Editorial Roundup: United States
News > National News
Audio By Carbonatix
8:12 PM on Tuesday, November 4
By The Associated Press
Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
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Nov. 4
The Washington Post says U.S. researchers are increasingly seeking work abroad
You know there’s a problem when scientists in the United States increasingly see European bureaucracy as a safer setting for conducting their cutting-edge research than their home country’s own institutions.
The European Research Council, which grants funding for academic work in the European Union, has seen a surge in applications, the Financial Times reported this week. That included nearly triple the number of proposals from Americans compared to the year before.
The United States is still the world’s leading scientific research power, but competition is growing more fierce, and it’s a dangerous time to dull the country’s competitive edge. Like so many of President Donald Trump’s initiatives, his effort to take down the wall that progressives built up around U.S. academia started with a worthy cause — pressing universities and other research institutions to seek greater viewpoint diversity — but it is faltering due to overreach.
The administration has cancelled or frozen billions of dollars for research, often based on politically triggering keywords such as “gender,” “bias” or “climate science.” It also mounted pressure campaigns on universities to micromanage their curricula and crack down on campus protests. At the height of the slash-and-burn tactics, one survey found that 75 percent of American researchers were so frustrated that they were considering working elsewhere.
Other countries have seen the drama as an “once-in-a-century brain gain opportunity,” as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute put it. France’s Aix-Marseille Université launched a program called “Safe Place for Science,” which attracted nearly 300 applications, primarily from U.S.-based researchers. The European Commission similarly pledged half a billion euros to make the continent a “safe haven” for scientists.
China, too, has used the Trump administration’s policies as a tool to lure Chinese-born engineers and scientists working in the U.S. back to their home country, a long-held priority for communist leaders in Beijing. One advertisement from a group connected with the Chinese Academy of Sciences specifically targeted “talents who have been dismissed by the U.S. (National Institutes of Health) or other universities/institutes.”
There’s reason to be skeptical that these recruitment efforts will succeed in dramatically weakening America’s scientific engine. It’s one thing for researchers to say they want to leave, and quite another to follow through, especially given limited slots at foreign institutions.
Yet the headwinds threaten to hold back the country’s intellectual might, just as China appears to build momentum in its application of AI-powered technologies. The U.S., which has benefited greatly from its ability to draw the best minds from across the globe over the past century, can ill afford to lose its academic sheen.
ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/11/04/science-research-universities-europe-china-trump/
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Oct. 31
The New York Times says Trump — author of ‘Art of the Deal’ — should negotiate to maintain ACA tax credits, SNAP
President Trump has played fast and loose with federal law during the current government shutdown to fund the things he considers important. He has found ways to pay military service members and F.B.I. agents. He has distributed tariff revenues to women with small children and arranged billions of dollars in financial support for Argentina. He has even ordered the Interior Department to keep federal lands open for hunting.
And what has Mr. Trump refused to fund?
As the shutdown enters its second month, the president still will not agree to an extension of the federal tax credits that allow millions of Americans to afford health insurance. Last week the Trump administration also said it would stop distributing food stamps to more than 40 million lower-income families, declining to tap the program’s emergency reserve fund.
A federal judge in Rhode Island intervened on Friday, ordering the administration to use the program’s reserves. A second federal judge, in Massachusetts, indicated that she was also prepared to rule against the administration if it did not agree to continue distributing food stamps. We urge the administration to abide by the decision and allow millions of Americans to receive food aid.
The government has never paused the distribution of food stamps, even during past shutdowns, and the threat is just one of the ways this shutdown is causing pain. More than a million federal workers are not being paid. The Small Business Administration is not making loans. Regulators are not conducting many routine safety inspections of food processing plants.
Mr. Trump and his congressional allies could end all of this by doing what they should have done months ago: making a deal. Under current Senate rules, Republicans manifestly do not have enough votes to pass a funding bill on their own, and it is absurd that they continue to insist that Democrats should simply acquiesce. The hard work of governing in a democracy is hammering out a compromise.
Mr. Trump already has sought to pile pressure on Democrats by suspending funding for projects in blue states, including the important Hudson River train tunnel between New Jersey and New York and mass transit in Chicago. The attempt to raise the stakes by suspending the distribution of food stamps is unconscionable. The administration would literally be keeping food from the mouths of hungry children. Food stamps, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, provide a monthly credit to millions of households that do not make enough money to feed themselves. Many recipients work low-wage jobs. Others are disabled or elderly.
The Agriculture Department, which administers the program, has an emergency reserve of $5.5 billion that could have been used to maintain benefits. During the last long shutdown, in Mr. Trump’s first term, the department said it would tap that fund to delay any interruption in the distribution of benefits. As recently as Sept. 30, the day before the current shutdown began, the department said that remained its plan. Instead, however, the Trump administration insisted the reserve was “not legally available” because it was meant for the aftermath of natural disasters.
Democrats, for their part, have remained united in their insistence that Republicans must agree to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits as part of any funding bill. They have resisted despite the pain Mr. Trump is causing because the credits are worth fighting for. The cost of health insurance plans sold through the A.C.A. marketplaces is set to rise sharply next year. The expiring tax credits would have shielded buyers from most of the increase. Without the credits, the average amount that people must pay each month is expected to rise to $159 from $74, according to KFF, a health research group.
For many, the difference — about $1,000 a year on average — would make the plans unaffordable. Indeed, one reason the premiums are rising is that insurers anticipate the cost increases will cause a significant number of relatively healthy people to drop their insurance, raising costs for everyone else.
Republicans say their party has become the party of the American working class. But many working families rely on the tax credits to afford health insurance. And many of those same families rely on food stamps to put enough food on the table. Mr. Trump can serve their needs by demonstrating his skills as a negotiator. It’s time to make a deal.
ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/opinion/shutdown-snap-trump-deal.html
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Nov. 4
The Wall Street Journal on Trump, Venezuela and the War Powers Act
Here we go again. Senators who oppose the American use of military force are trying again to hamstring presidential military action. No matter what you think about President Trump as Commander in Chief, putting Congress in charge of the military is an even worse idea.
That’s essentially what the war powers resolution offered by Sens. Tim Kaine, Adam Schiff and Rand Paul would do. The resolution states that “Congress hereby directs the President to terminate the use of United States Armed Forces for hostilities within or against Venezuela, unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific authorization for use of military force.”
The constitutional problem here is that Congress lacks the power to order a President to terminate military action. The authority as Commander in Chief lies with the President under Article II. Congress has the power to declare war, but the last time it did so was 1942. Presidents have used military force countless times since, including long wars in Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East.
If Congress opposes a military action, it can use its power of the purse to cut off funding for the conflict. Democrats in Congress reduced aid for South Vietnam in 1975, and the result not long afterward was a North Vietnamese invasion that conquered the South and sent tens of thousands of “boat people” adrift in the ocean. Congress can also impeach a President, but Democrats lack the votes.
That’s why the Senators are relying on the 1973 War Powers Act, which says the President must consult with Congress before committing troops to fight, and he must withdraw troops from a conflict after 60 days without authorization from Congress. The law in effect creates 535 Commanders in Chief.
The resolution passed over the veto of Richard Nixon, who thought it was unconstitutional and so have nearly all Presidents since. “We think it’s illegal,” said Ronald Reagan when Democrats tried to invoke it to block his deployment of the Navy to escort oil tankers in the Persian Gulf in 1987. Barack Obama claimed to be following the War Powers Act in Libya, though he didn’t wait for Congress’s permission to intervene in that conflict.
Numerous Presidents have used force without Congressional approval going back to Thomas Jefferson against the Barbary pirates. John F. Kennedy didn’t ask Congress before he decided to blockade Cuba, risking nuclear war. Ditto for Reagan’s invasion of Grenada. In the nearest analogy to Mr. Trump and Venezuela, George H.W. Bush sent troops in 1989 to depose and arrest the president of Panama, Manuel Noriega.
Mr. Trump is assembling a Navy flotilla in the Caribbean near Venezuela. Its purpose isn’t clear, though Mr. Trump said Sunday on CBS ’s “60 Minutes” that dictator Nicolás Maduro’s days in power are numbered. The U.S. has blown up boats and a submarine it says were carrying drugs to the U.S. But it’s hard to believe Mr. Trump has assembled a fleet of this size merely to attack drug boats.
Venezuela’s democrats won the 2024 election, and helping them oust Mr. Maduro would be a service to the Americas and U.S. security. It would turn a regime allied with Cuba, China, Russia and Iran into an American ally. It would also allow the Venezuelan diaspora that has fled the regime’s poverty and cruelty to return home and rebuild. Once a wealthy nation, Venezuela could be again.
If Senators are opposed to the U.S. deposing Mr. Maduro, they ought to say so. But the Senators don’t want to do that because it might be unpopular to side with a dictator. It’s so much easier, politically, to charge that Mr. Trump is acting unlawfully than address the merits of U.S. policy.
None of this means Mr. Trump shouldn’t inform and cooperate with Congress on Venezuela. If he brings Congress with him at the start of hostilities, he will have more allies if events go awry, as they often do in war. Mr. Trump would also be wise to explain to the public what he is doing and why he thinks it’s in America’s interest to depose Mr. Maduro.
If Mr. Trump does pursue regime change in Venezuela, he will have to stay with it until the end. That means supporting a new democratic government against Maduro diehards allied with Cuban intelligence. Mr. Trump doesn’t want his version of JFK’s Bay of Pigs.
The Constitution gives the Commander in Chief enormous power to use the military without Congressional micromanagement, but it also means taking responsibility for failure.
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Nov. 3
The Boston Globe on the War on Drugs, domestically and abroad
When the Trump administration’s war on drugs came to Franklin, N.H., the coordinated raids — complete with flash-bang grenades — were touted as targeting operatives of Mexico’s feared Sinaloa Cartel and netted 27 arrests in the town.
The raids tallied 171 arrests throughout New England, and more than 600 worldwide, and were announced on social media by the US Drug Enforcement Administration under the hashtag #SinaloaCrackdown2025.
“These results demonstrate the full weight of DEA’s commitment to protecting the American people,” DEA Administrator Terrance Cole insisted in the posting. “DEA will not relent until the Sinaloa Cartel is dismantled from top to bottom.”
Speaking about the 171 arrests from the late August raids, New England DEA head Jarod Forget said, “These are high-level arrests, not low-level retail distribution. They are members of the Sinaloa Cartel.”
The Globe Spotlight team, which contacted 75 law enforcement agencies, conducted scores of interviews, and examined more than 1,650 pages of court records, found otherwise. Most of the arrests were of addicts and low-level dealers; 10 people living in a Franklin homeless encampment were also arrested. They may have been consumers of the cartel’s product, but “high-level” members of a Mexican drug cartel? Really?
Of the 27 arrested in Franklin, the Globe found that only three were accused of dealing sufficient quantities of drugs to be held in jail and none faced federal charges. Even the press release put out by the DEA didn’t name names.
Hannah Gonthier, who was arrested in the tent she lives in in the New Hampshire woods, told the Globe, “(The DEA) wanted to accomplish something huge. They didn’t care how. They lied.”
All of this — call it political hype, administrative sloppiness, or outright lying — takes on added relevance as President Trump’s war on drugs has taken to the seas, targeting what he and the military insist are drug boats on their way from Venezuela and Colombia to dump their deadly cargo on US shores.
The military strikes — 14 in all — have killed 61 people thus far. They began just days after the DEA’s “Sinaloa Crackdown” and purport to target narco-terrorist gangs, such as Tren de Aragua, which was said to be the subject of that first strike on a Venezuelan boat in international waters on Sept. 2 that killed all 11 on board.
Unlike the DEA raid, however, there is no court to appeal to. In fact, there’s no process at all.
“I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country,” Trump said last week when pressed about why he didn’t seek a declaration of war from Congress. “OK, we’re going to kill them. You know, they’re going to be, like, dead.”
Thus far, the only Republican to take issue with the policy has been Senator Rand Paul, who called the raids what they truly are, “extrajudicial killings.”
“So far, they have alleged that these people are drug dealers,” Paul said in an interview on Fox News. “No one said their name. No one said what evidence. No one said whether they’re armed. And we’ve had no evidence presented.”
Few of the names of those killed in the raids have become known. One casualty of an Oct. 14 strike was identified by his family as 26-year-old Chad Joseph, who according to them was a fisherman from Trinidad and Tobago who had been living in Venezuela for several months. There have been three reported survivors of the airstrikes, two of whom were said to be repatriated, one to Colombia and one to Ecuador, thus presumably saving the United States the expense and potential embarrassment of bringing them to US shores. The choice to release people that the administration had claimed were dangerous criminals certainly raises questions about the quality of the evidence behind the lethal strikes.
It was following that mid-October raid that the military commander overseeing the alleged drug boat strikes, Admiral Alvin Holsey, stepped down less than a year into his stint as head of the US Southern Command — typically a three-year posting.
His official retirement will come at the end of the year, but leaving Southcom at a critical junction — and even as the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier and its escort ships are headed to Latin America — certainly attracted the attention of at least Democratic members of Congress.
“At a moment when US forces are building up across the Caribbean and tensions with Venezuela are at a boiling point, the departure of our top military commander in the region sends an alarming signal of instability within the chain of command,” Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island said in a statement.
Reed, ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, also expressed growing concern over Trump’s real military aims in Venezuela, given his avowed dislike for its president, Nicolás Maduro, and preference for regime change.
The Defense Department meanwhile has been happy to share videos of its strikes but little else — certainly not the names of those killed in the raids or evidence of the drugs salvaged or destroyed. And Trump’s only reference to drug cargo “ splattered all over the ocean ” dates back to September, at a time when the president was at least a little forthcoming about the source of information about the boats.
“We have recorded proof and evidence,” Trump said then. “We know what time they were leaving, when they were leaving, what they had, and all of the other things that you’d like to have.”
The administration insists it has held nine bipartisan classified briefings for members of Congress, but who gets invited — or disinvited — remains open to question. And few, including Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, who attended Thursday’s briefing, leave satisfied.
There are few things more destructive of democracy than a government that lies to its own people. This administration outright lied about arrests close to home, labeling dozens of drug users and low-level offenders as members of some notorious Mexican cartel.
It has since gone on to call in military airstrikes on boats it insists are running drugs in international waters and operated by narco-terrorists — without producing evidence of any of that or naming any of the dozens of people killed in the process.
In this case, “trust us, we’re the government” really isn’t good enough.
ONLINE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/03/opinion/drug-boat-strikes-franklin-dea/
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Oct. 30
The Guardian on President Trump's Xi Jinping visit
The diverging verdicts offered by the Chinese and American leaders after their talks in South Korea on Thursday reflected more than the chasms between their personal styles and political cultures. Donald Trump gushed about an “amazing” meeting, scoring it 12 out of 10; Xi Jinping reportedly noted that a consensus had been reached, with the two sides needing to finalise follow-up steps rapidly.
Mr Trump’s usual trade approach – shout loudly and wave a big stick – faltered when Beijing raised its own bludgeon. No tribute of gold crowns or Nobel nomination pledges were on offer from Mr Xi. The US president blinked first – but, predictably, attempted to repackage the underwhelming result as a great success.
In fact, it was a necessary de-escalation that essentially turned the clock back. Mr Trump – who once announced tariffs of 145% on China – agreed to cut the average rate to 45% and suspended the tightening of tech-related export controls. China has said that it will buy US soya beans and – most importantly – is holding off on draconian curbs to rare earth exports, which it threatened as a countermeasure. It’s still unclear whether China will get access to Nvidia’s powerful Blackwell chip. Experts say that would dramatically shrink the US advantage in AI, with obvious economic and security implications.
This is a year-long deal and may be no more than a pause. Mr Trump’s trade diplomacy is always erratic: last week, he announced that he would add 10% to tariffs on Canada in retaliation for a provincial political advert. The country’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has just completed his own swing through Asia; Trumpism is forcing longstanding allies to look for alternatives. Swinging tariffs on India have pushed it towards China. Yet if the US wants to win in the long term, it will need to boost partnerships.
Mr Trump notched up trade deals on this Asian tour, but the underlying problems are ever clearer. No one can count on bilateral ties with Washington any more, and the US is withdrawing from global institutions and forums, while China seeks to boost its role. Meanwhile, US businesses struggle to make strategic decisions when they don’t know what the tariff rate will be next week, never mind next year.
Beneath this administration’s shortcomings lie longer-term failings. China has been strategically mapping and tackling economic vulnerabilities; this truce buys it time to continue that work. The US is late to this game. It has just cut a critical minerals deal with Australia, but reducing dependence on Chinese rare earths will be a very long process – as Japan’s experience has shown.
Yet Beijing’s decision to wield access to rare earths as a weapon has increased concerns about China outside the US too. The G7 summit in Canada is expected to launch an alliance pushing back against China’s dominance on Friday. The European Union must also show that it will stand up to Chinese coercion.
Similarly, while China has become less reliant on exports to the US since Mr Trump’s first term, other countries are growing increasingly anxious about, and resistant to, dumping. Beijing’s longstanding pledges to rebalance the struggling economy towards domestic consumption have yet to be realised; hi-tech industrial self-reliance appears to be the priority.
Thursday’s meeting may have brought breathing space. But as underlying contradictions within and between the two behemoths remain unresolved, the dangers are not only to them; they are also to others who put little faith in either side.
