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As a fleet of U.S. warships barrel toward Iran, the Trump administration appears poised to “pull the trigger” on a “full-fledged war” at any moment, and may do so sooner than “most Americans realize,” Axios reported Wednesday.“Trump's military and rhetorical buildups make it hard for him to back down without major concessions from Iran on its nuclear program,” writes Axios’ Mike Allen in the outlet’s report Wednesday.“It's not in Trump's nature, and his advisers don't view the deployment of all that hardware as a bluff. With Trump, anything can happen. But all signs point to him pulling the trigger if talks fail.”The Trump administration met with Iranian officials in Geneva, Switzerland on Tuesday in the hopes of reaching a deal to avoid further escalations, but according to Vice President JD Vance, those talks stalled due to Iranian officials refusing to “acknowledge” some of President Donald Trump’s “red lines.”Now, according to sources who spoke with Axios on the condition of anonymity, the United States could be engaged in “a major war in the Middle East,” and “very soon,” Axios reported.Both the USS Gerald Ford and the USS Abraham Lincoln – two massive aircraft carriers that each carry dozens of aircraft and crews of up to 5,690 – are currently near Iran, BBC Verify and AntiWar.com have reported. With the aircraft carriers are dozens of warships and hundreds of fighter jets. And, according to Axios, more than 150 military cargo flights have “moved weapons systems and ammunition” to the region. Within the past 24 hours as of Wednesday morning, the Trump administration has also moved 50 additional fighter jets to the region.

Google, Anthropic and OpenAI bosses to mingle with global south leaders wrestling for control over technologySilicon Valley tech billionaires will land in Delhi this week for an AI summit hosted by India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, where leaders of the global south will wrestle for control over the fast-developing technology.During the week-long AI Impact Summit, attended by thousands of tech executives, government officials and AI safety experts, tech companies valued at trillions of dollars will rub along with leaders of countries such as Kenya and Indonesia, where average wages dip well below $1,000 a month. Continue reading...

Three boats targeted in eastern Pacific and Caribbean as Trump continues pursuit of alleged ‘narco-terrorists’US military officials have said American forces launched assaults on three alleged drug-smuggling boats, killing 11 in one of the deadliest days of the Trump administration’s months-long campaign against alleged traffickers.The military action on Monday brought the number of fatalities caused by US strikes to 145 since September, when Donald Trump called on American armed forces to attack people deemed “narco-terrorists” on small vessels. There have been 42 known strikes in notorious drug-trafficking routes such as the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, according to the Associated Press reported. Continue reading...

Donald Trump's administration has overseen a shift in the mood of world politics, with the U.S. drifting further to the right and a question mark looming over its relationship with Europe. The president's team has openly backed political candidates in elections across the globe, notably in Brazil and Honduras last year. Trump's meddling is targeted and shows how far the president will go to ratify his U.S. national security strategy, CNN analyst Stephen Collinson said.Collinson wrote, "The Trump administration’s backing of Orbán in Hungary’s election is the latest sign of an institutionalized shift to the right in US foreign policy, and a rejection of traditional stances. Some Europeans now regard their longtime protector as a growing political threat."And it reflects the growing willingness of the White House — amid new Trump claims that the US election system is plagued by fraud ahead of the midterm elections — to insert itself into the domestic politics of foreign states. "Trump has already tried to influence voters or shape elections in Argentina, Brazil, Honduras and Poland, and claims to be running Venezuela from the Oval Office after ousting President Nicolás Maduro."Trump isn’t acting on a whim. He’s codified his goals in the new US national security strategy, which praises the 'growing influence of patriotic European parties' in Europe. This refers to right-wing populist and anti-immigrant parties like the National Rally in France, Reform in the UK and the AfD in Germany, which are seeking to oust the global leaders with whom Trump deals every day."Collinson went on to suggest these stress tests of European willingness could amount to the US withdrawing from defense agreements and severing ties with some countries. He wrote, "At Munich last year, Vice President JD Vance conjured an idealized view of Western Europe rooted in Christianity at risk of being destroyed by a wave of immigration from Muslim and majority non-White nations. This year, Rubio delivered a similar message, albeit cushioned with more diplomatic finesse."He insisted that Washington doesn’t want “vassal” states but strong EU partners and that it is committed to ending the Ukraine war threatening the continent. But his speech was also a broad hint that unless the continent adopted MAGA’s view of Western civilization, America’s defense of Europe would be in question."

Mohan Karki – one of many people ICE has deported to countries with which they have little connection – leaves behind his wife and seven-month-old baby he has yet to holdTika Basnet sat facing the glow of her iPhone, a red tika pressed into the center of her forehead. Seven-month-old Briana slept on her lap, her breathing soft and uneven. On the other side of the screen was Mohan Karki, Basnet’s husband, who had yet to hold his daughter.For Karki, nearly 9,000 miles (14,500km) away, it was already morning. He was in hiding in south Asia, his exact location withheld for his safety, his face breaking into pixels as he watched his daughter sleep. Continue reading...

Parts of the winter world are frozen. Europe, the U.S. Midwest, and even southern states are enduring the worst cold in years as the North Pole rapidly melts, pushing frigid Arctic air through a weakened polar vortex into non-Arctic regions. So far, in the U.S., power grids are holding. Although some states experienced significant power outages in late January, they were short-lived. Ukrainians are not so lucky.A monster tries to freeze a nationOn Feb. 13, more than half the residents of Ukraine woke up in one of the coldest winters on record with no heat, no electricity, and no water. Ukrainians are fighting both climate change and a Russian invasion, both driven by evil and greed.When he attacked Ukraine in 2022, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin began strategically targeting its power grid, bombing one facility more than 200 times. By December 2024, more than half of Ukraine's energy-generating capacity had been knocked out. Now, roughly 60 percent of Ukraine’s families are living without heat during an extreme subzero winter, sleeping with pets and barn animals to share body heat and keep children alive.Putin has targeted high-voltage substations and power lines to break electricity connections within and between geographic regions. Ukraine’s Minister of Energy, Denys Shmyhal, acknowledged that there is “not a single power plant in Ukraine” that Putin hasn’t bombed. Putin’s “plan is instability through total blackout.” An American president celebrates a war criminalCutting off heat, electricity and water, deliberately freezing and starving non-combatant civilians to death, is a war crime. Kidnapping young Ukrainian children, stealing them to punish, torture or indoctrinate, is also a war crime. By credible counts, more than 19,000 Ukrainian children have been taken in Putin’s sick push to erase Ukraine’s national identity.Putin is not only committing high-visibility war crimes in Ukraine as he murders critics at home, he is also responsible for the deaths of more than 50,000 Ukrainians whose only offense was choosing democracy over dictatorship.In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest. As a result, he is now barred from entering more than 120 nations including nearly all of Europe, where border officials would immediately arrest him for crimes against humanity. Despite the ICC warrant, in August, 2025, Trump mocked the international rule of law and welcomed Putin on Alaskan soil.Putin is a notorious war criminal, an international pariah hated by leaders of the free world. So, on Jan. 28, when Trump installed a framed photo of Putin, standing side by side with Trump, in the White House, the collective response was disbelief.Leaders of the free world are aghast. As one European leader quipped, “The U.S. president considers it appropriate to hang on the White House wall a photo of the greatest war criminal of the 21st century.” Meanwhile, Trump is too compromised — financially, politically, or cognitively — to comprehend that honoring THE enemy of NATO in the White House spits in the face of our allies, not to mention our veterans.Get a roomJournalist Michael Andersen, who has written about Ukraine and the former U.S.S.R. for 15 years, asks whether Americans know, or even care, how this feels to people in Ukraine. He writes: Dear Americans, your president just put up a photo in the White House of himself and the biggest war criminal of the 21st century, the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. It is ‘perfectly’ timed to mark that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is about to enter its fifth year. Do you understand the feeling this provokes in Ukraine? In Europe? 10 million Ukrainians have been forced to run away from their homes, maybe 200,000 have been killed — and your country celebrates the monster responsible?It’s a fair question. Political analysts have long speculated that Trump owes Putin something considerable. The sooner main stream media stop sugarcoating the obvious, the better.A love that was never freeIn the late 1990s, after U.S. banks stopped lending money to the Trump Organization due to its repeated bankruptcies, Trump sought and obtained alternative financing from Russian sources. Since then, his financial ties to former Russian apparatchiks have only grown. Trump-branded condos in New York and Florida are owned by wealthy Russians, often purchased through shell companies. In 2019, Newsweek reported that “Crime Infested” Trump Tower was home to convicted Russian criminals and “mobster tenants.” Trump’s financial ties to Russia are beyond speculation: Eric Trump told a reporter that Trump’s businesses “have all the funding we need out of Russia.” KGB-trained Putin plays Trump like a cheap instrument: through flattery. In October, when Putin complimented Trump’s ability to “solve complex problems” and fix “crises that last for decades,” Trump ran to post a video of Putin’s praise, writing, “Thank you to President Putin!” That Trump has solved anything, complex or otherwise, comes as a surprise to Americans suffering under his asinine tariffs, unsolved inflation, climate denial, and massive civil rights violations. That he is too stupid or narcissistic to understand how honoring Putin hurts our allies, compromising America’s vital security interests in a real and material way, is dangerous.Michael Andersen finished his commentary on Putin’s new photograph in the White House by asking, “Where is your red line, Americans?” If a Putin photo in the White House is fine with Americans, “How about one of Adolf Hitler?” It’s another fair question.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.

President Donald Trump vowed to bomb "the dust" remaining at Iran's nuclear sites if he attacks the country again.During a Friday gaggle, one reporter pointed out that Trump had previously claimed the nuclear sites had been "obliterated" before threatening another strike."You said inside the Iranian nuclear sites have been totally obliterated," the reporter said. "What's left to go after?""Well, you could get whatever the dust is down there," Trump replied. "That's really the least of the mission. If we do it, that would be the least of the mission. But we, you know, probably grab whatever's left.""It has been obliterated, as you know," he added. The Pricer estimated that Trump's 2025 bombing of Iran's nuclear sites cost over $500 milllion.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has criticized global sensation Bad Bunny multiples times following his Super Bowl performance — but she might actually be a fan. People have uncovered on social media that Leavitt actually used the Bad Bunny song "DtMF” during her 2025 wrapped reel on Instagram, which featured some big personal and professional moments for her throughout last year, all to the sounds of the Latin artist and several other song mashups, The Daily Beast reported on Friday. After his groundbreaking Super Bowl performance, Leavitt had a harsh response. “I think it’s very ironic and frankly sad to see celebrities who live in gated communities with private security, with millions of dollars to spend protecting themselves, trying to just demonize again, law enforcement, public servants who work for the United States government to enforce our nation’s laws," Leavitt said.MAGA has been very vocal about their dislike for the award-winning music star — although President Donald Trump did tune in to watch instead of Turning Point USA's pre-recorded Kid Rock show — and several people talked about how they didn't like his performance, including reality personality Jill Zarin, who was cut from an E! reboot of "The Real Housewives of New York City," titled “The Golden Life,” which was slated to begin filming in Florida.On Instagram, several people commented on Leavitt's use of a Bad Bunny song in her own social media. "Bad bunny playing for the recap is the funniest s--- I’ve seen so far this year. And we’re only 19 days in," user Lycette Beatty commented on Instagram. "She lowkey loves him like the rest of us." "Not her using bad bunny on her stuff," another user wrote. "I find it so ironic that all the musicians that are singing in this clip, don’t stand with her. They hate her," one user added. "I thought bad bunny’s music is not for Americans," another user joked. Several other users shared the unbothered and tired Bad Bunny meme, when the artist sat the table with his hand over his face after winning Album of the Year at the Grammy's. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Karoline Leavitt Riccio (@karolineleavitt)