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Fareed Zakaria raked President Donald Trump over the coals in The Washington Post Friday for his "dangerous fantasy" that he can still negotiate rationally with Russia's Vladimir Putin.There is no placating Putin, said Zakaria; he only wants the destruction of America, and he has proven this time and time again."It is worth recalling a lesson about Putin learned by another businessman turned government official — Hank Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs. As treasury secretary, Paulson visited Beijing for the Olympics in August 2008, just as the global financial crisis was gathering force and markets were increasingly worried about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two giant institutions that guarantee most mortgages in the United States." When he arrived, he learned that Putin's government actually proposed Russia and China "dump large quantities of Fannie and Freddie securities" to destabilize them further — a plan China didn't indulge."Think about what this says," wrote Zakaria. "At a moment when the American financial system was approaching its worst crisis since the Great Depression, Putin was searching for ways to hit America when it was down — even though a deeper American crash would inevitably have damaged the rest of the world, including Russia. Putin appeared willing to risk a lose-lose outcome, as long as the U.S. lost badly."A businessman would never make that kind of decision, he said — yet Trump remains convinced he can deal with Putin the way he dealt with competitors in business.Trump's allies, he concluded, "see a businessman looking for a win-win. Putin’s record suggests that he is something very different: a man who has repeatedly been willing to impose costs on Russia, destabilize other countries and risk losses if doing so weakens the U.S. Hank Paulson learned that lesson in Beijing 18 years ago. It would be useful if America’s current businessmen-diplomats learned it in Moscow."Trump has repeatedly gone to and from the table to try to end Russia's invasion of Ukraine. At times, even he has appeared close to out of patience with Putin, but at other times he has pushed for "peace" plans that would be huge giveaways to Russia.

A CNN panel reacted with a mix of disbelief and disgust to newly surfaced text messages showing FBI Director Kash Patel trying, and failing, to marshal the bureau's press shop against an anonymous internet troll.The exchange, reported Thursday after journalist Seth Hettena spotted it in an FBI records release, showed Patel pressing his communications team to fire back at an account that had mocked him with a slur, replying with the FBI's "record year" stats. A top spokesman refused, warning it "would look bad on you." Patel pushed anyway, insisting it was about the post's view count.On CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper," the panel struggled Friday to make sense of it."They are very, very thin-skinned, and they are willing to use the resources of the government to protect their thin skin," said Corbin Trent, a former communications director for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). He noted Patel appeared to misread the platform entirely, mistaking the post's views for comments, and called the director's fixation "bizarre" and "a dereliction of duty" as antisemitism and Islamophobia were rising.Republican strategist Ashley Davis, a former George W. Bush White House official, condemned the slur outright. "If my son said that word, I'd slap him up against the head. I just think it's such an offensive word," she said. Davis questioned why the nation's top law enforcement official would "lower himself" to spar with a troll while crime and murders were falling."Don't worry about some trolls calling you a [slur]," she said.The texts had already surfaced in the FBI's release of records tied to its Jeffrey Epstein review, drawing days of ridicule. They come amid persistent scrutiny of Patel's handling of the Epstein files and his freewheeling use of social media. The FBI declined to comment to CNN.

The presidential briefing documents were declassified on the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacksSeveral dozen presidential briefing documents declassified on Friday, the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, detail intelligence that government officials had gathered about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida leading up to the hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people and upended American national security.The documents illustrate security analysts’ tracking of Bin Laden’s movements and support system, as well as concerns about possible threats to US targets. They also detail officials’ understanding of his network in the United States and other countries, including how his operations were financed. Continue reading...

Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA), the Republican nominee for Iowa's open Senate seat, downplayed the war with Iran as "out of sight, out of mind for so many Americans."Hinson made the remark on The Iowa Podcast with Justin Brady, in an episode published Aug. 26, when the host asked what her message would be heading into her Senate campaign.The episode drew little notice, logging 137 views on YouTube. Journalist Aaron Rupar resurfaced the Iran exchange Friday on X, where his post had drawn more than 21,000 views."It seems like Americans are kind of like, 'Ah, gosh. I don't know. I signed up for this America First stuff. I don't know what this stuff is,'" Brady said, describing the mood among voters after the United States went to war with Iran."So what is the message going into your Senate election?" Brady asked. "Are we still America First, or are we focused elsewhere?""And when it comes to Iran, you know, I don't want an endless war in Iran," Hinson answered. "I think it is important to make sure Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, and it is thousands of miles away. It's out of sight, out of mind for so many Americans.""Why I'm running for the U.S. Senate [is] we need to protect taxpayers," Hinson continued. "We need to make sure rural America has a seat at the table, and we have to have a safe and secure country. And that starts by eliminating threats not only at our southern border, but abroad as well.""And Iran has been massively increasing its stockpiles, not just of nuclear materials, but of missiles, of drones, that could have been not only a threat to our allies in the Middle East, but us here in the homeland as well," she said."And so I want to make sure we get this done quickly," Hinson added, "but the end goal for me in any deal or any negotiated deal end to this war is we need to make sure Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon, and we need to make sure our allies in the region are protected."The war Hinson described as distant has been running for more than six months. The United States and Israel began military operations against Iran in late February, according to the Congressional Research Service, and the fighting has continued since.Iran's Revolutionary Guard said Thursday that it targeted two U.S. Navy vessels, eight oil tankers and 10 other ships near the Strait of Hormuz, The Washington Times reported. The announcement came a day before Rupar posted the clip.Gasoline averaged $4.15 a gallon nationally this week, up from $4.08 a week earlier, Al Jazeera reported, with the increase tied to the fighting around the strait.Rupar noted in his post that Hinson has defended the war and voted against war powers resolutions, the measures that would force the president to seek congressional approval to keep fighting.Hinson and Iowa's three other House Republicans voted in March against a resolution that would have limited the military campaign against Iran, Radio Iowa reported. It failed 219-212.The House passed a similar measure 215-208 in June with four Republicans crossing over, CBS News reported. Hinson was not among them."Even though the Iran war is thousands of miles away, it is important that we finish the job there, because Iran can never get a nuclear weapon," Hinson told The Gazette in June, using nearly the same phrasing she would repeat on the podcast."If it drags on beyond that, it's a political liability for us too, because we've lost Iowa soldiers," Hinson told voters at a meet-and-greet in Webster County in late May, according to audio obtained by Politico and reported by The New Republic. "I've been to four funerals since December, it's awful."Six Army Reserve soldiers assigned to a Des Moines-based command were killed in an Iranian strike on a facility in Kuwait on March 1, The Gazette reported. Two were from Iowa.Hinson faces state Rep. Josh Turek, an Iowa Democrat, in November for the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), in a race Democrats are targeting as a long-shot pickup, 19th News reported.

Former President George W. Bush appeared to take a jab by praising the general who is pushing President Donald Trump to end his war in Iran, five miles from the crucial Republican midterm convention he did not attend.Bush made the remark Wednesday during an onstage appearance at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, where former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice interviewed him for the center's "Engage" series.About five miles away, the Republican Party was opening its first-ever midterm convention at the American Airlines Center, a two-day event billed as a celebration of Trump's America First agenda, Axios reported. Trump and Vice President JD Vance were the only confirmed speakers, and Bush was not expected to be among them.In his opening remarks, Bush thanked the center's staff before turning to Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was in the audience."Thank God you are where you are, and we appreciate it," Bush said.The war with Iran was nearly six months old, and Trump's top general had spent weeks telling other administration officials privately that the United States needed a way out of a conflict the president chose to enter, CNN reported in August.Caine made clear to other senior Trump advisers that the military options for escalating the war could backfire, and that bombing alone was unlikely to achieve the president's stated goals, three sources familiar with the matter told CNN."Caine is looking for an off ramp," one of the sources said bluntly.He raised the same concerns with CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vance, and coordinated with them before meetings with the president so they could lay out the limits of the options on the table, two of the sources told CNN."I think it is just his way of protecting the military," one of the sources said of those conversations.Caine had made a version of the argument in public, telling lawmakers at a hearing that "airpower has its limits," according to CNN.Senior military commanders believe American munitions stockpiles are "dangerously low," and Caine raised the shortage with Trump in at least two meetings where escalation was discussed, CNN reported.Before the war began, Trump had invoked Caine by name in a post claiming his top military adviser believed the conflict "will be something easily won," according to CNN.In the same White House meeting where he raised the stockpile problem, Caine told Trump that the military could "absolutely wreck" Iran if the president decided to go ahead, one source told CNN."He's definitely pulling punches," a source familiar with Caine's interactions with Trump told CNN, comparing those White House conversations with what the general says privately to military leaders."He is out of his depth on this one," another source familiar with Caine's handling of the war told CNN.Caine's spokesman, Joseph Holstead, declined to discuss the chairman's private conversations with the president or other senior officials and rejected what he called anonymous, agenda-driven descriptions of them, CNN reported."General Caine is an incredible asset to President Trump's national security team, and the overwhelming success of Operations Epic Fury, Midnight Hammer, and Absolute Resolve speaks for itself," a White House official told CNN.Privately, Caine has told people he wants to restore trust in his post and in the military more broadly "even as Trump has politicized both," according to CNN.Bush did not mention Trump, the war, or Caine's role in it. Video of the moment circulated Thursday morning after the account Headquarters posted it on X. The account wrote that Bush "appears to shade Trump by praising the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine," and paired the line with a clip of the exchange.Bush has criticized the direction of American politics before without naming Trump, Axios reported, most pointedly in a 2017 speech at his presidential center."Bigotry seems emboldened," Bush said in that address. "Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication."Bush did not name Trump in that speech either, and he has generally said little publicly about him.He declined to endorse a candidate in the 2024 election, Axios reported. Trump, for his part, once said it would have been "wonderful" if then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) had moved to impeach Bush over the Iraq war.The absence from this week's convention underscores the split between the Trump-era Republican Party and the Bush-era version of it, Axios reported. A person familiar with the convention planning, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said Bush was not expected to appear.Republican National Committee spokesman Zach Kraft said Trump and Vance were the only speakers confirmed at that point and declined to say whether Bush had been invited, Axios reported. Bush's office did not respond to the outlet's question about an invitation.Bush had already made other plans for the week. KERA reported that he had previously scheduled events marking the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.Dallas has been Bush's home base since the early 1990s. His presidential library sits on the Southern Methodist University campus, and a stretch of highway in the city is named for him, Axios reported.The convention hall sits a 4.9-mile drive from the center, about 17 minutes in traffic.Rice, who conducted Wednesday's interview, is the person Bush has said he wrote in for president in 2020, according to Axios.

The United States is facing an imminent “strategic disaster” as Yemen’s Houthis inch closer to capturing a major oil trade “chokepoint,” The Guardian reported Thursday, a development that could soon open a “second front” in President Donald Trump’s deeply unpopular war against Iran.Multiple news outlets reported Thursday that the Houthis had captured the Yemeni town of Mocha, which sits on the coast of the Red Sea in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which, like the Strait of Hormuz, is a major chokepoint for global shipping. According to Euronews, the two straits account for roughly a “quarter of daily petroleum and crude shipments, and nearly one-third of the world's maritime trade.”The Houthis are also working toward seizing complete control of Yemen’s west coast on the Red Sea, having previously vowed to block all Saudi Arabia shipments out of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.“Seizure of the coast would be a strategic disaster for Saudi Arabia and the US, taking Iran and its proxies closer to full control of two chokepoints for western shipping on opposite sides of the Arabian peninsula,” The Guardian’s report reads.“Observers have said a reduction in hostilities — the most intense since the UN-sponsored ceasefire of April 2022 put an end to major military exchanges — now seems unlikely in what is seen as an attempt by the Houthis to open a second front in the Iran-US war, alongside the battle for control of Hormuz.”The new threat to global trade comes as diesel prices in the United States soared to an all-time average high of $5.85 a gallon, breaking the previous record set in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Average costs for regular gasoline have spiked as well, reaching $4.15 a gallon last week.As noted by The Guardian, Saudi Arabia had also become increasingly “reliant” on traffic through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait following disruptions to trade through the Strait of Hormuz.

Following six years of talks, Pitt Rivers Museum will return body parts collected by British colonial administrators to north-east IndiaAnthropologists and community leaders from Nagaland, a remote state in north-eastern India bordering Myanmar, have expressed joy and relief that human remains belonging to their ancestors that had been on display in a British museum for nearly a century are finally being returned.On Monday, the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford announced that 39 pieces of human remains – including parts of skulls, a finger and a piece of skin with hair – belonging to the Naga tribes, will be returned to Nagaland after six years of negotiation between the community and the museum. Continue reading...

White House advisers have privately warned President Donald Trump that the Iran conflict could last through the end of his term.According to a Wednesday article by The Wall Street Journal, the message cuts sharply against the swift victory Trump has promised the public. Citing unnamed U.S. officials, The Journal reported that Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and others have told the president in the Oval Office and Situation Room that Tehran may keep resisting the American pressure campaign well past Inauguration Day in January 2029.Trump has offered a far rosier timeline. He told reporters this week that the war would end "immediately" after November's midterm elections "because they can't hold out any longer," The Journal noted.The conflict is in its seventh month and has killed 18 service members, The Journal added. Rather than escalate major combat, Trump has leaned on a naval blockade and sanctions meant to force Tehran to abandon its nuclear program, a strategy the Trump administration has dubbed "Operation Economic Outcast."When asked about the war's trajectory, White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales defended the approach and played down any fixed timeline. "Only President Trump knows what he will do and when," she said, per The Journal.Vance likewise declined to set an end date. It would be "irresponsible" to write out a strategy and timeline for an adversary that keeps targeting commercial ships, he told reporters.Analysts told The Journal that a drawn-out siege looks increasingly likely and increasingly costly. Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution said the blockade is "unlikely to produce a decisive outcome in the near or even medium term."Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group framed the standoff as a grinding stalemate that punishes both sides without breaking either."Everyone pays," he said. "But neither leadership is yet paying enough to accept the other side's terms."Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has already pushed some Middle East troop deployments into 2027, signaling Washington is bracing for a longer fight, The Journal reported.