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National Security Adviser Mike Waltz walks to board Marine One at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on April 3, 2025.
Waltz out of step. Though the former congressman wasn’t the one who shared war plans on the chat – US Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth holds that honor – he ultimately took responsibility. President Donald Trump initially seemed willing to give Waltz a second chance, but it turned out that the national security adviser had created several other Signal chats to discuss foreign policy.
The original Signal faux-pas also raised questions over the exact nature of Waltz’s relationship with The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg. Neither Waltz nor Goldberg would comment on it.
History repeats itself. Trump fired former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn just 22 days into his first term. The president reportedly regretted this decision, so was reluctant to remove Waltz this time, and instead landed on a reshuffle.
Hegseth gets away with it – for now. The former Fox News host seems to have escaped punishment, even though it emerged that he also shared war plans with his wife, brother, and lawyer in a separate Signal chat. A former Pentagon spokesperson also said the Department of Defense has been in “total chaos” under his leadership. Trump has thus far backed Hegseth, although he hedged on whether he had full confidence in him during an ABC News interview that aired on Tuesday.
A full plate for Rubio. The former Florida senator entered the administration as the secretary of state, but he now counts USAID administrator and the acting National Security role in his portfolio. Whether he lasts in this trio of roles for long is another matter — the Miami native has long had presidential ambitions, which he could pursue in 2028.Map of electoral shifts in Canada
Canada’s election on Monday was marked by unexpected twists from start to finish. While the Liberals staged a comeback to claim a fourth successive mandate to govern, voters at the local level triggered major changes: Over 60 ridings threw out their incumbent parties, leading to some unexpected upsets.
Chief among them was the stunning defeat of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who lost his long-held Ottawa-area seat to Liberal candidate Bruce Fanjoy. Poilievre had represented the riding since 2004, but Fanjoy attributed his victory to Poilievre’s focus on his national campaign and apparent neglect of local concerns. To remain as leader of the opposition, Poilievre will need a fellow Conservative MP to step aside so he can run in a by-election — a process likely to delay his return to Parliament until the fall.
Poilievre wasn’t the only party leader to suffer a loss. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh also lost his seat to a Liberal challenger and subsequently announced his resignation. The NDP secured just 6.3% of the national vote, falling short of the 12 MP threshold required for official party status.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives made significant inroads in Ontario, particularly in the southwest. In Windsor West – the country’s automotive heartland – Conservative candidate Harb Gill unseated a two-decade NDP incumbent. The riding had drawn high-profile attention during the campaign, with both Liberal leader Mark Carney and Singh making stops there to show support for autoworkers impacted by Donald Trump’s tariffs.
What surprised you most about the election results? Let us know here.
President Donald Trump speaks during a rally to mark his 100th day in office, at Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan, on April 29, 2025.
0.2: Canada’s GDP fell by 0.2% between January and February, contracting for the first time on a monthly basis since last fall. The drop was driven by sluggish activity in mining, energy, and construction, which suffered amid bad winter weather. Taken together with growing uncertainty about the impact of Donald Trump’s tariff policy, the GDP figures have raised expectations of a rate cut in June.
1: The co-leader of Canada’s Green Party, Jonathan Pedneault, has resigned after his party won just one seat in the election. The party had pulled its candidates from more than 100 ridings to avoid splitting the liberal vote.
20,000: As many as 20,000 people in the US have lost their jobs in the clean energy sector as a result of funding cuts made by the Trump administration, according to a lobbying group. Another 40,000 jobs in the sector are at immediate risk. Trump has cut nearly 100 clean energy projects totaling more than $70 billion in investments, as part of a broad push against renewables in favor of fossil fuels.An image of Prime Minister Mark Carney positioned near the Canadian parliament.
Mark Carney, who has never sat in Parliament and has only been a politician for four months, faces a lot of political puzzles after leading his Liberal Party to victory in Canada on Monday, and one huge challenge south of the border.
The former central banker was widely expected to win a majority but ended up coming short, with 169 seats in the House, just three short of a majority. That means that the path ahead is twistier than it would otherwise have been.
Opposition parties plagued by infighting and weakness
Still, there is no danger of Carney’s government falling any time soon. The New Democratic Party was all but annihilated on Monday, left with only seven leaderless MPs after Jagmeet Singh came third in his British Columbia riding and stepped down as party leader. The last thing they will want is to go to an election anytime soon.
And Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet, who has just 22 MPs, down from 32, said Monday that he recognizes that voters want stability. The leader of the provincial separatist party is attacking him, which suggests they have issues they need to sort out.
That leaves the Conservatives, with 144 seats, up 25 from the last election. They can be expected to vote against the Liberal government, but there are not enough of them to stop anything, and they seem to have some internal battles they will want to finish before they are ready to fight anyone outside their movement.
During the campaign, Conservative Ontario Premier Doug Ford repeatedly cast shade on Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. Ford’s campaign manager, Kory Teneycke, made headlines last month when he denounced Poilievre as incompetent: “This campaign is going to be studied for decades as the biggest f**king disaster in terms of having lost a massive lead.”
On election night, an MP close to Poilievre, Jamil Jivani, angrily denounced Ford as “a hype man for the Liberal Party,” which suggests the feud is not finished.
Poilievre, who gave Ford’s people a cold shoulder for two years while he was 20 points ahead in the polls, is vulnerable after losing an election that he seemed to have in the bag. The last two leaders of his party were forced out after losing to Trudeau, but they did not face the kind of open disdain that Poilievre does, and on Monday night, he lost his own seat, which means he will not be in the House until he convinces an MP to resign to let him run.
The Liberals, who will not miss his devastating critiques in the House, have six months to call a byelection to let him win a seat. They probably will not be petty and make him wait, but he will still not be there until the fall.
How Liberals can govern without a majority
If Carney wants to, he could likely manage to lure a few MPs across the floor to join his party, which would give him a majority. It would look cynical but would allow the Liberals to control committees where the government can be embarrassed and legislation bogged down.
Either way, Carney can govern as if he has a majority until the other parties get organized, and he has things he wants to do. He won a mandate to use deficit financing to build the economy, which is already on the brink of a recession thanks to a trade war with the Americans.
“We will need to do things previously thought impossible at speeds we haven’t seen in generations,” he said in his victory speech Monday night.
He has promised to jumpstart the economy and tackle the housing crisis with a pre-fabricated housing program, build new energy corridors, remove interprovincial trade barriers, and renegotiate the trade relationship with the United States.
Politics should not get in his way, says Gerald Butts, vice chairman of Eurasia Group, who advised Carney during the election campaign.
“I don’t think he’s going to peel back on his major promises, whether it’s the housing, building the housing agency, free trade in Canada, all the stuff that he kept saying,” Butts said. “His view is very direct on this, that ‘I asked for a mandate to do big things, I got a mandate to do big things, and now I'm going to do those things,’ and that he has the responsibility to do them.”
The Conservatives can be expected to oppose his agenda, but he doesn’t need them to get his stuff through the House, says Fred DeLorey, who was campaign manager for Poilievre’s predecessor, Erin O’Toole.
“He likely has a bit of wiggle room, depending on what it is he brings in and how aggressive it is and how palatable it is to the Bloc and NDP,” DeLorey said. “If he brings in something that really is against their values, you're gonna have a problem.”
Will Carney and Trump get along?
Carney won by promising to stand up to Donald Trump, his tariffs, and his annexation threats. The two men spoke the day after the election and agreed to meet in person soon. In a news release, Carney’s office said they "agreed on the importance of Canada and the United States working together – as independent, sovereign nations – for their mutual betterment."
Trump, of course, is insisting that Canada should become the 51st state, something Canadians rejected in Monday’s election.
In his concession speech, Poilievre promised to “put Canada first as we stare down tariffs and other irresponsible threats from President Trump.”
Trump has been remarkably consistent about his annexation plans, and Carney won the election by promising to resist those plans, so it is hard to know how the relationship will work.
“I think that on the one hand, Mark can be caricatured by the right in the United States and abroad as a globalist elite,” said Butts. “On the other, he’s the kind of person who Trump would respect. So I don’t know how it’s gonna go, to be honest. It’s gonna be a hard restart of the personal diplomatic relationship between the two countries at the highest levels.”
So far, so good. On Wednesday, Trump had kind words for the new prime minister and said Carney would be traveling to the White House within a week. Carney has been successful at everything he has done in his professional life, so it would be foolish to bet against him, but everything now depends on how he manages Canada’s southern neighbor.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announces proposed changes to several pieces of democratic process legislation, in Edmonton on Tuesday, April 29, 2025.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smithtabled a bill on Tuesday that will make it easier for voters in her province to force a referendum to secede from Canada. Though she has not endorsed separation, critics accuse her of exploiting the sentiment to animate her base and distract from other issues. The bill could theoretically clear the way for the province to become the 51st state.
The bill lowers the threshold for a citizen-initiated petition from about 600,000 signatures to about 170,000, which separatists hope would allow the vote to happen.
During the election, Smith warned that a reelected Liberal government would increase secessionist sentiments in both Alberta and Saskatchewan, staunchly conservative provinces that profit from the oil and gas industry. Many Prairie voters blame the federal government for legislation that made it harder to develop pipelines and an emissions cap on the money-spinning oil sands.
Former Reform Party Leader Preston Manning, a revered elder statesman, made a splash during the election when he published an op-ed predicting that another Liberal government could lead to Western separatism: “Voters, particularly in central and Atlantic Canada, need to recognize that a vote for the Carney Liberals is a vote for Western secession – a vote for the breakup of Canada as we know it.”
It’s unlikely to pass. A poll this month showed that 30% of Albertans and 33% of Saskatchewanians would vote to separate if the Liberals were reelected, but other polls have shown lower levels of support, concentrated in rural areas.
Canada’s Clarity Act theoretically allows for a province to separate after a referendum but only if it achieves a clear majority on a clear question, which would lead to a constitutional process at the federal level — an uncertain process.
Alberta’s Indigenous peoples, who have treaties that pre-date the creation of the province, are generally said to oppose the idea.
Elise Stefanik speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 22, 2025.
The New York governor’s election might be over a year away, but the Republican primary race is already heating up as one ambitious, ex-moderate, pro-Trump New Yorker faces another.
Split the difference. In today’s GOP, even the moderates in the party are staunchly behind President Donald Trump. Both Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), two top candidates weighing a New York governor run, were moderates when they were elected to the US House – former President Joe Biden even tacitly endorsed Lawler in 2023. The tables have since turned.
Speaking of the United Nations. Trump had picked Stefanik to be the US ambassador to the United Nations, a position that Nikki Haley had during the president’s first term. The Adirondacks congresswoman had even begun her farewell tour, but the president pulled her nomination amid concerns about losing seats in special House elections. Trump has now plucked National Security Adviser Michael Waltz to hold the role.
Who’s out in front? Stefanik, the House Republican Conference chair, leads Lawler by a country mile in the primary, 44%-7%, per an internal poll from the GOP-aligned firm GrayHouse. Still, it is early, and 44% of those surveyed were undecided. Stefanik, who has served in the House for over a decade, has built a far greater following than the Hudson Valley congressman, who is only starting his third year in office, so it’s no surprise that she has a cavernous head start.
A win-win. Stefanik may be taking a risk by relinquishing her leadership position in the House to run statewide in a liberal-leaning state, but her predecessor showed that she can taste some victory even in defeat. Lee Zeldin, the GOP governor nominee in 2022, lost the race by just six points, and his performance was credited with helping to lift candidates down the ballot. Now, Zeldin is a member of Trump’s Cabinet, leading the Environmental Protection Agency.
Dems seek Hochul’s head. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’sapproval ratings have been in the dumps, which could create a genuine opening for Stefanik to win. Hochul’s first challenge, though, will be getting past the primary: She will likely face challenges from Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado and Rep. Ritchie Torres.
Mark your calendars. Both primaries are likely going to be scheduled for June 23, 2026.
The White House wants to deal with Asian countries before it gets around to USMCA, the trade agreement governing trade with Canada and Mexico.
“It makes sense to separate out Canada and Mexico from the rest because they are going to want to redo the USMCA,” a source close to the White House told Politico. “They’re going to have separate tariffs that focus specifically on Mexico and Canada, and they’re going to take some actions to squeeze them a little bit.”
A delay might also suit Carney. A former central banker, Carney became prime minister in March but almost immediately went to the polls to get a democratic mandate. Canadian politics has been thoroughly disrupted since Trump started issuing tariff threats before his inauguration in January. Carney could benefit from a period of calm in which he can consult with other politicians, business, and labor to figure out the best strategy to take to USMCA renegotiations and try to soothe the anger in the oil-rich Prairies, where voters were hoping for a Conservative government.
Ultimately, Trump’s willingness to engage in trade negotiations may be driven by broader economic concerns, and he may be motivated to make some deals if it helps turn the economy around. Official numbers released Wednesday show the economy shrank in the first quarter, likely as a result of Trump’s tariffs.