San Francisco

US has cut inflow of refugees to a trickle, dousing hopes upstream

When Bassam Jalhoum’s oldest daughter, Rania, landed in Boston last October, it ended five years of waiting for her to complete her escape from Syria. As a Syrian refugee admitted to the United States, Rania is among a fortunate few. In the six months ending Mar 30, only 44 Syrian refugees were resettled in the US, a fraction of past admissions.

As Supreme Court hears travel ban, questions of presidential authority also on docket

Disruption has been a hallmark of Donald Trump’s presidency to date, and never was that more apparent than in the hours after he signed his first travel ban executive order. Drafted and signed with little input from federal officials or White House lawyers, the late-January executive order left travelers stranded around the world, families separated, and federal agencies confused. The US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments today in a lawsuit out of Hawaii against the most recent version of the ban.

Trump-Macron: Is friendship built on shows of strength a true partnership?

Shortly before French President Emmanuel Macron was to meet President Trump for the first time at a NATO summit last spring, the young and hyper-ambitious French leader received an urgent memo from France’s ambassador in Washington. Beware the American leader’s peculiar but very intentional handshake, the ambassador, Gérard Araud, advised Mr. Macron. What followed, Macron himself has since confirmed, was a crash course featuring videos of the Trump grab-and-jerk handshake, followed by sessions where France’s youngest leader since Napoleon practiced power handshakes of his own.

An Armenian rhapsody

In Armenia, a landlocked nation of nearly 3 million deemed “partly free” by Freedom House, that was certainly the case until this week. Moscow keeps 3,000 troops in Armenia, whose oligarchs resemble those in Russia.