The White House has said it is “monitoring” the case of Lucy Connolly in an escalation of free speech tensions with Sir Keir Starmer.
State department officials are examining the treatment of Connolly, the wife of a Conservative councillor, who was jailed for 31 months over a social media post about the Southport attacks.
Judges threw out an appeal brought by the 42-year-old last week, meaning she will not be released before August.
A growing number of people are leaving voluntarily rather than wait to be thrown out in President Trump’s crackdown — or risk prison in El Salvador
For Alexandra Hernández the American dream lasted less than four months.
The Venezuelan crossed the US southern border on January 18 and applied for humanitarian protection using a legal route provided by the Biden administration.
Her asylum hearing was scheduled for 2026 and she settled in Denver, hoping to work as a cleaner. But soon the news on Spanish-language social media started to frighten her. Two days after she entered the country, President Trump took office again. He announced executive orders targeting America’s millions of undocumented migrants.
TORONTO — The last time Canada’s monarch opened a session of Parliament was in 1977, when Queen Elizabeth II visited the country as part of her Silver Jubilee tour. On Tuesday, King Charles III will become only the second monarch in Canada’s history to participate in the historic ritual. From a walnut throne adorned with a spray of gold maple leaves, Charles, who is Canada’s head of state, will deliver the Speech from the Throne.
His presence, at Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s invitation, is widely viewed as sending a subtle message of resistance to a certain non-Canadian with a fondness for the British royal family: President Donald Trump.
The WAPO is on Canada’s side!
Donald Trump ran in 2024 promising “Mass Deportations Now,” a rallying cry that his base responded to enthusiastically. Since his second inauguration, he has made immigration policy the centrepiece of his administration. As a result, the U.S. is acting outside the existing legal process to arbitrarily deport U.S. residents to places like Panama and El Salvador, where they face severe conditions and from which there may be no release. Reports of plans for similar deportations to Rwanda and Libya raise the question of what exactly is happening and where these detention policies might lead.
Based on the words coming out of Mr. Trump’s mouth and my research into the history of mass civilian detention around the world, what he and those who help shape his policies want is unlimited power. If they can establish rendition and arbitrary overseas detention for one group – for example, those who are declared to be Tren de Aragua or MS-13 gang members – history shows that they will likely expand the categories of people they can subject to the same treatment. The administration has already declared its interest in subjecting U.S. citizens to detention in El Salvador.
Aaron started coming to San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighbourhood three years ago to buy heroin.
“I didn’t know where else to go to get drugs. San Francisco is the place where people historically do drugs. So I came here and I just started shoulder-tapping random people.”
He arrived at the height of San Francisco’s so-called doom-loop, as homelessness, addiction and shoplifting rocketed in the wake of the pandemic. Thousands of businesses abandoned the city, turning parts of downtown into lawless, open-air drug markets in one of the richest cities in the world.
Far from helping to end the war in Ukraine, all the indications suggest that US President Donald Trump’s mediation efforts are not only prolonging the conflict, but increasing the likelihood that Russia will ultimately emerge victorious.
Trump’s pledge to end the conflict within 24 hours of taking office now seems but a distant memory.
Instead, his belief that he could use his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin to implement a lasting ceasefire has amounted to nothing, with Trump now conceding that the Russian autocrat has shown little interest in negotiating a peace deal.
The “ban our way to safety” approach adopted by Illinois Democrats has made it impossible for lawful residents to purchase commonly-owned arms, and those guns that are allowed for sale can’t be possessed without a state-issued permission slip (and only after waiting 72 hours after they’ve been purchased).
John Rogers was visiting Shanghai in May 2013, attending a business forum as a Federal Reserve economist, when he first received an email from an alleged Chinese intelligence agent.
The man described himself as a Chinese graduate student who was interested in learning about the Fed. Rogers says he refused the man’s offer to pay him. But they stayed in touch, and later, the man invited Rogers to visit China again, all expenses paid.
This time, Rogers made the trip, setting off a chain of events that led to espionage charges against him in the U.S.—and exposed new details about China’s alleged efforts to recruit informants inside U.S. government institutions.
Donald Trump sent US officials to meet British pro-life activists over concerns their freedom of speech has been threatened, The Telegraph can reveal.
A five-person team from the US state department spent days in the country and interviewed campaigners to feed back to the White House.
They met with five activists who had been arrested for silently protesting outside abortion clinics across Britain.
OTTAWA — As an institution that has for centuries employed symbolism with surgical precision, the timing of the King’s visit to Canada may be more revealing than the itinerary itself.
It’s considered a core principle of the British constitutional monarchy that the ceremonial head of state of the United Kingdom, Canada and other Commonwealth countries not comment on or become directly involved in politics. It’s also a key component in trying to maintain the public’s trust.
When Prime Minister Mark Carney quietly lifted most food-related countervailing tariffs on May 7, few Canadians noticed.
There was no press release, no public statement – just a discreet policy shift mid-campaign. Yet several symbolic tariffs remain, notably on orange juice, coffee, alcohol, and tea.
The rationale? Canadians can supposedly “find substitutes.”
During the 12 months leading up to March, more than 6,000 US citizens have applied to either become British subjects or to live and work in the country indefinitely – the highest number since comparable records began in 2004, according to data released on Thursday by the UK’s Home Office.
Over the period, 6,618 Americans applied for British citizenship – with more than 1,900 of the applications received between January and March, most of which has been during the beginning of Donald Trump’s second US presidency.
The surge in applications at the start of 2025 made that the highest number for any quarter on record.
As soon as Magnus Mæland became mayor of a small town on Norway’s northern tip in late 2023, three delegations from China came knocking on his door.
“It’s because they want to be a polar superpower,” he tells me.
China might not instinctively spring to mind when you think about the Arctic – but it’s determined to be a big Arctic player. It’s been vying to buy real estate, get involved in infrastructure projects and hopes to establish a permanent regional presence.
China already describes itself as a “near-Arctic state”, even though its northernmost regional capital Harbin is on roughly the same latitude as Venice, Italy.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s endorsement of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney ahead of the April 28 election may reflect a dynamic where ideological rivals are able to engage more openly, one of America’s best-known historians and conservative commentators says.
Trump’s preference for another Liberal prime minister in Canada, along with his public praise for Carney on multiple occasions, could stem from a common dynamic among ideological opponents where interactions can be more blunt and direct, said Victor Davis Hanson in a recent interview with Jan Jekielek, host of The Epoch Times’ program “American Thought Leaders.”
Very interesting interview.
A U.S. judge has provided Harvard University a temporary reprieve from the Trump administration’s move to block enrolment of foreign students, including Canadians.
In a lawsuit filed early Friday in federal court in Boston, Harvard said the government’s action violates the First Amendment, the Associated Press reports, and will have an “immediate and devastating effect” on its more than 7,000 international visa holders.
Why do I doubt she’ll be shown the door.
