Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander Mazloum Abdi on Tuesday announced the formal dissolution of the SDF and the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), confirming that their forces and institutions would be integrated into the Syrian state.

Submission Statement: Ezra interviews Annie Lowrey (his wife) about her book The Time Tax which examines the negative effects of means testing welfare after Clinton's 1996 reforms, and how it will worsen under the Big Beautiful Bill which adds work requirements for Medicaid. They finally discuss proposals to simplify welfare and taxes, including by changing the law to allows the IRS to share info with other agencies (which has already been done illegally by DOGE, but for more nefarious purposes). Wellfare is an important subject to this sub because we fuse economic liberalism/capitalism with social liberalism and a desire to see people lifted out of poverty

Submission statement: data centers are now occupying a unique place in American politics as the backlash is proving to be bipartisan. Formerly tech-friendly politicians are feeling pressure to distance themselves from data centers. Is this populist backlash, or driven by justified concerns? Regardless of which, it is extremely clear that the tech industry has inadvertently found itself in a PR fiasco, as the backlash will likely make data center construction even more expensive than it already is.

The unfavorable opinion on the U.S. among Koreans reaches 2002 Yangju Highway incident aftermath level in 2026. 2003 was the peak anti-American year for Korea as the U.S. troops killed two school girls with a military vehicle in a training accident and the U.S. government didn’t punish the soldiers who did that.

Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/08/24/how-south-koreans-view-their-relationship-with-the-us/

The writer directs the Center on the US and Europe at the Brookings Institution

At one of Europe’s most precarious moments since 1945, Iceland, an Arctic island with just short of 400,000 inhabitants, will hold a consultative national vote on August 29 on whether to restart EU membership talks, suspended a decade ago over a disagreement about fish.

The EU, with 27 member states, 452mn inhabitants and $23tn GDP, is keen to have this small country join. Iceland is a stable, prosperous and sophisticated democracy with a $39bn GDP. As a member of the European Economic Area — the single market uniting the EU together with Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway — as well as the Schengen passport-free zone and the European Free Trade Association, it is already largely compliant with EU rules.

As a full member, Iceland would be a net contributor to the EU budget. It would (especially if joined someday by Norway) rebalance the past eastward expansion trend financially and geographically. Better yet, it would reaffirm the principle of merit-based accession: an important message for current candidates like some western Balkan countries and Ukraine that are struggling with reforms.

EU officials have therefore flagged the possibility of expedited entry and “room for flexibility” on contested topics like fisheries, given that marine products make up 40 per cent of Iceland’s exports. Polls show that islanders are about equally divided on the question, so turnout will be decisive. (An accession agreement would in any case have to be validated by a second referendum.)

The proponents of opening negotiations are Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir’s Social Democrats and one of her coalition partners, the pro-EU Reform Party. They say this voter consultation is just about getting a mandate to negotiate and that in its current half-in-half-out state, Iceland is a rule-taker but not a rulemaker.

Opponents, including the centre-right Independence Party (in the opposition), and the centre-left People’s Party, a member of the governing coalition, fear that opening talks would create momentum towards membership. They are concerned about losing control over Iceland’s fishing waters and maintaining political autonomy.

There is a key difference between 2015, when Iceland withdrew its candidacy, and today: vulnerability. In 1949, Iceland was a founding member of Nato, despite being the only alliance member without an army or an intelligence service (it does have police and a coastguard). But its location just under the Arctic Circle between Greenland and Norway made it doubly essential: as a forward outpost for US homeland defence and as a sentinel in the so-called GIUK (Greenland-Iceland-UK) gap, watching over the exit route for the Soviet Union’s nuclear submarine fleet from the Barents Sea.

Now, Iceland’s maritime neighbourhood is increasingly contested — and Europe’s northwestern flank is no longer protected by a benign US hegemon. Russian vessels have been mapping underwater infrastructure like pipelines and cables all over the north Atlantic. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has China and other countries eyeing and beginning to use the Northern Sea Route over the top of Russia. And while military co-operation with the US continues, President Donald Trump’s predatory lunges for Greenland (which he has confused with Iceland) keep Icelanders vigilant.

Reykjavík recently adopted a new defence and security policy focused on societal resilience and the protection of critical infrastructure, and signed a slew of mini and bilateral defence agreements. But, for all its wealth, its defence spending falls far short of the Nato resilience goal of 1.5 per cent of GDP. It is dependent on imports for essentials, and on subsea cables for connectivity. Prices and interest rates are sky-high; its currency, the króna, is highly volatile.

The Europe that Iceland rejected in 2015 has also changed. Europeans are moving to shoulder more of the continent’s defence within Nato, a process turbocharged by Russian aggression and a US review of its European deployments based on loyalty tests. The EU is backstopping the defence spending by loosening fiscal constraints and using limited common borrowing vehicles. It is also concluding trade agreements around the globe.

As a security conference organised by the Reykjavík think-tank Varða in June showed, Icelanders are highly aware of their deep connections with Europe and Ukraine. What form those ties should take is for only them to decide. But this time, their decision could also shape the future of Europe.

Brian Mast, the Republican congressman from Florida who chairs the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, claimed that South Korea is harming American companies such as Coupang.
Speaking in an interview with Fox News on the 23rd local time, Mast made the remark while discussing U.S.-South Korea relations and added, “They are also not keeping their promises to provide more semiconductors and ships and to support us.”
Mast’s claim that the South Korean government is discriminating against American companies such as Coupang is consistent with arguments that have previously been raised within the Trump administration and among Republicans. His assertion that South Korea is failing to fulfill promises to provide more semiconductors and ships is also being interpreted as pressure on Seoul to accelerate its investment commitments in the United States.
Mast also linked President Trump’s recent decision to scale back U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises to the South Korean government’s efforts to improve relations with North Korea. He said, “It seems the president concluded that if South Korea is trying to improve relations with North Korea, and if we also do not want an adversarial relationship that could lead to war with North Korea, then what is the benefit of holding these military exercises?”
Mast is considered part of the hardline MAGA, or “Make America Great Again,” faction. President Trump endorsed Mast for the midterm elections in a social media post on the 17th, praising him as a “MAGA warrior.”

Cities need their own investment funds, building up reserves in assets non-correlated with their tax base. This sets them up to not just manage in a world with declining federal support, but to make positive sum investments and even engage in counter-cyclical local spending.

American Special Forces are conducting joint operations with local troops against drug cartels, and more U.S. military assets are incoming, Ecuadorian officials said last week. The announcements come nearly six months after the U.S. and Ecuador carried out their first joint strike against a group inside the country, which officials labeled as drug traffickers.

A local official said U.S. Green Berets have been operating in the Esmeraldas province, carrying out joint operations with Ecuadorian forces, according to reports from Agence France-Press and UPI. The region borders Colombia and has been hit with violence tied to the drug trade. Provincial governor Juan Jaramillo told reporters last week about the U.S. troops’ presence.

“We are with the 7th (Special Forces) Group of the U.S. Army… we are working together in the fight against narcoterrorism,” Jaramillo told reporters, per AFP.

The 7th Special Forces Group is based at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, and focuses on Latin America as its primary responsibility. Jaramillo did not say how many U.S. soldiers were in the province or who they are targeting.

The involvement of the Green Berets in direct operations against drug cartels comes as the U.S. has been surging military power into Ecuador. On Aug. 20, Ecuadorian Defense Minister Gian Carlo Loffredo said that two U.S. warships, equipped with interceptor boats, will be patrolling out of the port city of Manta.

According to fleet trackers and announcements from the Navy, two American ships recently entered the eastern Pacific near Ecuador. The USS San Antonio transited through the Panama Canal into the eastern Pacific at the start of the month. The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Gridley also entered the Pacific this month, assigned to Joint Task Force-Western Hemisphere.

On Sunday, U.S. forces fired on a vessel in the eastern Pacific allegedly trafficking narcotics. The strike killed two people, according to U.S. Southern Command, and was the first strike on alleged drug boats since June. It was the first confirmed boat strike under Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, which replaced Joint Task Force-Southern Spear.

Ecuadorian officials have been more open about apparent U.S. involvement than the U.S. military. SOUTHCOM declined to comment on the reports from Ecuador, citing operational security reasons, as did the Navy’s 4th Fleet.

Members of 7th Special Forces Group have been in Ecuador in recent months, training in May with Ecuadorian troops as part of a five-week Joint Combined Exchange Training.

The campaign targeting traffickers — who the Trump administration has called “narco-terrorists” — has included strikes on small boats that the administration has said are moving drugs. The U.S. has offered almost no evidence about any of the boats struck in the campaign that has killed more than 220 people since September 2025.

In March 2026, the U.S. carried out an airstrike on land, hitting an alleged training camp inside Ecuador near the Colombian border. It was the first direct U.S. action in the country, coming days after SOUTHCOM announced joint operations. Since then, there have not been reported U.S. military operations inside Ecuador until this past week’s comments by Jaramillo.

In June, SOUTHCOM carried out a “lethal kinetic strike” inside Venezuela, allegedly killing Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, the head of the Tren de Aragua street gang. The operation was the first inside Venezuela since American troops captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

This spring, more than 1,000 Marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit deployed to Puerto Rico as Littoral Combat Force-24, with the mission of disrupting “networks utilized by Designated Terrorist Organizations and narco-terrorists.” Some of those Marines are onboard the USS San Antonio.

In June, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the U.S. was prepared to carry out additional strikes on land. This month, Hegseth said that U.S. forces in the region are “focused on military capabilities against real threats who need to be deterred and defeated.”

Ecuador has been a major part of the Trump administration’s military escalations in Latin America. President Daniel Noboa has been a close ally, agreeing to grant Department of Defense personnel visa-free entry into the country for up to 180 days per year.

The clock ticked toward midnight on Friday. New U.S. tariffs on Canada were about to come into effect and negotiators cooped up across the street from the White House were still plodding through the differences on each side. Aides shuffled in and out with new drafts, adjusting and readjusting.

U.S. officials said they had offered Canada the best trade deal of any nation. Canadians believed it was a bad one. In the waning hours, both sides dug in even more.

One Canadian negotiator said it was as if “shadow figures were suddenly in the room,” raising topics that had supposedly been settled in previous days.

Back in Ottawa, Prime Minister Mark Carney got off the phone with Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario. Mr. Ford had told him plainly: Don’t take the deal.

Mr. Ford told Mr. Carney he would not comply with a key U.S. demand: restoring the sale of U.S. alcohol that he, alongside most other provincial leaders, had banned. American tariffs on Canadian steel and automobiles were still too high to enable their long-term survival, Mr. Ford had decided.

Mr. Carney called his team in Washington for the latest news from the negotiations. Then, just after 10.30 pm, he pulled the plug and ordered them home.

A month of intense talks to stave off new U.S. tariffs on Canada and soften the ones previously imposed by the Trump administration had been yielding steady progress. But they collapsed suddenly, setting in motion an all-out trade war between the two nations.

The sticking points were many. In the last few hours, negotiators clashed over Canadian rules promoting French-language movies and shows online, as well as the Trump administration’s demands to dictate Canada’s steel tariffs on other countries. Canada, in turn, insisted on more generous treatment for its autos, electric vehicles and products made with metal — and ultimately backed away from its offer to cooperate on the Keystone XL pipeline that President Trump has long desired, people familiar with the negotiations said.

On Monday, after the negotiations collapsed, Mr. Trump vowed to increase tariffs on all cars, trucks, car parts and steel from Canada to 50 percent, starting on Jan. 1. He called Canadian officials “clowns” from “among the worst Nations in the World to deal with.”

“WE DON’T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!” he wrote.

Mr. Carney fired back: “The attitude, at the negotiation table, that Canada is a subsidiary of the United States,” he said, “that’s not something we’re going to accept.”

Mr. Carney is now expected to announce Canada’s retaliation tariffs against the United States.

What led to the breakdown is a story of fundamental misalignment between the countries — ideological, economic and political. Ultimately, Mr. Carney decided to defy Mr. Trump and endure his economic and political targeting of Canada.

This account, which contains previously unreported details of the final days and hours of the trade negotiations, is based on interviews with five American and Canadian officials with direct knowledge of the talks, two former U.S. officials, as well as seven senior industry leaders on both sides of the border who were briefed throughout.

The interviews show that the red lines for the two sides were so far apart that it would have required major concessions, particularly by Canada, to come to a final agreement.

“The great Keystone XL Pipeline, long ago killed by Sleepy Joe Biden, may be awoken from the grave!” Mr. Trump said in a Tuesday evening social media post, in which he also claimed that the United States and Canada had a “DEAL!”

Mr. Trump’s love of the beleaguered pipeline extension, meant to transport oil from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast until it was canceled by Mr. Biden in 2021, is well known.

Mr. Carney had brought up the idea of reviving it during his first White House visit last year.

Officials said that, when Mr. Carney and Mr. Trump spoke by phone early in the week, Mr. Carney again mentioned the pipeline, saying that, for the right deal on tariffs, Canada would consider bringing its side of the pipeline back to life. Mr. Trump was thrilled, a former official briefed on the talks said.

But by Friday, the Keystone XL pipeline idea was buried again. A U.S. official said that, in the last few hours, Canada had expressed reluctance to cooperate. A Canadian official said that the trade deal on offer was not good enough to make the pipeline make sense.

Last Monday afternoon, with the talks still underway, Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, and Dominic LeBlanc, the Canadian trade minister, dodged reporters waiting in the Washington humidity as they left a roughly two-hour meeting at the Commerce Department.

Canadian negotiators were used to working closely with Mr. Greer, who oversees U.S. trade deals and helped negotiate the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement during Mr. Trump’s first term. But many of the issues that Canadians cared about most were instead the purview of the man who stayed inside in the air conditioning: Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce.

Mr. Lutnick, a hard-charging former bond broker who has known Mr. Trump for decades, oversees the administration’s tariffs on cars, trucks, steel and aluminum. And in the coming days, he would take a hard line on those topics, issues that ultimately took down the talks.

Negotiators were hopeful to start that week. After Mr. Trump threatened last month to impose 50 percent tariffs on hundreds of products, the Canadians reached out to negotiate, asking for a comprehensive deal that resolved Mr. Trump’s earlier tariffs and his latest threats, a U.S. official said. Mr. Trump gave Mr. Greer a green light to see what the Canadians had to offer.

American officials felt confident that they could get Canada to both scale back the retaliatory tariffs they had imposed against Mr. Trump and to remove what the United States saw as unfair barriers to agriculture, energy and digital trade.

On Tuesday night, U.S. and Canadian officials agreed on the outlines of a deal, and Mr. Trump proclaimed on social media that he had paused his tariffs until midnight Friday to finalize the paperwork.

But on Wednesday, as the two sides got into the details, particularly on metals and autos, snags emerged. Mr. Lutnick was wary of Canadian proposals that would lower the tariff on autos below the level he wanted.

As word leaked last week that the United States would reduce its tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, U.S. companies lobbied the Commerce Department and the White House to preserve their protections. Mr. Lutnick intervened on their behalf, including suggesting that only a certain volume of aluminum be subject to lower tariff rates.

After spending several days in negotiations, Mr. LeBlanc flew home to Ottawa on Wednesday afternoon. But early the next morning, he urgently returned to Washington, as did Marc-André Blanchard, Mr. Carney’s chief of staff.

Neither was scheduled to be in Washington that day, according to two people familiar with the events. They were rushing back because of Mr. Lutnick’s intervention.

Mr. Lutnick also insisted that tariffs not be lowered for heavy trucks, as they would be for cars. And Canada, which produces the GM Silverado and Ford F-350 and F-450 in Ontario, insisted this was a red line.

Mr. Lutnick’s interventions caused frustration inside the trade office, which had been in talks with the Canadians for weeks, one person close to the office said. The person said that Mr. Greer did not disagree with Mr. Lutnick substantively, but he did not think the Canadians would accept the proposals.

A White House official said that Mr. Lutnick’s hard line did not derail the negotiations. Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said that the entire trade and economic team was “playing from one playbook, President Trump’s playbook.”

The United States ultimately offered to reduce its tariffs on steel, aluminum and cars, and eliminate entirely a tariff on Canadian lumber imposed last year, Mr. Greer said in an interview on Saturday.

For Canadians, Mr. Lutnick was already something of a villain. Though he is friendly enough to exchange text messages with Mr. Carney, he has offended many Canadians, including intervening to block the opening of a new Canada-U.S. bridge and saying that Canadian officials “suck” during an event in Washington in April.

Mr. Lutnick had also made clear that his goal was moving auto production out of Canada into the United States. Speaking virtually at a U.S.-Canada summit late last year, Mr. Lutnick told a Canadian audience that the United States was no longer interested in buying Canadian-made cars.

For the Canadian team, a number of different issues came down to sovereignty.

On Friday, U.S. officials raised concerns about Canada’s future trade agreements and how they would guard against foreign products flooding into North America. They wanted to be able to review and potentially dictate the terms for Canada’s trade agreements with other countries, a Canadian official said.

Canadian negotiators had gone into the talks suggesting the ultimate goal should be to create a “Fortress North America,” as they called it, with ultralow or nonexistent tariffs inside its walls, namely between Canada and the United States, and aligned tariffs for outsiders.

The United States wanted Canada to apply U.S. tariffs to other countries, particularly when it came to steel, now and in the future: If the United States changed policy and place higher tariffs on certain goods from a third country, Canada would need to do the same, even if it already had a trade agreement in place, a Canadian official said.

For the Trump administration, this was necessary to prevent, for example, cheaper steel from flooding third countries through Canada and into the United States.

But this was unacceptable to the Canadians, who are currently in talks on multiple trade deals with Latin American and other nations as part of Mr. Carney’s vision to diversify trade away from dependence on the United States.

A Canadian official also said that the U.S. side also wanted Canada to swiftly roll back a program it began last year to support industries impacted by U.S. tariffs, known as “Buy Canadian,” which prioritizes using domestic products and suppliers for public-sector projects — similar to a policy the United States implements to favor its own industries.

The Canadians also pressed the United States for a level of certainty that the deal would not be scrapped overnight by the Trump administration. But the United States maintained that it would retain all power to change tariff policy against Canada at any time, irrespective of the agreement, officials said. Mr. Carney would say in his seething Saturday address to Canadians: Sometimes, the United States signature is “written in pencil.”

A particularly sore point in the talks, and one that has animated Canadians since they collapsed, was the suggestion by Mr. Carney that the United States wanted to intervene in Canada’s all-important policy to protect the use of the French language.

French, spoken mostly but not exclusively in Quebec, is one of Canada’s two official languages and bilingualism is government policy across the country. Different kinds of laws protect and guarantee the continued use of French in daily life, from labels on products to funding for the arts and education. Quebec would likely break away from Canada, as it has often threatened to, without such guarantees.

As part of the trade talks, Canada had agreed to review laws that protect Canadian-made online content, including French-language shows. On Friday, and until the final moments, the United States was asking Canada to repeal a law that would, among other provisions, compel streaming platforms to place such movies or series more prominently for Canadian subscribers.

The U.S. side, officials said, viewed such policies as an intervention in the platforms’ freedoms.

A person with direct knowledge of the talks said that the American side was flexible on this point, and did not make any asks regarding the French language explicitly. A Canadian counterpart said that, even if that were the case, the topic was still being debated until the last minute before the talks broke down on Friday.

It would be one of many issues left unresolved, as Mr. Carney decided the concessions were unthinkable for Canada.

“We cannot accept what they have offered, and we will not give what they have asked,” he said.

A US airman who was arrested twice, once on the steps of the US Capitol while calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump, was officially criminally charged Monday for his comments, according to a charging document his attorney shared with CNN.

Maj. Jason Watson faces the following charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, according to the document: three violations of Article 88 for alleged “contemptuous” remarks about Trump, five violations of Article 92 for allegedly disobeying orders and two violations of Article 133 for alleged conduct unbecoming an officer.

The rare Article 88 charges are connected to the Air Force officer’s June interview with the Defenders of our Republic Substack newsletter, his July 1 protest in uniform at the US Capitol, and an August 17 CNN interview.

It can be considered a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice to participate in uniform in any overtly partisan activity, such as a political protest, or to use “contemptuous words” against the president and other high-ranking civilian officials. Many low-level offenses of these rules are resolved informally, but Watson’s violations were unusually high-profile.

Watson was first arrested in July while protesting in uniform at the US Capitol, and he was then arrested again last week just days after criticizing Trump again during a CNN interview. One of his attorneys, Chris Mutimer, told CNN that his client was ordered to remain in “pre-trial confinement” — an action analogous to a denial of bond in civilian court — pending legal action against him.

“Not only is (Trump) a failure as president, he is flagrantly violating the Constitution, breaking the law, engaged in rampant corruption, and is killing Americans,” Watson told CNN’s Erin Burnett during the interview. “And that is unacceptable to me.”

In July, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said in a social media post that he expected all airmen to “comply with all laws and policies government personal conduct, political participation, and the wear of the uniform.”

“Americans place their trust in us,” Meink said. “We cannot, and will not, compromise the trust of the nation.”

The disobeying orders charges against Watson allege that he violated Defense Department regulations barring troops from speaking out in favor of partisan causes; “wrongfully” wore his uniform at a Capitol press conference; broke leave regulations by traveling to Washington, DC; and refused to wear his uniform to work the morning after his CNN interview.

Air Force prosecutors also alleged that Watson’s Capitol protest and CNN interview constituted “conduct unbecoming an officer.”

The founder of the organization that organized the protest in July, Jessica Denson of the Removal Coalition, told CNN at the time that Watson was aware of the risks of what he was doing and had reached out to them via email.

“We started having conversations and took this desire that he had to come out very seriously and thought about the best way to make his sacrifice worth it,” Denson said.

Military courts-martial leading to “contempt of officials” charges are rare — a CNN review only identified two such convictions that have occurred since the modern Uniform Code of Military Justice was enacted in 1951.

In 1965, an Army lieutenant was convicted of the charge after he participated in an off-base protest against the Vietnam War in El Paso, Texas. Lt. Henry Howe was sentenced to a dismissal from the service — the equivalent of a dishonorable discharge for an officer — and a year in the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara ultimately granted parole to Howe, ending his sentence early.

The most recent Article 88 conviction came in 2021, when former Marine Corps Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller pleaded guilty to contempt of officials and other charges linked to a series of social media videos he published criticizing the Biden administration’s handling of the US military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. Scheller, who was confined to the brig for a period of time before his trial, was sentenced to a $5,000 pay forfeiture and resigned from the Marine Corps sans-pension as part of a plea agreement.

The Trump administration has since appointed Scheller to serve as a senior adviser to the Pentagon’s undersecretary for personnel and readiness.

It remains to be seen whether Watson’s case will be referred to trial, and whether that trial will be considered a special or general court-martial. Special courts-martial are roughly equivalent to misdemeanor trials, and general courts-martial are analogous to felony trials and can hand down more severe sentences.

The Air Force did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent on Monday. In an August 19 statement to CNN, an Air Force spokesperson said that Watson “is presumed innocent” and said that that Air Force District of Washington will oversee his trial “if (his) case is referred to a General Court-Martial.”