分类： politics

Trump claims other presidents flouted war powers law. It’s a mixed record

A high-stakes constitutional and political debate has erupted in Washington over President Donald Trump’s refusal to seek congressional approval to continue U.S. military operations against Iran, as the 60-day deadline mandated by the 1973 War Powers Resolution expired this Friday.

Speaking to reporters ahead of the deadline, Trump insisted that he has no legal requirement to secure congressional authorization for the ongoing conflict, claiming that no prior U.S. president has ever sought such approval for military action. “It’s never been used. It’s never been adhered to. Nobody’s ever asked for it before,” Trump said, adding that past commanders-in-chief have long viewed Congress’s claimed authority to limit presidential war powers as “totally unconstitutional.”

The reality of presidential compliance with the 1973 law, however, is far more nuanced than Trump’s framing. Enacted in the aftermath of the Vietnam War to curb unilateral executive war-making and restrict then-President Richard Nixon’s ability to escalate conflict without legislative backing, the War Powers Resolution requires the president to terminate any U.S. military engagement within 60 days of notifying Congress of its launch, unless lawmakers explicitly vote to extend the operation. This Friday marked exactly 60 days since the Trump administration notified Congress of the start of strikes against Tehran on February 28.

Both Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth argue that the 60-day clock was paused when the current ceasefire between U.S. and Iranian forces went into effect, triggering ongoing disagreement over whether ceasefire periods count towards the congressionally mandated deadline. Legal experts, however, reject this interpretation. “Nothing in the War Powers Act suggests a pause of hostilities changes the requirements of the law,” said David Schultz, a professor of political science and legal studies at Hamline University in Minnesota. “Just because other presidents haven’t invoked the law doesn’t mean that what Trump is doing here is correct. Here, Trump has basically committed us to combat without any support from Congress. And if we go back to the founding of this country, one of the core fears the framers had was a strong executive committing the nation to war without the support of the elected legislative branch.”

A look at modern U.S. history reveals that multiple of Trump’s predecessors did comply with the War Powers Resolution by securing congressional approval before launching large-scale military operations. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan obtained congressional approval to deploy U.S. Marines to Lebanon within the 60-day window, bringing his campaign into full compliance with the law. President George H.W. Bush sought and received congressional authorization for the 1991 Gulf War ahead of launching Operation Desert Storm, even as he maintained that he did not legally require the approval. His son, George W. Bush, won explicit congressional backing for the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

That said, Trump is correct that several past administrations did find ways to circumvent the 1973 law. President Bill Clinton allowed the 1999 NATO bombing campaign in Kosovo to run 18 days past the 60-day deadline without seeking congressional authorization, with the entire operation lasting 78 days. President Barack Obama argued that the 2011 U.S. military intervention in Libya did not qualify as “hostilities” under the War Powers Resolution, allowing the campaign to continue for more than seven months without congressional approval.

Trump has pushed back against criticism by noting that the current conflict with Iran has been far shorter in duration than many past U.S. wars, pointing to the 19-year Vietnam War, nearly nine-year Iraq War, six-year World War II, and three-year Korean War as points of comparison. Still, a clear path to ending the conflict remains elusive: Washington and Tehran remain deadlocked over two core issues, control of the strategic Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear program, leaving Trump’s exit strategy from the conflict unconfirmed. Echoing a line former President Barack Obama used in 2014 about the war in Afghanistan, ending the U.S. engagement in Iran appears far harder than starting it.

1 5 月, 2026
61% of Americans see Trump’s Iran war as ‘mistake’: new poll

A new joint poll conducted by The Washington Post, ABC News and Ipsos, released Friday, has revealed that more than 60 percent of U.S. adults now view President Donald Trump’s military conflict in Iran as a fundamental mistake. What makes this shift in public opinion extraordinary is how rapidly it has occurred: in just two months since the war began, the conflict has already hit levels of public disapproval that took previous, widely discredited U.S. wars years to reach.

CNN senior political analyst Aaron Blake notes that polling data stretching back decades puts this rapid backlash in stark context. It took more than three years of the Iraq War for a 60-percent majority of Americans to label the conflict a mistake, while the Vietnam War required six years of continuous fighting and tens of thousands of American troop deaths to cross the same threshold.

To understand how unprecedented this speed of disapproval is, it is necessary to look back at public opinion at the start of past major conflicts. When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 under President George W. Bush, even amid growing grassroots protest, 81 percent of voters backed the invasion in April 2003, with just 16 percent calling it a mistake. It was only as the occupation devolved into a years-long deadly quagmire, and it became clear the Bush administration’s justifications for the war – claims of weapons of mass destruction – were deliberate falsehoods, that public support eroded steadily, finally hitting 64 percent opposition by 2007.

Vietnam never commanded the overwhelming early backing that Iraq saw, but even so, 60 percent of Americans supported President Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 decision to deploy direct U.S. military intervention, with just 24 percent calling the move a mistake. While widespread anti-war protests became a defining cultural moment of the conflict, public opinion did not solidify against the war until 1968, and it was not until 1971 – after more than 50,000 U.S. troops had been killed in action – that a 61 percent majority called the war a mistake.

Unlike both Iraq and Vietnam, Trump’s Iran war has never enjoyed even a fleeting period of broad public consensus. Just days after the launch of the campaign, branded “Operation Epic Fury” by the Trump administration, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found only 27 percent of Americans approved of the opening strikes that killed 555 Iranians, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and multiple senior Iranian officials. Even at that early stage, 43 percent already disapproved of the action, a gap far wider than that seen at the start of any prior major U.S. conflict, with the remaining 30 percent of respondents still undecided.

Over the following two months, that undecided bloc has swung firmly against the conflict. Multiple damaging developments have fueled the shift: public confirmation that a U.S. double-tap airstrike on an Iranian school killed at least 155 people, 120 of them children; Iranian retaliation that blocked oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, pushing U.S. gasoline prices soaring above $4 per gallon; and increasingly aggressive rhetoric from Trump that critics have labeled an overtly genocidal posture toward Iran, which has made any peaceful negotiated resolution increasingly remote even under the current fragile ceasefire.

Friday’s poll confirms that while the war retains a core loyal base of 36 percent of Americans who still view it as the right decision – nearly all of whom identify as Republican – this base is heavily outnumbered by the 61 percent who now call the conflict a mistake.

Majorities of respondents across all demographic groups also linked the war to a range of serious national risks: 61 percent said it has increased the threat of terrorist attacks targeting Americans, 60 percent said it raises the risk of the U.S. economy tipping into recession, and 56 percent said it has damaged the United States’ relationships with its key global allies.

A deeper breakdown of polling data exposes a particularly troubling trend for the Trump administration: the war has almost no support outside the president’s most dedicated base. 91 percent of self-identified Democrats now label the conflict a mistake, and 71 percent of independent voters – a large majority of whom were undecided when the war began – have also turned against it, leaving just 24 percent of independents in support.

Even within the Republican Party, the war has created a sharp divide. 86 percent of self-identified MAGA Republicans still back the conflict, but moderate non-MAGA Republicans are deeply split: 50 percent still call the war the right decision, while 49 percent now view it as a mistake. Many of these Republican skeptics were rattled by Trump’s threatening remark last month that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran refused to accept a negotiating deal on his terms. A majority of all Republicans, 53 percent, said they viewed that incendiary threat negatively.

It remains unclear whether even Trump’s most loyal supporters will continue backing the war if the conflict drags on, and recent public remarks from top administration officials suggest the White House remains in denial about the scale of public opposition. On Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared before Congress, where Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, pressed him on the administration’s failure to build broad public support for the conflict, noting that three out of five Americans now oppose it. Hegseth rejected the premise outright, claiming “I believe we do have the support of the American people.” He pushed back on critics by noting the conflict is only two months old, arguing that calls for withdrawal are premature – a curious framing, given Trump himself initially claimed the war would last only four to five weeks.

During his testimony, Hegseth compared the Iran conflict to past long-running U.S. wars, arguing “Iraq took how many years? Afghanistan took how many years? And they were nebulous missions that people went along with. This is different.” That claim of a clear mission, however, falls flat: the Trump administration has offered a constantly shifting set of justifications for the war, ranging from regime change in Tehran, defending Iranian anti-government protesters, destroying Iran’s nuclear program, eliminating its ballistic missile arsenal, seizing Iranian oil fields, defending Israel, and reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

1 5 月, 2026
Brouhaha over Iran war costs to US taxpayers

A fierce public debate has erupted over the full financial burden of former President Donald Trump’s Iran war, with multiple independent analysts, lawmakers, and even Iran’s top diplomat challenging the Pentagon’s official $25 billion cost estimate as a deliberate undercount that misleads U.S. taxpayers.

The controversy ignited after Jules Hurst, the Pentagon’s acting comptroller, testified under oath before U.S. lawmakers that the Trump administration had accumulated $25 billion in expenditures on the conflict, a widely unpopular war of choice launched by the former administration. The New York Times noted that Hurst offered no additional details to contextualize the figure, which is dramatically lower than the $200 billion the Pentagon initially requested for the conflict. The low number also indicates a sharp slowdown in spending, despite early war data showing the conflict cost more than $11 billion in its first six days alone.

Independent and institutional analysts have repeatedly pushed back against the official estimate, releasing their own assessments that place the direct cost of the conflict far higher. This month, the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress calculated that direct Pentagon spending exceeded $33 billion in just the first 39 days of fighting. A ceasefire-era assessment from the conservative American Enterprise Institute, released April 10, put the total direct cost between $25 billion and $35 billion. Independent policy analyst Stephen Semler went further, estimating the U.S. spent nearly $29 billion on the war in its opening two weeks – an average of $2.1 billion per day. Semler accused Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of lying to Congress in a social media post Thursday, arguing that the total opening two-week cost alone already exceeded the Pentagon’s full $25 billion official estimate.

The debate went cross-border Friday when Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi joined the criticism, taking to social media to reject the Pentagon’s figure as a deliberate fourfold undercount. “The Pentagon is lying,” Araghchi wrote, claiming the conflict – which he framed as a gamble tied to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – has already cost U.S. taxpayers $100 billion in direct spending, four times the official claim. He added that indirect costs borne by American households are far higher, putting the current monthly burden at $500 per household and rising rapidly.

Beyond direct military spending, experts and lawmakers have drawn attention to the massive indirect costs the conflict has imposed on U.S. consumers through soaring energy and food prices. Democratic U.S. Representative Ro Khanna of California told the House of Representatives Thursday that when accounting for these price hikes, the total cost of the war to Americans surges to more than $630 billion – an average of $5,000 per household. “We need to end this war now, and help the American people reduce costs,” Khanna said.

Long-term projections paint an even starker picture of the conflict’s financial toll. Linda Bilmes, a public policy scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School, warned in early April that when factoring in long-term obligations like veterans’ health care and other sustained outlays, the total lifetime cost of the Iran war to U.S. taxpayers could top $1 trillion. Bilmes noted that pinning down an exact exact cumulative cost is challenging in the early stages of the conflict, but current data shows the conflict runs about $2 billion per day in short-term direct costs alone – a figure that represents just the tip of a much larger financial iceberg.

1 5 月, 2026
US court limits mail-order access to abortion pill mifepristone

On a Friday ruling that has upended the ongoing national battle over abortion access in the United States, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a temporary order that sharply curtails access to mifepristone, the core medication used in most US pregnancy terminations, by banning mail distribution and telemedicine pharmacy dispensing. The decision reverses a 2023 U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) policy that permanently eliminated the longstanding requirement that patients pick up the drug in person from a clinical provider, a rule that grew out of pandemic-era access expansions first enacted in 2021.

The legal challenge that led to this ruling was brought by the state of Louisiana, which argues that the FDA’s relaxed distribution rules directly invalidate the state’s total ban on abortion. In its official order, the appellate court wrote that every abortion enabled by the FDA’s policy overrides Louisiana’s abortion ban and contradicts the state’s official stance that “every unborn child is a human being from the moment of conception and is, therefore, a legal person.”

Mifepristone is the first drug in the two-step medication abortion regimen endorsed by the FDA: it blocks progesterone, a hormone required to sustain a pregnancy, and is followed by misoprostol, which empties the uterus. The drug was first approved for use up to seven weeks of pregnancy in the U.S. in 2000, with approval extended to 10 weeks in 2016. It is also used off-label to treat incomplete miscarriages and Cushing syndrome, while misoprostol has long been prescribed for stomach ulcers and postpartum hemorrhage, a non-abortion use that has kept it out of most recent regulatory battles.

Mainstream U.S. medical bodies including the FDA and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have repeatedly confirmed mifepristone’s safety after more than two decades of use. FDA data shows more than 3.7 million American women used the drug between 2000 and 2018, and clinical data puts the effectiveness of the full two-drug regimen at roughly 95%, with less than 1% of cases requiring additional invasive medical intervention.

This latest ruling comes against a shifting legal backdrop for abortion access in the U.S. In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the federal constitutional right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade, leaving regulation up to individual states. Two years later, in 2024, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected one high-profile effort to restrict mifepristone, but left open the possibility for future state-led challenges to the drug’s distribution rules. Friday’s ruling also overrides a recent lower court decision that paused the case to allow the FDA time to complete a regulatory review of the 2023 policy.

Reaction to the ruling has split sharply along pro-choice and anti-abortion lines. American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Julia Kaye condemned the decision in an official statement, arguing it ignores established medical science and existing legal precedent to advance an anti-abortion policy that a majority of Americans oppose. Kaye added that for vulnerable groups including rural patients, survivors of intimate partner violence, and people living with disabilities, eliminating telemedicine and mail access will cut off access to the vital medication entirely.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, who brought the challenge, celebrated the ruling, claiming the Biden-era FDA rule enabled the deaths of thousands of unborn children in Louisiana and millions across the country. “I look forward to continuing to defend women and babies as this case continues,” she said.

Other state officials have moved to reassure patients that abortion access will remain unchanged in jurisdictions where it remains legal. New York Attorney General Letitia James confirmed Friday that abortion care, including medication abortion, will remain legal and accessible in New York regardless of the appellate ruling. “Mifepristone is safe, effective, and essential. Restrictions on abortion care are restrictions on life-saving health care. This decision puts lives at risk,” James said.

1 5 月, 2026
US appeals court temporarily halts mail delivery of abortion pill

In a move that reignites the decades-long national debate over abortion access in the United States, a federal appeals court imposed a temporary suspension on mail and pharmacy delivery of mifepristone Friday, the medication that accounts for the majority of abortion procedures across the country. The order came in a lawsuit filed against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by the state of Louisiana, a southern U.S. state with some of the nation’s most restrictive anti-abortion policies.

The ruling came from a three-judge panel of the conservative-majority 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. It reverses an earlier lower court decision that permitted mail delivery of the drug to continue while the FDA undertakes a review of its existing regulatory framework for mifepristone. Under the new order, any person seeking mifepristone anywhere in the U.S. must obtain the drug in person from a licensed health clinic, eliminating all options for delivery by post or commercial pharmacy.

Supporters of tighter restrictions on mifepristone have centered their arguments on a non-peer-reviewed study conducted by a conservative think tank, which was released via a public website rather than a peer-reviewed scientific journal. The FDA first granted formal approval to mifepristone, which is sold under the brand name Mifeprex, back in 2000. Today, it is the most widely used method of abortion care in the U.S., and it is also a standard treatment for managing early-stage pregnancy loss.

In clinical use, mifepristone works by halting the progression of a pregnancy, and it is paired with a second medication, misoprostol, which expels the uterine lining. Together, the two drugs are approved by the FDA for terminating pregnancies up to 10 weeks (70 days) of gestation.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, a leading opponent of abortion access, celebrated the court’s decision, framing it as what she called a “Victory for Life!” In a statement following the ruling, Murrill claimed the Biden administration had facilitated what she labeled an “abortion cartel” that caused “the deaths of thousands of Louisiana babies (and millions in other states) through illegal mail-order abortion pills,” adding that “today, that nightmare is over.”

But abortion rights advocates have sharply condemned the ruling, which is already on track to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, called the order politically motivated rather than evidence-based. “This isn’t about science — it’s about making abortion as difficult, expensive, and unreachable as possible,” Northup said in an official statement.

Julia Kaye, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), emphasized that the decision creates unnecessary barriers to a medication that has been used safely by both abortion patients and people experiencing miscarriage for more than two and a half decades. “Anti-abortion politicians have just made it much harder for people everywhere in the country to get a medication that abortion and miscarriage patients have been safely using for more than 25 years,” Kaye noted.

The latest legal development comes amid a sweeping shift in U.S. abortion policy that followed the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that had enshrined a constitutional right to abortion nationwide for 50 years. Since that 2022 ruling, roughly 20 states have implemented full or partial bans on abortion care. Despite aggressive pushes from conservative groups to outlaw or severely limit abortion, consistent public opinion polling shows a majority of U.S. adults support maintaining widespread access to safe, legal abortion.

Most recently, in 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a separate challenge to mifepristone access, ruling that anti-abortion groups and physicians who brought the suit lacked the legal standing required to challenge the FDA’s approval of the drug.

1 5 月, 2026
US to withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany in next 6-12 months, fulfilling Trump’s threat

The Pentagon officially confirmed Friday that approximately 5,000 United States military personnel will be pulled out of Germany over the next six to 12 months, carrying out a threat issued by President Donald Trump amid a sharp public clash with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz over Washington’s ongoing war with Iran.

The dispute that triggered this latest troop withdrawal plan erupted earlier this week, after Merz publicly stated that U.S. leadership had been “humiliated” by Iran’s government and harshly criticized the Biden administration’s lack of a clear strategic framework for the conflict. Trump picked up on the criticism quickly, moving to follow through on his long-stated goal of shrinking the U.S. military footprint in the European NATO ally.

In an official statement, Pentagon press secretary Sean Parnell framed the troop drawdown as the outcome of a comprehensive review of the Defense Department’s force posture across Europe, noting the decision aligns with current theater operational requirements and on-the-ground security conditions. Germany currently hosts a sprawling network of critical U.S. military infrastructure, including the joint headquarters for U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command, Ramstein Air Base — a key logistics and transport hub for U.S. operations across Europe, Africa and the Middle East — and Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, which for decades has treated combat casualties from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The country also hosts deployed U.S. nuclear missiles as part of NATO’s collective deterrence framework.

The 5,000 troops scheduled for withdrawal make up roughly 14% of the 36,000 active-duty U.S. service members currently stationed across Germany. Nico Lange, a senior fellow at the Center of European Policy Analysis, told the Associated Press earlier this week that most of the U.S. troops deployed to Germany primarily serve core American strategic interests, including the global projection of U.S. military power, rather than focused support for Germany’s territorial defense.

As President Trump boarded Air Force One following an economic policy rally in Ocala, Florida Friday, he declined to answer reporter questions about the withdrawal decision. This is not the first time Trump has advanced a plan to cut U.S. troop numbers in Germany: during his first term, he proposed pulling roughly 9,500 troops from the then-garrison of 34,500 U.S. personnel, but never initiated the drawdown process. Shortly after taking office in 2021, former Democratic President Joe Biden formally canceled the planned withdrawal.

The unpredictable U.S. leader has publicly debated reducing the American military presence in Germany for years, and has repeatedly criticized NATO for declining to join the U.S.-led war against Iran, which began February 28 with coordinated U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iranian targets. In a social media post Wednesday, Trump confirmed the administration was reviewing potential troop reductions and would announce a final decision imminently. The next day, he doubled down on his criticism of Merz, posting that the German chancellor should focus more on ending the Russia-Ukraine war and addressing domestic economic problems in Germany instead of commenting on U.S. policy toward Iran.

NATO allies across Europe have been preparing for a potential U.S. troop drawdown since Trump began his second term, after the administration repeatedly signaled that Europe would need to take full responsibility for its own collective security going forward, including security support for Ukraine. Overall, the U.S. maintains a rotating troop presence of between 80,000 and 100,000 personnel across Europe, and allies have anticipated for more than a year that troops deployed to Eastern Europe after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine would be the first to be repositioned or withdrawn.

Ed Arnold, a European security expert at the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), explained that many European capitals are more concerned about potential U.S. plans to reposition Patriot missile defense systems and stockpiled ammunition from Germany to the Middle East to support the Iran war than the overall troop drawdown itself. The U.S. already confirmed a troop reduction on NATO’s eastern border with Ukraine back in October, cutting between 1,500 and 3,000 troops on short notice — a move that sparked unease in NATO member Romania, which hosts a key NATO air base on the Black Sea.

1 5 月, 2026
‘No going back’ for Colombia’s workers as the right eyes return

As Colombia prepares to head to the polls on May 31 to elect a successor to its historic first leftist government, working-class voters and left-wing political leaders are drawing a firm line in the sand: there will be no return to the old order that dominated the country for generations.

Four years after former guerrilla Gustavo Petro made history by winning the presidency, breaking a century of conservative and elite rule, two right-wing contenders are fighting to flip the executive branch and roll back the progressive social and labor reforms Petro enacted during his term. But at a raucous May Day rally held in central Bogota on Friday, thousands of working-class supporters packed the plaza outside Congress to rally behind Petro’s handpicked political heir, Senator Ivan Cepeda, who is currently leading polls in the race’s first round.

Cepeda used the address to warn attendees that hard-won labor gains—including an unprecedented 23% increase to the national minimum wage, and expanded overtime pay for night and weekend shifts enacted as part of Petro’s landmark 2024 labor reform—would be immediately rolled back if a right-wing government took power. He slammed his two leading rivals, ultra-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella and conservative Senator Paloma Valencia, as standard-bearers for the same neoliberal model that concentrated wealth in the hands of a small, unproductive elite for decades before Petro took office in 2022. “Comrades, don’t allow them to take away what we have achieved!” Cepeda told the cheering crowd under the hot Andean sun. Former Health Minister Carolina Corcho echoed the rallying cry, telling supporters: “The people have awoken. There’s no going back.”

Just a few months ago, political analysts widely predicted a right-wing wave would wash over Colombia, following a regional trend that saw voters oust left-wing governments across Latin America from Argentina to Chile and Bolivia, with critics faulting incumbents for mismanaging economies, failing to curb rising crime, and tolerating corruption. Petro himself faced intense scrutiny from U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this year, who threatened the Colombian leader after he supported ousted Venezuelan left-wing president Nicolas Maduro. But a diplomatic reset during a recent White House meeting between the two leaders, paired with the popular minimum wage hike, has sent Petro’s approval ratings soaring—and lifted Cepeda’s polling numbers with them.

For ordinary working Colombians, the labor reforms have delivered tangible change. Alejandro Guayara, a 38-year-old doorman at a Bogota apartment building and father of two who struggled to make ends meet for years, said the minimum wage increase brought his family much-needed “peace of mind.” While only 2.4 million Colombians earn the federal minimum wage, millions more have benefited from the overtime pay expansions included in Petro’s labor overhaul. “People have experienced new-found hope with this president because ordinary people are being taken into account,” Guayara said. Jose Cruz, a 60-year-old former member of the M-19 guerrilla group that Petro belonged to in his youth, echoed that sentiment, telling Agence France-Presse: “Today the power is in our hands, that of the people.”

Still, Petro’s administration has faced persistent criticism over a sharp rise in guerrilla and dissident violence across the country, a issue the right-wing candidates have centered their campaigns on. Critics have long used Petro’s past as a member of M-19, which disarmed in 1990, to accuse him of being too soft on the dozens of armed groups and cocaine trafficking networks that control large swathes of northeastern and southern Colombia. Last year was the most violent Colombia has seen in the decade since the FARC Marxist rebel army signed a historic peace deal ending a 50-year civil war, and just last weekend, a dissident FARC faction opposed to the 2016 peace deal bombed a southern Colombian highway, killing 21 people—a attack the faction later called an “error.”

Yann Basset, a political science professor at Bogota’s University of Rosario, noted that for decades, Colombia’s left was tarred by its public association with leftist guerrilla violence. But today, he said, “a large part of the population associate it with something else, with the social reforms of the Petro government in particular, and much less with violence.” Still, the surge in violence has eroded support for Cepeda, who was a key architect of Petro’s peace negotiation strategy with armed groups, among some left-leaning voters. The security crisis has also boosted support for the right-wing candidates’ signature “mano dura” (hard hand) crackdown policy, which calls for harsher prison sentences and aggressive policing of armed groups. For many younger voters like 18-year-old engineering student Juan Manuel Cespedes, the security situation has become untenable. “Security has been terrible in recent years,” Cespedes said, echoing the right’s call for harsher penalties.

Polling currently shows Cepeda leading the first round of voting, but no candidate is projected to hit the 50% threshold needed to win outright, meaning the race will almost certainly go to a run-off. It remains unclear whether Cepeda can hold onto his lead against either de la Espriella or Valencia in a head-to-head race, leaving Colombia’s political future hanging in the balance as voters head to the polls next week.

1 5 月, 2026
Met Police chief accused of misinformation over Palestine marches synagogues claim

A public dispute has erupted between the organisers of London’s recurring pro-Palestine ceasefire marches and the head of London’s Metropolitan Police, after Commissioner Mark Rowley claimed protest leaders have repeatedly sought to route demonstrations near Jewish synagogues — allegations organisers and prominent Jewish community figures have vehemently rejected as false and inflammatory.

Rowley made the remarks during an interview with *Good Morning Britain* earlier Friday, when he was pressed over how his force is safeguarding London’s Jewish community following a stabbing attack that injured two people in Golders Green, a north London neighbourhood with a large Jewish population. Rowley told reporters he was “really troubled” by what he described as intentional planning to march near synagogues, adding that police had been forced to impose route restrictions every time to block the move. “Even that intent causes me concern that they repeatedly ask to do such things,” he said.

But senior leaders of the UK’s Palestine Solidarity movement immediately pushed back against Rowley’s claims, framing the comments as dishonest and dangerously divisive at a time of already elevated community tension across the UK. Ryvka Bernard, deputy director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), the lead organiser of the central London marches, called Rowley’s intervention reckless, arguing it would only stoke unnecessary fear.

“It’s shocking that Rowley would make such dishonest and reckless comments in a moment when his police force should be focused on protecting vulnerable people,” Bernard said. She emphasized the movement has consistently rejected any effort to conflate the Jewish community with the actions of the Israeli government, adding that “this dangerous misinformation … will only serve to create more fear and anxiety.”

Bernard flatly denied Rowley’s core accusation: “None of our marches or proposed march routes has ever targeted a synagogue or even directly passed one along its route, and the Met Police knows that.” She clarified that the demonstrations are rooted in solidarity with Palestinians facing Israeli military action in Gaza and opposition to the UK government’s support for Israel’s campaign, a mission that will hold for the upcoming 16 March march as well.

Lindsey German, convener of the Stop the War Coalition, another key organising partner for the protests, echoed the denial, calling Rowley’s claims “simply untrue.” “We have never set out with intent to march near a synagogue and we have never intentionally held a demonstration outside or near to one,” German said, noting that organisers intentionally plan routes to keep far away from Jewish places of worship.

She pointed to a high-profile January dispute as evidence of organisers’ willingness to compromise. During that demonstration, police blocked organisers from assembling near the BBC’s London headquarters over the presence of a synagogue several hundred yards away, forcing the group to shift a static gathering to near the UK Parliament and leading to the arrest of senior organisers who attempted to walk to the BBC to lay a wreath for Palestinian children killed in Gaza. German said organisers had already offered multiple adjustments to the timing and route ahead of the event to avoid disrupting worshippers, only to have those compromises rejected.

The latest controversy comes amid growing political pressure on UK police to crack down on large pro-Palestine demonstrations, which have drawn hundreds of thousands of participants since Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza in October 2023. Last week, Jonathan Hall, the UK’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, called for a formal “moratorium” on the recurring marches, citing a recent uptick in antisemitic attacks across London tied to demonstrations.

But many prominent Jewish community leaders have pushed back against that narrative, including senior north London Rabbi Herschel Gluck, who explicitly rejected any link between the pro-Palestine marches and the Golders Green stabbing Wednesday. “It is certainly not the marches that caused the tragic stabbing attacks on Wednesday in Golders Gluck,” Gluck told Middle East Eye.

Gluck, who also serves as president of the Shomrim neighbourhood patrol group that serves London’s Jewish communities, noted that a large proportion of regular march participants are Jewish, saying “pro rata, there are more Jews than any other community” taking part in the demonstrations. He added that banning the protests over antisemitism concerns would be counterproductive, noting that restricting free speech runs counter to longstanding Jewish values.

He also argued that police are facing undue political pressure to harden their stance on the marches, accusing politicians from the Labour, Conservative, and Reform UK parties of exploiting concerns over antisemitism to distract voters from pressing domestic issues including sluggish economic growth, the ongoing cost of living crisis, and global instability. “They are just using the situation for their own ends and not really caring for the Jewish community. They are using the conflict to create more conflict,” Gluck said.

Gluck called on political leaders to engage with all segments of the UK Jewish community, including those that speak out against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. “They’re not marginal, but sadly, certain politicians choose not to listen also to these Jewish voices. And I think that again borders on antisemitism, when they decide not to listen to the concerns, feelings, and strong sentiments of a very large segment of the Jewish community. We need to enable and foster a more peaceful and harmonious atmosphere.”

The ongoing row has raised concerns among protest organisers that Rowley’s comments will erode already fragile trust between demonstration leaders and law enforcement, while amplifying harmful narratives that incorrectly paint all pro-Palestine activism as inherently antisemitic. Despite the public conflict, organisers confirmed the 16 May march will proceed as planned, reaffirming their longstanding commitment to peaceful protest and opposition to all forms of racism.

1 5 月, 2026
US to cut troop levels in Germany by 5,000 amid Trump spat with Merz

A sharp public diplomatic clash between U.S. President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz over the ongoing Iran conflict has triggered a formal Pentagon plan to withdraw 5,000 American military personnel from Germany, with the drawdown scheduled to unfold over the next 6 to 12 months. The announcement of the troop withdrawal came just 24 hours after Merz delivered critical remarks that stung the White House: speaking to university students earlier this week, the German leader argued that the U.S. lacked a coherent strategy for the Iran war, claiming Iranian negotiators had effectively humiliated Washington by drawing out talks and leaving American officials empty-handed after high-profile meetings in Islamabad.

Merz’s comments quickly drew a fiery retaliation from Trump on his social platform Truth Social. The U.S. president accused Merz of supporting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, dismissed his commentary as uninformed, and lambasted Germany’s overall economic performance. Beyond his attack on the German chancellor, Trump also broadened his criticism of NATO allies who have declined to join U.S. efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz amid the Iran conflict, a longstanding point of friction for the president, who has been an open critic of the alliance for decades. When asked Thursday if he would also consider pulling American troops from other NATO members Italy and Spain, Trump did not rule out the move, saying “I probably will” and accusing both countries of refusing to assist the U.S. in the Iran conflict, calling their inaction unacceptable.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell confirmed in an official statement that the order for the German drawdown originated with Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth. Parnell framed the decision as the outcome of a comprehensive review of U.S. military force posture across Europe, saying the adjustment aligns with current theater requirements and on-the-ground conditions. As of last December, the U.S. maintains more than 36,000 active-duty troops deployed across bases in Germany, making it the largest American military footprint in Europe and the second-largest globally, only trailing the U.S. troop presence in Japan. Germany’s Ramstein Air Base, located outside Kaiserslautern in southwestern Germany, serves as a critical logistics and command hub for U.S. operations across the continent.

This is not the first time Trump has pushed for U.S. troop reductions in Germany. During his first term in 2020, he proposed relocating 12,000 troops out of Germany to other NATO nations or back to the U.S., but the plan was ultimately blocked by Congress and later reversed entirely by his successor, President Joe Biden. At that time, Trump justified the proposed cuts by accusing Germany of failing to meet NATO’s military spending target of 2% of GDP, calling the country delinquent in its alliance obligations. That dynamic has shifted significantly under Merz’s government: Germany is on track to hit 3.1% of GDP in total defense spending by 2027, hitting 2027 levels of €105.8 billion (£91 billion), far exceeding the alliance’s requirement. Currently, the U.S. also stations roughly 12,000 troops in Italy and 10,000 more in the United Kingdom.

1 5 月, 2026
Who shot a Secret Service officer at the Trump press dinner?

It has been nearly seven days since a suspect was accused of attempting to assassinate former President and current U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, and critical information surrounding the shooting incident at the Washington Hilton remains unresolved amid an ongoing investigation. As authorities continue to piece together the events of that Saturday night, official statements from prosecutors have shifted dramatically around one central question: did the accused gunman actually shoot the U.S. Secret Service officer that multiple senior officials, including the president, say was hit during the attack.

President Trump and other top administration officials have publicly stated that as the attacker charged the hotel’s security checkpoint, a Secret Service officer was struck by gunfire, and survived the incident only because he was wearing a bulletproof ballistic vest. Trump initially told reporters that the agent was shot “from very close distance with a very powerful gun.” But court documents submitted by federal government attorneys have not explicitly made the claim that the suspect fired the shot that hit the officer on the night of the high-profile gala.

Authorities have confirmed that the responding Secret Service officer fired five shots at the suspect as he advanced through the checkpoint, but none of those rounds struck the suspect, identified by the Department of Justice as 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen. The incident, which unfolded steps away from the event attended by dozens of top government officials and journalists, was captured by closed-circuit security cameras that recorded the moment of gunfire.

Mark Lesko, a former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, explained the tension facing investigators in this high-stakes case in an interview with the BBC. “There’s this insatiable public interest in the case, pressure to get information out to the public,” Lesko said. “But on the other hand, you want to conduct a thorough investigation, which could take weeks in a case like this.” He noted that conflicting public statements from law enforcement are understandable in the chaotic early hours of a high-profile investigation, but warned that early inaccuracies could give defense attorneys room to undermine the prosecution’s case down the line.

The BBC reached out to the Department of Justice for additional comment on the shifting narratives, while the Secret Service and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia declined to provide any further clarification.

Within hours of the incident, the Department of Justice released an affidavit naming Allen as the suspect and bringing initial charges that included discharge of a firearm. Authorities confirmed Allen, who remains in federal custody, was armed with three weapons: a semi-automatic handgun, a pump-action shotgun, and three knives when he was detained at the scene.

The day after the attack, Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche told CBS News that the suspect had shot the Secret Service agent, saying “That’s what we understand as of now.” But just 24 hours later, at a public press conference, Blanche walked back that claim. When pressed again by a reporter to confirm who shot the officer, Blanche said, “We wanna get that right, so we’re still looking at that.” He confirmed investigators have recorded that five total shots were fired during the incident, and that “the suspect fired out of a shotgun, and we know that happened.” He added that full ballistics testing is still ongoing and has not been finalized.

The same day as Blanche’s revised press statement, the government released its full criminal complaint against Allen. The document states that the accused “approached and ran through the magnetometer holding a long gun.” It adds that “As he did so, US Secret Service personnel assigned to the checkpoint heard a loud gunshot. US Secret Service Officer V.G. was shot once in the chest; Officer V.G. was wearing a ballistic vest at the time.” Despite that accounting of the officer’s injury, prosecutors do not explicitly name Allen as the person who fired the shot that hit him.

“That is interesting and noteworthy because what it shows is the government does not yet have conclusive proof that the suspect did shoot the agent,” Lesko explained of the omission. He also pointed out that prosecutors have not yet added a charge of assaulting a federal officer to Allen’s case, though Blanche has confirmed additional charges could be filed as the investigation progresses. Even a Wednesday detention hearing filing submitted by the government made no reference to the officer being shot, only stating that a Secret Service officer had “observed the defendant fire the shotgun in the direction of the stairs leading down to the ballroom” without confirming that any of Allen’s shots hit a person.

This omission did not go unnoticed by Allen’s defense team. In a court filing arguing for Allen’s release from custody, defense attorneys wrote, “Moreover, the government, after essentially asserting that Mr. Allen shot a Secret Service Officer in the criminal complaint, has apparently retreated from the theory by not mentioning the alleged officer at all in its memorandum.” Allen’s legal team did not respond to the BBC’s request for additional comment.

Four days after the attack, Jeanine Pirro, the former Fox News host who now serves as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, released new security camera footage of the incident on the social platform X. The video shows the man identified by authorities as Allen running through the hotel’s security checkpoint, and at one point he appears to raise his shotgun, though it is impossible to confirm from the footage whether he fired. The clip also clearly shows the responding Secret Service officer raising his weapon, with multiple visible muzzle flashes confirming he fired his gun. Pirro wrote in her post that “There is no evidence the shooting was the result of friendly fire,” but stopped short of claiming the video proved Allen fired the shot that hit the officer.

The same day that footage was released, Secret Service Director Sean Curran told Fox News that “All the evidence that I’ve seen, the suspect shot our officer point-blank range with a shotgun.”

Forensic reviews of ballistics and other physical evidence often take weeks, and in some cases months, to complete, and authorities are expected to release additional details as the investigation moves forward. Legal experts note that regardless of who fired the shot that hit the officer, prosecutors already have enough charges to secure a lengthy prison sentence if Allen is convicted. “They have enough charges here to put Allen away for a very long time” if a jury finds him guilty, Lesko said.

1 5 月, 2026