Category: 2. World

One of the chauvinistic, self-glorifying myths of American liberalism is that the US has especially strong institutions. In this story, trotted out occasionally since 2016 to reassure those who are worried about Donald Trump’s influence, the private and public bodies of American commerce, governance, healthcare and education are possessed of uncommonly robust internal accountability mechanisms, rock-hard rectitude, and a coolly rational self-interest. Trump can only do so much damage to America’s economy, culture and way of life, it was reasoned, because these institutions would not bend to his will. They would resist him; they would check his excesses. When forced to choose, as it was always accepted that they one day would be, between Trump’s demands and their own principles and purposes, the institutions would always choose themselves.

This week put another nail into the coffin of this idea, revealing its valorization of American institutions to be shortsighted and naive. The latest intrusion of reality comes in the form of a deal that Columbia University made with the Trump administration, in which the university made a host of academic, admissions and governance concessions to the Trump regime and agreed to pay a $200m fine in order to restore its federal research funding. The deal marks the formal end of Columbia’s academic independence and the dawn of a new era of regulation by deal making, repression and bribery in the field of higher education.

The story goes like this. After Columbia became the centerpiece of a nationwide movement of campus encampments in protest of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, the university administration began a frantic and at times sadistic crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus speech in an effort to appease congressional Republicans, who had gleefully seized upon the protests to make cynical and unfounded accusations that the universities were engaged in antisemitism. Columbia invited police on to its campus, who rounded up protesting students in mass arrests. This showed that the university would bend to Republican pressure, but did nothing to satisfy its Republican adversaries – who demanded more and more from Columbia, making their attacks on the university the center of their broader war on education, diversity and expertise.

When the Trump administration was restored to power in January, the White House partnered with the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, the General Services Administration, and the Department of Justice to exert further pressure on Columbia, looking to exert a level of control over the university’s internal operations that is unprecedented for a private institution. This time, the university’s vast federal research funding – issued in the form of grants that enable university scientists, doctors and academics to make discoveries and pursue knowledge that has enormous implications for American commerce, health and wellbeing – was held hostage. Facing the end of its functioning as a university, Columbia capitulated and went to what was euphemistically called “the negotiating table” – really, an exchange on the precise terms of its extortion.

The deal that resulted gives the Trump administration everything it wants. A Trump-approved monitor will now have the right to review Columbia’s admissions records, with the express intent of enforcing a supreme court ban on affirmative action – in other words, ensuring that the university does not admit what the Trump administration deems to be too many non-white students. The Middle Eastern studies department is subject to monitoring, as well, after an agreement in March.

The agreement is not a broad-level, generally applicable regulatory endeavor that applies to other universities – although given the scope of the administration’s ambitions at Columbia, it is hard to say whether such a regulatory regime would be legal. Instead, it is an individual, backroom deal, one that disregards the institution’s first amendment rights and the congressionally mandated protections for its grants in order to proceed with a shakedown. “The agreement,” writes the Columbia Law School professor David Pozen, “gives legal form to an extortion scheme.” The process was something akin to a mob boss demanding protection money from a local business. “Nice research university you have here,” the Trump administration seemed to say to Columbia. “Would be a shame if something were to happen to it.”

That Columbia folded, and sacrificed its integrity, reputation and the freedom of its students and faculty for the federal money, speaks to both the astounding lack of foresight and principle by the university leadership as well as the Trump movement’s successful foreclosure of institutions’ options for resistance. With the federal judiciary full of Trump appointees – and the supreme court showing itself willing to radically expand executive powers and rapidly diminish the rights of other parties in its eagerness to facilitate Trump’s agenda – there is little hope for Columbia, or the other universities that will inevitably be next, to successfully litigate their way out of the administration’s threats. But nor does capitulation seem likely to put an end to the Trump administration’s demands. The installation of an administration-approved monitor seems poised to offer a toehold from which the government will impose more and more limitations on scholarship, speech and association. There is, after all, no limiting principle to the Trump administration’s absolutist expansion of its own prerogatives, and no way for Columbia to ensure that its funding won’t be cut off again. The university, in time, will become more what Trump makes it than what its students do.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is likely to use its experience at Columbia as a template to extract substantive concessions and big payouts from other institutions. And these are not just limited to universities. On Thursday, the day after Columbia’s capitulation, the Federal Communications Commission approved the merger of Paramount and Skydance. The pending merger – and the Trump administration’s threat to squash it – had been a rumored motivation for CBS’s decision to pay Trump millions to settle a frivolous defamation suit; it was also rumored to have caused an outcry at the CBS news magazine program 60 Minutes and the end of the evening talkshow The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, when writers, journalists, and performers on those shows stood by their critical coverage of the president or mocked the deal their bosses paid him. The shakedown, after all, is a tactic that lots of institutions are vulnerable to, and Trump is already using it effectively to stifle some of the most visible forms of dissent. The institutions are not standing firm against him; they are capitulating. They are choosing their short-term interest over their long-term integrity.

Australia’s government said on Saturday it signed a treaty with Britain to bolster cooperation over the next 50 years on the AUKUS nuclear submarine partnership.

The AUKUS pact, agreed upon by Australia, Britain and the US in 2021, aims to provide Australia with nuclear-powered attack submarines from the next decade to counter China’s ambitions in the Indo-Pacific. US President Donald Trump’s administration announced a formal review of the pact this year.

Defence Minister Richard Marles said in a statement that the bilateral treaty was signed with Britain’s Defence Secretary John Healey on Saturday after a meeting in the city of Geelong, in Victoria state.

“The Geelong Treaty will enable comprehensive cooperation on the design, build, operation, sustainment, and disposal of our SSN-AUKUS submarines,” the statement said.

The treaty was a “commitment for the next 50 years of UK-Australian bilateral defence cooperation under AUKUS Pillar I”, it said, adding that it built on the “strong foundation” of trilateral AUKUS cooperation.

Britain’s ministry of defence said this week that the bilateral treaty would underpin the two allies’ submarine programmes and was expected to be worth up to 20 billion pounds ($27.1 billion) for Britain in exports over the next 25 years.

AUKUS is Australia’s biggest-ever defence project, with Canberra committing to spend A$368 billion over three decades to the programme, which includes billions of dollars of investment in the US production base.

Australia, which this month paid A$800 million to the US in the second instalment under AUKUS, has maintained it is confident the pact will proceed.

The defence and foreign ministers of Australia and Britain held talks on Friday in Sydney on boosting cooperation, coinciding with Australia’s largest war games.

As many as 40,000 troops from 19 countries are taking part in the Talisman Sabre exercises held from July 13 to August 4, which Australia’s military has said are a rehearsal for joint warfare to maintain Indo-Pacific stability.

Britain has significantly increased its participation in the exercise co-hosted by Australia and the United States, with aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales taking part this year.

SURIN, Thailand — Thailand and Cambodia traded accusations Saturday of fresh attacks as deadly border clashes entered a third day, leaving at least 33 people dead and more than 168,000 displaced, as international pressure mounted on both sides to reach a ceasefire.

Artillery fire and gunshots were reported near several border villages, expanding the area of the fighting that flared again Thursday after a land mine explosion along the border wounded five Thai soldiers. Cambodian and Thai officials claimed to have acted in retaliation.

Both countries recalled their ambassadors and Thailand closed its northeastern border crossings with Cambodia.

Cambodian authorities reported on Saturday 12 new deaths, bringing its toll to 13, while Thai officials said a soldier was killed, raising the deaths to 20, mostly civilians.

The regional bloc, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, is under growing pressure to defuse the situation between its two members. During an emergency meeting on Friday, members of the U.N. Security Council called for de-escalation and urged ASEAN to mediate a peaceful solution.

The 800-kilometer (500-mile) frontier between Thailand and Cambodia has been disputed for decades, but past confrontations have been limited and brief. The current tensions broke out in May when a Cambodian soldier was killed in a confrontation that created a diplomatic rift and roiled Thailand’s domestic politics.

Cambodia’s Defense Ministry condemned what it said was an expanded Thai offensive early Saturday after five heavy artillery shells were fired into multiple locations in the province of Pursat, calling the attack an “unprovoked and premeditated act of aggression.”

Ministry spokesperson, Lt. Gen. Maly Socheata, said tensions flared in the province of Koh Kong, where four Thai naval vessels were reportedly stationed offshore and four others en route. She said the naval deployment was an “act of aggression” that risked further escalation.

Maly Socheata said seven civilians and five soldiers were killed in two days of fighting. Earlier, one man was reported dead after a pagoda he was hiding under was hit by Thai rockets.

The Thai army had denied targeting Cambodian civilian sites and accused Phnom Penh of using “human shields” by positioning their weapons near residential areas.

Meanwhile, Thailand’s navy, in a statement Saturday, accused Cambodian forces of initiating a new attack in the province of Trat, saying Thai forces responded swiftly and “successfully pushed back the Cambodian incursion at three key points”, warning that “aggression will not be tolerated.”

Thai authorities also alleged several Cambodian artillery shells had landed across the border in Laos, damaging homes and property. Lao officials have not publicly responded to the claim.

The conflict has so far left thousands displaced.

Cambodia’s Information Minister Neth Pheaktra said Saturday the clashes had forced 10,865 Cambodian families, or 37,635 people, in three border provinces to evacuate to safe locations, while Thai officials said more than 131,000 people had fled their border villages.

Human Rights Watch urged the U.N. Security Council and concerned governments to press the Thai and Cambodian governments to abide by international humanitarian law and take all steps to protect civilians. Children have been harmed and Thai authorities have closed at least 852 schools and seven hospitals for safety reasons, the rights group said in a statement Saturday.

Both sides have employed rocket and artillery attacks, and after initially denying Cambodian claims that internationally prohibited cluster munitions were being used, a Thai military spokesperson in a statement Friday said that such weapons could be utilized “when necessary” to target military objectives. HRW condemned the use of cluster munitions in populated areas.

Neither Thailand nor Cambodia is party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which bans the use of the weapon and Thai authorities had previously used them during a border dispute with Cambodia in February 2011 that left 20 people dead.

“Neither Thailand nor Cambodia appears to be paying attention to international humanitarian law at great expense to civilians,” John Sifton, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “Diplomatic efforts underway need to prioritize protecting civilians and civilian infrastructure.”

Thai officials also acknowledged the use of F-16 jets and drones to launch airstrikes.

The U.N. Security Council didn’t issue a resolution on the crisis during its Friday emergency session, but Thai Foreign Minister Maris Sangiampongsa said Saturday all 15 member countries called on both sides to exercise restraint, halt attacks, and resolve the dispute peacefully. They also supported ASEAN’s role in mediating between its two member states, he said.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, whose country is the current ASEAN chair, had earlier said Thailand and Cambodia were open in principle to his ceasefire proposal. Malaysian media said Anwar has tasked the country’s foreign minister to mediate peace talks to halt the fighting.

Maris said Saturday his country agreed in principle to the proposal, but insisted that Cambodia must first show sincerity and cease hostilities, adding that Thailand would continue to engage constructively with Malaysia.

“Thailand reaffirms its commitment to resolving the conflict peacefully and in accordance with international law,” he said, urging Cambodia to “return to the negotiating table with sincerity and in good faith.”

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Associated Press writers Chalida Ekvitthayavechnukul and Grant Peck in Bangkok, and Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this report. Sopheng Cheang reported from Oddar Meanchey, Cambodia.

Australia and the UK have signed a 50-year treaty to cement the Aukus pact to design and build a new class of nuclear-powered submarine.

Australia’s defence minister, Richard Marles, and the UK’s defence secretary, John Healey, signed the deal – dubbed the “Geelong Treaty” – in Geelong on Saturday, with Marles saying it was among the most significant treaties between the two nations.

It came as the US, which is not a party to the treaty, wavers on its own role in the trilateral Aukus agreement, after the Trump administration launched a review to examine whether it aligns with his “America first” agenda.

A joint statement released by the UK and Australia said the treaty would enable cooperation on the SSN-Aukus submarine’s design, build, operation, sustainment, and disposal, as well as workforce, infrastructure and regulatory systems.

The SSN-Aukus is intended to incorporate technology from all three Aukus nations. It will be built in northern England for the UK Royal Navy, and Australia plans to build its own in South Australia for delivery to the Australian navy in the 2040s.

The treaty is yet to be released publicly and will be tabled in parliament next week.

Marles told reporters the treaty will underpin how the UK and Australia work together to deliver the submarines.

He said there were three parts to the treaty, including training in the UK for Australian submariners and other required roles, and “facilitating the development” of infrastructure at the Osborne Naval Shipyard in Adelaide.

“And finally, what the treaty does is create a seamless defence industrial base between the United Kingdom and Australia. This project is going to see Australian companies supplying into Great Britain for the building of submarines,” he said.

“It will see British companies supplying to Australia for the building of our own submarines here in Adelaide.

Healey said the treaty would support tens of thousands of jobs in both Australia and the UK.

“It is a treaty that will fortify the Indo-Pacific. It will strengthen Nato and we’re the politicians signing it today. But this is a treaty that will define the relationship between our two nations and safeguard the security of our country for our children and our children’s children to come,” he said.

Marles said the deal was “another demonstration of the fact that Aukus is happening, and it is happening on time, and we are delivering it”.

“It’s a treaty which will last for 50 years. It is a bilateral treaty which sits under the trilateral Aukus framework.”

As part of the existing Aukus agreement, Australia will pay about $4.6bn to support British industry to design and produce nuclear reactors to power the future Aukus-class submarines.

It will pay a similar amount to the US to support America’s shipbuilding industry. Under the $368bn Aukus program, Australia is scheduled to buy at least three Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines from the US from the early 2030s.

Earlier on Saturday, the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, appeared at an event in Sydney run by the Lowy Institute.

Asked by the presenter if the UK was “coming to the rescue because America is losing interest in Aukus”, he said that wasn’t the case, and that the deal was about “20,000 jobs between our two countries” and a secure partnership well into the future.

Lammy dismissed concerns over the Trump administration’s Aukus review, saying it would “flush out any issues for them”. He said both the UK and Australian governments had also undertaken a review of the pact.

“All governments do reviews, and should do reviews, particularly when they involve big aspects of procurement and defence,” he said.

Lammy said the world had entered a “new era” of instability and that “investing in defence is an investment in peace” because opponents “realise that you are armed and capable”.

The Trump administration’s review is being headed by the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defence policy, Elbridge Colby, who has previously declared himself “sceptical” about the deal, fearing it could leave US sailors exposed and underresourced.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is pursuing heavy fines from Harvard and other universities as part of potential settlements to end investigations into campus antisemitism, using the deal it struck with Columbia University as a template, according to an administration official familiar with the matter.

Fines have become a staple of proposed deals in talks with Harvard and other schools, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The new strategy was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Federal civil rights investigations into schools and universities almost always have been resolved through voluntary settlements, yet they rarely include financial penalties. The Biden administration reached dozens of such deals with universities and none included fines.

Columbia’s settlement with the Trump administration included a $200 million fine in exchange for regaining access to federal funding and closing investigations accusing Columbia of tolerating harassment of Jewish students and employees.

The agreement announced Wednesday also orders Columbia to ensure its admissions and hiring decisions are “merit-based” with no consideration of race, to hire more Jewish studies faculty, and to reduce the university’s reliance on international students, among other changes. It places Columbia under the watch of an independent monitor and requires regular disclosures to the government.

The agreement deal includes a clause forbidding the government from directly dictating decisions on hiring, admissions or academics. Columbia leaders said it preserves the university’s autonomy while restoring the flow of federal money.

The Trump administration is investigating dozens of universities over allegations that they failed to address campus antisemitism amid the Israel-Hamas war, and several institutions have faced federal funding freezes, like those at Columbia and Harvard.

The federal government has frozen more than $1 billion at Cornell University, along with $790 million at Northwestern University.

In announcing the Columbia settlement, administration officials described it as a template for other universities. Education Secretary Linda McMahon called it a “roadmap” for colleges looking to regain public trust, saying it would “ripple across the higher education sector and change the course of campus culture for years to come.”

As Trump departed the White House on Friday, he told reporters that Harvard “wants to settle” but that Columbia “handled it better.” The president said he’s optimistic his administration will prevail in Harvard’s legal challenge — at least on appeal — and he suggested Harvard may never regain the level of federal funding it received in the past.

“The bottom line is we’re not going to give any more money to Harvard,” he said. “We want to spread the wealth.”

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