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Stephen Maher
Stephen Maher is an award-winning investigative journalist, a Harvard Nieman fellow, and the author of three novels. He has a BA in international development studies from the University of Kings College in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He has lived in Jamaica, Japan, France, and the United States, and has traveled widely around the world, sometimes on his own sailboat. He speaks French and is working on Spanish.
An organizer carries a clipboard with petitions for a ballot initiative to enshrine abortion into the Arizona state constitution during a small rally led by Women's March Tucson after Arizona's Supreme Court revived a law dating to 1864 that bans abortion in virtually all instances, in Tucson, Arizona, U.S. April 9, 2024.
On Wednesday, Arizona Republicans blocked attempts by Democrats to repeal an 1864 total abortion ban that the state’s supreme court reinstated on Tuesday. The court’s move means the state must revert to the 123-year-old law making abortions almost entirely illegal except when it is necessary to save a pregnant person’s life.
That ruling came a week after a pro-choice group obtained enough signatures to put an amendment to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution on the ballot in November – all but ensuring that abortion, a major motivating issue for Democratic voters, will play a big role in how the swing state votes later this year.
It is also having political fallout beyond the Grand Canyon State with Democrats wasting no time rallying opposition to abortion restrictions. Polling shows it is an effective issue for Democrats, particularly among young voters, with whom Joe Biden has struggled to connect.
In the upcoming, razor-close election against Trump, the struggle for battleground states that will allow the winner to carry the electoral college is intense. Abortion ballot initiatives could give the Democrats a boost in the presidential election and down-ballot races, since it may drive turnout. The issue is largely credited for helping the Democrats outperform in the 2022 midterms.
Abortion will likely be on the ballot in the battleground states of Arizona and Florida. Voters in blue states New York and Maryland will also have the opportunity to vote on abortion initiatives, and Democrats are trying to get it on the ballot elsewhere, including Nevada, which is seen as a crucial swing state.
Like the dog that caught the car, Republicans now look to be in disarray on the issue, trapped between wanting to take credit for restricting abortion and fears of alienating moderates and not wanting to fuel Democratic momentum on the issue. Trump, who likes to take credit for the Supreme Court appointments that ended Roe v. Wade, now seems to sense his vulnerability on this issue. He said Wednesday he would not sign a national abortion ban, preferring to leave the matter to the states.
It’s an issue that may gain salience north of the border, where abortion rights advocates can be expected to warn against Conservative plans for Canada during the election to come.The moon blotted out the sun across much of North America on Monday, but it did not put politics entirely out of mind.
Conservatives on both sides of the border used the occasion to compare their champion to the moon, blotting out the incumbent sun, while incumbents merely marveled at the moment.
In the United States, Donald Trump released an odd ad on his Truth Social network in which his face blotted out the sun. In Canada, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre just posted a photo of the moment, but one of his MPs posted an image showing a smiling Poilievre eclipsing Trudeau.
Meanwhile, Fox News issued a warning that the eclipse might make it easier for migrants to cross into the United States.
Justin Trudeau posted a video of himself taking in the sight from the roof of his office while Joe Biden posted a safety warning, a subtle reminder, perhaps, of the time, in 2017, when Trump gazed directly into an eclipse, which is said to be unwise.Riley Moore, State Treasurer of West Virginia.
Toronto-Dominion Bank, Citigroup, the Northern Trust Company, and HSBC face regulatory trouble in West Virginia after State Treasurer Riley Moore added the four banks to the state’s naughty list this week.
Moore wants the banks to change environmental, social, and governance policies that he says discriminate against fossil fuel companies, and if they won’t, they will not be allowed to provide banking services to the state.
“The $22 billion I do in a year in transactions, they will no longer be able to bid on any of those contracts,” Moore said.
In 2022, TD, under pressure from environmental activists, restricted its lending to certain coal projects, an unpopular move in the Mountain State, where about 13,000 people work mining coal. It did not immediately comment on the state’s decision. Citi challenged Moore, saying it is not boycotting energy companies.
Earlier this year, the Bank of Montreal changed the language around coal mining in its environmental, social, and governance policy after Moore threatened to add it to his blacklist. Moore then took it off his list.
The banks look to be in a no-win position. They can either do nothing and lose business or change their policies and face criticism from environmentalists.
On Monday — the day that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters that Canada is interested in joining the AUKUS defense alliance — documents were released at a public inquiry that showed that Canada’s intelligence agency believes China “clandestinely and deceptively interfered in both the 2019 and 2021 general elections.”
Also on Monday, as Chinese ships carried out exercises in disputed waters in the South China Sea, the US, UK, and Australia announced that they were talking to Japan about inviting that country to participate in Pillar II of the security pact.
China’s growing military and political belligerence is rattling other countries, and they are responding by drawing together in a way that would have been out of the question a decade ago.
Neighbors under pressure
Pillar I of AUKUS, which was announced in 2021, is a collaboration between Australia, the Americans, and the Brits aimed at adding a powerful new capacity to Australia’s military: nuclear-powered (though conventionally armed) submarines. This is a huge spend for Australia — $368 billion over 30 years — that carries an inherent political risk. And to make the deal, Canberra had to blow up relations with France by abandoning a deal to buy French subs. The Aussies only did that after a year of tense political and economic confrontations with China that left decision-makers in that country gravely concerned about its future in a neighborhood dominated by Beijing. Australia’s back was against the wall.
Like Australia, Japan is being driven to closer cooperation with the United States by its concerns about an increasingly powerful and assertive China. Japan’s trade-focused economy depends on international shipping passing freely through the South China Sea, for instance, where China has been clashing with the Philippines.
So Tokyo has reason to be interested in Pillar II of the AUKUS arrangement, which focuses on defense technology sharing, including quantum computing, hypersonic missiles, artificial intelligence, and electronic warfare — all areas where China presents a technological challenge, and where Japan could offer expertise.
With China rapidly expanding its military, Japan has decided to break with its post-war pacifist tradition and dramatically increase defense spending.
Northern lightweights
Canada is also opening its checkbook, but at a much smaller scale, which would explain why the AUKUS partners are making a point of talking about doing business with Japan, rather than Canada.
Nobody is talking about adding other countries as full members, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday, but proceeding on a project-by-project basis.
Historically, Canada spends little on defense, falling well short of the 2% of GDP that NATO members have all agreed to spend. In an increasingly dangerous world, though, pressure is mounting for Canada to step up, and on Monday, Trudueau’s government did roll out a five-year plan to bring defense spending up to 1.76% of GDP by 2030, up from 1.38% last year.
Allies welcomed the announcement, but there was nothing significant enough to make Canada a much more desirable partner for AUKUS, says Eugene Lang, a former Liberal defense official turned Queens University professor. Officials are interested.
“I just don’t know that we're doing anything to get their attention,” he says. “What they're doing in AUKUS is investing in developing brand-new technologies. To my knowledge, Canada has not got any specific money set aside for any of that.”
University of Ottawa Professor Thomas Juneau, who has interviewed allied officials about Canada’s potential role in AUKUS, found that Canada is increasingly seen as a free rider in defense and intelligence circles. It’s not surprising that Japan was invited before Canada, he says.
“It's really normal for AUKUS to bring in Japan before Canada because Japan is not only a much bigger country than we are, but it's right next to China.”
Wolf warriors
On the other hand, because of its Five Eyes intelligence-sharing experience, Canada could more easily cooperate with AUKUS than Japan, says Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst with Eurasia Group.
And while it may not be spending enough money to be taken seriously, the Trudeau government has moved to be more circumspect in its relationship with China, limiting Chinese investment in critical minerals and being cautious about research projects.
“The scales have fallen from a lot of politicians’ eyes in the West,” Thompson says. “The question remains, how do you have constructive diplomatic and economic relations with Beijing, while at the same time competing with them geopolitically and seeking to build up and maintain deterrence?”
China will object to the new alliances being organized around it, but don’t expect Beijing to stop buying sabers and rattling them.
“China has a rising economy, so the idea that its rising economic power wouldn't come with rising geopolitical ambition is a fantasy, and we've kind of believed in that fantasy for a while, not just in Canada but in other Western countries,” says Juneau.
“But it was a fantasy all along.”
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visits the offices of artificial intelligence tech company ScaleAI in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on April 7, 2024.
Most of the money will be for investments in computing infrastructure, but $50 million is to establish a Canadian AI Safety Institute to protect against “advanced or nefarious AI systems.” Trudeau predicted the money would help spur investment in the industry — an old-fashioned industrial policy aimed at keeping Canada from falling behind in the international race to develop the technology — but the government will also spend $200 million encouraging sectors to adopt technologies.
The recently announced US policy will require federal agencies to “assess, test, and monitor” the impact of AI, “mitigate the risks of algorithmic discrimination,” and provide “transparency into how the government uses AI.”
Unlike the United States, Canada is moving ahead with legislation that will update privacy laws and require businesses to ensure the “safety and fairness of high-impact AI systems.”
Both governments are trying to develop the technology while taking steps to make sure that potential dangers are understood and prevented. AI pioneers and researchers are warning that AI poses a wide variety of little-understood risks, ranging from impoverishing musicians to human extinction.
A pile of money sitting on top of a table.
It looks like neither Joe Biden nor Justin Trudeau can count on lower interest rates to give them the economic or political boosts they need.
In the United States, hopes for a rate cut were dimmed when Wednesday’s consumer price index numbers dropped. The index was up 3.5% in March compared to last year, higher than February and higher than expected, which means the Federal Reserve is unlikely to cut rates in the US anytime soon.
The Bank of Canada, meanwhile, held its benchmark rate steady for the sixth straight time on Wednesday, but Bank of Canada Gov. Tiff Macklem offered room for hope. “We need to be sure this is not a temporary dip in inflation,” he said, noting that a rate cut in June is still possible.
Both Biden and Trudeau desperately want inflation to ease and for interest rates to drop – to ease cost-of-living concerns for voters.
On Tuesday, former Bank of Canada and Bank of England Gov. Mark Carney – notably considered a potential successor to Trudeau – said the era of steady low-interest rates may be over because of structural changes – namely greater volatility and the shift to a low-carbon economy.
This perspective will be a cold comfort to the Biden and Trudeau camps as they face the prospect of asking for votes while mortgage rates, grocery, and gas bills remain high.
Bottles of blueberry and strawberry maple syrup displayed at a maple syrup farm in Mount Albert, Ontario, Canada, on March 05, 2022.
Maple syrup connoisseurs on both sides of the border take note: Canada’s strategic maple syrup reserve has reached a 16-year low.
The Quebec-based facility is designed to hold 133 million pounds of maple syrup, but in 2023, levels fell to 6.9 million pounds — the result of increased international demand and warmer springs associated with a changing climate.
However, there are — thankfully — no immediate concerns about supply shortfalls or a rise in prices, and this spring’s harvest is so far going well. GZERO will keep you on top of this sticky situation.
People take cover from gunfire near the National Palace, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti March 21, 2024.
Both the US and Canadian governments are facing challenges getting their citizens out of Haiti, and neither country seems to be making any headway toward a plan to reduce the chaos and violence in the Caribbean country.
The airport in Port-au-Prince has been closed since March 4, when heavily armed gangs attacked. The attack was repelled, but international carriers stopped providing service — leaving many foreigners stranded and fearful as gangs control the streets.
Both Canada and the US have resorted to helicopter flights to get people to the neighboring Dominican Republic. A spokesperson for Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Jolysaid Tuesday that 36 had been choppered out. Some Americans are exiting via harrowing helicopter flights as others fly out on commercial flights from the airport at Cap-Haitien, where the security situation is better than in the chaos-consumed capital.
There has been no progress in re-establishing security. A police force from Kenya has agreed to go in, but it can’t do so without a mandate from a functioning government, and the unelected prime minister announced he would resign under pressure after the airport attack. US Ambassador to Kenya Meg Whitmanon Tuesday said that the Kenyan police can’t go to Haiti until they are trained, the US sets up a base for them and the necessary structures are put in place to manage the finances for the mission.
The head of Unicef said Tuesday that 125,000 children are at risk of severe malnutrition unless order is soon restored.
There is no sign that the violence will come to an end without outside intervention. Former US Ambassador James B. Foley wrote in the Washington Postthis week that Biden may be forced to order a brief US intervention for humanitarian reasons, although he would surely rather stay out of it.