Robert Wood, Author at Loonie Politics

Bestselling author of eight books, including The War on The West and The Madness of Crowds, Douglas Murray has just released On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization.

In it, he paints a detailed picture of the minutes, and hours, of the devastation wrought in the Gaza envelope during the massacres of October 7, 2023, as well as the hours, days and months afterwards; the heroism of Israelis who defied orders, and fended off Hamas on their own; the weaponry IDF soldiers discovered in civilian Gazan homes; and the exclusive harrowing accounts of the massacre’s survivors. As one of the first outside observers inside Gaza, he recounts the “pitiful sight” and the “utterly avoidable devastation” triggered by the Hamas-led attacks.

Murray takes a microscope to the question of how modern Jew-hatred has reached unprecedented levels since wartime Europe. That includes the global campus demonstrations that sprung up almost immediately, which he describes as “revolutionary cosplay,” their message communicated with “bludgeoning” — subsequently thanked by a Hamas leader as the “great student flood.” He follows the blood-soaked international money trail that has made Hamas leaders billionaires, and details the global web of Jihad supporters — the “death cults” — as an imminent danger not just to Israel, but to civilization.

Dave Gordon interviews Murray, a columnist for the New York Post and The Free Press, who has for decades filed stories from Middle East war zones, frequently appears on major broadcast channels, and recently had a much-discussed, tension-filled appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast.

What compelled you to write the book?

DM:

Three things. One, was I wanted to get down as accurate an overview as possible, of what happened on October 7 in Israel, by collecting first hand testimony, and much more. The second thing was to give a firsthand account of the Israeli response to October 7, the war, and just get as much as possible up close, an account accurately and truthfully, in an era where much is written a lot about it untruthfully.

And thirdly, to look at this question which haunted me throughout the last 18 months and indeed many years before, which was: why so much of the world finds it so hard to decide which side to be on, in a fight between a democracy like Israel, and a death cult like Hamas?

After October 7, Western democracies doubled down on a two-state solution. Why?

: I think that much of Western policy making has just ended up in the realm of magical thinking in recent years. Put aside whether or not they deserve one, but there’s this completely magical belief that the Palestinians have to get another state, and it will right some great historical wrong. This thinking goes, it would cause an outburst of peace and growth, not just in the Middle East, but in the wider world.

I think they mucked up in Gaza so badly, by now it’s clear that another Palestinian state would just be another terrorist proxy state, another Iranian front state, and that it would have done nothing to improve the lives of anyone in the region or the wider world.

The two state solution paradigm has failed completely since 1948, when Arabs rejected having a state, and rejected ever since, and they only ever responded with violence.

Is this a case where Western leaders don’t want to say the conflict is about jihadism, lest they be seen as Islamophobic?

: Yeah, very weak and dangerous world leaders will quite often try to give themselves some kind of collateral in the human rights bank, by saying how important a two state solution is, and how important another state for the Palestinian people is.

My belief, as I explained the book, is that the “death cult” has the ideology that seeks a downfall, not just of Israel, but of all Western democracies. The triumph of jihadism. The people who think they’re buying themselves time by wittering on about a two state solution are, at best, in denial.

In the book, you mentioned that you spent time in Israeli prisons, face-to-face with Hamas terrorists. What that was like?

DM:

It was to meet, and see for myself, the people who carried out the atrocities and invaded Israel in order to slaughter, rape, kidnap and seek death.

What I really wanted to confront was this question of what this unbelievable evil actually is. And one of the things I say in the book is that I think that we’ve stripped ourselves of the language of evil in the West. In popular culture we speak like: There’s no such thing as evil, we haven’t understood it properly yet, people are misunderstood, or people had a bad childhood, or much more.

But when you stare into evil, what they did on October 7, we need to use this term evil because that’s exactly what it is. People not just engaging in evil actions, but rejoicing positively high on them. Now that is an evil we have seen in the West, in sometimes profound glimpses.

Things like 9/11, the Manchester arena bombing in 2017 (that took 23 lives), Pulse nightclub attack in 2016 (that took 49 lives), the Bataclan massacre in Paris (which took 138 lives.) We’ve seen it, but we’ve tried to turn our eyes away from it, and I wanted to focus the reader on the reality of it.

I’m sure you’ve heard people say that Israel’s PR war has fallen considerably short since the war began. Do you agree? And what could it do differently?

: I tend entirely to disagree. I think Israeli communications has explanation of the actions, of the ideas, much better in this conflict than any previous conflict involving Israel that I’ve covered.

Twenty years ago, getting information out of the Israelis was getting blood out of stone. In this conflict, access to media and information is pretty much real time, and a lot better.

That’s different from whether or not the world wants to accurately report what is happening.

This morning, I opened the BBC website, as I do most mornings, among other media. And you know, despite all the other things going on in the world, there’s story number two about Israel, which is a story which has really no immediate news relevance, and almost always there will be misreporting, deliberate and malicious reporting of Israel’s actions, and deliberately skewed or under-reporting, of the actions of Hamas and their governments of Gaza.

You can criticize Israeli communication strategies as much as you want. But it’s extremely hard to communicate things accurately when most of the world’s media will gleefully report Hamas claims as if they are true and interrogate and misrepresent any actions of the IDF as if they are lying.

This is obviously a big challenge for Israel. The war for public opinion is extremely important. But it’s not as important as the immediate aims of the war, which are the release of the Israeli hostages and the destruction of Hamas.

Maybe if somebody compiled a list of the top 20 thinkers like yourself and a list of the top 20 resources to go to for information about Israel, and hand delivered it to our friends at certain media, and said, “it’s clear that you don’t have this information on hand, now you do. Now there’s no excuses.”

DM:

I’m very fond of the quote of Jonathan Swift, the great Irish-born satirist who said “it is not possible to reason somebody out of the position they were not reasoned into.” And for many people, the Israeli-Hamas war is not something that they feel about because of reason.

I think that’s the same with what I warn about, in On Democracies and Death Cults. I warn about the magical thinking, as well as the bigoted thinking in the West that originates not from reason, but out of anti-reason and out of senses of bigotry and prejudice, ignorance and much more.

That doesn’t mean I’m fatalistic. I think that there’s a lot of good that can be done by actually reasoning people out of positions that they were reasoned into, or would be reasoned into. And I think that’s a very important thing to do. I don’t give up on that. But I think a lot of people in Canadian society and elsewhere in the West, are simply swimming in lumps of bigotry that they may not understand.

I am very keen to bring across, people should notice the order in which the enemies of Israel have their targets. It really isn’t the case that they simply hate Israel. They always hate Israel first, and everyone else in the West next. I can’t think of a society in history that would have tolerated that before now.

That idea of Western society being at risk — do people know what that really means? Would it be more accurate to say they want to kill off liberal values, like a “liberalicide”?

DM:

Yeah, yeah.

People should notice that. For instance, when I’ve been in Canada in the last couple of years, I noticed that the anti-Israel protesters will fly the Palestinian flag, the flag of Hamas or Hezbollah, and various other death cults. They will never fly the Canadian flag.

By comparison when, for instance, last year I spoke at an event for Christians, Jews, Hindus, progressive Muslims and others, which was supportive of Israel, we finished the evening by singing Hatikva and O Canada.

I challenge anyone who thinks that they know what they’re playing with in the “anti” circles, check whether or not any of the Palestinian or Hamas supporters and the anti-Israeli bigots in Canada ever sing O Canada.

They believe that the destruction of a country of 9 million people is possible. But they also want the destruction of the rest of our societies in the West.

Whether or not we continue to fail to identify that, will have huge repercussions, not just on Israel, but Canada, America, and the rest of the West as well.

You’ve embedded yourself in the IDF extensively. How would you answer a critic who’d say you were only getting the Israeli side of the war?

DM:

Well, I’m not only seeing that. I mean, there’s a lot in the book about the Palestinian perspective, and Hamas perspective, and I’ve spent a lot of time with their leadership. But when it comes to embedding, you tend to, in a conflict zone, have to choose a side you embed with.

Some journalists from outside the region have had permission from Hamas to go into Gaza, but it’s extremely limiting, and with my own views of Hamas, they would not welcome me warmly.

When somebody does occasionally raise this question, I’m always struck by the fact that when I’m in Ukraine reporting, as I have done in the last few years, I’ve embedded with Ukrainian armed forces. What I find interesting is that nobody says to me, “why didn’t you hop over the line and embed with the Russian army as well?”

There’s a sort of inbuilt presumption that, unlike reporting from Ukraine, if you report from Israel and Gaza, you are uniquely prone to not reporting the other side. I think that’s flat out wrong. And by the way, in the book, there’s plenty of criticism of the failures of Israeli military and intelligence in the run up to, and obviously on the day of, October the seventh. The book by no means avoids criticism of Israeli failures.

In light of October 7 should there be accountability for the Israeli officials who signed off on the 2005 Gaza disengagement?

DM:

Well, I always think people should be held to account for failures, but they almost never are. It’s unlikely that George W. Bush and members of his government are going to be made to take responsibility for forcing elections on Gaza in the wake of disengagement, when so many people, including in Israel, warned that this would lead to only one thing, which is electing Hamas. One of the reasons there hasn’t been an election in the Palestinian areas of Judea and Samaria in 19 years is precisely because no one wants Hamas elected.

This engagement question is incredibly sore and difficult, because it was obviously the decision of Ariel Sharon. And he was strongly encouraged by the Americans and others in the West, including the sort of know-nothings who go on about the “two state solution” again.

Gazans could have made a lot of it. But as usual, they couldn’t resist deciding that the annihilation of their neighbours was more important than the creation of a state themselves. They prioritized the destruction of Israel over the creation of a viable entity in Gaza.

With rising Jew-hatred, what might be the tipping point for Jewish North Americans?

DM:

It’s extremely hard to say, because everybody has their own early warning system in their heads, in their hearts. All I would say is that many Jews in the West have felt the first time in their lives, the re-eruption of hatred of Jews.

And by the way, nowhere more so than in Canada. To my mind, Canada has disgraced itself in the last 18 months by showing that that anti-Jewish hatred is permissible and is tolerable in a way which hatred of no other group would be.

I would submit that if there were a large number of protests across Canada calling for lynching of black people or Indigenous people or gay people or anything else, that all of the strength of government and civil society would condemn the people doing that. Swiftly, too.

This is the great shame of Canada, that synagogue after synagogue and Jewish school after Jewish school across Canada should have been attacked, fire bombed, shot at. Canada’s politicians, if they care about Canada’s view in the world, should address this. But of course, seems that they’re doing the classic thing of feeding the crocodile.

So what would Prime Minister Carney have to say and do, in your view, to show that he’s truly on Israel’s side?

: First of all, he wouldn’t do the pathetic signalling of talking about a two state solution and revealing, once again, that he knows nothing about the region.

The fact that he did that so early was very telling. He simply wants to feed the crocodile in the hope it’ll eat him last. What he reveals is he knows nothing of what has happened in the region, in particular, in the aftermath of October 7.

What he should do is to make it clear that in a fight between a democracy and a death cult, Canada will be on the side of the democracy. And if thousands of Canadians had been massacred in one day in their homes, and hundreds more taken hostage and held in a terrorist entity next door to Canada, I would like to think that the world sympathies would be with our friends in Canada, and not with the terrorist group who did that to them. But it seems that many Canadian politicians and others would in that situation, expect people to side with the terrorists. I think anyone who does that is showing not only they’re an ignoramus, but they have no moral compass at all.

Why should people pick up the book?

DM:

October 7 was one of the most appalling atrocities of our lifetime, and it’s a warning for people in the West, not just to stare into the face of evil and to understand evil, but to understand the reality of what we could all find someday.

It’s also about what is happening in our own societies in the West, the threat to it, and the opportunity we still currently live in to avoid those threats.

In the end, the book is optimistic. I say, towards the end of the book, I saw a society that after the seventh of October, rose back, and showed that life is a thing worth fighting for, and that in the face of the death cults like Hamas, those of us who value life can win.

This interview was edited for brevity

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LONDON — As America signed its first trade deal since threatening to rip up the postwar economic order, I was reminded of Shakespeare’s famous line: “All the world’s a stage.” Rarely has global trade felt more theatrical.

The announcement was made live on television, with

the screen split

between officials in their respective countries. On one side sat British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, hunched with advisers in London’s blandest, most claustrophobic conference room. It looked like a space launch: boffins squinting at screens, willing the mission into orbit.

On the other side sat U.S. President Donald Trump, in the leather-upholstered throne of the Oval Office, unmistakably leading the performance. The U.S. president hailed the deal as “comprehensive” and “historic.” Announced on the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, it was a symbolically loaded assurance that the United Kingdom remains, in Trump’s words, “truly one of our great allies.”

These were welcome words, no doubt, just weeks after the United States seemed ready to declare economic war on the world. Perhaps the fallout from Trump’s so-called Liberation Day, with U.S. economic growth dipping in the first quarter of this year, prompted the president to expedite the U.K. deal to lift the mood at home.

Free-market Conservatives were quick to

hail the deal

as a “win for Brexit.” It would not have been possible , after all, to skip to the front of the queue in bilateral trade talks had Britain still been inside the European common market.

It was another reminder that Trump’s America is nothing like former president Barack Obama’s, who once warned Britain it would be “at the back of the queue” if it left the European Union. America’s preference to deal with Europe as one entity had its day, but has now been eclipsed by Trump’s Euroscepticism.

He underlined the point himself. “That was always a big part of your decision on Brexit, they were never able to make that deal,” he told Starmer, a staunch Remainer.

In any case, the substance of the agreement was far thinner than either leader let on. Most tariffs, including the 10 per cent global baseline, stayed in place. For those hoping for a return to free trade, the olive branch looked more like a birch switch — one Trump shows no sign of putting down.

Britain’s economic outlook remains far gloomier than it was just two months ago, with the deal offering only minor relief on tariffs overall. British car manufacturers received some relief, with the tariff on the first 100,000 vehicles cut to 10 per cent from the 25 per cent rate initially touted; and levies on steel and aluminum were reduced to zero.

This is positive for Britain, and may provide, as ambassador Peter Mandelson optimistically put it, a “springboard” for future concessions. But ultimately, it is thin gruel: as Sam Ashworth-Hayes wrote in

the Telegraph

, “The net effect is that between lower export volumes and lower prices, we’ll still likely be £9.5 billion worse off than we were before.”

Still, the deal marked a tentative step toward economic rapprochement. It was a modest win for both Starmer and Trump, each eager to offer a sunnier economic story to their respective citizens.

Perhaps its overriding significance was the message sent to the rest of the world about China. The U.S.

demanded assurances

that Britain would freeze out Beijing from critical infrastructure, including pharmaceuticals and steel production. Anyone looking for favourable trade ties with the U.S. will likely have to follow suit. As ever, it’s not really Britain, but “Chi-na” that’s at the forefront of Trump’s mind.

National Post

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Michael Murphy is a journalist based in London. He writes for the Daily Telegraph and presented the documentary “Ireland is full! Anti-immigration backlash in Ireland.”

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Last Saturday, a large crowd of people rallied for Alberta’s independence in front of the legislature in Edmonton. Disappointed that the federal election didn’t deliver their preferred result, many in the group felt a boost when the government of Alberta introduced Bill 54, which will lower the threshold for citizens to trigger a referendum. But that bill has also stirred up anger with another group: Indigenous peoples across the province.

Several First Nations leaders across Alberta have argued the law blatantly disregards Treaty rights. Many in our communities, including in my home Nation of Fort McKay, are outraged and emotional — and understandably so. But today I invite all frustrated Albertans to consider wisdom drawn from the path towards reconciliation.

Anger and alienation towards the government is a feeling that’s all too familiar for Indigenous peoples. The failed extermination of Indigenous cultures, languages and traditions fuelled those exact emotions, and far worse, for generations. Those sentiments have run deep, and have been an unfortunate fact of life with roots dating back before Canada’s Confederation.

But despite having more reasons than anyone to be bitter and resentful, Indigenous peoples are overwhelmingly rejecting separatism. We respect the Treaty relationship we made with the Crown. At times we have had to fight in the courts and negotiate hard to enforce the Treaties, but we have not walked away from the Treaty relationship.

Thanks to that determination, some Indigenous people of today’s generation are starting to see results — tangible improvements to their lives that are directly tied to our demand to be treated with the dignity and respect called for under our treaties with the Crown. But progress is uneven.

In truth, we are only on the first few steps of the road towards reconciliation. For Fort McKay First Nation, that has included making strides on economic reconciliation. After decades of work, today we are both a strong partner in the energy sector that drives Alberta’s economy, and we are environmental stewards developing innovative solutions to protect our land for the future. We got there by working hard, acting in good faith, and being persistent. We built our own financial success, one contract and one company at a time. When we needed to, we fought hard: we first negotiated and then litigated the Moose Lake Accord, which created a protected zone preserving our traditional lands from expanding oilsands development.

Our Nation is a living example of how a commitment to reconciliation and respect for Treaty rights can generate results. We advanced our interests by being reliable partners, using reason, and playing the long game.

Today, Canada is at a crossroads. We are living in a tense, critical time when Canadians’ livelihoods are threatened by a neighbour to the south. The pressure on leaders to make the right decisions is enormous. But the rewards for accomplishing it would be tremendous. For Indigenous peoples, that includes getting a permanent, overdue seat at the table, using new tools to forge our own prosperity, and creating better lives for our children.

Despite the many real frustrations, the threats to our economy have aligned the people of Canada on common goals to a degree that would astonish our ancestors.

A recent poll from Angus Reid shows a clear majority of Canadians, including in Quebec, support expanding the country’s oil and gas pipelines to reach new markets and secure our economy. The federal Liberal and Conservative parties, which together will make up 90 per cent of the seats in the new House of Commons, agree that there is an urgent need to get our natural resources to fresh customers, and to build the infrastructure to do it. In a recent report, RBC pointed out that 73 per cent of the major energy projects that are currently planned for Canada would run through Indigenous territory. For both Canada and Alberta, there is a clear path to opportunity, and the public will to take it.

As human beings, we must always acknowledge our own emotions. Frustrated community voices also have a right to be heard. But it is our responsibility as leaders to act practically, and to be constructive. We must not make a challenging situation even more fraught by feeding our most destructive instincts. The stakes, and rewards, are great enough already.

We must meet the moment. It’s time for us to put the division aside, and get to work together.

Special to National Post

Raymond Powder is the Chief of Fort McKay First Nation, in Northern Alberta.

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CBC’s The House spoke with four of at least 40 incumbent MPs who lost their seat in the House of Commons last election. Some described the moment as more than just losing a job. It’s the end of a chapter of their life they’ve spent years, even decades, writing.

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GENEVA (AP) — The U.S. treasury secretary and America’s top trade negotiator will meet with high-ranking Chinese officials in Switzerland this weekend to de-escalate a dispute that threatens to cut off trade between the world’s two biggest economies and to damage global commerce.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will meet in Geneva with a Chinese delegation led by Vice Premier He Lifeng.

Prospects for a major breakthrough appear dim. But there is hope that the two countries will scale back the massive taxes – tariffs – they’ve slapped on each other’s goods, a move that would relieve world financial markets and companies on both sides of the Pacific Ocean that depend on U.S.-China trade.

U.S. President Donald Trump last month raised U.S. tariffs on China to a combined 145%, and China retaliated by hitting American imports with a 125% levy. Tariffs that high essentially amount to the countries’ boycotting each other’s products, disrupting trade that last year topped $660 billion.

Even before the talks began, Trump suggested Friday that the U.S. could lower its tariffs on China, saying in a Truth Social post that “ 80% Tariff seems right! Up to Scott.″

Sun Yun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, noted it will be the first time He and Bessent have talked. And she doubts the Geneva meeting will produce any substantive results.

“The best scenario is for the two sides to agree to de-escalate on the … tariffs at the same time,” she said, adding even a small reduction would send a positive signal. “It cannot just be words.”

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has aggressively used tariffs as his favorite economic weapon. He has, for example, imposed a 10% tax on imports from almost every country in the world.

But the fight with China has been the most intense. His tariffs on China include a 20% charge meant to pressure Beijing into doing more to stop the flow of the synthetic opioid fentanyl into the United States. The remaining 125% involve a dispute that dates back to Trump’s first term and comes atop tariffs he levied on China back then, which means the total tariffs on some Chinese goods can exceed the 145%.

During Trump’s first term, the U.S. alleged that China uses unfair tactics to give itself an edge in advanced technologies such as quantum computing and driverless cars. These include forcing U.S. and other foreign companies to hand over trade secrets in exchange for access to the Chinese market; using government money to subsidize domestic tech firms; and outright theft of sensitive technologies.

Those issues were never fully resolved. After nearly two years of negotiation, the United States and China reached a so-called Phase One agreement in January 2020. The U.S. agreed then not to go ahead with even higher tariffs on China, and Beijing agreed to buy more American products. The tough issues – such as China’s subsidies – were left for future negotiations.

But China didn’t come through with the promised purchases, partly because COVID-19 disrupted global commerce just after the Phase One truce was announced.

The fight over China’s tech policy now resumes.

Trump is also agitated by America’s massive trade deficit with China, which came to $263 billion last year.

In Switzerland, Bessent and Greer also plan to meet with Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter.

Trump last month suspended plans to slap hefty 31% tariffs on Swiss goods — more than the 20% levies he plastered on exports from European Union. For now, he’s reduced those taxes to 10% but could raise them again.

The government in Bern is taking a cautious approach. But it has warned of the impact on crucial Swiss industries like watches, coffee capsules, cheese and chocolate.

“An increase in trade tensions is not in Switzerland’s interests. Countermeasures against U.S. tariff increases would entail costs for the Swiss economy, in particular by making imports from the USA more expensive,” the government said last week, adding that the executive branch “is therefore not planning to impose any countermeasures at the present time.”

The government said Swiss exports to the United States on Saturday were subject to an additional 10% tariff, and another 21% beginning Wednesday.

The United States is Switzerland’s second-biggest trading partner after the EU – a 27-member-country bloc that nearly surrounds the wealthy Alpine country of more than 9 million. U.S.-Swiss trade in goods and services has quadrupled over the last two decades, the government said.

The Swiss government said Switzerland abolished all industrial tariffs on Jan. 1 last year, meaning that 99% of all goods from the United States can be imported into Switzerland duty-free.

____

Wiseman and Tang reported from Washington.

Paul Wiseman, Didi Tang And Jamey Keaten, The Associated Press

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The Republican administration must halt much of its dramatic downsizing of the federal workforce, a California judge ordered Friday.

Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco issued the emergency order in a lawsuit filed by labor unions and cities last week, one of multiple legal challenges to Republican President Donald Trump’s efforts to shrink the size of a federal government he calls bloated and expensive.

“The Court holds the President likely must request Congressional cooperation to order the changes he seeks, and thus issues a temporary restraining order to pause large-scale reductions in force in the meantime,” Illston wrote in her order.

The temporary restraining order directs numerous federal agencies to halt acting on the president’s workforce executive order signed in February and a subsequent memo issued by the Department of Government Efficiency and the Office of Personnel Management.

The order, which expires in 14 days, does not require departments to rehire people. Plaintiffs asked that the effective date of any agency action be postponed and that departments stop implementing or enforcing the executive order, including taking any further action.

They limited their request to departments where dismantlement is already underway or poised to be underway, including at the the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which announced in March it will lay off 10,000 workers and centralize divisions.

Illston, who was nominated to the bench by former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, said at a hearing Friday the president has authority to seek changes in the executive branch departments and agencies created by Congress.

“But he must do so in lawful ways,” she said. “He must do so with the cooperation of Congress, the Constitution is structured that way.”

Trump has repeatedly said voters gave him a mandate to remake the federal government, and he tapped billionaire Elon Musk to lead the charge through DOGE.

Tens of thousands of federal workers have been fired, left their jobs via deferred resignation programs or have been placed on leave as a result of Trump’s government-shrinking efforts. There is no official figure for the job cuts, but at least 75,000 federal employees took deferred resignation, and thousands of probationary workers have already been let go.

Lawyers for the government argued Friday that the executive order and memo calling for large-scale personnel reductions and reorganization plans provided only general principles that agencies should follow in exercising their own decision-making process.

“It expressly invites comments and proposals for legislative engagement as part of policies that those agencies wish to implement,” Eric Hamilton, a deputy assistant attorney general, said of the memo. “It is setting out guidance.”

But Danielle Leonard, an attorney for plaintiffs, said it was clear that the president, DOGE and OPM were making decisions outside of their authority and not inviting dialogue from agencies.

“They are not waiting for these planning documents” to go through long processes, she said. “They’re not asking for approval, and they’re not waiting for it.”

The temporary restraining order applies to departments including the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Labor, Interior, State, Treasury and Veteran Affairs.

It also applies to the National Science Foundation, Small Business Association, Social Security Administration and Environmental Protection Agency.

Some of the labor unions and nonprofit groups are also plaintiffs in another lawsuit before a San Francisco judge challenging the mass firings of probationary workers. In that case, Judge William Alsup ordered the government in March to reinstate those workers, but the U.S. Supreme Court later blocked his order.

Plaintiffs include the cities of San Francisco, Chicago and Baltimore; labor group American Federation of Government Employees; and nonprofit groups Alliance for Retired Americans, Center for Taxpayer Rights and Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks.

Janie Har, The Associated Press

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NEW YORK (AP) — Columbia University has suspended dozens of students and barred alums and others who participated in a pro-Palestinian demonstration inside the school’s main library earlier this week, a school spokesperson said Friday.

The Ivy League institution in Manhattan placed more than 65 students on interim suspension and barred 33 others, including those from affiliated institutions such as Barnard College, from setting foot on campus.

Interim suspension generally means that a student cannot come to campus, attend classes or participate in other university activities, according to Columbia’s website. The university declined to say how long the disciplinary measures would be in place, saying only that the decisions are pending further investigation.

An undisclosed number of alums who also participated in the protest are also now prevented from entering school grounds, according to Columbia.

Roughly 80 people were arrested in connection with the Wednesday evening demonstration at the university’s Butler Library. Most face trespassing charges, though some may also face disorderly conduct, police have said.

The mask-clad protesters pushed their way past campus security officers, raced into the building and hung Palestinian flags and other banners on bookshelves. Some protesters also scrawled phrases on library furniture and picture frames, including “Columbia will burn.”

New York City police in helmets and other protection broke up the demonstration at the request of university officials, who denounced the protests as an “outrageous” disruption for students studying and preparing for final exams.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said his office will be reviewing the visa status of those who participated in the library takeover for possible deportation.

The Trump administration has already pulled federal funding and detained international students at Columbia and other prestigious American universities over their handling of student protests against the war in Gaza.

The Associated Press

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ATLANTA (AP) — U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said Friday she won’t challenge Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia in next year’s midterms, delivering relief for some Republicans who worry she’s too divisive to win.

In a lengthy post on the social media platform X, Greene disputed GOP donors and consultants who fear she would turn off the moderate Republicans and independents needed to beat Ossoff. But Greene said she doesn’t want to serve in a Senate that “doesn’t work” and that she said is dominated by lawmakers hostile to grassroots Trump supporters and unwilling to shake up the status quo.

“If I’m going to fight for a team, it will only be a team willing to lay it all on the line to save this country,” she wrote.

Ossoff, a first-term senator, won the seat by a slim margin in a state that has historically been a Republican stronghold but has more recently become a battleground. He is a top target for Republicans looking to expand their narrow Senate majority.

Popular Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who could be a formidable opponent for Ossoff, opted out of the 2026 race on Monday. His decision leaves a wide-open race for the GOP nomination.

U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, who represents a district on the Georgia coast, became the first major Republican candidate to declare Thursday.

Six other GOP officeholders besides Greene have acknowledged interest in running to The Associated Press. They include two other Republicans in the U.S. House, Mike Collins and Rich McCormick. Also considering the race are Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, state Agriculture Commissioner Tyler Harper, state Insurance Commissioner John King and state Sen. Greg Dolezal.

“I expect a competitive primary — Senate seats don’t come along that often,” said Eric Tanenblatt, a top national GOP fundraiser and Kemp ally who has backed Trump’s rivals in presidential primaries.

Greene is nationally known and a prolific fundraiser, but she has embraced conspiracy theories and feuded with members of her own party. On Thursday, she noted to reporters that she has more than 11 million social media followers, saying that’s because people know where she stands.

Greene’s appeal would be clear in a GOP primary with many voters fiercely loyal to the president. Her decision not to run came a day after she told reporters she was considering it.

“I’m going to give it some thought, talk to my family. I’m honored to have so much support from the great people of Georgia. And I have options,” she said Thursday.

Greene was first elected to the House in 2020. She initially planned to run in a competitive district in northern Atlanta’s suburbs, but relocated into the much more conservative 14th District in Georgia’s northwest corner.

Greene continued to embrace conspiracies even after 11 House Republicans joined Democrats to remove her committee assignments in February 2021. She embraced people jailed on charges following the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol as political prisoners, part of her campaign to reframe the narrative of the attack and cast Democrats, not Republicans, as a party of violence.

She was welcomed back into the mainstream of the Republican conference by Kevin McCarthy, who forged an alliance with her. But Greene kept feuding with Republicans and Democrats alike. The House Freedom Caucus expelled Greene in 2023.

___

Cooper repoted from Phoenix.

Jeff Amy And Jonathan J. Cooper, The Associated Press

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NEW YORK (AP) — Federal agents investigating New York City Mayor Eric Adams were still seizing phones and applying for search warrants days before Justice Department leaders ordered prosecutors to drop the corruption case, according to documents released Friday.

The trove of court records, which had been sealed, opens a window into the criminal case and show that even as Washington officials were backing away from the prosecution, investigators in Manhattan were moving forward.

The documents also confirm something prosecutors revealed previously: That a federal investigation into whether Adams took improper campaign contributions began in the summer of 2021, when the Democrat was still in his old job of Brooklyn borough president but widely expected to win the mayor’s race that fall.

Adams has repeatedly said he believed he was prosecuted because, much later, as mayor, he had criticized former President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.

The investigation first spilled into public view in November 2023, when FBI agents seized Adams’ phones and iPad as he was leaving an event in Manhattan. He was charged 10 months later with accepting free travel and illegal campaign contributions from people seeking to buy his influence, including a Turkish diplomat.

But on Feb. 10, weeks after President Donald Trump took office, the new leadership of the Justice Department ordered federal prosecutors in New York to drop the charges, arguing the case was hindering his ability to assist in the Republican administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

The extraordinary directive roiled federal prosecutors’ offices in Manhattan and Washington. Rather than implement the order, multiple prosecutors resigned, including the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, Danielle Sassoon. A judge ultimately said he legally had no choice but to dismiss the case at the request of senior Justice Department officials.

Prosecutors were continuing to dig into Adams in the weeks before the case got halted, and Sassoon has said they were on the verge of bringing additional charges against him for obstruction of justice.

On Feb. 7 a judge had signed off on an application to search a phone that an unidentified subject of the investigation had turned over in response to a subpoena. Weeks earlier, a judge had signed a warrant to search a home in Middletown, New York, in connection with a probe of alleged straw donations made to Adams campaign in 2020. Around the same time, prosecutors requested a warrant to access location data for a mobile phone in that investigation. On Dec. 4, a judge had approved a request by federal investigators to search a town house in Queens.

Searches and seizures

U.S. District Judge Dale E. Ho ordered the records unsealed at the request of The New York Times and, later, the New York Post. The Times argued in court papers that there was a “particularly compelling” case for making them public because there would be no trial. Neither Adams’ lawyers, nor prosecutors opposed the request.

The documents offer an intriguing behind-the-scenes look at how investigators pieced their case together through searches of electronics and physical locations around New York and beyond.

The unsealed documents also revealed that in May 2024, a magistrate judge signed off on a warrant to search the Fort Lee, New Jersey, condominium home of the mayor’s longtime romantic partner, Tracey Collins, who formerly served as a senior official in the city’s Department of Education.

The warrant application does not name Collins directly but identifies her as Adams’ partner and says that the mayor also sometimes uses the home. Agents wanted to do the search to get access to five iPhones as they looked into whether an official connected to the Turkish consulate sought help getting a child admitted to a highly sought-after public middle school.

Also included was the September 2024 application for a warrant to search Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence in Manhattan, providing photos of the building from multiple angles.

An affidavit from an FBI agent notes that location data for one of Adams’ phones suggests he spends the “overnight hours” of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at the residence “and occasionally does so on other days as well.”

Adams meets with Trump

Neither Adams’ office nor his campaign spokesperson immediately returned messages seeking comment Friday evening.

Adams has touted the dismissal of the case as a vindication, while denying that he cut a deal with Trump in exchange for leniency. But he has maintained a warm relationship with the president after his case was dismissed. The two leaders met in Washington on Friday, with Trump later telling reporters that “I think he actually came in to thank me.”

Adams’ office released a statement that said they discussed “critical infrastructure projects, as well as the preservation of essential social services, among other topics.”

Even with the criminal charges behind him, Adams faces an uncertain political future. He recently announced that he would skip the Democratic primary in June and instead run as an independent in the November general election.

___

Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz, Anthony Izaguirre, Ruth Brown, Philip Marcelo, David B. Caruso and Larry Neumeister contributed to this report.

Jake Offenhartz And Michael R. Sisak, The Associated Press

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The Royal Canadian Navy returned to Halifax Friday from a deployment to Antarctica with tales of spotting exotic wildlife and samples that could lead to a greater understanding of climate change.

HMCS Margaret Brooke’s four-month voyage took the Arctic and offshore patrol ship to South America and beyond, logging close to 25,000 nautical miles, or 46,300 kilometres.

“It’s been just such an amazing experience to visit an area of the world where less than one per cent of the world’s population has visited,” said Cmdr. Teri Share, the skipper of Margaret Brooke.

The Arctic and offshore patrol vessel was the navy’s first ship to be north of the Arctic Circle and south of the Antarctic Circle all within the same year.

“Not only were we able to do all this amazing work with science in the south, within Antartica, but the relationships that we built with Latin American countries on the way south and north was just phenomenal,” Share said. “It’s in an area where the RCN hasn’t been able to really operate in the last couple of decades. So, it’s been amazing to be able to help build those relationships again.”

The ship, crewed by 83 people, carried both sailors and scientists.

“We traveled to the South Shetland Islands and then along the Antarctic Peninsula collecting a lot of sea floor data and water column data to understand the effect of climate change on retreating glaciers,” said Alex Normandeau, a research scientist from Natural Resources Canada who made the trip with Margaret Brooke.

He was one of 15 federal government and university scientists aboard.

One of their tasks was to learn more about how glaciers are retreating.

“Some of the things we were looking at (are) where glaciers were positioned, for example, 50 or 100 years ago and how fast that retreat happened, and to do that we collect some sediment cores to go back in time,” Normandeau said.

Scientists plan to start analyzing those samples at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography next week.

“When we open those cores and look at the different layers that we see in there, that’s when we’ll have a better story to tell about climate change,” said the marine geologist.

“We hope to learn about the rate of glacier retreat related to climate change over the years and how that has evolved through time. So, has it been increasing over the last 10 years or the last 20 years?”

The crew spotted “massive amounts of wildlife” during the voyage including three or four different types of penguins in Antarctica, said the ship’s captain.

“One actually hopped in one of our small boats and ended up spending a little time in there,” Share said. “They’re everywhere down there; they’re beautiful.”

They also spotted several different types of whales, seals and sea birds.

Percy the Penguin signing up for the Naval Experience Program aboard HMCS Margaret Brooke.

Video courtesy of Chris Landry

Posted by Royal Canadian Navy Today and Yesterday on Thursday, March 13, 2025

The Antarctic looks like Canada’s Western Arctic, with mountains and glaciers, Share said. “So, we felt like home almost at some points.”

The trip aboard Margaret Brooke “was the first large-scale expedition for science like this,” Normandeau said.

“This was really showing how we can work with the navy,” he said. “It also shows that we can do that type of work in other environments, like the Arctic, in the future from these vessels.”

Margaret Brooke steamed through half-metre thick ice in Antarctica. “Now this crew can say we have some pretty significant experience doing ice breaking,” Share said.

Her ship also navigated amongst icebergs. “That’s another check in the box for us.”

It didn’t take long for the sailors in uniform to get used to having scientists aboard in civvies, Share said. “Within a couple of days, I think we were a well-oiled machine.”

The deployment took Margaret Brooke first to the Caribbean, then South America, where federal government scientists came aboard in Punta Arenas, Chile, for the voyage south of the Antarctic Circle to the northern tip of Antarctica.

During the scientific portion of the trip, “we had every single small boat on the ship out … collecting samples,” Share said. “We had uncrewed surface vessels. We had scientists ashore. We just did everything and anything to support them, and that’s all things that we can help do in the north as well.”

To reach Antarctica, they had to cross the notoriously rough Drake Passage, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans between Cape Horn and the South Shetland Islands.

The trip south “was very calm seas,” Share said.

The return trip wasn’t so pleasant, with the Margaret Brooke battling six-metre waves as it headed back north.

“We ended up getting a bit of an experience on the way back home,” Share said.

“But … these ships are meant for the North Atlantic, they’re meant for the Arctic, they’re meant for our weather up here. So, it’s nothing that we couldn’t handle … Not too many people got sick.”

The ship performed “amazingly,” she said.

“We really didn’t have any major technical difficulties that impacted our mission at all,” Share said. “So, this definitely has proven that we are incredibly versatile with this platform to operate in a very warm climate in and around the equator for a little bit, and all the way down into polar regions and back up.”

HMCS MARGARET BROOKE hoisting their battle ensign while entering Halifax after a historic deployment to Antarctica. The ship reached the farthest south a RCN ship has ever deployed, proving their versatility and value to the RCN and Canada. Bravo Zulu!

Posted by Royal Canadian Navy Today and Yesterday on Friday, May 9, 2025

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Author: Robert Wood

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