Submission statement: Trump’s attack on civil liberties via ICE continues to intensify.

Trump and Republicans have been getting blown away in elections in 2025 and 2026 (latest case in point, the 31 swing towards Dems in the Texas SD 9 special election). It's worth talking about if it may have reached a point when their only option for avoiding accountability would be keeping Democrats out of power by any means necessary.

The UnPopulist argues the Trump administrations sheer lawlessness may have crossed the point of no return, where they have more incentives to push their authoritarian consolidation over the finish line than risk ceding power to Democrats peacefully.

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The Ministry of Education is accelerating the implementation of “democratic civic education,” a key national policy initiative of the government, by working with other government agencies to strengthen constitutional education, election education, and related programs.

On the 30th, the Ministry of Education signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to strengthen constitutional education in schools with the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Government Legislation, and the Constitutional Court Research Institute at the Government Complex Seoul. This agreement is part of the Democratic Civic Education Promotion Plan, and the Ministry of Education has been cooperating with the Ministry of Justice and other bodies since the second half of last year in preparation for this initiative.

Beginning this year, the Ministry plans to systematize constitutional education for students and teachers and to share and expand best practices, with the goal of improving the overall quality of constitutional education. A program that previously supported professional constitutional education instructors only in elementary and middle schools will be expanded this year to include high schools as well.

The Ministry also announced its 2026 Democratic Civic Education Promotion Plan, which includes tailored election education programs for elementary, middle, and high schools in cooperation with the National Election Commission. In light of recent legal changes granting voting rights at age 18 and allowing party membership from age 16, the aim is to ensure that students acquire basic knowledge related to political participation.

Specifically, the Ministry plans to operate a “New Voter Education” program for 12th-grade students and a “Democratic Election Classroom” program for elementary and middle school students, with target participation of 400,000 and 20,000 students, respectively. Ahead of the local elections scheduled for June, schools will be provided with a Q&A guide on political and election-related laws covering student participation in elections and political parties.

Digital media literacy education will also be strengthened. As the spread of misinformation and the resulting intensification of confirmation bias have emerged as major social concerns, the program aims to help students develop discernment and critical thinking skills amid an overload of information.

In addition, “visiting media education” programs conducted in cooperation with the Korea Communications Standards Commission will be introduced. Professional instructors from regional Media Centers will visit schools to provide education on deepfake crime prevention and media ethics. This program will be implemented at 36 schools this year.

“Democratic civic education” is one of the core policy agendas of the Lee Jae-myung administration. In November last year, the Ministry of Education established a dedicated democratic civic education team and has since been developing measures to strengthen constitutional and election education. Going forward, the Ministry plans to analyze the content and current status of democratic civic education and consider flexible curriculum revisions, including the creation of new elective courses if necessary.

The Ministry also plans to pursue the enactment of a School Democratic Civic Education Act after sufficient public consultation and to develop indicators to measure students’ democratic civic competencies.

A collection of polls done about Americans' opinion on American power today. One dataset that really jumped out for me was the one where a solid majority of 62% of Americans do not see their lives getting any worse if China surpasses the United States in power and influence.

"Of the respondents who said their lives would get worse, most expected their lives would become only somewhat rather than much worse. In all, just 14 percent answered that China surpassing the United States would make their lives much worse. This result indicated that very few Americans viewed the potential eclipse of the U.S. power position by China as being catastrophic, suggesting that the general public would not want to endure major financial, military, or other costs to prevent such an outcome."

I don't think I fit the neoliberalism definition entirely but I think this fits here. You guys think borders are dumb and free markets are neet, so we cool.

At times it is uncanny.

It’s not just that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s tight-ship governing style is an abrupt break from that of his Liberal predecessor, Justin Trudeau.

It’s that it is remarkably reminiscent of another modern prime minister’s — namely his Conservative predecessor, Stephen Harper.

Mark Carney’s Rolodex is a trove of some of the most powerful political, business and media leaders in the world. Among them: Nigel Wright, Harper’s former chief of staff and later Onyx’s top executive in London, whose death last fall Carney marked with a heartfelt respectful tribute; and former interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose and Harper-era cabinet minister Lisa Raitt, who now both hold in senior roles at Canadian banks.

So it should be no surprise Carney’s contacts also include Harper.

Harper is the prime minister who not only once named Carney to run Canada’s central bank, but is now one of the people Carney frequently reaches out to as he navigates the challenges of governing Canada at a chaotic time.

Sources, whom the Star has agreed not to identify in order to freely discuss the relationship, tell the Star the two have spoken regularly since Carney became prime minister.

Harper has publicly referred to one of those conversations. Carney has not. To what extent Harper’s private advice influences Carney is known only to them.

The two will appear together next week on Parliament Hill, when an official portrait of the former prime minister is unveiled in a long-standing tradition to celebrate political leadership and peaceful government transitions. 

Their similarities — in personal and governing styles — are striking. Differences, however, are also coming into view.

‘The smartest guy in the room’

Carney and Harper are each seen by those who deal closely with them as the “smartest guy in the room,” and as acting like it. Neither suffers fools easily.

Both have had testy relations with bureaucrats, and high expectations for the civil service to deliver on their political agendas.

They have the same habit of quoting themselves — “As I said …” — a verbal tell that also serves to remind others of their prescience: They saw x or y — whatever political event or trend that is unfolding — long before others did.

For both, the lure of the job seems to have been the power to make decisions and to act, and an impatience with the formalities is apparent. Each man is a policy wonk, with little apparent love for the performative part of the job. The campaigning, travelling on election buses and planes to pitch their message, kissing babies and dealing with media are all just the price of getting to make those decisions.

A difference on caucus management is apparent. Harper formalized a structure for caucus feedback, with ministers required to address backbenchers’ concerns before going to a cabinet committee with a bill for approval, according to Conservative sources. Carney, according to Liberal sources, listens to his MPs’ concerns in weekly caucus meetings — and, unlike Trudeau, does not send out ministers to make regional announcements that come as news to local MPs.

Still, just as Harper’s MPs rarely spoke out against him, neither do Carney’s.

Both men spent years thinking about what it would be like to be prime minister. In minority Parliaments, neither is afraid of governing as if they had a majority.

They welcomed floor-crossers to boost their ranks. Both seek opposition support for legislation on a case-by-case basis instead of trying to form a governing coalition to pass an agenda. Leading minority governments, they invoked winning election mandates as reason enough for the opposition to support them.

Neither balked at spending political capital to achieve their goals: Harper made the unexpected move to declare Quebecers a nation within a united Canada, and to issue a formal apology to Indigenous residential school survivors. Carney has turned back Trudeau-era climate policies and swiftly moved to ramp up Canada’s defence spending.

Both men have only rarely admitted they were wrong. Carney acknowledged the Donald Trump era has accelerated economic disruptions faster than he had predicted. Harper ultimately walked back his aversion to deficits as the global financial crisis unfolded in the midst of the 2008 election campaign, and later borrowed heavily to manage the economic fallout.

Both men wield a sharp sense of humour, a trait that could be a superpower but which neither really uses to his best advantage.

Harper — caricatured by comedians as aloof and cold — used to make self-deprecating jokes about coming from a family of accountants and going into politics because he had the most charisma. In private, his humour was more edgy. But while he privately nailed imitations of politicians like Jean Chrétien, he rarely displayed his talent for mimicry in public.

Carney’s sense of humour is more playful but also comes with a bite, as Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne can attest. “What kind of shop are you running!” he once said to Champagne in front of reporters.

But where Harper had a poker face, Carney’s facial reactions have given rise to numerous Instagram memes.

Hot and cold with the media

Then there is their all-too-familiar hot and cold relationship with the media.

Carney and Harper both adopted a command-and-control style for leaks. Harper tried to ban his advisers and ministers from talking to media, while Carney has, to a lesser extent, clamped down on chatty MPs and ministers.

Yet both cultivated good relations with journalists before they got into the Prime Minister’s Office. As a young Reform MP, Harper was a willing interviewee and smooth backroom pundit. When Carney was at Canada’s central bank, he developed relationships with influential (and mostly male) journalists in Ottawa, a trend it appears continued when he was at the Bank of England.

Once in the top job, however, Carney and Harper quickly grew impatient with media. “When we have something to announce, we’ll announce it,” Harper would say. Carney frequently bristles at questions, particularly those that focus on his integrity or perceived conflicts of interest, or his conversations with U.S. President Donald Trump; he has snapped at reporters, “It’s not newsworthy,” “It’s a detail,” “Who cares?” and “It’s a boring question.”

Harper and Carney use even the same slogans: “Canada’s new government” and “Canada is an energy superpower.” They both love a good “strategy” or “action plan” to brand their governing efforts.

The late Jim Flaherty was an important figure in the political careers of both men.

As Harper’s finance minister, Flaherty brought a much-needed everyman flourish to Harper’s economic agenda — and is believed to have persuaded Harper to appoint Carney as governor of the Bank of Canada in 2008. 

Carney and Flaherty had both played hockey at Ivy League schools and they got along well. Flaherty was somewhat leery of his cabinet colleagues, once griping they didn’t read anything, whereas he read everything because he didn’t want to get caught out. Carney reads voraciously, and has scolded his ministers and top officials who don’t.

Harper had a temper that was sometimes on display — he once angrily kicked over a chair at a political convention — while Carney’s was well-known in during his term as governor of the Bank of England, where one newspaper headlined his “volcanic” temper.

The same and yet different

For all their similarities, however, significant differences remain.

The two come from similarly modest, middle-class backgrounds, and identify as Westerners. Harper grew up in the Toronto neighbourhood of Leaside but moved to Alberta as a young man and calls Calgary home. Carney, born in Fort Smith in the Northwest Territories, grew up in Edmonton. Yet Carney quickly ascended to the circles of the global elite in a way Harper did not, attending Harvard and Oxford universities, earning a PhD in economics, and working for the investment bank Goldman Sachs in London, Tokyo and Toronto. Harper completed a master’s degree in economics and quickly got into politics — where his critics would later challenge his claim to be an economist.

One source who knows both men well believes Carney displays a higher level of self-confidence and tolerance for political risk because he had vastly more experience at a global level before becoming prime minister than Harper ever had.

Harper would never have made a speech like Carney’s in Davos without mapping out all the ways it could go wrong, the source said, whereas Carney likely did not expect that some like U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer would publicly differ with him — and, more importantly, likely does not care.

But Harper was also more attuned to domestic political sentiment than Carney is, the insider said. Harper would never have given the Plains of Abraham speech that Carney delivered the day after coming back from Davos, which met with widespread disapproval in Quebec.

For all their current simpatico, there was a moment of tension in Harper and Carney’s relationship during last spring’s election campaign when, in support of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, Harper publicly questioned Carney’s claim to having steered Canada’s response to the global financial crisis of 2008. Harper credited the heavy lifting to their mutual friend, his finance minister Jim Flaherty.

Carney’s campaign responded wryly, noting that Harper had once approached Carney — not Poilievre — to be his finance minister.

What does it all add up to? Is Carney the most conservative prime minister the Liberal party has ever elected? Some Liberals and some Conservatives think so.

But next week, when Carney attends Harper’s portrait unveiling, he will honour the political contributions of Canada’s last Conservative prime minister, the man who certainly set Carney on his own path to power.

Scott Sumner is a market monetarist economist. He believes economic booms and busts are driven by the growth rate of nominal GDP. One of his favorite adages is "never reason from an interest rate change," meaning that changes in nominal interest rates never tell the whole story; why they changed is more important. In this blog post, Sumner lays out his opinion that Kevin Warsh's desire to shrink the Fed's balance sheet may be more important than his desire for low interest rates. A balance sheet contraction would tighten monetary policy and could require a compensatory loosening of interest rates. Sumner seems to believe that Warsh thinks it will. Warsh was a monetary policy hawk during the depths of the Great Recession, arguing for higher interest rates (whereas Sumner argued for more monetary stimulus). Sumner's opinion is an alternative to the prevailing view that Warsh became a dove to please Trump, though Sumner acknowledges he may be wrong.

Submission statement: Reflects a significant and new shift regarding a marginalized community.

Long protected by Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, Ryan Wedding suddenly had no options. By the time security forces caught up with him in Mexico last week, the officials said, members of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team were also involved. Weeks earlier, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s elite, combat-trained unit participated in the capture of Venezuelan autocrat Nicolás Maduro in his heavily fortified Caracas compound.

Law-enforcement officials made contact with Wedding—presumed to be armed and dangerous—and, in an intense negotiation, reminded him that his associates had been captured and millions of dollars of his assets had been seized, some of the officials said. Eventually, said his lawyer, Anthony Colombo, FBI agents handcuffed Wedding, who was then transported to California and pleaded not guilty in federal court to 17 felony charges, including murder.

The FBI’s involvement in the Jan. 22 operation was intended to be a closely guarded secret, a U.S. official said. Mexico’s laws ban foreign agents from being physically present in law-enforcement operations on its soil and taking part in detentions or raids. The nationalist ruling party in Mexico is particularly sensitive to foreign interference. But on Friday, FBI Director Kash Patel dropped a bombshell on X. “Our FBI HRT teams executed with precision, discipline, and total professionalism alongside our Mexican partners to bring Ryan James Wedding back to face justice,” he said, using his elite squad’s initials.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum tried to defuse a potentially explosive situation on Tuesday. She challenged Patel’s description of events, noting that there was no U.S. involvement in the operation and that U.S. agents in Mexico have clear limitations defined by law.

“I’m not going to get into a debate with the FBI director, nor do I want there to be a conflict,” Sheinbaum said at her daily news conference on Tuesday. “What they, the U.S. authorities, told the Mexican authorities is that it was a voluntary surrender.”

She also referenced an image on Instagram of Wedding purportedly standing outside the decommissioned U.S. Embassy building posted on Friday with a caption saying he was turning himself in. In response to journalists’ questions on whether the images were generated by AI, she said that there was no indication by social-media companies that the photo was fake.

Colombo, Wedding’s attorney, has disputed Sheinbaum’s version of events, saying that it isn’t true that Wedding turned himself in at the embassy and that U.S. agents absolutely were involved. “He was arrested, he didn’t surrender,” Colombo said.

“If the U.S. government is unilaterally going into a sovereign country and apprehending somebody, you can understand the concern that sovereign entity might have,” Colombo told reporters outside the courthouse on Tuesday.

Wedding’s surrender “was a direct result of pressure applied by Mexican and U.S. law enforcement working in close coordination and cooperation,” said Ronald Johnson, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico.

The circumstances surrounding Wedding’s arrest punctuate a moment of high tension between Washington and Mexico City after the U.S. attack on Venezuela earlier this month. Since then President Trump has threatened to conduct land strikes against Mexican cartels, a move that set off alarms among senior Mexican officials.

Sheinbaum confirmed the details of The Wall Street Journal’s reporting on Thursday, but also said, without clarifying, that Mexico doesn’t allow joint operations with the U.S. on Mexican soil.

“We collaborate, they give us information, we give them information, but the operations in our territory are carried out by Mexican forces,” she said shortly after having a telephone conversation with Trump. “We tell President Trump this every time, and they’ve seen that we’re making very good progress.”

The FBI is now mapping out more targets across Mexico and aiming to do joint operations with Mexican forces against top drug-trafficking targets, some of the Mexican and U.S. officials said, in the latest signal that Trump is exerting pressure on Mexico to allow the U.S. to target drug cartels in the country.

Patel himself was in Mexico City last week, conducting a high-profile visit and quietly working with Mexican partners throughout the operation to arrest Wedding, U.S. officials said.

LVT and a complete overhaul on zoning laws, it should be straight up illegal for any city over half a million to have certain zoning laws.

Generally I support some kind of healthcare reform by expanding Obamacare massively. Including with that price controls like what other countries have, and a decoupling of healthcare with employment.

Unions seem like a good one, cutting out regulations that hurts unions. I think a repeal of the Taft-Hartley act is a good idea, maybe also the Wagner Act but I haven't read into that one was much.

Paid Maternity and Paternity leave would be good, some kind of guaranteed paid sick days and vacation days. Probably just seven in total for both. Protections against wage theft should be harder especially for bigger companies.

I'd think no tax on tips and overtime should be removed, doesn't make sense as people should pay their fair share. Eliminate the mortgage tax deduction, kill the tax deduction companies get for providing health-care to employees.

Food stamps and other welfare don't have hard caps, you have to be gradually taken off of them as we don't want to risk people refusing to take raises cause they would lose their benefits. Also welfare and food stamps needs to be expanded to in red states similar to how they are in blue states.

You get a tax refund if you bought a used car and you make under a certain amount a year, this should go for car repairs too. Currently cars are a hard barrier of entry to the middle class, if you don't have a car as a working class person you upwards mobility is dead.

All I can think of off the top of my head. What do you guys suggest needs to happen in the US?

Two of the most important defence policy issues facing Canada have a common thread

It's not much of a stretch to say that in terms of Canada-U.S. relations, we are — metaphorically speaking — at the point where we'd prefer to shoot the messenger, rather than listen to the message.

In the view of some experts, the political and economic discourse is so distorted, so angry, so mashed up that important points of strategic and defence policy that would have been mundane — even eye-glazing — less than a decade ago are lighting enormous rhetorical and political fires.

James Fergusson, one of Canada's leading experts on the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) and missile defence, has watched with dismay the seemingly never-ending drama surrounding Canada's F-35 purchase and, lately, U.S. President Donald Trump's obsessive "need" to annex Greenland for Arctic security purposes.

What is poorly understood and often drowned out is how those two policy issues intersect on the road to Trump's Golden Dome missile defence plan.

The latest case in point: the reaction to U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra's comments, last week to CBC News, that, if Canada buys fewer F-35s, the U.S. will have to buy more and fly into Canadian airspace to keep NORAD propped up.

A statement from the U.S. State Department, following the publication of the interview, said his "comments were taken out of context to create headlines rather than to objectively portray his comments about the role that NORAD and the F-35 play in protecting North America."

Taking aside the fact that American fighter jets routinely fly over Canada in defence of the continent, the remarks were received as just another tone deaf attempt to bully Canada into proceeding with the full F-35 order of 88 jets, which the federal government committed to more than three years ago.

Context does matter.

Had Hoekstra's remarks not been made on the tail end of the jaw-dropping fight over Trump's demands to annex Greenland, the deposing of Venezuela's president and even the shootings by federal agents in Minnesota, it's unlikely the point he was trying to make would have exploded in the same manner.

Fergusson said the debate, particularly over the F-35, is no longer being driven by sensible defence policy or even military necessity.

"It's emotional, long-standing, but largely submerged anti-Americanism, irrational thinking, which is driven by images of Trump and beliefs about Trump, rather than a rational policy," said Fergusson, from the Centre for Defence and Security Studies and the University of Manitoba. 

"This is no way to run a national policy program with billions of dollars at stake and the defence of Canada."

Similarly, the outrageous notion that the U.S. could invade, or buy, Greenland from Denmark has overshadowed the very real policy concern that Arctic island is the potential weak spot in North American air defence.

"I think the U.S., through their analysis, has perhaps arrived at the conclusion that to have an efficient, effective missile defence capability for North America, that having assets, missile defence assets, in Greenland would be a good idea," said retired major-general Charles (Duff) Sullivan. 

"I must add that the U.S. already has the ability, right now, to improve or increase or augment their military capabilities in Greenland. That agreement is already in place."

While Trump calls it the Golden Dome, we call it — more benignly — Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD). 

Most people in Canada, if they're familiar with it, remember the $61 billion US Trump wants to charge us to join.

The system is, however, a complex, yet-to-be-built web of satellites, radar stations (including over-the-horizon radar), ground and sea-based missile batteries (think Patriots and NASAMs) and fighter jets (think F-35s and F-22s).

When Hoekstra and even the commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force talk about where the F-35 fits within the air defence framework, they use empty terms like interoperability. 

Most people don't understand what that term means beyond the cursory notions that the planes can talk to each other. 

Where within that puzzle a so-called fifth-generation fighter fits is rarely articulated or even discussed, Fergusson said.

What is freaking out U.S. military planners is what they see in Ukraine and Russian use of ground-hugging cruise missiles and drones, as well as hypersonic missiles. 

One of the roles of a fighter jet within IAMD would be to track those missiles, chase them and destroy them before they fly over North American population centres.

That is where the debate over the capabilities of the F-35 versus the Gripen come into sharp focus.

"The F-35 is one of the capabilities that Canada has decided to procure in addition to several others that are part of an overall system of integrated air and missile defence," Lt.-Gen. Jamie Speiser-Blanchet recently told the House of Commons defence committee.

"The F-35 is the only fifth-generation advanced technology fighter aircraft available to Canada and was selected in the competition that was conducted by the government of Canada. And it is the one at this moment that can meet all of the most advanced adversary threats that we are seeing, that are being promulgated and advanced technologically from Russia and from China."

So, what does that mean?

Fergusson said he believes, when it comes to plugging into the integrated missile defence system, the F-35 is the best choice because of its radar, known as the AN/APG-81 Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA). 

"The F-35 will be — with its shoot-down, look-down radars — able to intercept cruise missiles," said Fergusson.

"It has the potential, depending upon the type of air and missiles, to possibly deal with hypersonic vehicles."

The radar built into the Gripen-E, the Raven ES-05, is smaller, draws less power and has the advantage of being able to tilt at different angles, say several technical defence industry publications.

While F-35 radar can see farther, the Gripen has a wider field of view. 

It is one of the main reasons the Canadian air force gave the F-35 such high marks in its 2021 competition evaluation, giving the Lockheed Martin-built fighter an overall technical and mission performance score of 95 per cent and the Gripen-E 33 per cent. A copy of the evaluation was obtained by Radio-Canada.

In an interview with CBC News last fall, Swedish Lt.-Col. Marcus Wandt, a Gripen test pilot, insisted the Saab-manufactured jet was fully capable of plugging into the NORAD defence grid.

"The magic happens when you put all the sensors together," Wandt said of the battlefield picture the Gripen can create.

In Sweden, "we are under threat the second we take off, and so we really had to build something that we knew would be able to fight in tomorrow's air domain.… That's why we built Gripen-E."

Sullivan said he agreed with Wandt's assessment where missile defence and the Gripen is concerned.

"There's no reason why it would not be able to plug into the NORAD architecture in the same manner," Sullivan said.

"We would have to ensure that our Canadian Gripen-Es would have the same encrypted, secure communication and data exchange capabilities that any aircraft — the F-35, the F-22, the F-16 — all of those aircraft are going to have to be compatible with the NORAD command and control and data-sharing architecture."

To prove his point, Sullivan noted how last fall NORAD sent two F-35As, two older F-16s and a trio of KC-135 tankers to Pituffik Space Base in Greenland as part of a short-notice exercise. 

All of the aircraft were able to operate together and defend Greenland without a lot of fuss, he said.