• D.C.
  • BXL
  • Lagos
  • Dubai
  • Beijing
  • SG
rotating globe
  • D.C.
  • BXL
  • Lagos
Semafor Logo
  • Dubai
  • Beijing
  • SG


Biden to announce new protections for undocumented migrants, Trump’s foreign policy will offer ‘peac͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌ 
 
cloudy Mexico City
cloudy Boston
sunny Beijing
rotating globe
June 18, 2024
semafor

Flagship

newsletter audience icon
Americas Morning Edition
Sign up for our free newsletters
 

The World Today

  1. Biden’s migrant offer
  2. Trump’s foreign policy
  3. Mexico overhauls judiciary
  4. Indian political shift
  5. NATO chief warns China
  6. US strikes ISIS leader
  7. China Olympic doping fear
  8. Giant particle accelerator
  9. Social media warning label
  10. Celtics win NBA title

Big-money stamp collecting, and Flagship recommends a podcast about the rise of new weight-loss drugs.

1

Biden’s immigration push

Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

US President Joe Biden will announce new protections for undocumented immigrants married to US citizens. The move is a “major olive branch” for US progressives, Semafor’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig wrote, and came after Biden issued an executive order this month that eased the deportation of undocumented immigrants and set tighter limits on the number of daily asylum applications. The government’s handling of immigration could define November’s presidential election: According to polling by Gallup, 18% of Americans say the issue is their biggest concern ahead of the vote. For his part, Donald Trump blamed immigrants for stealing jobs and resources at a weekend campaign event.

For more on the presidential election, subscribe to Semafor’s daily US politics newsletter. →

PostEmail
2

Trump’s ‘peace through strength’

Courtesy of the Council on Foreign Relations

A second Donald Trump presidency’s foreign policy would favor “peace through strength,” a Trump loyalist wrote in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs. Robert O’Brien, Trump’s former national security adviser, argued that Washington should deregulate to lure investment in its competition with Beijing, and more aggressively decouple the two countries’ economies. He also said that America should make it clear to Taiwan that “along with a continued US commitment comes an expectation that Taiwan should spend more on defense.” On Ukraine, O’Brien said Trump would provide lethal aid to Kyiv “while keeping the door open to diplomacy with Russia — and keeping Moscow off balance with a degree of unpredictability.”

PostEmail
3

Mexico judicial overhaul proceeds

Henry Romero/Reuters

Mexico’s outgoing president and his successor pressed ahead with a revamp of the country’s judiciary that critics say will erode democratic institutions. Under the proposal, all judges — including Supreme Court justices — would be elected, a move critics said would give the ruling party control over all branches of government, and which they worry could lead to drug gangs financing judges’ campaigns, further entrenching cartel power. President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum cited a poll which showed that almost three-quarters of Mexicans backed the shift, with the current president aiming to work with the incoming Congress to pass the law. “This is a catastrophic foolishness that progresses despite everyone knowing that it’s a catastrophic foolishness,” one of Mexico’s leading political analysts wrote in Reforma.

For the most interesting and important election news, check out Semafor’s Global Election Hub. →

PostEmail
4

India’s ‘tectonic shift’

Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi hailed a “tectonic shift” in the country’s politics after voters denied Prime Minister Narendra Modi a majority in this year’s election. Speaking to the Financial Times, Gandhi — whose own Congress party outperformed expectations — predicted Modi’s coalition “will struggle,” grappling with a far slimmer majority than prior years. Still, “the rejection of the BJP is not a rejection of Hindutva,” or political Hindu nationalism, one of India’s foremost political analysts argued in The Indian Express: If anything, the opening of a Hindu temple on the site of a destroyed mosque this year confirmed that broader “communalism is growing,” Pratap Bhanu Mehta warned.

PostEmail
5

China warned over Russia support

Ints Kalnins/Reuters

China should face consequences for supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the head of NATO argued. Jens Stoltenberg told the BBC that Beijing was “trying to get it both ways,” maintaining friendly relations with European nations while backing Moscow’s war effort, and that there was an “ongoing conversation” about sanctions. China shares dual-use technologies which “are key for Russia to build missiles, weapons they use against Ukraine.” Stoltenberg’s stint as NATO leader ends this year: Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is “cautiously optimistic” about replacing him after holding talks with his Russia-friendly Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orban, offering Budapest an opt-out of NATO activity supporting Ukraine in return for approving his appointment.

PostEmail
6

ISIS leader targeted in US strike

FBI Director Christopher Wray. Nathan Howard/Reuters

The global leader of ISIS may have been killed in a US airstrike in Somalia last month. Abdulqadir Mumin was believed to have quietly taken on the mantle of worldwide ISIS commander in 2023. US officials initially said the attack killed three militants, but now admit Mumin was the target: He was responsible for several deadly attacks throughout Somalia. ISIS still has thousands of fighters in the Middle East, but views Africa as a region of potential growth, hence basing its leader there. The FBI director made a rare trip to Africa this week, visiting Nigeria and Kenya to discuss the threat of ISIS, al-Qaida, and al-Shabab in the region, all of which consider Africa “very fertile ground.”

PostEmail
7

China doping claims mount

Renewed focus on doping and corruption in Chinese sports cast a shadow over the country’s preparation for next month’s Paris Olympics. The New York Times cited a secret report to say that of 23 Chinese swimmers who had tested positive for banned substances but were allowed to compete in the last Olympics, three tested positive for a different substance and were not penalized, adding to what the outlet characterized as “longstanding suspicions among rival athletes.” Chinese authorities dismissed the story as violating “media ethics,” reiterating prior arguments that the athletes had inadvertently ingested the substances. The report came as the Chinese outlet Caixin noted the country’s sports regulator was dealing with “an avalanche of corruption investigations.”

PostEmail
Plug

Want to know the true story behind the Cuban missile crisis, China’s Tiananmen protests, the CIA’s meddling in Congo, and much more? Find out what really happened in Foreign Affairs Summer Reads, a free newsletter focused on previously untold stories in international affairs. Delivered Sundays through Labor Day in September. Subscribe here.

PostEmail
8

Beijing’s giant particle-smasher

Artist’s illustration of the simulated decay pattern of the Higgs boson. Flickr

China wants to start building the world’s largest particle collider within the next three years. The proposed Circular Electron Positron Collider would be 100 kilometers (62 miles) long and aims to examine the Higgs boson, the subatomic particle which gives everything mass. It would also, if successful, throw Europe’s efforts to build a replacement for the Large Hadron Collider into sharp relief: The CEPC is estimated to cost around $5 billion, compared to $17 billion for the proposed Future Circular Collider — a figure sharply questioned by Germany — and while the Chinese effort could start construction in 2027, Europe is not slated to break ground on its version until the 2030s, even “if it receives government approval,” Nature reported.

PostEmail
9

US surgeon general’s warnings

The US Surgeon General wants to put tobacco-style warning labels on social media. Vivek Murthy said in a New York Times op-ed that the labels should state that “social media is associated with significant mental health harms,” arguing that teens who spend a lot of time on it have higher risk of anxiety and depression. But the psychologist Lucy Foulkes wrote in The Guardian that it’s “an oversimplification to blame social media” for a purported rise in mental health problems: “The majority of teenagers do not have mental health problems, and do have social media.” She said that calling today’s teens “a lost generation, uniquely doomed” can backfire, making them interpret normal feelings of anxiety in a medical way.

PostEmail
10

Celtics win 18th NBA title

The Boston Celtics defeated the Dallas Mavericks to win the NBA championship. Key to the triumph was the Finals Most Valuable Player Jaylen Brown, a highly touted but oft-maligned star who last year signed the biggest contract in NBA history. Upon his winning the award, social media users resurfaced a 2014 tweet in which Brown, then still in high school, said one of his teachers predicted he would be in jail within five years. Instead, he attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he was seen as academically strong as well as athletically gifted, and was in 2016 drafted by the Celtics, the team he just helped lead to their 18th NBA title — the most in league history.

PostEmail
Flagging
  • US lawmakers are due to meet with the Dalai Lama while on a trip to India.
  • Chinese and South Korean foreign and defense officials hold talks in Seoul.
  • Agents of Mystery, a new South Korean series, premieres on Netflix.
PostEmail
Semafor Stat
$19.2 million

The price paid for a stamp collection in the US, making it one of the biggest-ever hauls for such a sale. The collection included an 1868 Benjamin Franklin stamp that sold for more than $4 million. Despite the impressive price, Bill Gross, the former owner who is a giant in the global bond markets, made just a 2% annual return on the Franklin stamp, having purchased it for $2.97 million in 2005. Had he invested the same amount in the S&P 500, Gross would have netted approximately $16 million. The low returns presumably won’t trouble Gross: In recent years, he has made more than $50 million from selling stamps in his collection.

PostEmail
Recommendation
Spotify Podcasts/Pete Ryan

Trillion Dollar Shot, a podcast from The Wall Street Journal and Spotify Studios. The 4-part series explores the rise of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, Mounjaro, and Wegovy. Partially told through the personal experience of WSJ reporter Bradley Olson, it breaks down the business behind Ozempic, from its invention to the way it’s changing “bodies, fortunes, and industries,” as the Journal puts it. Guests include executives from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, the two main manufacturers of GLP-1 drugs, and even David Peyton, the singer-songwriter who wrote the song Magic, which is being used to advertise Ozempic in the US.

PostEmail
Hot on Semafor
  • The interest rate cut summer that wasn’t.
  • Senators tell Biden admin to increase pressure on India.
  • The Washington Post looks to remake its identity.
PostEmail