They came out in defense of national parks and small businesses, public education and health care for veterans, abortion rights and fair elections. They marched against tariffs and oligarchs, dark money and fascism, the deportation of legal immigrants and the Department of Government Efficiency.

Demonstrators had no shortage of causes as they gathered in towns and cities across the country on Saturday to protest President Trump’s agenda. Rallies were planned in all 50 states, and images posted on social media showed crowds in places like St. Augustine, Fla., and Franklin, N.C., and rainy Frankfort, Ky.

While crowd sizes are difficult to estimate, organizers said that more than 600,000 people had signed up to participate. On Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, the protest stretched for nearly 20 blocks. In Chicago, several thousand people flooded Daley Plaza and adjacent streets, while in the nation’s capital tens of thousands surrounded the Washington Monument. In Atlanta, the police estimated the crowd marching to the gold-domed statehouse at over 20,000.

Some demonstrators waved American flags, occasionally turned upside down to signal distress. Many, especially federal workers and college students, were afraid to speak on the record for fear of retaliation.

The mass action, “Hands Off!,” was planned at a time when many have bemoaned what they see as a lack of strong resistance to Mr. Trump. The president has moved aggressively to punish people and institutions he views as out of step with his ideology.

The rallies were organized by Indivisible, MoveOn and several other groups that led protests about abortion rights, gun violence and racial justice during the first Trump administration. Organizers said they hoped to shift the emphasis to pocketbook issues like health care and Social Security, with the message that Mr. Trump is making life harder for the average American while benefiting his richest friends.

They also moved away from focusing on massive demonstrations, like the 2017 Women’s March on Washington, to instead plan hundreds of local gatherings in communities large and small.

Just what we need, 5 trillion I'm tax cuts for the wealthy. Hopefully the house is unable to pass it with their slim majority.

A 39-year-old DACA recipient and married father of three from Kansas City, Kansas, was deported last month after he left the U.S. and traveled to Mexico to visit his grandfather's grave, according to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday.

Evenezer Cortez-Martinez was detained March 23 at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport as he was making his way back into the U.S., the lawsuit states.

Martinez traveled to Mexico on March 20. Upon his return he arrived at DFW, where U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents stopped him from boarding his connecting flight home to Kansas City, claiming he had a removal order filed in June 2024, the lawsuit says.

Cortez-Martinez was deported immediately to Mexico City.

According to Cortez-Martinez's lawyer, Rekha Sharma-Crawford, her client was unaware of a removal order filed in 2024 given he has been a DACA recipient since 2014 and had successfully renewed his permit every two years. Cortez-Martinez was brought to the U.S. as a 4-year-old child.

Sharma-Crawford told CBS News her client applied for and obtained permission to travel outside of the U.S. through the Advance Parole process. This allows DACA recipients in the U.S. to temporarily travel outside of the country and return without a visa.

Sharma-Crawford is urging other dreamers not to travel outside of the U.S. under the Trump administration. "If you don't have to travel right now, you should probably not travel. It's just too uncertain, it's just too unknown."

The Justice Department attorney who unsuccessfully argued Friday in defense of the controversial and mistaken deportation of a Maryland man to El Salvador has been placed on administrative leave, CBS News learned Saturday.

During a federal hearing Friday in Greenbelt, Maryland, in which U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ruled that Kilmar Abrego Garcia must be returned to the U.S. by April 7, Justice Department attorney Erez Reuveni frequently failed to answer Xinis' questions, and made multiple critical comments of his agency in court, saying he wasn't given sufficient information by the Justice Department for some of Friday's arguments.

When further questioned about why the government is not able to return Abrego Garcia, Reuveni said he "asked the government the same question," and did not receive an answer.

Reuveni argued the case Friday after being promoted on March 21 to acting deputy director of the Justice Department Office of Immigration Litigation.

In a statement provided to CBS News Saturday about the move, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said, "At my direction, every Department of Justice attorney is required to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States. Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences."

The purpose of this post is to answer a question I have seen many users on this sub ask over the last few weeks: who is pushing all this Afrikaner stuff in the United States?

The answer is an Afrikaner lobbying and civil society group known in South Africa as Afriforum. Together with Afriforum is another organization known as Solidarity, which is an Afrikaner trade union. Afriforum and Solidarity are not political parties, but are well-resourced and effective parts of the civil society advocating for the interests of Afrikaners. Together they both fall under the umbrella of the 'Solidarity Movement'.

The rest of this article explores the history of these organizations, their growing prominence in South Africa in recent years, their ideology and their beliefs.

Apartheid-era White Politics

To understand where these organizations come from, you have to start in the 80s.

During Apartheid, the party that governed under the White only elections was called the National Party) ('the Nats'). These are the people who designed and enforced Apartheid.

There were other parties that stood in opposition to the Nats. An early example were the United party of Jan Smuts. But towards the end of Apartheid, reformists from the United Party and other liberal parties coalesced into a liberal party known as the Progressive Federal Party ('the Progs'). These are White people who opposed Apartheid but participated in Parliamentary politics, like Helen Suzman.

In the 80s, the Nats began a process of trying to reform Apartheid by introducing some basic representation for Indian and Coloured people (but not Black people). They wanted to have a 'Tricameral Parliament' where Indians and Coloureds would be able to have their own representatives. When the talk of reforms began, a group in the National Party broke away in resistance to these reforms. They formed the Conservative Party).

The Conservative Party quickly overtook the Progs as the official opposition. During the 1992 referendum to end Apartheid, they campaigned for No which won 30% of the vote (White South Africans), which is about the same as their level of support in Parliament.

The Conservative Party represented White people to the right-wing of the National Party of Both and De Klerk. The opposed the end of Apartheid. They were far-right Afrikaner Nationalists.

During the negotiations to end Apartheid, members of the Conservative Party were involved in the assassination the leader of South Africa's Communist Party, Chris Hani.

There were people even further to the right of the Conservative Party, like the Afrikaner Weerstandbeweging (AWB). These right-wing terrorists were literally neo-Nazis who formed militias to terrorize negotiators and ordinary citizens.

So there was an entire political spectrum to the right of the National Party, that ran from the Conservative Party to neo-Nazis like the AWB. Many of these forces coalesced into militias united under the Afrikaner Volksfront, led by Constand Viljoen, a former military general.

The Volksfront attempted to assist the dictator of the Tswana Bantustan, Lucas Mangope, to maintain his rule in the face of pro-democracy/pro-ANC protests. The AWB (neo-Nazis) got involved against Mangope's wishes. Mangope wanted Viljoen and the more 'moderate' militia elements, often led by former army generals. Many senior leaders in the Volksfront were also wary of the AWB. The situation escalated dramatically and the entire plan failed spectacularly.

Viljoen then left the Volksfront and formed a political party which participated in the transition to democracy and the first elections. The party that Viljoen formed was called the Freedom Front.

The Freedom Front would eventually absorb those Afrikaner right-wing leaders who didn't want to run around with AWB neo-nazi militias, but who nonetheless were to the right of the National Party. Many of the leaders and members of the Conservative Party would end up in the Freedom Front.

The Freedom Front was thus the successor to the Conservative Party. It was founded by right-wing Afrikaners, from Parliamentarians to former defense officials acting as militia leaders during the tumultuous transition to democracy. But it stopped short of going into the territory of the militant neo-Nazis like the AWB.

Unlike the Conservative Party, the Freedom Front participated in the 1994 elections and ran on the idea of creating an Afrikaner ethnic enclave within South Africa, known as a Volkstaat. Charitably, this would be something like Afrikaner Quebec. Less charitably, it was an attempt to create a White Afrikaner ethnostate within the borders of South Africa, and any talk of co-existence was a pretext to declaring independence from South Africa and establishing an Afrikaner Republic.

In the final years of Apartheid and the first years of democracy, White South African politics thus went like this:

• Liberals who opposed Apartheid voted for the Progressive Freedom Party, which rebranded as the Democratic Party.
• Conservatives who supported Apartheid and opposed reforms and its end voted for the Conservative Party which evolved into the Freedom Front.
• Most White South Africans voted for the National Party led by FW de Klerk. This was the party the implemented Apartheid, but also, ultimately, negotiated its end. By the standards of Apartheid-era White South Africa, it was the 'center'.
• The far-far-right nutjobs were involved in militias and neo-Nazi type groups which were quickly brought under control.
• Genuine left-wing Whites voted for the ANC.

In the early 2000s, the National Party collapsed. Its leaders would scatter amongst many parties (including the ANC), but its membership moved almost entirely into the Democratic Party, which became the Democratic Alliance we know today.

The Freedom Front Plus picked up a few other microparties and rebranded as the Freedom Front Plus (FF+). Just as the National Party and Democratic Alliance included many Coloured voters, the Freedom Front Plus was also able to pick up a few prominent Coloured political leaders. They presented themselves as a party not merely for Afrikaners, but for 'minorities' in general. In practise, they would maintain a keen focus on Afrikaners in particular, with a link to the Coloured community through the Afrikaans language, of which Coloureds comprise the majority of speakers.

Afriforum and Solidarity

The Afrikaner Nationalists were unsuccessful in negotiating a Volkstaat for themselves. When the National Party collapsed in the early 2000s, most of those voters ended up in the DA rather than the FF+. The transition to democracy had gone well, and the economy was growing. Mandela's project was successful, and the ANC commanded supermajorities in Parliament which they exercised mostly responsibly. The appetite for Volkstaat 80s/90s panic was thus quite low, and Afrikaners began to lose interest in even moderate forms of these ideas. Politically, the Freedom Front Plus was very weak, even just within White and Coloured communities.

These conditions meant that the Afrikaner Nationalists had to modernize in order to maintain their relevance. In 2006, Afriforum was founded. Here is how it is described on its website:

AfriForum is a non-profit civil rights organisation that was established on 26 March 2006. The organisation was created to call up Afrikaners to participate in public debate and actions outside of the sphere of party politics

Afriforum worked together with a White trade union, Solidarity, to form the broader Solidarity Movement to mobilize Afrikaners outside of party politics. One of the founders of Afriforum, Kallie Kriel, is a former member of the Conservative Party and the Freedom Front Plus. It is that same political tradition brought into a much more modern form.

Afriforum is a very effective organization. It is not just a think tank, like the Heritage Foundation. Afriforum, together with the broader Solidarity movement, are active in undertaking practical projects and litigation to fix problems in failing communities. Here are some examples:

• They have established a network of community policing forums. These are neighbourhood and farm watch groups staffed by thousands of volunteers and working in coordination with the South African Police Service.
• They fixed potholes in the City of Pretoria and other municipalities, and organizing volunteers to assist local municipalities with basic services like grass-cutting.
• They have taken the government to court to interdict decisions that they view as reckless or irresponsible, for example donating money to Cuba or increasing electricity tariffs.
• They have also taken educational institutions to court when they choose to phase out Afrikaans-medium instruction in favour of an English-only model.
• They built an Afrikaans-medium private technical college from scratch in the city of Centurion, near Pretoria, on time and under budget to fight against the growing tide of English-medium only education, and they are currently planning to build a university.
• Establishing a private prosecutions unit (I believe it is the first in the country) to take on cases that the state prosecutors wrongly ignore. The Afriforum Private Prosecutions unit is headed up by Gerrie Nel, the renowned prosecutor who put Oscar Pistorious behind bars.
• They established a large media network called Maroela Media which is one of the largest Afrikaans-language media organizations in the country.

This competence has built Afriforum some credibility amongst Afrikaners and the broader society.

They couple this with a communication network led by effective, younger communicators on digital platforms. For example, their head of Public Relations, Ernst van Zyl, has a YouTube channel under the name the Conscious Caracal and publishes at the Daily Friend.

So the idea here is that Afriforum is not a political party. It's not about getting votes and cushy jobs and prestige. They are practical people just trying to build a better world. And they aren't just complaining. They're rolling up their sleeves and actually doing something. If you are even slightly right of center, then Afriforum's politics is the kind of politics that you probably find legitimate and respectable. Within the logic of right-wing politics - even moderate right-wing politics - Afriforum has earned the right to talk about concepts like self-determination through their competence and their exercise of self-reliance and responsibility.

Afriforum have taken off in Afrikaner communities. Their membership exceeds that which you might expect if it were one-to-one with Freedom Front Plus voters. It is their competent, practical projects and their non-partisan engagement that allows them to quietly build an authentic relationship within communities. It is also obvious that their political influence doesn't stop at the Freedom Front Plus but extends deep into the Democratic Alliance as a result of Afriforum's influence amongst the base.

These are the people that traveled to the US and begun to bring up Afrikaner issues as a salient topic in Trump world. And before we get to criticizing them, it is crucial to understand how they present positively: as practical, 'roll-up-your-sleeves' types who are smart, hard working and brave. Even if you are only slightly right of center, Afriforum, or at least the version of themselves they present, are impressive and seem legit.

Lobbying in the West

Afriforum began a campaign of lobbying in the United States and the West in May 2018. Afriforum sent their CEO, Kallie Kriel, and Deputy CEO, Dr. Ersnt Roets, to the United States. According to Tyler McBrien of the Council on Foreign Relations:

• They visited the CATO Institute, where they left one analyst convinced that the "explicitly racist" policies of the ANC government mirrored those under Apartheid
• They persuaded Australia's home affairs minister to call for visas to be issued for farmers
• Were featured on Tucker Carlson regarding farm murders

They also met the Heritage Foundation, Ted Cruz and John Bolton.

Later that year, President Donald Trump issued his first tweet about South Africa:

I have asked Secretary of State u/SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. “South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers.” @TuckerCarlson @FoxNews

He cited Tucker Carlson in the tweet and Afriforum took credit for it:

"We welcome it," said Ernst Roets. The group travelled to the US in May to lobby individual members of the US Senate and the House of Representatives. "I think our lobbying has certainly had an impact because we have spoken with a lot of people who have had contact with President Trump and we have spoken with many think tanks, one of them for example the Cato Institute, which has taken a very strong stance shortly before this statement now by President Trump."

This is how we know that it is Afriforum that is in Trump's ear, indirectly. Trump's interest in this issue predates Elon's involvement in the administration by years. I'm not saying Elon isn't contributing anything today. But the Afriforum-Carlson-Trump pipeline was clear from as early as 2018.

Afriforum's lobbying wasn't limited to the United States. They also travelled to Australia. After their lobbying there, the Australian Home Affairs minister indicated that he wanted to look at providing some sort of refugee intake for Afrikaners:

"I've asked the department to look at ways that we can provide some assistance. We could provide more visas for people potentially in the humanitarian program," Mr Dutton told 2GB radio on Thursday.

"If people are being persecuted, regardless of whether it's because of religion or the colour of their skin or whatever, we need to provide assistance where we can."

Mr Dutton said there were already large numbers of South African expatriates living in Australia.

"They work hard, they integrate well into Australian society, they contribute to make us a better country and they're the sorts of migrants that we want to bring into our country," he said.

On Wednesday, Mr Dutton told News Corp white South African farmers "deserve special attention" and "need help from a civilised country like ours", and the Home Affairs department was working with partners in the region, with an announcement likely to be forthcoming soon.

In 2024, Afriforum returned to the United States. Their leaders attended the National Conservative Conference (NATCON4). Dr. Roets gave a presentation about the The Afrikaner Philosophy of Fixing Your Own Problems. It's actually a really nice speech rhetorically, and again it speaks to that spirit of 'do it for yourself' which Afriforum can genuinely lay some claim to. Roets is quite smart and well read. He is educated in law and his arguments have depth and logic to them.

He and other voices in this world have a very clever and fascinating proposition which they like to put forward to Westerners: that Zimbabwe's past is South Africa's ongoing present is the future of the West. Roets didn't use the word DEI in this speech (from late 2024), but that's the key idea here: that a powerful + DEI will lead to other people coming in and using that state against you, and you are better off doing things at a small-scale, self-reliant community level. The history and experiences of the Afrikaners become a case study in the effects of progressive politics. I strongly encourage you to watch or listen to the speech.

Unfortunately, Roets often makes misleading claims and, more frequently, misleads audiences through omission. Westerners generally don't have enough of a background in the minutiae of South African history to poke holes in some of the arguments he makes. For example, in the speech he delivered at NATCON4, he contrasts the early 20th century Afrikaners who believed in self-help with those of the second half of the 20th century who believed in Big Government. He omits that it was the early 20th century Afrikaners who undertook a massive mineworkers strike and advocated for the government to maintain a Colour Bar that would prevent willing and able Black people from undertaking skilled work in the mines.

Mask Off

By all accounts, Afriforum's lobbying in the U.S. has been very successful. Donald Trump issued an executive order prioritising refugee settlement for Afrikaners as a direct consequence of their lobbying, and U.S. Congressmen have double down on this.

But, believe it or not, Afriforum isn't really happy with this. Because they don't want refugee status to escape South Africa, what they want is what the Afrikaner Nationalists have wanted since the transition to democracy - an ethnostate/enclave. There are many different and innovative ways to spin it, but that's basically the goal here. That is the reason why these organizations did not declare victory when Trump offered them refugee status, but instead submitted a memorandum requesting that

Aid be provided to an Afrikaner development fund to assist with community infrastructure protecting Afrikaners. This includes safety structures, social structures, job structures, training structures and infrastructure to settle Afrikaners in a concentrated manner

It's the Volkstaat again, folks.

In addition to having a questionable end goal, every now and then, representatives from these movements will go mask off and draw immense criticism as a result. Even if you limit yourself to criticism only from centrist and right wing White people, you are left with:

• Frans Cronje of the IRR think tank accusing them of releasing a documentary that attempted to sanitize Apartheid and telling them to apologize
• Gareth van Onselen, a prominent and fairly harsh liberal commentator, calling the same documentary disgraceful for its portrayal of Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of Apartheid
• Various academics circulating a letter of condemnation after Roets, in response to being fact-checked by an academic, quoted a Jewish writer Victor Klemperer, who wrote that if the tables were turned after the Holocaust he "would have all the intellectuals strung up, and the professors three feet higher than the rest; they would be left hanging from the lamp posts for as long as was compatible with hygiene."
• Broad condemnation for Kallie Kriel, Afriforum's leader, for saying that Apartheid was not a crime against humanity but it was wrong.
• Constitutional Court Justice Edwin Cameron who raged in a judgment about Afriforum describing Apartheid as a 'so-called historical injustice'
• White MPs from the ANC, DA and ACDP for their presentation on land expropriation. The ANC MP, who formerly was a member of the National Party, equated them to one of the most extreme Black Radical groups in South Africa, BLF. The DA MP said she found that she could not align with them at all. And the ACDP MP said that Afriforum were taking us backwards. Video here.
• Max du Preez describing Afriforum's youth wing as "stormtroopers" and compared the mentality of Afriforum's supporters to the EFF on the other side of the aisle. I am not an Afrikaner and am not in all the Whatsapp groups and I don't go to community events. But du Preez says that in many circles pro-Afriforum are vicious and rabid in their defense of the organization, and they behave as cruel bullies.

Two things can be true at once. It is true that Afriforum are effective, capable and intelligent people who have built one of South Africa's most impactful NGOs/civil society organizations. It is also true that, the minute you scratch just a little bit deeper, you find Apartheid apologia, racism, authoritarianism, bullying and Christian nationalism.

Conclusion

We know who is influencing the Republican Party on Afrikaners - it's Afriforum and their sister organizations collectively known as the Solidarity Movement. These organizations ultimately trace their heritage back to the Conservative Party - the party formed to resist even the modest 'reforms' to Apartheid in the 80s.

These organizations are full of persuasive, competent and intelligent people. They are also built on horrible historical foundations, starting from the mission to preserve the Apartheid system even after the National Party had begun to give up on it. The content that they put out, and the conduct of their members, has led to some prominent and respected voices in White South African politics labelling these organizations as racist hateful bullies when they feel they have an opportunity to do so without being punished by their peers or through litigation.

These organizations have successfully modernized Afrikaner Nationalism for the digital, 21st century era. They have managed to sync up with right wing movements and media ecosystems across the Western world, and to portray a story of Afrikaner history which resonates deeply with the agenda and worldview of the global Western right - from America to Germany to Australia. The story that Afriforum tell about themselves is misleading, and the stories they tell about South Africa are effectively Apartheid denialism. But these stories are growing in reach as the West continues to embrace ethnonationalist right wing ideas.

The success of the Solidarity Movement have prompted other right wing White voices to also journey to the US. The Cape Independence Advocacy Group has announced they will be going to the US, as have representatives from the Afrikaner-enclave town known as Orania. The Solidarity Movement itself have announced plans to go to Europe in 2025 to undertake more lobbying there.

A US neo-Nazi terrorist group with a Russia-based leader is calling for targeted assassinations and attacks on the critical infrastructure of Ukraine in an effort to destabilize the country as it carries out ceasefire negotiations with the Kremlin.

The Base, which has a web of cells all over the world, was founded in 2018 and became the subject of a relentless FBI counter-terrorism investigation that led to several arrests and world governments officially designating it as a terrorist organization.

Now, with the Trump administration pulling the FBI from pursuing the far right, the Base, left unchecked, is trying to export its violence abroad.

This is the first time the Base has openly allied itself with the Kremlin’s broader geopolitical goals, a sudden change experts say signals its likely involvement in Russian sabotage and propaganda operations now being carried out across Europe.

The Base founder and leader, Rinaldo Nazzaro, a semi-defected American who worked with US special forces during the war on terror and now lives in Saint Petersburg, has for years garnered suspicions of being a Russian intelligence asset. Even members of the Base mused that he was a spy and grew weary of the source of his cash flow.

In posts on Telegram, the Base is offering cash for volunteer operatives and recruits to carry out attacks on, “electric power stations, military & police vehicles, military & police personnel, government buildings, [Ukrainian] politicians”, specifically in Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine.

The plan was unveiled online last week and is in support of a wider bid to carve out a white nationalist enclave in the Zakarpattia region of Ukraine, something the Base describes as having “rugged mountainous terrain which is a force multiplier for an unconventional paramilitary force”.

The Base’s Ukrainian ambitions fall in line with a major Kremlin talking point since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine: casting aspersions on the government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, himself a Jewish man, as a sort of new Third Reich. While Russia has long sought to portray Ukraine as a bastion for the far right – even though it harbors Nazzaro, uses a neo-Nazi militia alongside its military and makes alliances with European fascists.

How real the Base’s actual presence in Ukraine currently is, remains unclear and is unlikely to be significant. In 2019, Ukrainian security services deported one of the Base’s members for his neo-Nazi activities and trying to enlist in their military. Though they have tried and failed, it is rare for stateside far-right groups to export any real influence into Ukraine.

This isn’t the first time the Base, which has made recent strides in rebuilding its American membership, started appearing in Europe. Last year, members were arrested in Belgium, the Netherlands, and in Italy where authorities cracked down on a Base cell that it said had ties to a network of Russian far-right terrorists recruiting from Telegram.

Obviously there are many critiques of Trump's tariff policy, but one I keep hearing repeated is that billionaires are behind it all so that they can profit off short selling. It sounds very conspiratorial to me, as I always assumed big companies losing customers would outweigh any benefits of tariffs, but regardless I'd like to be more informed about the feasibility of this.

Trump administration officials have fired workers for the main American aid agency who were sent to Myanmar to assess how the United States could help with earthquake relief efforts, three people with knowledge of the actions said.

The firings, done Friday while the workers were in the rubble-strewn city of Mandalay, raise doubts about Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s stated commitment to continuing some humanitarian and crisis aid even as the aid organization, the U.S. Agency for International Development, is dismantled by the Trump administration.

More than 3,300 people were killed and more than 4,800 injured in Myanmar, according to Burmese government estimates. A tropical storm was lashing much of the country on Saturday, with heavy rain and winds leading to flooding. The Trump administration has been criticized by Democratic lawmakers and others for what they called its paltry response.

The three experienced aid workers got termination emails addressed specifically to them just days after arriving in Myanmar, said the three people with knowledge of the situation, who are current and former U.S.A.I.D. officials. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.

The government of Myanmar, ruled by authoritarian generals, asked other nations to send help after the earthquake hit on March 28. China, Russia and India sent teams and supplies, as did Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam. The United States did not send any aid specialists into the country until this week, when the three-person assessment team arrived.

The State Department spokeswoman, Tammy Bruce, pointed to that team on Monday as a sign that the United States was willing to help Myanmar despite widespread doubts over Washington’s ability to perform aid operations given the slashing of the agency since late January. The cuts were carried out by Mr. Rubio; Pete Marocco, a divisive political appointee at the State Department; and Elon Musk, the billionaire adviser to Mr. Trump.

When asked by a reporter on Friday in Brussels about the inability of the United States to provide substantial aid to Myanmar, Mr. Rubio said that other large countries, including China and India, should step up in global foreign aid as the United States cuts back.

The U.S. Embassy in Myanmar announced on March 30 that the American government would provide up to $2 million in aid for earthquake relief. That is only one-tenth of the $20 million in aid that the United States, India, Japan and Australia have together committed; the four nations announced that number in a joint statement on Thursday.

Organisers say 150,000 joined protest in Madrid urging the government to ‘end the housing racket’ and to demand access to affordable housing

President Donald Trump’s global tariffs are convincing Austria to ditch its long-time opposition to a trade deal between the European Union and the Mercosur bloc.

Economy Minister Wolfgang Hattmannsdorfer is now urging the European Commission to prepare a final agreement and ratification process for the free-trade deal signed in December, which seeks to create an integrated market of 780 million consumers in Europe and Latin America.

The shift means there’s one fewer European nation opposing the pact that followed 20 years of negotiations. Some European countries, including France and Poland, have said they won’t accept the agreement due to its potential impact on farmers, raising questions over its implementation.

It also shows how Trump’s onslaught on the global economic order is pushing nations to adapt on the fly, including by forging new trade alliances and seeking markets for export goods that may no longer reach the US.

EU trade ministers are due to meet on Monday to discuss the US measures. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has promised a firm and proportionate response, but has also indicated that the EU would prefer to avoid a confrontation and instead find a negotiated solution in the coming weeks.

Hattmannsdorfer’s comments are all the more remarkable as they come from a minister appointed by the conservative People’s Party, which is deeply rooted in rural Austria and has been wary of damaging farmers, against the backdrop of surging popularity for the far-right Freedom Party.

Mercosur, the regional economic market established in 1991, has five full members - Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Venezuela’s full membership has been suspended since 2016. Seven other countries in South and Central America are associate members.