Category Archives: Marco Rubio

Rubio expected to push Trump plan to displace Palestinians from Gaza on trip to Israel

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US secretary of state is making his first trip to region and is expected to advocate Trump’s plan to create ‘Riviera of the Middle East’

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, will discuss the Gaza ceasefire with Israel’s prime minister in Jerusalem, launching a Middle East tour a day after the latest hostage-prisoner exchange.

On his first visit to the region as Washington’s top diplomat, Rubio is expected to push the US president Donald Trump’s widely condemned proposal to take control of the Gaza Strip and relocate its more than 2 million residents – which experts say would amount to ethnic cleansing.

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Panama accuses US of peddling ‘intolerable falsehood’ about canal

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President José Raúl Mulino denies making a deal that US ships can transit the canal free of charge

The president of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, has accused the US of peddling a “quite simply intolerable falsehood” about the Panama canal, as Donald Trump’s pledge to “take back” the waterway continued to poison relations between the two countries and cause alarm around Latin America.

The US state department claimed late on Wednesday the Central American country had agreed to no longer charge US government vessels to pass through its canal – a move that would supposedly save Washington millions of dollars a year.

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El Salvador offers to hold deportees and incarcerated US citizens in its jails

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Human rights groups alarmed as Marco Rubio, US secretary of state, meets with Nayib Bukele during overseas trip

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has offered to accept deportees from the US of any nationality and hold them in his jails, including “dangerous American criminals”, Marco Rubio said on Monday.

The US secretary of state, who this week made his first overseas trip as the top US diplomat, visited El Salvador on Monday as part of a wider trip through Central America and the Caribbean.

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Rubio to visit Central America with migration and Panama canal on agenda

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US secretary of state to visit region amid concern over Trump threat to ‘take back’ canal and tensions over China

Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, will travel to Central America this week on a five-country tour that will focus on limiting migration to the United States, curbing Chinese influence in the region and on securing Donald Trump’s ambitious goal of reasserting US control over the Panama canal.

Rubio will travel to Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic from Saturday to Thursday this week, meeting with the presidents of each. It is the first time in more than a century that a secretary’s first official visit abroad will be to Central America.

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Panama will not discuss control of canal during Rubio visit, president says

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José Raúl Mulino rules out talks on waterway with secretary of state: ‘That is sealed. The canal belongs to Panama’

Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, has ruled out discussing control over the Panama Canal in a meeting with the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who is set to visit the Central American country in his first official trip abroad this weekend.

Mulino’s comments during a weekly press conference come after Donald Trump threatened to take control of the canal, claiming it is being operated by China. The Panamanian government strongly denies the accusation.

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US orders halt to virtually all foreign aid except for Israel and Egypt

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Internal memo to US state department staff explicitly makes exceptions for military assistance to Israel and Egypt

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has ordered a halt to virtually all foreign aid, but made an exception for funding to Israel and Egypt, according to an internal memo to staff at the US state department.

“No new funds shall be obligated for new awards or extensions of existing awards until each proposed new award or extension has been reviewed and approved … as consistent with President Trump’s agenda,” said the memo.

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The world braces for Trump, hoping for the best, unprepared for the worst

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His pick for secretary of state may have given measured assessment of world affairs, but ‘crazy’ Trump will call the shots

Western allies of the US are braced for the return of Donald Trump, still hoping for the best, but largely unprepared for what may prove to be a chaotic and disorientating worst.

The run-up to his inauguration has sent out a catherine wheel of signals as Trump turned up the volume on tariffs against Canada, China and Mexico, vowed to buy – and if not, invade – Greenland and the Panama canal, and used his leverage to press Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a Gaza ceasefire that the Israeli PM had resisted since May.

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Loyalty the key as impulsive Trump picks team for America First agenda

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President-elect’s team has China hawks, an alleged Assad defender and a Fox News host – all have been vocally loyal

As Donald Trump rushes to fill out his cabinet and enact his America First agenda in the United States and abroad, a clear throughline for his foreign policy and national security team has been a vocal loyalty to the president-elect – at least in this election cycle.

The rapidly expanding roster includes established – and some Maga supporters would say establishment – foreign policy hawks, and a neophyte defense secretary who until this week was still a conservative commentator on Fox News.

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Trump’s early second-term choices fuel fears of extremist agenda

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Trump has chosen loyalists and hardliners to lead departments that will shape US policy on immigration, defense and more

Donald Trump may have won a second term in the White House just last week, but his recent administration appointments have already heightened fears among some who believe his return to the White House will lead to an extremist agenda.

On immigration, Trump has chosen loyalists and hardliners: Stephen Miller will serve as deputy chief of staff for policy and Department of Homeland Security adviser; Tom Homan as “border czar”, and Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor, will lead the Department of Homeland Security.

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Trump nominates Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead new efficiency department to ‘restructure federal agencies’ – live

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Tesla CEO and onetime Republican presidential hopeful put forward to lead department to ‘dismantle government bureaucracy’

Joe Biden is meeting with two foreign leaders at the White House today.

At 11.15am, he will speak with Israel’s president Isaac Herzog, then with Indonesia’s president, Prabowo Subianto, at 2pm.

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Activist with far-right ties fronts Marco Rubio-linked anti-immigration effort

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Nate Hochman recorded several videos for America 2100, a thinktank linked to the Republican Florida senator

The rightwing activist Nate Hochman, who was fired last year by the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, for employing neo-Nazi imagery in a campaign video, is now the face of a Marco Rubio-linked thinktank’s efforts to spread anti-immigrant panic from Ohio to Pennsylvania.

Videos featuring Hochman recorded in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, have been boosted on X by a range of rightwing figures including the platform’s owner, the tech billionaire Elon Musk.

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Donald Trump looking for ‘fighter’ as Republican running mate

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Sources close to ex-president say gender and race irrelevant over pick who’s ‘America first’ and believes in agenda

Donald Trump is looking for a “fighter” as his running mate in this year’s presidential election and regards factors such as their gender or race as irrelevant, according to sources close to the former US president.

Conventional wisdom used to hold that Trump was likely to choose a woman or a person of color as his potential vice-president in an effort to broaden his appeal. But aides close to the presumptive Republican nominee currently say he will not take so-called identity politics into account.

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Marco Rubio says he would not accept 2024 election results ‘if it’s unfair’

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Republican senator’s comments come as he is considered among Trump’s top candidates for vice-president

The Republican Florida senator Marco Rubio said on Sunday he would not commit to accepting the 2024 presidential election results, insisting that “if it’s unfair” his party will “go to court and point out the fact that states are not following their own election laws”.

Rubio’s statements on Meet the Press come as he is considered among former president Donald Trump’s top candidates for vice-president. Trump has continuously said falsely that the 2020 election was stolen.

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Trump plots revenge on Republicans who betrayed him as Senate trial looms

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Republican divisions over Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial came into clearer focus on Sunday, as the former president spent his first weekend out of office plotting revenge against those he says betrayed him.

Related: Can Trump do a Nixon and re-enter polite society? Elizabeth Drew doubts it

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