Critical State: US-Canadian Trade Under the Boot of Nationalism

In a new piece at The Dial, Donal Gil breaks down the four-decade history of “ever deepening economic, security and military cooperation” between Canada and the United States.

Throughout its first century as a nation, Canada had clung to its “separateness from the US,” billing itself as a social democracy that could remain “insulated politically from the influence of the superpower next door,” Gil explains.

That began to change in 1988, when Canadian voters had to chart a path forward in “an election presented by both the pro- and anti-free trade sides of the debate as a critical juncture in the nation’s destiny.”

Because the free trade side won out, Gil argues: “The economy of Canada changed dramatically as companies reoriented to serve the massive market to their south, now largely free from protectionist barriers to trade.”

Since then, economic, political, and military ties have continued to tighten between Washington and Ottawa — that is, until the second arrival of US President Donald Trump, who began to warn of punitive tariffs against his country’s northern neighbor and routinely threaten annexation.

“Canadians may have responded to the threat of tariffs and annexation in 2025 with the muscle memory of nationalist pride,” Gil writes, “but Trump’s bluster has laid bare an unavoidable truth: Canada’s 40-year-ago embrace of free trade with the US has come back to haunt it.”

If You Read One More Thing: Trump’s Deadly Strikes on Yemen

At The Intercept, Nick Turse revisits a particularly disturbing episode during the Trump administration’s campaign of deadly air and naval strikes against Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world.

• In late April, US military forces carried out a strike on an immigrant detention facility in northwestern Yemen’s Sa’ada, killing 61 immigrant detainees and zero combatants.

• Amnesty International, which interviewed 15 of the attack’s survivors, has called for an investigation into whether the attack constituted a war crime.

• “The harrowing testimonies from survivors paint a clear picture of a civilian building, packed with detainees, being bombed without distinction,” said Kristine Beckerle, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa.

The UAE Weapons Behind the Genocide in Sudan

At the Wall Street Journal, Jared Malsin, Benoit Faucon, and Robbie Gramer report on the weapons the United Arab Emirates “has funneled” into war-ravaged Sudan, where fighting has killed up to an estimated 150,000 people since April 2023.

• “US intelligence agencies say the United Arab Emirates sent increasing supplies of weapons including sophisticated Chinese drones to a major Sudanese militia this year, bolstering a group that has been accused of genocide and pouring fuel on a conflict that has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises,” the piece explains.

• That group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has received “advanced Chinese-made drones along with small arms, heavy machine guns, vehicles, artillery, mortars and ammunition,” US officials told the Journal.

• The report notes that Western officials and the United Nations have both accused the RSF of crimes against civilians, while the US State Department said in January that “the RSF had committed systematic murder of men, boys, even infants, based on ethnicity.”

Deep Dive: ‘Excessive Force’ Defines Trump’s Federal Crackdown in Chicago

The global watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) has published a new report that details the abuses that have marked the federal law enforcement deployment in Chicago, Illinois, since mid-September.

In the report, HRW notes that federal law enforcement agents have used “excessive force” against peaceful protesters, media workers, volunteer medics, and legal observers, among others, during rallies at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in the city’s suburbs. “This is not crowd control but a campaign of intimidation and a clear message that dissent will be punished,” the report says.

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The federal crackdown in Chicago comes just months after the Trump administration deployed the National Guard and active-duty Marines to Los Angeles during demonstrations against ICE raids in June. Like in Chicago, HRW accused federal agents in Los Angeles of “brutal, excessive, and unnecessary force.”

In Chicago, agents from the Department of Homeland Security “repeatedly used excessive force against small groups of protesters who appeared to pose no threat to the agents or to public security, and against clearly identifiable journalists, legal observers, and volunteer street medics,” the new report explains.

Drawing on interviews with 18 people and analysis of video footage, the report details federal agents’ “firing of projects” and their use of “chemical irritants” during the demonstrations.

On Sept. 26, for instance, journalist Raven Geary was struck in the face by a pepper-spray projectile outside the detention facility. “I have never seen anything like this response in my life,” she told HRW. “There is no rhyme or reason to the violence agents are resorting to.”

Agents also fired pepper balls at a protester named Ashley Vaughn, who relies on the use of a cane, on Sept. 12, an incident the demonstrator said caused them to black out. A week later, in an incident that gained national media attention, a federal agent fired a pepper ball that hit Reverend David Black in the skull while he was conducting a prayer outside the ICE facility.

For its part, DHS has defended its agents’ conduct during the protests. In a Sept. 19 statement, DHS claimed that “rioters assaulted law enforcement, threw tear gas cans, slashed tires of cars, blocked the entrance of the building, and trespassed on private property,” though demonstrators who spoke with HRW denied those allegations.

In response to the crackdown, media groups, reporters, and demonstrators have filed a class action lawsuit “against President Donald Trump and senior officials from DHS, ICE, Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Justice, and other federal agencies, citing the use of excessive force, suppression of free speech and religious expression, and unlawful arrests.”

HRW has called on congressional DHS oversight committees to host public hearings in order to investigate federal agents’ conduct in Chicago. The watchdog also pointed to the need for stronger legislation to protect against federal abuses and increased accountability for immigration authorities.

“The federal government is not just violating the human rights of protestors here,” said Belkis Wille, HRW’s associate crisis and conflict director. “These violent abuses are part of a broader assault on US democratic norms and institutions.

Show Us the Receipts

At Inkstick, Miriam Frost takes on the Trump administration’s claims to have ended a slate of wars — seven in seven months, according to the State Department, although Trump himself has insisted that he ended eight wars. Frost argues that “the suggestion that any of these conflicts has truly been resolved” is both false and dangerous. “As the Trump administration will soon discover, signing an agreement does not guarantee peace.”

Inkstick fellow Sophie Hurwitz, meanwhile, takes readers to the picket line outside of St. Louis, where Boeing machinists have been on strike since early August. Many among the thousands of striking workers speak of relying on food pantries and second jobs to get by, but the strike has taken a toll on the defense giant: The production of specific military aircraft has experienced significant delays, Air Force Chief of Staff Kenneth S. Wilsbach admitted in his recent Senate confirmation hearing.

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The World from PRX reports on the Nobel laureates and influential celebrities who have “cautioned that the threat of artificial intelligence is real, particularly regarding what’s known as artificial superintelligence.” PRX spoke with Max Tegmark, head of The Future of Life Institute and a professor doing AI research at MIT, who warned that the clock is ticking to put safeguards against AI in place. “This is an incredibly radical thing to just force on us all undemocratically,” he explained.

Pitch Inkstick

Inkstick is on the lookout for US-related pitches. We’re especially interested in reported features and personal essays that examine issues like the weapons industry, the increasing militarization on the US-Mexico border and within the country, domestic extremism, and the people in power pushing for more wars abroad.

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Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.