Rex Murphy, the Newfoundland-born pundit and wordsmith whose writing and often-blistering observations dominated a decades-long career in Canadian media, died at the age of 77, according to the National Post.

According to a post on the Post’s website on Thursday, Murphy died after a fight with cancer.

Murphy had a long career in the media, including many years at CBC, and was a columnist for the National Post at the time of his death.

For almost two decades, he hosted Cross Country Checkup on CBC Radio and was a familiar face to long-time viewers of CBC’s The National. His appearances on CBC-TV extend back to the 1970s.

Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper paid tribute to Rex Murphy on X, describing him as “one of the most intelligent and fiercely free-thinking journalists this country has ever known.”

Countless National Post readers throughout Canada will mourn his death, as they turned to him to make sense of the world and an increasingly weird national politics.

He was motivated not by party, but by the fact that he no longer recognized his own country. Some of this is undoubtedly what happens to all of us as we age, but the culture battles of the last decade, whether over green attacks on the oil and gas industry or the more identity-obsessed left, have bewildered people of all ages and backgrounds across Canada. Not only men and women from Rex’s generation, but all of us.

His critics condemned him as an out-of-date curmudgeon, but this was a mistake, a handy falsehood perpetuated by people with opposing political views.

Rex Murphy’s relevance only grown as time went on.

He spoke for a Canada that existed beyond the confines of downtown, a Canada unconcerned with the latest, useless tantrum on Twitter. He called for a Canada that values who you are as an individual above all.

Because of his exceptional use of words, Rex contributed to the survival of conservatism in Canadian politics. He was often aggressive, but always with a reason.

His approach, which relied on colorful language, was more like to British pundits at the Times or the Telegraph than anything you’d see in a North American newspaper. In fact, his style was frequently more British than the British.

He was unique, and not only in his writing. In person, Rex was as charming, gracious, and kind as he portrayed in his columns. He was a true gentleman.

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Washington — Making future military aid to Ukraine contingent on its participation in peace talks with Russia. Chinese nationals are prohibited from purchasing property within a 50-mile radius of US government structures. Filling the national security sector with supporters of Donald Trump.

One group attempting to prepare the framework for a second Trump administration if the former Republican president wins in November has released a new policy book articulating an “America First” national security strategy.

The book, which was shared with The Associated Press before its release on Thursday, is the America First Policy Institute’s newest endeavor. Like the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” the group aims to help Trump avoid the mistakes he made in 2016 when he entered the White House unprepared.

In addition to its policy activities, the institute’s transition project has been working on dozens of executive orders and a training program for prospective political appointees. Heritage has been developing a comprehensive personnel database and providing its policy manuals.

Both organizations emphasize their independence from Trump’s campaign, which has frequently made an effort to distance itself from such efforts by claiming that the only ideas the candidate supports are those that he has himself expressed.

Still, the book’s editor, Fred Fleitz, stated that he and retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who served as Trump’s acting national security adviser and wrote several of the chapters, have been in frequent contact with the former president, soliciting feedback and discussing topics such as Ukraine in depth.

We hope this is where he is. “We’re not speaking for him, but I believe he will approve,” said Fleitz, who formerly served as the National Security Council’s chief of staff.

A Trump Affiliated Group Has Released A New National Security Book Outlining Prospective Second-Term Approaches.

He thinks the book will serve as “an intellectual foundation for the America First approach” to national security and be “easy to use.”

“It’s a grand strategy,” Kellogg continued. “You do not begin with the policies first. You start with the strategies first. And that’s what we did.”

The group portrays the current direction of US national security as a failure, blaming the foreign policy establishment for embracing an interventionist and “globalist” strategy at the expense of America’s national interests.

While lacking in specifics, the book provides guidelines for how a potential Trump administration should address foreign policy concerns such as Russia’s war against Ukraine. Trump has stated that if elected, he will resolve the problem before Inauguration Day in January but has yet to specify how.

The war chapter in the book focuses on how the conflict developed rather than how it was resolved. However, it states that any US military help should be subject to Ukraine’s participation in peace talks with Russia.

It forecasts that the Ukrainian army would gradually lose ground and warns against the US continuing “to send arms to a stalemate that Ukraine will eventually find difficult to win.” However, once a peace accord is reached, it states that the United States will continue to arm Ukraine as a deterrence to Russia.

The authors appear to support a framework in which Ukraine “would not be asked to relinquish the goal of regaining all its territory” but would agree to diplomacy “with the understanding that this would require a future diplomatic breakthrough, which probably will not occur before (Russian President Vladimir) Putin leaves office.”

A Trump Affiliated Group Has Released A New National Security Book Outlining Prospective Second-Term Approaches.

It recognizes that Ukrainians “will have difficulty accepting a negotiated peace that does not return all of their territory or, at least for now, hold Russia accountable for the carnage it inflicted on Ukraine.” Their supporters will, too. However, as Donald Trump stated during the CNN town hall in 2023, ‘I want everyone to stop dying.’ That is our viewpoint as well. It’s a good first step.

The book blames Democratic President Joe Biden for the war and reiterates Trump’s argument that if he had been president, Putin would never have invaded. Its key argument in support of that assertion is that Putin regarded Trump as powerful and determined. Trump developed a close relationship with the Russian leader and hesitated to question him.

Most of the chapter outlines an, at times, inaccurate timeline of Biden’s management of the conflict.

Moving forward, it appears like Putin could be convinced to participate in peace talks if Biden and other NATO leaders offer to postpone Ukraine’s NATO membership for an extended time. It proposes that the United States develop a “long-term security architecture for Ukraine’s defense that focuses on bilateral security defense.” It needs to explain what this entails. It also proposes charges on Russian energy sales to fund Ukraine’s rehabilitation.

The book criticizes Trump’s 2016 transition operations, citing a general lack of preparation before Trump took office.

“The tumultuous transition of 2016/2017 did not serve President Trump and the nation well and slowed the advancement and implementation of his agenda,” the writers stated. For example, they point out that before the election, Democrat Hillary Clinton’s transition team submitted over 1,000 names for future security clearance. Trump’s team filed only 25.

The group claims to have identified over 1,200 national security-related roles that the future administration would need to fill and wants it to be prepared on Day 1 with Trump loyalists who support the “America First” strategy.

“It is not about retaliating against individuals or attempting to politicize official posts. “It’s about ensuring that government employees do their jobs while keeping politics out of it,” Fleitz added.

The book portrays China as the country’s most significant national security concern, eager to dethrone the United States as the world’s dominant force. It advocates a hardline policy that builds on methods taken under both the Trump and Biden administrations to render Beijing’s actions “largely irrelevant to American life.”

A Trump Affiliated Group Has Released A New National Security Book Outlining Prospective Second-Term Approaches.

It raises economic concerns about China to national security ones and advocates a reciprocal strategy that would deny Beijing access to US markets in the same way that American enterprises have been denied access in China.

The book also calls for more stringent screening of cyber and digital enterprises owned by US rivals, particularly China, to ensure they are not collecting sensitive information. It also advises prohibiting Chinese people from purchasing property within a 50-mile radius of any US federal facility.

It advocates for visa restrictions on Chinese students seeking to study in the United States and the ban of TikTok and other Chinese apps due to worries about data privacy. Conversely, Trump has spoken out against legislation that would force TikTok to sell or ban access in the United States.

Analysts’ interpretations of what constitutes an “America First” policy frequently reflect the writers’ own interests.

Ellie Cohanim, a former Trump senior State Department ambassador in charge of monitoring and combatting antisemitism, sees “America First” as a shopping list for Israel’s military.

The United States should provide Israel with a squadron of “25 Lockheed Martin F-35s, one squadron of Boeing’s F-15 EX, and a squadron of Apache E attack helicopters,” Cohanim stated.

The United States should give Israel some of its billions of dollars in military funding in Israeli currency so that it can spend it at home, and Washington should press Arab states to foot the bill for Gaza reconstruction and accept Israel’s suspension of any political talks with the Palestinians pending an indefinite period of compulsory deradicalization for the Palestinian people, she wrote.

SOURCE – (AP)

Boulevard, California  — Julia Paredes believed that her migration to the United States was either now or never. Mexico was just days away from needing visas for Peruvian travelers. If she didn’t move immediately, she’d have to embark on a more dangerous, clandestine voyage overland to join her sister in Dallas.

Mexico began requiring visas for Peruvians on Monday in response to a significant surge of migrants from the South American country, following similar actions by Venezuelans, Ecuadorians, and Brazilians. It removed the possibility of flying to a Mexican city near the US border, like Paredes, 45, did just before the deadline.

“I had to treat it as an emergency,” said Paredes, who worked delivering lunch to miners in Arequipa, Peru, and borrowed money to fly to Tijuana, Mexico, across the border from San Diego. Last month, traffickers led her through a remote hole in the border wall to a dirt lot in California, where she and about 100 other migrants from around the world chilled over campfires after a morning drizzle while waiting for overloaded Border Patrol agents to bring them to a processing station.

Mexico Tightens Travel Rules On Peruvians In A Show Of Visa Diplomacy To Slow Migration To US

Senior US officials addressed reporters ahead of a summit of top diplomats from approximately 20 Western hemisphere countries this week in Guatemala. They praised Mexico’s crackdown on air travel from Peru and described visa restrictions as an important instrument for combating illegal migration.

Critics argue that banning air travel fosters more risky decisions. Although the pause was brief, illegal migration by Venezuelans fell sharply after Mexico enforced visa requirements in January 2022. Last year, Venezuelans accounted for about two-thirds of the record-breaking 520,000 migrants who crossed the Darien Gap, a notorious jungle that spans portions of Panama and Colombia.

Last year, more than 25,000 Chinese traveled through Darien. They typically fly to Ecuador, a country with little travel restrictions, and then illegally cross the US border in San Diego to request asylum. With an immigration court backlog of over 3 million cases, it takes years to resolve such claims, allowing people to obtain work permits and establish roots.

“People are going to come no matter what,” said Miguel Yaranga, 22, who flew from Lima, Peru’s capital, to Tijuana before being released by Border Patrol on Sunday at a San Diego bus stop. He received orders to appear in immigration court in New York in February 2025, which perplexed him because he had informed authorities he would settle with his sister on the opposite side of the country, in Bakersfield, California.

According to Jeremy MacGillivray, deputy chief of the International Organization for Migration’s Mexico mission, Peruvian migration will reduce “at least at the beginning” and then rebound as individuals move to travel through the Darien Gap and to Central America and Mexico.

Last month, Mexico said that it will need visas for Peruvians for the first time since 2012 in response to a “substantial increase” in illegal migration. Large-scale Peruvian migration to Mexico began in 2022. Peruvians were stopped an average of 2,160 times each month from January to March this year, up from a monthly average of 544 times in 2023.

Peruvians also began arriving at the US border in 2022. The US Border Patrol apprehended Peruvians an average of 5,300 times per month last year, dropping to 3,400 from January to March amid Mexico’s massive immigration campaign.

Peru promptly reciprocated Mexico’s visa demand but altered its direction after facing criticism from the country’s tourism industry. Peru stated in its reversal that it is a member of a regional economic bloc that includes Mexico, Chile, and Colombia.

Mexico Tightens Travel Rules On Peruvians In A Show Of Visa Diplomacy To Slow Migration To US

According to Adam Isaacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, Peru’s membership in the Pacific Alliance with Mexico gave its people visa-free travel longer than in other countries.

It is unknown whether Colombia, another major source of migration, will be next, but Isacson claims Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has a “lovefest” with his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, while his relations with Peru’s administration are tense.

Colombians frequently rank among the top nationalities of migrants arriving at Tijuana’s airport. Many stay in motels before being guided to the boulder-strewn mountains east of the city, where they cross through border wall holes and walk into dirt lots designated as waiting stations by the Border Patrol.

Bryan Ramírez, a 25-year-old Colombian, arrived in the United States with his girlfriend last month, just two days after flying from Bogota to Cancun, Mexico, and then to Tijuana. He waited with others overnight for Border Patrol authorities to pick him up as chilly rain and strong winds whipped over the crackle of high-voltage power lines.

The group waiting near Boulevard, a small, vaguely defined rural community, included several Peruvians who claimed to have come for economic opportunities and to flee violence and political concerns.

Peruvians can still bypass the Darien jungle by traveling to El Salvador, which granted them visa-free travel in December in exchange for a similar action by Peru’s government. However, they would still have to travel overland via Mexico, where many are robbed or abducted.

Mexico Tightens Travel Rules On Peruvians In A Show Of Visa Diplomacy To Slow Migration To US

Ecuadorians, who have required visas to enter Mexico since September 2021, can also fly to El Salvador, albeit not all of them do. Oscar Palacios, 42, explained that he walked through Darien since he couldn’t afford to fly.

Palacios, who abandoned his wife and year-old child in Ecuador with plans to financially support them in the United States, said it took him two weeks to get from his house near the violent city of Esmeralda to Mexico’s border with Guatemala. It took him two months to cross Mexico because immigration officials turned him around three times and bused him back to the country’s southern region. He claimed he was routinely robbed.

After three nights in a motel, Palacios arrived in Tijuana and entered the United States. A Border Patrol agent recognized him with migrants from Turkey and Brazil and drove them to a dirt lot to wait for a van or bus to transport them to a processing station. Looking back on the adventure, Palacios stated that he would rather cross the Darien Gap 100 times than Mexico just once.

SOURCE – (AP)