International
Justin Trudeau’s star goes out among the Canadian population and his own party
After 10 years in power, Justin Trudeau’s star is dying at high speed: the electorate has turned their backs on him and, within his Liberal Party, more and more voices want him to resign to avoid a catastrophe in the elections scheduled for October 2025.
For months, the polls have all told the same story. Justin Trudeau is an unpopular prime minister and the Liberal Party is heading for a painful loss in the upcoming general election that may relegate him to third place in the lower house of Parliament.
What do the polls say?
The average of polls currently places the Conservative Party, led by Pierre Poilievre, with 42.5% of voting intention, while Trudeau’s Liberal Party is 19 points below, with 23.2%.
And what is worse for the critical voices within the Liberal Party, the lack of ideas and the immobility of the Justin Trudeau Government in the face of the problems that afflict the country anticipate that the next few months more Canadian will turn their backs on them.
Some even fear that the situation experienced in the 2008 elections will be reproduced when the Liberal Party, then in opposition and led by the intellectual Michael Ignatieff, was reduced to 34 deputies of the 308 seats that the Lower House of Parliament then had.
“It has been behind in the polls for some time now. That is not a huge problem when the elections are far away so the party gave Trudeau room to try to improve the situation because there was time left,” Andrew McDougall, professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, explained to EFE.
“But now there is only one year left before the next election. So the pressure has increased and the party is getting more and more impatient,” he added.
Justin Trudeau swept the 2015 general election
Paradoxically, Justin Trudeau took the leadership of the Liberal Party after the 2008 election disaster. Son of former minister and former liberal leader Pierre Trudeau, one of the most transcendental politicians in the modern history of Canada, he met expectations and in 2015 swept the general elections, becoming the twenty-third first minister of the country.
And also, paradoxically, one of the main proposals that brought him to power in 2015 was to open the country’s borders to receive more refugees and immigrants, both for economic reasons and to recover the founding spirit of Canada as a host country.
True to his promises, one of his first acts as prime minister after winning in 2015 was to go to Toronto airport to personally receive Syrian refugees.
Canada has changed
Ten years later, the North American country has changed. In 2015, Canada received 300,000 immigrants. Since then, the figure has not stopped growing. In 2022 there were 431,645, 16% more than in 2021. In 2023 there were 465,000. This year they will reach 485,000. From 2025, 500,000 per year.
Thanks to these migration levels, Canada is the G7 country with the highest population growth, with 2.7% per year. It is the highest level since 1957, when the explosion of post-war births and immigration placed the rate at 3.3%.
The problem for Justin Trudeau is that the country has not been able to absorb these levels of immigration. There are literally not enough housing for a population that in nine months between July 2023 and April 2024 grew by one million people.
Nor have basic services such as health care been able to keep up with the growth rate.
Trudeau acknowledged on Thursday that he was wrong and has announced that he will reduce the number of immigrants that Canada will receive by up to 27% in the next three years.
“We didn’t get the balance right,” he agreed.
“We are going to stabilize the growth of our population so that all levels of government have time to recover, to make the necessary investments in health, housing and social services. To accommodate more people in the future,” he added.
The question now is whether he will have time to recover the aura that has kept him in power since 2015, especially within the Liberal Party.
“Trudeau insists that he is the best person to lead the party, that no one would do it better. Most politicians believe they are the best to lead their formations. So I’m not surprised that Trudeau resists leaving power,” McDougall explained.
International
ACLU seeks emergency court order to stop venezuelan deportations under Wartime Law
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Friday asked two federal judges to block the U.S. government under President Donald Trump from deporting any Venezuelan nationals detained in North Texas under a rarely used 18th-century wartime law, arguing that immigration officials appear to be moving forward with deportations despite Supreme Court-imposed limitations.
The ACLU has already filed lawsuits to stop the deportation of two Venezuelan men held at the Bluebonnet Detention Center, challenging the application of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The organization is now seeking a broader court order that would prevent the deportation of any immigrant in the region under that law.
In an emergency filing early Friday, the ACLU warned that immigration authorities were accusing other Venezuelan detainees of being members of the Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal gang. These accusations, the ACLU argues, are being used to justify deportations under the wartime statute.
The Alien Enemies Act has only been invoked three times in U.S. history — most notably during World War II to detain Japanese-American civilians in internment camps. The Trump administration has claimed the law allows them to swiftly remove individuals identified as gang members, regardless of their immigration status.
The ACLU, together with Democracy Forward, filed legal actions aiming to suspend all deportations carried out under the law. Although the U.S. Supreme Court recently allowed deportations to resume, it unanimously ruled that they could only proceed if detainees are given a chance to present their cases in court and are granted “a reasonable amount of time” to challenge their pending removal.
International
Dominican ‘False Hero’ Arrested for Faking Role in Nightclub Collapse That Killed 231
A man identified as Rafael Rosario Mota falsely claimed to have rescued 12 people from the collapse of the Jet Set nightclub in Santo Domingo—a tragedy that left 231 people dead—but he was never at the scene.
Intelligence agents in the Dominican Republic arrested the 32-year-old man for pretending to be a hero who saved lives during the catastrophic incident, authorities announced.
Rosario Mota had been charging for media interviews in which he falsely claimed to have pulled survivors from the rubble after the nightclub’s roof collapsed in the early hours of April 8, during a concert by merengue singer Rubby Pérez, who was among those killed.
“He was never at the scene of the tragedy,” the police stated. The arrest took place just after he finished another interview on a digital platform, where he repeated his fabricated story in exchange for money as part of a “media tour” filled with manipulated information and invented testimonies.
“False hero!” read a message shared on the police force’s Instagram account alongside a short video of the suspect, in which he apologized: “I did it because I was paid. I ask forgiveness from the public and the authorities.”
Central America
Nicaraguan Exiles to Mark 7th Anniversary of 2018 Protests with Global Commemorations
The Nicaraguan opposition in exile announced on Thursday that it will commemorate the seventh anniversary of the April 2018 protests against the government of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, with events in Costa Rica, the United States, and several European countries.
The commemorative activities—which will call for justice for the victims, as well as freedom and democracy for Nicaragua—will include religious services, public forums, cultural fairs, and other public gatherings, according to official announcements.
In April 2018, thousands of Nicaraguans took to the streets to protest controversial reforms to the social security system. The government’s violent response quickly turned the demonstrations into a broader call for the resignation of President Ortega, who is now 79 and has been in power since 2007.
The protests resulted in at least 355 deaths, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), although Nicaraguan organizations claim the toll is as high as 684. Ortega has acknowledged “more than 300” deaths and maintains the unrest was an attempted coup d’état.
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