Can Labour government usher in a new era of UK-Arab engagement?

Analysis Can Labour government usher in a new era of UK-Arab engagement?
The message for Labour’s Keir Starmer is that Britain’s sizable Muslim community has found its voice and its political power, and its support can no longer be taken for granted. (Reuters)
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Updated 09 July 2024
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Can Labour government usher in a new era of UK-Arab engagement?

Can Labour government usher in a new era of UK-Arab engagement?
  • Some experts think policy focus will shift from migration, counterextremism to Palestine, closer Gulf ties
  • Loud and clear election message is that support of Britain’s Muslim community cannot be taken for granted

LONDON: Before last Thursday, few British voters outside of the east London constituency of Ilford North had heard of Leanne Mohamad, the independent candidate running for election in the seat held by one of the Labour Party’s biggest names.

Mohamad’s name was no better known after the election, in which Wes Streeting, Labour’s shadow health secretary, held on to the seat he had captured from the Conservatives in 2015.

But the success of the 23-year-old British-Palestinian in coming within a whisker of defeating Streeting was one of several warning shots fired across the bows of a Labour Party which has now woken up to the fact that the UK’s Muslim community might have an equal or even greater say in its chances of remaining in power for more than one term as the UK Jewish lobby, which the party has spent the past five years courting assiduously.

Streeting, who is now Labour’s new health secretary, squeezed back in by just 528 votes — 15,647 to Mohamad’s 15,119 — an unprecedented collapse of support over a single issue of foreign policy.

He was not the only senior party member who felt the wrath of the Muslim community and its supporters over Labour’s half-hearted stance on Gaza.




Labour’s new prime minister is on tricky ground over Gaza. (Reuters)

In the constituency of Holborn & St. Pancras, even Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s 2019 majority of 36,641 was slashed in half.

His chief opponent was another independent, Andrew Feinstein, a former South African politician and the son of a Holocaust survivor who criticized Starmer’s pre-election position on Gaza, having previously argued that the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is “a peaceful mechanism to weaken and thus force concessions from” an “apartheid Israel.”

Over 120 miles north in Birmingham Ladywood, long-serving Labour MP Shabana Mahmood, who secured 79 percent of the constituency’s votes in 2019, saw her majority cut in half and almost equaled by Akhmed Yakoob, yet another pro-Palestinian independent candidate.

In the neighboring constituency of Birmingham Yardley, Labour’s Jess Phillips saw her 2019 majority of 10,659 slashed to fewer than 700 votes by newcomer Jody McIntyre, running for the Workers Party.

Her setback came her November 2023 resignation from the shadow cabinet in protest over her party’s stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict, declaring she had to vote “with my constituents, my head, and my heart, which has felt as if it were breaking over the last four weeks with the horror of the situation in Israel and Palestine.”




The new health secretary, Wes Streeting, narrowly escaped defeat to Pro-Palestine independent Leanne Mohamad. (Reuters)

And they were the lucky ones. In 21 seats in the UK where more than one-fifth of the population is Muslim, Labour saw its share of the vote fall by 25 percent, and four MPs lost their seats to independents on pro-Gaza tickets.

The message for Labour, which has been received loud and clear, is that Britain’s sizable Muslim community has found its voice and its political power, and its support can no longer be taken for granted.

As Shabana Mahmood said after holding on to her Birmingham Ladywood seat, “we have bridges to rebuild … we have trust that we must earn back from my own community.”

There are already signs that Britain’s new government, whose program of social and economic reform is dependent upon securing a second term in office five years from now, is taking steps to do just that.

Starmer, whose wife is Jewish, inherited the leadership of the Labour Party in April 2020 from Jeremy Corbyn, a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause whose five years as leader were overshadowed by persistent accusations that the party he presided over was antisemitic — allegations that Corbyn and his supporters saw as an orchestrated campaign motivated by Labour’s support for Palestine.




Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause, regained his seat as an independent candidate. (Reuters)

A report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the UK’s human rights watchdog, published in October 2020, concluded there were “serious failings in the Labour Party leadership in addressing antisemitism and an inadequate process for handling antisemitism complaints.”

The report had a Catch-22 air about it, concluding as it did that Labour’s protestations that the multiple accusations of antisemitism against it — from organizations including the Jewish Labour Movement, the Campaign Against Antisemitism and Jewish Voice for Labour — were manufactured smears, was, in itself, evidence of antisemitism.

Starmer set out to rebuild the trust of the Jewish community, declaring that he would “tear out this poison by its roots and judge success by the return of Jewish members.”

It seems to have worked. In the 2019 general election an estimated 11 percent of British Jews voted Labour; last Thursday it was closer to 50 percent.




Staremer, whose wife is Jewish, told The Guardian, “half of the family are Jewish, they’re either here or in Israel.” (AFP)

But Labour’s new prime minister is on tricky ground over Gaza. As he told The Guardian in an interview last month, “half of the family are Jewish, they’re either here or in Israel.”

Now that the election is over, and his party has been badly bruised at the ballot box by the perception that it has turned its back on the plight of the Palestinians, a cause traditionally close to Labour’s heart, Starmer faces the puzzle of how to retain UK Jewish support while bringing Muslims back on board.

“Labour has been very vocal about the need to counter antisemitism, and this now puts it in a very awkward position,” Kelly Petillo, program manager for the Middle East and North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Arab News.

“On the one hand, they have portrayed themselves as the people who are going to clean up the Labour Party, but on the other they have to grapple with the reality that many independent candidates won because Labour’s stance on the war in Gaza was unsatisfactory for many.”

It is possible, she believes, that Labour will tread water on the issue of Gaza and the broader question of Palestinian statehood until the outcome of November’s presidential election in the US is settled.




Israel has been conducting a devestating military assault on the Gaza Strip since October last year. (AFP)

If, as seems increasingly likely, Donald Trump returns to the presidency, “there could well be alignment with the Trump administration, leading to a bias toward Israel, which is already evident in the nature of some of the candidates Labour selected to run in the election.”

For example, one of Labour’s new parliamentarians is Luke Akehurst, the MP for North Durham and former director of the pro-Israeli activist group We Believe in Israel, who has described Israel’s actions in Gaza as proportionate.

But for now, at least, the new UK government’s foreign policy is already showing signs of taking a turn for the pro-Palestinian.

Before the election, the then Conservative government had challenged the decision by the International Criminal Court to consider approving the chief prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants to be issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, for alleged war crimes in Gaza.

The UK questioned the ICC’s jurisdiction in the case, but the new Labour-led government has hinted it may withdraw the objection.




Israel’s military campaign in the Palestinian enclave has killed more than 35,000 people. (AFP)

The news leaked after two early calls to leaders in the region by Starmer. In one, he spoke to Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, expressing his concern about “the ongoing suffering and devastating loss of life” in Gaza, and restating the support for a Palestinian state that David Lammy, his foreign secretary, had already articulated.

Starmer’s other call was to Netanyahu. According to a Labour transcript, the new prime minister spoke of the “clear and urgent” need for a ceasefire in Gaza, adding that it was “also important to ensure the long-term conditions for a two-state solution were in place, including ensuring the Palestinian Authority had the financial means to operate effectively.”

Starmer also urged the Israeli leader to act with caution in his dealings with Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border.

Meanwhile, Lammy has said that the Labour administration will reexamine legal advice given to the Conservative government that UK arms being sold to Israel were not being used in breach of international humanitarian law.

Lammy has also suggested the UK might reverse its decision to stop funding UNRWA, the UN’s Palestinian relief agency. In January, major donors to the agency, including the US, the EU, the UK and Germany, withdrew funding when it emerged that a dozen of UNRWA’s 30,000 Palestinian employees were suspected of having been involved in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel.




Britain’s newly appointed Foreign Secretary David Lammy leaves Downing Street. (Reuters)

By April, most of this international funding had been restored and “the UK is now in the weird position where it is one of the few countries that has not restored UNRWA funding,” said Petillo.

Despite Lammy’s pronouncements, “I think Starmer is being advised internally to delay this as much as possible, keeping the UK in line with the US, which has blocked it until March 2025. This type of deflection is probably a tactic they will use to address some of the domestic tensions they are under.”

Because of this and other issues, UK policy in the Middle East “will continue to be dictated to a certain extent by US politics and the US line; you could argue that we won’t see a huge change from foreign policy in this area under the Conservatives.

“On the other hand, one can anticipate change just because the bar set by the Conservative government was so low, partly because of all the distractions they have faced, but also because of the narrow lens through which they have looked at Middle East policy, focused mostly on migration and countering extremism and, of course, through a reduction in aid budgets, which has affected countries like Yemen and Syria massively.”




Smoke billows during Israeli bombardment on the village of Khiam in south Lebanon near the border with Israel. (AFP)

Lammy has already made plain that Labour intends to reengage with the Middle East through a new policy of what he called “progressive realism,” and has also spoken of the need for the UK to mend relations with the Arab Gulf states.

This would be timely and highly welcome in the region, said Petillo.

“The UK has definitely shifted its attention a bit away from the region,” she said. “It was a big part of the international support for Ukraine and lately has been looking at the Gulf states solely through the narrow lens of energy.

FASTFACTS

• SR83.31bn Total Saudi-UK trade in goods and services in 2023.

• SR116.54bn Total UK-UAE trade in goods and services in 2023.

•SR37.56bn Total UK-Qatar trade in goods and services in 2023.

“This has really frustrated the Gulf countries, but Lammy has been traveling to the region, even before the war in Gaza, to address this grievance, and since then has been using the war as an opportunity to widen the conversation.

“There is a conversation right now among the Gulf states about building a regional security architecture, into which the process of Arab-Israeli normalization fits, and the new UK government is very keen to enter this conversation in a way that the Conservatives were not.”




Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party lost power in an election landslide to Labour. (Reuters)

The new UK government, Lina Khatib, director of the SOAS Middle East Institute and associate Fellow of the Chatham House Middle East and North Africa Program, told Arab News, “has the mandate to implement the needed foreign policy resets that the Labour party had prioritized ahead of the general election. Repairing relations with Arab countries in the Gulf and taking action toward a ceasefire in Gaza and resurrecting the Israel-Palestine peace process are two such priorities.”

According to Khatib, Labour has “rightly framed the Gulf as an important partner for security and economic growth.

“However, the UK government must pursue a more comprehensive strategy toward the Gulf which also takes into consideration the region’s geopolitical interests,” she said.

“This includes adopting a bold approach in addressing the destabilizing role of Iran and its proxies in the Middle East, which the previous UK government had merely skirted around.”




Labour will tread water on the issue of Gaza until the outcome of November’s presidential election in the US is settled, analyst Kelly Petillo indicated.

The UK “must also strengthen its diplomatic, cultural, and business engagement with the Middle East and North Africa. This will help nurture areas of growth across those sectors in the region and bolster the UK’s own standing.”The Labour Middle East Council, established in January this year by British politicians and former ambassadors to the region, with “the fundamental goal of cultivating understanding and fostering enduring relationships between UK parliamentarians and the Middle East & North Africa,” was “one avenue for facilitating such engagement.”

Two perspectives on a historic relationship


MIRAN HASSAN, Founder and director, Labour Middle East Council

It’s about treating the UK-Gulf relationship with more respect and giving it the attention that it deserves. For example, if you look at the GCC-UK Free Trade Agreement, those negotiations have been going on for years with no meaningful progress. That’s a very good example of where the relationship needs to be enhanced and given the attention that it deserves, considering the bloc is one of our largest trading partners.

Not enough attention was paid by the Conservatives to the GCC as a priority trading partner, and I’m hopeful and quite confident that’s going to change under this government.

This is no longer a world where the UK and the US are the only partners available. Now you can just go over to China, Russia is making strategic alliances, and so on. It’s now a world where the UK needs to actually fight to be a partner and for opportunities. It isn’t that the region wants to turn its back on the UK, but one that commands respect. And if they don't have the right level of engagement, then naturally they will look elsewhere.

What’s important for us at Labour Middle East Council is to have the region viewed through the lens of how interconnected our foreign policy is. So, when we look at the issue with the Houthis and their attacks, for example, how has that impacted global trade as a whole and our interests in other parts of the world?

Domestically, migration is a huge priority for the UK government, and we need to be engaged with the region that is the source of a lot of that migration, especially as climate change plays a bigger role and has a huge impact on many countries, such as Syria, Iraq and Libya.

BURCU OZCELIK, Senior Research Fellow (Middle East Security), RUSI

The Labour government has inherited status quo-altering challenges on multiple fronts in the Middle East. With the epicenter in Gaza, conflict vectors reach across Yemen and the Red Sea, Iraq, Syria, and notably with Lebanon-based Hezbollah, where the threat of an escalated war looms large.

While voting results show that Labour gained the trust of a sizeable portion of the British Jewish electorate, largely thanks to rejecting the Corbyn era’s polarizing policies to a more centrist approach, how Labour behaves both in its domestic response to voter expectations, and in its foreign-policy posture in the Middle East, will be scrutinized closely by Jewish and Muslim voters alike, who look to the new government to reduce the devastating human cost of the conflict.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy is set to emphasize the pledge enshrined in the Labour manifesto to recognize a Palestinian state as part of a peace process toward a two-state solution “with a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state.” The issue is the extent to which Britain will play a proactive role in being pro-peace above all.

With the electoral campaign now behind us, voters will look to see tangible evidence that policies will match promises. This requires foregrounding a human-rights based approach equally all those civilians impacted, continuing to call for the immediate release of Israeli hostages held since Oct. 7, 2023, by Hamas, alongside pressure for a ceasefire, and urgent humanitarian aid to Palestinians. Unresolved issues will demand urgent attention, such as reviewing future means of funding that will permit the Palestinian Authority to govern effectively, legal concerns around UK arms sales, and the ICC’s ruling on Israel.

The Gulf states are poised — with the appropriate diplomatic assurances — to contribute to a necessary regional effort to support the rehabilitation, reconstruction and rebuilding of Gaza. Despite lulls and lags in the relationship, Labour now has an opportunity to engage with Gulf states (and societies) to facilitate a regional and sustained response to support Gaza, reassure Israel, and work toward the objective of Palestinian statehood.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right allies will seek to buy more time. Britain can apply pressure to bring an end to the humanitarian crisis and support mechanisms — with strong buy-in from the Arab states — to begin planning for the day after.

 


North Korea detains 3 shipyard officials over the failed launch of a naval destroyer

North Korea detains 3 shipyard officials over the failed launch of a naval destroyer
Updated 10 sec ago
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North Korea detains 3 shipyard officials over the failed launch of a naval destroyer

North Korea detains 3 shipyard officials over the failed launch of a naval destroyer
  • Satellite imagery on the site showed the vessel lying on its side and draped in blue covers, with parts of the ship submerged
  • The failed launch was subsequently an embarrassment to Kim Jong Un, who is eager to build greater naval forces to deal with what he calls US-led military threats
SEOUL: North Korea authorities have detained three shipyard officials over the recent failed launch of a naval destroyer, an incident that leader Kim Jong Un said was caused by criminal negligence, state media said Sunday.
The 5,000-tonne-class destroyer was damaged Wednesday when a transport cradle on the ship’s stern detached early during a launch ceremony attended by Kim at the northeastern port of Chongjin. Satellite imagery on the site showed the vessel lying on its side and draped in blue covers, with parts of the ship submerged.
The vessel is North Korea’s second known destroyer. The failed launch was subsequently an embarrassment to Kim, who is eager to build greater naval forces to deal with what he calls US-led military threats.
North Korea launched its first destroyer, also a 5,000-ton-class ship, with massive fanfare last month. The ship is North Korea’s largest and most advanced warship and state media reported it is designed to carry various weapons including nuclear missiles.
Law enforcement authorities detained the chief engineer, head of the hull construction workshop and deputy manager for administrative affairs at Chongjin Shipyard, who they said were responsible for Wednesday’s failed launch, the official Korean Central News Agency said.
Hong Kil Ho, the shipyard manager, also was summoned for questioning, KCNA previously reported.
Kim blamed military officials, scientists and shipyard operators for what he called a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness, irresponsibility and unscientific empiricism.”
In an instruction to investigators Thursday, North Korea’s powerful Central Miliary Commission echoed Kim’s position, saying those responsible “can never evade their responsibility for the crime.”
North Korea denied the warship suffered major damage, saying the hull on the starboard side was scratched and some seawater flowed into the stern section.
North Korea said Friday it needed about 10 days to make repairs, but many outside observers said the country likely understated the damage.

George Floyd’s uncertain legacy is marked five years on

George Floyd’s uncertain legacy is marked five years on
Updated 25 May 2025
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George Floyd’s uncertain legacy is marked five years on

George Floyd’s uncertain legacy is marked five years on
  • An anniversary event is taking place in what has been named George Floyd Square

MINNEAPOLIS: Americans on Sunday mark five years since George Floyd was killed by a US police officer, as President Donald Trump backtracks on reforms designed to tackle racism.
Floyd’s deadly arrest on May 25, 2020 helped launch the Black Lives Matter movement into a powerful force that sought to resolve America’s deeply rooted racial issues, from police violence to systemic inequality.
But since Trump’s return to power in January — he was serving his first term when Floyd died — his administration has axed civil rights investigations and cracked down on diversity hiring initiatives.
BLM, meanwhile, finds itself lacking the support it enjoyed when protesters sprawled across US cities during the Covid pandemic — with many now agreeing the movement achieved little of substance.
An anniversary event is taking place in what has been named George Floyd Square, the area of Minneapolis where the 46-year-old took his final breath as police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck during an arrest.
A small junction in a residential part of the northern US city, the square is covered with protest art including a purple mural that reads “You Changed the World, George.”
That optimistic message painted in 2020 is now, however, at odds with a president whose more extreme allies have suggested he pardon Chauvin, who was convicted of murdering Floyd and sentenced to more than 22 years in prison.
Some experts believe Trump’s re-election was partly a backlash to BLM activism, which included protests that turned to riots in some cities and calls to defund the police.
Floyd’s family members told AFP in Minneapolis on Friday that they wanted people to continue pushing for reform despite the hostile political climate.
“We don’t need an executive order to tell us that Black lives matter,” said his aunt Angela Harrelson, who wore a dark T-shirt depicting Floyd’s face.
“We cannot let a setback be a holdback for the great comeback. Donald Trump just didn’t get the memo,” she added to nods from other relatives standing beside her.
Paris Stevens, a Floyd cousin, agreed: “No one can silence us anymore.”
The Floyd relatives, with around 50 other people, held a moment of silence on Friday afternoon before placing yellow roses on the roadside spot where Floyd’s fatal arrest was filmed and shared around the world.
It was a moment of reflection — others include a candlelight vigil on Sunday night — during a weekend otherwise devoted to music, arts and dancing.
Memorial events have been held annually since Floyd’s death and the theme for this one — “The People Have Spoken” — was suggested by Nelson Mandela’s grandson Nkosi when he visited the square, according to Harrelson.
She said the defiant title was meant to reflect five years of protesting, adding that “even though it’s tiresome, we go on.”
Visitors are expected to pay their respects through the weekend.
Jill Foster, a physician from Minneapolis, told AFP at the square on Friday that she felt honoring Floyd’s legacy was partly a form of political resistance.
“Under the Trump administration, everything is trying to be rewritten and a new reality created,” the 66-year-old said.
“We have to keep the memory going and keep the information flowing.”
Meanwhile, for Courteney Ross, Floyd’s girlfriend when he died, the anniversary weekend brings up powerful feelings of personal loss.
“I miss him so much, I miss him by my side,” Ross, 49, told AFP, dressed in black and holding a bunch of yellow roses.
“It’s beautiful to see all the people come out and celebrate him,” she added.
“You see a unification that you don’t get a lot in this country lately, and people are celebrating a man who, you know, gave his life for us.”


UK renationalizes first train operator under Labour reforms

UK renationalizes first train operator under Labour reforms
Updated 25 May 2025
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UK renationalizes first train operator under Labour reforms

UK renationalizes first train operator under Labour reforms
  • Train passengers in Britain suffer from frequent cancelations

LONDON: Britain’s South Western Railways on Sunday becomes the first private train operator to be returned to public ownership under the Labour government’s plans to renationalize the country’s much-maligned railways.
Renationalizing all of the UK’s rail operators is among the key policies launched by Prime Minister Keir Starmer since his party’s return to government last July following 14 years in opposition.
“Today is a watershed moment in our work to return the railways to the service of passengers,” Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said in a statement.
Train passengers in Britain suffer from frequent cancelations, in addition to high ticket prices and regular confusion over which services they can be used on.
The privatization of rail operations took place in the mid-1990s under the then Conservative prime minister John Major, but the rail network remained public, run by Network Rail.
Four of the 14 operators in England are already run by the state owing to poor performance in recent years, but this was originally meant to be a temporary fix before a return to the private sector.
Labour triumphed over the Conservative party in elections last year, re-entering Downing Street with promises to fix the country’s ailing transport services.
Legislation was approved in November to bring rail operators into public ownership when the private companies’ contracts expire — or sooner in the event of poor management — and be managed by “Great British Railways.”
Alexander said this will end “30 years of fragmentation,” but she warned that “change isn’t going to happen overnight.”
“We’ve always been clear that public ownership isn’t a silver bullet, but we are really firing this starting gun in that race for a truly 21st-century railway, and that does mean refocusing away from private profit and toward the public good,” she added.
In an example of how passengers might not immediately notice much difference, South Western’s first service under public ownership on Sunday was set to be a rail replacement bus.
Government figures show that the equivalent of four percent of train services in Britain were canceled in the year to April 26.
Rail unions — which have staged a stream of strikes in recent years over pay and conditions due to a cost-of-living crisis — welcomed the state takeover.
“We’re delighted that Britain’s railways are being brought back where they belong — into the public sector,” said Mick Whelan, general secretary of union Aslef.
“Everyone in the rail industry knows that privatization... didn’t, and doesn’t, work,” he added.
Two operators serving towns and cities in southeastern and eastern England are next to be brought back into public ownership by late 2025.
All the current contracts are set to expire by 2027.
The government has said renationalization will save up to £150 million ($203 million) per year because it will no longer have to pay compensation fees to rail operators.
The main rail operators in Scotland and Wales, where transport policy is handled by the devolved administrations in Edinburgh and Cardiff, are also state-owned. 


Trump hails US as ‘hottest country in the world’, takes credit for America’s military might

Trump hails US as ‘hottest country in the world’, takes credit for America’s military might
Updated 16 min 45 sec ago
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Trump hails US as ‘hottest country in the world’, takes credit for America’s military might

Trump hails US as ‘hottest country in the world’, takes credit for America’s military might
  • Addressing US Military Academy graduates, Trump said the military needs to focus on core mission
  • Says "I rebuilt the military. And we rebuilt it like nobody has ever rebuilt it before in my first term”

WEST POINT, New York: President Donald Trump used the first service academy commencement address of his second term Saturday to congratulate graduating West Point cadets on their accomplishments while also veering sharply into politics, taking credit for America’s military might and boasting about the “mandate” he says he earned in the 2024 election.
“In a few moments, you’ll become graduates of the most elite and storied military academy in human history,” Trump said at the ceremony at Michie Stadium. “And you will become officers of the greatest and most powerful army the world has ever known. And I know, because I rebuilt that army, and I rebuilt the military. And we rebuilt it like nobody has ever rebuilt it before in my first term.”
Wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat, the Republican president told the 1,002 members of the class of 2025 at the US Military Academy that the United States is the “hottest country in the world” and underscored an “America First” ethos for the military.
“We’re getting rid of distractions and we’re focusing our military on its core mission: crushing America’s adversaries, killing America’s enemies and defending our great American flag like it has never been defended before,” Trump said. He later said that “the job of the US armed forces is not to host drag shows or transform foreign cultures,” a reference to drag shows on military bases that Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration halted after Republican criticism.

 

Trump said the cadets were graduating at a “defining moment” in Army history as he accused political leaders in the past of sending soldiers into “nation-building crusades to nations that wanted nothing to do with us.” He said he was clearing the military of transgender ideas, “critical race theory” and types of training he called divisive and political.
Past administrations, he said, “subjected the armed forces to all manner of social projects and political causes while leaving our borders undefended and depleting our arsenals to fight other countries’ wars.”
At times, his remarks were indistinguishable from those heard in a political speech, from his assessment of the country when he left office in January 2021 to his review of last November’s victory over Democrat Kamala Harris, arguing that voters gave him a “great mandate” and “it gives us the right to do what we want to do.”
But Trump also took time to acknowledge the achievements of individual graduates.
He summoned Chris Verdugo to the stage and noted that he completed an 18.5-mile march on a freezing night in January in just two hours and 30 minutes. Trump had the nationally ranked men’s lacrosse team, which held the No. 1 spot for a time in the 2024 season, stand and be recognized. Trump also brought Army’s star quarterback, Bryson Daily, to the lectern, where the president praised Daily’s “steel”-like shoulder. Trump later used Daily as an example to make a case against transgender women participating in women’s athletics.

United States Military Academy graduating cadets throw their hats in the air at the end of commencement ceremonies in West Point, New York, on May 24, 2025. (AP Photo)

In a nod to presidential tradition, Trump also pardoned about half a dozen cadets who had faced disciplinary infractions.
He told graduates that “you could have done anything you wanted, you could have gone anywhere.” and that “writing your own ticket to top jobs on Wall Street or Silicon Valley wouldn’t be bad. But I think what you’re doing is better.”
His advice to them included doing what they love, thinking big, working hard, holding on to their culture, keeping faith in America and taking risks.
“This is a time of incredible change and we do not need an officer corps of careerists and yes men,” Trump said. “We need patriots with guts and vision and backbone.”
Just outside campus, about three dozen demonstrators gathered before the ceremony and were waving miniature American flags. One in the crowd carried a sign that said “Support Our Veterans” and “Stop the Cuts,” while others held up plastic buckets with the message: “Go Army Beat Fascism.”
On Friday, Vice President JD Vance spoke to the graduating class at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Vance said in his remarks that Trump was working to ensure US soldiers are deployed with clear goals, rather than the “undefined missions” and “open-ended conflicts” of the past.
Trump gave the commencement address at West Point in 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the school forced cadets spread out across the country to travel, risking exposure on public transportation, and then land in New York, a coronavirus hot spot.
 


After brief X outage, Musk says refocusing on businesses

After brief X outage, Musk says refocusing on businesses
Updated 24 May 2025
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After brief X outage, Musk says refocusing on businesses

After brief X outage, Musk says refocusing on businesses
  • As a backlash to job cuts grew and Tesla share prices slipped, Musk began drawing away from the government role and returning to his original work

WASHINGTON: Social media platform X was hit by a two-hour outage Saturday, prompting owner Elon Musk to say he needs to spend more time focusing on his companies.
The billionaire has an extraordinarily full plate as owner/CEO of X, xAI (developer of the AI-powered chatbot Grok), electric-car maker Tesla and rocket builder SpaceX — not to mention his recent polarizing efforts to help Donald Trump slash thousands of US government jobs.
As a backlash to those job cuts grew and Tesla share prices slipped, Musk began drawing away from the government role and returning to his original work.
On Saturday, following the X outage, he suggested that he might have been away too long.
“As evidenced by the X uptime issues this week, major operational improvements need to be made,” he said.
“Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms,” the South African-born businessman posted on X.
“I must be super focused on X/xAI and Tesla (plus Starship launch next week), as we have critical technologies rolling out.”
Of the X outage, he said: “The failover redundancy should have worked, but did not.”
X had largely returned to normal service by 11:00 am Saturday (1500 GMT).
Contacted by AFP for comment, the company did not immediately reply.
SpaceX announced Friday that it plans to attempt a new launch of its mega-rocket Starship next week. Still under development, Starship exploded in flight during two previous launches.
Musk acknowledged early this month that his ambitious effort to slash US federal spending, led by his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), did not fully reach its goals despite tens of thousands of job cuts and drastic budget reductions.