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The thrust of the Trump Doctrine is not to allow anti-democratic behaviour to get in the way of doing business.
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Free Malaysia Today
5 hours ago
- Free Malaysia Today
External parties behind push for Hadi to step down, say PAS leaders
Abdul Hadi Awang, a seven-term MP for Marang, has been president of PAS since June 2002. PETALING JAYA : Two PAS leaders have dismissed claims that there is a push within the party for its long-time president, Abdul Hadi Awang, to relinquish the post at the party elections in September. Johor PAS Youth chief Ahmad Nawfal Mahfodz claimed that such a call had never been raised at neither the state nor central leadership level. 'Clearly this push is coming from outside PAS. It's evident that some parties are uneasy with the performance of PAS under Hadi's leadership,' he told FMT. Terengganu PAS leader Hanafiah Mat also said calls for Hadi not to defend the PAS presidency came from outside the party, and not among its members or supporters. 'Although his health is not that great right now, he is mentally sharper than others,' he said. Speculation has emerged that, for the first time in a decade, the posts of PAS president and deputy president might be contested at the party elections in September. The last time the top two posts were contested was in 2015 when Hadi defeated Ahmad Awang for the president's post, and Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man ousted Mohamad Sabu for the deputy presidency. Hadi is a seven-term MP for Marang and a former Terengganu menteri besar. Sinar Harian recently reported that Hadi had conveyed his intention to relinquish the post at a PAS top leadership retreat, citing health reasons. Hadi has suffered declining health in recent years, undergoing dialysis and being admitted to hospital several times. Hanafiah said the party still needed Hadi at the helm, citing his commanding support from the grassroots to the top leadership levels. The Chukai assemblyman also believes Hadi can lead the Islamic party to even greater success at the polls, after its best-ever haul of 43 parliamentary seats in the 2022 general election. 'I'm confident that 'Tok Guru' can lead us towards winning more than 70 parliamentary seats and, God-willing, we will govern Malaysia,' he said.
Malay Mail
6 hours ago
- Malay Mail
Trump's threat to cancel Musk's contracts exposes risks of US reliance on SpaceX
WASHINGTON, June 7 — SpaceX's rockets ferry US astronauts to the International Space Station. Its Starlink satellite constellation blankets the globe with broadband, and the company is embedded in some of the Pentagon's most sensitive projects, including tracking hypersonic missiles. So when President Donald Trump threatened on Thursday to cancel Elon Musk's federal contracts, space watchers snapped to attention. Musk, the world's richest person, shot back that he would mothball Dragon—the capsule Nasa relies on for crew flights—before retracting the threat a few hours later. For now, experts say mutual dependence should keep a full-blown rupture at bay, but the episode exposes just how disruptive any break could be. Founded in 2002, SpaceX leapfrogged legacy contractors to become the world's dominant launch provider. Driven by Musk's ambition to make humanity multiplanetary, it is now Nasa's sole means of sending astronauts to the ISS—a symbol of post-Cold War cooperation and a testbed for deeper space missions. Space monopoly? The company has completed 10 regular crew rotations to the orbiting lab and is contracted for four more, under a deal worth nearly US$5 billion. That's just part of a broader portfolio that includes US$4 billion from Nasa for developing Starship, the next-generation megarocket; nearly US$6 billion from the Space Force for launch services; and a reported US$1.8 billion for Starshield, a classified spy satellite network. Were Dragon grounded, the United States would again be forced to rely on Russian Soyuz rockets for ISS access — as it did between 2011 and 2020, following the Space Shuttle's retirement and before Crew Dragon entered service. 'Under the current geopolitical climate, that would not be optimal,' space analyst Laura Forczyk told AFP. Nasa had hoped Boeing's Starliner would provide redundancy, but persistent delays—and a failed crewed test last year—have kept it grounded. Even Northrop Grumman's cargo missions now rely on SpaceX's Falcon 9, the workhorse of its rocket fleet. The situation also casts a shadow over Nasa's Artemis programme. A lunar lander variant of Starship is slated for Artemis III and IV, the next US crewed Moon missions. If Starship were sidelined, rival Blue Origin could benefit—but the timeline would almost certainly slip, giving China, which aims to land humans by 2030, a chance to get there first, Forczyk warned. 'There are very few launch vehicles as capable as Falcon 9 — it isn't feasible to walk away as easily as President Trump might assume,' she said. Nasa meanwhile appeared eager to show that it had options. 'Nasa is assessing the earliest potential for a Starliner flight to the International Space Station in early 2026, pending system certification and resolution of Starliner's technical issues,' the agency said in a statement Friday to AFP. Still, the feud could sour Trump on space altogether, Forczyk cautioned, complicating Nasa's long-term plans. SpaceX isn't entirely dependent on the US government. Starlink subscriptions and commercial launches account for a significant share of its revenue, and the company also flies private missions. The next, with partner Axiom Space, will carry astronauts from India, Poland, and Hungary, funded by their respective governments. Private power, public risk But losing US government contracts would still be a major blow. 'It's such a doomsday scenario for both parties that it's hard to envision how US space efforts would fill the gap,' Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told AFP. 'Both sides have every reason to bridge the disagreement and get back to business.' Signs of a rift emerged last weekend, when the White House abruptly withdrew its nomination of e-payments billionaire Jared Isaacman — a close Musk ally who has twice flown to space with SpaceX — as Nasa administrator. On a recent podcast, Isaacman said he believed he was dropped because 'some people had some axes to grind, and I was a good, visible target.' The broader episode could also reignite debate over Washington's reliance on commercial partners, particularly when one company holds such a dominant position. Swope noted that while the US government has long favored buying services from industry, military leaders tend to prefer owning the systems they depend on. 'This is just another data point that might bolster the case for why it can be risky,' he said. 'I think that seed has been planted in a lot of people's minds — that it might not be worth the trust.' — AFP
The Sun
7 hours ago
- The Sun
US steps up immigration crackdown with LA raids, NY courthouse arrests
LOS ANGELES (United States): Masked and armed federal agents carried out sweeping immigration raids in Los Angeles Friday, while others pounced on migrants at a New York courthouse in forceful displays of US President Donald Trump's crackdown on people without papers. From courthouses to hardware store parking lots in two of the most diverse cities in the world, federal agents wrestled migrants into handcuffs and unmarked vehicles. Agents used extreme tactics, conducting unprecedented raids on at least three areas of Los Angeles to detain dozens of people. At one sweep less than two miles from Los Angeles City Hall, agents threw flash-bang grenades to disperse angry crowds of people following alongside a convoy of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) vehicles as protesters hurled eggs and epithets at the agents, media reported. - 'Terror' - 'As a Mayor of a proud city of immigrants, who contribute to our city in so many ways, I am deeply angered by what has taken place,' LA Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement. 'These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city.' White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who grew up in LA's Santa Monica, insisted on social media platform X that Bass had 'no say in this at all.' 'Federal law is supreme and federal law will be enforced.' Service Employees International Union leader David Huerta was briefly detained while documenting one of the raids in Los Angeles, according to media reports. 'Hard-working people, and members of our family and our community, are being treated like criminals,' Huerta said in a statement after his release. Homeland Security Investigations spokesperson Yasmeen Pitts O'Keefe told the Los Angeles Times that federal agents were executing search warrants related to the harboring of people illegally in the country. Hundreds of protesters gathered in downtown Los Angeles on Friday afternoon to demand the release of detainees, broadcaster ABC7 reported. The largely peaceful rally was later ordered to disperse by police, with some violent clashes between protesters and riot police being reported. - NY courthouse arrests - Across the country, plainclothes agents in New York pounced on two immigrants in the hallway of a courthouse Friday. AFP saw the officers yell for the men not to move before forcing them to lay face-down on the ground as they were handcuffed and arrested. It was not immediately clear why the two men were arrested. Trump was elected to a second term with broad support for his promise to crack down hard on the entry and presence of undocumented migrants. ICE agents have intensified such operations in and around American immigration courts in recent weeks. The Department of Homeland Security revoked regulations that limited agents' access to protected areas such as courts after Trump returned to office in January. One of the men arrested in New York was Joaquin Rosario, a 34-year-old Dominican who arrived in the United States a year ago, registered as he came in and who had his first immigration hearing Friday, his relative Julian Rosario said. 'He was at ease. He did not think anything was going to happen,' the relative said, adding that Rosario was so unworried he had not brought his lawyer with him. The other detainee appeared to be Asian. He arrived accompanied only by one of many immigration advocacy group volunteers who walk immigrants to and from the courtroom. The volunteers screamed out as the agents arrested the two men but it did nothing to halt the raid. - 'Sound the alarm' - Human rights groups are outraged by such operations, arguing that they sap trust in the courts and make immigrants wary of showing up for appointments as they try to gain US residency. 'They're illegal abductions,' said Karen Ortiz, a court employee who was demonstrating Friday against the sudden arrests of migrants. 'We need to sound the alarm and show the public how serious this is and one way we can do that is actually physically putting ourselves between a masked ICE agent and someone they're trying to detain and send away,' she told AFP. Trump has dramatically tested the limits of executive power to crack down on foreigners without papers since he returned to office, arguing that the United States is being invaded by criminals and other undesirables.
