AMY GOODMAN: President Trump addressed a joint session of Congress in a highly partisan 100-minute speech, the longest presidential address to Congress in modern history on Wednesday.

Trump defended his sweeping actions over the past six weeks.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplished in four years or eight years, and we are just getting started.

AMY GOODMAN: President Trump praised his biggest campaign donor, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who’s leading Trump’s effort to dismantle key government agencies and cut critical government services.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And to that end, I have created the brand-new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Perhaps.

Which is headed by Elon Musk, who is in the gallery tonight. Thank you, Elon. He’s working very hard. He didn’t need this. He didn’t need this. Thank you very much. We appreciate it.

AMY GOODMAN: Some Democrats laughed and pointed at Elon Musk when President Trump made this comment later in his speech.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It’s very simple. And the days of rule by unelected bureaucrats are over.

AMY GOODMAN: During his speech, President Trump repeatedly attacked the trans and immigrant communities, defended his tariffs that have sent stock prices spiraling, vowed to end Russia’s war on Ukraine and threatened to take control of Greenland.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We also have a message tonight for the incredible people of Greenland: We strongly support your right to determine your own future, and if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America. We need Greenland for national security and even international security, and we’re working with everybody involved to try and get it.

But we need it, really, for international world security. And I think we’re going to get it. One way or the other, we’re going to get it.

‘A declaration of war against the American people.’  Video: Democracy Now!

AMY GOODMAN: During Trump’s 100-minute address, Democratic lawmakers held up signs in protest reading “This is not normal,” “Save Medicaid” and “Musk steals.”

One Democrat, Congressmember Al Green of Texas, was removed from the chamber for protesting against the President.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Likewise, small business optimism saw its single-largest one-month gain ever recorded, a 41-point jump.

REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMEMBER 1: Sit down!

REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMEMBER 2: Order!

SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: Members are directed to uphold and maintain decorum in the House and to cease any further disruptions. That’s your warning. Members are engaging in willful and continuing breach of decorum, and the chair is prepared to direct the sergeant-at-arms to restore order to the joint session.

Mr Green, take your seat. Take your seat, sir.

DEMOCRAT CONGRESS MEMBER AL GREEN: He has no mandate to cut Medicaid!

SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: Take your seat. Finding that members continue to engage in willful and concerted disruption of proper decorum, the chair now directs the sergeant-at-arms to restore order, remove this gentleman from the chamber.

AMY GOODMAN: That was House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called in security to take Texas Democratic Congressmember Al Green out. Afterwards, Green spoke to reporters after being removed.

DEMOCRAT CONGRESS MEMBER AL GREEN: The President said he had a mandate, and I was making it clear to the President that he has no mandate to cut Medicaid.

I have people who are very fearful. These are poor people, and they have only Medicaid in their lives when it comes to their healthcare. And I want him to know that his budget calls for deep cuts in Medicaid.

He needs to save Medicaid, protect it. We need to raise the cap on Social Security. There’s a possibility that it’s going to be hurt. And we’ve got to protect Medicare.

These are the safety net programmes that people in my congressional district depend on. And this President seems to care less about them and more about the number of people that he can remove from the various programmes that have been so helpful to so many people.

AMY GOODMAN: Texas Democratic Congressmember Al Green.

We begin today’s show with Ralph Nader, the longtime consumer advocate, corporate critic, former presidential candidate. Ralph Nader is founder of the Capitol Hill Citizen newspaper. His most recent lead article in the new issue of Capitol Hill Citizen is titled “Democratic Party: Apologise to America for ushering Trump back in.”

He is also the author of the forthcoming book Let’s Start the Revolution: Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country That Works for the People.

Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare, all these different programmes. Ralph Nader, respond overall to President Trump’s, well, longest congressional address in modern history.

RALPH NADER: Well, it was also a declaration of war against the American people, including Trump voters, in favour of the super-rich and the giant corporations. What Trump did last night was set a record for lies, delusionary fantasies, predictions of future broken promises — a rerun of his first term — boasts about progress that don’t exist.

In practice, he has launched a trade war. He has launched an arms race with China and Russia. He has perpetuated and even worsened the genocidal support against the Palestinians. He never mentioned the Palestinians once.

And he’s taken Biden’s genocidal policies one step further by demanding the evacuation of Palestinians from Gaza.

But taking it as a whole, Amy, what we’re seeing here defies most of dictionary adjectives. What Trump and Musk and Vance and the supine Republicans are doing are installing an imperial, militaristic domestic dictatorship that is going to end up in a police state.

You can see his appointments are yes people bent on suppression of civil liberties, civil rights. You can see his breakthrough, after over 120 years, of announcing conquest of Panama Canal.

He’s basically said, one way or another, he’s going to take Greenland. These are not just imperial controls of countries overseas or overthrowing them; it’s actually seizing land.

Now, on the Greenland thing, Greenland is a province of Denmark, which is a member of NATO. He is ready to basically conquer a part of Denmark in violation of Section 5 of NATO, at the same time that he has displayed full-throated support for a hardcore communist dictator, Vladimir Putin, who started out with the Russian version of the CIA under the Soviet Union and now has over 20 years of communist dictatorship, allied, of course, with a number of oligarchs, a kind of kleptocracy.

And the Republicans are buying all this in Congress. This is complete reversal of everything that the Republicans stood for against communist dictators.

So, what we’re seeing here is a phony programme of government efficiency ripping apart people’s programmes. The attack on Social Security is new, complete lies about millions of people aged 110, 120, getting Social Security cheques.

That’s a new attack. He left Social Security alone in his first term, but now he’s going after [it]. So, what they’re going to do is cut Medicaid and cut other social safety nets in order to pay for another tax cut for the super-rich and the corporation, throwing in no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security benefits, which will, of course, further increase the deficit and give the lie to his statement that he wants a balanced budget.

So we’re dealing with a deranged, unstable pathological liar, who’s getting away with it. And the question is: How does he get away with it, year after year? Because the Democratic Party has basically collapsed.

Courts Just Say No to Trump’s Authoritarian Power Grabs https://t.co/wUZspBh6RQ

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) March 6, 2025

They don’t know how to deal with a criminal recidivist, a person who has hired workers without documents and exploited them, a person who’s a bigot against immigrants, including legal immigrants who are performing totally critical tasks in home healthcare, processing poultry, meat, and half of the construction workers in Texas are undocumented workers.

So, as a bully, he doesn’t go after the construction industry in Texas; he picks out individuals.

I thought the most disgraceful thing, Amy, yesterday was his use of these unfortunate people who suffered as props, holding one up after another. But they were also Trump’s crutches to cover up his contradictory behavior.

So, he praised the police yesterday, but he pardoned over 600 people who attacked violently the police [in the attack on the Capitol] on 6 January 2021 and were convicted and imprisoned as a result, and he let them out of prison. I thought the most —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Ralph? Ralph, I —

RALPH NADER: — the most heartrending thing was that 13-year-old child, who wanted to be a police officer when he grew up, being held up twice by his father. And he was so bewildered as to what was going on. And Trump’s use of these people was totally reprehensible and should be called out.

Now, more basically, the real inefficiencies in government, they’re ignoring, because they are kleptocrats. They’re ignoring corporate crimes on Medicaid, Medicare, tens of billions of dollars every year ripping off Medicare, ripping off government contracts, such as defence contracts.

He’s ignoring hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate welfare, including that doled out to Elon Musk — subsidies, handouts, giveaways, bailouts, you name it. And he’s ignoring the bloated military budget, which he is supporting the Republicans in actually increasing the military budget more than the generals have asked for. So, that’s the revelation —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Ralph? Ralph, if I — Ralph, if I can interrupt? I just need to —

RALPH NADER: — that the Democrats need to pursue.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Ralph, I wanted to ask you about — specifically about Medicaid and Medicare. You’ve mentioned the cuts to these safety net programmes. What about Medicaid, especially the crisis in this country in long-term care? What do you see happening in this Trump administration, especially with the Republican majority in Congress?

RALPH NADER: Well, they’re going to slash — they’re going to move to slash Medicaid, which serves over 71 million people, including millions of Trump voters, who should be reconsidering their vote as the days pass, because they’re being exploited in red states, blue states, everywhere, as well.

Yeah, they have to cut tens of billions of dollars a year from Medicaid to pay for the tax cut. That’s number one. Now they’re going after Social Security. Who knows what the next step will be on Medicare? They’re leaving Americans totally defenceless by slashing meat and poultry and food inspection laws, auto safety.

They’re exposing people to climate violence by cutting FEMA, the rescue agency. They’re cutting forest rangers that deal with wildfires. They’re cutting protections against pandemics and epidemics by slashing and ravaging and suppressing free speech in scientific circles, like CDC and National Institutes of Health.

They’re leaving the American people defenseless.

And where are the Democrats on this? I mean, look at Senator Slotkin’s response. It was a typical rerun of a feeble, weak Democratic rebuttal. She couldn’t get herself, just like the Democrats in 2024, which led to Trump’s victory — they can’t get themselves, Juan, to talk specifically and authentically about raising the minimum wage, expanding healthcare, cracking down on corporate crooks that are bleeding out the incomes of hard-pressed American workers and the poor.

They can’t get themselves to talk about increasing frozen Social Security budgets for 50 years, that 200 Democrats supported raising, but Nancy Pelosi kept them, when she was Speaker, from taking John Larson’s bill to the House floor.

That’s why they lose. Look at her speech. It was so vague and general. They chose her because she was in the national security state. She was a former CIA. They chose her because they wanted to promote the losing version of the Democratic Party, instead of choosing Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, the most popular polled politician in America today.

That’s who they chose. So, as long as the Democrats monopolise the opposition and crush third-party efforts to push them into more progressive realms, the Republican, plutocratic, Wall Street, war machine declaration of war against the American people will continue.

We’re heading into the most serious crisis in American history. There’s no comparison.

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, we’re going to have to leave it there, but, of course, we’re going to continue to cover these issues. And I also wanted to wish you, Ralph, a happy 91st birthday. Ralph Nader —

RALPH NADER: I wish people to get the Capitol Hill Citizen, which tells people what they can really do to win democracy and justice back. So, for $5 or donation or more, if you wish, you can go to Capitol Hill Citizen and get a copy sent immediately by first-class mail, or more copies for your circle, of resisting and protesting and prevailing over this Trump dictatorship.

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, longtime consumer advocate, corporate critic, four-time presidential candidate, founder of the Capitol Hill Citizen newspaper. This is Democracy Now!

The original content of this programme is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence. Republished by Asia Pacific Report under Creative Commons.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Much has been and much more will be written about the looming abolition of USAID.

It’s “the removal of a huge and important tool of American global statecraft” (Konyndyk), or the wood-chipping of a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America” (Musk) or, more reasonably, the unwarranted cancellation of an organisation that should have been reviewed and reformed.

Commentators will have a lot to say, some of it exaggerated, about the varieties of harm caused by this decision, and about its legality.

Some will welcome it from a conservative perspective, believing that USAID was either not aligned with or acting against the interests of the United States, or was proselytising wokeness, or was a criminal organisation.

Some, often more quietly, will welcome it from an anti-imperialist or “Southern” perspective, believing that the agency was at worst a blunt instrument of US hegemony or at least a bastion of Western saviourism.

I want to come at this topic from a different angle, by providing a brief personal perspective on USAID as an organisation, based on several decades of occasional interaction with it during my time as an Australian aid official.

Essentially, I view USAID as a harried, hamstrung and traumatised organisation, not as a rogue agency or finely-tuned vehicle of US statecraft.

Peer country representative
My own experience with USAID began when I participated as a peer country representative in an OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) peer review of the US’s foreign assistance programme in the early 1990s, which included visits to US assistance programmes in Bangladesh and the Philippines, as well as to USAID headquarters in Washington DC.

I later dealt with the agency in many other roles, including during postings to the OECD and Indonesia and through my work on global and regional climate change and health programmes, up to and including the pandemic years.

An image is firmly lodged in my mind from that DAC peer review visit to Washington. We had had days of back-to-back meetings in USAID headquarters with a series of exhausted-looking, distracted and sometimes grumpy executives who didn’t have much reason to care what the OECD thought about the US aid effort.

It was a muggy summer day. At one point a particularly grumpy meeting chair, who now rather reminds of me of Gary Oldman’s character in Slow Horses, mopped the sweat from his forehead with his necktie without appearing to be aware of what he was doing. Since then, that man has been my mental model of a USAID official.

But why so exhausted, distracted and grumpy?

Precisely because USAID is about the least freewheeling workplace one could construct. Certainly it is administratively independent, in the sense that it was created by an act of Congress, but it also receives its budget from the President and Congress — and that budget comes with so many strings attached, in the form of country- or issue-related “earmarks” or other directives that it might be logically impossible to allocate the funds as instructed.

Some of these earmarks are broad and unsurprising (for example, specific allocations for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment under the Bush-era PEPFAR program) while others represent niche interests (Senator John McCain once ridiculed earmarks pertaining to “peanuts, orangutans, gorillas, neotropical raptors, tropical fish and exotic plants”) — but none originates within USAID.

Informal earmarks calculation
I recall seeing an informal calculation showing that one could only satisfy all the percentage-based earmarks by giving most of the dollars several quite different jobs to do. A 2002 DAC peer review noted with disapproval some 270 earmarks or other directive provisions in aid legislation; by the time of the most recent peer review in 2022, this number was more like 700.

Related in part to this congressional micro-management of its budget — along with the usual distrust of organisations that “send” money overseas — USAID labours under particularly gruelling accountability and reporting requirements.

Andew Natsios — a former USAID Administrator and lifelong Republican who has recently come to USAID’s defence (albeit with arguments that not everybody would deem helpful) — wrote about this in 2010. In terms reminiscent of current events, he described the reign of terror of Lieutenant-General Herbert Beckington, a former Marine Corps officer who led USAID‘s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) from 1977 to 1994.

He was a powerful iconic figure in Washington, and his influence over the structure of the foreign aid programME remains with USAID today. … Known as “The General” at USAID, Beckington was both feared and despised by career officers. Once referred to by USAID employees as “the agency’s J. Edgar Hoover — suspicious, vindictive, eager to think the worst” …

At one point, he told the Washington Post that USAID’s white-collar crime rate was “higher than that of downtown Detroit.” … In a seminal moment in this clash between OIG and USAID, photographs were published of two senior officers who had been accused of some transgression being taken away in handcuffs by the IG investigators for prosecution, a scene that sent a broad chill through the career staff and, more than any other single event, forced a redirection of aid practice toward compliance.

Labyrinthine accountability systems
On top of the burdens of logically impossible programming and labyrinthine accountability systems is the burden of projecting American generosity. As far as humanly possible, and perhaps a little further, ways must be found of ensuring that American aid is sourced from American institutions, farms or factories and, if it is in the form of commodities, that it is transported on American vessels.

Failing that, there must be American flags. I remember a USAID officer stationed in Banda Aceh after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami spending a non-trivial amount of his time seeking to attach sizeable flags to the front of trucks transporting US (but also non-US) emergency supplies around the province of Aceh.

President Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller has somehow determined to his own satisfaction that the great majority (in fact 98 percent) of USAID personnel are donors to the Democratic Party. Whether or not that is true, let alone relevant, Democrat administrations have arguably been no kinder to USAID than Republican ones over the years.

Natsios, in the piece cited above, notes that The General was installed under Carter, who ran on anti-Washington ticket, and that there were savage cuts — over 400 positions — to USAID senior career service staffing under Clinton. USAID gets battered no matter which way the wind blows.

Which brings me back to necktie guy. It has always seemed to me that the platonic form of a USAID officer, while perhaps more likely than not to vote Democrat, is a tired and dispirited person, weary of politicians of all stripes, bowed under his or her burdens, bound to a desk and straitjacketed by accountability requirements, regularly buffeted by new priorities and abrupt restructures, and put upon by the ignorant and suspicious.

Radical-left Marxists and vipers probably wouldn’t tolerate such an existence for long. Who would? I guess it’s either thieves and money-launderers or battle-scarred professionals intent on doing a decent job against tall odds.

Robin Davies is an honorary professor at the Australian National University’s (ANU) Crawford School of Public Policy and managing editor of the Devpolicy Blog. He previously held senior positions at Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and AusAID.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Washington has announced plans to reopen the United States Embassy in Solomon Islands.

Inside the Games reports that the move is a bid to counter China’s increasing assertiveness in the region, which has seen Beijing fund infrastructure for this year’s Pacific Games which take place later this year.

The US Department of State has informed Congress that it plans to establish an interim embassy in Honiara on the site of a former consular property.

It said it would at first be staffed by two American diplomats and five local employees at a cost of US$1.8 million a year.

A more permanent facility with larger staffing will be established eventually.

The US closed its embassy in Honiara in 1993 as part of a post-Cold War global reduction in diplomatic posts and priorities.

The State Department warned in February 2022 that China’s growing influence in the region made reopening the embassy in the Solomon Islands a priority.

In October 2020, the Solomons and China signed an agreement for China to help build venues for the Pacific Games.

Last year, Honiara and Beijing signed a security pact after Chinese President Xi Jinping upgraded relations for a second time following a meeting with Solomons Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare.

The agreement could allow Solomon Islands to request China send police and military personnel if required, while China could deploy forces to protect “Chinese personnel and major projects”.

Sogavare has assured the US and other Western allies that he would not allow China to establish a naval base in his country, but concern about Chinese intentions has not eased.

Solomons and Chinese police visit Games stadium
Representatives from the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force have met with Chinese officials and police to visit the 2023 Pacific Games stadium which is still under construction.

The stadium is being built by the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation, while a dorm at the National University is being built by JiangSu Provincial Construction.

The police force acknowledged the work of the companies in providing employment opportunities to local residents.

Assistant Commissioner Simpson Pogeava said police assistance would be reaffirmed, instructing Central police and Guadalcanal police to provide security support to keep the projects safe.

• The Games are scheduled to take place from November 19 to December 2.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The President of New Caledonia’s Congress Roch Wamytan is set to be re-elected for another one-year term after the party holding the balance of power said it would again vote for him next week.

The ethnic Wallisian and Futunan party, Pacific Awakening, has confirmed its decision to vote for Wamytan of the pro-independence Caledonian Union, saying there was a need for stability to advance reforms.

The party has three of the 54 seats, with the anti-independence camp holding 25 and the pro-independence parties 26.

It said that 30 years of political bipolarity over the question of independence from France has led to growing problems in everyday life, be it in terms of employment or cost of living.

Earlier this week, the anti-independence parties named the MPC (Caledonian People’s Movement) leader Gil Brial as their candidate for Tuesday’s election of a Congress president.

When politicians of the newly formed Pacific Awakening party were first elected in 2019, they vowed to foster a balance of power by supporting an anti-independence candidate to lead the government and a pro-independence candidate to be in charge of the Congress.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz