Secretary of State Mike Pompeo discusses the counting of votes in the U.S. election last month at the State Department.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched another broadside against China this week, warning of Chinese threats to U.S. research universities.
“Americans must know how the Chinese Communist Party is poisoning the well of our higher education institutions for its own ends, and how those actions degrade our freedoms and American national security,” he said in a speech Wednesday at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.
Pompeo accused China’s Communist Party of trying to “steal our stuff and pressure critics to keep quiet.”
It was a reprise of a favorite theme for Pompeo, who has used recent speeches and interviews to burnish his image as tough on China and Iran. His choice of venue, though, is drawing criticism, taking place less than a month before key runoff races in Georgia that will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.
Pompeo’s critics see his trip to Georgia at a politically tense moment for the state as another example of America’s top diplomat breaking norms by getting involved in domestic politics.
“Secretary Pompeo’s lasting mark on American foreign policy is the extent to which he politicized the State Department and the conduct of American foreign policy and made it a part of advancing his own domestic political interests,” said Tamara Cofman Wittes of the Brookings Institution.
Pompeo, who has presidential ambitions and is considered a contender for the Republican nomination in 2024, has used State Department resources to network, she said. Congressional Democrats are looking into the “Madison Dinners” — taxpayer-funded private functions— that Pompeo and his wife, Susan Pompeo, hosted for Republican donors and supporters at a cost of at least $45,000, according to receipts obtained by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Pompeo brushes off the criticism. Answering questions following his Georgia Tech speech, he insisted his trip was not about partisanship. “I don’t think a single thing I said today reflected a partisan viewpoint, but rather relied on a dataset,” Pompeo told students.
The moderator did not ask him to comment on the Georgia Senate runoffs or his controversial remark last month that “there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration,” in which he amplified President Trump’s baseless claims about the U.S. election results.
Pompeo’s readiness to wade into political waters was on full display in his recent trip to Israel, where he visited a West Bank settlement and an evangelical Christian museum, stops that can boost his appeal among fellow evangelicals.
When Pompeo first arrived at the State Department in April 2018, some veteran U.S. diplomats hoped his close relations with Trump would mean that after the previous year of cutbacks under Rex Tillerson, the State Department was back in the game.
“They may have been demoralized, but they seemed in good spirits,” Pompeo told reporters after meeting American diplomats in Brussels at the U.S. mission to NATO, on his first trip as secretary of state. “They are hopeful that the State Department will get its swagger back, that we will be out doing the things that they came onboard at the State Department to do. To be professional, to deliver diplomacy, American diplomacy around the world – that’s my mission set, is to build that esprit and get the team on the field so that we can effectuate American diplomacy.”
His close ties to Trump often came at a cost to that team, though. Pompeo refused to support Marie Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who was ousted in 2019 after a smear campaign by Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. More recently, Pompeo left his ambassadors with no talking points on the U.S. election results after his controversial remark about a “second Trump administration.”
Pompeo counts his work against abortion rights as one of his major achievements as secretary of state. During his tenure, the administration expanded what is known as the global gag rule to block all funding to organizations overseas that provide abortion counseling or services.
In October, Pompeo signed an anti-abortion declaration with countries including Belarus, Hungary, Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
“We continued our unprecedented defense of the unborn by signing the Geneva Consensus Declaration alongside 32 other nations,” he told reporters in November. “I’m especially proud that we’ve made religious freedom a top priority in the United States foreign policy for the first time in America’s history.”
Rori Kramer, a former State Department official, worries that some civil liberties may be curbed in the name of religious freedom. She points to the latest international conference on religious freedom, which was hosted in Poland, “a country that has LGBTQ-free zones,” she said, “that has basically banned all reproductive access.” The State Department launched the annual gatherings and worked closely with Poland on this year’s event.
Kramer, who is now with the American Jewish World Service, believes Pompeo has been pushing his religious beliefs to “degrade the rights of women, girls and LGBTQ people.”
He stripped the State Department’s annual human rights reports of any mention of reproductive rights for women. And the Commission on Unalienable Rights, which he set up in 2019 to address his concerns about a “proliferation of rights,” put greater emphasis on property rights and religious freedom than other rights.
“When I worked at the State Department, we didn’t infuse politics and religion into policy, in particular into universal human rights. And so now the State Department staff has been asked to make basic human rights of others into a domestic political issue,” Kramer said.
She expects the Biden administration to reject some of these policies. Trump’s envoy on religious freedom, Sam Brownback, though, told reporters recently he’s hoping Pompeo’s emphasis on religious freedom will outlive his tenure as secretary of state.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
MONTREAL – NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says he will not be taking advice from Pierre Poilievre after the Conservative leader challenged him to bring down government.
“I say directly to Pierre Poilievre: I’m not going to listen to you,” said Singh on Wednesday, accusing Poilievre of wanting to take away dental-care coverage from Canadians, among other things.
“I’m not going to listen to your advice. You want to destroy people’s lives, I want to build up a brighter future.”
Earlier in the day, Poilievre challenged Singh to commit to voting non-confidence in the government, saying his party will force a vote in the House of Commons “at the earliest possibly opportunity.”
“I’m asking Jagmeet Singh and the NDP to commit unequivocally before Monday’s byelections: will they vote non-confidence to bring down the costly coalition and trigger a carbon tax election, or will Jagmeet Singh sell out Canadians again?” Poilievre said.
“It’s put up or shut up time for the NDP.”
While Singh rejected the idea he would ever listen to Poilievre, he did not say how the NDP would vote on a non-confidence motion.
“I’ve said on any vote, we’re going to look at the vote and we’ll make our decision. I’m not going to say our decision ahead of time,” he said.
Singh’s top adviser said on Tuesday the NDP leader is not particularly eager to trigger an election, even as the Conservatives challenge him to do just that.
Anne McGrath, Singh’s principal secretary, says there will be more volatility in Parliament and the odds of an early election have risen.
“I don’t think he is anxious to launch one, or chomping at the bit to have one, but it can happen,” she said in an interview.
New Democrat MPs are in a second day of meetings in Montreal as they nail down a plan for how to navigate the minority Parliament this fall.
The caucus retreat comes one week after Singh announced the party has left the supply-and-confidence agreement with the governing Liberals.
It’s also taking place in the very city where New Democrats are hoping to pick up a seat on Monday, when voters go to the polls in Montreal’s LaSalle—Émard—Verdun. A second byelection is being held that day in the Winnipeg riding of Elmwood—Transcona, where the NDP is hoping to hold onto a seat the Conservatives are also vying for.
While New Democrats are seeking to distance themselves from the Liberals, they don’t appear ready to trigger a general election.
Singh signalled on Tuesday that he will have more to say Wednesday about the party’s strategy for the upcoming sitting.
He is hoping to convince Canadians that his party can defeat the federal Conservatives, who have been riding high in the polls over the last year.
Singh has attacked Poilievre as someone who would bring back Harper-style cuts to programs that Canadians rely on, including the national dental-care program that was part of the supply-and-confidence agreement.
The Canadian Press has asked Poilievre’s office whether the Conservative leader intends to keep the program in place, if he forms government after the next election.
With the return of Parliament just days away, the NDP is also keeping in mind how other parties will look to capitalize on the new makeup of the House of Commons.
The Bloc Québécois has already indicated that it’s written up a list of demands for the Liberals in exchange for support on votes.
The next federal election must take place by October 2025 at the latest.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante is defending her decision to turn off comments on her social media accounts — with an announcement on social media.
She posted screenshots to X this morning of vulgar names she’s been called on the platform, and says comments on her posts for months have been dominated by insults, to the point that she decided to block them.
Montreal’s Opposition leader and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association have criticized Plante for limiting freedom of expression by restricting comments on her X and Instagram accounts.
They say elected officials who use social media should be willing to hear from constituents on those platforms.
However, Plante says some people may believe there is a fundamental right to call someone offensive names and to normalize violence online, but she disagrees.
Her statement on X is closed to comments.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
