference. The West African Sahel, he said last Friday, was now the 'epicenter of terrorism' and the gravest terrorist threats to the U.S. homeland were 'unfortunately right here on the African continent.' The embattled four-star general — who noted his days were numbered as AFRICOM's chief — was speaking from a conference of African defense chiefs in Kenya, where he had been imploring ministers and heads of state to help save his faltering command. 'I said: 'OK, if we're that important to [you], you need to communicate that,'' he explained, asking them to have their U.S. ambassadors make entreaties on behalf of AFRICOM. Current and former defense officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide candid assessments, were divided on whether Langley deserves a measure of blame for the dire straits the command finds itself in. One former defense official spoke highly of Langley, calling him 'an effective and transformational leader' who 'rapidly grew into the job and developed strong, fruitful relationships with members of Congress.' A current official, however, said almost the opposite, calling the four-star general a 'marble mouth' who did a poor job of making a case for his command, 'fumbled' relations with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and diminished AFRICOM's standing with legislators. Asked by messaging app if the latter assessment was accurate, a former Africa Command official sent a laughing emoji and replied 'no comment' followed by 'but yes.' (The official said he could be quoted as such.) Before 2008, when the command began operations, U.S. military activities in Africa were handled by other combatant commands. AFRICOM's creation reflected rising U.S. national security interests on the continent and a desire for a single command to oversee a proliferation of post-9/11 counterterrorism activities, predominantly in the West African Sahel and Somalia. Since U.S. Africa Command began operations, the number of U.S. military personnel on the African continent — as well as programs, operations, exercises, bases, low-profile Special Operations missions, deployments of commandos, drones strikes, and almost every other military activity — has jumped exponentially. AFRICOM 'disrupts and neutralizes transnational threats' in order to 'promote regional security, stability and prosperity,' according to its mission statement. That hasn't come to pass. Throughout all of Africa, the State Department counted 23 deaths from terrorist violence in 2002 and 2003, the first years of U.S. counterterrorism efforts in the Sahel and Somalia. By 2010, two years after AFRICOM began operations, fatalities from attacks by militant Islamists had already spiked to 2,674, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution. The situation only continued to deteriorate. There were an estimated 18,900 fatalities linked to militant Islamist violence in Africa last year, with 79 percent of those coming from the Sahel and Somalia, according to a recent analysis by the Africa Center. This constitutes a jump of more than 82,000 percent since the U.S. launched its post-9/11 counterterrorism efforts on the continent. 'The Sahel — that's where we consider the epicenter of terrorism — Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger are confronted with this each and every day; they're in crisis. The terrorist networks affiliated with ISIS and al-Qaeda are thriving, particularly in Burkina Faso,' said Langley. During his tenure, the U.S. was largely kicked out of the region, forced to abandon key nodes of its archipelago of West African bases and many secret wars across the Sahel that were largely unknown to members of Congress as they played out. Langley noted that, since the U.S. left Niger in September of last year, AFRICOM has observed a rise in violence across the Sahel. He neglected to mention that terrorism increased exponentially during the years of heaviest U.S. military involvement, leading to instability and disenchantment with the U.S. He also failed to note, despite having been previously grilled about it during congressional testimony, that the military juntas that booted the U.S. from West Africa were made up of U.S.-supported officers who overthrew the governments the U.S. trained them to protect. As violence spiraled in the region over the past decades, at least 15 officers who benefited from U.S. security assistance were key leaders in 12 coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel during the war on terror — including the three nations Langley emphasized: Burkina Faso (in 2014, 2015, and twice in 2022), Mali (in 2012, 2020, and 2021), and Niger (in 2023). At least five leaders of the 2023 coup d'état in the latter country, for example, received American assistance. U.S. war in Somalia which has ramped up since President Donald Trump retook office, also got top billing. The U.S. 'is actively pursuing and eliminating jihadists,' said the AFRICOM chief. 'And at the request of the Somali Government, this year alone AFRICOM has conducted over 25 airstrikes — double the number of strikes that we did last year.' The U.S. military is approaching its 23rd year of operations in Somalia. In the fall of 2002, the U.S. military established Combined Joint Task Force–Horn of Africa to conduct operations in support of the global war on terror in the region, and U.S. Special Operations forces were dispatched to Somalia. They were followed by conventional forces, helicopters, surveillance aircraft, outposts, and drones. By 2007, the Pentagon recognized that there were fundamental flaws with U.S. military operations in the Horn of Africa, and Somalia became another post-9/11 stalemate, which AFRICOM inherited the next year. U.S. airstrikes in Somalia have skyrocketed when Trump is in office. From 2007 to 2017, under the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the U.S. military carried out 43 declared airstrikes in Somalia. During Trump's first term, AFRICOM conducted more than 200 air attacks against members of al-Shabab and the Islamic State. By the end of his first term, Trump was ready to call it quits on the sputtering conflict in Somalia, ordering almost all U.S. troops out of the country in late 2020. But President Joe Biden reversed the withdrawal, allowing the conflict to grind on — and now escalate under Trump. The Biden administration conducted 39 declared strikes in Somalia over four years. The U.S. has already carried out 33 airstrikes in Somalia in 2025, according to AFRICOM public affairs. At this pace, AFRICOM is poised to equal or exceed the highest number of strikes there in the command's history, 63 in 2019. Despite almost a quarter-century of conflict and billions of taxpayer dollars, Somalia has joined the ranks of signature forever-war failures. While fatalities from Islamist attacks dropped in Somalia last year, they were still 72 percent higher than 2020, according to the Africa Center. AFRICOM told The Intercept that the country's main militant group, al-Shabab, is now 'the largest al Qaida network in the world.' (Langley called them 'entrenched, wealthy, and large.') The command called ISIS-Somalia 'a growing threat in East Africa' and said its numbers had tripled from 500 to an estimated 1,500 in the last 18 months. The U.S. recently conducted the 'largest airstrike in the history of the world' from an aircraft carrier on Somalia, according to Adm. James Kilby, the Navy's acting chief of naval operations. That strike, by 16 F/A-18 Super Hornets, unleashed around 125,000 pounds of munitions. Those 60 tons of bombs killed just 14 ISIS members, according to AFRICOM. At that rate, it would take roughly 13,000,000 pounds of bombs to wipe out ISIS-Somalia and about 107,000,000 pounds to eliminate al-Shabab, firepower roughly equivalent to four of the atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Troubles loom elsewhere on the continent as well. 'One of the terrorists' new objectives is gaining access to West Africa coasts. If they secure access to the coastline, they can finance their operations through smuggling, human trafficking, and arms trading,' Langley warned, not mentioning that U.S. counterterrorism failures in the Sahel led directly to increased attacks on Gulf of Guinea nations. Togo — which sits due south of Burkina Faso — saw a 45 percent increase in terrorist fatalities in 2024, according to the Africa Center. Langley also referenced trouble in Africa's most populous nation. 'We're observing a rise in attacks by violent extremist organizations, not only in Niger but across the Sahel to include Nigeria,' Langley warned. He offered a somewhat garbled plan of action in response: 'The scale and brutality of some of these incidents are really troubling. So we're monitoring this closely and these events, and offering of sharing intel with the Nigerian and also regional partners in that area remains constant. We are committed to supporting one of the most capable militaries in the region, in Nigeria.' U.S. support to the Nigerian military has been immense, and Nigerian people have suffered for it — something else that Langley left unsaid. Between 2000 and 2022, alone, the U.S. provided, facilitated, or approved more than $2 billion in security aid to the country. In those same years, hundreds of Nigerian airstrikes killed thousands of Nigerians. A 2017 attack on a displaced persons camp in Rann, Nigeria, killed more than 160 civilians, many of them children. A subsequent Intercept investigation revealed that the attack was referred to as an instance of 'U.S.-Nigerian operations' in a formerly secret U.S. military document. A 2023 Reuters analysis of data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a U.S.-based armed violence monitoring group, found that more than 2,600 people were killed in 248 airstrikes outside the most active war zones in Nigeria during the previous five years. That same year, an investigation by Nigeria's Premium Times called out the government for 'a systemic propaganda scheme to keep the atrocities of its troops under wraps.' In his conference call with reporters, held as part of the 2025 African Chiefs of Defense Conference, Langley took only written, vetted questions, allowing him to skirt uncomfortable subjects. AFRICOM failed to provide answers to follow-up questions from The Intercept. During the call, Langley offered a farewell and a pledge. 'This will likely be my last, final Chiefs of Defense Conference as the AFRICOM commander. A nomination for my successor is expected soon,' Langley told The Intercept and others. 'But no matter who holds this position, the AFRICOM mission remains constant. AFRICOM will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with African partners into the future.' Langley's pleas at the conference suggested less certainty. For years, AFRICOM — and Langley in particular — has been paying lip service to a preference for 'African solutions for African challenges' or as Langley put it last week: 'It's about empowering African nations to solve African problems, not just through handouts but through trusted cooperation.' But he has seemed less than enamored with African solutions that include severing ties with the United States. In April, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he accused Burkina Faso's leader, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, of misusing the country's gold reserves 'to protect the junta regime.' Langley partially walked back those comments last week and appeared to seek reconciliation. 'We all respect their sovereignty,' he said. 'So the U.S. seeks opportunities to collaborate with Burkina Faso on counterterrorism challenges.' For more than two decades, the U.S. was content to pour billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars into failed counterterrorism policies as deaths mounted across the continent. Today, the dangers of terrorism loom far larger, and the U.S. finds itself shunned by former partners. 'I've been charged by the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to mitigate threats to the U.S. homeland posed by terrorist organizations,' said Langley. 'It's about the mutual goal of keeping our homeland safe, and it's about long-term capacity, not dependence.' The current Pentagon official said that Langley had used up what good will he once had. 'I don't think many will be sad to see him go,' he told The Intercept. Langley's tenure may not have sown the seeds of AFRICOM's dissolution, he said, but if the command is ultimately folded into European Command — as some have proposed — he likely helped to hasten it. 'He's been part of this problem,' the official said. 'Maybe him leaving could be one solution.'
