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Donald J. Trump White House 2nd Term Page 16
Mali and Burkina Faso are the latest to issue ‘tit-for-tat’ bans on visas for US citizens with immediate effect.
By Shola Lawal

Mali and Burkina Faso have announced they are imposing full visa bans on United States citizens in retaliation for US President Donald Trump’s ban on US visas for their citizens this month.

The two West African countries, which are both governed by the military, on Tuesday became the latest African nations to issue “tit-for-tat” visa bans on the US. These follow Trump’s new visa restrictions, which now apply to 39 countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. The White House said they were imposed on “national security” grounds.

“In accordance with the principle of reciprocity, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation informs the national and international community that, with immediate effect, the Government of the Republic of Mali will apply the same conditions and requirements to US nationals as those imposed on Malian citizens,” the Malian ministry said in a statement.

Burkina Faso’s foreign minister, Karamoko Jean-Marie Traore, in a separate statement similarly cited a reciprocity rule for his country’s visa ban.
Which countries have issued bans on visas for US citizens?

The US directive issued on December 16 expanded full US visa bans to citizens of five nations other than Mali and Burkina Faso: Laos, Niger, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Syria.

Travellers holding travel documents issued by the Palestinian Authority were also banned from entering the US under the order.

The US cited the countries’ poor screening and vetting capabilities, information-sharing policies, visa overstay rates and refusal to take back their deported nationals for the ban.
Ana Faguy

Adrienne Martin and her family are starting the New Year off without healthcare.

The 47-year-old Texas mother had to make a difficult choice when she found out her monthly healthcare premium was increasing in 2026 from what she described as a manageable $630 (£467) to an unaffordable $2,400 (£1,781).

Her husband depends on an IV medication to treat a blood-clotting disease that costs $70,000 a month without insurance. Knowing their benefits would expire, the family stockpiled the drug to survive the first few months of the year.

"It would be like paying two mortgage payments," she said of the new monthly price for healthcare. "We can't pay $30,000 for insurance a year."

Ms Martin and her family are not the only ones facing this conundrum. Millions of Americans will see their healthcare bills skyrocket when these subsidies, which were provided through the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, expire.

Some members of Congress on both sides of the aisle attempted to extend these subsidies into 2026, but Washington was gridlocked. A vote in the new year could offer hope, but until then, many like Ms Martin will have to live without insurance or see their bills steeply increase.
Americas

More than 20 million people in the United States will face sharply higher health insurance costs as of January 1 after enhanced tax credits that helped enrollees in the Affordable Care Act afford coverage expired overnight. The expiration of the subsidies will mostly affect families, small business owners and self-employed workers.

Enhanced tax credits that have helped reduce the cost of health insurance for the vast majority of Affordable Care Act (ACA, also known as "Obamacare") enrollees expired overnight, cementing higher health costs for millions of people in the United States at the start of the new year.

The change affects a diverse cross-section of the population who don’t get their health insurance from an employer and don’t qualify for Medicaid or Medicare – a group that includes many self-employed workers, small business owners, farmers and ranchers.

On average, the more than 20 million subsidised enrollees in the Affordable Care Act programme are seeing their premium costs rise by 114 percent in 2026, according to an analysis by the healthcare research nonprofit KFF.

The subsidies were first given to Affordable Care Act enrollees in 2021 as a temporary measure to help US residents get through the Covid-19 pandemic. Democrats in power at the time then extended them, pushing the expiration date to the start of 2026. Some lower-income enrollees received health care with no premiums, and high earners paid no more than 8.5 percent of their income. Eligibility for middle-class earners was also expanded.
Luke Garrett

Millions of Americans are facing higher health care premiums in the new year after Congress allowed Affordable Care Act subsidies to expire. But earlier this week, a bipartisan group of senators worked to strike a compromise that could resurrect the enhanced ACA premium tax credits — potentially blunting the blow of rising monthly payments for Obamacare enrollees.

"There's a number of Republican and Democratic senators who are seeing what a disaster this will be for families that they represent," Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., said on Morning Edition Thursday. "That's the common ground here, and it's a doable thing."

Welch said he joined a bipartisan call Tuesday — first reported by Punchbowl News — in which a handful of senators charted out a possible health care compromise.

"We could extend the credits for a couple of years, we could reform it," Welch said of the call. "You could put an income cap, you could have a copay, you could have penalties on insurers who commit fraud. You actually could introduce some cost saving reductions that have bipartisan support."

But according to Welch, this legislation is only doable with President Trump's blessing.
Story by Jesus Mesa

The Trump administration on Thursday warned China to halt military pressure on Taiwan, saying Beijing’s actions and rhetoric are raising tensions unnecessarily in the region. The State Department urged China in a New Year’s Day statement to “exercise restraint, cease its military pressure against Taiwan, and instead engage in meaningful dialogue.

“China’s military activities and rhetoric toward Taiwan and others in the region increase tensions unnecessarily. We urge Beijing to exercise restraint, cease its military pressure against Taiwan, and instead engage in meaningful dialogue,” said State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott on Thursday. “The United States supports peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and opposes unilateral changes to the status quo, including by force or coercion,” he added.

Why It Matters
The drills reflect Beijing’s increasingly assertive military posture toward Taiwan. China claims the island as its territory, despite the Chinese Communist Party never having ruled it. After losing the civil war, the Chinese Nationalist government fled to Taiwan, which now operates as a sovereign state with its own elected government, diplomatic relations, and military.

What To Know
The administration’s statement came after approving an $11 billion arms package for Taiwan, one of the largest in recent years. The deal includes missile systems, naval platforms, and radar upgrades intended to bolster the island’s defenses.

Beijing responded with its sixth round of large-scale military drills since 2022, simulating a blockade of Taiwan’s key ports under the codename “Justice Mission 2025.” China deployed fighter jets, naval ships, and coast guard vessels around the island and fired 27 rockets from its eastern coast. Taiwanese military officials said some landed closer to the main island than ever before.
Trump admin terminates lease of 3 DC golf courses operated by non-profit
The Trump administration is terminating the National Links Trust's lease agreement for three public golf courses in D.C., according to the Washington Post. National Links Trust is a non-profit whose goal is to make golf more affordable and accessible for everyone. Will Smith, co-founder of the organization, joins Laura Barrón-López to share his reaction to learning about the move, saying "we fundamentally disagree" with the move.
Story by Simon Marks

As 2026 gets under way, the closing weeks of the old year have suggested that over the next 12 months, Vice President JD Vance will become increasingly emboldened, promoting himself as the inevitable successor to Donald Trump.

While the current US President is still toying with the idea of trying to circumvent the constitution in order to seek a third term in office, Vance is sending his boss a series of increasingly unsubtle messages that the Make America Great Again revolution will be safe in his hands.

No issue animates Vance more than his hostility towards governments across Europe, including our own. Last February, he stunned European leaders by telling the Munich Security Conference that their continent faced a “threat from within”, and lectured them with the blistering claim that “democracy will not survive if…people’s concerns are deemed invalid or, even worse, not worth being considered”.

The speech served as the Vice President’s coming-out party in Europe, and with hindsight can be viewed as his opening salvo in a campaign that has now found full voice in the US government’s official National Security Strategy.

Vance, a political chameleon for much of his life, is a key influence behind the strategy’s argument that immigration will soon leave Europe facing “civilisational erasure”. But beyond his enthusiastic backing of the Trump administration’s masked agents seizing people off America’s streets, he is also the lead administration voice warning Europe over what he claims is the continent’s “backsliding” on freedom of speech.
During a House Homeland Security Committee hearing today, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem tried to blame the recent D.C. shooting on former President Joe Biden. Noem's blame game crashed into a dead end when Congressman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) called out the Trump Administration for approving the asylum application of the D.C. shooter.
Story by abitter@businessinsider.com (Alex Bitter)

As the US one-cent coin disappears from circulation, stores are putting up signs asking for exact change or advising customers that their change will be rounded.

Retailers from AutoZone to Whole Foods are putting up the signs at checkouts pointing to the penny shortage and outlining their response to it.

Though the US Mint struck the last pennies in November, Congress hasn't approved any laws around the denomination's phase-out, including how retailers should handle cash transactions that don't end in five or 10 cents. That's forced many retailers to implement their own policies, including rounding transactions up or down to a nickel or dime.

"When they don't have pennies, rounding comes into place," Dylan Jeon, the National Retail Federation's senior director of government relations, told Business Insider.

At a Whole Foods location in Brooklyn this week, Business Insider saw a sign saying that the store "is unable to receive new pennies to make change with."

"If you pay in cash, your change will be rounded up to the nearest nickel and may not match the amount you see on the receipt," the sign read.
Story by Steve Goldstein

The swift and successful U.S. operation to capture Venezuela president Nicolas Maduro is likely to pressure oil and could unleash a reaction in other financial markets on Monday.

President Donald Trump announced the capture of Maduro, and according to U.S. Senator Mike Lee citing Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the Venezuelan leader will be put on trial.

While the U.S. operation against Venezuela did not come entirely out of the blue, the timing may have caught many by surprise. On the prediction market Kalshi, for instance, the market for Maduro leaving office before February was trading around 13 cents on the dollar.

The immediate focus of markets will be on oil which already has lost 22% over the last 52 weeks.
Nick Paton Walsh

Expressions of unbridled power don’t come blunter than abducting a sitting president from his capital in the dead of night.

President Donald Trump has shown in a 74-word social media post that he can act decisively, suddenly and perhaps recklessly, in pursuit of his varied and varying foreign policy goals, with little regard for precedent, consequence or it seems, international law.

The operation to take Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife from their heavily guarded location in Caracas to – presumably – face the American court system, does follow a predictable albeit extreme pattern for what the US calls a fugitive, with a $50 million bounty on his head.

But there is a grave exception here: Maduro is a head of state, whose nation is prey to various ongoing US political objectives. Whatever the indictments say, this will always feel political.

Successive White Houses have wanted to remove Venezuela’s left-leaning, yet autocratic and at times violent, regime – whether for fighting drug trafficking, or for their oil, or for regional alignment.

The second Trump term promoted an end to Maduro’s role as kingpin of a vast regional narco-trafficking network as key to its rationale. But they ran into a paradox when suggesting Maduro just leave power: He could not be both the kingpin and a man who could walk out on his role at the drop of a hat.

The evidence that Maduro was top of the regional tree was also not as substantial as the White House would have hoped. Yes, Venezuela undoubtedly permitted drug trafficking from its airspace and shores, with the top, global cocaine producer Colombia just over the border. But Mexico and Colombia’s cartels were bigger players – yet seemed to attract less US military focus.
Story by Trevor Jennewine

Key Points
The S&P 500 advanced 16% in 2025, notching double-digit gains for the third straight year.

Federal Reserve research suggests President Trump's tariffs will slow economic growth.

The S&P 500 trades at the most expensive valuation since the dot-com crash in 2000.

The S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) added 16% in 2025, marking the third consecutive year in which the benchmark index has recorded double-digit gains. Unfortunately, investors have reason to think 2026 will more challenging. Evidence suggests President Trump's tariffs are hurting the economy, and the stock market just flashed a warning last seen during the dot-com crash in 2000.

Here's what investors should know.
President Trump's tariffs have coincided with reduced manufacturing activity, higher unemployment, and record-low consumer sentiment
In 2025, President Donald Trump broke with decades of trade-policy precedent and imposed sweeping tariffs that raised the average tax on U.S. imports to 16.8%, the highest level since 1935, per the Budget Lab at Yale. And Trump -- who once called tariffs "the most beautiful word" in the dictionary -- has made many misleading or inaccurate statements to drum up support for his signature trade policies.
Story by Alex Henderson

Within in the MAGA movement, a far-right legal doctrine known as the Unitary Executive Theory has become increasingly prominent. The theory claims that U.S. presidents have sole authority over the federal government's executive branch, and its critics argue that it ignores the checks and balances in the U.S. Constitution.

One of those critics is Simon Lazarus, who was a domestic policy adviser for President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s but has spent most of his career working for Washington, D.C. law firms.

In an article published by The New Republic on January 2, Lazarus is highly critical of the Unitary Executive Theory and the U.S. Supreme Court — which, he argues, is helping to advance an idea that has no "grounding" in the U.S. Constitution.

The High Court recently heard oral arguments in Trump v. Slaughter, President Donald Trump's legal battle with former Federal Trade Commission (FTC) official Rebecca Slaughter (who he fired). Trump and his lawyers believe that under the Unitary Executive Theory, the president had a right to fire Slaughter. But Slaughter's allies are countering that the executive branch, under the Constitution, doesn't have nearly as much power as he says it does.
Story by Jeet Heer

On Christmas Day, Donald Trump delivered the most bizarre yuletide message ever offered by a US president. Complaining that he’s being unfairly linked to the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, Trump posted a long rant on Truth Social that began, “Merry Christmas to all, including the many Sleazebags who loved Jeffrey Epstein.” Trump went on to lament how he is being blamed for his ties with Epstein, protesting that he was “actually the only one who did drop Epstein, and long before it became fashionable to do so.”

Trump’s claim to have dropped Epstein is partly true but obscures a crucial fact: that he and Epstein were close friends from the 1980s until their break at some point in 2003. Epstein had been barred from the spa at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in 2003 and the two men seemed to have a more definitive break in 2004. The exact circumstances of the break remain mysterious, since Trump has offered conflicting accounts, sometimes claiming that he was mad that Epstein “stole” an employee from Mar-a-Lago and sometimes referring to competition the two men had over real estate in 2004.
Story by Diksha

Donald Trump had earlier said he underwent an MRI during his October health checkup at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. However, a new update contradicts that claim, with Trump now saying, “It wasn’t an MRI. It was less than that. It was a scan.”

Meanwhile, there have been rumors about his declining health. Some signs often cited online include bruises on his hands, swollen ankles, and a bulge in his pants that some have speculated could be from a catheter. He has also, at times, been heard slurring his speech. Some netizens have labeled him a “senile president” and suggested these signs point to dementia in progress.
How to steal an election: delay the date the ballots were mailed.

Story by Anna Liss-Roy

A recent change to how the U.S. Postal Service says it postmarks letters could discount the ballots of thousands of last-minute voters.

Many Americans have long assumed that tax returns, ballots and other mailed documents sent on deadline would be marked as sent the day they are dropped in a mailbox.

But the Postal Service announced Dec. 24 that it was making no such guarantees about postmarks. Its new guidelines say a postmark might come days later, when mail is actually processed at a regional facility, sometimes miles from a local mailbox.

Most states require mail ballots to be in the hands of election officials by Election Day. Fourteen states provide a grace period allowing mail ballots to be counted if they arrive after Election Day if they are postmarked by then, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. More than two dozen others provide grace periods for military and overseas voters.

A Postal Service spokesperson, Martha Johnson, said the new guidance does not actually signal a change to the current practice. It is merely putting that practice into the service’s written protocols. Voters can still get a postmark on the day they mail a ballot if they request one at a local post office.
Treasury data shows the national debt jumped $1 trillion in 82 days as persistent budget deficits continue. The Government Accountability Office warns higher debt translates to increased interest rates on mortgages, car loans, and credit cards.
Opinion by Thom Hartmann

The turn of the calendar is more than a ritual. It’s a reminder that democracy is not self sustaining, not guaranteed, and not permanent unless we choose it again and again.

If we want this new year to be about renewal rather than retreat, we need to give some serious thought to what it’ll take to reclaim and defend the democratic republic that generations before us fought, organized, and sacrificed to build.

The American Revolution was not just a revolt against British rule. It was a revolt against three ancient tyrannies that had dominated human society for thousands of years. Warlord kings. The morbidly rich. And theocrats.

The Founders knew exactly what they were fighting. They wrote about it constantly, in the Declaration of Independence and in decades of letters to one another. They believed those three forces were the natural enemies of freedom, and unless they were restrained, they would always claw their way back into power.

Today, every one of those tyrannies is back. And they’re not even pretending otherwise.

The first tyranny was the warlord king. For most of human history, power came from violence. Kings ruled because their ancestors slaughtered their neighbors, seized land, and enforced obedience at sword point. They claimed God had chosen them, demanded loyalty, and crushed dissent.
Story by Tom Peterson

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian declared Iran is engaged in "full-scale war" with the United States, Israel, and Europe following President Trump's explicit warnings of additional military strikes.

The statement came after Trump's December 29 meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago, where he threatened to "knock the hell" out of Iran if it rebuilds nuclear or missile capabilities.​

June Conflict Transformed Regional Dynamics
The current crisis stems from the devastating 12-day Israel-Iran war in June 2025, when Israeli and American forces struck over 100 targets across Iran.

The conflict killed between 1,060 and 1,190 Iranians, including senior military commanders and nuclear scientists, while destroying critical infrastructure and setting back Iran's nuclear program by 18-24 months according to Pentagon assessments.​

Tehran Promises "Decisive Response"
President Pezeshkian warned that Iran's response to any new aggression would be "harsh and discouraging," claiming Iranian military forces are now "stronger in terms of equipment and manpower" than before June.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi invoked Iran's right to self-defense under international law, threatening "decisive, overwhelming, and proportionate force" against further attacks.​​
Story by Daysia Tolentino

Another government official has been busted, seemingly using their post in the Trump administration for personal gain.

Documents obtained by the New York Times found that the third-highest-ranking official in the Interior Department failed to disclose her family’s financial interest in a controversial government-approved lithium mine.

Frank Falen, who owns Home Ranch in northern Nevada, sold water to Lithium Nevada Corporation, a subsidiary of Lithium Americas, for $3.5 million in 2018. The mining company was planning a new lithium mine near the ranch called Thacker Pass. Falen is the husband of Karen Budd-Falen, who currently serves as Associate Deputy Secretary of the Interior.

At the time of the sale, Budd-Falen was deputy solicitor of the agency, which manages the country’s natural resources and land. Falen’s water contract was dependent on Thacker Pass securing a permit from the Interior Department, according to the New York Times. Budd-Falen met Lithium Americas executives for lunch in November 2019, although a company representative told the outlet that they had not discussed the mine.
During a roundtable discussion at the White House several weeks ago in late October, Donald Trump openly admitted that he pardoned billionaire and former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao because "very good people" told him to.
Story by Max Rego

(The Hill) – A new report from Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee outlines crimes committed by Jan. 6 rioters since the 2021 attack on the Capitol.

The report, shared with The Hill, notes that at least 23 individuals charged in connection with the sprawling Jan. 6 case committed new crimes between the attack and President Trump’s second inauguration last January. These crimes include plotting the murder of FBI agents in retaliation for investigating the case; violent assault; strangulation; possession of child sexual abuse material and reckless DUI homicide.

Trump pardoned nearly all Jan. 6 defendants on his first day back in office, after vowing to do so throughout his third presidential campaign.

Venezuela’s Maduro set for first court appearance after US capture
“What they’ve done to these people is outrageous,” Trump said at the time.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, has slammed the president for his role in Jan. 6 and for pardoning the individuals involved last year. The report echoes his rhetoric, saying that the attack “would never have happened without then-President Trump’s instigation and involvement.”
The House Judiciary Committee on New Year's Eve released a full transcript and video of former special counsel Jack Smith's closed-door deposition before the Republican-led panel earlier this month. The release consists of a 255-page transcript and more than eight hours of video. Smith sought to testify publicly, but his request was denied by Republicans on the Judiciary Committee. The Morning Joe panel discusses.
Story by Rodrik Cassel

American cattle ranchers face an unprecedented crisis as President Trump's sudden reversal of beef tariff protections in October 2025 triggered a devastating market collapse. With the national herd at its smallest level since 1951, just 86.7 million head, ranchers had finally begun recovering from years of losses.

Now, the announcement to quadruple Argentine beef imports threatens to erase gains and spark another contraction. The timeline reveals how fast it unraveled.

When Protection Turns Into Betrayal
Cattle ranchers across Texas and the Great Plains thought President Trump's tariffs finally turned luck around. In April 2025, the 10% reciprocal tariff on beef imports offered hope. By October 2025, Trump announced quadrupling Argentine beef quotas from 20,000 to 80,000 metric tons at reduced tariffs. Feeder cattle futures fell $41 per hundredweight, cutting $80 to $100 per head overnight. The reason shocked even loyal supporters.

A Herd Crisis Years In The Making
The U.S. cattle herd shrank to 86.7 million head by January 2025, the lowest since 1951, a 74-year low. Seven straight years of contraction came from drought, record input costs, and depressed prices that forced liquidation of breeding herds. Then, 2024 and early 2025 finally brought profitability. Ground beef hit $6.32 per pound in August 2025. Still, warning signs were quietly stacking up.
Story by Trevor Jennewine

Key Points
President Trump's tariffs have coincided with a sharp reduction in hiring and the highest unemployment rate in more than four years.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will release its November JOLTS report on Wednesday; the consensus estimate calls for 7.6 million job openings.

The BLS will release its December Employment Situation report on Friday; the consensus estimate says the economy will add 55,000 jobs while unemployment drops to 4.5%.

The S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) has advanced 93% since entering bull market territory in October 2022. But the bull market is still quite young by historical standards. Since 1957, the average duration has been five years, during which the index added an average of 184%.

However, several headwinds threaten to derail the bull market this year. The S&P 500 tends to perform poorly around midterm elections, recording an average intrayear drawdown of 18%, according to CFRA Research. In addition, the S&P 500's forward price-to-earnings ratio is near the "upper end of its historical range," according to the Federal Reserve.

Meanwhile, President Trump's tariffs are a significant source of uncertainty for consumers and businesses. As a result, consumer sentiment recorded its lowest reading in history (since surveys started in 1952) last year, and businesses have pumped the brakes on hiring new employees.

On that front, investors will get several important pieces of information this week.
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin were all smiles as they met in Alaska for Ukraine ceasefire talks, with a lip reader detailing the moment the US President whispered "I'll help you" to his Russian counterpart
Liam Doyle

Donald Trump seemed to immediately back Vladimir Putin during their high-stakes meeting in Alaska tonight, with a lip reader revealing the moment he whispered, "I'll help you".

The two world leaders were all smiles as they landed in Anchorage this evening for Ukraine ceasefire discussions although meeting details were changed last minute. The duo looked like old pals as they walked down the red carpet to Mr. Trump's waiting Presidential limo.
Story by Charles P. Pierce

Everybody with any brains in this country has a pet paranoia these days. This is mine. The other day, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago made one of his funny jokes about cancelling this year’s midterm elections.

“I won’t say cancel the election, they should cancel the election because the fake news will say ‘he wants the elections canceled. He’s a dictator.’ They always call me a dictator.”
Well, if the armband fits...

Anyway, with Venezuela back in the news again, follow me down the rabbit hole for a while. Remember Sidney Powell, the bananapants election-denying lawyer who performed her duties so well that the president had to pardon her? Central to Powell’s pitch back then was her theory that, via complicated means that may have included dragon’s teeth and magic beans, Nicolás Maduro manipulated the Dominion voting machines in this country. From The New York Times:
Story by Adam Lynch

"It’s not just that American manufacturing under President Donald Trump is shrinking,” argued journalist David Shuster on his Blue Amp Substack. “It’s that U.S. manufacturing is shrinking under a lunatic who never tires of boasting that he alone can make U.S. manufacturing great again.”

Despite Trump hammering former President Joe Biden on his economy in the months leading up to Trump’s election, Shuster observed that U.S. manufacturing actually grew under Biden.

“Output climbed to record levels. Investment poured into factories, supply chains stabilized following the Covid hurdles, and the dull, unglamorous business of making things regained a measure of dignity. The boost in U.S. manufacturing was achieved not with chest-thumping speeches or tariff tantrums, but with policies designed for the real world—predictability, infrastructure, and a government that did not wake up each morning looking for a trade war to fight,” Shuster wrote.

But then came Trump 2.0 and his tariffs. Shuster – a former CNN, Fox News and NBC reporter – pointed out that manufacturing has yet to recover from the wave of tariffs Trump imposed last spring.
Story by David Edwards

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) lashed out at Republicans on the House Oversight Committee for jumping on alleged daycare fraud in Minnesota while ignoring President Donald Trump's pardons of fraudsters.

"And when people commit fraud, and people get hurt, there's going to be repercussions as there should be," Garcia said during a Wednesday hearing. "We want to hold fraudsters accountable. We want to protect the victims and innocent people."

"But we also know that's not how it should work according to President Trump," he continued. "President Trump granted a get out of jail free pardon to Philip Esformes. Now, Mr. Esformes is a nursing home mogul convicted of schemes who defraud Medicare and Medicaid of $1.3 billion. Where is that hearing?"

"Let's look at another case, another Trump case. Joseph Schwartz, he was sentenced for taking advantage of nursing home residents and workers and defrauding the government of $38 million."
"Put this in your primary ads, Dems."
Michaela Bramwell by Michaela Bramwell | BuzzFeed Staff

During Donald Trump's recent remarks at the House GOP Retreat, he became a little too candid about his views on healthcare — an issue that many of his supporters have been begging him to address.

After ranting about how "horrible" Obamacare has been, he said this:

"One thing I've learned, I've learned a lot about healthcare. I've found healthcare sort of like...not of tremendous interest. But it was very important."
During an announcement from the Oval Office last year in August, Donald Trump interrupted his remarks to needlessly show reporters a photo of Vladimir Putin. "I thought you'd all like to see it," Krasnov Trump excitedly stated.
Story by Bryan Brunati

Jeffrey Epstein sent a “massive” bodyguard to a photographer’s studio to retrieve images he didn’t want anyone else to ever see, Knewz.com can report.

Christopher Anderson — the photojournalist whose headline-making close-up Vanity Fair portraits of White House officials including Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt sparked a firestorm in recent weeks — revealed the late financier once did all he could to get his hands on the photos he’d posed for inside his New York City mansion after successfully getting a magazine to scrap plans to run them.

Anderson’s Epstein encounter
Anderson took to Instagram to share photos of the late predator he snapped in 2015 after being hired to “make a portrait of Epstein to accompany an article” by vocal Donald Trump critic and author Michael Wolff for New York Magazine.

The photographer explained that he “didn’t know much” about Epstein at the time he was hired, “other than the fact that he had heavy connections to powerful men.”

Anderson recalled that when he got to Epstein’s seven-story home on the Upper East Side, “A young woman with an Eastern European accent answered the door (I would later see the same girl setting up a massage table in a room just off one of his offices) followed quickly by his private secretary, Lesley Groff.

“When Epstein arrived, his eyes sized me up like someone always looking for the angles. He quizzed me about my pictures, how the shoot would go, and how much I thought my pictures were worth,” he continued.

Epstein was very particular and “didn’t want anyone else to have the pictures after the magazine published them,” Anderson wrote, explaining how he “offered me $20K to own them after publication.”
Story by Pratik Sharma

Jeffrey Epstein’s brother, Mark Epstein, told the FBI in 2023 that his sibling was murdered because he was prepared to “name names.”

In a formal complaint, Mark alleged, “I have reason to believe he was killed because he was about to name names. I believe President Trump authorized his murder.”

The allegation appeared in a recent batch of files released by the Department of Justice under congressional orders to disclose Epstein-related records.

DOJ’s official response
The Department of Justice rejected the claim, noting some of the released documents included “untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump.”
Story by Sarah Rumpf

Two people were shot and injured in Portland, Oregon Thursday afternoon in an incident “involving” federal agents, the Portland Police confirmed in a press release.

According to the statement on the department’s website, Portland Police officers responded to ” a report of a shooting” at 2:18 pm PT and the officers “confirmed that federal agents had been involved in a shooting.”

“Portland Police were not involved in the incident,” the statement noted, and added more details:

At 2:24 p.m., officers received information that a man who had been shot was calling and requesting help in the area of Northeast 146th Avenue and East Burnside. Officers responded and found a male and female with apparent gunshot wounds. Officers applied a tourniquet and summoned emergency medical personnel. The patients were transported to the hospital. Their conditions are unknown. Officers have determined the two people were injured in the shooting involving federal agents.

“We are still in the early stages of this incident,” said PPB Chief Bob Day. “We understand the heightened emotion and tension many are feeling in the wake of the shooting in Minneapolis, but I am asking the community to remain calm as we work to learn more.”

The PPB released the map below showing the location of the shooting and where the individuals were located.
Story by John O'Sullivan & Amrita Carroll

Jesse Ventura has called President Donald Trump "a draft-dodging coward" and hinted he might make another run for Minnesota governor, in the wake of a wave of immigration enforcement raids sweeping through Minneapolis.

Ventura, who held the Minnesota governorship from 1999 to 2003, opted against seeking a second term. The Vietnam veteran and former Navy SEAL is perhaps best remembered by many for his wrestling days as Jesse "The Body" Ventura in the WWE.

While visiting his alma mater, Roosevelt High School, Ventura didn't hold back in his criticism of Trump, who avoided the Vietnam War draft through a medical exemption for bone spurs.

"He's the draft-dodging coward who, when it was his time to serve his country, did what all rich white boys did. I wasn't a rich white boy...We had to go...He's gonna tell me what courage is?" Ventura told local outlet Fox 9.
Story by Dan Mangan

Federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell focused on the $2.5 billion renovation to the central bank's headquarters in Washington, D.C., and his related testimony to Congress, he said on Sunday evening.

Powell said the probe is the result of longstanding frustration by President Donald Trump over the Fed's refusal to cut interest rates as quickly and as much as the president has demanded.

"The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President," Powell said in a video statement tweeted by the Fed's X account.

The chairman warned that the outcome of the investigation will determine the future of the central bank's decisions.

"This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions — or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation," Powell said.

Powell said the Department of Justice on Friday served the Fed "with grand jury subpoenas threatening a criminal indictment related to my testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last June."

"That testimony concerned, in part, a multi-year project to renovate historic Federal Reserve office buildings," he said.

The threat of indictment, Powell said, "is not about my testimony last June or about the renovation of the Federal Reserve buildings."
Story by John Bowden

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy said on Sunday that Donald Trump had so far in his second term committed “10 times” the number of impeachable offenses as he’d committed in his first term and appeared to disagree with senior members of his party who’ve waved off impeachment efforts.

The Connecticut lawmaker has become an increasingly prominent voice among his party’s younger members, who favor a more forceful pushback against the president as his party looks toward 2026.

Murphy spoke Sunday with NBC’s Kristen Welker on Meet the Press, where Welker asked him a question about former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s declaration late in 2025 that Trump’s conduct did not rise to the standard of impeachable so far under his second term. Murphy firmly disagreed.

“I know that this president has committed ten times more impeachable offenses in his second term as he did in his first term. He is stealing from the American people,” he said, calling his judgment a result of having “common sense”.

“The amount of corruption that he is involved in, taking a luxury private jet from Qatar, trading national security secrets to a foreign nation in exchange for a $2 billion investment in his cryptocurrency. That is wildly corrupt,” he said. “I don't think it's any secret that the president's level of corruption and illegality is nuclear grade in his second term compared to his first term.”
Story by Daniel Gura

Jeffrey Epstein once warned that Donald Trump would “misuse” his presidential pardon powers in a “childlike way” to make desperate offenders forever loyal to him, Knewz.com can report.

One of the president’s harshest critics made the claim about the late predator and the politician, explaining that as Epstein saw it, Trump would view his pardon power as a toy or tool of absolute, unquestionable authority.

Presidential pardons for sale?
Author Michael Wolff, who’s written extensively about both Trump and Epstein — who sat for more than 100 hours of interviews with Wolff mostly in 2017, the writer has said — told The Daily Beast‘s “Inside Trump’s Head” podcast that the late financier previously told him Trump “loves having this kind of thing” and “loves showing the power that he has.”

Wolff said a presidential pardon can be bought as long as the price is right.

“There are no free pardons here,” he said, explaining that wealthy and high-profile offenders need to “know people who know people who know Trump, with an amount of money that has been passed along the line.”
Story by Matthew Chapman

A federal judge on Monday rejected the Trump administration's latest rationale for blocking an offshore wind project under construction by a Danish company.

According to Bloomberg News, "The Revolution Wind project, intended to power hundreds of thousands of homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut, 'would be irreparably harmed' unless work was allowed to continue during the legal fight, US District Judge Royce C. Lamberth in Washington concluded Monday. The project is almost 90% complete."
Story by Karina Tsui, CNN

The Department of Homeland Security has altered its account of an immigration enforcement-related shooting in a Baltimore suburb on Christmas Eve after details in its initial statement were contradicted by local police.

On December 24, DHS issued a statement saying Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers “defensively fired” at a van occupied by two undocumented immigrants during an enforcement operation in Glen Burnie, Maryland, after the driver rammed ICE vehicles while trying to flee and “then drove his van directly at ICE officers, attempting to run them over.”

The driver was shot and wounded, and the passenger was injured when the van crashed seconds later, according to the original statement from DHS.

The department now says the injured man was not in the van but “was a passenger in one of the ICE vehicles that was rammed,” according to a new statement to CNN from DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

The changed account comes as DHS faces increased scrutiny over the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman by an ICE agent last week – and more broadly over the veracity of the information the department puts forward regarding federal officers’ actions while carrying out President Donald Trump’s nationwide immigration crackdown.

The new detail in the Maryland ICE shooting was first announced Thursday by the Anne Arundel County Police Department, which is investigating the incident.

“To clarify preliminary information released publicly on the shooting involving ICE agents in Glen Burnie, Maryland, on December 24, 2025: one ICE detainee who was injured during the incident was already in custody in an ICE vehicle, and the other individual injured was struck by gunfire while operating a separate vehicle,” the police department said.
Donald Trump accused of leaking "market-sensitive data"
Story by Hugh Cameron

President Donald Trump has been accused of releasing embargoed “market-sensitive data” before these were made public on Friday.

On Thursday evening, Trump posted a graph to Truth Social showing aggregate changes in private and government employment in 2025, which incorporated data from the jobs report the Department of Labor released the next morning.

“Donald Trump’s decision to leak market-sensitive data was nothing but an attempt to distract from his failing economy,” Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts posted to X on Monday.

One White House official called Trump’s post an “inadvertent public disclosure of aggregate data that was partially derived from prereleased information” in a statement to Newsweek.

Why It Matters
According to The Associated Press, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) tightly restricts access to the data contained in its inflation and jobs reports. However, it provides advance copies to the White House under strict confidentiality agreements to prepare summaries for the president ahead of their official release. Meanwhile, the Office of Management and Budget bars executive branch officials from commenting on this data ahead of time, while also forbidding any public commentary until at least 30 minutes after their publication.

This secrecy is intended to prevent the sensitive, nonpublic information from being disseminated and prematurely influencing financial markets. These early disclosure concerns are particularly acute in the case of the monthly Employment Situation report—considered one of the most closely watched economic releases worldwide.
Turkey has issued a stark warning to the United States as fears mount over a potential military strike on Iran. Ankara says any foreign intervention would ignite regional chaos and destabilize the entire Middle East. Turkish officials insist Iran’s internal crisis must be resolved through national will, not outside force, while warning that Israel-provoked actions could spiral into a wider conflict.The warning comes as President Donald Trump signals readiness for decisive action against Iran’s leadership and announces sweeping 25 percent tariffs on countries doing business with Tehran.
NYT just confirmed why the left was right about Trump being a fascist
Story by Phenix S Halley

When President Donald Trump‘s longest-serving chief of staff, John Kelly, declared he fit the definition of a fascist in 2024, Republicans called him crazy. They claimed there was no way fascism could’ve made its way to the U.S. But almost two years have passed, and fears of fascism continue to brew. Now, experts believe it’s finally time to call a spade a spade, bringing even more fears about the future of American democracy to the forefront.

The textbook definition of fascism emphasizes extreme nationalism, militarism and suppression of opposition for the benefit of the government. According to The New York Times, Trump fits the category to a T.

“If anyone had predicted back in 2024 precisely what Trump’s return to the White House was going to look like, I suspect they’d have been accused of suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome,” columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote. “But the shrillest of Resistance libs have always understood Trump better than those who make a show of their dispassion.”

Take Trump’s recent capture of Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro. The president skipped over the Constitution, which demands he ask Congress’ approval for military use, and essentially took over the nation’s oil reserves. Trump has also flirted with taking over other sovereign countries like Greenland and Canada– straight out of the playbook of fascist leaders like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
Story by Ally Webb

President Donald Trump's January 8, 2026, Fox News declaration—"We're going to start now hitting land with regard to the cartels"—sent shockwaves through Mexico, signaling a dramatic escalation that could mark the first US ground military operations on allied Mexican soil since the 1916 Pancho Villa Expedition. The threat came mere hours after US Delta Force operators captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas, demonstrating Washington's willingness to conduct deep-strike operations in Latin America.

From Sea to Land: Trump's Expanding War
Operation Southern Spear, initiated in September 2025, has conducted over 35 maritime strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, eliminating more than 115 suspected traffickers according to US Southern Command. Trump has claimed—without independent verification—that nearly 97% of sea-borne drugs have been intercepted, though fact-checkers dispute this figure. Now, with Trump publicly threatening land operations, the focus could shift to cartel strongholds in Sinaloa, Jalisco, and border states where fentanyl production fuels over 100,000 annual US overdose deaths.

The White House justifies potential military action under Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designations for six Mexican cartels, established February 20, 2025: Sinaloa, Jalisco New Generation (CJNG), Northeast, Gulf, United Cartels, and Michoacán Family. These labels equate cartels to groups like ISIS, enabling military responses typically reserved for terrorist organizations.

Venezuela Operation as Blueprint
Operation Absolute Resolve in Caracas offers a potential model: 150 aircraft, Delta Force teams, and approximately 70-100 casualties per Venezuelan government reports. This urban deep-strike success prompted Trump to threaten Mexican operations within 48 hours. Military analysts identify dozens of potential targets including leadership compounds, fentanyl labs in Sinaloa and Jalisco, Chinese precursor import ports like Manzanillo and Lázaro Cárdenas, border smuggling hubs, and weapons caches.
TAG24 NEWS

Washington DC - The Pentagon disguised a military aircraft as a civilian plane to wage its first attack on a boat in the Caribbean last year, killing 11, the New York Times reported Monday.

The alleged move would be in violation of international laws of armed conflict, which prohibit combatants from "feigning civilian status to fool adversaries...a war crime called 'perfidy,'" the Times reported.

The US strike was announced by President Donald Trump in a September 2, 2025, social media post that charged the targets were members of the Tren de Aragua criminal organization "operating under the control of Nicolas Maduro, responsible for mass murder, drug trafficking, sex trafficking and acts of violence and terror."

The aircraft was painted to look like a civilian plane, and its munitions were hidden inside the fuselage instead of being carried visibly under its wings, the Times reported.
Story by Jennifer Jett

HONG KONG — China had its biggest trade surplus ever last year at almost $1.2 trillion, according to data released Wednesday, defying tariffs President Donald Trump has imposed on the world’s second-largest economy as it sends more exports to other parts of the world.

China’s foreign trade in goods last year totaled 45.47 trillion yuan ($6.51 trillion), up 3.8% from the year before, state media reported, citing figures from the General Administration of Customs. That included 26.99 trillion yuan ($3.8 trillion) in exports and 18.48 trillion yuan ($2.6 trillion) in imports.

Exports grew 6.1% compared with the previous year, while imports grew 0.5%.

The yearly data comes after China’s trade surplus surpassed the $1 trillion mark for the first time in November, compared with a trade surplus of $992 billion for all of 2024.

China had a monthly trade surplus of more than $100 billion seven times last year, helped in part by a weak yuan, compared with just once in 2024. Its overall exports have remained strong even as exports to the U.S. fell 28% in 2025, according to a report this week published by shipping data company Project 44.
During his remarks at a Detroit Economic Club meeting yesterday, President Trump admitted that he does whatever his cabinet tells him to. Trump stated, "If he didn't agree, I wouldn't do it."
Story by Rasmus Senator

ICE and the Trump administration have sparked furious reactions and received hefty criticism amid the dispatch of ICE agents inthe Minneapolis-Saint Paul area. Now, a video has gone viral where footage shows ICE agents allegedly dragging a disabled woman from her car.

The Trump Administration dispatched more than 2,000 agents in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area in the last few weeks. The Department of Homeland Security has called it their largest operation ever as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented migrants.

Last week, 37-year-old mother of three Renee Nicole Good was killed when trying to leave the scene where ICE agents had stopped her car. It sparked fury nationwide, while many, including members of the Trump administration, called the agent’s actions self-defense.

The killing of Renee Nicole Good sparked large protests in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area. Speaking to Fox News, ICE official Charles Marcus said at least 60 protesters have been arrested and charged with assaulting or impeding ICE agents in the last five days.

“We will be arresting anybody that interferes or impedes in any of these enforcement actions,” he said. “We’ve already arrested 60… that have got in our way, impeded us or assaulted an officer.”

Footage shows ICE agents dragging a woman from her car
The video of the moment when Renee Nicole Good was shot dead spread worldwide. Now, six days later, another distressing video of a confrontation between a member of the public and an immigration enforcement officer has gone viral.
Story by Tierney Sneed, CNN

The Trump administration’s sweeping legal effort to obtain Americans’ sensitive data from states’ voter rolls is now almost entirely reliant upon a Jim Crow-era civil rights law passed to protect Black voters from disenfranchisement – a notable shift in how the administration is pressing its demands.

The Justice Department says it wants to use the registration records to “help” states “clean” their rolls by comparing it to other data sets held by the government, according to public comments from Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who was appointed by President Donald Trump to head the department’s civil rights division.

Voter advocates and election experts warn of the potential for sloppy purges that risk disenfranchising eligible voters instead. They have also raised concerns that the data will be shared with other agencies to be used for other purposes.

The Justice Department has been working with the Department of Homeland Security on plans to review state voter registration files for evidence of non-citizens on the rolls, according to a source familiar with Trump administration discussions.
Story by S.V. Date

In a speech the White House billed as focusing on the economy, President Donald Trump spent most of his hour on a Detroit stage Tuesday repeating his various lies and grievances on just about everything else.

Only two minutes and 34 seconds into his remarks to the Detroit Economic Club, Trump veered off and returned to one of his favorite lies: that Democrats cheat in elections and that he has been a repeat victim.

“I won the popular vote all three times, too. But we’re not going to get into that,” he said, before doing exactly that ― notwithstanding the fact that he lost the popular vote by 3 million in 2016 and 7 million in 2020.

In his 64 minutes on stage, Trump also lied about having stopped eight wars, went on a familiar tangent about transgender athletes, personally insulted Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, used a racist smear against Minnesota’s Somali community generally and congresswoman Ilhan Omar in particular, bragged about his extrajudicial killing of more than 100 suspected drug smugglers on the high seas and attacked the late President Jimmy Carter for turning over the Panama Canal to Panama, as a treaty required him to do.

“Hydrogen, I don’t know about. I’m hearing it’s not testing so well. It’s fine, except when there’s an explosion. You’re a goner now. Have you heard that with hydrogen? One guy is trying to sell hydrogen?” he said on a detour about fuel-cell powered electric cars, apparently unaware of the explosive characteristics of gasoline vapor.
Story by Frank Landymore

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents reportedly stole a teenage boy’s phone — and then seemingly pawned it afterwards for cash.

That detail comes from alarming new reporting from ProPublica that documents more than forty cases of ICE agents putting civilians in chokeholds and other moves that can block breathing.

One of these civilians was tenth grader Arnoldo Bazan, who was getting McDonald’s with his father, Arnulfo Bazan Carrillo, when they were pulled over by masked agents. According to Arnoldo, after several agents violently tackled his father — who is undocumented — to the ground, with one pressing a knee into his neck, another put the 16-year-old in a suffocating chokehold. When he told the agent that he was a citizen and a minor, the agent didn’t stop.

“I started screaming with everything I had, because I couldn’t even breathe,” Arnoldo told ProPublica. “I felt like I was going to pass out and die.”
Exclusive NBC News reporting found that some ICE officers were sent out into the field without proper training. The error was because an AI tool used to help ICE identify potential new recruits with law enforcement experience wrongly categorized some potential new officers, sources say. NBC News' Julia Ainsley explains the details of the reporting.
Story by The Kenya Times

Top Iranian officials, including the son of Ayatollah Khamenei, have reportedly transferred $1.5 billion to escrow accounts in Dubai over the past two days amid fears of political instability.

In a statement dated January,15,2026, Mike Huckabee, Trump’s ambassador, revealed that he shared his bank account with these officials to safeguard the funds, claiming they could trust him as the world could trust them.

“I’ve sent my account info to these Iranian officials so they can transfer those funds to me for safekeeping. They surely can trust me at least as much as the world can trust them,” read part of the Mike Huckabee statement.

The Iranian bank crisis hit at the same time as a 12-day war with Israel and the US in June 2025. In November, Israel and the US threatened to strike again if Iran tried to start up its nuclear or missile programs, further weakening the nation’s image.

Iranian Bank Collapse and $1.5 Billion Transfers
The collapse of Ayandeh Bank late last year triggered an economic crisis that has driven thousands to protest across cities, threatening the Islamic Republic’s control.

Ayandeh Bank, run by individuals connected to the Iranian regime, failed after incurring nearly $5 billion in losses from bad loans.
Story by Nicole Charky-Chami

An extremism expert accused the Trump administration of brazenly using white supremacist and Nazi propaganda as ICE ramps up its aggressive attacks across American cities.

Wendy Via, co-founder of the Global Project Against Extremism and Hate, described how as tensions have escalated following the ICE killing of 37-year-old mother Renee Good and that the administration has increased its "contentious messaging" as questions rise over the agency's aggressive immigration tactics, The Daily Beast reported.

“DHS, and now other departments, are hardly bothering with dog whistles anymore,” Via told The Beast.

“They’re using blatant white supremacist and Nazi references in their imagery and slogans in an attempt to recruit staff, and they don’t even try to defend their actions. Their shameful reincarnation of white America propaganda from decades ago perfectly illustrates this administration’s view on what America should look like.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has been criticized for standing at a podium last week, just a day after the fatal ICE killing, with the message "one of ours, all of yours." The phrase was reminiscent of a Nazi slogan.

"Observers and historians say the words on the podium echo the notion of collective punishment, which underpinned atrocities such as the World War 2 massacre in which Nazis killed civilians in retaliation after an SS officer’s assassination," according to The Beast.
Story by Joe Sommerlad

President Donald Trump’s administration will keep the money generated from the sale of Venezuelan oil across multiple bank accounts, the largest of which is located in Qatar, according to a report.

Senior officials told Semafor that the U.S. has now completed its first sale of the South American country’s oil in a deal worth $500 million.

They justified the decision to hold some of the proceeds in the Gulf state, rather than in U.S. banks, by pointing out that it is a neutral location from which the funds could be freely and safely moved without risk of seizure.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, hit out at the strategy and said: “There is no basis in law for a president to set up an offshore account that he controls so that he can sell assets seized by the American military.

“That is precisely a move that a corrupt politician would be attracted to.”

Trump’s friendly relationship with Qatar was previously placed under the spotlight last May when he was heavily criticized for accepting a $400 million Boeing jet as a gift from the country.

The Independent has reached out to the White House and to the Treasury for comment.

The U.S. finds itself in control of Venezuela’s natural resources after its forces swept into Caracas in the early hours of Saturday, January 3, and abducted its then-president Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, subsequently removing them to New York to answer federal drug trafficking charges.
Story by Jashandeep Singh

Another day, and yet another report of ICE’s brutal use of force surfaces. The victim this time is a 16-year-old boy. Arnoldo Bazan, a tenth grader, has accused ICE agents of choking him and confiscating his phone, which they later allegedly sold.

The incident took place in Houston, Texas, in October 2025. It was a usual day for Arnoldo, who was headed to school with his father, Arnulfo Bazan Carrillo, in their family car.

The two stopped to eat at a McDonald’s, where ICE agents, wearing masks, got out from unmarked vehicles and started knocking on their car doors. Instead of coming out, Arnulfo chose to drive away as he does not have legal documents to reside in the country.
Donald Trump and his Cabinet acolytes continue to insist on the righteousness and professionalism of Trump's ICE enforcers terrorizing Minneapolis, even as Americans see endless accounts and videos of the reckless brutality the residents of Minneapolis are enduring. Elliott Payne, Minneapolis city council president, talks with Jen Psaki about the reality on the streets of his city.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that President Donald Trump was "speaking facetiously" when he said in an interview the U.S. shouldn't have midterm elections.
Robert Davis

A federal judge handed President Donald Trump's administration another stinging defeat in its bid to rig the 2026 midterm elections, according to a new report.

For months, Trump's Department of Justice has been trying to access state voter rolls under the guise of inspecting them for fraud. Some Democratically-controlled states have pushed back and sued the administration, while Republican-led states appeared quick to comply with the spurious demand.

On Thursday, a federal judge in California, David O. Carter, ruled that the administration was prohibited from accessing the state's voter rolls, The Washington Post reported. He also called into question the motives behind the administration's attempt.
Story by Gerren Keith Gaynor

Advocates say the Trump administration’s latest move sends a global message to world leaders and threatens the momentum for global reparations.

While it likely went unnoticed by many living in the United States, the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent is alarming advocates and international leaders. They warn that, though the move carries out President Trump’s year-long agenda to do away with DEI both domestically and abroad, the withdrawal also threatens momentum for racial and reparative justice around the world.

Last week, Trump signed an executive memorandum announcing the U.S.’s withdrawal from 66 international organizations. One of them was the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, an organization created by the UN General Assembly in 2021. The group has convened annually since 2022 to constructively engage with the collective harms of global colonialism and to develop policy solutions that improve the lived outcomes for people of African descent, from the more than 40 million Black Americans in the U.S., to the 1.5 billion on the African continent, and everywhere in between, from the Caribbean to South America.

“It was a space where Black people from all over the world could come and share their struggles, but also share their joy and see themselves in each other, even if they didn’t share the same language,” said Desirée Cormier Smith, founder and co-president of the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice.
Story by Daniel Gura

A new investigation has found that Donald Trump and one of his biggest political enemies now have something in common: Both have been accused of committing mortgage fraud.

The president allegedly claimed more than one primary residence in a bid for lower mortgage rates, Knewz.com can report — the same thing his Justice Department alleged New York Attorney General Letitia James did.

Scoring a better deal
Mortgages for a person’s main home often qualify for lower interest rates or more favorable terms than mortgages for a second home or an investment rental property.

The charges that Trump tried to skirt the system are the same ones faced by James, who last year was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of bank fraud and making a false statement to a financial institution while securing a mortgage for an additional home.

James has denied committing fraud. The initial charges against her were dismissed by a judge, and two separate grand juries subsequently refused to re-indict her on mortgage fraud charges, marking major setbacks for the Justice Department’s ongoing efforts to prosecute her.

According to the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica, Trump signed a mortgage for a “primary home” in Palm Beach, Fla., in 1993.

Less than two months later, he filed for another mortgage for a separate residence, which he once again labeled as his “primary home.”

“In reality, Trump, then a New Yorker, does not appear to have ever lived in either home, let alone used them as a principal residence,” ProPublica found.

“Instead, the two houses, which are next to his historic Mar-a-Lago estate, were used as investment properties and rented out… exactly the sort of scenario his administration has pointed to as evidence of fraud,” ProPublica reported.
Adeola Adeosun

The Trump administration is reportedly asking countries that want a permanent spot on President Donald Trump's new "Board of Peace" to contribute at least $1 billion, according to Bloomberg on Saturday who obtained a draft charter for the proposed international organization.

The White House Rapid Response account on X called Bloomberg's report "misleading," stating the proposal "offers permanent membership to partner countries who demonstrate deep commitment to peace, security, and prosperity."

The charter reportedly reveals that Trump would serve as the inaugural chairman and would decide on who's invited to be members. The draft charter says that member states would serve three-year terms subject to renewal by the chairman, but this term limit would not apply to countries contributing more than $1 billion in cash funds within the first year.

Newsweek has reached out the White House via email on Saturday for comment.

Why It Matters
Some critics and leaders are concerned that Trump is attempting to build an alternative or rival to the United Nations (U.N.), which he has long criticized. The proposal raises questions about international governance structures and how diplomatic influence could be shaped by financial contributions. Many rights experts and advocates have previously said Trump overseeing a board to supervise a foreign territory's governance resembled a colonial structure, Reuters reported.

The Board of Peace's role in Gaza comes as the territory continues to see deadly violence despite a fragile ceasefire that went into effect in October. About 1,200 people were killed and 251 abducted in Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, according to Israeli authorities. Gaza’s health ministry says more than 71,000 people have been killed in the territory since Israel began its military campaign—figures that do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
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