A new round of talks aimed at resolving the trade war between the US and China are set to take place in London on Monday. A senior US delegation including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick will meet with Chinese representatives such as Vice Premier He Lifeng to resolve tensions between the world's two largest economies, which is threatening global growth. Chinese exports of rare earths, which are crucial for modern technology, as well as Beijing's access to US products, including computer...

U.S. President Donald Trump’s top trade officials are meeting their Chinese counterparts in London on Monday for talks aimed at resolving an ongoing trade dispute between the world’s two largest economies. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer are representing the U.S. China’s foreign ministry said on Saturday that Vice Premier He Lifeng, Beijing’s lead trade negotiator, will be in the U.K. between June 8...

Surpassing the rock and roll crooner.

The premeditated demise.

The most striking thing about the Democrat Party’s perceived priorities is how unpopular they are, even as President Trump’s own popularity has seen ups and downs. The results of an early post-election Quinnipiac survey, which showed that only 31 percent of the electorate had a favorable opinion of what Democrats stand for, have remained essentially unchanged in subsequent polling. It is an encouraging sign for ambitious Democrat politicians that some left-leaning intellectuals have recently begun talking about the need for … concessions to public opinion. So why, observers wonder, do the party’s best-known politicians seem to spend half their time doubling down on the very causes which lost them the 2024 election, as the other half attempts to discredit such widely favored Republican reforms as deporting criminal illegals and making the government more efficient? It certainly is not for a lack of advice from friendly quarters. James Carville, Bill Maher, podcaster Jon Favreau, and CNN’s Van Jones are just some of the liberal commentators who have been pleading for a more appealing Democrat agenda. And it is hard to imagine that frequently mentioned up-and-comers like Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee, and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro are privately pleased with the lingering progressivism at the top of their party. Part of the reason why Democrat politicians are reluctant to stake out more popular positions is clearly their fear of retribution from far-left activists. Writing in the current issue of City Journal, Manhattan Institute fellow Park MacDougald describes what happened to Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton when, shortly after the last election, he told the New York Times that his party desperately needed to rethink its position on transgender issues. Immediately both local activists and national groups “accused Moulton of scapegoating trans people, descended on his office for a ‘Neighbors Against Hate’ rally, and pledged to primary him in his next election.” Moulton’s own campaign manager quit in protest, and the chair of one city in his district (Salem) denounced him as a “Nazi cooperator.” But even should some moderate Democrat be willing to take on the party’s vengefully vigilant progressives, he or she would still have to contend with the wider public’s understandable skepticism that, once elected, any centrist impulse expressed during the campaign would endure. After all, President Biden ran as a moderate in 2020, only to later enable massive illegal immigration, pass an inflationary green energy bill, use the federal bureaucracy to imbed transgender rights, and favor the comfort of educators over the welfare of school children during Covid. And while Biden’s own reversals can be attributed to a weakened mental condition, it is now quite clear that behind every would-be Democrat office holder is a political machine which takes every opportunity to push as far left as it can. In other words, the country has come to see that while progressive thinking may not represent the average Democrat, it does advance the interests of those factions which supply the party with its funding, election manpower, and intellectual ammunition. Most prominently, the teacher unions, the vast majority of the country’s university professors and administrators, a variety of well-funded nonprofits, and those Wall Street investment firms specializing in government finance. As a result, the party now suffers from what Democrat data analyst David Shor has appropriately termed a “trust deficit” — a skepticism on the part of voters that its more moderate candidates, no matter how sincere or capable, can be depended on to follow through on what they promise. More than the wrath of party activists, the biggest problem facing any Democrat politician contemplating a move to the middle is much like that faced by any Republican in the 1930s who might have wanted to support President Franklin Roosevelt’s proposed Social Security legislation. Back then, a GOP candidate who genuinely approved of the idea would still not have been trusted to defend it against those powerful financial and intellectual forces in his own party which remained opposed to the very idea of big government entitlements. Indeed, it was not until the 1950s, when Social Security had become such a firmly established part of American life that neither party dared be seen as wavering in support of it, when the public was finally willing to give Republicans another chance at the White House. And even then, the GOP needed a nominee widely admired for pulling off the D-Day landing and winning the war in Europe. What this means for current Democrat politicians wanting to run as moderates is that they cannot hope to be successful until most of the signature policies that got Trump elected are believed by voters to be safe from reversal by powerful factions within their own party. It is not sufficient for just the candidate to say he or she wants to control the border, take advantage of American fossil fuels, end woke social policies, and operate the government more efficiently. Enough party affiliated donors, interest groups, think tanks, and other factions must begin expressing compatible sentiments. They must demonstrate their acceptance of the fact that there has been what historians call a “change election” — one in which the American people have made up their minds on previously controversial issues and are not prepared to trust any party that threatens, either directly or indirectly, to reverse their judgment. It is an encouraging sign for ambitious Democrat politicians that some left-leaning intellectuals have recently begun talking about the need for an “abundance agenda,” a “patriotic populism,” and similar sounding concessions to public opinion. It has also been reported that Adam Jentleson, former chief of staff to Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) and aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), is privately pitching the establishment of a think tank called Searchlight to come up with policies more broadly acceptable to the general electorate. How Far Need Democrats Go? But what specifically are these would-be reformers prepared to accept? A border wall? Banning transgender men from women’s sports? School choice for children from poor families? We have yet to hear. Voters are certainly sophisticated enough to appreciate that Democrat thought leaders cannot wholeheartedly endorse the very policies they so recently opposed and, to both save face and salvage something of their own, must triangulate “even better” versions. But vague concepts and flowery language — what blogger and journalist Matt Yglesias has termed “dog-whistle moderation” — cannot substitute for genuine accommodation. It is conventional wisdom that Democrats currently have no politician capable of recapturing the White House. But it is far more likely that the smartest ones are simply waiting for the party’s most influential factions to provide the public with credible assurances that future Democrat candidates for high office will be allowed to move the country forward, not backward. For not until many of today’s GOP reforms have ceased to be controversial will voters once again trust Democrat leadership. READ MORE from Lewis M. Andrews: America’s Promise: Classically Educated Kids Churches Bring School Choice to Every State Dr. Andrews is president of the Kids’ Scholarship Fund (www.ksfct.org). His latest book is Living Spiritually in the Material World (Fidelis Books). The post Democrats Must Adapt to Popular Republican Reforms appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

A recent article in the Washington Post  caught my eye. It outlined the astounding loss of over 3 million birds among breeding adults — 30 percent of the adult population — in the last half century (waterfowl are an exception due to wetlands protection). The article goes on to discuss possible causes. Not surprisingly loss of habitat was among them. Then, of course, the leading usual suspect was rounded up; that being climate change.  The Post — being the Post — did not dare to bring up solar and wind farms as culprits. That is the third rail of the Green-Industrial Complex and the Post, New York Times, and NPR dare not touch it for fear of offending their elite progressive base; or are birds and butterflies sacrifices on the altar of climate change? If Green energy is ever forced to survive on market demand rather than government funding, it will likely collapse within five years. I am not a birder, but I keep feeders and a couple of Milkweed and Wildflower gardens in my yard to attract other pollinators. I recognize  the value of their contribution and have followed with interest for several decades the decline of bird and butterfly species. It strikes me that these rapid declines have coincided with the progressive rise of wind and solar generation farms beginning during the Carter Administration four and a half decades ago. The death of many birds nation-wide has been attributed directly to wind farms. However, we hear very little about their impact in the mainstream media. I suspect that the baleful influence of the Green Industrial-Academic Complex has much to to with it.  In the Upstate New York county where I live, many residents complain bitterly about the amount of arable land lost to wind and solar farms, They are generally written off by the Democratic state government which tells them it is for their own good and the good of the planet. Unlike the Military-Industrial complex before it, which was driven by a real need to compete militarily with the Soviets, the Green Industrial-Academic complex is fueled by a threat that is ridiculously overhyped. Rarely a day goes by when the Washington Post, NPR, or CNN does not blame climate change for something. There is even one group of loons that claims increasing earthquakes and volcanic activity are linked to climate change. The philosophy here is based on Joseph Goebbels “Big Lie” theory. If a lie is repeated often enough, it becomes the truth. Today, the Big Lie on climate change has become conventional wisdom among a large segment of the population. Fortunately ,however, if the last election is any indication, a majority of Americans have not yet drunk the Kool Aid.  The climate change cult has many acolytes, and some are sincere believers. But too many are far-left fanatics who want to eliminate carbon based power entirely whatever the economic impact. Still others are academic charlatans producing reams of suspect studies and computer models. Worse are the scam artists who are making billions sucking from the government teat.  If Green energy is ever forced to survive on market demand rather than government funding, it will likely collapse within five years So far, the Trump Administration has done a good job of trying to kill this parasitic vampire, and I hope the efforts succeed. However, like Count Dracula, if a stake is not driven through its heart finally and forever, it will rise from the dead, the next time the Democrats control Congress. Like most zany progressive schemes, the climate change cult has tremendous potential to create unintended consequences along with the stated objective of eliminating carbon based power sources. I just hope we are not destroying the environment in an attempt to save it.  READ MORE from Gary Anderson: It’s Time for Trump to Wield the Stick Against Putin Some Generals Should Be Fired. Start With Eric Smith. Gary Anderson Lectures on Alternative Analysis at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. The post Is Climate Change Destroying the Environment? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

An assailant or assailants shot Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe, thought of as a likely presidential candidate in the 2026 election, in the head at a rally in the nation’s capital over the weekend. Authorities arrested a 15-year-old in possession of a pistol at the scene. Distinguishing between politicians and criminals struck Uribe as an increasingly difficult task. His age comes as a convenience. In Colombia, minors — those under 16 — face a maximum of seven years of incarceration for crimes such as murder. Those 16 and older may face trial as an adult. The country’s left-wing president noted this but reminded that “the laws and norms oblige us to protect the child for being a child.” President Gustavo Petro promised to find the true “intellectual authors” of the assassination attempt. To some, the promise sounded like O.J. Simpson’s vow to find the “real killers.” A month ago, voters almost anticipated such an outcome in their responses to an AtlasIntel poll. When asked about the top concern, they named corruption. At 79 percent, that issue received more than double the share of responses than the next highest concern. When asked about the likelihood of Colombia facing certain challenges in the next six months, corruption again ranked as the top answer, with “increase in attacks or murders related to criminal factions” coming in second. Though Mr. Uribe polled in the middle of the pack among various figures discussed as a possible next president, 44 percent said they preferred an opposition candidate to just 31 percent who wanted one supported by President Gustavo Petro, who cannot run for reelection because of constitutional term limits. The assassination attempt on the conservative politician feels disturbingly familiar, and not just because Pablo Escobar’s forces kidnapped Uribe’s mother, who lost her life in the attempt to rescue her in 1991, three days before her son’s fifth birthday. Leftists increasingly revert to bullets when ballots do not go their way. Consider the recent assassination of two Israeli embassy employees in Washington, D.C., allegedly by a left-wing activist, last year’s murder of the chief executive officer of UnitedHealthcare in Manhattan allegedly by another such kook, and the attempt on Donald Trump’s life allegedly by a small-dollar Democratic Party donor bearing a Kamala Harris bumper sticker on his vehicle. More commonly, the organized Left sics the law upon politicians they regard as threatening to their designs. In neighboring Brazil, one court barred former President Jair Bolsonaro from seeking office while another seeks to try him on charges to include the abolition of the democratic rule of law (rich!). In Romania, where opposition candidate Călin Georgescu led in the presidential polls by a 2-to-1 margin, the government ironically banned him earlier this year from ballots on the grounds that he did not “respect the Constitution and defend democracy.” In France, where Marine Le Pen led in presidential polls by double digits, a court earlier this spring sentenced her to four years in prison and banned her from running for office for five years because it claimed she used European Union aides for political purposes. Donald Trump, of course, faced 717.5 years in prison on various trumped-up charges before a jury of the American people found his pursuers guilty last November. Unlike Bolsonaro, Le Pen, Trump, and Georgescu, Uribe looked like a long shot to win the presidency of his country. So, possibly a criminal rather than a political outfit sought to murder him because of his various positions that stand athwart their interests. Distinguishing between politicians and criminals struck Uribe as an increasingly difficult task. “Every day Petro is in power,” he tweeted earlier this year. “Colombia bleeds. [Western Colombian administrative department] Chocó today is experiencing the consequences of Petro’s complicity with the bandits.” Was Petro complicit with Saturday’s bandits? “No resource should be spared,” President Petro vows, “not a single peso or a single moment of energy, to find the mastermind.” Phew. READ MORE from Daniel J. Flynn: Uncle Sam Just Conducted Its Final April 15th Pledge Drive for PBS and NPR The People Who Came for Your Plastic Bag and Straw Now Want Your Dog The post Assassination Attempt on Colombian Politician Looks Familiar appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Surprises and upsets are the normal fare at sporting events, but do they determine outcomes? Usually not: this year’s French Open, which concluded yesterday, pitted the no.’s 1 and 2 seeds against each other in both the women’s and men’s singles draws, and the most successful Italian in the sport ever, Sara Errani, won in the doubles, with Jasmine Paolini and the mixed, with Andrea Vavassori. Miss Gauff’s laser focus and discipline did it, say what Miss Sabalenka will about this being the worst final she ever played. Stronger, better players tend to win.  This is not a judgmental statement, but a factual one. You may see in the underdog the more inspiring story line and the more likeable character, but the hard power is real. Miss Errani and Jasmine Paolini are charming and tenacious, and five-five and five-four, respectively, so there. You can argue about hard power, sure. How many divisions does the Pope have, Stalin famously — or infamously — asked toward the end of World War II. No one warned him a seminarian named Karol Wojtyla heard it, and also heard a higher power telling him faith was stronger than a hundred divisions. Then again, the cost of all those decades. However, this is tennis, not Western civilization. The beauty of the men’s draw at Rolland Garros this year was that you could not help but like both finalists and recognize that we cannot say yet who is going to prove better, stronger, more durable, and improvable over the next years during which their rivalry promises to be central to the sport. The streaming film shows Carlos Alcaraz, fresh off his win over Jannik Sinner at the Italian Open in Rome, saving three match points in the fourth set, having lost the first two and won the third! Epic match, going into four hours! It has been quite a show.  Three American men got as far as the quarters, best in a quarter century in this tournament, where the last American winner was Andre Agassi in 1999. Well, the French have not done better on their home court, last of theirs was Yannik Noah in 1983.  Happily this year, they had a Cinderella with a wild card named Lois Boisson, ranked in the mid-300’s yet able to beat Buffalo’s own Jessica Pegula (world no.3) to make it all the way to the semis, where she ran into Coco Gaff. Who went on to win the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen, first American since Serena Williams in 2015.  She came back from a set down to beat world no. 1 Aryna Sabalenka, who had got to the final by beating the defending champion, Iga Swiatek. Miss Gauff’s laser focus and discipline did it, say what Miss Sabalenka will about this being the worst final she ever played.  What I say is if you play awful, it is surely in large part because your opponent is beating you, disrupting your game, as the mighty Bill Tilden used to say. However, sour grapes or whatever, they surely will meet again, and Miss Gauff as usual was generous in victory (her second Slam, having beaten the same Miss Sabalenka at the U.S. Open in 2023), and thanked her parents and the Lord. It usually ends this way, the best against the best. Carlos Alcaraz, as we were noting on the basis of watching from a great distance thanks to marvelous technology, we were saying — yes, with a fantastic effort, using every shot in his book, survives what seemed like a Sinner clinch and takes the match to a deciding fifth set. The rest is history.  Or sports stats. Or it just got to where I figured to let it be, I can watch the reruns and meanwhile I can go and hit a few in between an intermittent drizzle. But before that I owe my readers a serious correction. An error in the previous column on this tournament stated that James Gordon Bennett, Jr., fled to Paris to escape his father’s wrath following some scandalous behavior that wrecked his engagement to a high society lass.  No, the elder Bennett was gone by then. Also, his great paper, The New York Herald, did indeed report the fracas. This was in the late 1870s. James Jr., who in the previous decade served with distinction in the U.S. Navy during the Civil War, did well in France, launching a Paris edition of the Herald (eventually to become the Paris Herald Tribune), and promoting sporting events. He was in Paris during the Great War and was taken away by the flu as the Allies, led by Americans including the 369th New York, the Harlem Hellfighters, were on their way to the Rhine. Sports were mainly amateur affairs back then, but you could place bets: Bennett Jr won one of these in the first transatlantic yacht race.  In tennis today, the money is pretty reasonable, you get almost $3 million if you win the French Open (women and men the same). However, you get under 90 thousand if you lose in the first round. So clearly there is an incentive to keep getting more better. READ MORE from Roger Kaplan: Americans Advance at French Open Italian Open Tennis: Faith and Racquets in Rome The post Coco Gauff Triumphs at Roland-Garros appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

While mainstream news outlets, cable networks and social media obsess over Elon Musk’s latest antics, they have neglected a far more important story — the Trump administration is accumulating a significant catalogue of appeals court and SCOTUS victories. Last Friday alone three more wins were added to the list. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the White House may exclude AP from its press pool while SCOTUS stayed a district court order requiring DOGE to heed a Freedom of Information Act  request and ruled that it can access Social Security Administration records. The Supreme Court will rule on Trump v. CASA before the end of June, and it’s a good bet that the Trump administration will be able to chalk it up as a win. These rulings follow a spate of similar wins last month. On May 30, the Supreme Court stayed a district court ruling that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem couldn’t revoke former President Biden’s parole of 532,000 non-citizens. On May 29, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit stayed a U.S. Trade Court ruling that President Trump’s tariffs are somehow unlawful. On May 22, SCOTUS stayed a district court order reinstating two Biden administration officials fired by Trump. On May 19, SCOTUS stayed a district court ruling that Secretary Noem does not possess the legal authority to terminate the temporary protected status of 350,000 Venezuelan non-citizens. The seven cases noted above do not exhaust the list of the Trump administration’s wins. During April the administration won three Supreme Court cases. On April 17, Justice Elena Kagan declined to stay a deportation order involving four Mexican nationals without referring the case to the full court. On April 8, SCOTUS stayed a district court order to reinstate 16,000 fired federal employees. On April 7, the Court vacated a district court order blocking deportations pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act. This particular ruling, combined with two others, led the editors of the Wall Street Journal to conclude that the Supreme Court was sending a message to the district courts: President Trump is exercising executive power in aggressive and often novel ways, and opponents are suing to stop him. But in a trio of recent orders, the Supreme Court has sent lower-court judges an important reminder that they must still respect judicial rules and procedures. A 5-4 majority handed Mr. Trump a partial victory Monday by allowing his Administration to continue deporting Venezuelans believed to be members of the Tren de Aragua gang under the Alien Enemies Act. This last ruling turned out to be a Pyrrhic victory for the Trump administration, however. On May 16, the Court effectively reversed itself — prompting Justice Samuel Alito to issue this blistering dissent: “In sum, literally in the middle of the night, the Court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application.” The good news, on the other hand, is that there are six additional cases on the Supreme Court’s “Emergency Docket,” half of which invite definitive rulings concerning nationwide injunctions issued by district courts. Trump’s EO on Birthright Citizenship Forces the Court’s Hand The most obvious vehicle for such a ruling is Trump v. CASA, which revolves around the following issue: “Whether the Supreme Court should stay the district courts’ nationwide preliminary injunctions on the Trump administration’s Jan. 20 executive order ending birthright citizenship except as to the individual plaintiffs and identified members of the organizational plaintiffs or states.” In order to get to birthright citizenship, the Court must first deal with the proliferation of nationwide injunctions. The following exchange between Justice Clarence Thomas and Solicitor General D. John Sauer during oral arguments reveals why this metastasis matters so much: JUSTICE THOMAS: So we survived until the 1960s without universal injunctions? GENERAL SAUER: That’s exactly correct. And, in fact, those were very limited — very rare even in the 1960s. It really exploded in 2007 in our cert petition in Summers against Earth Island Institute. We pointed out that the Ninth Circuit had started doing this in a whole bunch of cases involving environmental claims. Justice Thomas, exercising his gift for cutting through the red herrings, straw men and false dichotomies that constitute the stock and trade of Democrat lawyers, put his finger on a core problem facing the Court in Trump v. CASA. And he is by no means the only sitting justice who has genuine reservations about universal injunctions. Justice Elena Kagan has publicly expressed her concerns as follows: “It just can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years that it takes to go through the normal process.” She was right in 2022, when she said that. It will be quite difficult to reverse herself in 2025. The Supreme Court will rule on Trump v. CASA before the end of June, and it’s a good bet that the Trump administration will be able to chalk it up as a win — and a big one. If so, the judicial insurrection that we have been watching will have been effectively put down. That certainly doesn’t mean the Democrats and their accomplices in the corporate media will end their assault on the Trump administration and the Constitution. Nonetheless, they will have lost one of the most powerful weapons in their political arsenal. Perhaps, by that time, even Elon Musk will have at last divined the difference between big money and genuine power on the world stage. READ MORE from David Catron: Tapper and Thompson Continue Dangerous Cover-Up Trump’s Poll Numbers Rise, Resistance 2.0 Flops The post Trump Is Racking Up Court Victories appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.