INTERNACIONAL
African growth boom follows Trump push to replace aid with trade
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FIRST ON FOX: Many African economies are accelerating – booming – since the Trump Administration shifted policy focus from aid to trade, a senior State Department official told Fox News Digital.
In some African countries, doom was forecast when the Trump administration severely cut back USAID funding, but instead there’s been unprecedented economic growth, credited to the Commercial Diplomacy Strategy, introduced at the beginning of President Trump’s second term.
Now, «nine of the 20 fastest-growing economies (in the world) are in Africa,» Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of African Affairs Frank Garcia told Fox News Digital.
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South African shoppers in Pretoria’s Central Business District. (Leon Sadiki/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Garcia added, «African economies are responding positively to the shift from aid to trade. In 2025, U.S. exports to sub-Saharan Africa increased by 23% to $22.6 billion. And continue to grow this year.»
When the Administration cut USAID by 83% early last year, «The predictions were catastrophic: economies heavily dependent on foreign donors—from Ethiopia to South Sudan and Malawi — were expected to collapse. Instead, something quite different happened,» Anna Mahjar-Barducci, Project Director at the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), told Fox News Digital.
«The African continent proved far more resilient than expected, citing Ethiopia, which revised its 2026 growth forecasts upward despite the funding cuts,» Mahjar-Barducci continued. «According to projections by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to grow between 4.3% and 4.6% in 2026, outpacing Asia as a whole, whose growth is forecast at around 4.1%. Growth is propelled by massive hydroelectric investments, construction, mining and expanding coffee exports.»
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Oil refinery in Ibeju Lekki district, Nigeria (Toyin Adedokun/AFP via Getty Images)
«This is no minor detail,» she continued. «For decades, we were told that without international aid Africa would collapse. Now that aid is genuinely drying up, much of the continent is not only avoiding collapse —i t is accelerating. This is precisely the argument that a long-standing school of African economic thought, now more relevant than ever, has advanced for years: aid is not the solution. In many cases, it is part of the problem.»
Assistant Secretary Garcia explained how the strategy works:» We see this economic acceleration in Africa. In order to best capitalize on it, the United States is focused on driving private investment, sustainable growth in terms of partnership and treating African nations not as aid recipients, but as capable commercial partners.»
He added «Our embassies (in Africa) work directly with the private sector to identify the policies, laws, and regulations constraining U.S. trade and investment. We then work with partner governments to develop practical reforms, identify the officials responsible for implementing them and determine where technical assistance may support implementation.»
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An American flag and USAID flag fly outside the USAID building in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 1, 2025. (REUTERS/Annabelle Gordon)
It’s a strategy that appears to be working, with Garcia adding, «The Bureau of African Affairs has worked on 37 commercial transactions that have closed since the beginning of the (current) Trump Administration, representing $25.67 billion in total value, with more still being reported. Embassies across the continent are actively working to close hundreds more. Top sectors include Energy 24%, ICT 19%, Critical Minerals and Mining 11%, Aerospace 8%, Agriculture 8%, Infrastructure 8%.»
Mahjar-Barducci criticized the way USAID worked, telling Fox News Digital,» When aid flows to governments rather than markets, it tends to finance projects designed in Brussels, Rome, or Washington which are not responding to the actual needs of local economies. Poverty cannot be overcome by treating people as permanent recipients of charity. Poverty can be reduced by recognizing people as entrepreneurs, workers and economic partners capable of building their own prosperity.»
The Bishoftu International Airport is expected to become Africa’s largest aviation hub upon completion. (Geng Xinning/Xinhua via Getty Images)
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Trade, rather than aid works, Mahjar-Barducci claimed. «The Trump administration’s more transactional approach to aid — access to critical minerals, or to citizens’ health data, in exchange for funding — should not be dismissed as merely cynical. Unconditional transfers have long been the deeper flaw in the traditional aid model: money with no strings attached removes any incentive for a recipient government to reform and often entrenches the same officials responsible for the underlying poverty.»
Enter the America First Global Health Strategy. A senior State Department official told Fox News Digital this week that the administration «has signed 34 bilateral global health Memoranda of Understanding(MOU) representing more than $24 billion in new health funding, including more than $14.3 billion in U.S. assistance, alongside more than $9.6 billion in co-investment from recipient countries.»
«24 of these MOUs were signed with sub-Saharan African countries,» the official continued. «These new bilateral MOUs are designed to continue life-saving care, build resilient healthcare systems, reduce dependency on American taxpayers and strengthen country ownership.»
MEKELE, ETHIOPIA – JUNE 16: Aid workers move bags of yellow lentils that are part of athree-piece «Full Package» to be distributed to residents of Geha subcity at an aid operation run by USAID, Catholic Relief Services and the Relief Society of Tigray on June 16, 2021 in Mekele, Ethiopia. (emal Countess/Getty Images)
The administration has also decided to cut funding for a U.S. anti-AIDS program known as PEPFAR. Africa has been hit hard by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. UNAIDS, the United Nations program that deals with the virus, reports that South Africa has the highest infection rate in the world.
But the State Department official Fox News Digital spoke with says South Africa must take some of the blame for cutting help to its own people. «The United States has decided to initiate a phased drawdown of PEPFAR programming in South Africa, following South Africa’s failure to make demonstrable progress on policy requests by the administration. The United States communicated to [the] South African government multiple times at many levels that PEPFAR funding would be terminated if they failed to address President Trump’s concerns.»
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«PEPFAR was never intended to be permanent,» the official added. «Its success is measured by countries’ ability to sustain and build upon these gains. South Africa is a middle-income country and is more than capable of supporting its own health programs.»
Fox News Digital reached out to the South African government, but received no response.
africa, national security, state department, aid, donald trump, south africa
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A confidential report prepared for Iran’s presidency is raising a consequential question for Washington and its allies: Do extraordinary levels of public anger and support for systemic change justify reassessing whether the Islamic Republic may be more vulnerable to regime change than previously believed?
The classified document, titled «What Iran Wants,» reportedly found that only 9% of respondents supported maintaining the status quo, with 53% calling for fundamental or structural reforms and more than 19% favoring changing the political system outright.
Taken together, nearly three-quarters of those surveyed reportedly supported either deep structural reform or replacement of the existing system — findings that could strengthen arguments that Iran’s political crisis has moved beyond dissatisfaction with individual leaders or policies.
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Protesters march in downtown Tehran, Iran, Monday, Dec. 29, 2025. (Fars News Agency via AP)
IranWire reported on July 13 that it had obtained the document, which was compiled by Ali Rabiei, President Masoud Pezeshkian’s social adviser and a former government spokesman. It was based on polling conducted by the Ara Opinion Research Center in May 2026 and circulated among institutions within Iran’s governing structure in June, according to the outlet.
Miad Maleki, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that the report should prompt a fresh assessment of the potential for political upheaval inside Iran.
«If anything, this research understates the depth of Iranians’ rage,» Maleki said. «And that is what makes it remarkable: even a survey prepared for the regime’s own president, by its own pollsters, records anger levels above 63%, well beyond the highest rate Gallup has ever recorded anywhere in the world, alongside 81% struggling to put food on the table and a majority expressing hopelessness.»
Maleki cautioned that polling conducted under an authoritarian government cannot be treated as precise because respondents may fear the consequences of expressing opposition.
«In a police state where expressing the wrong opinion can cost you your job, your freedom, or your life, respondents self-censor, which means these findings are best read as a floor, not a ceiling,» he said.
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In this picture obtained from Iran’s ISNA news agency, Mojtaba Khamenei (C), son of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, walks along a street in Tehran on May 31, 2019. (Hamid FOROUTAN / ISNA / AFP via Getty Images)
The complete survey methodology was not included in the material obtained by IranWire. The report reportedly did not disclose how respondents were selected, who was questioned or whether the sample reflected Iran’s geographic and demographic makeup.
Its findings therefore cannot be independently verified or treated as definitive measurements of Iranian opinion. The report also cannot establish that dissatisfaction will translate into an organized movement capable of removing the government.
Still, its findings portray multiple pressures converging at once.
Approximately 64% of respondents reported persistent anger, up roughly 12% points from a previous government survey conducted in December 2025. Half reported hopelessness, approximately 48% reported sadness or depression and about 45% reported persistent fear or anxiety, according to IranWire.
Economic distress also appears central to the public anger.
More than 81% experienced severe or partial difficulty obtaining enough food, while 75% struggled to cover medical costs, IranWire reported. Fifty-four percent said their income did not cover current household expenses, and only 8% reported earning enough to save.
Respondents blamed domestic governance more frequently than international pressure. 46.9% cited government inefficiency as the cause of Iran’s economic problems, 26.3% blamed corruption and 20.7% cited foreign sanctions.
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Thousands gathered at Revolution Square in Tehran on May 30, 2026, to protest attacks by the US and Israel on Iran, carrying Iranian flags and posters of the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. (Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu)
That finding could be especially significant to the regime-change debate because it suggests many Iranians do not primarily blame outside powers for their deteriorating living conditions.
The document also points to a crisis of institutional confidence. Roughly 60% reportedly distrusted major government institutions, while 61.2% negatively assessed officials’ ability to solve Iran’s problems. Distrust of the government, parliament, judiciary and state television remained above 50%, IranWire reported.
The report’s recommendations, however, reportedly centered on managing dissatisfaction rather than addressing demands for systemic change.
Rabiei urged state institutions to better explain the impact of sanctions, moderate the rhetoric used by officials and religious platforms, present a more inclusive image through state television and avoid policies that place the government in direct confrontation with society.
Cars burn in a street during a protest over the collapse of the currency’s value in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 8, 2026. (Stringer/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS)
IranWire’s follow-up analysis argued that the recommendations treated Iran’s crisis primarily as a communications and public-perception problem. The report offered few concrete proposals involving institutional accountability, political liberalization or fundamental economic reform, according to the outlet.
Maleki said the findings were consistent with the expanding scale of unrest, citing demonstrations that spread from more than 80 cities in 2017 to more than 200 cities across all 31 provinces this year, alongside what he described as a quadrupling of strikes.
«Iranians have moved from being skeptical of what another revolution might bring to concluding there is no alternative to one, because reform has proven impossible,» Maleki said.
Yet the report does not resolve one of the largest obstacles to regime change: The Islamic Republic has spent decades building institutions designed to monitor, deter and violently suppress organized opposition.
«This regime was born of revolution, by revolutionaries,» Maleki said. «Preventing and crushing the next one is the one thing they genuinely know how to do.»
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Buses that were burned during Iran’s protests, in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 21, 2026. (Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters)
He nevertheless argued that further unrest was inevitable.
«So the discontent will translate into renewed protest,» Maleki said. «The question is not if, but when, and whether anyone is prepared to stand with the Iranian people when it does.»
war with iran, iran, world protests, world
INTERNACIONAL
State Department fires back after Walz doubles down on pardon of convicted child rapist
You always look for the ‘new bottom’ with Democrats: Jonathan Fahey
Laura Ingraham and former Acting I.C.E. Director Jonathan Fahey strongly criticize Democrats for their approach to illegal immigration and criminal justice. They highlight Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s controversial pardon of a child rapist, who was also an illegal alien, and a lenient sentence for an illegal alien truck driver in California. Ingraham also questions why victims’ rights often seem secondary.
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After Democrat Tim Walz doubled down on his move to pardon a foreign child rapist prior to his deportation, the State Department took another swing at the Minnesota governor in an escalating back-and-forth.
The Minnesota Board of Pardons, comprised of Walz, state Attorney General Keith Ellison and state Chief Justice Natalie Hudson, granted clemency to Laotian national Tou Lue Vang, 42, on June 10. Vang was scheduled to be deported from the United States before the pardon.
«Governor Walz’s pardon of a convicted foreign sex offender was a grave and unconscionable betrayal of the very people he is supposed to defend,» State Department Assistant Secretary Dylan Johnson told Fox News Digital.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz testifies during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on March 4, 2026. The hearing examined alleged misuse of federal funds for Minnesota social services and Medicaid programs. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
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«Walz’s plot to sacrifice the safety of Americans on the altar of open borders was thwarted by Secretary Rubio. Now this foreign criminal will never harm another American,» he continued.
Vang was convicted for repeatedly raping a 10-year-old girl between 2002 and 2004, and told authorities after he was arrested that «it is a cultural thing… to marry and have sex with girls as young as 12.»
Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked Vang’s visa earlier this month, and he was deported back to Laos.
Walz defended the clemency move in a Tuesday press conference, contending that deportation of a convicted child rapist did not make the U.S. safer.
«Did that make us any safer?» Walz questioned. «Did that make the children that are left behind any more stable? Did it improve the idea that we can’t all be judged by our worst day?»
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) testifies during his Senate Foreign Relations confirmation hearing at Dirksen Senate Office Building on Jan. 15, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
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Still, Walz admitted that Vang’s crimes were «horrific.»
The State Department raked Walz over the coals for downplaying Vang’s crimes.
«Walz sides with foreign criminals. Secretary Rubio sides with the American people,» Johnson told Fox News Digital of the governor’s remarks. «Walz wants open borders. This administration ended the era of mass migration. Walz endangered the American people. Secretary Rubio protected them.»
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Upon last week’s announcement that the State Department had skirted Walz’s pardon and deported Vang anyway, Rubio scolded Walz for granting Vang clemency in the first place.
«Americans should never have to live in fear that foreign sex predators — shielded from deportation by their own elected officials — could endanger them or their children,» he told Fox News Digital
«That’s why I terminated his legal status in the United States,» he continued. «Vang has now been removed from our country and will never pose a threat to any American ever again.»
Mugshot of Tue Lue Vang, a convicted Laotian illegal alien child rapist who has been deported from the United States. (Department of Homeland Security)
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At the time of Vang’s pardon, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) feared that the move would shield the criminal illegal alien from deportation.
«Governor Tim Walz’s decision to pardon an illegal alien convicted child rapist so he can remain in our country is disgusting,» DHS Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said at the time.
«These are the criminal illegal aliens he and his Minnesota sanctuary politicians are protecting.»
state department, migrant crime, marco rubio, tim walz, politics, deportation
INTERNACIONAL
El diario The Guardian pidió que Inglaterra restablezca negociaciones con la Argentina por las Islas Malvinas
La exhibición de una bandera sobre las Islas Malvinas por parte de los jugadores de la Selección en la semifinal del Mundial 2026 reabrió el debate sobre la disputa de la soberanía argentina por el archipiélago. En ese contexto, el diario británico The Guardian publicó un editorial en el que instó al Reino Unido a retomar las negociaciones con la Argentina y sostuvo que las islas “no pueden ser británicas para siempre”.
En el artículo, el periodista Simon Jenkins sostuvo que mantener indefinidamente la soberanía británica sobre las Islas Malvinas resulta “insostenible” desde el punto de vista político y geopolítico. En esa línea, mencionó el reciente acuerdo alcanzado entre el Reino Unido y España sobre la caída del muro fronterizo en Gibraltar. “Pero, ¿será mucho esperar que una negociación similar surja producto de la semifinal?“, planteó Jenkins.
“Ninguno de los territorios de la era imperial británica tiene el derecho eterno de permanecer como están, menos uno que le cuesta a los contribuyentes británicos más de 60 millones de libras esterlinas en materia de defensa por año”, cuestionó.
Según el editorial del diario The Guardian, la firme defensa de la soberanía británica sobre las Islas Malvinas encuentra una de sus principales explicaciones en el rédito político que obtuvo la ex primera ministra Margaret Thatcher con la victoria en conflicto bélico de 1982. “No pueden ser británicas para siempre”: el contundente editorial del diario The Guardian sobre la soberanía de las Islas Malvinas (Foto: Reuters)
“Lo que se olvida es que, antes de la guerra, los gobiernos británicos estaban negociando la transferencia de la soberanía de las islas con Argentina”, recordó Jenkins. Según explicó, esas conversaciones se apoyaban en un acuerdo firmado con Buenos Aires en 1971, que “permitió a los isleños comerciar y viajar con el continente, utilizando sus hospitales, comercios y demás servicios”.
Y agregó: “La cuestión no radicaba en derechos históricos —un argumento eterno— sino en el sentido común geográfico. Para Gran Bretaña, era absurdo que un Estado europeo financiara una gran armada para defender territorios distantes y en disputa. Desesperado por ahorrar dinero, el gobierno ya se estaba retirando del Atlántico Sur. Las Malvinas quedaron expuestas e indefensas”.
Para The Guardian, la guerra puso fin a las negociaciones que ambos países mantenían hasta ese momento, pero no justifica que el Reino Unido haya descartado cualquier diálogo sobre la soberanía durante más de 40 años
“La realidad es que estas colonias, inevitablemente, tarde o temprano, se convertirán en parte de sus continentes. No pueden ser protegidas indefinidamente por un patrón europeo y los reclamos argentinos no se irán a ningún lado”, señaló.
En ese sentido, el columnista consideró que el gobierno de Reino Unido terminará retomando las conversaciones con la Argentina, pero advirtió que “el Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores y de la Commonwealth y el ministro de Defensa pospondrán el problema”. Giovani Lo Celso deja la bandera con la leyenda «Las Malvinas son argentinas» en la cancha tras la victoria de la Selección por 2 a 1 contra Inglaterra. (Foto: AFP/Jewel Samad).
«Sería gratificante si la bandera de las Malvinas exhibida durante un partido de fútbol sacudiera a alguien para que pase a la acción», concluyó el editorial.
Los kelpers cuestionaron a la Selección argentina por la bandera de Malvinas
A través de un comunicado oficial difundido este jueves, las autoridades del archipiélago manifestaron su “decepción” por lo ocurrido durante la semifinal del Mundial, reclamaron que la política no interfiera en el deporte y solicitaron a la FIFA que evalúe la aplicación de sanciones.
En el texto, las autoridades locales señalaron que lamentan la decisión del plantel argentino de utilizar ese símbolo en un partido que, según sostienen, “de ninguna manera involucraba a las Islas Falkland”.
“El pueblo de las islas fue víctima de una invasión agresiva en 1982, que dejó a muchas personas traumatizadas. Por lo tanto, la bandera exhibida por Argentina anoche fue particularmente insensible para muchas personas de las Falkland”, afirmaron.
Islas Malvinas, Reino Unido, soberania
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