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US & Canada
California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks as he announces the Golden State Literacy Plan and deployment of literacy coaches statewide, at the Clinton Elementary School in Compton, California, USA, on June 5, 2025.
8: California Governor Gavin Newsom posted an eight-minute video on social media Tuesday night in which he berated US President Donald Trump for sending federal troops into Los Angeles to support local police amid protests and riots against immigration enforcement. Newsom has been increasingly positioning himself as a national-level opponent of Trump.
450: The US Centers for Disease Control has reinstated 450 employees who were terminated in the recent rounds of DOGE-led layoffs, which cut 10,000 federal health workers. The reinstated employees work in a range of areas, including STD prevention, global health, environmental health, and lead poisoning prevention.
30 billion: Canada needs to invest at least $30 billion in its critical minerals industry by 2040 if it hopes to meet rising demand stoked by the green energy transition. Critical minerals such as lithium and copper are key components of electric vehicles, batteries, and solar panels. Industry leaders say permitting needs to be streamlined as well.
4: Formula 1 driver Max Verstappenwill attempt to win a record fourth consecutive Canadian Grand Prix when the race roars through the notoriously brake-heavy course on Montreal’s Île Notre-Dame this Sunday.What We’re Watching: Canada-US deal takes shape, G7 kicks off in Kananaskis, Wildfires rage
Flags fly above the Peace Arch at a Canada-US border crossing in Blaine, Washington, USA, on April 2, 2025.
Canada, US may be closer to a deal
Canadian and US officials may be approaching at least the framework of a deal covering trade and other issues, CBC reported Wednesday. Sources say that in exchange for tariff relief from the United States, Canada would agree to participate in Washington’s Golden Dome missile defense program and build infrastructure in the Arctic. But Canadian officials have cautioned there is as of yet no deal on the table.
The G7 summit: big guest list and big questions
The tarmac at Calgary International Airport will be clogged next week when leaders from around the world arrive for the G7 summit of the world’s advanced economy democracies at nearby Kananaskis. In addition to G7 leaders, the heads of Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico, and Ukraine will attend. The big question: Can seven of the world’s most influential countries agree on a strategy for key issues such as trade, the climate, and Ukraine when the most powerful one of all now has radically different views from the rest?
Wildfires pose health risks near and far
Another terrible wildfire season in the northern forest has forced tens of thousands of Canadians, many of them from isolated Indigenous communities, to be evacuated to cities as distant as Niagara Falls, where they are staying in university dorms and hotels. In addition to the terrible disruption for those residents, the fires are sending smoke and smog as far away as Milwaukee. Worryingly, there is reason to fear the resulting health hazards could be more severe than usual.
The Trump administration wants to slash the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US’ main medical research institution, by 40% for the next fiscal year.
The move would bring funding levels back to those of the early 1990s, before a huge post-Cold War push to increase non-military R&D nearly doubled the NIH budget.
The current, Trump-appointed NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya reaffirmed his agency’s commitment to addressing “the health needs of all Americans” before the senate on Tuesday. At the same time, more than 300 current and recently terminated NIH employees have accused the director of suspending federal grant funding for ideological reasons.
Here’s a look at how Trump’s proposed cuts stack up against NIH funding over the past 30 years.
On Saturday, US President Donald Trump activated 2,000 members of the California National Guard to quell protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation efforts in Los Angeles, after small but highly visible demonstrations had popped up across the city in the days prior – with some instances of violence, opportunistic looting, and property damage. California Governor Gavin Newsom disputed that federal intervention was necessary and condemned Trump’s deployment decision as illegal and inflammatory, blaming it for stoking the protests.
Though the protests had largely petered out by then, on Tuesday the president dispatched an additional 2,000-plus National Guard troops and 700 active-duty Marines to the area. Downtown LA had a quiet night on the back of a curfew, but anti-ICE (and, more broadly, anti-Trump) demonstrations have started to spread to other major cities like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Austin, Dallas, and Atlanta, with more planned in Las Vegas, Minneapolis, San Antonio, and Seattle. Texas Governor Greg Abbot has already called in the National Guard ahead of any potential unrest in his state.
Here are my eight key takeaways:
- Trump’s decision to send federal troops into Los Angeles was extreme. It marked the first time in 60 years that the National Guard had been deployed to a US state without the consent of its governor. The last such instance was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson federalized the Alabama Guard in defiance of Governor George Wallace, one of the nation’s leading segregationists, to protect civil rights demonstrators led by Martin Luther King Jr. from violence. Needless to say, federal supremacy over states’ rights is being asserted in a very different context, by a very different president, and in service of a very different goal today.
- It’s legal – for now. Trump’s deployment pushes the envelope politically, but as long as the troops limit their role to protecting federal personnel and facilities while refraining from taking law-enforcement actions (as they reportedly have thus far), it will stay within the bounds of presidential authority. That’s a key legal distinction, as the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act bars active-duty forces from engaging in domestic law enforcement unless the president invokes the 1807 Insurrection Act. That’s a step Trump hasn’t taken (yet at least), suggesting that he still sees as high a bar for it as he did during the George Floyd protests in 2020.
- The door is open to a more radical use of emergency powers. The counterpoint is that Trump referred to the LA protesters as a “violent insurrectionist mob” (he does know a little something about those) and on Tuesday refused to take the invocation of the Insurrection Act off the table. He also warned that any protesters at this weekend’s military parade in Washington, DC – peaceful or not – “will be met with very big force,” and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth hinted at a desire to use military forces on domestic soil more extensively going forward. This pattern suggests that Trump’s threshold for activating emergency powers or using troops against Americans is lower than last time around, when he was repeatedly talked out of extreme steps by institutionalist advisors. I wouldn’t be shocked if the administration invoked the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (aka IEEPA, the same law it used to levy reciprocal tariffs on Liberation Day) to freeze the assets of individual American citizens and organizations it accused of aiding and abetting “foreign invaders” (aka undocumented aliens). Or if it used the Communications Act to pressure internet platforms into throttling protest-related content. These scenarios may sound far-fetched, but so did the unilateral deployment of the National Guard and Marine Corps to Los Angeles less than 200 days into the first year of the Trump presidency. In his second term, Trump has proven willing to push the legal and political limits of executive power, against precedent and despite long odds of success.
- Trump’s LA deployment was designed to score political points, not restore peace. The City of Los Angeles was unaffected by the protests, which were confined to a handful of downtown city blocks. The Los Angeles Police Department had things under control (at least until Trump escalated the situation), and local officials saw no reason to request federal help. In fact, they warned that adding federal troops to the mix would risk heightening tensions and endanger public safety. But Trump wasn’t trying to solve a security problem – he was playing politics.
- Trump is eager to pick public fights over immigration. This is the one issue area where the president has had consistently positive approval ratings, save for a brief dip underwater caused by the administration’s mishandling of the Abrego Garcia case. For Trump, the political upside of doubling down on the migrant crackdown is twofold. First, it shifts attention toward his biggest strength and away from headlines that are more problematic for the administration, such as his failure to secure trade deals, his inability to end the Russia-Ukraine war, and his messy breakup with Elon Musk. Second, it forces Democrats into defending politically unsympathetic targets and positions, much like they did with Abrego Garcia (before the White House overplayed its hand) and Harvard University.
- The optics of the LA protests play straight into Trump’s hands. Images of burning Waymos and protestors flying Mexican flags lend credence to the White House’s false claim that undocumented immigrants are dangerous foreign invaders and their defenders are radical anti-American traitors, allowing the president to discredit opponents of mass deportations as threats to public order and safety. That only a small number of troublemakers were illegal aliens doesn’t matter; Trump is betting (correctly, in my view) those visuals will drive public opinion away from the demonstrators and toward more aggressive deportation policies.
- More deportations are coming. Trump has made measurable progress in curbing illegal border crossings, but so far, deportations have fallen far short of his campaign pledge (and even of deportations during Joe Biden’s last year in office). That’s not surprising; large-scale interior removals are much more politically, economically, and logistically fraught than border enforcement. But according to the Wall Street Journal, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller recently ordered ICE to step up its game, demanding that they stop targeting migrants with criminal records, asylum requests, and court petitions and instead “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens” at their jobs and schools. In other words, snag anyone who looks illegal, no probable cause (let alone warrant) needed. That approach was reportedly what sparked the LA protests last week. The backlash was instrumental to Miller’s goals: by signaling that Trump is making good on his deportation promise, standoffs with law enforcement can make deportations more popular and give Trump the political capital to ramp up more visible and disruptive workplace and neighborhood raids, particularly in Democratic-run cities. These operations will trigger more protests, which will in turn be met with more repression and stepped-up enforcement, and so on.
- On immigration, don’t bet on TACO. Trump faces fewer internal constraints in implementing his policy agenda on immigration than in any other area. Unless and until it starts dragging on his approval ratings, he is likely to double down: more aggressive raids, more confrontations with Democratic governors and mayors, more troop deployments to quell public protests. Mass deportations will disrupt local life in places like Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Chicago. Backlash to aggressive enforcement tactics, family separations, and mistaken detentions will be the primary source of domestic unrest in the coming months, but Trump won’t back down. This is a fight the White House is happy to fight.
Trump's deployment of troops to Los Angeles was less about taking control of the streets and more about taking control of the narrative. The strategy is confrontational by design, with immigrants and Democrats as foils and civil unrest as a feature, not a bug. This playbook may work politically. But in the long term, the result will be more conflict: between cities and Washington, between red and blue, between civilians and the military, and between competing visions of American identity. The most politically divided and dysfunctional industrialized nation will only become more so.
Trump tells Elon to say it to his face. #PUPPETREGIME
Watch more PUPPET REGIME here!
On Ian Bremmer’s World In 60 Seconds: Ian breaks down the assassination attempt on Colombia's presidential candidate, the US-China trade talks, and Canada plans to hit NATO's 2% defense target seven years early.
Ian's takeaways:
An assassination attempt on a Colombian presidential candidate highlights that “security continues to be a really serious problem,” as opposition momentum grows amid President Petro’s struggles.
On US-China trade, Ian says, “There is real progress happening,” as factory shutdown threats push both sides toward short-term stability, even if long-term trust remains elusive.
And Canada’s plan to hit NATO’s defense target early? “It’s about Trump,” Ian notes, as Ottawa moves to ease tensions with Washington ahead of 2025.
What We’re Watching: School shooting in Austria, Duterte impeachment update, Crapo shoots for the moon
Police in and around a high school in Graz, Austria, after a gunman killed nine people at the school, on June 10, 2025.
Shooter kills nine at Austrian school
A gunman killed at least nine people at a school in Graz, Austria, on Tuesday, in what appears to be the worst school shooting in the country’s post-war history. The 21-year-old suspect, who was an ex-student of the school, reportedly took his own life. Austria has relatively liberal gun laws, compared to some other European countries, so we’ll be watching to see if this tragedy prompts any debate about tighter restrictions.
Could Duterte nab an impeachment reprieve?
The Philippines Senate on Tuesday sent impeachment articles against Vice President Sara Duterte back to the House for constitutional clarifications. It’s a reprieve for Duterte, who faces impeachment on allegations of high crimes, including a plot to kill her political (and dynastic) rival, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The stakes are high: if impeached, Duterte could be blocked from running for president in 2028. The political blowback could be severe, thoug: The vice president’s party outperformed expectations in last month’s midterm elections.
Trump’s Big Bill is now a Crapo-shoot
All eyes in Washington are today on Sen. Mike Crapo, Republican from Idaho who, as chairman of the Finance Committee, will be marking up President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful” tax-and-spending bill. Crapo has his work cut out: A cadre of budget hawk GOP senators have called for cuts to the spending outlined in the House-passed version of the bill, while others are worried that any significant savings will come at the expense of Medicaid or other popular programs. Rock, meet hard place: Over to you, Mike.