Ellen DeGeneres backs comedian in heated Trump row
The US President lashed out at the comedian over the weekend as he branded her a 'threat to humanity' on his Truth Social platform and threatened to revoke her US citizenship but Ellen has
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Otago Daily Times
9 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
US 'will sell so much' beef to Australia after relaxed restrictions: Trump
The United States will sell "so much" beef to Australia, US President Donald Trump said today after Canberra relaxed import restrictions. He added that other countries that refused US beef products were on notice. Australia on Thursday said it would loosen biosecurity rules for US beef, something analysts predicted would not significantly increase US shipments because Australia is a major beef producer and exporter whose prices are much lower. "We are going to sell so much to Australia because this is undeniable and irrefutable Proof that US Beef is the Safest and Best in the entire World," Trump said in a post on Truth Social. "The other Countries that refuse our magnificent Beef are ON NOTICE," the post continued. Trump has attempted to renegotiate trade deals with numerous countries he says have taken advantage of the United States – a characterisation many economists dispute. "For decades, Australia imposed unjustified barriers on US beef," US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement, calling Australia's decision a "major milestone in lowering trade barriers and securing market access for US farmers and ranchers." Australia is not a significant importer of beef, but the United States is, and a production slump is forcing it to step up purchases. Last year, Australia shipped almost 400,000 metric tons of beef worth $US2.9 billion ($NZ4.8 billion) to the United States, with just 269 tons of US product moving the other way. Australian officials say the relaxation of restrictions was not part of any trade negotiations but the result of a years-long assessment of US biosecurity practices. Canberra has restricted US beef imports since 2003 due to concerns about bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease. Since 2019, it has allowed in meat from animals born, raised and slaughtered in the US but few suppliers were able to prove that their cattle had not been in Canada and Mexico. On Wednesday, Australia's agriculture ministry said US cattle traceability and control systems had improved enough that Australia could accept beef from cattle born in Canada or Mexico and slaughtered in the United States. The decision has caused some concern in Australia, where biosecurity is seen as essential to prevent diseases and pests from ravaging the farm sector. "We need to know if [the government] is sacrificing our high biosecurity standards just so Prime Minister Anthony Albanese can obtain a meeting with US President Donald Trump," shadow agriculture minister David Littleproud said in a statement. Australia, which imports more from the US than it exports, faces a 10% across-the-board US tariff, as well 50% tariffs on steel and aluminium. Trump has also threatened to impose a 200% tariff on pharmaceuticals. Asked whether the change would help achieve a trade deal, Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell said: "I'm not too sure." "We haven't done this in order to entice the Americans into a trade agreement," he said. "We think that they should do that anyway."
Scoop
2 days ago
- Scoop
How Not To Reform A University: Trump's Harvard Obsession
The messy scrap between the Trump administration and Harvard University was always more than a touch bizarre. On June 4, President Donald Trump issued a proclamation claiming that the university was 'no longer a trustworthy steward of international student and exchange visitor programs.' It had not pursued the Student Exchange Visa Program (SEVP) in good faith and with transparency, nor adhered 'to the relevant regulatory frameworks.' The university had failed to furnish the government with sufficient information 'to identify and address misconduct', thereby presenting 'an unacceptable risk to our Nation's security'. The nature of that misconduct lay in foreign students supposedly engaged in any number of scurrilous acts vaguely described as 'known illegal activity', 'known dangerous and violent activity', 'known threats to other students or university personnel', 'known deprivation of rights of other classmates or university personnel', and whether those activities 'occurred on campus'. Harvard had failed to provide any useful data on the 'disciplinary records' of such students. (The information on three miscreants supplied in the lists were not just inadequate but useless.) Just to make Trump foam further, Harvard had 'also developed extensive entanglements with foreign countries, including our adversaries' and flouted 'the civil rights of students and faculty, triggering multiple Federal investigations.' While the proclamation avoids explicitly mentioning it, the throbbing subtext here is the caricatured concern that antisemitism has not been adequately addressed by the university. In various splenetic statements, the President has made no secret about his views of the university. On Truth Social, we find him berating the institution for 'hiring almost all woke, Radical left, idiots and 'birdbrains''. The university was also hectored through April by the multi-agency Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism to alter its governance processes, admissions and hiring policies, and academic programs. The administration demanded via an April 11 letter to Harvard's president that a third party be hired to 'audit' the views of students, faculty, and staff to satisfy government notions of 'viewpoint diversity' that would also include the expulsion of specific students and the review of 'faculty hires'. Extraordinarily, the administration demanded that the audit 'proceed on a department-by-department, field-by-field, or teaching-unit-by-teaching unit basis as appropriate.' Harvard's refusal to accede to such demands led to a freezing of over $2.2 billion in federal funding. On May 22, the Department of Homeland Security cancelled Harvard's means of enrolling students through the SEVP program or employ J-1 non-immigrants under the Exchange Visitor Program (EVP). In its May 23 filing in the US District Court for Massachusetts, the university contended that such actions violated the First Amendment, the Due Process Clause, and the Administrative Procedure Act. They were 'in clear retaliation for Harvard exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government's demands to control Harvard's governance, curriculum, and the 'ideology' of its faculty and students.' The June 4 proclamation proved to be another sledgehammer wielded by the executive, barring non-immigrants from pursuing 'a course of study at Harvard University [under the SEVP program] or to participate in an exchange visitor program hosted by Harvard University'. The university successfully secured a temporary restraining order on June 5 preventing the revocation from taking effect. On June 23, US District Judge Allison D. Burroughs granted the university's request for a preliminary injunction, extending the temporary order. 'The case,' wrote Burroughs, 'is about core constitutional rights that must be safeguarded: freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom of speech, each of which is a pillar of a functioning democracy and an essential hedge against authoritarianism.' The 'misplaced efforts' by the government 'to control a reputable academic institution and squelch diverse viewpoints seemingly because they are, in some instances, opposed to this Administration's own views, threaten these rights.' On July 21, the parties again did battle, this time over the matter of restoring the money frozen in federal research grants. Burroughs made no immediate decision on the matter but barely hid her scepticism about the government's actions and inclinations. 'If you can make decisions for reasons oriented around free speech,' she put to Justice Department senior attorney Michael Velchik, 'the consequences are staggering to me.' Harvard's attorney Steve Lehotsky also argued that the demands of the government impaired the university's autonomy, going beyond even that of dealing with antisemitism. These included audits of viewpoint diversity among the faculty and students, and changes to the admissions and hiring processes. The demands constituted 'a blatant, unrepentant violation of the First Amendment.' The issue of withdrawing funding was also argued to be a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which requires an investigation, the holding of a hearing, and the release of findings before such a decision was made. Velchik, very much in the mood for sophistry, made less on the antisemitism issue than that of contractual interpretation. Under government contracts with institutions, language always existed permitting the withdrawal of funding at any time. If Trump was serious about the MAGA brand, then attacking universities, notably those like Harvard, must count as an act of monumental self-harm. Such institutions are joined hip and all to the military-industrial-education complex, keeping America gorged with its complement of engineers, scientists and imperial propagandists. Harvard has also shown itself willing to march to the music of the Israel lobby, which happily provides funds for the institution. The heft of that influence was made clear by a decision by the university's own Kennedy School to deny a fellowship to former head of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, in early 2023. While the decision by the morally flabby dean, Douglas Elmendorf, was reversed following much outrage, the School had displayed its gaudy colours. Little wonder, given the presence of the Wexner Foundation, responsible for sponsoring the attendance of top-ranked Israeli generals and national security experts in a Master's Degree program in public administration at the university. Trump is partially right to claim that universities and their governance structures are in need of a severe dusting down. But he has shown no interest in identifying the actual problem. How wonderful it would be, and most unlikely, to see actual reforms in university policies that demilitarise funding in favour of an enlightened curriculum that abominates war.
NZ Herald
2 days ago
- NZ Herald
Analysis: Both men are constrained by a shared need to please conservative Americans
Another host, Greg Gutfeld, said Democrats were secretly 'relieved that the golden age is here'. The war Trump is waging against Murdoch over the Journal's coverage, including a US$10 billion ($16.6b) lawsuit he filed last week, has been billed as a Battle of the Titans. Given their stature atop conservative politics and media, it is certainly that. In suing Murdoch, Trump, who has extracted multimillion-dollar settlements in suits against ABC News and CBS News, is taking on the most battle-tested, self-assured, and politically astute mogul in media. But the continued affection for Trump among Fox News hosts makes it clear that while this is a fight between giants, it is like nothing found in the works of Homer or Hesiod. That's because the two men are constrained by the one thing that has kept them linked across 10 years of personal comity and conflict: their shared need to please conservative Americans. For Murdoch, those conservatives are the most important constituency of his empire. They provide a committed base audience for Fox News — his leading revenue generator — and they expect the network to mirror their own loyalty to Trump in return. It explains why Fox News largely avoided repeating the Journal's scoop or saying much about Trump's lawsuit against the Journal. Although loyalty to Trump among Fox viewers has appeared unshakable, Trump clearly wants to keep it that way. They are his core voters, many of them glued to Fox more than to the Maga multiverse of social media and podcast influencers who make up the harder-edged, ideological wing of his movement. Trump's appreciation for the Fox audience has been evident in his decision to populate his new Administration with former Fox hosts and contributors. It has also shown up in the many Truth Social messages he has posted since he sued Murdoch, directing his followers to watch Fox News segments. Trump's ire is exclusively trained on Murdoch and the Journal for moving ahead with what Trump called a 'fake' story, according to a person with knowledge of Trump's views about the feud. The article focused on a 'bawdy' birthday message the Journal said Trump sent to Epstein in 2003. Trump, this person said, considers Fox News — and for that matter, the New York Post, another business owned by Murdoch — to be in a separate, friendlier category, where he has warm relations with various personalities. That helps explain why even as Trump filed his lawsuit he wrote on Truth Social: 'Everybody should watch Sean Hannity tonight. He really gets it!' What Hannity got that evening: Trump's was 'the single most consequential, transformational presidency in our lifetime.' Hannity, who is happy to acknowledge his admiration for his friend, has avoided mentioning the Journal article on his show. But another Murdoch-world friendly, Miranda Devine at the New York Post, went so far as to call the article a 'nothingburger'. The relationship between Trump and Murdoch has always been complicated. When Trump first told Murdoch he was running for president, at a lunch at Murdoch's New York offices, Murdoch didn't hide his scepticism. Murdoch did not see Trump as a president. The Fox News audience thought otherwise, Murdoch soon discovered. And as someone who built his empire by giving his customers what they want, he came on board as network hosts rallied to help place Trump in the White House in 2016. An awkward friendship blossomed, as both came to enjoy gossiping and comparing notes over the phone — satisfying Murdoch's thirst for access to the Oval Office and Trump's craving for acceptance from his fellow billionaire conservative. The 2020 election wedged them apart anew. Trump was furious at Murdoch for refusing to block Fox News' projection that Trump had lost the pivotal state of Arizona. Murdoch was furious at Trump's stolen-election conspiracies, which drew sympathetic coverage among some Fox hosts and resulted in a US$787.5 million payout to settle a defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems, a company at the centre of the false narrative. The two did not speak for a long period after the election as Murdoch's outlets lined up behind a would-be challenger to Trump, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida. But the audience still wanted Trump, forcing the two back together last year. Murdoch was on the dais at Trump's second inauguration and appeared with the President before cameras inside the Oval Office in early February. Even then, though, there were some signs of the tension that has exploded into view in the past week. Speaking with reporters as Murdoch sat nearby, Trump called the media mogul one of the 'most talented people in the world'. Then a reporter in the room asked the President about an editorial in the Journal that accused him of starting 'The Dumbest Trade War in History'. It was one of many critical editorials the Journal, whose opinion page has long favoured free trade and an opposition to tariffs, has published on the Administration's economic policy and other topics. Trump grimaced and said of Murdoch: 'I'm going to have to talk to him about that'. He added, 'I've been right over the Wall Street Journal many times'. In the weeks that followed, the Journal's editorial board expressed numerous other criticisms of the Administration, even as it offered praise at times, too. It called Trump's decision to pull security for several former national security officials 'a new low'; gave him a new name, 'Tariff Man'; asked if he would 'please take a summer vacation for the good of the nation'; and suggested the Federal Communications Commission was operating as Trump's 'personal protection racket'. The two men continued to talk on the phone throughout, trading information and gossip. A pivotal interaction, though, came last week, with the Journal's reporting on Epstein. Trump has said he directly asked Murdoch to spike the article, arguing that it wasn't true. Murdoch, in Trump's telling, said he would 'take care of it'. Murdoch's representatives declined to comment on that assertion. Murdoch, though, has shown a pattern of refusing to intervene to kill his journalists' stories. Dow Jones, the Journal's parent company, expressed 'full confidence in the rigour and accuracy of our reporting' and vowed to 'vigorously defend against any lawsuit'. That leaves many progressives and First Amendment advocates looking to an unlikely protagonist. 'Is this what we have come to,' Tina Brown, the author and former top magazine editor, wrote this week, 'depending on Rupert Murdoch to stand up for press freedom?' She predicted he would, but the ultimate outcome may depend on the viewers-slash-voters who are so central to Murdoch's and Trump's power. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Written by: Jim Rutenberg Photograph by: Hiroko Masuike ©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
