Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

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April 18

The Washington Post says to keep working toward peace in Ukraine

It’s been only about nine weeks since President Donald Trump began his stunning pivot toward Moscow, reversing the U.S. policy of support for Ukraine as the victim of Russian aggression, and upending America’s policy alignment with Europe.

This turn of events began on Feb. 12, when Trump held a lengthy phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, ending a three-year freeze in high-level contacts between Washington and Moscow. This was followed by an extraordinary meeting in Saudi Arabia between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. They discussed future economic ties and eventually restoring diplomatic relations. Trump’s lead negotiator, Steve Witkoff, hasmet with Putin three times.

In a series of concessions perhaps meant to induce Putin to agree to a peace deal, Trump had the United States vote alongside Russia against a United Nations resolution naming Russia as the war’s aggressor. The U.S. president ordered a halt to offensive cyber operations against Russia. He stopped U.S. funding for a three-year project to trace the thousands of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia, and he withdrew U.S. cooperation with the International Criminal Court that indicted Putin related to the kidnappings. To top it off, Trump slashed funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development — which funds many small, independent Russian and Ukrainian media outlets — and pushed to eliminate Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Meanwhile, Trump has effectively thrown Ukraine under the bus. He has ruled out Ukrainian membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He has refused to commit to any security guarantees for Ukraine, even as he pressures Kyiv to agree to a lopsided deal to surrender part of its future oil, gas and mineral wealth to the U.S. And he has berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “dictator” and blamed him for starting the war.

What does Trump have to show for his policy shift toward Moscow? Pretty much nothing.

Putin has gleefully pocketed all the White House concessions and gifts, said “ spasibo ” and continued his ruthless assault on Ukrainian cities, while spurning entreaties for a reasonable peace deal. An especially devastating Russian missile attack on the city of Sumy on Palm Sunday left 35 dead and more than 100 wounded.

Trump’s one bit of success was an agreement reached last month between Russia and Ukraine not to attack each other’s energy infrastructure for 30 days. But Russian strikes continued in violation of the pause, and Russia has said it will no longer be bound by the deal when it expires.

Trump’s pivot to Russia has so far failed to meet his stated goal, which was to stop the war and end the suffering. It’s worth recalling that, during the campaign, Trump said he could end the war in “one day” after taking office.

On Friday, Rubio appeared to acknowledge the frustrating failure, telling reporters in Paris that Trump was ready to “move on” absent a peace deal soon. “I think the president’s probably at a point where he’s going to say, ‘Well, we’re done,’” Rubio said.

Diplomacy is painstaking work, and achievements rarely come in a few weeks, as the administration discovered with Gaza and might soon learn as it begins a new round of talks with Iran. Trump’s trademark bravado is no substitute for the long and difficult process of finding common ground between warring combatants, and calibrating the right combination of pressure and inducements to reach a deal.

Rather than shrug their shoulders and give up, Trump and his team should return to the approach of the Biden administration and European allies: continue to arm Ukraine so it can defend itself and raise the cost of the conflict for Russia. This means supplying Ukraine with more lethal weaponry and allowing the country to stage defensive strikes against military positions inside Russian territory, something the Biden administration was too slow to approve.

It also means reengaging with European allies whom Trump and his team have needlessly offended. Rubio’s meetings in Paris are a good start. The British and French have proposed a European military force to deploy to Ukraine as a deterrence against further Russian attacks, but the plan needs American logistics, intelligence and air support; Trump should provide it. Further, he should now recognize that Putin is the aggressor in this war, Ukraine is the victim and the Europeans are our allies in countering Russian aggression.

ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/04/18/trump-putin-russia-ukraine-peace-failure/

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April 16

The New York Times on Harvard's refusal to capitulate to abuse of power

Harvard refused on Monday to submit to the Trump administration’s quest to command and control America’s higher education system. Its president, Alan Garber, brightly illuminated the profound principle at stake in remaining independent of the government’s edicts.

“No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” he wrote in a public letter that took a stand against government overreach into academic freedom. Doing otherwise, he said, would threaten the values of any private university “devoted to the pursuit, production and dissemination of knowledge.”

With these words, Harvard became the first university to officially resist the administration’s abusive intimidation, and it is urgent that it not be the only one. Its actions, supported in recent weeks in statements by other academic leaders, including the presidents of Princeton and Wesleyan, light the way forward on a vital path to fighting President Trump’s war on the independence of higher education. Its example should also offer encouragement to those states fighting a similarly coercive cutoff of federal aid, to law firms facing a loss of business from the president’s campaign of retribution, to every group challenging unconstitutional actions in court, to the public square and ultimately to voters at the ballot box.

Nearly immediately after Harvard’s lawyers made its refusal public in a letter rejecting the government’s long list of demands, the Trump administration announced it would freeze more than $2.2 billion in Harvard’s federal grants and contracts. Academic leaders around the country might be staggered by the prospect of losing even a fraction of that kind of money, but Harvard made it clear that it wasn’t taking its stand simply because its $53 billion endowment gave it the resources to do so.

Giving in to the unreasonable demands of the Trump administration would shatter an engine of American culture, as many academic leaders are beginning to recognize. Less wealthy colleges should also follow Harvard’s example, even though it could come at a high cost. They may have to choose between losing their federal grants and losing their souls, and the choice, painful as it may be, is clear.

Wesleyan, a top-tier university with an endowment of $1.55 billion, gets $20 mllion a year in federal funds, much of which could be at risk if it similarly refuses to bend the knee to the government. But its president, Michael Roth, has made it clear that it will not submit. “If we don’t speak up, it’s going to get worse,” he told The Wesleyan Argus this month. “Much worse, much faster.” Christopher Eisgruber of Princeton recently wrote that the administration’s crusade represents “the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s.”

Their stiffened backbones present a contrast to the concessions made by Columbia, which agreed to many of Mr. Trump’s demands in the hopes of protecting $400 million in federal funds. In exchange, it won only the right to negotiate with the administration.

Harvard will no doubt pursue its rights in court, as it should; no college should accept the loss of its First Amendment freedoms without a fight. But at a core level, higher education could very well be reshaped and diminished by the widespread loss of federal funds if institutions refuse the government’s virulent bargain. They might have to cut vital scientific and medical research, for example, the kind that has long been supported by taxpayers to keep the nation safe, healthy and prosperous. The University of Pennsylvania faces a loss of $175 million in research funds, which its president, Larry Jameson, said would jeopardize lifesaving research into hospital-acquired infections, drug screening against viruses and protections against chemical weapons.

If universities accept Mr. Trump’s terms, on the other hand, the consequence would be far greater, undermining the very purpose of an independent institution.

Ostensibly, the Trump administration is penalizing universities for not protecting the rights of Jewish students during the protests over Israel’s bombardment of Gaza after the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023. And some universities have failed to stand up to antisemitism. But it’s increasingly obvious that fighting antisemitism is simply a pretext for what Mr. Trump and his supporters hope to be an overhaul of American higher education.

Consider some of the dictates made to Harvard by the administration last week, which seemed to distinguish between bad diversity and good diversity. All forms of traditional diversity, equity and inclusion in hiring and admissions must be eliminated, the government said. (That demand has nothing to do with ending antisemitism.) Harvard would be required to conduct an audit to ensure that something called “viewpoint diversity” is maintained in every department, course and classroom.

There’s no doubt that conservative students often feel ostracized and voiceless on many campuses, which have failed to welcome open debate consistently on many significant issues. Mr. Roth, for instance, has spoken forcefully about the insularity of American academia, and change is necessary. But this is work the universities should be undertaking in the name of academic freedom and excellence. It is not the role of federal bureaucrats to police every college course, threatening to slash federal funding if they don’t like what they find.

Mr. Trump himself promised to “reclaim our once great educational institutions from the radical Left,” and Christopher Rufo, an ideological author of the academic crackdown, told Times Opinion recently that the goal is “to adjust the formula of finances from the federal government to the universities in a way that puts them in an existential terror.”

Fear is a formidable tool, and it is the principal weapon the administration has used to bully immigrants, law firms and centrist Republicans into submission. But universities, which have for generations taught their students the principles of American democracy and the long, dark history of authoritarian rule around the world, are supposed to know better. If they follow Harvard’s example and refuse to be intimidated by unjust abuses of power, they may inspire other fundamental national institutions to do the same.

ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/opinion/harvard-university-trump.html

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April 20

The Wall Street Journal on the effects of tariffs and tax reforms

One economic policy mistake invariably leads to another to compensate for the damage from the first. The latest example are reports that the Trump Administration may create a tax break for U.S. exporters harmed by foreign retaliation to the President’s tariffs. Don’t be surprised if the cost of paying off the many U.S. tariff victims ends up exceeding the revenue they raise.

While some countries are trying to negotiate Mr. Trump’s tariffs down, others are punching back. Beijing is imposing 125% duties on all U.S. goods to match Mr. Trump’s latest tariffs, which will effectively cut off American exports to China. Ford Motor has stopped shipping to China pickups, SUVs and sports cars made in Michigan.

Beijing has also told Chinese airlines to halt purchases of Boeing airplanes and aircraft parts from U.S. companies. The European Union has threatened 25% duties on an array of U.S. goods in response to Mr. Trump’s 25% steel and aluminum tariffs. Canada has slapped 25% tariffs on more than $40 billion in U.S. exports.

If the trade war escalates, Mr. Trump’s tariffs could reduce U.S. exports as much as they do imports. The first-term Trump Administration spent some $23 billion to aid farmers harmed by China’s retaliatory tariffs, which the Trump team plans to do again. Now news reports say some Trump officials are also considering a new exporter tax credit to support manufacturers.

The idea is to compensate U.S. companies for declines in exports caused by retaliatory tariffs. So if steelmaker Nucor ’s exports shrink by $3 billion as a result of other countries’ tariffs on U.S. steel, the company could receive a tax credit—effectively a government payment via the tax code—to offset reduced sales.

Unlike most business credits—such as for research and development, chip-making or green energy projects—this tax subsidy wouldn’t be designed to reward politically favored investments and industries. The point would be to mitigate damage caused by a misconceived U.S. government policy.

Another recent example is the Covid employee retention tax credit, which was paid to employers to keep workers on their payroll after government shut down the economy. That credit was rife with fraud as businesses unaffected by lockdowns claimed it. Consider it a safe bet that companies that lose exports for reasons other than trade retaliation will claim the export credit.

The bigger problem is that the credit runs counter to the goals of Mr. Trump’s 2017 tax reform, which simplified the corporate code by eliminating sundry tax breaks. As JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon noted in his recent annual letter, the cut in the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35% was paid for in large part by this simplification and broadening of the tax base.

Adding new tax dispensations will muck up the code and reduce corporate tax revenue. It will put fiscal pressure on Republicans to raise the corporate tax rate, which would make U.S. businesses overall less globally competitive. Republicans are already considering raising the corporate rate and top marginal individual rate to pay for Mr. Trump’s tax breaks that do nothing for economic growth like his deduction for interest on car loans.

Tariffs are economically harmful for their immediate victims, but they are also politically corrupting as lobbyists plead for exemptions and subsidies. An export subsidy won’t be the last mistake to make up for the original sin of tariffs.

ONLINE: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/tariffs-tax-break-exports-donald-trump-trade-economy-0cb44654?mod=editorials_article_pos5

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April 17

The Guardian on a U.S.-U.K. trade deal

Looked at objectively, a bilateral trade agreement between Britain and the United States is of relatively small economic significance to this country. Back in 2020, Boris Johnson’s government estimated that a US deal “could increase UK GDP in the long run by around 0.07%” – a figure that is not exactly transformative. The view touted by some Brexiters that a US trade deal would fire up the entire British economy was always a fantasy, the product of deregulatory yearning for which there was little public support, even among leave voters. Any urge of that kind is clearly even more delusional now, in the wake of Donald Trump’s tariff wars.

Hopefully, the right’s across-the-board deregulatory horror is now a thing of the past. But global trade has new traumas too. Mr Trump’s protectionism and bullying of US rivals are resetting the terms. There are nevertheless specific reasons why it is in Britain’s interest to pursue freer trade talks with the US. Chief among these is the threat posed by current tariffs, especially on cars and pharmaceuticals, as well as the prospect that a 10% tariff will be reimposed on all UK exports to the US after the current pause ends in July.

The problem with any deal lies with the prices that the US may try to extract for tariff reductions or exemptions. Although the vice-president, JD Vance, said this week that he sees a “good chance” of a deal, this could still be contingent on UK concessions in sectors such as agriculture, sanitary and phytosanitary rules and digital regulation. These are essentially the same sectors that, for good reason, proved to be stumbling blocks in the post-Brexit discussions. Efforts to rebrand things like AI, biotech and digital as strategically important industries of the future do not dispel some real threats now facing British food standards, healthcare or online controls.

All this is multiplied by the Trump administration’s unreliability and geostrategic approach. The administration’s goal in Europe is to weaken and destroy the EU. Urged on by rightwing Brexiter politicians, the president sees pulling Britain away from the EU’s orbit as part of that effort. So, however, does the EU. As a result, any attempt by Washington to offer generous terms to the UK in particular sectors is likely to make any reset with the EU more difficult. Sir Keir Starmer says that Britain does not need to make an either/or choice. Like Mr Johnson, he says Britain can have its cake and eat it. The brutal reality is that neither the US nor the EU will necessarily take the same generous view.

Even if the prospective UK-US deal is less wide-ranging than it might once have been, it is still significant. Politically, the Trump factor also makes any such deal more explosive. UK treaties and trade deals are traditionally made under prerogative powers. As the Brexit argument about a “meaningful vote” showed, there is a very limited role for parliament. That needs to change. It would be intolerable in the UK-US case. This is clearly a matter for parliament to debate, both during and after negotiations, and for both houses of parliament to vote on.

This week, the Labour chairs of the Commons foreign affairs and trade select committees called for such votes. The Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National party are both in favour. The government should make clear that no agreement will go ahead without a meaningful Commons vote in favour.

ONLINE: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/17/the-guardian-view-on-a-uk-us-trade-deal-mps-must-get-a-vote-on-any-agreement-with-trump

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April 18

The Boston Globe says a repressive arbitrary regime in forming before our eyes

History, as the saying goes, has a way of rhyming. So it is worth noting that as the nation marks the 250th anniversary of the Revolution — that world-changing rebellion against tyranny and taxation that began in Boston, Concord, and Lexington — there are rumblings of discontent with President Donald Trump’s sweeping and erratic tariffs.

Polls suggest that even many Republicans are growing restive about the potential cost of what are effectively broad-based taxes on American consumers and businesses that depend on imports, which is to say almost all of us. But there is another Trump policy with equally haunting echoes of 1775.

It is an issue that doesn’t touch our pocketbooks the way taxes, tariffs, or the price of tea do. But it is one about which every American — particularly those who care about what it means to be an American — should be asking hard questions. That is: The use of federal force to arrest, imprison, and deport without due process foreign nationals accused, usually with scant or zero evidence, of being a danger to the country.

The president can fairly claim that he was elected with a mandate to reduce immigration, deport criminal aliens, and remove visa holders who pose a legitimate threat to the country. Yet time and again, reporting has shown that this is not what is happening in far too many cases. For every incident of an undocumented alien who is deported because of a demonstrable record of criminality or dangerousness, there are too many others whose visa cancellations and removals seem unsupported, capricious, or arbitrary.

Consider these:

° Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is an immigrant from El Salvador who entered the United States illegally. But in 2019, a federal immigration judge barred his removal to El Salvador on the ground that he had a credible fear of persecution there. Nevertheless, alleging that he is a member of the violent gang MS-13, federal agents arrested him in Maryland last month and sent him to El Salvador where he is now imprisoned in a notoriously brutal prison. Yet Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old father of three, has no criminal record in the United States, and the government has yet to produce evidence that he belongs to MS-13. It has also acknowledged that sending him to El Salvador was an administrative mistake. Federal courts, including the Supreme Court, have found that his removal was improper and that the US should “facilitate” his return. Yet the Trump administration says the matter is out of its hands, though it has not bothered to request his return from El Salvador, whose president is a close ally of Trump.

° Rümeysa Öztürk is a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University whose arrest last month in Somerville by masked federal agents who handcuffed her and hustled her into an unmarked SUV was captured on viral video. She was denied access to a lawyer and shuttled to multiple lockups before landing in a Louisiana jail where she has been denied bail. Federal officials have cited her support for Hamas as the reason for revoking her visa and detaining her, but so far their only evidence appears to be an op-ed she wrote for a student newspaper that accused Israel of genocide in its war against Hamas. A federal judge in Vermont hinted that he may order her returned to Vermont for future hearings, but also expressed concerns that the Trump administration would ignore his order and prompt a “constitutional crisis.”

° Kseniia Petrova is a Russian biologist who was researching aging at Harvard Medical School when she was detained at Logan airport in February for failing to declare frog embryos that were to be used in her research, an infraction typically punished with a fine. Instead she was sent to a detention center in Louisiana and now faces deportation to Russia, where she fears imprisonment for protesting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Immigration experts told The New York Times that violating customs rules is not grounds for revoking a visa and deporting someone. “I feel like something is happening generally in America,” she told the Times. “Something bad is happening. I don’t think everybody understands.”

These individual stories may seem just that — individual and therefore unconnected. But a pattern is forming, and it should worry anyone who understands how essential the rule of law is to our political system. The concept of due process is a cornerstone of Western democracy, dating back to at least the Magna Carta. It is also enshrined in the Constitution, where the Fifth Amendment states that no person shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

Protesting these unlawful actions by the Trump administration should not fall solely to Democrats, civil rights lawyers, or immigration advocates. Small-government conservatives and libertarians who worry about unmoored police power should be every bit as uneasy about the masked agents and unmarked cars; the dubious allegations of unspecified wrongdoing; the disregard for court orders. A good libertarian would not be faulted for detecting the sour smell of a budding police state. All that is missing are the black helicopters.

Many average Americans will be tempted to pretend that none of this has anything to do with them, or to believe that these migrants are getting what they deserve. Even if the visas that made them legal immigrants were rescinded overnight without clear cause. Even if they were whisked away to dank prison cells without evidence of wrongdoing.

But those people should remember that when a government disregards the law in its treatment of some, there is good reason to fear that it will disregard the law in its treatment of all. Leave it to Trump himself to open the door to that possibility.

“The homegrowns are next, the homegrowns. You’ve got to build about five more places,” Trump said to President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador following a meeting at the White House, referring to more Salvadoran prisons to house US citizens, an illegal proposition. The Trump administration has already sent about 250 migrants slated for deportation to El Salvador’s largest prison, a “service” for which the United States is paying $6 million a year.

Lest anyone think that a joke, consider the case of Jensy Machado, a US citizen detained by federal agents in Virginia, who were looking to deport another man. After Machado showed the agents his Real ID driver’s license, they released him. But what if he had forgotten to carry his ID that day? How long might he have languished in a Louisiana lockup while administration lawyers denied the mistake?

Machado told a Washington, D.C., television station that he voted for Trump because he thought he would “just go after criminals.” Instead, he said, “They’re just following Hispanic people.”

On this weekend leading up to Patriots Day and the running of the marathon, Boston commemorates the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere’s ride, while Lexington and Concord once again reenact the famous battles at the Battle Green and Old North Bridge.

Battles, after all, are what people remember best about the Revolution. But it is the words in the nation’s founding documents and the ideas behind those words that have had the most profound and lasting impact: that all men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights.

This of all years is not the time to forget the meaning of those words, and the democratic system they spawned.

ONLINE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/04/18/opinion/trump-deportation-ice-revolution-anniversary/

News from © The Associated Press, 2025