Donald Trump's latest economic threat will backfire, according to an economist who said that, if the president follows through, a major crisis will be heightened.

Peter Schiff, a financial commentator and radio personality who has been raising alarms about America’s affordability crisis, weighed in over the weekend. Previously, Trump himself went nuclear when Schiff did an appearance on Fox News.

“Why would Fox and Friends Weekend (of all things?) put on a ‘Stockbroker’ named Peter Schiff, a Trump hating loser who has already proven to be wrong. Either the show made a mistake, or it is heading in a different direction,” he wrote in December.

But as it relates to foreign tariffs, Schiff says Trump is about to make a big mistake.

"Trump threatened to hit Americans with 25% tariffs on imports from countries that directly or indirectly do business with Iran," Schiff said, noting the follow-up effects of that move.

"Since China does business with Iran and nearly every country does business with China, if Trump follows through the affordability crisis will get worse," the chief economist and global strategist for Europac then added Sunday.

A user on X responded to Schiff by Asking Elon Musk's AI chatbot if the take was a correct one. Grok replied, "Trump did post on Truth Social in January 2026 that countries 'doing business' with Iran would face 25% tariffs on their US trade. He signed an executive order on Feb 6 formalizing this... China trades with Iran, so it could be targeted, which might increase US import costs if implemented."

The FBI and Pima County Sheriff's Department were investigating a "new message" Friday in connection with the abduction of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie, according to reports.

The message was sent to KOLD via email and is under review by investigators. KOLD had originally received the original alleged ransom note, anchor Mary Coleman wrote in a post on X.

The station had apparently received the message at 11:45 a.m. Friday and immediately sent it to the FBI and sheriff's department, who were trying to determine its authenticity, Briana Whitney reported via X. It was sent through a service that cannot be traced back.

Guthrie, the mother of "Today" show co-host Savannah Guthrie, vanished sometime overnight between Saturday and Sunday from her home in Tucson, Arizona. The family previously released two video messages asking for the abductors to give them a sign that Nancy was OK and telling her captors that they were ready to talk.

Pima County sheriff's officials released the following statement:

"The FBI and Pima County Sheriff’s Department are aware of a new message regarding Nancy Guthrie. Investigators are actively inspecting the information provided in the message for its authenticity. While this is one new piece of information, the FBI and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department are still asking anyone with tips to contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI. The FBI continues to offer a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to the recovery of Nancy Guthrie and/or the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in her disappearance."

Vice President JD Vance was reportedly booed at the Milan Cortina Winter Games as U.S. Olympians denounced President Donald Trump's administration.

A video shared on social media showed the audience booing Vance as the camera panned by him during the Opening Ceremony on Friday.

"Those are a lot of boos for him," one announcer noted.

At a press conference, members of the U.S. figure skating team were asked about the Trump administration's use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to crack down on migrants.

"I feel heartbroken about what's happened in the United States when, you know, I'm pretty sure you're referencing ICE and some of the protests and things like that," freestyle skater Chris Lillis told reporters. "I think that as a country, we need to focus on respecting everybody's rights and making sure that we're treating our citizens as well as anybody with love and respect."

"It brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now, I think. It's a little hard," skater Hunter Hess agreed. "There's obviously a lot going on that I'm not the biggest fan of, and I think a lot of people aren't."

"Just because I'm wearing the flag doesn't mean I represent everything that's going on in the U.S.," he added. "So yeah, I just kind of want to do it for my friends and my family and the people that support me getting here."

Mockery erupted online Friday over Attorney General Pam Bondi's comment that "Donald Trump never forgets."

Bondi was speaking at a press conference where the Department of Justice announced an arrest of a suspect in the 2012 Benghazi attack when she made the remark.

The internet was quick to point out a few times when the president had a mix up over his memory.

"Two weeks ago he forgot the name of the territory - Greenland - that he was threatening to annex during his rambling speech at Davos. Three times," Jimmy Rushton, a foreign policy and security analyst based in Ukraine, wrote on X.

"The same guy who thinks airports existed during the Revolutionary War doesn’t 'forget' lmao ok," user John Brown wrote on X.

"He can barely remember things from one hour to the next these days," user Bill the Beaver wrote on X.

"In truth, Trump can’t recall if there’s a conflict between Azerbaijan, Albania, or Armenia," user Anna Baxter wrote on X.

"Neither do we," user Dianne McKenna wrote on X.

Donald Trump could sink the GOP's midterm chances even further should he take military action in Iran.

Whether the president does so is yet to be seen, but CNN political analyst Stephen Collinson believes the administration may take action. It would follow strikes made last year on Iran, and could plunge the US into a war with the potential to go wrong enough that it would affect the voting intention at home.

Collinson wrote, "Iran, the seat of the ancient Persian civilization, is more contiguous and less plagued by sectarian divides than Iraq — which splintered after the US invasion in 2003. But no one wants to test the impact of a power vacuum if the government falls, in the absence of any clear path to a return to democracy.

"And the short, sharp thunderclap strike of the type Trump prefers and that doesn’t conflict with the no-foreign-quagmires mantra of his MAGA movement may not be sufficient to topple the clerical regime in Tehran.

"But a longer military engagement with uncertain consequences would severely test Americans’ trust in their president. A war that went wrong could devastate Republicans in November’s already unpromising midterm elections."

Trump may also be bolstered by his administration's recent activities in Venezuela. Collinson added, "A sense of hubris has gathered around the White House since the toppling of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro last month.

"But major US combat deaths in an Iranian war could effectively drain all the power and legitimacy from Trump’s second term."

Part of the problem too, Collinson says, is that Trump has no problem in kindling a counter protest in Iran.

"Trump’s predecessors avoiding encouraging a counter-revolution in Iran because they feared providing a pretext for even more fierce repression against demonstrators seen as US proxies," he wrote.

"Trump had no such qualms and his vow that the US was “locked and loaded” to punish Tehran for its crackdowns conceivably brought more people onto the streets.

"One option for Trump would be to ink a rudimentary deal and hype it as a great victory — the great salesman’s certainly done this before.

This might placate war-weary US voters, but it would send a clear message of a climbdown to US adversaries and tarnish his global strongman aura."

The American ambassador to Poland had a meltdown Thursday after the country's parliament speaker said President Donald Trump wasn't worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Ambassador Tom Rose, a MAGA ally, raged over the comment Thursday in a post on X after Parliament Speaker Wlodzimierz Czarzasty did not agree that Trump was a good potential recipient of the famed prize, The Daily Beast reported.

"Effective immediately, we will have no further dealings, contacts, or communications with Marshal of the Sejm Czarzasty, whose outrageous and unprovoked insults directed against President Trump @POTUS has made himself a serious impediment to our excellent relations with Prime Minister Tusk and his government," Rose wrote. "We will not permit anyone to harm U.S.–Polish relations, nor disrespect @realDonaldTrump, who has done so much for Poland and the Polish people."

Czarzasty had made clear that he would not support the campaign from House Speaker Mike Johnson and Israeli Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana’s to encourage world leaders to back Trump's latest bid for the prize.

“In my opinion, President Trump is destabilizing the situation in these (international) organizations by representing the politics of force and using force to pursue a transactional policy,” said Czarzasty. “All of this means that I will not support President Trump’s Nobel Prize nomination because he doesn’t deserve it.”

Trump has made it very clear — on multiple occasions — that he believes he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

He has even "shared" the prize with another world leader, after Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado revealed that she "presented" Trump with the Nobel Peace Prize she won "for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela."

An expert Thursday warned that President Donald Trump's health has started to rapidly deteriorate as questions increase over his mental capacity and ability to lead, according to reports.

Dr. John Gartner, psychologist, psychiatrist, and a former assistant professor at John Hopkins Medical School, told British publication The i Paper that there have been increased concerns over the president's health and suggested signs of cognitive decline.

“The main way to diagnose dementia is that we see a deterioration from someone’s own baseline in these four areas: language, memory, behavior, and psychomotor performance,” Gartner said.

“He’s deteriorated since his last administration noticeably but now we’re seeing deterioration almost week over week. The rate of decline is accelerating,” Gartner said.

Trump has made several statements, including his mix-up over Iceland and Greenland, among other comments that have led to further unease around his health.

“The high-pressure job can also accelerate cognitive dysfunction,” Gartner added.

The White House has said that the 79-year-old president has been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency — this can cause swollen ankles — and also stated that the president's frequent hand shaking has caused hand bruising.

And while medical professionals have cautioned against diagnosing Trump based on his family history or jumping to any conclusions around his health, the increased signs have drawn health experts to consider "the wider state of his health" as Trump pushes to threaten military takeovers and his "military adventurism" with Venezuela.

"While this form does not produce the same level of memory decay as Alzheimer’s, it does produce tremendous disinhibition of behavior because it’s the frontal lobes that are the brakes of the brain. So that’s what inhibits us from acting out,'" Gartner told The i Paper.

“Part of his brain [appears to be] deteriorating disproportionately so he’s losing the brakes and this is someone who was always impulsive and always acted out aggressively… Whilst he’s becoming confused about what’s happening, he’s also becoming aggressively disinhibited to act in impulsive and erratic ways," Gartner said.

A new investigation from The Guardian published Thursday has revealed that a friend and donor of President Donald Trump has been using his private jet for deportations.

Gil Dezer, a Florida property tycoon and longtime friend of the Trump family, has now twice flown Palestinian men from Arizona to Tel Aviv, according to the report. Dezer has been a Trump donor and member of the Miami branch of Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.

Just Monday, the luxury jet was used to transport "another group of Palestinian deportees. They landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport and also appear to have been taken to the West Bank." In January 24-year-old Maher Awad was taken from Arizona to the West Bank. Awad has lived in the United States for for nearly a decade.

Dezer's plane has apparently been contracted by U.S. agencies to charter flights.

"His sleek Gulfstream jet – which he has called 'my little rocket ship' – was used to transport the men from an airport near a notorious removal centre in Arizona to Tel Aviv," The Guardian reported. "The jet made three refuelling stops en route: in New Jersey, Ireland and Bulgaria."

The plane was seen landing at Israel’s Ben Gurion international airport and reportedly has the logo for Dezer Development, a real estate firm created by Israeli-American developer Michael Dezer and now run by his son, Gil Dezer. Since the early 2000s, the Dezer family has worked with the Trump to build six Miami residential towers. Filings show that the father and son have donated more than $1.3 million to the Trump campaigns.

"A Guardian investigation has established the flight was part of a secretive and politically sensitive US government operation to deport Palestinians arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the Israeli-occupied West Bank," according to the outlet.

It's unclear if several countries where the plane landed were aware of the deportations underway as the plane made fuel stops.

"Aircraft tracking data shows that both the 21 January and 1 February flights to Israel made refuelling stops at Shannon airport in Ireland and at Sofia airport in Bulgaria," The Guardian reported. "Those stops may raise questions for the authorities in those countries about the legal status of the passengers transited through their territory."

"The eight Palestinians had their ankles shackled on the 21 January flight, according to Awad and another man onboard, Sameer Isam Aziz Zeidan, a 47-year-old grocery worker. Awad said he was forced to wear a body restraint, with his wrists handcuffed to his stomach. Both men said the restraints made it difficult to eat, requiring them to bend their heads forward to put food in their mouths."

President Donald Trump walked back his criticism of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer's agreement to transfer ownership of a strategically located island to Mauritius.

The 79-year-old president has complained that the United Kingdom plans to decolonize the Chagos Islands, including the site of the U.S. military base on Diego Garcia, but he said Starmer had reassured him on the transfer of sovereignty of the Indian Ocean archipelago.

"I have had very productive discussions with Prime Minister Keir Starmer about the Island of Diego Garcia," Trump posted on Truth Social. "It is the site of a major U.S. Military Base, strategically situated in the middle of the Indian Ocean and, therefore, of great importance to the National Security of the United States."

"I understand that the deal Prime Minister Starmer has made, according to many, the best he could make," he added. "However, if the lease deal, sometime in the future, ever falls apart, or anyone threatens or endangers U.S. operations and forces at our Base, I retain the right to Militarily secure and reinforce the American presence in Diego Garcia."

Trump vowed to keep the base at Diego Garcia no matter what Mauritius might decide in the future.

"Let it be known that I will never allow our presence on a Base as important as this to ever be undermined or threatened by fake claims or environmental nonsense," he posted. "Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP."

A former US State Department employee has outlined what a "worst-case scenario" would look like following the expiry of the New START deal.

The treaty was a nuclear arms reduction treaty between the US and Russia, which expired today (February 5). Donald Trump claimed that, should the deal expire, the administration would move to put another one into effect, though details of this have not yet been confirmed.

Russia, who suspended its participation in the New START deal in 2023, confirmed they would still abide by the numerical limits imposed by the deal. Rose Gottemoeller, the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security at the US State Department, has sounded the alarm on what could be the worst-case scenario for the deal's expiration.

She told CNN that no longer imposing a numerical limit on Russia's weapons of mass destruction "leaves us in the dust while we're still trying to get organized and the Chinese are building up steadily again."

Gottemoeller added a year-long extension could be of benefit to the US, though there is much work to be done when it comes to "plan and prepare" a new deal.

She added, "They have active warhead production lines as well as active production lines for other related components for their missile systems that they would be able to upload rapidly. We know they have that industrial capacity available, and we do not have it."

Matthew Kroenig, vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, disagreed and suggested the treaty is not as powerful a deterrent as the US nuclear arsenal itself.

He said, "In theory, it is nice to have limitations, but the main goal of US nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear war, not to have treaties."

Trump was flippant when asked about the treaty last month, saying, "If it expires, it expires. We'll do a better agreement."

Outrage erupted Wednesday after The Washington Post announced it would lay off more than 300 people from its newsroom — including a reporter in the middle of a warzone in Ukraine.

The reporter received the news under harsh conditions while covering the war in Ukraine.

"I was just laid off by The Washington Post in the middle of a warzone. I have no words. I'm devastated," reporter Lizzie Johnson wrote on X.

The move to cut one-third of the staff was met with sharp criticism.

"A publisher who lays off a reporter whose pen is freezing because she's covering a frigid war zone while dodging missiles is not an editor you want to work for, in a more perfect world," journalist and professor Bill Grueskin wrote on Bluesky.

"I am appalled by this. please be in touch if you’re interested in continuing to cover Russia/Ukraine, either full time or as a stringer. least i can do is introduce you to the folks making our relevant hiring decisions," author and political scientist Ian Bremmer wrote on X.

"I’m so sorry. Thank you for your courageous and indispensable work," New York Times columnist David French wrote on X.

"So sorry my friend - I truly feel for all of you guys but particularly for those dodging fire," CNN anchor Jim Sciutto wrote on X.

Donald Trump has set his sights on a post-Greenland target and may use tariffs as a way of hindering the country in question.

The president's administration carried out an operation in Venezuela and then shifted tact to Greenland earlier this month. While Trump confirmed the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, his campaign in Greenland was far less successful. The president was met with strong resistance from European nations at the time, and it seems he has not yet given up in subsuming the country into US territory.

For now though, The Hill columnist Jose Chalhoub believes the president has already shifted his attention to a European nation which could offer oil reserves like Venezuela.

Chalhoub wrote, "In Venezuela, enforcement actions continued, even as headlines faded, disrupting supply to Asia and exposing billions in Chinese investments. Cuba, heavily dependent on those flows, was warned that oil would move only on Washington’s terms. The region became a testing ground for how much pressure energy leverage can exert before governments cave.

"The Americas, then, are a rehearsal. The real audience is Europe. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine abruptly ended decades of European dependence on its energy.

"A costly divorce — roughly $1,500 per person — was unavoidable. American suppliers surged in, such that the U.S. now rivals Norway as the European Union’s main source of oil, and it is also the source of nearly 60 percent of its liquified natural gas."

Despite European countries considering the US an ally, it may not stop Trump from using the economy to his advantage, freezing out some nations who do not give in to his demands.

Chalhoub added, "Europe reassured itself that America is an ally, bound by mutual restraint and shared values. But that assumption deserves scrutiny.

"Trump’s tariffs demonstrated how readily economic ties can be weaponized. As tensions with Denmark and Greenland escalated, Europeans faced a sobering question: If energy becomes leverage, will Trump take a page from Putin’s playbook?

"Europe’s vulnerability is structural. Energy is purchased nationally, not collectively. Pressure applied to a few can fracture solidarity among many. Matching coercion with coercion would invite escalation and play to Washington’s strengths.

"The gravest mistake would be to continue with the delusion that the U.S. will always be a benign partner. Even an imperfect rules-based order is infinitely preferable to a world governed by oil. Should international restraint dissolve, Venezuela will not be an anomaly, but a warning — the opening of chapter of an era in which power is measured by who controls the tap."

A vital peace pact which prevents escalations in creating nuclear arms is set to end tomorrow (February 5).

Donald Trump's administration has not reportedly worked on finding a solution to the treaty, with negotiations stalling last month and not picked up from there. According to those familiar with the peace treaty developments, the president and his advisers are yet to even hold a conversation about what to do about the impending deadline, let alone how to resolve it.

Writing in Slate, Fred Kaplan claimed those who knew of the New SMART expiry date were not in a position to bend to Trump's demand that China be included in the next treaty arrangement. Such a suggestion could take years, according to Kaplan.

He wrote, "If past is precedent, a new treaty would take at least a year to negotiate; if China takes part, something that has never happened before, it would take many years.

"In the meantime, we may well see the renewal of a nuclear arms race, reversing a trend of the past half-century. The stunning thing is that, by all accounts, Trump and his advisers haven’t so much as held a conversation about the possibility or its implications for U.S. policy or the safety of the world."

Trump was flippant when asked about the treaty last month, saying, "If it expires, it expires. We'll do a better agreement.

"It’s worth recalling that when Trump scuttled the Iran nuclear deal back during his first term as president, he said that he—master of the “art of the deal”—would goad Tehran into accepting a 'better' deal.

"This never happened. There is no reason to believe, especially given Washington’s tense relations with both Moscow and Beijing, that he’ll bring about a superior substitute for New START either."

An ex-Pentagon official had previously warned the expiration of the treaty may bolster Russia and its allies. Kingston Reiff warned the new START deal had offered valuable insight into what Russia had been doing with its military.

He wrote, "So, my net assessment is the treaty reduced uncertainty about Russian strategic nuclear forces and provided us with greater confidence in our own nuclear plans and capabilities.

"Since New START's entry into force, there has been no real progress on further arms control measures. Moscow and Beijing deserve most of the blame for this. Charting a course to the next chapter will not be easy, but remains a necessary pursuit."

The Roman diocese, led by Pope Leo XIV, has ordered a church to alter an angel's face painted on a fresco that bears a close resemblance to one of President Donald Trump's closest European allies.

An Italian newspaper reported over the weekend that a newly restored fresco at Rome's Basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina included an angel whose updated face appeared to resemble Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, although artist Bruno Valentinetti denied that was his intention and the parish priest defended the work, reported The Daily Beast.

“It doesn’t mean we’re Meloni supporters,” parish priest Daniele Micheletti told La Repubblica on Saturday. “Maybe we are Meloni supporters, but we don’t say so. The face of King Umberto II is also there, does that mean we’re monarchists?”

Technicians from the Roman diocese, which is headed by the America-born pope, told the priest the painting needed to be altered to remove Meloni's likeness, and Cardinal Vicar Baldassare Reina, a close ally of Leo's, issued a "firm" statement.

“Images of sacred art and the Christian tradition can be misused or exploited, as they are intended exclusively to support liturgical life," the cardinal vicar said.

Micheletti agreed to have the 13th-century basilica's fresco, which Valentinetti himself had originally painted in 2000, modified after speaking to diocese officials.

Pope Leo has spoken out against Trump's immigration policies and expansionist threats and shared some of those disagreements directly with Vice President JD Vance, who converted to Catholicism as an adult, during a face-to-face meeting in May.

A treaty between Russia and the U.S. could expire shortly because of a standstill over country membership.

An ex-Pentagon official said the potential expiry is a frustrating one, and it appears Donald Trump is caught up in a detail that, to the former official, makes little difference. Kingston Reiff warned the new START deal, which will expire on February 5, had offered valuable insight into what Russia had been doing with its military.

He wrote, "So, my net assessment is the treaty reduced uncertainty about Russian strategic nuclear forces and provided us with greater confidence in our own nuclear plans and capabilities."

But Reiff has since suggested the deal may lapse because Trump wants to include China in the agreement, something which has puzzled the former Pentagon worker. He wrote, "It was never clear to me why we should jettison all limits on Russian strategic forces because New START wasn’t a panacea that captured all nuclear weapons — which of course it was never intended to be.

"Same goes for the argument the treaty didn’t include China. During the treaty’s 15-year existence, the limits have been sufficient to meet U.S. deterrence objectives against both Russia and China. (Whether this remains the case is a topic of significant debate.)

"In the end, factors outside the scope of the treaty ultimately became too much for it to overcome. These included the onset of the COVID pandemic in early 2020, which put the treaty inspections on ice, and Russia’s unconscionable invasion of Ukraine.

"Since New START's entry into force, there has been no real progress on further arms control measures. Moscow and Beijing deserve most of the blame for this. Charting a course to the next chapter will not be easy, but remains a necessary pursuit."

Democratic Party representatives are equally concerned, with John Garamendi (CA) suggesting the deal must not collapse. He told Politico, "If we allow New START to lapse without a replacement or an extension, we will be entering a new terrifying world we haven’t seen in decades: a world without limits on the nuclear arsenals of the two largest nuclear powers."

President Donald Trump unleashed a rant about risky airplane stairs after he was asked to explain his so-called Donroe Doctrine foreign policy.

During a Monday interview on The Dan Bongino Show, the host asked the president for his take on the Monroe Doctrine after a U.S. military attack on Venezuela.

"We were laughed at a year and a half ago. We were laughed at as being stupid people," Trump asserted. "We were laughed at it not as, we see a guy falling up the stairs going into an airplane."

"I got to be very careful going in," Trump continued. "Nice and slow. I'm not looking to set any records. You don't want to go down. Could happen. I mean, you'll get up. But it can't happen three times in one shot, okay? The three times going up to say, I don't think you'll ever see anything like that. But it could happen."

The president seemed to shift into a story about former President Barack Obama without mentioning his name.

"That was the one thing I have to tell you," he said. "It's probably the only thing I respected, and yet it didn't look elegant at all. He bopped down the stairs. He would be in the middle. I thought it looked so terrible. You know, I mean, this is the president of the United States. He's bopping down, you know, bop-bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. And I kept waiting for him to fall, and he didn't. So I would rather have other traits than that."

Here’s a quick civics test for those concerned with the U.S. immigration issue.

Q. Donald Trump has publicly stated at least a thousand times that other countries have emptied their prisons and asylums and sent criminals across our border. Name one.

Feel free to use any search engine or AI resource you’d like. Just name one prison or asylum anywhere that was emptied to send criminals to America.

You can’t do it because it never happened. It’s a pure fiction invented from scratch by Trump and repeated often enough to brainwash millions of people. And it worked.

Just like it worked to repeat that 10.5 million people illegally “invaded” during Joe Biden's presidency. Or that thousands of murderers, rapists, and child molesters have been unleashed on America. Or that MS-13 gangs are inflicting a “migrant crime wave” on U.S. cities.

All that makes for some fiery speeches and intensely inflamed emotions, even among those who pride themselves on moderation. The lies are compelling.

In fact, the entire premise that the U.S. today faces some new existential crisis — unlike anything it’s ever experienced before — could not be more false. It also could not be more believed by millions of Americans.

I stumbled upon the best example of this in researching this piece.

The most authoritative source on immigration data, Pew Research Center, reported in August 2025 that roughly 14 million undocumented people reside in the U.S. illegally today. Using Pew’s data, we can make an apples-to-apples comparison across decades.

In 2007, under President George W. Bush, Pew measured 12.2 million undocumented people — with a total U.S. population of 301 million. Today’s U.S. population is roughly 349 million.

Do the math: About 4.05 percent of people living in the U.S. were undocumented in 2007. Today, that figure is 4.01 percent.

Let that sink in. The proportion of undocumented people in America hasn’t changed in nearly two decades.

Immigration policy has always been contentious, but it wasn’t viewed as an existential crisis back then. It wasn’t a major issue in the 2008 presidential campaign, or the ones after that — not until Trump rode down his infamous escalator and declared that Mexico was sending rapists and other criminals to the U.S.

Trump’s demagoguery worked. The previously unthinkable idea of federal agents using storm-trooper tactics to terrorize millions of citizens and non-citizens alike no longer draws the universal condemnation it should. All because the scope and nature of the immigration “problem” have been so badly distorted.

Here’s what the actual data shows:

Data collected by Texas in 2025 — anything but a liberal source — confirmed what it showed a decade earlier: that undocumented immigrants are arrested at a fraction of the rate of native-born citizens. Nationally, a 2025 Northwestern University study found that immigrants are now 60 percent less likely to be incarcerated than people born in the U.S. Conflating people here illegally with crime is just a talking point.

As for the border “invasion,” that 10.5 million figure Republicans cite represents Customs and Border Protection encounters — not unique individuals crossing. It’s like saying that if the St. Louis Cardinals have 3 million in attendance, it means 3 million different people went to the games. Many encounters involve the same individuals being turned back repeatedly. The vast majority were turned away, and many who were admitted came legally seeking asylum under U.S. law.

Here’s another fact that rarely gets mentioned: Between 40 and 45 percent of undocumented immigrants didn’t sneak across the border at all. They entered the United States legally on valid visas and simply overstayed.

Without question, the Biden administration botched border security and handed Trump the demagogue’s dream: an “invaders” issue. Democrats made it worse by abandoning the Dreamers — young people brought here illegally who grew up thinking they were Americans and loving what they thought was their country.

Remember them? In September 2017, 88 percent of Americans — including 79 percent of Republicans — supported allowing Dreamers to stay and apply for citizenship. Support remains strong, with recent polls showing 81 percent overall backing a pathway to citizenship.

I wrote a commentary in 2022 for Raw Story criticizing Democrats for “blowing the immigration debate and hurting kids by hiding.” As a candidate for Congress in 2024, my position was straightforward: tighten border security and establish a path to citizenship for the Dreamers.

I lost. But my fate was nothing compared to the tragedy of the Dreamers — first deserted by Democrats, and now left as collateral damage in Trump’s authoritarian playbook.

Let’s stipulate that any number of people coming to the U.S. illegally and living in the shadows is too many. Let’s also stipulate that if someone here illegally commits a crime — large or small — they should face swift and fair justice.

But none of that excuses what’s happening today. And not all the blame belongs to Republicans. Democrats, terrified of looking “soft” on immigration, have internalized the fear. They’ve gone mute while the lies stick — not just with politicians, but with media analysts and average Americans.

Is illegal immigration too high? Of course. And it was an unspeakable tragedy that Laken Riley, Rachel Morin and Jocelyn Nungaray lost their lives at the hands of criminals who were in the country illegally — to justifiable outrage across the country.

But it does nothing to diminish their suffering to consider that some 5,000 women are murdered annually in the United States, and an estimated 500,000 are victims of rape or sexual assault. Almost exclusively at the hands of U.S. citizens.

It is nothing short of despicable to exploit three tragedies as proof of an immigrant crime wave as if those exponentially larger numbers didn’t exist.

The horror of what’s happening across the country at the hands of ICE has finally begun to give some leaders the courage to resist Trump’s authoritarian surge. But to find any consensus or intelligent path forward on immigration policy will require a reset that has nothing to do with politics.

Instead, America has to start dealing with the truth.

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In his recent Davos speech to world leaders in Switzerland, President Donald Trump chastised European countries for falling for the climate-change hoax and wasting billions of dollars on green-energy scams.

Trump sees himself on a crusade to disabuse the world of the greatest environmental con in history, having singlehandedly uncovered the Chinese climate-change hoax intended to undermine democratic countries’ economies. Countries around the globe began developing green-energy sources, reduced their reliance on fossil fuels, and undermined their countries’ energy stability. Now, Trump claims to be wisely moving the US in the opposite direction and taking the world with him.

A very nervous, twitchy fly on the Oval Office wall provided the following plausibly reliable information on Trump’s fever-dream aspirations for the next 100 days:

Beginning his crusade in the US, Trump will sue any newspaper spreading misinformation harmful to Americans that climate change fuels terrible natural disasters. As a case in point, Trump will sue any newspaper that has falsely linked the deadly winter storm currently gripping the US to warming temperatures in the Arctic caused by climate change.

“So warmer Arctic weather is causing frigid temperatures in the US,” Trump allegedly guffawed. “What kind of fools do the newspapers and their pseudo scientists take us for?” All newspapers will be forced to publicly retract every word linking the deadly storms to climate change to avoid a $10 billion lawsuit. “Lying to the American people is one thing I won’t tolerate,” said Trump.

Trump is also scrubbing false climate-change propaganda from America’s educational system, where he believes an entire generation of young Americans are being fed lies that climate change is this huge existential threat to the planet.

A recently enacted executive order requires that all units on climate change be deleted from public-school science textbooks and replaced by an EPA-provided unit entitled, “The Anti-Science Climate-Change Hoax.” In addition, wherever the term “climate change” may appear in any textbook across the curriculum, it must be referred to as “natural climate change,” Mother Nature’s climate change,” or “God-given climate change.”

Any school district not complying with the executive order will lose all federal funding and not be allowed to name any school after President Trump. In addition, board members will be investigated by FBI director Kash Patel for possible ties to the Chinese government.

Evidence of such ties may include a board member’s abnormal frequenting of Chinese restaurants, an unusual preoccupation with karaoke singing, or large amounts of made-in-China toys and appliances discovered through FBI search-and-seizure operations of board members’ homes.

“We will evaluate the evidence,” said Patel, “and never rush to judgment unless examples must be made.”

States will also feel the brunt of increasing green-energy production and/or reducing their reliance of fossil fuels. Executive orders will remove all federal funding for states’ green-energy programs, “cap” the amount of green energy-produced Kilowatt hours to 2025 levels, and cut off all green-energy heating in governors’ mansions.

In addition, oil-producing states will lose federal funding that don’t increase their oil production and refinement output by 15 percent annually. To ensure compliance, teams of federal agents may be sent to oil-drilling and refinement sites with the power to arrest protestors but without authority to shoot unless provoked by violence or unendurable humiliation.

Countries that continue to increase green-energy production will be slapped with additional US tariffs up to 50 percent. However, countries that increase fossil fuel-produced energy will be given “very generous terms” according to President Trump. For replacing green-energy sources with US-purchased oil, countries will receive a 15 percent reduction in established rates for US oil recently produced in Venezuela or confiscated by the US military from Venezuelan tankers.

President Trump is taking these critical steps for two reasons: to defeat China’s plan to weaken the democratic world through its climate-change hoax and to ensure the US’s energy independence through greater production and usage of fossil fuels.

According to Trump, “America and the rest of the world must dramatically increase our production and reliance on dependable, environmentally enriching fossil fuels or we’ll all be wearing Mao suits tomorrow, which doesn’t flatter my body type. It’s either ‘drill, baby, drill’ across the globe or Chow Mein and fortune cookies three meals a day.”

Trump’s crusade to expose man-made climate change as an abominable Chinese hoax is essential to changing worldwide public opinion and rescuing countries from self-inflicted destruction. If Trump is successful, he says, “The time will come when electric cars, wind turbines, solar panels, and hydroelectric plants are as popular universally as Crooked Joe Biden’s “Cup O’ Joe” coffee mugs.”

As Trump prophesizes, “The day will come when oil proudly rules the energy world once again, and no one’s in a better position to make a killing than the US. Take that to the bank.”

A new report about a "secret" and "unprecedented" deal between Donald Trump and a "spy Sheikh" has analysts concerned.

According to the Wall Street Journal, "Four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, lieutenants to an Abu Dhabi royal secretly signed a deal with the Trump family to purchase a 49% stake in their fledgling cryptocurrency venture for half a billion dollars, according to company documents and people familiar with the matter."

The article continues:

"The buyers would pay half up front, steering $187 million to Trump family entities. The deal with World Liberty Financial, which hasn’t previously been reported, was signed by Eric Trump, the president’s son. At least $31 million was also slated to flow to entities affiliated with the family of Steve Witkoff, a World Liberty co-founder who weeks earlier had been named U.S. envoy to the Middle East, the documents said."

The report prompted outrage from political insiders and analysts.

Gregg Carlstrom of The Economist said, "To call this the most corrupt administration in American history doesn't really do it justice, because no prior president, Republican or Democrat, would have even conceived of a grift on this scale."

Ex-GOP lawmaker Barbara Comstock chimed in, "When the Trump corruption story is in the WSJ…are the leaks coming from inside the house?….."

Political scientist Brendan Nyhan added Sunday, "Corruption at a level that is unimaginable in any previous admin. People were mad that Hunter Biden sold some mediocre paintings."

The Tennessee Holler asked, "So… a bribe? Trump got $500 Million and U.A.E. got 'tightly guarded' A.I. chips. How is this not a bribe, exactly?"

Activist Garry Kasparov wrote, "Nearly every day brings a real Trump corruption scandal that is billions beyond even the most creative fantasies about Hunter Biden. US power and influence exchanged to enrich Trump and his family."

America’s economic system has never been fair or perfect but for more than a century it rested on basic guardrails that kept instability in check and allowed us to fight for progress and win. Those guardrails are now being stripped away by policies that favor wealth and power over accountability and long-term stability.

For over a hundred years, the United States has been the cornerstone of international economic stability. The independence of our central bank (the “Fed”) has been a part of it, as has the strength of the dollar, which comes about in large part because the rest of the world relies on our currency as the default for international trade.

And now Donald Trump and the GOP are threatening it all.

Trump has added $2 trillion to our national debt in the past 12 months, and he’s on course to do it again (or worse) this year. While our entire GDP — the entirety of all goods and services produced in America every year — is roughly $31.1 trillion, our national debt stands at $38.4 trillion.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell pointed out on Wednesday:

“Right now we’re running a very large deficit at essentially full employment and so the fiscal picture needs to be addressed, and it’s not really being addressed,” adding, “the path is unsustainable and the sooner we work on it, the better.”

When Ronald Reagan came into office in 1981, our national debt was less than $1 trillion, because every president from FDR to Truman to Eisenhower to Kennedy to Johnson to Nixon to Ford to Carter had worked to pay down the roughly 140 percent of GDP debt we ran up fighting World War II.

Across those same presidencies, America had also built a broad and strong social safety net for its citizens, primarily through the New Deal and Great Society programs. And Republicans hated it all, particularly because it’d been paid for with a 74 percent to 91 percent income tax on billionaires and a 50 percent income tax on corporate profits.

They were desperate to find a way to force Democrats to gut their own “Santa” social welfare programs, so, Republicans reasoned, if they just cut taxes on rich people and then ran the debt up hard and fast enough it would freak out Democrats and force them to dial back social spending.

They called it their “Two Santas” strategy, which I detail here, and over the course of the Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts and two illegal wars, four Republican presidents managed to add over $37 trillion to our national debt.

The grimmest consequence of this is that we’re spending $1.2 trillion every year on interest payments on our national debt. That’s money that could otherwise have gone to create a national healthcare system, provide free college education, or help people buy their first homes but, instead, is going to payments to wealthy investors here and abroad who hold US Treasuries.

Up until recently, we were able to pull this off because the US Dollar has been the world’s reserve currency for the better part of a century. All sorts of international transactions (especially oil) are denominated in dollars, so there’s a huge worldwide demand for our currency because you can’t trade without them; that keeps the dollar’s value strong and lets us borrow at what would otherwise be absurdly low rates.

That, in turn, is essentially a subsidy for Americans of all stripes: lower mortgage rates, lower car loan rates, easier credit, and US-based companies can more easily finance growth and new product development.

It also gives our government more power on the international stage because we control the dollars everybody must use, so we can exploit that leverage to seize other countries’ dollar-denominated assets, enforce embargos, and freeze economic activity.

But twice in the past twelve months the value of the dollar has taken a huge hit, in both cases because the world freaked out at Trump’s insanity and started to sell dollars.

The first was in April of last year (a 6 percent drop in value) when Trump announced his bizarre worldwide tariffs; the second was last week when he went to Davos and blithered through a semi-coherent speech that left international leaders wondering about his sanity, his judgement, and his reliability. And, by inference, the judgment and reliability of the United States itself.

Trump’s own economic illiteracy and impulse-driven tariff policies, in other words, have damaged the value of our currency and may have put the status of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency at risk.

The most visible consequence of this collapse in the dollar’s value are spikes in the prices of gold (now over $5,000/ounce, up from $1,077 in 2015) and silver, and how much more expensive foreign travel has become. Three years ago, the euro was at parity with the dollar (one dollar buys one euro), but today a dollar only buys €0.84 (84 cents).

As the dollar drops in value, that’s ultimately reflected in everything imported becoming more expensive (which drives inflation), although it does help companies that export things as it makes their goods and services cheaper.

The big impact, though, could come if international investors and other countries conclude it’s unlikely that the US will be able to repay our debts.

Ever since the Bush Crash of 2008 revealed how deregulation had corrupted our banking system, foreign investors holdings of US debt have steadily declined.

For the rest of the world to have “full faith and confidence” in the US and our currency, they must be convinced we operate with economic transparency and consistently abide by the rule of law.

Trump’s willy-nilly tariffs, often used to extort other nations into giving his family a new hotel or golf course, his constant lies on the international stage about everything from renewable energy to our “right” to invade a foreign country and capture its leader, to his killing fishermen off the coast of Venezuela and his current threats against Iran, all argue against trusting us.

Trump’s already destroyed our soft power by gutting USAID, ruined our relationships with our allies by embracing Putin and trash-talking NATO and the EU, and now is shaking the confidence of our remaining democratic allies by imposing police-state tactics on Blue cities.

The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) countries are on the move, with Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the UAE having joined recently in an agreement to use their alternative currencies instead of dollars. China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) is now also challenging our SWIFT system, and South Africa and Brazil are the most recent countries to integrate it into their own financial systems. They’re using the real and the yuan to trade things like soybeans, going entirely around the dollar.

India and the UAE are now trading in rupees and the dirham, and China is using yuan to buy natural gas from the UAE. China has almost entirely abandoned the dollar for their trade with Russia, the UAE, and Iran. Like South Africa, Brazil has increasingly been using the real and the yuan to settle bilateral trade with China, bypassing the US dollar.

Thus, in recent years, alternatives to the greenback are gaining traction. Even Trump’s good buddy Javier Milei in Argentina is now trading with China in yuan instead of dollars.

We still have enormous momentum and a collapse of the dollar or the international system based on it is unlikely to happen in the near term, but if Trump continues to badger our Federal Reserve or appoints a toady to its chair, and continues with his erratic, illegal, and unconstitutional behavior here and abroad, there’s a good chance that a concerted international effort to de-dollarize will pick up even more steam than it already has.

Economic collapse isn’t inevitable, but it becomes more likely when demagogues choose inequality, debt, and instability over responsibility and shared prosperity.

Whether this era is remembered as a turning point or just a warning from our Fed chief will depend on whether we ignore those choices Republicans have made for 45 years, or if we finally confront and reverse them.

Hang on, keep your eyes open, and follow these trends. Forewarned is forearmed.

• Thom Hartmann is a New York Times best-selling author and SiriusXM talk show host. His Substack can be found here.

For the first time in American history, a foreign government official took "a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president's company," according to a report Saturday night.

According to the Wall Street Journal's reporting, a so-called "spy Sheikh" signed an "unprecedented" deal to buy part of Trump's company for half of a billion dollars.

According to the report, "Four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, lieutenants to an Abu Dhabi royal secretly signed a deal with the Trump family to purchase a 49% stake in their fledgling cryptocurrency venture for half a billion dollars, according to company documents and people familiar with the matter."

The article continues:

"The buyers would pay half up front, steering $187 million to Trump family entities. The deal with World Liberty Financial, which hasn’t previously been reported, was signed by Eric Trump, the president’s son. At least $31 million was also slated to flow to entities affiliated with the family of Steve Witkoff, a World Liberty co-founder who weeks earlier had been named U.S. envoy to the Middle East, the documents said."

It further states that the "investment was backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, an Abu Dhabi royal who has been pushing the U.S. for access to tightly guarded artificial intelligence chips, according to people familiar with the matter. Tahnoon—sometimes referred to as the 'spy sheikh'—is brother to the United Arab Emirates’ president, the government’s national security adviser, as well as the leader of the oil-rich country’s largest wealth fund. He oversees a more than $1.3 trillion empire funded by his personal fortune and state money that spans from fish farms to AI to surveillance, making him one of the most powerful single investors in the world."

Read it here.

By Rachelle Wilson Tollemar, Adjunct Professor of Spanish, University of St. Thomas.

Minneapolis residents say they feel besieged under what some are calling a fascist occupation. Thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been swarming a city whose vast majority in 2024 did not vote for Donald Trump — or for a paramilitary roundup of its diverse population.

Tragically, two residents have been killed by federal agents. Consequently, social media is aflame with comparisons of Trump’s immigration enforcers to Hitler’s Gestapo.

While comparisons to Hitler’s fascist regime are becoming common, I’d argue that it may be even more fitting to compare the present moment to a less-remembered but longer-lasting fascist regime: that of Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain from 1936 until his death in 1975.

In 2016, critics warned that Trump’s campaign rhetoric was grounded in textbook fascism, exhibiting signs such as racism, sexism and misogyny, nationalism, propaganda and more. In return, critics were met with intense backlash, accused of being hysterical or overly dramatic.

Now, even normally sober voices are sounding the alarm that America may be falling to fascist rule.

As a scholar of Spanish culture, I, too, see troubling parallels between Franco’s Spain and Trump’s America.

Putting them side by side, I believe, provides insightful tools that are needed to understand the magnitude of what’s at risk today.

Franco’s rise and reign

The Falange party started off as a a small extremist party on the margins of Spanish society, a society deeply troubled with political and economic instability. The party primarily preached a radical nationalism, a highly exclusive way to be and act Spanish. Traditional gender roles, monolingualism and Catholicism rallied people by offering absolutist comfort during uncertain times. Quickly, the Falange grew in power and prevalence until, ultimately, it moved mainstream.

By 1936, the party had garnered enough support from the Catholic Church, the military, and wealthy landowners and businessmen that a sizable amount of the population accepted Gen. Francisco Franco’s coup d'etat: a military crusade of sorts that sought to stop the perceived anarchy of liberals living in godless cities. His slogan, “¡Una, Grande, Libre!,” or “one, great, free,” mobilized people who shared the Falange’s anxieties.

Like the Falange, MAGA, the wing of the Republican Party named after Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again,” repeatedly vilifies the left, who mostly live in cities, as godless anarchists who live like vermin.

Once in power, the Francoist regime commissioned a secret police force, the Political-Social Brigade — known as the BPS — to “clean up house.” The BPS was charged with suppressing or killing any political, social, cultural or linguistic dissidents.

Weakening resistance

Franco not only weaponized the military but also proverbially enlisted the Catholic Church. He colluded with the clergy to convince parishioners, especially women, of their divine duty to multiply, instill nationalist Catholic values in their children, and thus reproduce ideological replicas of both the state and the church. From the pulpit, homemakers were extolled as “ángeles del hogar” and “heroínas de la patria,” or “angels of the home” and “heroines of the homeland.”

Together, Franco and the church constructed consent for social restrictions, including outlawing or criminalizing abortion, contraception, divorce, work by women and other women’s rights, along with even tolerating uxoricide, or the killing of wives, for their perceived sexual transgressions.

Some scholars contend that the repealing of women’s reproductive rights is the first step away from a fully democratic society. For this reason and more, many are concerned about the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent overturning of Roe v. Wade.

The #tradwife social media trend involves far-right platforms echoing Francoist-style ideologies of submission, restriction, dependence and white male dominance. One of TikTok’s most popular tradwife influencers, for instance, posted that “there is no higher calling than being a wife and a mother for a woman.” She also questioned young women attending college and rebuked, on air, wives who deny their husbands sexual intimacy.

Weakening the economy

Economically, Franco implemented autarkic policies, a system of limited trade designed to isolate Spain and protect it from anti-Spanish influences. He utilized high tariffs, strict quotas, border controls and currency manipulation, effectively impoverishing the nation and vastly enriching himself and his cronies.

These policies flew under the motto “¡Arriba España!,” or “Up Spain.” They nearly immediately triggered more than a decade of suffering known as the “hunger years.” An estimated 200,000 Spaniards died from famine and disease.

Under the slogan “America First” — Trump’s mutable but aggressive tariff regime — the $1 billion or more in personal wealth he’s accumulated while in office, along with his repeated attempts to cut nutrition benefits in blue states and his administration’s anti-vaccine policies may appear to be disconnected. But together, they galvanize an autarkic strategy that threatens to debilitate the country’s health.

Weakening the mind

Franco’s dictatorship systematically purged, exiled and repressed the country’s intellectual class. Many were forced to emigrate. Those who stayed in the country, such as the artist Joan Miró, were forced to bury their messages deeply within symbols and metaphor to evade censorship.

Currently in the U.S., banned books, banned words and phrases, and the slashing of academic and research funding across disciplines are causing the U.S. to experience “brain drain,” an exodus of members of the nation’s highly educated and skilled classes.

Furthermore, Franco conjoined the church, the state and education into one. I am tracking analogous moves in the U.S. The conservative group Turning Point USA has an educational division whose goal is to “reclaim" K-12 curriculum with white Christian nationalism.

Ongoing legislation that mandates public classrooms to display the Ten Commandments similarly violates religious freedom guarantees ratified in the constitution.

Drawing comparisons

Trump has frequently expressed admiration for contemporary dictators and last week stated that “sometimes you need a dictator.”

It is true that his tactics do not perfectly mirror Francoism or any other past fascist regime. But the work of civil rights scholar Michelle Alexander reminds us that systems of control do not disappear. They morph, evolve and adapt to sneak into modern contexts in less detectable ways. I see fascism like this.

Consider some of the recent activities in Minneapolis, and ask how they would be described if they were taking place in any other country.

Unidentified masked individuals in unmarked cars are forcibly entering homes without judicial warrants. These agents are killing, shooting and roughing up people, sometimes while handcuffed. They are tear-gassing peaceful protesters, assaulting and killing legal observers, and throwing flash grenades at bystanders. They are disappearing people of color, including four Native Americans and a toddler as young as 2, shipping them off to detention centers where allegations of abuse, neglect, sexual assault and even homicide are now frequent.

Government officials have spun deceptive narratives, or worse, lied about the administration’s actions.

In the wake of the public and political backlash following the killing of Alex Pretti, Trump signaled he would reduce immigration enforcement operations] in Minneapolis, only to turn around and have Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorize the use of an old military base near St. Paul, suggesting potential escalation, not de-escalation. Saying one thing while doing the opposite is a classic fascist trick warned about in history and literature alike.

The world has seen these tactics before. History shows the precedent and then supplies the bad ending. Comparing past Francoism to present Trumpism connects the past to the present and warns us about what could come.

Trump Tower. Trump Steaks. Trump University. Trump Watches. Trump cologne, candles, coins, robes, ornaments, towels, pens, gerbils, and gold-tipped suppositories. It’s hard to think of anything Trump hasn’t tried to monetize.

And now, from his premier fantasy collection, there’s Trump UN.

Last September, while Trump was busy solving eight wars that leaders of those countries say never started, never ended, or had nothing to do with him, Trump hatched a plan to line his own pockets with the misery in Gaza. He came up with a Gaza Board of Peace vested with magical powers to maintain order while steering private investments to his friends and family.

Billion-dollar racket

For a mere billion-dollar membership fee, you can join Trump’s Orwellian-themed Board of Peace and dine with the world’s most brutal dictators.

Trump, who invested his dad’s money in Middle East real estate decades ago, claimed last year that the U.S. would “run” Gaza, that he saw “long-term ownership” possibilities there. His “Riviera of the Middle East” proposal with son-in-law Jared Kushner floated luxury tourism and an economic hub, describing a “phenomenal location, on the sea, the best weather” with “unbelievable” potential.

The only hitch? Someone would first need to relocate more than two million desperately poor Palestinians who have nowhere else to go.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, no fan of international law or Palestinians, loved the concept. Arab leaders, not so much. Palestinians, leaders of surrounding Arab nations, and international organizations saw Trumps ‘Riviera’ as ethnic cleansing, ripe for war crimes under international law.

Trump’s peace deal didn’t survive

After widely congratulating himself for the Gaza ceasefire, Trump first mentioned a Gaza Board of Peace to govern reconstruction of the rubble pile last October. The ceasefire never really materialized — they’re still killing each other — but Trump’s Board idea took hold of his ego and ran with it.

As Trump originally designed it, the Board would provide a forum where Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and other Middle East countries could discuss political reforms and reconstruction of Gaza, the latter rife with private profit potential. Trump, who has already pocketed $1.4 billion in loose emoluments since re-assuming the presidency, magnanimously offered to serve as chairman.

By the time he got around to presenting the Board last week at Davos, it had become a barnacle attached to his id, distorted beyond recognition. The Times of Israel published the Board’s charter, announcing that it would “promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict.”

The grandiosity of purpose was not limited to Gaza; as the Times of Israel noted, the charter doesn’t even mention Gaza. Instead Trump’s Board aspires to be a private, mini United Nations divvying up the spoils of war and operating under one thumb: Trump’s.

Democratic leaders politely declined

The Board is Trump’s power fantasy strutting on a catwalk. Under Trump’s plan, he personally gets to decide policies for the world and declare resolutions by majority vote, reserving veto power for himself. He also gets to name his successor, which, preliminarily, will be Don Jr. (when he isn’t in a helicopter slaughtering animals endangered by his dad’s climate ignorance).

Trump has crowned himself and his smirking spawn Chairmen of the Universe of Rogue Actors which includes the leaders of Hungary, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Mongolia, Morocco, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan. They’re all royals or dictators or both, or they’re wannabes buying access. Their billion-dollar entrance fee is a solid investment in their oligarchs, not just in Gaza but around the globe.

When Trump presented the idea at Davos, EU leaders were already aghast at his Greenland blunder. When he invited Canada, the U.K, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and other European nations to join, the invitees had already gotten a good look at who he is, and what he is up to. Unsure whether to attribute Trump’s bombast to dementia, malice or some sick combination of hubris and ignorance, their unified response was to say no thank you, and back away.

What’s left for the Board to do?

While wrecking the global economy and trying to start a civil war at home to slake his midterm worries, Trump has awarded himself the power to “administer Gaza” even as European leaders roll their eyes and describe his derangement as “dangerous.” They are also walking the talk, pivoting away from Trump’s adulterated version of democracy.

This week India and the European Union closed a breakthrough free trade agreement reducing tariffs. German firms’ investments in China are at a four-year high. Working around Trump, Mexico, Canada and China are rapidly expanding their cooperation. Despite Trump’s stated goal of weakening China economically, his tariffs accelerated supply-chain reconfiguration, causing China’s 2025 trade surplus to surge to a record-breaking $1.2 trillion. After treating Venezuela like a real-estate acquisition, Trump can’t even convince his own big oil supporters to invest there.

Real leaders, in short, aren’t buying Trump’s “U.S. economy is hotter than ever” schtick or his Gaza “Peace” Board.

Trump thinks he can fool the world, but he can’t fool anyone outside the Fox News/Sinclair propaganda bubble. He will try to do his worst in Gaza, but the civilized world, fed up with Trump’s insanity, is moving on.

• Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

A hot mic on a livestream Thursday night caught someone behind the camera naming several notable no-shows at the premiere of first lady Melania Trump's self-titled documentary screening at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

In the video, which was shared by several users on social media, a black carpet appeared empty while a voice behind the camera listed names of several Trump allies — including a number of administration officials — who did not appear at the Amazon MGM Studios film's premiere.

Kari Lake, Bret Baier, Kellyanne Conway, Riley Gaines, Kash Patel, Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, Sean Duffy and Peter Navarro were all named as missing at the event by the person behind the camera.

Ticket sales for the film have reportedly been dismal, with the London premiere reportedly drawing in only single-digit ticket sales.

"Melania" will open in 1,400 theaters Friday across the U.S. and in more than 27 other countries. Amazon dropped a reported $35 million on marketing the documentary, and social media posts have suggested that many theaters will be empty as the film rolls.

President Donald Trump has frequently brought up the specter of China in his threats to annex Greenland away from the Kingdom of Denmark, saying that if the United States does not secure the island, it could be used strategically by the Chinese Communist Party.

But in a twist of irony, China itself was hoping to use Trump's obsession with Greenland to weaken the NATO alliance and bring itself closer to Europe, according to diplomatic cables obtained by Politico.

"A cable from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing on Jan. 21 suggests the Chinese government is eager to benefit from Trump’s moves against Greenland. The situation 'offers China an opportunity to benefit from European hedging' and could “'amplify trans-Atlantic frictions,' U.S. diplomats wrote in laying out the thinking in China," said the report. "But the cable, which cites media and analysts affiliated with the ruling Chinese Communist Party, also notes that Chinese leadership was aware that a larger U.S. military footprint in Greenland could complicate their goals in the Arctic and 'consolidate U.S. military and infrastructure advantages.'"

A number of other diplomatic cables further underscored the stress the Greenland sideshow put on European countries, with many leaders enraged but also fearful that too strong a rebuke of Trump would cause critical military partnerships to fall apart.

Both Denmark and the Greenlandic government have closed the door on the U.S. acquiring Greenland; nonetheless, the military, through the NATO alliance, has enjoyed access to the island for strategic purposes for decades.

Earlier this month, Trump seemingly de-escalated from a stance of threatening to send troops to Greenland, saying that he had reached the "framework of a future deal" to determine Greenland's status.

Melania Trump's eponymous documentary flopped in its London debut.

UK cinema chain Vue's will premier "Melania" at 3:10 p.m. at its flagship Islington theater in London, but so far only one person has bought a ticket and just two tickets have sold for a 6 p.m. showing – undercutting President Donald Trump's hype claims, reported LBC.

"MELANIA, the Movie, is a MUST WATCH," Trump posted Tuesday on Truth Social. "Get your tickets today — Selling out, FAST!"

In truth, according to Vue chief executive Tim Richards, UK ticket sales are "soft," and the film – for which Amazon MGM Studios paid a reported $40 million – is projected to make just $5 million during its opening weekend, and trade publication Boxoffice Pro projects less than half that haul.

"I’d be amazed if box office gets reported on this title," one industry insider told The Mirror, adding that the film’s distributors might be paying a fee to cinemas to screen the movie, an established practice known as “four-walling.”

Documentary filmmaker Stefano Da Frè, who was not involved in the film, told CNN that "data-driven" Amazon would not have invested that much expecting to lose money.

“With all their tools, all their AI, Amazon Web Services — they didn’t just come up with that number randomly,” Da Frè said. “They believe, through their metrics, that it’s worth that amount.”

A studio spokesperson backed that assertion and disputed that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had sunk that much money on a "vanity project" for the president's wife.

“We licensed the film for one reason and one reason only — because we think customers are going to love it," the Amazon MGM Studios spokesperson said.

"Melania" will open in 1,400 theaters Friday in the U.S. and in more than 27 other countries, and Amazon spent a reported $35 million on marketing the documentary, and social media posts have suggested that many theaters will be empty as the film rolls.

A top US military official has warned Donald Trump may prolong the end of the war in Ukraine.

Colonel Jonathan Sweet explained how the president could bring the conflict between Russian and Ukraine to an end, but that it would rely on military intervention and the help of NATO. He wrote in The Hill, "Trump has the cards to end the war, but those cards need to be played against Russia and not Ukraine.

"He must coerce Russia to stop attacking, give up their territorial aspirations for the Donbas, and accept a European military peace-keeping force in Ukraine.

"That will likely require military force. It begins with a NATO-enforced no-fly zone over western Ukraine, sufficiently arming Kyiv to defeat Russian forces in Ukraine, and destroying Moscow’s ability to fund and sustain the war.

"Anything less equals a Team Trump forever war in Europe." Sweet had previously referred to this prolonged decision-making as a "forever war" which Trump may have orchestrated.

Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were present for talks between the two nations, which Col. Sweet says did little to ease the tensions.

He wrote, "The talks commenced and concluded in Abu Dhabi the next day. The outcome? Russia refused to back off their maximalist demands and continued to demand Ukraine unilaterally withdraw from the Donbas.

"The U.S. is now 0 for 7 in its negotiations with Russia to end the war — chiefly because Ukraine stubbornly refuses to commit national suicide.

"Kyiv will not give Moscow in negotiations what the Russians cannot take on the battlefield. Nor should they be persuaded or coerced into doing so."

EU diplomats believe the relationship with Trump has broken down and that their dreams of working with him and the administration in the future are dead.

One EU diplomat said, "Our American Dream is dead. Donald Trump murdered it." Another senior envoy from a country described as a "key American ally" by Politico suggested the "trust is lost" with the U.S.

They added, "We are experiencing a great rupture of the world order."

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) was among several lawmakers grilling Secretary of State Marco Rubio over the US attacks on Venezuela.

Kaine called out Rubio and the Trump administration for not seeking congressional approval or consulting lawmakers in the five months since initiating strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea, sending troops into the conflict and the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

"We started this operation on September 2nd with the attack on Venezuelans and boats in open waters, and now we are nearly five months in. Next week is five months. Finally, a public hearing! Wow! How novel," Kaine said. "Finally, a public hearing in the Senate or House. This is the first public hearing we've had. Two hundred folks who are on secret designated combatant lists have been killed, U.S. troops have been injured, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent, an armada amassed the announcement of a new Monroe Doctrine, which does not land well in the Americas. Democrats have been asking over and over again, can we have a public hearing? Can we share what we know with the American public? Finally, a public hearing. But even that hearing is constrained."

Kaine delivered a sharp critique against Rubio and the Trump administration, expressing his frustration over the attack.

"I'd like to talk about the complete weakness of the legal rationale about the strikes on boats in international waters. But I can't, because the administration has only shared it with members in a classified setting," Kaine said. "I can't tell you why the domestic rationale is hollow and the international rationale is hollow. I can't tell you why the rationale for attacking Venezuela is hollow, because, again, the rationale has been shared with us in a closed setting. I can't share with you the grim details of the murder of shipwrecked survivors in open waters that we all know, because we've seen the videos and we've questioned the US military officials involved about legality, because the administration will not release that publicly. They release the boat strike videos publicly, but they hid the second strike that killed struggling shipwreck survivors, even from Congress, for nearly three months. But I can't really talk to you about it."

Kaine questioned what the administration was hiding and why they were targeting these boats.

"I can't talk to you about the weakness of the targeting criteria being used to attack boats in the Caribbean and Pacific," he added. "I would encourage any colleague, if you have not go to the classified setting and ask for a briefing on each strike and ask this question, 'what was the evidence that there were narcotics on that craft?' You will be very surprised if you ask that question about every strike. And so even in this first public hearing, five months in, there's a lot we can't talk about. If it was such a righteous operation, why is the administration and the majority in the senate so jealously protecting the details about it from being revealed to the American public?"

Kaine also described how his constituents have asked him about the American military actions in Venezuela.

"I have Virginians deployed in this operation. I can't answer their families questions," Kaine said. "Thank God we're having a public hearing five months in. This is supposed to be the greatest deliberative body in the world."

Ecuador lodged a complaint after claiming that at least one U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent tried to force his way into the country's diplomatically protected consulate in Minneapolis.

According to Reuters, Ecuador's Foreign Ministry sent a "note of protest" to the U.S. Embassy, insisting that future incidents "not be repeated."

Ecuador's protest described Monday's incident as an "attempted incursion into the Ecuadorean Consulate in Minneapolis by ICE agents."

In a video obtained by BN, consulate staffers could be seen blocking an ICE agent.

"This is a consulate, you cannot enter here," one of the staff members says in the video.

A President Donald Trump ally described his concern and shock over the president's mental state, according to a report Wednesday.

Robert Fico, the Prime Minister of Slovakia, apparently made a private comment after a recent trip to Mar-a-Lago and described his surprise over Trump's disposition, Politico's PL reported.

“Slovakia’s prime minister told EU leaders at a summit last week that a meeting with Donald Trump left him shocked by the U.S. president’s state of mind, five European diplomats briefed on the conversation said," Politico reported.

The MAGA-friendly EU leader has been one of the few European leaders to continue his support for Trump, including the president's stance on "Europe's weakness," according to Politico. Fico was "concerned about the U.S. president’s ‘psychological state,’ two of the diplomats said.”

“Fico used the word ‘dangerous’ to describe how the U.S. president came across during their face-to-face meeting,” according to Politico.

Trump has faced mounting questions about his health, which have increased as the president continues to be spotted in public with swollen ankles and bruised hands. His increased instances of rambling during speeches, along with his MRI scan last year that has yet to be fully explained have also raised concerns among critics.

Eight children including two infants among dead in vehicle carrying displaced people, says Sudan Doctors Network

A drone attack by a paramilitary group has hit a vehicle carrying displaced families in central Sudan, killing at least 24 people, including eight children, a doctors’ group said on Saturday.

The attack by the Rapid Support Forces took place close to the city of Er Rahad in North Kordofan province, according to the Sudan Doctors Network, which tracks the country’s war. The vehicle was transporting displaced people who fled fighting in the Dubeiker area, the group said in a statement. Among the dead children were two infants.

Peaceful demonstrations force a delay in measures aimed at improving revenue collection but which many fear will be fatal for small traders

Demonstrations across Malawi’s four main cities during the past week have achieved a delay in the introduction of a new tax regime that business owners claim will cripple their livelihoods.

Tens of thousands had signed petitions which this week were presented to tax officials and on Monday thousands of small traders shut up shops and businesses to hold protest marches in Blantyre, Lilongwe, Zomba and Mzuzu.

Spain and Portugal hit with torrential rain while flash floods in Morocco force more than 100,000 people to evacuate

The Iberian peninsula has been placed under severe weather alerts as Storm Leonardo continues to batter parts of Spain and Portugal with torrential rain and strong winds.

Since Tuesday, the slow-moving system has brought widespread disruption, flooding and evacuations. In Grazalema, in southern Spain, more than 700mm of rain has fallen since Wednesday, roughly equivalent to the country’s average annual rainfall.

Umar Bio Salihu, 53, the local head of Woro in Kwara state, says gunmen ‘just came in and started shooting’

The traditional chief of a village in western Nigeria where jihadists massacred residents earlier this week has recounted a night of terror during which the attackers killed two of his sons and kidnapped his wife and three daughters.

Umar Bio Salihu, the 53-year-old chief of Woro, a small, Muslim-majority village in Kwara state, said that at about 5pm on Tuesday the gunmen “just came in and started shooting”.

Local politician says armed men rounded up residents, bound their hands behind their backs and shot them

More than 160 people have been killed in two villages in western Nigeria in the country’s deadliest armed assaults this year, as communities reel from repeated and widespread acts of violence perpetrated by jihadists and other armed groups.

The death toll from Tuesday’s attacks in Woro and Nuku in Kwara state stood at 162 on Wednesday afternoon, according to Mohammed Omar Bio, a member of parliament representing the area.

While Quebec parties have long sought independence, the secret meetings by unelected Albertans with US officials have been branded treasonous by some

A separatist push for a referendum on independence from Canada. Meetings with foreign officials perceived to be sympathetic to their cause. Accusations of treason and sedition.

Ahead of a 1995 referendum, leaders of Quebec’s independence movement made a string of provocative overtures to foreign governments, including a trip by the province’s premier to France. In a move that outraged anglophone Canada, the mayor of Paris gave Quebec’s Jacques Parizeau a welcome befitting a national leader.

Special pods at Chester zoo helped conservationists breed and release more than 100,000 greater Bermuda snails

A button-sized snail once feared extinct in its Bermudian home is thriving again after conservationists bred and released more than 100,000 of the molluscs.

The greater Bermuda snail (Poecilozonites bermudensis) was found in the fossil record but believed to have vanished from the North Atlantic archipelago, until a remnant population was discovered in a damp and overgrown alleyway in Hamilton, the island capital, in 2014.

Robert Lloyd Schellenberg was detained on drug charges in 2014 before Canada-China ties nosedived in 2018

China has overturned the death sentence of Canadian Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, a Canadian official said on Friday, in a possible sign of a diplomatic thaw as prime minister Mark Carney seeks to boost trade ties with Beijing.

Schellenberg’s lawyer Zhang Dongshuo, reached in Beijing on Saturday, confirmed the decision was announced on Friday by China’s highest court.

Initial announcement sparked fury from US cattle ranchers as economists say change will have little impact on prices

Donald Trump on Friday signed a proclamation to hike the US’s low-tariff imports of Argentinian beef, though economists have said the attempt to lower costs for US consumers will likely have little impact on prices.

A White House official said in October that Trump would make such a move, evoking fury from the nation’s cattle ranchers.

Founding of diplomatic outposts in Nuuk comes after US made efforts to secure control of Arctic island

• Opposition to US has hardened in western Europe after Greenland threat, poll finds

Canada and France are to open diplomatic consulates in the capital of Greenland on Friday, showing support for their Nato ally Denmark and the Arctic island after US efforts to secure control of the semi-autonomous Danish territory.

Canada’s foreign minister, Anita Anand, was travelling to Nuuk to inaugurate the consulate, which officials say also could help boost cooperation on issues such as the climate crisis and Inuit rights. She was joined by Canada’s Indigenous governor general, Mary Simon.

Exit polls point to public endorsement of new prime minister, after day hit by blizzards and freezing conditions

Japan’s conservative governing party is on course to dramatically strengthen its grip on power after exit polls predicted a landslide victory in Sunday’s lower house elections.

The Liberal Democratic party (LDP) was projected to win between 274 and 328 seats out of a total of 465, according to an exit poll by the public broadcaster NHK, well above the 233 it needed to regain the majority it lost in 2024. Combined with seats secured by its junior coalition partner, the Japan Innovation party, the parties could win between 302 and 366 seats, NHK added.

Residents of New Zealand capital advised not to enter the water, collect seafood or walk their dogs on local beaches after wastewater plant failure

A sewage leak in New Zealand’s capital Wellington has been described by local authorities as an “environmental disaster,” with repairs to the city’s wastewater treatment plant expected to take months.

Residents of Wellington have been advised not to enter the water, collect seafood or even walk their dogs on local beaches.

Dozens of people have died, including two Australians, as record-breaking snowfall blankets the north

Dozens of people have died in Japan after record-breaking snowfall blanketed northern regions of the country, while officials warned that warmer temperatures could trigger a new wave of accidents.

Authorities said 35 people had died in snow-related incidents across Japan since 20 January, with almost 400 injured, 126 of them seriously. Most of the deaths were among people who fell while trying to clear snow from their roofs or around their homes.

The country’s first female PM is the object of a personality cult revolving around everything from her outfits and snacks to her favourite pink pen

Just eight months ago, Japan’s ruling party appeared to have reached the edge of the electoral abyss. It had lost a parliamentary majority for the second time in 15 months; its MPs were implicated in a long-running slush fund scandal; the then prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, was the target of factional plotting.

But as voters prepare to brave freezing temperatures in this Sunday’s lower house elections, the Liberal Democratic party (LDP) is expected to pull off a momentous victory. And the party’s recovery from the disappointment of last year is largely down to one woman.

Taiwanese president says ties with Washington ‘rock solid’, hours after leaders of US and China share first call since November

In their first call since November, Chinese leader Xi Jinping warned US president Donald Trump to be “prudent” about supplying arms to Taiwan, according to a readout of their call provided by China’s foreign ministry.

“President Xi emphasised that the Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-US relations,” the readout said. “China must safeguard its own sovereignty and territorial integrity, and will never allow Taiwan to be separated. The US must handle the issue of arms sales to Taiwan with prudence.”

Laws to be introduced this week include up to two years in prison for distributing, displaying or reciting prohibited phrases to harass or offend

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Queensland could become the first state in Australia to outlaw the phrase “from the river to the sea”, under sweeping new hate speech reforms announced by the state government.

The premier, David Crisafulli, announced the proposed laws on Sunday, ahead of their introduction to parliament on Tuesday, describing them as a direct response to the Bondi terror attack, in which 15 people were killed during a Hanukah celebration.

Wind gusts up to 170km/h could develop as cyclone forecast to make landfall between Exmouth and Onslow on Sunday night

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Severe Tropical Cyclone Mitchell is expected to maintain its category 3 intensity as it barrels along the Pilbara coast before making landfall.

Located west of Karratha, the cyclone was about 30km offshore with 120km/h winds near the centre and gusts up to 165km/h on Sunday morning, according to the Bureau of Meteorology’s latest track map.

Deal sees all former Nationals frontbenchers suspended from shadow ministry until March

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The Coalition has reunited after Sussan Ley brokered a deal with David Littleproud to bring the Liberals and Nationals back together for the second time since the May 2025 election.

Littleproud guaranteed there would be no further splits while he and Ley were in charge, after both leaders made significant concessions to end a messy and damaging period for the struggling conservative parties.

State transport minister says ebikes modified to exceed 25km/h speed limit will be confiscated by police and ‘end up as a twisted wreck’

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The NSW government has announced a “crackdown” on illegally modified ebikes, with police to be given powers to seize and destroy any that exceed the legal speed limit.

The transport minister, John Graham, announced on Sunday that new seizure laws will be developed to allow police to seize any ebike that does not cut power assistance at 25km/h, with non-compliant bikes to be removed from the streets and crushed.

Palestine Action Group march planned from Sydney Town Hall to NSW parliament in breach of public assembly declaration

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A court challenge to the New South Wales government’s use of special powers during the visit of Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, will be decided at an urgent hearing on Monday, as police continue to urge protesters planning to march through Sydney’s CBD to take an alternative route.

At a hastily convened NSW supreme court hearing on Sunday evening, Justice Natalie Adams ruled a challenge by the Palestine Action Group to “major event” powers invoked during the visit would be heard before a planned march from Sydney town hall to state parliament on Monday night. Herzog was expected to arrive on Sunday evening and depart on 12 February.

Blaze probably caused by candles at makeshift tribute near Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana, say police

A memorial for the victims of a deadly fire at a new year party in Switzerland itself caught fire early on Sunday, probably sparked by candles left burning inside, police have said.

It was a makeshift tribute to the 41 people killed and the 115 injured in the fire that erupted in the early hours of 1 January at Le Constellation bar in the ski resort town of Crans-Montana, which was packed with mainly teenagers and young adults.

Relatives shut out of €200m fortune reportedly receive letters from executor saying will could be overturned

The late German-born Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld was famously precise, exacting and known to hold a grudge, but his final wishes concerning the beneficiaries of his vast fortune could now be overturned beyond the grave in a looming court battle.

Seven years after Lagerfeld’s death from cancer, an unnamed plaintiff has come forward to challenge the haute couture titan’s last will and testament.

Arrests follow discovery on Friday of magistrate and her mother in a garage in south-east of country

French authorities have arrested five suspects after a magistrate and her mother were held captive last week for about 30 hours in a cryptocurrency ransom plot, prosecutors said on Sunday.

The arrests of four men and one woman followed the discovery on Friday of the 35-year-old magistrate and her 67-year-old mother, found injured in a garage in the south-eastern Drôme department, the Lyon public prosecutor’s office said.

António José Seguro tipped to beat populist André Ventura with support of mainstream politicians on left and right

The centre-left Socialist candidate, António José Seguro, is heavily favoured to defeat the far-right populist André Ventura in Portugal’s runoff presidential election on Sunday, in a vote that will test the depth of support for Ventura’s brash style of politics.

Recent opinion polls suggest Seguro will collect twice as many votes as Ventura in the head to head between the two top candidates in last month’s first round of voting, when none of the 11 runners captured the more than 50% of the vote required for victory.

Former culture minister Jack Lang resigns from Arab World Institute in Paris and is also subject of tax investigation

Jack Lang, a former French culture minister, has resigned as head of Paris’s prestigious Arab World Institute after revelations of his past contacts with the disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the launch of a financial investigation by French prosecutors.

Lang, 86, resigned on Saturday night before he was due to attend an urgent meeting called by the French foreign ministry to discuss his links to Epstein.

Reporters say relatives in Iran have been questioned and persecuted in an effort to curb coverage of unrest

Exiled Iranian journalists working for the BBC have been warned their movements are being closely monitored by the state, as they said their families in Iran were being interrogated and persecuted for their reporting.

Journalists said family members had been threatened with arrest and the seizure of their assets unless their loved ones stopped reporting on Iranian unrest.

Donald Trump says another meeting set for next week while warning of ‘very steep’ consequences if Tehran doesn’t make a deal

Indirect talks between Iran and the US on the future of Iran’s nuclear programme ended on Friday with a broad agreement to maintain a diplomatic path, possibly with further talks in the coming days, according to statements from Iran and the Omani hosts.

The relieved Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, described the eight hours of meetings as a “good start” conducted in a good atmosphere. He added that the continuance of talks depended on consultations in Washington and Tehran, but said Iran had underlined that any dialogue required refraining from threats.

Zubayar al-Bakoush is suspected in Libya attack resulting in deaths of US ambassador and three other Americans

The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, announced on Friday the arrest of a “key participant” in the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack that killed four US government officials, including the US ambassador to Libya, J Christopher Stevens.

Bondi said the suspect, Zubayar al-Bakoush, was taken into US custody at 3am ET on Friday. “We will prosecute this alleged terrorist to the fullest extent of the law. He’ll face charges related to murder, terrorism, arson, among others,” Bondi told reporters at a press conference at the Department of Justice in Washington DC.

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It is the first time the US and Iran have sat down for face-to-face negotiations since June last year, when Israel launched attacks on Iran that sparked a war marked by tit-for-tat airstrikes, with the US also joining the fray. It effectively ended the US-Iran talks that were held in the weeks prior to the conflict aimed at reaching a nuclear peace agreement.

More recently, Donald Trump has been threatening to strike Iran for more than a month and just last week warned that an “armada” of US warships had reached the Persian Gulf. This recent clash began after Trump said he would strike Iran if it killed protesters during mass antigovernment demonstrations that swept the country last month. Human rights groups say thousands of people were killed during the brutal government crackdown on those protests.

Emails appear to show Mountbatten-Windsor attempting to introduce Epstein to UAE crown prince via foreign affairs minister

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor vouched for Jeffrey Epstein during a UK state visit to the United Arab Emirates with Queen Elizabeth II in 2010, according to newly released emails.

The email was sent from “The Duke” to Epstein on 24 November of that year, with the subject listed as “Abdullah” – an apparent reference to the UAE foreign affairs minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan.