Editorial Roundup: United States
Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
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April 29
The Washington Post says “this time” the US should stop a genocide
This month marked a grim milestone for Sudan, the unfortunate African country suffering what is considered the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. On April 15, the country’s brutal civil war entered its third bloody year, with an estimated 150,000 people killed, about 12 million displaced and no settlement in sight.
The next day, the State Department for the first time characterized the atrocities being committed in Sudan’s western Darfur region as a genocide, citing the systematic killings of men and boys and the sexual violence against women and girls from the Masalit community. The U.S. statement named the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, which has been locked in a battle with the Sudanese armed forces, as the perpetrator of the ethnic cleansing. The Biden administration had earlier also named the RSF as responsible for genocide.
Declaring an ongoing genocide is one thing. Doing something immediately to alleviate it is more important. The United States and the world must not fail to act.
The State Department’s declaration happened to come on the eve of the anniversary of another mass atrocity. Fifty years ago, on April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge seized control of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, and launched a fanatical experiment to remake society through the systematic extermination of professionals, businesspeople, intellectuals and ethnic minorities. Up to 3 million people perished from summary executions, forced labor and starvation in the nearly four years of genocide that ensued. This horror, too, took place amid global indifference.
At the time, the United States was in retreat from Southeast Asia, scarred by its humiliating military failure in Vietnam. A 1976 memo from President Gerald Ford’s national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, outlined reports of widespread executions of former government officials, soldiers, teachers, students and anyone showing signs of having been educated. But neither Ford nor his successor, President Jimmy Carter, took action to stop the bloodletting or even to raise awareness of it.
Now that the Trump administration has recognized a genocide is occurring in Sudan, what, if anything, can the United States do to end it?
Sudan’s civil war defies any easy solution. The conflict stems from a power struggle between two warring generals who once were allies: Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the armed forces commander, and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, commander of the RSF, which is the contemporary offshoot of the Janjaweed militia that, in the early 2000s, terrorized Darfur and was responsible for Sudan’s first genocide. When the generals’ tenuous alliance snapped two years ago, their artillery and tank battles left much of the capital, Khartoum, in ruins.
In late March, there seemed to be a major break in the stalemate when Burhan’s forces managed to recapture Khartoum. But Hemedti retreated west to his stronghold in the Darfur and Kordofan regions, where he has set up a rival “ Government of Peace and Unity.” And he has formed an alliance with a militia group called the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, a remnant of South Sudan’s independence war. Hemedti’s moves to declare a rump state now risk splintering Sudan. Meanwhile, the massacres of the Masalit people and other non-Arab minority groups continue.
The participants in Sudan’s civil war include a volatile mix of regional and international players, with their own agendas and long-standing rivalries. Burhan is backed by Egypt, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Iran, hoping to expand its influence to the Red Sea, is also backing the Sudanese armed forces, supplying drones and other weapons. And Turkey has sent drones and missiles. The RSF, for its part, is supported by the United Arab Emirates as well as Libya, Chad, the Central African Republic and South Sudan. Hemedti has also been welcomed in Ethiopia, Uganda and Kenya.
With such a combustible brew, the temptation might be to turn a blind eye. But this would be wrong — just as it was wrong for the United States half a century ago to ignore the atrocities of Cambodia’s killing fields.
Strong action does not have to mean direct intervention. The Trump administration could halt arms sales to the UAE and impose sanctions, until the country ends its military and financial support for Hemedti’s RSF. Other countries that seem to support the RSF should be warned. And the United States should appoint a special envoy to the region to kick-start diplomacy by leaning on Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other U.S. allies to bring their client to the negotiating table.
President Donald Trump wants to be known as a peacemaker. Sudan might not be high on his priority list, but he should nevertheless pay attention. By helping to reach a peace agreement there, he could stop a genocide and end the world’s biggest humanitarian nightmare.
ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/04/28/us-stop-genocide-sudan/
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April 27
The New York Times says the West must stand up to Erdogan, Turkey’s autocracy
The United States has long been willing to befriend unsavory foreign governments, sometimes with good reason. In a dangerous world, democracies cannot afford to alienate every nondemocracy. But any alliance with an autocratic regime requires at least a careful weighing of trade-offs. How valuable is the relationship to American interests? And how odious is the regime’s behavior?
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has personified this dilemma for much of his 22 years in power. Turkey, at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East, is an important American partner, with the second-largest military in NATO. Yet Turkey has been sliding toward autocracy over the past decade. Mr. Erdogan has changed its Constitution to expand his power, brought the courts under his control, manipulated elections, purged professors, shut down media organizations and arrested journalists and protesters.
Last month, Mr. Erdogan took the assault on democracy to a new level. With dissatisfaction with his government growing, it detained his likely opponent in the next presidential election, Ekrem Imamoglu, the popular mayor of Istanbul, along with almost 100 of Mr. Imamoglu’s associates on dubious charges. The arrests put Turkey on the path that Russia has traveled over the past two decades, in which a democratically elected leader uses the powers of his office to turn it into an autocracy. “This is more than the slow erosion of democracy,” Mr. Imamoglu wrote from Silivri Prison in these pages. “It is the deliberate dismantling of our republic’s institutional foundations.”
The response from the rest of the world has been weak. A short time after Mr. Imamoglu’s arrest, President Trump said of Mr. Erdogan, “I happen to like him, and he likes me.” Many European leaders stayed quiet. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said only that the arrest was “deeply concerning.” There are no easy answers, given Turkey’s strategic importance and Mr. Erdogan’s grip on power. But the world’s democracies are getting the balance wrong. They can do more to support Turkey’s people and pressure Mr. Erdogan.
A crucial point is that Turkish voters seem to have tired of Mr. Erdogan. If elections were held today, Mr. Imamoglu would probably win, according to polls and political analysts. A self-described social democrat, Mr. Imamoglu, 54, is a member of the Republican People’s Party, which Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded in 1919 as a resistance group and which later became the first governing party of the modern Turkish republic. The party is committed to a secular government for Turkey.
Mr. Imamoglu became mayor of Istanbul in 2019 in an upset victory over Mr. Erdogan’s candidate — two upset victories, in fact, because Mr. Erdogan’s party annulled the first vote and Mr. Imamoglu then won a second election more decisively. He has since compiled an impressive governing record, developing the area around the Golden Horn, a major waterway in Istanbul, and providing free milk for children. His stance on external affairs has been moderate; he condemned Hamas for its terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, and has since criticized Israel for its assault on Gaza. Mr. Erdogan, by contrast, has praised Hamas as a liberation group, and called for Israel’s destruction.
For all their differences — Mr. Imamoglu is a secular progressive, while Mr. Erdogan, 71, is a religious conservative — Mr. Imamoglu has the potential to be a version of what Mr. Erdogan once seemed to be: a pragmatic and popular Turkish leader who could provide stability at home while helping restrain conflicts of the Middle East. In his early years in power, Mr. Erdogan gathered a broad political coalition, brought the army officer corps under civilian control, grew the economy, fostered a moderate Islamism, tried to resolve a long conflict with the Kurdish minority and normalized relations with Greece, a neighbor and longtime rival. His approach prompted George W. Bush and Barack Obama to cultivate relationships with him.
Over time, though, Mr. Erdogan became more extreme, more corrupt and more focused on consolidating power. He took power in 2003 as prime minister and, after being elected president in 2014, moved to change the Constitution to transfer power to that office. Since then, he has often prioritized his authority over everything else. “The healthy paranoia and self-confidence of a successful politician metastasized into egomania and vindictiveness,” Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations has written. “He destroyed every institutional check and balance — such as they were — in the Turkish political system.” The arrest of Mr. Imamoglu is a sign that Mr. Erdogan aspires to be Turkey’s president indefinitely.
His next step toward that goal may be an attempt to avoid the term limits that would prevent him from running for re-election in 2028, when the next election is scheduled. He could do so by calling for earlier elections or changing the Constitution again.
It is notable that Mr. Erdogan ordered his rival’s arrest only two months after Mr. Trump returned to the White House. Mr. Trump has shown disdain for democracy, both through his attempts to consolidate power at home and through his repeated praise for autocrats like Vladimir Putin. The Trumpist view of the world is a version of might makes right, which emboldens like-minded leaders to use their own might to crush domestic opposition.
But Mr. Trump’s influence on Mr. Erdogan contains a silver lining: It is a sign that Mr. Erdogan can be affected by the attitudes of foreign governments. As with any country, Turkey needs to care about its relationships with the rest of the world. And other democracies, including the European nations, Canada, Japan and India, have reason to be unhappy with Mr. Erdogan’s recent moves. Even Mr. Trump has cause for concern.
Turkey’s drift toward Islamist extremism suggests that it could become another country that supports terrorism and threatens Israel. The most obvious potential for instability is in Syria, Turkey’s southern neighbor, which is trying to emerge from Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship. In Europe, political leaders who are anxious about Mr. Putin’s ambitions and the rise of authoritarianism in Hungary should be worried that Turkey will become another sign that democracy is in retreat. Europe does have levers to influence Mr. Erdogan: Germany is Turkey’s largest trading partner, and several other Western European nations are not far behind.
By speaking up, these countries can make Mr. Erdogan’s life less comfortable. They can make clear that Turkey is risking cooperation on a wide range of issues that matter to it, such as trade, migration and military supplies. The rest of the world may not be able to prevent Turkey’s slide toward authoritarianism and extremism. But it should certainly try.
After Mr. Imamoglu’s arrest, hundreds of thousands of Turks filled streets with the largest protests in years. Doing so required courage. Authorities responded by arresting hundreds of protesters, many of whom are facing sham trials. Their bravery deserves more than global silence.
ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/27/opinion/turkey-istanbul-protests.html
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April 28
The Wall Street Journal says Trumps second term might have been sunk by tariffs
Presidential second terms are rarely successful, and on the evidence of his first 100 days Donald Trump ’s won’t be different. The President needs a major reset if he wants to rescue his final years from the economic and foreign-policy shocks he has unleashed.
There’s no denying his energy or ambition. Mr. Trump is pressing ahead on multiple fronts, and he has had some success. His expansion of U.S. energy production is proceeding well and is much needed after the Biden war on fossil fuels. He has ended the border crisis in short order.
He is also rolling back federal assaults on mainstream American values—such as by policing racial favoritism. Mr. Trump was elected to counter the excesses of the left on climate, culture and censorship, and he is doing it.
On other priorities, the execution hasn’t matched the promises. That would seem to apply to DOGE, which we’ve supported but has been so frenetic it isn’t clear what it is achieving. Easy targets like USAID make for symbolic victories but no fundamental change in the growth of government. The Trump budget will offer more reform proposals, if the White House can get them through Congress. He badly needs a pro-growth tax bill.
Even on popular causes, one problem has been needless excess. Harvard and other universities need to change, but trying to dictate their curriculum and faculty choices is an intrusion on free speech and risks defeat in court. His deportation of criminals is worthwhile, but denying due process and toying with the courts will sour the effort. The White House motto seems to be that if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing too much.
That’s especially true on tariffs, which could sink his Presidency. Mr. Trump was elected to control inflation and raise real incomes, but tariffs do the opposite. They guarantee at least a one-time increase in prices on imported goods that will flow through the economy. They portend shortages for consumers, and for businesses that source goods and components from abroad.
The tariffs are the largest economic policy shock since Richard Nixon blew up Bretton Woods in 1971, which unleashed inflation that Nixon tried to stop with wage and price controls and a tariff. The economic consequences arguably doomed Nixon’s second term, perhaps as much as Watergate.
It’s a mistake to think the tariff damage is only domestic. The willy-nilly assault on friends and foes has shaken global confidence in U.S. reliability. Ken Griffin, the investor and major donor to Mr. Trump, summed it up last week as a self-inflicted blow to the American brand. The U.S. is needlessly ceding global economic leadership.
China is already taking advantage by courting U.S. allies as a more dependable giant market. This will make it much harder to build a trade alliance to stop China’s often predatory economic behavior. Mr. Trump last week called us “China Loving,” which must amuse Beijing. Mr. Trump’s tariffs on allies are the real gift to Xi Jinping.
There are signs Mr. Trump is finally recognizing some of the tariff risks, as he now talks of doing some 200 trade deals. He is also saying he might unilaterally cut his 145% tariff on Chinese imports. We’d like nothing better than to see a retreat—a “Mitterrand moment,” as we wrote last week about the reversal by the 1980s French socialist. But Mr. Trump remains a long way from making such a pivot, and those trade deals won’t be easy to strike.
Mr. Trump’s second-term foreign policy so far is a work in progress. He is trying to reclaim Middle East sea lanes from the Houthis after Joe Biden ’s timidity. And he is restoring “maximum pressure” on Iran to abandon its nuclear program. These are hopeful signs.
The main cause for alarm is his one-sided pursuit of peace in Ukraine. Until this weekend he had said scarcely a discouraging word about Vladimir Putin while squeezing Ukraine to make concessions that could doom it to future marauding. Much will hang on the details of an armistice, if there is one, and not merely for Europe’s future.
Joe Biden’s retreat from Afghanistan destroyed American deterrence. A debacle in Ukraine would do the same for Mr. Trump, with ramifications for Iran, North Korea and especially Chinese ambitions in the Pacific. Don’t be surprised if China decides to snatch Taiwan’s outer islands or tries a partial blockade. Mr. Trump told us in October that he’d respond to such a provocation with tariffs, but he’s already playing that card without success.
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April 27
The Guardian capitalism and the cosmos - is space a private asset?
In 2015, a rare moment of US congressional unity passed the Space Act – to mine asteroids as if they were open seams of ore and harvest planets like unclaimed farmland. Quietly signed by President Barack Obama, it now reads as a premature act of enclosure: staking titles in a realm we scarcely understand. Though some expressed concerns at the time, it was justified by the idea of inevitable progress. Such naivety evaporated with Donald Trump. Space had been humanity’s last commons, shielded by a 1967 Outer Space treaty. Mr Trump declared it dead in 2020, signing the Artemis Accords and enlisting 43 allies, including the UK, in the legalisation of heaven’s spoils. In March, Mr Trump vowed to plant the stars and stripes on Mars – and beyond. The age of celestial commons was brief, if it ever began.
A new report by the Common Wealth thinktank, titled Star Wars, warns that a powerful coalition – composed of private corporations, billionaires such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, and “ neoliberal ” thinktanks – is working to extend earthly ownership structures to space. The report’s author, Durham University’s Carla Ibled, calls it “the transfer of shared resources into the hands of a few”. The 1967 treaty bans state exploitation of space, but is vague on private claims – a loophole now fuelling a tycoon-led scramble for the stars. The aim is obvious: to act first, shape norms and dare others to object.
Companies are targeting asteroid mines for “platinum group” metals, lunar ice for fuel and helium 3 for nuclear fusion. These are, admittedly, more likely to be business cases more than functioning businesses. Space law, however, is being fashioned to allow appropriation under the guise of peaceful, commercial activity. Some bizarrely argue that off‑planet mining is social justice – shifting pollution from Earth to “ lifeless ” space to spare local communities environmental harm. Common Wealth rightly sees this as a modern-day enclosure movement. Space isn’t a prize for private conquest. It’s a shared realm needing democratic, ethical stewardship – not corporate extraction in legal disguise.
Building a worldwide democratic, collective model is not easy. There is no global body that has clear authority over space resource governance. There is an embryonic one in the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs. Previous attempts to create new frameworks – like the 1979 Moon Agreement – have failed to gain traction among major space powers. There are also longstanding concerns that privatisation is a cover for the militarisation of the cosmos. Notably, the UK has yet to adopt a space resource licensing system – unlike its fellow Artemis Accords founders the US, Luxembourg, United Arab Emirates and Japan. Reviving cold war lines in the stars, Russia and China defend space as common property against western-style celestial land grabs.
There is no viable commercial model for the extraction of space resources and their return to Earth for sale. Nasa’s Moon rock returns helped Congress justify space property rights. Dr Ibled warns that humanity’s last commons is slipping into private hands. Some have proposed an Antarctic-style, consent-based model for space – which would treat it not as endless bounty but as a realm worthy of restraint and respect, where survival uses like water extraction would be permitted. Creating equitable global governance is hard. But that’s no excuse not to try. The stakes, after all, are planetary.
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April 27
The Philadelphia Inquirer on the first 100 days of Trump’s second term
President Franklin D. Roosevelt coined the term “first 100 days” as he moved with warp speed to lift the country out of the Great Depression.
As the 100th day of Donald Trump ’s second presidential term approaches, he has moved with haste and brute force.
But instead of building up the United States, Trump is tearing it apart.
No elected official has done more damage to America in the half century or so since Watergate than Trump. In just a few months, his words and deeds have made the country weaker, poorer, and less stable.
Trump has inflicted pointless pain and suffering on individuals, families, and businesses. He has made America less free, less efficient, less healthy, less respected, and more lawless.
At every turn, Trump has created costly chaos for no good reason. Even worse, he has acted with a cruelty and vengeance that borders on pathological.
The blitz has been so relentless that it is hard to believe he has only been back in power for roughly 100 days.
Amid the tumult, one thing is clear: Trump is not making America great. In fact, his actions are un-American.
Each day brings a fresh new hell.
It started on Day One when Trump rewarded lawlessness at the highest levels by granting sweeping pardons to more than 1,500 of the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and assaulted police officers, defiled the building, and threatened to hang Vice President Mike Pence.
It continued with Trump’s torrent of executive orders that ranged from the ridiculous ( renaming the Gulf of Mexico) to the unconstitutional ( ending birthright citizenship).
Then it morphed into reckless attacks on government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Department of Education, the National Park Service, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
No doubt, the federal government could run more smoothly. But firing hundreds of thousands of federal employees with no rhyme or reason will make the government less efficient.
Elon Musk, the unelected point person overseeing the government purge at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, slashed jobs and issued ridiculous edicts, while accessing reams of private information on nearly every American.
Damage done, Musk will soon slink away to save his failing car company, while keeping the billions in corporate welfare his other businesses receive from the government.
But after all the upheaval, Musk said DOGE will only reduce spending by $150 billion. In a government that spends roughly $7 trillion a year, that’s 2% — far short of Musk’s initial claim of cutting $2 trillion.
Musk’s stated paltry savings can’t even be trusted since the reports are riddled with errors. One of DOGE’s biggest supposed savings involved a $1.9 billion contract that was canceled last fall by the Biden administration.
Unaccounted for is the damage to people’s lives and the hollowed-out departments Musk leaves behind. It is easy to criticize the government until you need a VA appointment, Medicare coverage, a Social Security check, or Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) assistance.
Firing air traffic controllers amid a run of airplane crashes is depraved.
Closing embassies and ending foreign aid will destabilize hot spots around the world, turn countries against America, and lead to senseless deaths. One group estimated that 15,000 people have died from the administration’s immolation of the international relief group USAID. Researchers say that number could climb to 25 million because of cuts to global health funding.
Firing FBI agents, CIA spies, and U.S. Justice Department prosecutors benefits criminals and leaves the country more vulnerable to terrorist attacks and espionage.
Then there are Trump’s tariffs. Just check your 401(k) to see how that is going. Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs have whipsawed financial markets, upended small businesses, and raised prices on consumers.
Over one three-day stretch, Trump’s tariff moves sliced $10 trillion from pension funds, investment accounts, and retirement savings. Trump inherited an economy that was the envy of the world. But in just three months, he made America 20% poorer, and likely headed for a recession.
Along the way, Trump has picked needless fights with our strongest allies in Europe, Canada, and Mexico. He’s threatened to take Greenland and the Panama Canal. It has been a disgusting display of arrogance, bullying, and imperialism that has made America less admired and respected.
Even worse, Trump has switched sides in the war between Russia and Ukraine. Trump is in war criminal Vladimir Putin’s pocket — where he has always been.
The selling out of Ukraine and its valiant President Volodymyr Zelensky will go down as one of the most disgraceful and costly foreign policy blunders ever by an American president — with a shameful assist from complicit Republican lackeys.
Then, there have been relentless broadsides aimed at ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Sadly, many support the end of DEI without understanding the benefits for everyone.
While perhaps imperfect, programs that strive for the fair treatment of all people, especially those who faced systemic discrimination for generations, are a worthy goal to live up to the founders’ vision of a more perfect union.
Trump prefers to go backward, declaring, “Our country will be woke no longer.”
Note that the opposite of woke is lulled. And the opposite of diversity, equity, and inclusion is homogeneity, inequality, and exclusion.
In other words, Trump is at war with a bedrock principle in the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal.”
He is also at war with higher education, science, public health, and the legal community — institutions and bulwarks that have long distinguished the United States.
Trump has spent the past few months threatening and bullying universities, law firms, and media companies. He appears to take sick pleasure in abusing his power, but the upshot of the attacks will weaken America.
Cutting off research funding will jeopardize public health, slow discoveries for cancer and other rare diseases, while leaving the country less prepared to combat the next pandemic.
Trump’s assault on higher education — despite his benefiting from an Ivy League degree — will result in higher tuition and fewer college graduates to fill jobs in fields that face shortages like engineering, nursing, and teaching.
It will lead to less innovation and more inequality, as only the wealthy will be able to afford tuition. Chasing away foreign students will also undermine America’s higher education dominance, while benefiting other countries like China, which will fill the void.
Trump’s roundup and deportation of migrants and foreign students — including many who are in the country legally — is perhaps his most un-American act.
Instead of trying to fix America’s broken immigration system, Trump assaulted human rights, trampled constitutional protections, and defied court rulings.
Many judges have done their job by applying the law and serving as a check on the executive branch — just as the founders designed the system. But the Republicans in the legislative branch have ignored their constitutional duty and enabled Trump.
As legal experts debate whether Trump has created a constitutional crisis, others say we have crossed the Rubicon.
Former Vice President Al Gore compared the Trump administration’s abuse of power and war on truth with Nazi Germany.
A Harvard professor who studies how democracies slip into authoritarianism said, “We are no longer living in a democratic regime.”
Much has been lost in Trump’s first 100 days. It will be up to voters, lawmakers, and the courts to stop him before there is no turning back.
ONLINE: https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/editorials/trump-first-100-days-chaos-firings-tariffs-20250427.html