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      Belarus releases 123 prisoners including opposition leaders after US lifts sanctions

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      Nobel prize winner Ales Bialiatski and opposition figure Maria Kalesnikava among those freed after US talks with Alexander LukashenkoThe Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has freed 123 prisoners, including Nobel peace prize winner Ales Bialiatski and leading opposition figure Maria Kalesnikava, after the US lifted sanctions on Belarusian potash, a key export.The announcement came after two days of talks with an envoy of the US president, Donald Trump, the latest diplomatic push since the Trump administration started talks with the autocratic leader. Continue reading… More

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      ‘Not a gift-giving year’: student loan debt upends US borrowers’ holiday spending

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      After Trump ended key repayment plan, 40% of borrowers say their student loans make it harder to cover essentialsA recent survey found that a whopping 40% of student loan borrowers say that their loans have negatively affected their ability to cover their basic needs, such as food, housing and transportation – a financial burden that becomes even more apparent around the holiday season.At first glance, someone like Ben L should not be struggling financially. He attended Georgetown University and Columbia University for his undergraduate and graduate degrees, respectively, and now earns a six-figure salary working at a biotech company. Still, the 36-year-old is drowning in student debt. Continue reading… More

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      The Katie Miller Podcast: an aggressively vibeless curriculum for the Maga mom

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      The wife of the Trump adviser aims to entice conservative women into Maga – but like much of the rest of the movement, her sales pitch is fundamentally lackingWhen Katie Miller, the wife of Donald Trump’s powerful adviser Stephen Miller, interviewed Pete Hegseth on her podcast last week, she didn’t ask him about whether the war secretary had ordered the US military to kill the shipwrecked survivors of an airstrike. She didn’t ask him about the settlement he paid a woman who accused him of sexually assaulting her. Nor did she ask about allegations of alcohol abuse, or the accusation that he had made his ex-wife so terrified that she hid in a closet.Instead, when Hegseth and his wife, Jennifer Rauchet, appeared on the Katie Miller Podcast, the titular host asked questions like: “If you could write one Hegseth family rule on that whiteboard, what is that?” Continue reading… More

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      ‘They fought for American values’: Afghan immigrants and advocates push back against Trump crackdown

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      The US has been punishing ‘an entire group’ since the arrest of an Afghan in the shooting of two national guard troopsAfghan immigrants and advocates across the United States are pushing back firmly against the Trump administration’s most recent crackdown on legal immigration, saying the American government is punishing hundreds of thousands of people for the alleged actions of one man.Since the shooting of two national guard soldiers in Washington DC late last month, with the authorities charging an Afghan man as the suspect, the Trump administration has taken harsh action, especially against Afghans in the US, generating a mix of fear, outrage and defiance in the diaspora. Continue reading… More

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      The ethnic cleansing of the US will destroy it | Heba Gowayed

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      Trump’s racist remarks on Ilhan Omar and Somali immigrants reveals his vision for the US as a white Christian nationA rally on affordability in Pennsylvania on 9 December devolved into a racist tirade when Donald Trump said to the crowd: “We only take people from shithole countries. Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden, just a few? … From Denmark. Do you mind sending us a few people? Send us some nice people. But we always take people from Somalia, places that are a disaster, right? Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime.”Referring to the US representative Ilhan Omar’s hijab as a “little turban”, Trump continued: “She should get the hell out. Throw her the hell out.” His supporters erupted in chants of: “Send her back.” Continue reading… More

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      You and me against the world: who was behind Trump’s anti-Europe foreign policy?

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      The US’s national security strategy, shared last week, claims European immigration will cause ‘civilisational erasure’How do you create a foreign policy manifesto for a US president who leads from the gut?The initial draft fell to Michael Anton, a Maga firebrand whom officials have called the lead author behind the US’s radical new national security strategy (NSS). The document shocked US allies, warning that immigration to Europe would cause “civilizational erasure”, reviving the Monroe doctrine in the western hemisphere, and downgrading the US’s responsibility for great power competition with China and Russia. Continue reading… More

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      The Trump administration keeps picking fights with pop stars. It’s a no-win situation | Adrian Horton

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      By using music from SZA, Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo in ICE videos, the government is playing a game of rage-baitLast week, as the Trump administration was engulfed in controversy over its illegal military strikes near Venezuela (among numerous other crises), a Department of Homeland Security employee – I picture the worst sniveling, self-satisfied, hateful loser – got to work on the official X account. The state-employed memelord posted a video depicting Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) officials arresting people in what appeared to be Chicago, celebrating the humiliation and incarceration of undocumented immigrants as some sort of patriotic achievement. The vile video borrowed, as they often do, from mainstream pop culture; in this case, a viral lyric from Sabrina Carpenter’s song Juno – “Have you ever tried this one?”, referring to sex positions – overlaid on clips of agents chasing, tackling and handcuffing people, cheekily nodding to all the methods in ICE’s terror toolbox.Carpenter, as a pre-eminent pop star, was caught in an impossible position. Say nothing, as her friend and collaborator Taylor Swift did weeks earlier when the White House used her music in a Trump hype video, and risk appearing as if you condone the administration’s use of your art for a domestic terror campaign (the administration hasn’t yet used Swift for an ICE video, but I’m sure it’s coming); or engage, even if to honestly express your utter disgust, and risk bringing more attention to objectionable propaganda designed to provoke a response. Continue reading… More

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      Hunger’s whip: why connecting US food stamps to work is outdated and ineffective

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      In many parts of the country, there are new work requirements to get food aid. But starving people doesn’t motivate them – despite centuries of this rhetoricFor more than 200 years, common wisdom and policymakers have assumed that to get people to work, you had to make them hungry. New work requirements for Snap food benefits, which went into effect in most of the US on 1 December, are only the latest in a long line of policies based on this idea. The new rules cut off benefits for any non-disabled adult up to age 65 who cannot prove that they are working or seeking work at least 80 hours every month (that includes homeless people, veterans and former foster youth). The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 2.7 million people will lose their benefits.You’ve heard this reasoning before: people are motivated to work because they and their families have to survive. If you give someone welfare – especially food aid – they become dependent and lazy. The Florida-based Foundation for Government Accountability, a conservative thinktank that has been campaigning for years to cut welfare, calls this “the dependency trap”. Starving people by taking away their food stamps is supposed to “incentivize individuals to better themselves and transition from dependency to work and self-reliance”. Continue reading… More