The Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands’ (CNMI) economic struggles are not just a local issue, but a matter of strategic importance to American operations in the Indo-Pacific, say senior US military leaders.

In a letter, dated 25 February 2026, Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of United States Indo-Pacific Command, said he shared concerns raised by CNMI leaders about worsening economic conditions and their broader implications.

“The security and stability of the CNMI are of vital strategic importance,” Paparo wrote, warning that the islands’ civilian infrastructure and community wellbeing were “inextricably linked” to the US military’s ability to operate in the region.

He said he had directed staff to analyse proposals put forward by CNMI officials, but noted the requested federal actions fall outside his authority.

Paparo said he would elevate the issues to agencies including State, Commerce, Transportation and Homeland Security.

Paparo also backed calls for direct engagement with the White House, saying he supported “an executive-level dialogue with the Administration” and was prepared to take part.

“We are committed to the security and prosperity of the CNMI,” he said.

Expanding US presence
At the same time, military officials say an expanding US presence across the Marianas could provide longer-term economic opportunities — though not an immediate fix.

Speaking at a Saipan Chamber of Commerce forum on March 11, Rear-Admiral Brett Meitus of Joint Region Marianas said more than US$500 million in projects were underway, with additional development planned, particularly on Tinian.

“It’s going to happen over the course of several years . . .  we just don’t have the capacity to do it all at once,” he said.

Meitus said the military was trying to move beyond a short-term construction surge toward a longer cycle of “build, sustain, and operate,” aimed at creating ongoing economic activity.

“Just as important is how we sustain it . . .  making sure that what we build looks like it should a year, two years, five years, ten years from now,” he said.

He said future operations-including exercises and deployments-are expected to bring spending into the local economy as visiting personnel stay in hotels and patronise businesses.

“When forces come in . . .  they can spend money on the local economy,” he said.

Potential benefits
Meitus also pointed to potential benefits including expanded land leases, increased exercises, more port visits and service member tourism, while acknowledging that coordination across different military branches is still evolving.

“We’re working hard to get our arms around exactly how we want to do it,” he said.

He added that the goal is to move from a project-driven boost to more sustained participation by local businesses, though he acknowledged it would not fully address the CNMI’s economic challenges.

Both leaders emphasised the need for continued engagement with federal partners, framing the CNMI’s economic outlook as closely tied to US strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show looking at the arrests of two American journalists for covering a protest at the Cities Church [in the Minnesota Twin City of] St Paul, where a top ICE official serves as pastor.

Former CNN anchor Don Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort from the Twin Cities were released last Friday after initial court hearings.

A federal grand jury in Minnesota indicted Lemon and Fort for violating two laws, an 1871 law originally designed to combat the Ku Klux Klan and the FACE Act, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which was written to protect abortion clinics.

The indictment names a total of nine people, including the two journalists. US Attorney General Pam Bondi took personal credit for the arrests of Fort and Lemon and two others on Friday, posting on X that the arrests occurred at her direction.

Don Lemon, who was arrested late Thursday night by the FBI in Los Angeles, had been reporting on the church protest in St Paul in January as an independent journalist.

His attorney, Abbe Lowell, described the arrest as an “unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration.”

On Friday afternoon, Don Lemon vowed to continue reporting after appearing court in Los Angeles.

AMY GOODMAN: Don Lemon attended the Grammys on Sunday night.

Also arrested Friday was Georgia Fort, an independent journalist from the Twin Cities. She posted a video to Facebook just as federal agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration were about to arrest her and take her to the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined now from Minneapolis by that longtime independent journalist Georgia Fort, whose reporting has been recognised with three Midwest Emmys.

‘Journalism Is Not A Crime’                Video: Democracy Now!

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

Former US President Barack Obama has taken to social media to praise Harvard’s decision to stand up for academic freedom by rebuffing the Trump administration’s demands.

“Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions — rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking concrete steps to make sure all students at Harvard can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate and mutual respect,” Obama wrote in a post on X.

He called on other universities to follow the lead.

Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions – rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking concrete steps to make sure all students at Harvard can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate and… https://t.co/gAu9UUqgjF

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) April 15, 2025

Harvard will not comply with the Trump administration’s demands to dismantle its diversity programming, limit student protests over Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, and submit to far-reaching federal audits in exchange for its federal funding, university president Alan M. Garber ’76 announced yesterday afternoon.

“No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” he wrote, reports the university’s Harvard Crimson news team.

The announcement comes two weeks after three federal agencies announced a review into roughly $9 billion in Harvard’s federal funding and days after the Trump administration sent its initial demands, which included dismantling diversity programming, banning masks, and committing to “full cooperation” with the Department of Homeland Security.

Within hours of the announcement to reject the White House demands, the Trump administration paused $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in multi-year contracts to Harvard in a dramatic escalation in its crusade against the university.

More focused demands
On Friday, the Trump administration had delivered a longer and more focused set of demands than the ones they had shared two weeks earlier.

It asked Harvard to “derecognise” pro-Palestine student groups, audit its academic programmes for viewpoint diversity, and expel students involved in an altercation at a 2023 pro-Palestine protest on the Harvard Business School campus.

It also asked Harvard to reform its admissions process for international students to screen for students “supportive of terrorism and anti-Semitism” — and immediately report international students to federal authorities if they break university conduct policies.

It called for “reducing the power held by faculty (whether tenured or untenured) and administrators more committed to activism than scholarship” and installing leaders committed to carrying out the administration’s demands.

And it asked the university to submit quarterly updates, beginning in June 2025, certifying its compliance.

Garber condemned the demands, calling them a “political ploy” disguised as an effort to address antisemitism on campus.

“It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner,” he wrote.

“Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Since the September 11 terror attacks, there has been no hiding from the increased militarisation of the United States. Everyday life is suffused with policing and surveillance.

This ranges from the inconvenient, such as removing shoes at the airport, to the dystopian, such as local police departments equipped with decommissioned tanks too big to use on regular roads.

This process of militarisation did not begin with 9/11. The American state has always relied on force combined with the de-personalisation of its victims.

The army, after all, dispossessed First Nations peoples of their land as settlers pushed westward. Expanding the American empire to places such as Cuba, the Philippines, and Haiti also relied on force, based on racist justifications.

The military also ensured American supremacy in the wake of the Second World War. As historian Nikhil Pal Singh writes, about 8 million people were killed in US-led or sponsored wars from 1945–2019 — and this is a conservative estimate.

When Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican and former military general, left the presidency in 1961, he famously warned against the growing “military-industrial complex” in the US. His warning went unheeded and the protracted conflict in Vietnam was the result.

The 9/11 attacks then intensified US militarisation, both at home and abroad. George W. Bush was elected in late 2000 after campaigning to reduce US foreign interventions.

The new president discovered, however, that by adopting the persona of a tough, pro-military leader, he could sweep away lingering doubts about the legitimacy of his election.

Waging war on Afghanistan within a month of the Twin Towers falling, Bush’s popularity soared to 90 percent. War in Iraq, based on the dubious assertion of Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction”, soon followed.

The military industrial juggernaut
Investment in the military state is immense. 9/11 ushered in the federal, cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security, with an initial budget in 2001-02 of US$16 billion. Annual budgets for the agency peaked at US$74 billion in 2009-10 and is now around US$50 billion.

This super-department vacuumed up bureaucracies previously managed by a range of other agencies, including justice, transportation, energy, agriculture, and health and human services.

Centralising services under the banner of security has enabled gross miscarriages of justice. These include the separation of tens of thousands of children from parents at the nation’s southern border, done in the guise of protecting the country from so-called illegal immigrants.

More than 300 of the some 1000 children taken from parents during the Trump administration have still not been reunited with family.

The post-9/11 Patriot Act also gave spying agencies paramilitary powers. The act reduced barriers between the CIA, FBI, and the National Security Agency (NSA) to permit the acquiring and sharing of Americans’ private communications.

These ranged from telephone records to web searches. All of this was justified in an atmosphere of near-hysterical and enduring anti-Muslim fervour.

Only in 2013 did most Americans realise the extent of this surveillance network. Edward Snowden, a contractor working at the NSA, leaked documents that revealed a secret US$52 billion budget for 16 spying agencies and over 100,000 employees.

Normalisation of the security state
Despite the long objections of civil liberties groups and disquiet among many private citizens, especially after Snowden’s leaks, it has proven difficult to wind back the industrialised security state.

This is for two reasons: the extent of the investment, and because its targets, both domestically and internationally, are usually not white and not powerful.

Domestically, the 2015 Freedom Act renewed almost all of the Patriot Act’s provisions. Legislation in 2020 that might have stemmed some of these powers stalled in Congress.

And recent reports suggest President Joe Biden’s election has done little to alter the detention of children at the border.

Militarisation is now so commonplace that local police departments and sheriff’s offices have received some US$7 billion worth of military gear (including grenade launchers and armoured vehicles) since 1997, underwritten by federal government programmes.

Militarised police kill civilians at a high rate — and the targets for all aspects of policing and incarceration are disproportionately people of colour. And yet, while the sight of excessively armed police forces during last year’s Black Lives Matter protests shocked many Americans, it will take a phenomenal effort to reverse this trend.

The heavy cost of the war on terror
The juggernaut of the militarised state keeps the United States at war abroad, no matter if Republicans or Democrats are in power.

Since 9/11, the US “war on terror” has cost more than US$8 trillion and led to the loss of up to 929,000 lives.

The effects on countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and Pakistan have been devastating, and with the US involvement in Somalia, Libya, the Philippines, Mali, and Kenya included, these conflicts have resulted in the displacement of some 38 million people.

These wars have become self-perpetuating, spawning new terror threats such as the Islamic State and now perhaps ISIS-K.

Those who serve in the US forces have suffered greatly. Roughly 2.9 million living veterans served in post-9/11 conflicts abroad. Of the some 2 million deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, perhaps 36 percent are experiencing PTSD.

Training can be utterly brutal. The military may still offer opportunities, but the lives of those who serve remain expendable.

Life must be precious
Towards the end of his life, Robert McNamara, the hard-nosed Ford Motor Company president and architect of the United States’ disastrous military efforts in Vietnam, came to regret deeply his part in the military-industrial juggernaut.

In his 1995 memoir, he judged his own conduct to be morally repugnant. He wrote,

We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong.

In interviews with the filmmaker Errol Morris, McNamara admitted, obliquely, to losing sight of the simple fact the victims of the militarised American state were, in fact, human beings.

As McNamara realised far too late, the solution to reversing American militarisation is straightforward. We must recognise, in the words of activist and scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore, that “life is precious”. That simple philosophy also underlies the call to acknowledge Black Lives Matter.

The best chance to reverse the militarisation of the US state is policy guided by the radical proposal that life — regardless of race, gender, status, sexuality, nationality, location or age — is indeed precious.

As we reflect on how the United States has changed since 9/11, it is clear the country has moved further away from this basic premise, not closer to it.

Dr Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz