Options considered as Niger leadership cuts military ties with US
DAKAR, Senegal — The United States on Sunday scrambled to assess the future of its counterterrorism operations in Africa’s Sahel region after Niger’s junta said it was ending its yearslong military cooperation with Washington following a visit by top U.S. officials.
The U.S. military has hundreds of troops at an airbase in northern Niger that deploys flights over the vast Sahel region — south of the Sahara — where jihadi groups linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State operate.
Top U.S. envoy Molly Phee returned to the capital, Niamey, this past week to meet with senior government officials, accompanied by Marine Gen. Michael Langley, head of the U.S. military’s African Command. She also visited in December, while acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland traveled to the country in August.
The State Department said Sunday in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that talks were frank and that it was in touch with the junta. It wasn’t clear whether the U.S. has any leeway left to negotiate a deal to stay in the country.
Niger had been seen as one of the last nations in the restive region that Western nations could partner with to beat back growing jihadi insurgencies. The U.S. and France had more than 2,500 military personnel in the region until recently, and with other European countries had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance and training.
But that changed in July when mutinous soldiers ousted the country’s democratically elected president and months later asked French forces to leave.
The U.S. military still had 650 personnel working in Niger in December, according to a White House report to Congress. The Niger base is used for manned and unmanned surveillance operations. In the Sahel, the U.S. also supports ground troops, including accompanying them on missions. However, such accompanied missions have been scaled back since U.S. troops were killed in a joint operation in Niger in 2017.
It’s unclear what prompted the junta’s decision to suspend military ties.
Cameron Hudson, who served with the Central Intelligence Agency and State Department in Africa, said the incident shows the diminution of U.S. leverage in the region and that Niger was angered by Washington’s attempt to pressure the junta to steer clear of Russia, which has been offering security support to neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso, which have had two coups each since 2020.
Arrest in state cop’s killing:
A suspect in the shooting death of a New Mexico state police officer was captured Sunday by law enforcement officers based on a tip from a gas station clerk.
The Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office detained Jaremy Smith, 33, of Marion, South Carolina, in the southwestern reaches of Albuquerque after the clerk notified authorities of a man who fit Smith’s description, Sheriff John Allen said at a brief news conference.
South Carolina authorities have identified Smith as a person of interest in the killing of a local paramedic whose stolen car was involved in Friday’s fatal shooting of Officer Justin Hare along Interstate 40.
Allen said Smith was walking on the outskirts of a residential area and wounded by gunfire as officers
pursued him on foot. He was taken to a hospital for treatment under police guard. No medical condition was given.
Allen and State Police Chief Troy Weisler did not discuss possible criminal charges and declined to provide further information. It is unclear whether Smith has a legal representative.
‘Judge shopping’ rule: Senate Republicans took aim last week at a new federal courts policy trying to curb “judge shopping,” a practice that gained national attention in an abortion medication case.
The courts’ policy calls for cases with national implications to get random judge assignments, even in smaller divisions where all cases filed locally go to one judge. In those single-judge divisions, critics say private or state attorneys can essentially pick which judge will hear their case, including suits that can affect the whole country.
The policy was adopted last week by the U.S. Judicial
Conference, the governing body for federal courts. It is has 26 judges, 15 of them appointed by Republican presidents, and is presided over by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke out against it on the Senate floor and joined with two other GOP senators to send letters to a dozen chief judges around the country suggesting that they don’t have to follow it.
Interest groups of all kinds have long tried to file lawsuits before judges they see as friendly to their causes, but the practice got more attention after an unprecedented ruling halting approval of abortion medication.
That case was filed in Amarillo, Texas, where it was all but certain to go to a judge appointed by then-President Donald Trump who is a former attorney for a religious-liberty legal group that championed conservative causes.
The Supreme Court eventually
put the ruling on hold and will hear arguments on it this month.
Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, have applauded the policy change, with Schumer saying it would “go a long way to restoring public confidence in judicial rulings.”
Kushner projects: Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former President Donald Trump and a top adviser in the Trump administration, confirmed Friday that he is closing in on three major real estate deals in Albania and Serbia, the latest example of Trump’s family doing business abroad even as he seeks to return to the White House.
Kushner’s plans in the Balkans appear to have come about in part through relationships built while Trump was in office. Kushner, who was a senior White House official, said he had been working on the deals with
Richard Grenell, who served briefly as acting director of national intelligence under Trump and as ambassador to Germany and special envoy to the Balkans.
Two projects involve land now controlled by the governments, meaning a deal would have to be finalized with foreign governments.
Kushner’s participation would be through his investment firm, Affinity Partners, which was set up after his White House role and has $2 billion in funding from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, among other foreign investors.
In a statement, an official with Affinity Partners said it had not been determined whether the Saudi money might be a part of any project Kushner is considering in the Balkans.
“We are very excited,” Kushner said in an interview. “We have not finalized these deals, so they might not happen, but we have been working hard and are pretty close.”