Donald Trump

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Donald Trump would dearly like to add his face to Mt. Rushmore as the fifth presidential musketeer. His fireworks-and-fury extravaganza on July 3 was the next best thing. Trump’s dystopian speech was almost beside the point. Much more important was the photo op of his smirking face next […]

China

How Trump lost Iran to China: 25-Year ‘Lion-Dragon Deal’ makes Iran part of One Belt, One Road

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The 2015 nuclear deal signed by the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany with Iran had the potential to bring Iran into the world community economically and politically. Iran at one point intended to buy 80 Boeing civilian airliners, creating jobs in Seattle. A country with extensive […]

Donald Trump

Trump’s Plan to Expel Int’l University Students will Further Slash Economy, Hurt US Innovation, and Cost Jobs

The Conversation

By David L. Di Maria | – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, made a decision on July 6 regarding international students in the U.S. that will affect far more than just the roughly 870,000 international students themselves. Based on what I know about the power and influence of higher education in the U.S., […]

Donald Trump

UN Special Rapporteur: US Drone Strike killing Iranian Gen. Soleimani was Unlawful

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Agnes Callamard, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, has concluded in a new report that the Trump administration’s killing of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani at Baghdad International Airport on January 3 was unlawful. Callamard has the responsibility to report on killings by drone. Anna Germoni […]

Donald Trump

Trump has Quit on Us: The President is conducting a sit-down strike in his bedroom while the country burns

David Faris

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – Over the past month, it has become painfully clear even to millions of people who voted for him in 2016 that Donald Trump is deeply uninterested in doing the job he was entrusted with. In the face of the worst crisis to confront human civilization in nearly a century, […]

Climate Crisis

Coal and Covid: Trump Facilitates both in a backward US as Europe makes strides against Both

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The US management of the Covid-19 crisis has been horrible compared to Europe, as the famous chart makes clear. I don’t know if the bar-goers actually know how to read a chart, but that line going up is the US and that is bad, and the line hugging the bottom […]

African-Americans

Maskless in the Red Death: The Pathology of Trump’s Racism is turning our Pandemic into Negligent Genocide

Dan Dinello

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – As Donald Trump sits idly by, the nation is experiencing both a catastrophic public health collapse that has brought international humiliation as well as a convulsive, impassioned protest movement that indicts police brutality and systemic racism. Trump’s negligent response to the pandemic — morally amounting to genocide — has […]

Authoritarianism

For “Safety and Happiness:” On the 4th of July, we Need a Declaration of Independence from Donald Trump

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The founding generation of Americans was deeply concerned with well-being. The Declaration of Independence says that if a government won’t provide it, it is time “to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to […]

Donald Trump

In the U.S., the Second Wave of the Pandemic Is Already Here

John Feffer

(Foreign Policy in Focus) – If the United States had quick-thinking and efficient leadership, the pandemic would have infected about 100,000 people and killed only a couple thousand. That’s the experience of South Korea, times seven to account for the difference in population. If the United States had overwhelmed but reasonably sensible leadership, the coronavirus […]