The South African Ambassador to the United States, Ebrahim Rasool has been expelled from the U.S.

U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio described Rasool in a post on X l as “race baiting politician”.

The U.S. Secretary of State also accused the South African ambassador of hating America and hating Donald Trump.

Rasool has been at loggerhead with the Trump’s administration since January when President Trump assumed office.

The row started after Rasool said in an online seminar hosted by a South African think tank that the MAGA movement was partially in response to worries about demographic change and a future when white Americans would no longer be the majority.

“So in terms of that — the supremacist assault on incumbency, we see it in the domestic politics of the USA, the MAGA movement — the Make America Great Again movement — as a response not simply to a supremacist instinct, but to very clear data that shows great demographic shifts in the USA in which the voting electorate in the USA is projected to become 48% white, and that the possibility of a majority of minorities is looming on the horizon,” said Rasool.

Vincent Magwenya, spokesman for the South African president, described the ambassador’s expulsion “regrettable.”

“We urge all relevant and impacted stakeholders to maintain the established diplomatic decorum in their engagement with the matter,” he said. “South Africa remains committed to building a mutually beneficial relationship with the United States of America.”

The recent row may not be unconnected with the earlier false accusation by Trump that the South African government was confiscating land from white farmers and invited white Afrikaners to resettle in the US as refugees.

South Africa’s government said it was, quote, “ironic that the executive order makes provision for refugee status in the US for a group in South Africa that remains amongst the most economically privileged.”

Trump had earlier cut all financial aid to South Africa, citing the alleged persecution of the Afrikaners as well as South Africa’s genocide case against US ally Israel at the Hague.

Rubio snubbed South Africa last month too, by failing to attend the G20 Foreign Ministers meeting. South Africa is the current G20 president but Rubio said he was skipping the event because the summit had DEI and climate change on the agenda.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also opted out of the G20 Finance Ministers meeting in Cape Town after the US objected to the themes of “solidarity, equality and sustainability.”

South African-born Trump adviser Elon Musk has also attacked South Africa for what he says are its “racist ownership” laws, that prevent him from taking his Starlink satellite service to the country unless he meets affirmative action requirements.

Ambassador Rasool was South Africa’s envoy to the US once before, from 2010 to 2015.

When he was a child, Rasool’s family was forcibly removed from their home during apartheid when the government declared their suburb a “whites only area.” He went on to become active in South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement.

In his speech on the webinar that caused Rubio’s outrage on Friday, the ambassador said South Africa needed to be cautious and diplomatic in dealing with Trump’s administration.

President Donald Trump took his contentious bid to end birthright citizenship in the United States to the Supreme Court on Thursday.

Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship, which he signed on his first day in office, was blocked by federal district courts in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state.

Birthright citizenship is enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which decrees that anyone born on American soil is a citizen, and Trump’s order seeks to end it for children whose parents are in the country illegally.

In an emergency application with the Supreme Court, the Justice Department sought to narrow the scope of the nationwide lower court injunctions to the individual plaintiffs in the three cases.

The department’s acting solicitor general Sarah Harris described it as a “modest” request and she notably did not seek a ruling from the Supreme Court at this time as to whether eliminating birthright citizenship is constitutional or not.

“Those universal injunctions prohibit a Day 1 Executive Order from being enforced anywhere in the country,” Harris wrote.

“While the parties litigate weighty merits questions, the Court should ‘restrict the scope’ of multiple preliminary injunctions that ‘purport to cover every person in the country,’ limiting those injunctions to parties actually within the courts’ power,” she said.

Trump has been facing legal pushback in courts across the country as he attempts to stem illegal immigration, slash the government budget and reduce the federal workforce.

In his latest setback, a district judge in California on Thursday ordered six federal agencies to rehire thousands of probationary workers who had been fired.

‘Epidemic proportions’

Harris, in her brief with the Supreme Court, also took issue with the number of injunctions on Trump administration moves being issued by district court judges.

“Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions,” she said, and are preventing “the Executive Branch from performing its constitutional functions.”

Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship was due to come into effect by February 19.

The 14th Amendment says, in part: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Trump’s order was premised on the idea that anyone in the United States illegally, or on a visa, was not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the country, and therefore excluded from this category.

Judge John Coughenour, who heard the birthright case in Washington state, described the president’s executive order as “blatantly unconstitutional.”

“I’ve been on the bench for over four decades, I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is,” said Coughenour, who was appointed by a Republican president, Ronald Reagan.

The conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which includes three justices nominated by Trump, is primed to play a significant role as the president tests the limits of his executive power and the judiciary pushes back.

AFP

The Armed Forces of Ukraine sent dozens of drones to six regions of Russia, the Russian Defense Ministry reported on its Telegram channel.

In total, the air defense forces shot down 77 drones over Russia overnight. As specified by the Defense Ministry, the attempted attacks were carried out between 8:00 p.m. on March 12 and 6:36 a.m. on March 13.

The largest number of drones – 30 – were intercepted over the Bryansk region. Another 25 drones were shot down over Kaluga Oblast, six each over Voronezh and Kursk Oblasts, and five each over Rostov and Belgorod Oblasts.

On the evening of March 12, it was reported that 14 Ukrainian drones had been shot down over Bryansk, Rostov, Kaluga, and Belgorod Oblasts. Five drones were shot down over Bryansk and Rostov Oblasts, three over Kaluga Oblast, and one over Belgorod Oblast.