In this week’s editors’ discussion on Trend Lines, WPR’s Judah Grunstein, Frederick Deknatel and Laura Weiss talk about a recent Pentagon report documenting the Islamic State’s resurgence in Iraq and Syria. They also discuss a controversial abortion case in El Salvador, and prospects for the G-7 summit in France. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our uncompromising analysis delivered straight to your inbox. The newsletter offers a free preview article every day of the week, plus three more complimentary articles in [...]
Earlier this month, a white supremacist gunman opened fire at a Walmart shopping center in El Paso, Texas, killing 22 people. According to police, the suspected shooter has admitted to targeting “Mexicans,” and he had apparently posted a manifesto online just prior to his rampage, in which he decried a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” In the same manifesto, he praised another white supremacist gunman who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March of this year. These are sadly just a few of the violent incidents perpetrated in recent years by right-wing extremists around the world. [...]
If there’s still any question about whether President Donald Trump will actually deliver on his promises to “get out” of Afghanistan, the answer seems simple after this week. No, Trump won’t, not while he remains convinced that he could win the war there in 10 days by killing 10 million people and wiping Afghanistan “off the face of the earth.” Trump’s statement, made in a stomach-churning Oval Office meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan on July 22, may have been shocking, but it wasn’t all that surprising. After 19 years at war, the bumbling that has passed for U.S. [...]
