06/02/2026

FRIDAY | FEB 6, 2026

8

Trump calls for Republicans to ‘nationalise’ voting

French navy seizes four tonnes cocaine PAPEETE: France’s navy has seized 4.25 tonnes of cocaine from a ship in the south Pacific, officials said on Wednesday. The vessel, from Central America and believed to be bound for South Africa, was intercepted in French Polynesia, the country’s high commission in the island territory said. Its cargo was destroyed at sea, away from the Polynesian economic zone and marine protected area, officials said. The prosecutor’s office did not bring charges so as not to burden the local court with a case of drug trafficking not destined for French Polynesia itself. The high commission said the vessel and its crew were freed under international law. Last month, the navy seized almost five tonnes of cocaine, believed to be headed for Australia, from a fishing vessel near French Polynesia. The United Nations (UN) has said in recent years organised crime groups trafficking cocaine and methamphetamine have expanded their presence in the Pacific. Large amounts of drugs are transported from North and South America for Australian and New Zealand markets, the UN said. French Polynesia lies along these maritime routes and is itself affected by significant methamphetamine use. However, its small population of 280,000 spares it from being a prime target for large-scale drug trafficking. – AFP HAVANA: Utility officials said eastern Cuba was plunged into darkness on Wednesday after a power grid failure left Holguin, Granma, Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo without electricity. After six decades under US embargo, Cuba’s electricity system is in shambles, with frequent and prolonged outages. US President Donald Trump recently threatened to cut off its heavily subsidised oil supplies from socialist Venezuela. Along with shortages of food and medicine, the country is experiencing a mass exodus. Officials blame tight US sanctions, but poor economic management and the collapse of tourism following the outbreak of Covid-19 contributed to the country’s woes. Despite the imposition of the US trade embargo in 1962, Cuba’s eight power plants were built in the 1980s and 1990s. Thirty solar plants built with help from China have not helped to prevent blackouts. In December, a massive power outage in western Cuba left millions of people without electricity. – AFP DUTCH QUEEN SIGNS UP AS ARMY RESERVIST AMSTERDAM: Dutch Queen Máxima, 54, has voluntarily signed up for military service, the royal court in The Hague announced, saying she would be a reservist. The wife of King Willem-Alexander had her first day of service on Wednesday, it said, the German Press Agency reported. After a brief period of military training, she is expected to work with the armed forces for some time. Máxima is following the example of her eldest daughter Amalia, who recently completed her basic training as a reservist. She plans to perform her part-time service alongside her studies. Dutch reservists are a flexibly deployable reserve of the army. They can be called up in emergencies, such as floods or in the event of war. According to the court, Máxima decided to serve because the country’s “security is no longer a given and she, like many others, wants to contribute to this security”. – Bernama-dpa EASTERN CUBA FACES POWER OUTAGE

BR I E F S

WASHINGTON: From calls for his Republican party to “nationalise” voting to his repeated false claims of a stolen election, US President Donald Trump is ramping up attacks on the electoral system ahead of this year’s midterms. The latest idea from Trump, who still refuses to acknowledge his 2020 election defeat by Democrat Joe Biden, is to take responsibility for organising elections away from some US states and hand it to the federal government instead. “Republicans should say: ‘We want to take over. We should take over the voting in at least 15 places.’ Republicans ought to nationalise the voting.” His comments come as Republicans face losing control of Congress in the Nov 3 midterm elections. Polls show low approval ratings for Trump while Republicans have suffered a string of losses in local elections. However, Trump has doubled down on his long-standing but debunked claims of widespread voter fraud, and his insistence that he needs to address it. Trump pressed the case in an interview with o Comments come as party faces losing control of Congress in Nov 3 midterm elections The fatal shootings of two US citizens by federal officers in Minneapolis last month sparked widespread outrage in the United States and calls for an end to immigration raids in the Midwestern city, but Trump’s administration has been reluctant to shift course. “I learned that maybe we could use a little bit of a softer touch. But you still have to be tough,“ said Trump when asked what he had learned from Minneapolis. Trump’s border chief Tom Homan earlier announced that 700 federal officers would be withdrawn from Minnesota, but said the contentious deployment would continue, with about 2,000 agents remaining after the drawdown. He vowed that removals of undocumented migrants would continue. “Mass deportations are here, we are already breaking records and we are not going to stop.“ The Minneapolis mayor and Minnesota governor, both Democrats, described the announcement of the pullback as “a step in the right direction“, but called for the federal government to move faster in winding down its immigration operations in the state. Homan said the reduction would take effect immediately, citing increased cooperation with local authorities. He said there are “more officers taking custody of criminal aliens directly from the jails” rather than detaining them on the streets, efforts that require fewer personnel. Before the launch of the high-profile crackdown in Minnesota, there were only 150 federal immigration officers in the state, he said. He also stressed that he would stay in

National Intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard, whose role is meant to be focused on foreign threats. The US Justice Department has meanwhile filed lawsuits in some 20 states to try to recover voting records. Trump’s administration has falsely claimed that undocumented migrants are illegally voting on a large scale. Such actions are “part of a broader strategy to cast doubt on the validity of the upcoming elections”, said University of California, Los Angeles law professor Rick Hasen. “At worst, it suggests that he may try to use the federal government to interfere in how states run elections,” he said, calling for civil society groups to be on the lookout. The NAACP, which has fought for years for the civil rights of Black people, accused Trump’s administration of “looking to exhaust our nation with these deplorable and unconstitutional antics in hopes that we will grow tired and concede”. Some Trump critics fear he could use law enforcement or even the military to influence the upcoming election. Some Trump supporters have suggested as much. “We are going to have Immigration and Customs Enforcement surround the polls come November. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen,” said first-term Trump aide Steve Bannon on Tuesday. – AFP

NBC News that aired on Wednesday, alleging that “there are some areas in our country that are extremely corrupt”. He added that if elections “cannot be done properly and timely, then something else has to happen”. His comments have sparked fears that he will, and not for the first time, go up against the US Constitution itself. “The Constitution clearly says states are the ones that do the running of elections, there is no debate about this”, said Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt. Levitt, who worked in the administrations of presidents Barack Obama and Biden, said this is partly because of the huge size of the United States, but also as a “separation of powers” and an “anti-corruption measure”. Trump, who has openly warned that he faces a third impeachment if Republicans lose in November, has been unrepentant in his quest to change the way America votes. The 79-year-old remains convinced that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him, although its legitimacy has been confirmed by the courts. “It was a rigged election. Everybody now knows that. People will soon be prosecuted for what they did.” On Jan 28, the FBI seized hundreds of boxes of ballots and other materials in Georgia as part of a controversial probe into his 2020 election loss in the southern state. Unusually, the raid was carried out under

‘Softer touch’ needed on immigration MINNEAPOLIS: US President Donald Trump suggested on Wednesday that a “softer touch” may be needed on immigration, as his administration said 700 federal officers would be pulled from Minnesota but mass deportations would not stop.

The reduction in federal personnel has been lauded, but officials said the US immigration operation in Minneapolis must end ‘immediately’. – AFPPIC

Minneapolis, which has become a major flashpoint in Trump’s overall immigration policy, “until we get it all done”. “Trump fully intends to achieve mass deportations during this administration, and immigration enforcement actions will continue every day throughout this country.“ Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey welcomed the reduction in federal personnel but said the US immigration operation in Minneapolis, dubbed Metro Surge, must end “immediately”. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz took a similar stance, calling for a “faster and larger drawdown of forces” and state-led investigations into the killings of the two Minneapolis residents. Federal agents shot and killed an unarmed woman, 37-year-old Renee Good, as she attempted to drive away from an encounter with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

agents last month. Two weeks later, immigration officers beat and shot dead intensive care nurse Alex Pretti, 37, as he lay pinned to the ground. Both victims were US citizens. Trump said although neither victim was an “angel“, he was upset about their deaths. The killings drew international attention and condemnation over the government’s false accounts of what happened, intensifying public concern about the conduct of federal immigration operations. Following the outcry over the shootings that drew tens of thousands of demonstrators into the streets, Trump withdrew combative Customs and Border Protection Commander Gregory Bovino and replaced him with the more policy-focused Homan, who pledged to draw down the operation with conditions. – AFP