Trump, Carney to speak in coming days, Canadian official says
Dominic LeBlanc, the federal cabinet minister in charge of U.S.-Canada trade, also told CBS News' "Face the Nation" that he was "encouraged" by recent discussions and believed a deal to bring down tariffs remained an option.
"We're encouraged by the conversations with Secretary Lutnick and Ambassador Greer, but we're not yet where we need to go to get the deal that's in the best interest of the two economies," LeBlanc said, referring to U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
The trade minister said he expected Carney and Trump to speak "over the next number of days."
"We think there is an option of striking a deal that will bring down some of these tariffs provide greater certainty to investment," LeBlanc said.
Washington linked Friday's tariff announcement in part to what it said was Canada's failure to stop fentanyl smuggling. It was the latest blow in a months-long tariff war which Trump initiated shortly after returning to power this year.
Carney says Canada accounts for just 1% of U.S. fentanyl imports and has been working intensively to further reduce the volumes.
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The Independent
7 minutes ago
- The Independent
The Trump administration is using ‘fascist propaganda' to promote its mass deportation campaign, experts say
The Department of Homeland Security is accused of sharing thinly-veiled nativist propaganda on social media through art as it pursues a sweeping campaign of mass deportations. Throughout July, the X account of the department run by Kristi Noem posted a steady stream of paintings exemplifying a very particular version of the 'homeland.' That has included posting the 1872 work American Progress by John Gast, in which an ethereal Lady Liberty floats above the Western landscape, as white settlers advance across the frame with stage coaches and rail lines, while Native Americans and buffalo run to the margins. Another X post features the contemporary painting A Prayer for a New Life, by Morgan Weistling, a close-up of a white pioneer couple clutching a baby in the back of a covered wagon, along with the caption, ' Remember your Homeland's Heritage.' A third such post includes Morning Pledge, a nostalgic mid-20th century scene of kids in a small town walking towards an American flag, as painted by Thomas Kinkade. The creators and guardians of these works have expressed outrage over being drafted into DHS publicity — and history and politics experts have also raised concerns over this art being used as 'propaganda'. Weistling said he wasn't consulted prior to the Trump administration using his work. The Kinkade Family Foundation, meanwhile, said Morning Pledge was also being used without permission, perverted to 'promote division and xenophobia associated with the ideals of DHS.' The foundation told The Independent that Kinkade, who died in 2012, struggled in life with poverty as a child and substance abuse as an adult. He viewed his paintings, known for their soft, glowing light, as a way to 'imagine a different kind of world, where warmth, safety, and belonging are human rights for all.' Beyond the canvas, Kinkade helped raise millions for the poor, while his foundation has handed out thousands of therapeutic art kits, including in farmworker communities. 'That vision wasn't meant for a select few, but for everyone,' the foundation said in an email. 'Throughout his life, Thomas sought to respond to moments of hardship with compassion and solidarity, standing with communities made vulnerable.T o see his work used in ways that promote exclusion and division betrays the very heart of what he stood for.' The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the agency 'honors artwork that celebrates America's heritage and history, and we are pleased that the media is highlighting our efforts to showcase these patriotic pieces.' 'If the media needs a history lesson on the brave men and women who blazed the trails and forged this Republic from the sweat of their brow, we are happy to send them a history textbook,' Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in the statement. 'This administration is unapologetically proud of American history and American heritage.' According to Richard White, a distinguished historian of the West and professor emeritus at Stanford University, DHS's use of works like American Progress is as ironic as it is revealing. The painting depicted a highly nostalgic, mythologized version of the country even at the moment it was created. In reality, instead of the peaceful scene, violence was everywhere, with the U.S. Army (not pictured in the painting) involved in violent, dispossessing wars with indigenous tribes across the West, and groups like the KKK carrying out racist terror campaigns against newly emancipated Black people after the U.S. Civil War. 'It's not about history,' White said of American Progress, but rather a 'mythic narrative' of America. 'The original picture erased the reality around it.' White suspects the Trump administration is using the painting now for a similar purpose. The historian lives in Los Angeles, where masked federal immigration agents and military troops spent weeks conducting dragnet immigration operations, an effort he compares to the Nazi regime's Gestapo secret police. 'The real problem is what's actually happening on the streets of Los Angeles and other cities,' he said. Journalist Spencer Ackerman, author of Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump, sees similar far-right currents in DHS's images, strains of nativism he argues have existed just below the surface at the department since its founding in 2002 after the 9/11 terror attacks. 'It was definitely a crypto-right wing move from the start after 9/11 to use a word like 'homeland' in particular in the context of security,' he told The Independent. Prior to this point, he said, the term 'homeland' was not in mainstream use in this way in the U.S. It had the ring of European-style nationalism (and worse) back then, a poor fit for a pluralist democracy in which most of the population, at some point in history, came from somewhere else. Trump's DHS, however, has taken this implicit ideology to the explicit extreme, Ackerman argued, using the tools of 'far-right internet culture' to provoke people by using jarring memes plus the 'classic fascist propaganda' of armed agents kicking in doors to arrest mostly non-white people. 'This is a turn. This is different,' he said. 'This is very racialized, very essentialized propaganda that DHS did not previously explicitly traffic in, even if this probably reflects the id of the Department of Homeland Security that whole time.' The administration's immigration PR efforts have extended beyond the DHS X account and its selection of pioneer paintings. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has earned the derisive nickname ' ICE Barbie ' from critics for her frequent photo-ops in cowboy oufits and combat-ready gear matching with the various agencies under her purview. Both Trump and Noem have featured in wartime-style recruiting posters urging viewers to 'Defend the Homeland, Join ICE Today,' as the administration offers $50,000 sign-on bonuses for new ICE officers. Trump has long leaned into a nostalgic aesthetic as a notable part of his politics. One of his final executive orders in 2020 involved a demand that all new federal buildings in Washington be built in the ' beautiful ' neo-classical style, with marble and columns meant to evoke the temples of ancient Greece and Rome, while his signature political slogan, 'Make America Great Again,' includes an unmistakable nod to a heroic past. Government officials have long trafficked in tropes and propaganda about disfavored groups, too, White said, pointing to the virulently racist popular depictions of the Japanese during WWII. What stands out in this present era, however, is the seeming commitment of whole government departments to producing such images. In time, however, White said even these purposely exclusionary images of national propaganda reveal their limitations. 'In myth, nothing ever changes,' he said. 'In history, things do change.'
The Independent
7 minutes ago
- The Independent
Trump critic turned ally Nancy Mace announces run for South Carolina governor
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) – a former critic of President Donald Trump who became one of his most outspoken defenders on Capitol Hill while also becoming one of the most virulent voices against transgender people – announced she would is running to be governor of South Carolina. Despite having a thin legislative record, Mace has largely built a name for herself for bombastic stunts such as pushing to ban Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender person elected to Congress, from using the women's restroom and voting to eject Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House. 'I don't answer to the establishment,' she said during her speech. 'I don't know those in the back room a single thing. I answer to the people.' Mace made her announcement at the Citadel, South Carolina's military college, where she became the first woman to graduate. That came after she had initially dropped out of high school following being raped as a teenager, an ordeal she has publicly recounted. During her announcement, Mace mentioned a series of hardline policies, mostly focusing on immigration and cutting the state's income tax to zero in five years. 'They are all here, and we will work with ICE better than ever to ensure that anyone who is here illegally gets deported immediately, we will work with ICE in every respect,' she said of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 'If we need housing price we have it, if we need to have boots on the ground to help ICE, we will do it everything in our power, and we will not let another sanctuary share it dictate who gets to stay here when they're here illegally.' Unsurprisingly, Mace also said that she would oppose what she called the 'gender cult,' citing how she called out Clemson University for having 15 gender options. 'I hold the line on women and kids, Insanity and education by vetoing any funding to any college that pushes gender ideology and refuses to define what a woman is,' Mace said. 'If a school erases women, it erases its right to your tax dollars.' But Mace faces a crowded primary. Fellow Rep. Ralph Norman, who endorsed Nikki Haley during the 2024 preisdential primary, is also running. Another opponent is state attorney general Al Wilson, whom Mace accused on the House floor of ignoring her report of sexual assault, though Wilson said that Mace's report never made it to his office. Mace first came to Washington after serving in South Carolina's state legislature. In 2014, she staged a primary challenge to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) at the peak of the Tea Party movement. She later worked on the 2016 Trump campaign in the Palmetto State. In 2020, she beat former Democratic congressman Joe Cunningham in South Carolina's 1st district. Initially, after the January 6 riot, Mace criticized Trump and said she held him responsible for the riot, though she voted against impeaching him. That led to Trump endorsing her Republican primary opponent Katie Arrington in 2022. In response, Mace posted a video of herself infront of Trump Tower in New York. Mace initially billed herself as a moderate Republican who was part of a 'Caucus of One,' telling The Independent in 2023 that she was ' pro-baby, pro-gun, pro-pot, pro-gay.' She initially worked on legislation to decriminalize cannabis and voted with Democrats to legalize protections for same-sex and interracial married couples. But after her primary win, she moved significantly to the right. After initially voting for McCarthy as speaker, when former congressman Matt Gaetz filed a motion to vacate, Mace joined Gaetz and six other Republicans to eject McCarthy alongside every Democrat present at the time. Given many of her opponents within the GOP, Mace would likely need to win the support of the president. While Trump has not made an endorsement in the race yet, her announcement ad features Trump praising her.
Reuters
8 minutes ago
- Reuters
The jobs data revisions that cost a US government statistician her job
Aug 4 (Reuters) - The revisions to previous estimates of the size of U.S. payrolls gains for May and June that prompted President Donald Trump to fire Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer on Friday were by any measure extraordinarily large. Indeed, the combined downward revision for the two months of 258,000 was the largest - outside of those during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic - since at least 1979. Here's a quick graphical breakdown: The monthly nonfarm payrolls report, released typically on the first Friday of each month, includes an initial estimate of employment changes for the immediately preceding month and revisions to the earlier estimates for the prior two months. BLS makes the revisions because more survey responses come in over the ensuing weeks and because it updates the seasonal factors affecting each month's estimates. The BLS on Friday said 133,000 fewer jobs had been created in June than first estimated. Over the last several years, the first estimate of the net change in payrolls each month has been revised lower more often than not. It has been revised down in eight of the last 12 BLS reports over the last year. The downward revision on Friday was the largest since the first estimate of payrolls gains for March 2021, published in April 2021, was revised down by 146,000 a month later. Over the last three years through June, the median estimate revision was -10,000. That contrasts with a median increase of 8,000 during the decade before the pandemic and a median increase of 2,000 over the series history since 1979. The total for May's payroll gains was revised lower by 125,000 in Friday's report, when the third estimate for payrolls for that month was published. That figure was the largest downward reduction of payrolls gains for a second revision - outside of the pandemic era - since the estimate for March 1983 was revised down by 127,000 in the report published in June 1983. The combined downward revision for the two previous months - May and June - was larger than anything reported outside of the pandemic era. Indeed, the estimates for the two prior months combined have more often than not been revised higher. Since 1979, the median two-month combined estimate change was an upward revision of 10,000. Measured in absolute terms - revisions in either direction - Friday's revision also stands out. There have only been four larger revisions: +709,000 for November and December 2021; -642,000 for March and April 2020; +285,000 for August and September 1983; and +414,000 for April and May 1981.
