Tactical Surrender: World Professional Association for Transgender Health

"WPATH [World Professional Association for Transgender Health] now agrees that pediatric transgender medicine is marked by 'medical and scientific uncertainty."

"Yet for years, WPATH presented its guidelines as an  unquestionable medical standard of care."

"The social and scientific costs of questioning their recommendations were steep and could be career-ending."

"For 10+ years doctors have been told WPATH's is the only way." 

Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) 

 

"SEGM's characterization of WPATH's legal position is a clear misrepresentation of an established legal distinction by the courts."

"[Our dedication to our mission and the served patient population] remains unwavering."

"[We are a nonprofit] dedicated to promoting science-based medical care, education, research and public policy in transgender health." 

"[Our Standards of Care] articulate a professional consensus about the psychiatric, psychological, medical and surgical management of transgender people."

"That transgender health care is an area of intense medical debate does not entitle Plaintiffs to prevent individuals and organizations like WPATH from free speech aimed at contributing to that debate."

"Many governments and organizations, including New Zealand, Canada, and some U.S. States and the American Academy of Pediatrics, agree that the evidence supports SOC-8 [Standards of Care-8 updated by WPATH]." 

World Professional Association for Transgender Health

 

"Parents have been told that the WPATH approach is not optional, but medically necessary and lifesaving."

"[WPATH] has aggressively promoted that approach, including by suppressing and stigmatizing alternatives. I think it's disingenuous at best for WPATH to now frame its recommendations as merely one opinion in a legitimate debate."

Leor Sapir senior fellow, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research 

 

 

Within the throes of a legal battle with the Trump administration, the U.S. transgender health organization appears to have made a shift of significance in its guidelines; the very guidelines that platform gender-care policies in North America. According to a new legal filing, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health now claims that its guidance to doctors represents one area in a matter of "intense medical debate". 

 

The organization has brought forward a dismissal of lawsuit motion that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission brought against WPATH, by now claiming that its Standards of Care that have been so influential up to the present are not in fact presented as "assertions of fact, but rather opinions" ,that have been based on cited scientific studies.

 

WPATH claims its opinions are "non-actionable", protected by the First Amendment; that it is doctors who have based their decision-making on WPATH's guidelines who are in point of fact the bearers of "independent responsibility for their own advice", according to the legal filing by WPATH. In response, the organization's critics regard these arguments as a "remarkable humbling in attitude". 

 

They are, in essence, shrugging off their own responsibility in presenting their guidelines as the final word in response to gender dysphoria. Their having framed those guidelines as a matter of dire necessity to respect the confused gender choices made by underage children meriting instant responses of pediatric decision making in hormone-arresting maturation of pre-puberty adolescents and even 'corrective' surgeries now rests on the consciences of the doctors responding to the authority of their original guidelines. 

"[WPATH] went to great lengths to convince insurance companies, doctors and parents that its standard of care was the 'settled science'."

"And now it's claiming that the standard of care is worth no more than a student essay in a high school newspaper."

Andrew Ferguson, chair, U.S. Federal Trade Commission  

The initial development of WPATH's guidelines in its Standards of Care date from 1979. A recent 2022 update was signed off by over 100 co-authors. Guidelines for gender-affirming care in Canada have been driven in alignment with WPATH recommendations. In its position statement in support of an affirming approach to care, the Canadian Paediatric Society refers to the recommendations within SOC-8. Those are recommendations described as internationally accepted standards of care. A chapter dedicated to adolescents states the "medical necessity of treatment and care is clearly recognized for the many people who experience dissonance between their sex assigned at birth and their gender identity". 

WPATH describes itself as a non-profit "dedicated to promoting science-based medical care, education, research and public policy in transgender health." Photo by Adobe Stock

In the original document WPATH offers “suggested minimum ages” for a number of irreversible surgical procedures for minors, such as: 

 14+ years old for cross-sex hormones 

 15+ years old for double mastectomies 

 16+ years old for breast implants, facial feminisation surgery 

 17+ years old for metoidioplasty, orchiectomy, vaginoplasty, hysterectomy, fronto-orbital     remodelling  

18+ years old for phalloplasty.  

The decision to remove all age requirements (apart from the phalloplasty) was taken despite there being no new evidence to support that recommendation. 

Genspect 

 

Britain's National Health Service took the initiative to question its own earlier position that the effects of puberty blockers are wholly reversible. Doctors, SOC-8 adherents are now advised, may decide to depart from WPATH's guidance in reflection of a patient's "unique anatomic, social or psychological situation", led by a research study  or other reasons. "These departures should be recognized as such, explained to the patient and documented for quality patient care and legal protection."

 

The Federal Trade Commission's lawsuit (along with Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas) claims that WPATH made "false, misleading or unsubstantiated" statements regarding the necessity, effectiveness and safety of puberty blockers, hormones, and sex-change surgeries. WPATH asserts, in seeking to squash the complaint that the "core deceptive statements" have no  presence in SOC-8 and thus were paraphrased from other quotes based on citations by the group quoted in published research.

 

According to WPATH, the deceptive statements are "non-actionable opinions about subjects and scientific uncertainty", reads the WPATH motion, in that the plaintiffs "fail to allege a single deceptive statement by WPATH, much less a statement to consumers". "SOC-8 does not tell doctors what to say, much less how to mislead". "Plaintiffs", they go on, "seek to brand one side of scientific debate as 'deceptive' without even considering the science". 

 

The evidence is of such low certainty, it is impossible to determine whether the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in children and teens help or harm, according to Canadian researchers who last year published two major reviews. For its part, WPATH claims the Federal Trade Commission and other plaintiffs are "attempting to insert themselves in the middle of this medical debate and silence those with whom they disagree".  

"All clinical guideline recommendations are evidence informed, but opinion based."

"The guidelines for hypertension, for diabetes, for Crohn's disease. Pick a disease, pick a clinical scenario, pick a preventative health issue."

"An 'opinion' in this context does not imply ill-considered loose thoughts or brain droppings, but specifically refers to a genuinely subjective judgement that cannot be proven true or false and thus cannot be sanctioned merely because he government disagrees with it."

"[However, a legitimate debate is to be had over whether WPATH's opinions are supported by the evidence]."

Dr. Laura Targownik, professor of medicine, University of Toronto 

 

The Average Russian's Confidence in Vladimir Putin's Russia

"Drones are flying. Things are burning down. Nervousness is growing. And people's everyday wisdom may be kicking in that they need to have cash under their pillow and not somewhere in banks where it may never be returned."

"For some banks this really is a problem. They didn't expect this and they invested all the cash elsewhere, and yet people are coming and taking out half a trillion rubles a month."

Former (anonymous) finance official, Russia

 

"It means people have no trust in the Russian banking system or in the Russian financial system."

"This is all a consequence of the fear that the government will do something with the banking system, that it could nationalize deposits."

"I would not exclude that the authorities could impose limits on withdrawals."

Alexandra Prokopenko, former advisor, Russian Central Bank

Russian banks have been bleeding cash each day (Picture: EPA)

 

First half of August: $3.4 billion (286.4 billion roubles) withdrawn in a span of just fourteen days.

July: $7.3 billion pulled from commercial accounts, marking the single highest monthly withdrawal total of the calendar year.

June: $4.5 billion removed as initial drone disruptions against critical logistics hubs began to escalate.

Cumulative 2026 figure: Over $32 billion (2.5 trillion roubles) siphoned out of the formal banking architecture since January 1.

 

"Beyond physical disruptions, the driving force behind the liquidity drain is an intense, pervasive rumour mill regarding the Kremlin’s plans for private savings."

"As the war of attrition drags on, the financial demands of sustaining a military outfit numbering over a million active personnel, alongside funding defence contractors, wounded-in-action payouts, and death benefits, are burning through Russia's state budget."

"Russia’s Ministry of Finance is operating under a widening federal deficit that standard taxation and energy export revenues can no longer comfortably cover."

"With foreign reserves frozen in Western clearinghouses and access to international capital markets blocked by sanctions, Moscow must fund its war expenditures entirely through domestic borrowing, sovereign wealth drawdowns, and money creation."

"In this environment, fears have mounted among ordinary Russians that the Kremlin will inevitably resort to extraordinary measures to tap into retail bank deposits."

First Post summary

Billions are disappearing from Russia's banking system, as Russians display their penchant for economic survival against a backdrop of Moscow's floundering 'special military operation' which was meant to see the great Russian military swoop into defenceless Ukraine to liberate it from its 'neo-Nazi' government, bowing to the applause of grateful Ukrainian citizens and just incidentally picking up great regional swaths of its neighbour in the interests of rewarding Russian President Vladimir Putin's fixation on restoring Soviet-era influence, power and command of its neighbours' resources, from land to population to natural resources. 

 

Who could foresee that Ukraine's government had its own plans that included staunch national sovereignty and a commitment to democracy in a country that prided itself on its peoples' defiance of the invader, and a national identity that was capable of coping with the stress of invasion by an enemy that recognized no civilized internationally respected conventions of war. Ukranians, prepared to improvise, to cope with scarcity and danger in support of their government, their innovative military, their proud history of struggle against all odds. 

 

Above all, the courage of its smaller military service, and the improvisation of new technologies enabling them to hold their own. In the event, challenging Russia on its own  turf, informing Russians there are no free lunches in Ukraine for them.

 

In the first two weeks of August, close to $3.4 billion was withdrawn, in addition to the $7.3 billion that Russians withdrew in July and over $4.5 billion in June; figures  from the Russian Central Bank. In the first year of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, such withdrawals were recognized as a problem; at this juncture in the war total withdrawals this year are overtaking and doubling the 2022/23 withdrawals, according to Taras Skvortsov, senior executive at Sberbank, the largest retail financial institution in Russia.

 

Both Mr. Skvortsov and another former senior Russian finance official have stated that these withdrawals have led to liquidity problems -- with the financial sector already strained by increasing bad debts in the wake of a government lending boom to ramp up military output -- the financial sector is being overstretched. As pointed out by former adviser to the Russian Central Bank, Alexandra Prokopenko, these withdrawals are a reflection of the atmosphere of fear growing deeper within the Russian public. 

  

Russians pull billions from banks fearing Kremlin will seize savings for war        AP Photo

 

 The situation is not a new occasion during which Russians express their doubts over their government's decision-making in imposing on them a violent conflict with a neighbour. During the initial two weeks of the invasion the Russian banking system lost $23 billion and even then banks seemed imperilled by depositors and businesses lined up with the intention of emptying their accounts. Then the government addressed the drain through the imposition of strict capital controls aligned alongside sharply raised interest rates.

 

The concerns over economic survival go beyond that of the Russian public, as big business also now seeks as well to move their money out of Russian regulatory reach, while anxiety increases over asset seizure potentials. Over $9.4 billion was transferred in the second quarter of 2026 out of Russia, according to data from Russia's Central Bank. 

 

The government's plans to raise money to finance the war through the issuance of state bonds have been undermined by the withdrawals. After all, Russians, whether individuals or corporations, frantically engaged in protecting their cash assets by removing them from the possibility of the government's octopus reach into private property, are highly unlikely to voluntarily part with their cash at a time of severely reduced trust, to buy state bonds. 

 

There is ample reason for distrust of the government's intentions. A nationalization drive to target wealthy Russians has been intensified; prosecutors confirmed that last year $51.5 billion in assets were seized in 2025. Prior to that, in June the state confiscated $7.6 billion with links to Vadim Moshkovich, Russian agricultural tycoon, representing the largest seizure since 2022 marking the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

 

Smoke billows from the burning Wildberries warehouses following a Ukrainian drone attack, August 16. Stringer/REUTERS

  

"Each month there is a big outflow."

"If the trend continues things are not going to get better."

 Taras Slvortsov. senior executive, Sberbank, Russia

Traditional U.S. Alliances: Now You See Them ... Soon You Won't

"Based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, of North Korea, I am not happy with the fact that the United States has, long ago, agreed to participate in Joint Military Exercises with South Korea."

"These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America [as usual], but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful."

U.S. President Donald J. Trump 

Chinese President Xi Jinping made a rare visit to North Korea to meet with Kim Jong Un, where the two moved closer to improving economic ties despite North Korea strengthening its relationship with Russia. Still from video, CBC News

 

Mr. Trump's great good friend saw to it that Pyongyang test-fired a ballistic missile recently over the Sea of Japan, warning it was prepared to respond to the annual joint military exercises shared by the United States and South Korea as practise runs in preparation for a potentially possible attack by North Korea on the South. All of the region has been made nervously expectant by the obvious militancy of Kim Jong Un, leading North Korea on a military and nuclear arms trajectory that traditional U.S. allies like South Korea, the Philippines, Japan and others view as threatening, along with that of Beijing, North Korea's 'big brother'.

 

There is also no secret about an alliance between Russia, North Korea, China and Iran. Much less the fact that Russia's war on Ukraine has been aided by the presence of North Korean troops. All four of those countries are anything but friends of the Democratic West. And while the U.S. military views Russia, North Korea and China as volatile military enemies, and is at war, directed by their president, with Iran, this tangled version of friends and allies versus military belligerents and adversaries of all that the West values is as puzzling as it is nonsensical.

 

A museum in North Korea honors soldiers who have fought for Russia

 

 The U.S. president wrote on his Truth Social site that he had ordered the Pentagon to scale back "inappropriate and hostile" military drills with South Korea, mere hours prior to the drills taking place. The exercises, according to South Korean officials, proceeded as planned. South Korea officials, in fact, expressed the hope that the personal relationship Mr. Trump speaks of with the South's political nemesis could yield a resumption of talks, and with that, some forward movement in reconciliation between the two Koreas.

 

While U.S. allies in East Asia cringe over displays of weapons' technical capabilities forever moving forward and displayed with militant pride by Pyongyang, along with the hermit nation's growing alignment with Vladimir Putin's territorially aggressive agenda, not to mention North Korea's historical mentorship by China, the annual drills offered a notional reassurance of having the support of the United States should the situation of military threats continue to accelerate.

 

"I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, 'No thanks!'." That disinclination to become embroiled in a conflict outside their own internal interest zone appears to have sealed and delivered a verdict that Mr. Trump has applied elsewhere, when allies have failed to join America's spontaneous military decisions with no outreach before conflict has been launched with the heads of governments later expected to lend themselves to the American enterprise of war.

 

U.S. army soldiers are seen during joint military exercises with South Korea in Yeoncheon, South Korea, in March 2025. (Ahn Young-joon/The Associated Press)

 

The normal 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, designed to prepare the region for a potential war with North Korea, proceeded, though to "substantially reduced" impetus. That, reflecting the fact that when Mr. Trump decided he no longer wished the United States under his rule to continue with the drills, it was too late to cancel them, but Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth was ordered to reduce them.

 

Seoul's presidential office assured the press that it remained in "close coordination" over the exercises with Washington, expressing the "hopes that the friendly relationship between the leaders of the United States and North Korea will lead to meaningful dialogue". That's called diplomacy. Or looking on the bright side of things as expressed by Monty Python, in a skit somewhat resembling his tongue-in-cheek, sardonic episodes of portraying human lunacy.

 

There are some 28,500 American troops stationed in South Korea as a show of support for the country's defences since the 1950-53 armistice that ended the Korean War. Tellingly, American commitments to security in East Asia now appear fairly wobbly given U.S. President Trump's repeated criticism of what was once universally thought of as rock-solid alliances.

 

South Korean soldiers watching a joint live-fire exercise with the U.S. Army in Pocheon, South Korea, last year.   SeongJoon Cho / Bloomberg via Getty Images file

 

WWII Ukrainian SS Galicia Division

"Let’s be clear about the eight men for whom the University of Alberta maintains named endowments. They fought for the Waffen-SS, an armed wing of the Nazi Party which was declared a criminal organization at the Nuremberg trials because of its role in war crimes. Their division was implicated in brutal wartime massacres of civilians, including one atrocity in which Polish women and children were locked inside buildings and burned alive."

"It should publish a complete list of all endowments honouring a Waffen-SS member, together with a timeline for resolving them. It should pursue renaming, seek legal variations where necessary, and return to court if required. The university must make clear that those who fought in service of the Nazis have no place of honour at a Canadian university."

Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, Bernie Farber, Edmonton Journal 

Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler inspects volunteers of the Ukrainian Waffen SS division during the Second World War. Library and Archives Canada is now reviewing whether to release the names of alleged Nazi war criminals who fled to Canada after the war. (File photo)

 

 The Waffen SS Galicia comprised of Ukrainian volunteers and overseen by Nazi SS groups were implicated in WWII war crimes; Jewish groups as well as the Polish government denounced the Ukrainian volunteer group for its part in murdering civilians, as well as for massacres it was involved with. The Nazis made use of the division in Slovakia to crush a national uprising; another condemnation for war crimes committed by the group. 

 

In the wake of receiving a legal permission to proceed with dissolving a research trust in the name of Ukrainian SS veteran Yaroslav Hunka who received accolades in Parliament during a visit to Canada by Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2023 when a standing ovation honoured the misconception that he was a war hero by Western standards by fighting against the Soviet occupation of Ukraine, at a time when Russia was viewed as an ally alongside the U.K., U.S. and Canada, the University of Alberta announced it would go no further in expunging Ukraine-centred research funding.

 

Yaroslav Hunka (giving a thumbs up) during applause in the Canadian Parliament, September 22, 2023. Photo: YouTube/CBC News: The National

 

The university planned to retain eight other endowments involved with Waffen-SS soldiers, claiming it would be too costly in time and legal fees to seek court approval for termination of the endowments. Researchers with the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center. a Toronto-based Holocaust research organization, totaled a list of 12 endowments at the University of Alberta with a value to the university of $2.2 million in funding, linked to Nazi-allied individuals during WWII in Ukraine. 

 

"This is dirty money and it's unconscionable they are continuing with this. It's beyond despicable", 84-year-old Andy Reti, a child survivor of the Holocaust stated in condemnation of the university's position. An alternative, he felt reasonable was that the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the university should donate the endowment funding of he Waffen-SS to the Salvation Army so that something positive could result from the untenably tainted funds. 

 

Senior director at the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, Jaime Kierzner-Roberts, stated that her group had called on a number of occasions for the university to divest all of the Nazi-linked endowments, including one named for Peter Savaryn, another SS-Waffen member, who had in time become chancellor of the university. In 2023, however, the office of the Governor General expressed its deep regret for having awarded the Order of Canada to Savaryn in 1987. In the event, at revelations of his wartime activities and connections, in consequence of which the Order was revoked. 

 

In its remediation defence, the University of Alberta revealed its intention to spend $100,000 to "deepen scholarship and education about the Galicia Division and other complex and difficult aspects of 20th-century history". None of which can expunge the reality that the university had accepted funds from the estate of Volodymyr Kubijovyc, a Nazi collaborator who had helped create the Waffen-SS Galicia, and was as well an advocate for ethnic cleansing to create an independent Ukraine without the presence of Jews or Poles.

 

Parade of recruits of the Waffen SS “Galicia” Division in Lviv. In the foreground is the head of the Military Administration, Col. Bisanz. July 18, 1943. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

 

Members of the Waffen SS Galicia are regarded as heroes -- who had fought against Soviet forces -- among nationalist Ukrainian Canadians. In summer day camps for Ukrainian children in Canada, this kind of folkhero history is taught to the campers, where they can also view commemorative statuary celebrating Waffen-SS WWII members for their courageous heroism in confronting and killing Red Army servicemen. Criticism of these heroes, they aver, represents Russian misinformation.

 

Critics of the volunteer SS battalion point out that in volunteering themselves to fight with the Nazis, Ukrainians were essentially freeing  up German soldiers to enable them to be redirected to fighting against the British, Canadian,and American soldiers, at that time advancing toward Berlin. Following the end of the war, the International Military Tribunal declared the SS a criminal organization, with the inclusion of Waffen-SS units. 

 

Ukrainians dressed in SS Galicia Division uniforms march past graves during a re-burial ceremony at the SS Galicia Division cemetery near the village of Chervone, Ukraine, in 2013. Photo by Efrem Lukatsky/AP/File

 

Hoekstra, Endearing Himself to Canadians

President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, third from right, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Pete Hoekstra, U.S. Ambassador to Canada, listen on the sidelines of the G7 Summit, Monday, June 16, 2025, in Kananaskis, Canada. | Mark Schiefelbein/AP

I'm disappointed that I came to Canada — a Canada that it is very, very difficult to find Canadians who are passionate about the American-Canadian relationship."

You ran a campaign where it was anti-American, elbows up, me too. You know, that was an anti-American campaign. That has continued. That's disappointing.

 “This Canadian government, It is so nice of them to put out a national emergency that the U.S. ambassador is again speaking. Watch out!”

“I’ve got suggestions that I think can get it restarted but it’s not going to be easy.” 

“Here, I’ll just get myself in trouble. I go around the country and people will say, ‘Pete, you just don’t understand why we’re so mad about the 51st state.’ Yeah, you’re right. I don’t.”

“I’m sorry. That does not happen in the United States of America. You do not come into America and start running political ads — government-funded political ads — and expect that there will be no consequences or reaction from the United States of America and the Trump administration.”

“As far as we can tell, it has never happened in America before. And if Canada wants to insert itself and create a new precedent that you’re going to participate in our electoral politics through advertising targeting the president of the United States and his policies … I would suggest that you seriously consider whether that is the best way to try to achieve your objectives in the United States of America.”

"Canadians staying home, that's their business, you know. I don't like it, but if that's what they want to do, it's fine. They want to ban American alcohol. That's fine."

"There are reasons why the president and some of his team referred to Canada as being mean and nasty to deal with, OK, because of some of those steps."

U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra  

The U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra speaks during an event at the Halifax Chamber of Commerce in Halifax on Sept. 18. (Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press)

 

"I don’t do ‘diplomatic speak’ very well. I think when they listen to what I have to say, they know exactly what my viewpoint is. And they may disagree with it, but at least they understand where I’m coming from and where the United States of America is coming from.”

"It’s not about me, OK. Donald Trump did not tell me to go to Canada and become liked. Matter of fact, I think he would have said ‘If you go to Canada and you’re liked, it probably means that you’re not doing your job.’"

"I’m not running a campaign here for Pete Hoekstra. And I wouldn’t even try to, because the media made up their mind long before I got here about what they were going to say about a Trump ambassador to Canada." 

"That’s fine. You’re a sovereign country. Your defense relationship and stance with the United States, that is a decision you make."

"We’re going to fix the energy issue for the United States of America.We’re open to doing it together. Canada has to decide whether that’s what they want."

U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra  

U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra walks to a Fourth of July party at Lornado, the residence of the ambassador from the United States, in Ottawa, on July 4, 2025. | Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP

 

In his relentless campaign to convince Canadians that the trade impasse between Canada and the United States and the ongoing threats of tariff punishments meted out by an irascible American president, are really deserving of Canadian appreciation for the position of the United States in righting a 'wrong' long done the economic behemoth by other countries' penchant for traditionally depending on the good nature of Americans to continue milking them while failing to adequately compensate America for dependence on its singular power to keep the world safe, and being content with their trade agreements that invariably it is charged by Mr. Trump, cheat the U.S. out of its due with huge trade imbalances, Pete Hoekstra has made one charged statement too many for Canadians to digest.

 

Just the contratemps over the Gordie Howe International Bridge alone was enough to make Canadians howl with fury with the formal announcement from Mr. Hoekstra's statement:  "Today we welcome the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge to traffic between Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario, adding new capacity to one of the busiest and most economically significant border crossings between the United States and Canada. President Trump made the opening possible and has consistently prioritized a safer, more secure, and more prosperous North America."

 

In fact, Donald J. Trump refused to allow the bridge to open until Canada succumbed to his demands: "The original Deal on the Bridge, which was terribly negotiated by a previous Administration, no longer stands. We changed the terms of the Deal so that the United States of America now gets 50% of the Profit." The original agreement was between Michigan and Canada, that the total cost of the Bridge was to be paid by Canada, with tolls thereafter going to pay off Canada's debt, after which any toll profit would be shared 50% with Michigan, as well as offering the state half-ownership of the bridge.

 

The $6.4 billion Canada paid for the bridge construction made no impression on Mr. Trump, claiming that Canada 'owed' the U.S. profits realized from tolls. Only when Canada agreed to the extortionist demands made by Mr. Trump would he permit the bridge to be opened. So much for the magnanimity of performance in making 'the opening possible', mentioned in the Ambassadorial report. As for a 'more prosperous North America', that should be rectified to a more prosperous America; Canada and Mexico, part of the continent of North America are being beggared by Mr. Trump's unappeasable appetite for tariffs. 

 

 

Top: They wore red and plaid, they carried signs and flags, they chanted “elbows up”. Hundreds gathered in Nathan Phillips Square to protest President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about Canada becoming the 51st state at Toronto City Hall in Toronto. March 22, 2025. Bottom: A sign is placed in front of the American whiskey section at a B.C. Liquor Store before top selling American made products are to be removed from shelves as a demonstration for media in Vancouver, B.C., Sunday, Feb. 2, 2025. | Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images; Ethan Cairns/The Canadian Press via AP

 

Little wonder than that over 120,000 Canadians signed a petition of removal for U.S. Ambassador Peter Hoekstra, whose insulting, demeaning, patronizing and controlling messaging has managed to offend all of Canada's provincial premiers and the Canadian public. Leading many Canadians who would normally vacation in the United States, to cancel any such plans for the foreseeable future. Most premiers' moves to remove U.S. alcohol from provincial liquor shops had the support of the greater public, while infuriating the Trump administration. The whopping tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, softwood and vehicles have led to the loss of tens of thousands of Canadian manufacturing jobs.

 

Mr. Hoekstra's volatile tenure has brought to Canada first-hand the implacable volatility of the American president in in-your-face entitlements amidst Canada put-downs, top of which is the occasional reference to Canada as the 51st U.S. state. Little wonder that the petition  accuses Mr. Hoekstra of normalizing "the Trump administration's threats to annex Canada as the 51st state". This is an effort led by ordinary Canadians, calling for Pete Hoekstra to be declared persona non grata. Once the petition has  been closed to further signatures by November, the document is set to be introduced to the House of Commons for a Parliamentary vote. 

 

The proposed agreement surrounding the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge connecting Windsor, Ont., to Detroit, was released amid escalated tariff threats by U.S. President Donald Trump. Still from video, CBC News

 

Palestinian Victimhood on Full Display

"The popular view of the Nakba presented by the Canadian Human Rights Museum falls short of the facts regarding events in Palestine following the U.N. partition vote of 1947."

"[Palestinian displacement was partly the result of] weak leadership and military unpreparedness [of the Arab nations who were at war with the newly founded nation of Israel]." 

"[Arabized Jewish refugees who fled conflict in the 1940s were welcomed in Israel and assimilated, while Arab refugees were treated by Arab countries where they lived in refugee camps as] symbols of the heartlessness and murderous intent of the Jews."

"Jewish presence [in Iraq as example] was virtually extinguished in just a few years. Those who fled to Israel were eventually absorbed, given Israeli citizenship, and began to play important parts in Israeli life."

"There was neither desire nor expectation that they would return to Iraq, unlike the desires and expectations of the Palestine Arab refugees in 1948."

David Bercuson and Logan Jaspers, Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy  

Aristotle Foundation report

 

Authors David Bercuson and Logan Jaspers produced a study for the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy, beginning with a detailed history of the causes and effects of the Israeli-Arab war of 1948 when the nascent Jewish state was attacked by the combined militaries of its Middle East neighbours, with the intention of destroying the state before it was entrenched, on the basis that land once consecrated to Islam could not host or revert to any other religious communities. Islam, on the other hand, expunged the ancient ancestral indigeneity of Jews in lands once their own long before Islam came into being.

 

With the re-creation of the State of Israel in 1948, hundreds of thousands of both Jews and Arabs were forced from their homes; in the case of Jews, living in Arab and Muslim countries in North Africa and the Middle East there was forcible exile, and expropriation of properties from lands Jews had lived in for millennia. The Arabs who called themselves Palestinians came mostly from Transjordan and Egypt in the last century seeking economic opportunities in the area that hosted Jewish, Christian and Muslim populations whose total numbers were relatively sparse. When the UN in 1947 wrestled with the concept of Partition apportioning a major share of the territory to Jordan, then dividing the 1/3 that was left for Jews and for Arabs, the Jewish Committee accepted, the Arabs did not.

 

The Aristotle Foundation report focuses on the detailed history, commissioned after the Human Rights museum based in Winnipeg had faced a storm of controversy over its decision to host and display an exhibit focused on the displacement of Arab Palestinians with the declaration of Israeli nationhood. That declaration inspired an instant response from Israel's neighbours, a military invasion meant to destroy the possibility that Jews could return to their heritage. Palestinians were promised by the leaders of the invading Arab armies they could return, once Israel's presence was demolished. 

Aristotle Foundation report

 

The Nakba exhibit, according to its critics, focuses on the plight of Palestinian refugees, totally ignoring and  failing to include a similar experience of 800,000 Jews forcibly evacuated from their homes in Muslim and Arab countries, displaced during the conflict. Arab refugees, the authors of the report, point out, were treated by the Arab countries they fled to as "symbols of the heartlessness and murderous intent of the Jews", creating a lasting disparity between how the communities of Arabs and the Jews each view their experience.

 

Years after the initial conflict which failed to dislodge Jews from their homeland, leading the Arab armies to nurse their wounded expectations by declaring their defeat a 'nakba' (catastrophe), 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes seeking refuge in various Arab nations. The reasons were various; some historians claim many fled in response to the violence Arab civilians faced. Jewish paramilitary forces were alleged to have killed some 100 villagers in the Palestinian village of Deir Hassin. There were Palestinian leaders who claimed the outflow of Arabs was an orchestrated project they had planned, as was a later return when Israel was destroyed.

 

The Nakba exhibit is a temporary one at the museum, to run for several months with the use of photos video testimonies, artworks and family heirlooms describing the plight of Palestinian refugees from the 1940s and carrying forward to the present. The fact that around 800,000 Jews were displaced from their homes in Arab and Muslim nations in the Middle East and North Africa is never mentioned. Nor is the  fact that Palestinian terrorists led by Gaza's Hamas leadership committed a sprawling atrocity against Israeli citizens in southern Israel on 7 October 2023, which led to the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

 

A coalition of civil society groups has called on Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture Marc Miller to retract his statement on viewing the exhibit that it was replete with "errors" that "must be rectified", arguing that any government interference in the museum's exhibits (paid for by the federal government) would be unacceptable. Chief executive Isha Khan of the Canadian Museum of Human Rights argues that the exhibit was designed  explicitly to feature Palestinian experiences, however controversial their personal accounts are.

  

The UN created an orderly plan for the partition of Palestine. The Jewish people accepted it, but the Palestinians refused to even consider the idea.

After 13 months of violence, 700,000 Arabs had fled or been expelled from Mandatory Palestine and Israel, while 800,000 Jews were forced to flee North Africa and the Middle East and settle in Israel between 1948 and the early 1970s.

Prior to 1947 there were major bouts of violence toward Jews in 1920 (the Nebi Musa Riots), 1921 (Jaffa Riots), 1929 (Hebron massacre plus attacks in Safed and Jerusalem), and 1936–1939 and 1945–1946 (Arab Revolts). In the period after 1930, as the Jews became more militarily active, Jews responded to attacks from Arab villages that were perceived as origins of attacks against Jews. Nevertheless, the record of violence after 1920 was overwhelmingly a record of Arab attacks against Jews.

During the civil war both sides carried out unsavoury acts, but Israelis always claimed a military reason for the removal of populations, either to bolster communication lines or stop regular attacks being launched from Arab population centres.

Jewish authorities actively encouraged Arab populations to remain in the new State of Israel but did not try to keep Arabs from fleeing if they so chose.

Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy 

 

People gathered outside the Canadian Museum for Human Rights on June 26 to protest the Nakba exhibit. (Rudi Pawlychyn/CBC)

 

"What then can we conclude from this brief history?"

"First, that the Arab refugees left for several complicated reasons, including weak leadership and military unpreparedness, but the root cause of their flight was the war itself."

"The Nakba exhibit at the Canadian Human Rights Museum] falls short of the  facts."

David Bercuson and Logan Jaspers, Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy 

President Donald Trump; the "Most Consequential"

"I understand putting a priority on the president’s security, but frankly, this was just a despicable incident of disrespect for the press and for members of his own Cabinet."

"They should have been allowed to disembark and to fly home another way, rather than taking off on the No. 1 target in the whole region."

Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) 

 

"The Israelis passed a tip, a concern, that the plane and potentially the president was under threat."

"[But it turns out the] CIA had low confidence [in the Israeli tip, according to a more recent Post story  on Thursday]."

"I think that kind of leaves the Secret Service in a tough spot of assessing: What do you do in this zero-fail mission to keep the president safe?"

Dan Lamothe, reporter, Washington Post 

 

"It's really just up to Secret Service. I just follow what they like to do. They wanted me to go on a different flight, a different plane, equal safety. I do what they say." 

"The plane that I was on was at greater risk. Because that would be the plane that I think that they would be more likely to go for."

"[I was not surprised by the operation because I face] a lot of threats that  you don't know about."

"Any consequential president has a lot of threats. Non-consequential presidents don't get threatened. And I think that I may be the most consequential."

U.S. President Donald J. Trump  

President Trump speaks to reporters after stepping off Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on August 11, 2026. Anna Moneymaker, Getty Images

 

 As President Trump left a NATO summit last month that took place in Turkey, his departure appeared to have run into a bit of an inconvenience. As a result of a perceived threat to his safety and security, a covert alteration in his departure scheduling took place. Under cover he secretly left the Air Force One jet he was scheduled to remain aboard en route to the U.K. to instead furtively board a catering truck to make his journey from Turkey. A potential Iranian assassination threat had emerged while the president was in Turkey.

 

As President Trump left the Air Force One jet, he was accompanied with some of his longest-serving aides; no cabinet officials were among those with them. Passenger on the truck alongside the president included Dan Scavino, deputy chief of White House staff, Natalie Harp, executive assistant to the president and Walt Nauta, director of Oval Office operations. This was confidential information relayed by an official familiar with the operation, speaking on condition of anonymity.

 

Among that group were other lower-profile aides. Secretary of State Marco Rubio remained on Air Force one, along with Cabinet members and high level officials of the U.S. government, while those aboard the catering truck that concealed their presence moved from the legacy Air Force One aircraft to a smaller Air Force C-32A to fly on to the United Kingdom, separated from the White House press corps and senior government officials.

 

President Donald Trump, pictured as he prepares to board Air Force One at RAF Mildenhall, in England, on July 8.    Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

 

That July 8 furtive operation was reported by the Washington Post, setting off calls from congressional Democrats for an immediate briefing. The secret move had been withheld from journalists travelling with the president on that occasion, nor were they briefed for over a month after the fact. Along with several senior administration officials, military personnel, and Secret Service agents who remained on the legacy Air Force One plane, deemed too potentially hazardous for the president to remain aboard, were the journalists. 

 

The entire scenario, kept under wraps, did not become public knowledge until the Washington Post broke the story. Stirring outrage that the scheme that focused on ensuring that the president was secure, with a hushed-up alternate plan of avoidance, still left others, from government officials to White House journalists susceptible to danger should the information of an attempt through a shoulder-mounted missile to take down the presidential plane have been accurate. They were presumably left as part of a decoy to deflect attention from the president's departure. 

 

A catering truck is parked next to Air Force One at Ankara Esenboga Airport in Ankara, Turkey, on July 8.   ABC-TV/Pool/Reuters

  

"The U.S. Secret Service continuously analyzes a wide range of information to guide our protective operations in real time and across every location we secure."

"In light of recent assassination attempts and a significant increase in threats against the President, we remain unyielding in our mission."

Secret Service Communications Chief Anthony Guglielmi