Thailand faces heavier challenges under Trump tariffs
Thitinan Pongsudhirak is professor at Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Political Science and a senior fellow at its Institute of Security and International Studies in Bangkok.
Thailand is in deeper water compared with its peers in the face of U.S. President Donald Trump's "reciprocal" tariffs announced on April 2. Several policy missteps from an ill-advised deportation of Uyghurs to China and the reception of Myanmar's junta chief to the controversial arrest of an American academic have undermined Thailand-U.S. relations at a time when Bangkok needs to navigate and negotiate a tariff deal in Washington.
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Japan Times
4 hours ago
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Republican lawmakers try to dodge Trump-Musk crossfire
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Yomiuri Shimbun
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They Served the Nation. Now, These Veterans Say They're Protesting to Save It.
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So this week he drove from St. Louis to D.C. to be among the thousands of veterans from across the country expected to pour onto the National Mall for a rally Friday afternoon that organizers say is a grassroots push 'to defend our American values, protect civil servants and restore dignity to public service.' Veteran-led protests will occur at hundreds of locations across dozens of states to protest the Trump administration's VA cuts. Veterans, who make up a disproportionate share of the federal workforce, are feeling the brunt of the rapid push to shrink the federal workforce, stirring ire in a reliable political base for Republicans. 'I didn't think I'd be doing this at my age, but I can't stand by,' said Radcliffe, who said the Unite for Veterans rally will be the first time he has protested in the nation's capital. He made a sign for the occasion: 'In America we shouldn't have to defend democracy from the president.' Organizers are expecting 10,000 to 20,000 participants and say speakers will include Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois), a combat-wounded Iraq War veteran; former congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois), an Air National Guard veteran; and former congressman Conor Lamb (D-Pennsylvania), a Marine Corps veteran. Massachusetts punk rock band Dropkick Murphys is also scheduled to perform. Friday marks 81 years since D-Day, when allied forces landed on the beach in Normandy and invaded northern France during World War II. Next week, the National Mall will host a multimillion-dollar celebration honoring the Army's 250th birthday, including a day-long festival, fireworks and a parachute jump. Dozens of tanks will roll, and thousands of soldiers from across the country will march in a parade at a time when the service is cutting some programs to fund Trump's priorities. The celebration will occur on Trump's 79th birthday. Christopher Purdy, one of the rally's organizers, considers the parade to be a waste of money, but he said it is not the focus of Friday's action. 'This is not about the parade. This is about the veteran community and honoring the sacrifices of veterans,' said Purdy, who served for eight years in the National Guard and deployed to Iraq in 2011. Morale is plummeting inside VA as tens of thousands of employees prepare for deep staffing cuts, raising alarms among staffers, veterans and advocates who fear the reductions would severely damage care and benefits for millions of the nation's former service members. VA Secretary Douglas A. Collins has signaled plans to shrink the agency's workforce by 15 percent, or about 83,000 employees. Thousands of employees across VA's health and benefits systems have opted for early retirement, The Washington Post previously reported after reviewing internal data. 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Yomiuri Shimbun
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Tom Brenner/For The Washington Post President Donald Trump holds a news conference with Elon Musk to mark the end of the Tesla CEO's tenure as a special government employee May 30. As President Donald Trump and the world's richest man blew up the internet by detonating their friendship, a key Kremlin point man on White House contacts used a phrase from the L.A. riots, a divisive moment in American history, to get in a dig. Posting on Elon Musk's platform X, close Putin ally Kirill Dmitriev used the famous Rodney King line to ask 'why can't we all just get along?' In Russia, as elsewhere, the internet was transfixed as Trump and Musk, the man who claimed he had gotten the president elected, traded threats and insults. Comments both wry and mocking flooded social media. As the brawl turned nastier, and Trump ally Stephen K. Bannon called for Musk to be deported as an illegal immigrant and for Trump to seize his company SpaceX, some Russian officials ironically suggested that Musk could seek asylum in Russia, joining the likes of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and Wirecard fugitive Jan Marsalek, who according to British prosecutors is a Russian spy. Dmitriev, the U.S.-sanctioned head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund who traveled to Washington in April to dine with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, even asked Grok, the AI chatbot developed by Musk's xAI, what to do about the fight, seeming as eager as Fox News hosts to repair the rift. '@grok what needs to happen for @realDonaldTrump and @elonmusk to reconcile,' he posted. Grok suggested private talks and public apologies for personal attacks. 'However, their escalating conflict and public barbs suggest reconciliation is unlikely soon.' Russia's informal troller in chief Dmitry Medvedev, who held the presidency for Putin from 2008 to 2012 and is now deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, also chimed in on X with a horrified-face emoji. 'We are ready to facilitate the conclusion of a peace deal between D and E for a reasonable fee and to accept Starlink shares as payment. Don't fight, guys!' he posted Friday, referring to Musk's satellite internet network. But easily the most provocative offer came from Musk's onetime rival in spaceflight, Dmitry Rogozin, former head of Russia's space agency, Roscosmos. The two sparred publicly for years on Twitter. On Thursday, Rogozin, now an official in occupied Ukraine who heads a special technical military combat battalion, BARS-Sarmat, invited Musk to flee the United States and join in the war on Russia's side. 'Elon @elonmusk, don't be upset! You are respected in Russia. If you encounter insurmountable problems in the US, come to us and become one of us – a 'Bars-Sarmat' fighter,' he wrote on X. 'Here you will find reliable comrades and complete freedom of technical creativity.' The offer was echoed by the first deputy chairman of the international affairs committee of the lower house of parliament, Dmitry Novikov, who told the Tass state news agency that Russia could offer asylum to Musk 'if he needs it.' Beside the tsunami of bawdy memes, the Trump-Musk row exposed the ways in which America's political culture at times resembles aspects of Russia's: There were the open calls by Trump allies to probe a powerful oligarch, arrest and deport or seize his assets merely because he fell out with the president. There was Musk's claim that he was responsible for Trump's reelection, courtesy of his social media platform X and his vast political donations. Then there were Trump's threats to cut Musk's state contracts, worth billions, amid the dispute, and his comment that 'I've done a lot for him.' These evoke aspects of Putin's autocratic system of personalized patronage, which he uses to curb Russia's oligarchs and ensure total loyalty. On X, memes appeared comparing Musk to Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the Putin ally, oligarch and Wagner mercenary group founder who staged an aborted uprising in 2023 and whose plane later fell out of the sky due to an unexplained explosion, killing him and nine others, including top Wagner commanders. Some compared Musk to other Russian oligarchs who fell out with Putin over the years, including Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was jailed for 10 years before he was forced to leave Russia, and Boris Berezovsky, a media tycoon who fled Russia in 2000 and was found dead, apparently hanged, in his Berkshire, England, home in 2013, although the coroner returned an open verdict due to several anomalies. For years Musk, as an immigrant who became the world's richest man, has been a popular figure in Russia, attracting a large fan base and sparking ironic memes about tech-savvy ideas and even inspiring cocktails. In February 2021, Musk tagged the Kremlin on Twitter to ask for a meeting with President Vladimir Putin on the then-popular Clubhouse social media app. The result of that outreach is unknown, but in March 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine, Musk tagged the Kremlin calling for one-on-one combat with Putin to decide the war. 'I hereby challenge Vladimir Putin to single combat. Stakes are Ukraine,' wrote Musk. 'Do you agree to this fight?' he added in Russian. There was no known response. Musk strongly opposed military aid to Ukraine during the war and repeatedly accused Kyiv of corruption, although he did not carry out his 2022 threat to cut off Starlink satellite links that provide Ukraine's internet.
