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Black America Web
4 days ago
- Politics
- Black America Web
White House To 'Review' All Smithsonian Exhibits To Fit Trump's Vision, Social Media Fears He's Rewriting History
Source: Andrew Harnik / Getty President Trump has already had a hand in altering America's future, and now he wants to alter its past. In his latest fascist move, the Trump administration wants to review all exhibits and materials at the Smithsonian Institution–the head of Washington, D.C's major public museums–so that the White House can ensure that the items being displayed align with Trump's vision. According to CNN , the White House sent a letter to Smithsonian Institution secretary Lonnie Bunch III, noting that they wanted to conduct internal reviews of exhibits and materials at the museums to decide what should or should not be displayed. We care about your data. See our privacy policy. The measure 'aims to ensure alignment with the President's directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions,' the letter read. For the record, the Trump administration believes that historical mentions of slavery in any context is disparaging and divisive. CNN notes that this is merely the latest move by the Trump administration to push the president's revisionist history that eliminates materials that focus on diversity. From CNN: Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order accusing the Smithsonian Institution of having 'come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology' that has 'promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.' Trump's action put Vice President JD Vance in charge of stopping government spending on 'exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.' The letter released Tuesday — signed by Trump aides Lindsey Halligan, the senior associate staff secretary; Vince Haley, the Domestic Policy Council director; and Russell Vought, the Office of Management and Budget director — says the review will focus on public-facing content, the curatorial process to understand how work is selected for exhibit, current and future exhibition planning, the use of existing materials and collections, and guidelines for narrative standards. The letter notes that eight major museums will be under review in this first phase. This includes: the National Museum of American History, the National Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Air and Space Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. The second phase assures that more museums will be added. The Smithsonian told CNN that they are reviewing the letter, but admitted that they would bend the knee and work 'constructively' with the White House. 'The Smithsonian's work is grounded in a deep commitment to scholarly excellence, rigorous research, and the accurate, factual presentation of history. We are reviewing the letter with this commitment in mind and will continue to collaborate constructively with the White House, Congress, and our governing Board of Regents,' the statement said. Per usual, social media is upset with Trump's reign. See the reactions below. White House To 'Review' All Smithsonian Exhibits To Fit Trump's Vision, Social Media Fears He's Rewriting History was originally published on
30-07-2025
- Business
Trump orders 50% tariff on some copper imports, citing national security
Headlines Latest News Podcasts (new window) Home International Trade Agreements The tariff will apply to semi-finished copper products and copper-intensive derivative products U.S. President Donald Trump is pictured at Trump Turnberry golf club in Turnberry, Scotland, earlier this week. The president ordered 50 per cent tariffs on copper on Wednesday. / Andrew Harnik U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a proclamation ordering 50 per cent tariffs on certain copper imports, citing national security, the White House said. The proclamation imposes a 50 per cent tariff on semi-finished copper products and copper-intensive derivative products as of Aug. 1, according to a fact sheet released by the White House. The tariffs will exclude copper scrap and copper input materials such as copper ores, concentrates, mattes, cathodes and anodes, the statement said. The measure came after a U.S. investigation under Section 232 that Trump ordered in February. That section of U.S. trade law allows the president to impose levies on certain goods that are said to threaten national security. Along with tariffs, the order calls for steps to support the domestic copper industry, including requiring 25 per cent of high-quality scrap produced in the U.S. to also be sold within the country. With files from CBC News Warmer temperatures mean ticks are showing up in places they haven't before Advisory cancelled for B.C. coast after massive earthquake struck off Russia 2 hours ago Incidents & Natural Disasters Restaurant food prices jumped 25% between 2019 and 2023, says Statistics Canada Economists widely expected the central bank to hold off on changing the lending rate 4 hours ago Economic Indicators 'Catch up on shows? Whatever. There's always someone at the beach'
The Star
10-07-2025
- Business
- The Star
Philippines plans to negotiate with US to lower tariffs, envoy to Washington says
FILE PHOTO: Philippine Ambassador to the U.S. Jose Manuel Romualdez speaks during a U.S. Trade and Development Agency Offshore Wind Grant Signing at Ayala Triangle Gardens in Manila, Philippines, August 6, 2022. Andrew Harnik/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo MANILA (Reuters) -The Philippines is planning to negotiate with Washington to lower tariffs after the United States moved to impose higher 20% duties on goods imported from Manila, its ambassador to the United States said on Thursday. "We are still planning to negotiate that down," Jose Manuel Romualdez said in a phone message. U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday issued August 1 tariff notices to several trading partners including the Philippines, which he slapped with a 20% duty, higher than the previously announced 17%. Asked what rate the Philippines is looking at, he said: "Will see." U.S. goods trade with the Philippines reached an estimated $23.5 billion in 2024, according to data from the Office of the United States Trade Representative. U.S. exports to the Philippines stood at $9.3 billion, a 0.4% increase from 2023, while imports from the Philippines totalled $14.2 billion, up 6.9% year-over-year. The resulting U.S. goods trade deficit with the Philippines widened to $4.9 billion in 2024, marking a 21.8% increase from the previous year. There was no immediate comment from the office of the Philippine president. (Reporting by Karen Lema; Editing by Kim Coghill and Stephen Coates)
Boston Globe
08-07-2025
- Automotive
- Boston Globe
Could Elon Musk really create a viable third political party?
Advertisement As with many of his tweet-length proclamations, Musk's plans for the new party are opaque. His private conversations about it so far have been conceptual and not focused on the details of what it would take to bring it to fruition, according to two people briefed on those talks. Some advisers to Musk who have also been involved in these early talks, however, appear more focused on those details and are soliciting more feedback from experts, according to one of the people. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Musk's advisers have indicated privately that they plan to use a super political action committee to organize initial support for the new party before it is formally established, according to one of the people briefed. Musk has said the America Party would be a new entity and would have the goal of disrupting the two major parties' hold on the federal government. Advertisement Should he eventually tire of the idea, it would not be the first time he offered a grand pronouncement in a post on his social platform X before either walking it back or letting it wither as he moved on to a new pursuit. Still, some notions that originated as seeming jokes by Musk -- like his early purchase of shares in Twitter -- have ended with world-altering investments. Public opinion polling has long shown that Americans are hungry for an option beyond the two major political parties, though third-party candidates have seldom performed well in elections. Should Musk make a sustained investment in his America Party project -- either in monetary terms or by expending his political capital -- it would face steep hurdles. Here are a few. Elon Musk, President Trump, and a red Tesla at the White House. Andrew Harnik/Photographer: Andrew Harnik/Gett Rules in each state are hard to follow. Musk boasted on Sunday that his plan to radically transform American democracy would not be difficult -- suggesting he had spent little time studying state ballot-access and federal campaign-finance laws. Congressional candidates for a theoretical new party face a labyrinthine system of signature requirements that vary from state to state. The most restrictive laws are in Georgia, where candidates outside the two major parties must gather 27,000 signatures from their district. This hurdle has kept third-party congressional candidates from being on a general election ballot since the law was enacted in 1943, according to Richard Winger, the publisher of Ballot Access News, which has tracked election laws since 1985. Qualifying a slate of 435 House candidates, were Musk to take his idea national, would require about three times as many petition signatures as putting a presidential candidate on the ballot in every state and could cost more than $50 million just in signature gathering, Winger said. Advertisement 'I was on a Zoom call yesterday with people talking about this,' Winger said in an interview Monday. 'A lot of them predicted that he's the kind of person who, when he finds out how hard this is, he'll give up.' Ross Perot greeted supporters in Flemington, N.J., on Oct. 25, 1992. ANDREA MOHIN/NYT Parties require a sustained commitment. It is not yet clear whom Musk would designate to set up a new party on his behalf. Some people who are friends with Musk's Republican advisers privately worry about those advisers' career prospects should they attach themselves to an anti-Trump effort. President Donald Trump has punished Republican consultants who have joined or even tenuously linked arms with his opponents. The White House in recent days has been closely watching Musk's allied operatives, a person briefed on the White House's posture said. That could leave Musk dependent, at least somewhat, on the mercenary types who populate the world of minor parties and ballot-access campaigns, and who may be willing to suffer reputational damage with national Republicans if the paycheck is big enough. In recent days, cash-hungry ballot-access operatives have been conducting frenzied research and developing proposals with the hopes of getting them in front of Musk, according to one person doing just that. Some of them have begun spending inordinate amounts of time analyzing his social media posts. Aside from minor parties like the Libertarians and Greens, which have been successful at qualifying for ballots and occasionally at spoiling general elections, American third parties have generally had a short shelf life. The Reform Party, created by H. Ross Perot for his presidential campaign in 1992, petered out after Jesse Ventura was elected governor of Minnesota on its line in 1998 and Trump declined to run for president on its line in 2000. Advertisement Perot won 19 million votes in 1992 on a populist platform that in some ways preceded Trump's rise. Musk so far has espoused no real policy agenda beyond deficit reduction and anger at Trump. 'He's no Ross Perot, you know,' said Ralph Nader, the 2000 Green Party presidential candidate, who was widely seen as having spoiled that election for Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic nominee. 'He doesn't have a popular program to run on.' Another much-discussed group, No Labels, never got around to putting forward a candidate in 2024. Andrew Yang's Forward Party merged with a few state-based third parties but has not made a significant impact on elections anywhere. Musk and Yang have been in touch in recent days, according to two people with knowledge of the talks. Unite America, a 2010s project to put forward centrist candidates, stopped nominating candidates after the 2018 election and shifted its focus to pushing for changes in election laws that would make it easier for independent and third-party candidates to succeed. Ralph Nader spoke at the National Press Club, in Washington in 2014. Manuel Balce Ceneta Musk may not know what he wants yet. On his social media site, Musk has floated the idea of holding an American Party Congress next month in Austin, Texas. He suggested that he would be interested in keeping a 'laser-focus on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts' in the 2026 midterms. And if those candidates were to win, he said, they would 'caucus independently,' but 'legislative discussions would be had with both parties.' Musk's team has not yet taken many operational steps to stand up the party, according to people in touch with them. On X, he has ingested feedback about the effort -- including what the party's logo should look like -- from Grok, his company's artificial intelligence chatbot. Advertisement Limiting his ambitions to just a handful of races might not fit with Musk's often grandiose self-image, but it could leave him with a better return on his investment. It could also require Musk to direct the actions of his candidates and elected officials, much like an old-school party boss. And for such a smaller-scale initiative to achieve the influence he imagines, it most likely rests on the continuation of a narrowly divided Congress, in which lawmakers aligned with Musk had the numbers to decide the majority. Given Musk's recent actions tearing down large segments of the federal government on Trump's behalf, it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which Democrats might align with Musk to thwart the president. It is easier to work within the system. For all his talk about starting a new party from scratch, Musk may find it easier to work within the existing system. There are still many Republicans in Congress who will privately express disgust with Trump, but very few who have been willing to cross him in public. In recent weeks, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska announced they would not seek reelection next year, in part because of their inability to be totally committed to Trump's agenda. Musk has committed to support Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who is staring down a potential primary challenge from a Trump supporter. Several veterans of minor parties suggested that Musk might try to ally himself with an existing party that has a ballot line already, such as the Libertarians. Advertisement Nick Troiano, the executive director of Unite America, proposed that Musk could achieve a much better return on his political investment by persuading Republican incumbents to align with his new effort than by trying to elect newcomers to Congress. Whether the new Musk crew operated as a bloc within the Republican Party or formed an entirely new organization could make little difference if members of Congress aligned with Musk stuck together amid what would certainly be an unrelenting onslaught from Trump. 'If the hardest thing to do is elect a third-party or independent candidate to Congress, the overlooked opportunity is who is there that would potentially defect to a new effort if they had the backing to get reelected,' Troiano said. 'Right now, the options are to continue a miserable existence in the party, or retire, or try something new.' This article originally appeared in .
Hindustan Times
22-06-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Operation Midnight Hammer timeline: Here's how US carried out 18 hour long mission against Iran
In a high-stakes military operation dubbed Midnight Hammer, the US launched a powerful strike involving B-2 stealth bombers and submarines. Air Force General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed during a Sunday press conference that the US deployed bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, along with Tomahawk missiles launched from submarines. Operation Midnight Hammer timeline. (Photo by Andrew Harnik / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP)(Getty Images via AFP) The 18-hour mission culminated in precision strikes within Iranian territory, with the U.S. claiming to have successfully "obliterated" Iran's nuclear program. Also Read: What is Operation Midnight Hammer? Pete Hegseth offers key details about 'bold and brilliant' US airstrikes on Iran June 21, 12:01 (EDT)- B-2s Depart Whiteman AFB Caine explained that the bombers, launched from the Whiteman AFB, were part of a carefully orchestrated plan designed to maintain tactical surprise. A decoy package veered westward into the Pacific, while the main strike force—consisting of seven B-2 Spirit bombers with two crew members each—quietly proceeded east. The operation was shrouded in secrecy, with only a small group of planners and key leaders in Washington and Tampa aware of the effort. June 21, 17:00 (EDT)- B-2s join support package in CENTCOM During the 18-hour flight, the B-2s conducted multiple in-flight refuelings before linking up with escort and support aircraft. This was executed with precision and minimal communications, requiring exact synchronization across various platforms in a tightly controlled airspace. June 21, 17:00 (EDT)- Maritime Launch Just before the strike package entered Iranian airspace, a US submarine launched over two dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles targeting critical infrastructure in Isfahan, located within the Central Command Area of Responsibility. June 21, 18:00 (EDT)- Bombers and support package enter Iran As the strike package entered Iranian airspace, the US used decoys and high-speed aircraft to counter threats. Supported by various military commands, advanced suppression weapons were deployed near Fordow and Natanz to ensure safe passage. June 21, 18:40-19:00 (EDT)- Time on target The lead B-2 dropped two GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators on Fordow, marking the first strike of several against Iranian nuclear targets. All three sites were hit between 6:40 p.m. and 7:05 p.m., with Tomahawk missiles striking Isfahan last to maintain operational surprise. June 21, 19:30 (EDT)- Bombers exit Iran After releasing its weapons, the Midnight Hammer strike package exited Iranian airspace and began its return journey. No reports have indicated any shots fired at the package during its exit. June 22: Bombers return to Whiteman AFB The bombers successfully returned to Whiteman Air Force Base after completing the mission.
