标签： North America

In a sudden announcement that underscores a period of unprecedented turnover at the highest levels of the U.S. national security establishment, the Pentagon confirmed Wednesday that Secretary of the Navy John Phelan has departed the Trump administration, with his departure taking effect immediately.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell broke the news of Phelan’s exit in a post on social media, confirming that current Navy Undersecretary Hung Cao will step into the role as acting secretary to oversee the service branch in the interim. Notably, no official explanation for Phelan’s departure has been released by the U.S. Navy, leaving room for speculation amid growing tensions in the Middle East.

Phelan’s exit comes at a defining moment for U.S. military operations in the Persian Gulf: the U.S. maintains an ongoing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global chokepoint for oil and commodity shipping, while armed conflict escalates between U.S. ally Israel and Iran. This high-stakes geopolitical context makes the sudden leadership change at the top of the Navy particularly noteworthy.

A civilian without prior military service, Phelan was first tapped for the role by President Donald Trump in 2024, and officially sworn into office as the 78th Secretary of the Navy just 13 months ago, in March 2025. He is now the latest in a growing string of high-ranking uniformed and civilian military leaders to leave the administration in a series of shake-ups that have unfolded over the past several months under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Just weeks before Phelan’s departure, Hegseth requested that Army Chief of Staff Randy George step down from his post. Two other senior Army leaders – General David Hodne and Major General William Green – have also been removed from their leadership positions in recent weeks. Since taking command at the Pentagon, Hegseth has overseen the firing of more than a dozen top military officers, including the Chief of Naval Operations and the Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force. The sustained purge of senior military leadership has drawn widespread attention for its scale and speed, as the administration reshapes the top ranks of the U.S. armed forces ahead of a pivotal period in global geopolitics.

A fresh wave of political tension has swept across the United States ahead of November’s midterm congressional elections, after former President Donald Trump made baseless claims of electoral cheating surrounding a recent Virginia ballot measure that could hand Democrats up to four additional U.S. House seats currently controlled by Republicans.

Virginians headed to the polls on Tuesday to vote on a redrawn congressional district map, a decision that carries outsized national implications for control of the lower chamber of Congress. This vote comes as part of a growing national “redistricting arms race” that launched after Trump encouraged conservative-led states to revise their voting maps to help Republicans defend their narrow current majority in the House.

On his social platform Truth Social, Trump issued an unsubstantiated warning: “A RIGGED ELECTION TOOK PLACE LAST NIGHT.” The claim echoed the same false assertions of systemic fraud he pushed following his 2020 presidential election loss. “All day long Republicans were winning, the Spirit was unbelievable, until the very end when, of course, there was a massive ‘Mail In Ballot Drop!’” he wrote. To date, no U.S. investigative body has ever uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud, including in the nation’s mail-in voting system.

Right now, Republicans hold a razor-thin advantage in the House: with 217 Republican seats, 212 Democratic seats, and one independent who aligns with the Republican caucus, following the recent death of a Democratic representative from Georgia. Historically, the sitting president’s party almost always loses House seats during midterm elections. If Democrats flip control of the chamber in November, it would not only derail Trump’s core policy agenda but also clear the way for a wave of Democratic-led congressional investigations into the former president.

In the U.S., partisan gerrymandering — the practice of redrawing electoral boundaries to intentionally benefit one political party — is only prohibited when it is drawn along discriminatory racial lines.

Ahead of the vote, Trump, a Republican, warned that a Democratic win in Virginia would be “a disaster.” In response, Democratic Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger pushed back in a post on X, writing that voters “pushed back against a President who claims he is ‘entitled’ to more Republican seats in Congress. As we watched other states go along with those demands without voter input, Virginians refused to let that stand. We responded the right way: at the ballot box.”

Trump’s false fraud claims come as he continues to press congressional Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act, a sweeping proposal to overhaul U.S. voting rules that would require all voters to show proof of U.S. citizenship to cast a ballot. He is also currently facing lawsuits from Democratic-led state governments over a previous executive order aimed at restricting access to mail-in voting.

The former president has spent years spreading unsubstantiated claims that mail-in voting is rife with systemic fraud. Notably, however, Trump himself recently voted by mail in a Florida election, arguing his status as former president justified the choice; his wife and son have also used mail-in voting in recent elections.

By federal requirement, U.S. states typically redraw their congressional district maps once every 10 years, following the release of new population data from the U.S. Census. Mid-decade redistricting, like the moves currently underway across multiple states, is an unusual shift that was triggered after Trump pressured Republican states to revisit their maps. Texas became the first state to approve a mid-decade redraw, setting off a cascade of map changes from both major parties to gain electoral advantage.

Last November, California voters approved new Democratic-drawn maps that give the party an edge in five new congressional districts. On the Republican side, North Carolina and Missouri have both passed revised maps that favor GOP candidates. In Utah, a court-ordered redraw is expected to give Democrats a competitive advantage in one district, making the national map battle far more unpredictable ahead of November’s critical vote.

Tensions are running high ahead of the mandatory mid-term review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney drawing a firm line against Washington’s attempts to dictate trade negotiation terms.

Carney made clear this week that Ottawa will not accept one-sided demands from the United States ahead of upcoming bilateral talks, rejecting framing that casts Canada as a supplicant to U.S. interests. “It’s not a case where there is someone making demands, and a supplicant,” Carney told reporters. “It’s not a case that the United States dictates the terms. We have a negotiation, we can come to a mutually successful outcome – it will take some time.”

Carney’s comments come amid deep public rifts between the two neighboring trade partners, after top U.S. trade official Jamieson Greer told members of Congress this week that Canada and the U.S. remain fundamentally misaligned on core trade priorities. Greer accused Canada of doubling down on outdated globalist trade frameworks even as Washington works to address the economic downsides of decades of unregulated globalization.

The three North American trade partners face a mandatory 1 July 2026 deadline to complete the scheduled review of the 2018 USMCA deal, which replaced the earlier NAFTA agreement. While Mexico will launch formal bilateral negotiating rounds with the U.S. in May – following a recent meeting between Greer and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum – formal U.S.-Canada talks have not yet begun, though lower-level trade officials have maintained behind-the-scenes contact.

To prepare for the talks, Carney convened a new cross-party advisory committee on U.S.-Canada trade relations this week, with the group’s first inaugural meeting scheduled for next week. Former Quebec Premier Jean Charest, a member of the new committee, told Canadian public broadcaster Radio-Canada that the U.S. is already demanding sweeping concessions from Ottawa even before formal talks get underway.

Among the top sticking points is Canada’s decades-old dairy supply management system, a long-running irritant for U.S. agricultural interests. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick repeated Washington’s criticism this week, telling a Senate committee that Canada treats American dairy producers “poorly,” echoing former President and current U.S. political figure Donald Trump’s 2025 claims that Canada charges extraordinary tariffs of up to 400% on U.S. dairy imports.

Canada’s supply management system strictly controls domestic production and import volumes to support the livelihoods of Canadian small-scale dairy farmers, allowing a set quota of U.S. dairy imports to enter Canada tariff-free. Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirms that the U.S. has never actually hit that import quota limit, despite ongoing complaints.

Canadian Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc drew a clear red line on dairy negotiations this week, telling the *Globe and Mail* that the issue is non-negotiable for Ottawa. “We’ve been very clear with them,” LeBlanc said. He added, however, that Canada is prepared to address most other U.S. concerns, as long as talks progress as part of a balanced, comprehensive broader agreement.

Other outstanding points of friction include Canada’s earlier decision to remove U.S. liquor from retail shelves in retaliation for U.S. tariffs, which Lutnick this week called “disrespectful.” Canada has already made one major concession to the U.S. in recent months, dropping a planned digital tax on large U.S. tech firms last June after the Trump administration flagged the policy as a major trade irritant.

While both sides remain committed to restarting formal talks, senior officials on both sides have acknowledged that a final deal is unlikely to be reached before the 1 July deadline. If no agreement is reached by the deadline, the USMCA will move to annual review cycles until the full agreement expires in 2036. Greer emphasized this week that Washington’s core goal in the renegotiation is to preserve U.S. market access to Canada and Mexico, leaving the ultimate trajectory of the trilateral trade deal hanging in the balance.

Veteran Democratic U.S. Congressman David Scott, who represented Georgia’s 13th Congressional District for over 20 years, has passed away at the age of 80, just one day after he cast his last vote on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. At the time of his death, Scott was actively campaigning for a 13th consecutive term in the Democratic primary election scheduled for next month, having repeatedly rejected calls to step down amid growing public questions about his declining health. No official cause of death has been announced by his office or family as of Wednesday.

Born in rural South Carolina in 1945, Scott built a long legacy of public service that culminated in a groundbreaking milestone in 2020, when he became the first Black lawmaker to chair the powerful House Agriculture Committee. He remained steadfast in his commitment to serving his constituents even amid health speculation, telling reporters in 2024 that he was “in good health, moving and doing the people’s work” and had no plans to retire. His final act in Congress came on Tuesday, when he voted in favor of a bipartisan bill advancing new hydropower infrastructure projects across the U.S.

Scott’s passing marks the fifth time a sitting member of Congress has died in office since last year, a string of vacancies that has upended the already fragile balance of power in the lower chamber. Before Scott’s death, Republicans held a razor-thin 218-213 majority in the House, with one independent legislator caucusing with the GOP. Following the vacancy created by Scott’s death, the new breakdown stands at 217 Republicans, 212 Democrats and one Republican-aligned independent, giving Republicans an even narrower working advantage as they fight to defend their slim majority in November’s upcoming midterm elections.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democratic leader in the chamber, released a formal statement honoring Scott’s legacy on Wednesday. “David Scott was a trailblazer who served a district that he represented admirably, rose up from humble beginnings to become the first African American ever to chair the House Ag Committee,” Jeffries said. “He cared about the people that he represented. He was fiercely committed to getting things done for the people of the great state of Georgia, and he’ll be deeply missed.”

The four other sitting House members who have died since last year include three fellow Democrats: Sylvester Turner of Texas, Raúl Grijalva of Arizona and Gerry Connolly of Virginia. Republican Congressman Doug LaMalfa of California also passed away earlier in 2025.

Under Georgia state election law, Governor Brian Kemp is required to formally declare a special election to fill Scott’s vacant seat within 10 days of the vacancy. The special election must be held no fewer than 30 days after the governor’s declaration, setting up an early contest that could further reshape the House’s partisan balance ahead of November’s general election.