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      Mitt Romney: Trump’s call to stonewall Democrats on immigration ‘appalling’

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      Donald Trump’s directive to congressional Republicans to not agree to a deal with Democrats on immigration and border control is “appalling”, Mitt Romney said.“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump,” Romney, the Republican senator from Utah, told reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday.“And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame [Joe] Biden for it is … really appalling.”Having won in Iowa and New Hampshire and with only the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley still in the race, Trump is the clear favourite for the Republican presidential nomination to face Biden in November.His progress has not been impeded by 91 criminal charges, attempts to remove him from the ballot for inciting the January 6 attack on Congress and assorted civil trials.It was widely reported this week that Trump has sought to dynamite Senate talks for an immigration deal long linked to prospects of a new aid package for Ukraine.Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, reportedly acknowledged that Trump’s opposition makes it highly unlikely immigration talks will succeed, given hardline Republicans’ hold on the House and its speaker, Mike Johnson, a far-right congressman from Louisiana.Romney is a former Massachusetts governor who became the Republican nominee for president in 2012 before winning a Senate seat in Utah in 2018.Though he flirted with working for Trump when he won the White House, Romney has since emerged as a constant opponent.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe sole Republican to vote to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial, for seeking political dirt in Ukraine, Romney was one of seven senators to find Trump guilty in his second such trial, for inciting the January 6 insurrection.On Thursday, Romney said: “The reality is that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border, and someone running for president ought to try and get the problem solved, as opposed to saying: ‘Hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later.’” More

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      US border policy deal within reach despite efforts by Trump to derail it, senators say

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      Congressional negotiators said a border deal was within reach on Thursday, despite efforts by Donald Trump and his allies on Capitol Hill to derail the talks.With the fate of US aid for Ukraine hanging in the balance, the outlook for border compromise had appeared grim following reports on Wednesday night that the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, was walking away from a compromise that he suggested could “undermine” Trump’s chances in a November general election against Joe Biden. But by Thursday afternoon, senators involved in the discussions were insisting that the opposite was true: an agreement was within reach and legislative text could be released in the coming days.Referring to Trump as the “nominee”, McConnell reported told Republicans in a closed-door meeting on Wednesday night that “politics on this have changed”, according to a report in Punchbowl News. With Trump as their likely standard bearer, he suggested that it would be unwise to move forward with a bipartisan immigration bill that could possibly neutralize one of Biden’s biggest vulnerabilities. “We don’t want to do anything to undermine him,” McConnell said, referring to Trump.“That’s like parallel universe shit,” Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican of North Carolina involved in the negotiations, fumed to reporters on Thursday. “That didn’t happen.”It would amount to a surprising about-face for McConnell, a strong supporter of sending aid to Ukraine and no friend of the former president, who has leveled racist broadsides against McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, and mercilessly disparaged the Republican leader as an “old crow”.Walking through the Capitol on Thursday, McConnell told Bloomberg News that the immigration talks were “ongoing”. Later he reportedly assured his confused conference that he was “fully onboard” with the negotiations, and brushed off reports that suggested otherwise.The proposal under discussion in Congress would have changed immigration policy to discourage migration. It would include major concessions from Democrats on immigration in exchange for Republican support on passing military assistance to Israel and Ukraine, a country whose cause the party’s far right has turned against.But the politics of a deal have only become more challenging as Trump consolidates support from Republican officials in what many view as his inevitable march toward the GOP nomination.On social media, Trump implored Mike Johnson, the arch-conservative House speaker, not to accept a deal “unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION of Millions and Millions of people”.Failure to strike a deal would have global implications, with the Pentagon warning that Ukrainian soldiers on the frontlines of its grinding war with Russia risk running out of ammunition. The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has said the “future of the war in Ukraine” and the “security of our western democracy” depend on Congress reaching an agreement.Biden had requested tens of billions of dollars from Congress to send aid to Ukraine and Israel as well as to allies in the Asia Pacific region. But the funding package has been stalled for months in Congress amid Republican demands for dramatic changes to border policy.View image in fullscreenSenate Republicans who support the border talks said the party should seize the opportunity to address the record rise of people arriving at the US southern border, a situation both parties and the White House have described as a crisis.“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump,” the Utah senator Mitt Romney, a Republican who has pressed his party to approve military aid for Ukraine, told reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday. “And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling.”He continued: “The reality is that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border. And someone running for president ought to try and get the problem solved as opposed to saying: ‘Hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later.’”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEven in less contentious times, immigration remains one of the thorniest issues in American politics, and efforts to reform the nation’s outdated system have failed repeatedly. But as an unprecedented number of people fleeing violence, poverty and natural disasters seek refuge at the US-Mexico border, the issue has become top of mind for many Americans who overwhelmingly disapprove of the Biden administration’s handling of the matter.Trump has already made immigration a central issue of his campaign, outlining a draconian vision for his second term that includes mass raids, detentions camps and more funding to build his long-promised wall along the border with Mexico.Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill have argued that a bipartisan deal would only serve to give Biden political cover without actually solving the problem. Others argue that the Senate plan was designed to force the hand of the Republican-controlled House, where the speaker is under pressure from the far-right flank of his party not to compromise on the issue.At a press conference earlier this week, the Texas senator Ted Cruz, a Republican, denounced the proposal, the details of which have not yet been released, as a “stinking pile of crap” that “represents Senate Republican leadership waging war on House Republicans”.Cruz alleged that the negotiators involved cared only about supporting Ukraine and not fixing the issues at the southern border.If a deal falls apart, Schumer and Biden will be forced to look for alternative legislative paths to approving aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. But with Republicans demanding border security measures in exchange for their votes, it remains far from certain that tying the aid to must-pass spending bills or bringing it to the floor as a standalone measure would garner the necessary 60 votes in the Senate.The world will likely know soon whether a deal is possible, the Connecticut senator Chris Murphy, one of the Democratic negotiators, told reporters on Thursday.“I think the Republican Congress is going to make a decision in the next 24 hours as to whether they actually want to get something done or whether they want to leave the border a mess for political reasons,” he said. More

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      La disputa migratoria amenaza el legado de Biden en política exterior

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      El debate sobre la inmigración en Estados Unidos está salpicando otras áreas de la agenda del presidente, en particular la guerra en Ucrania.El creciente número de personas que cruzan a Estados Unidos desde México ha sido una vulnerabilidad política para el presidente Joe Biden durante los últimos tres años porque, poco a poco, ha socavado su índice de aprobación y lo ha expuesto a ataques políticos.No obstante, ahora, la crisis amenaza con afectar el apoyo de Estados Unidos a la guerra en Ucrania, lo que pone en riesgo el eje de la política exterior de Biden.Tras reunirse con Biden en la Casa Blanca el miércoles, el presidente de la Cámara de Representantes, Mike Johnson, insistió en que la Cámara Baja, de mayoría republicana, no aprobaría la legislación para enviar ayuda a Ucrania, a menos que los demócratas aceptaran restricciones nuevas y amplias en la frontera de Estados Unidos con México.Incluso si ambos bandos llegan a algún tipo de acuerdo, muchos republicanos, en especial en la Cámara Baja, estarían poco dispuestos a concederle una victoria a Biden en un año electoral en un tema que les ha dado poderosos motivos para criticar a la Casa Blanca. El asunto también se ubica en el centro de la candidatura del posible rival de Biden en el otoño, el expresidente Donald Trump.Esta situación muestra cómo el debate sobre migración en Estados Unidos ya no solo se trata de la frontera. El tema se está filtrando a otras secciones de la agenda de Biden y cobra cada vez más influencia porque los republicanos lo utilizan para bloquear las principales prioridades del presidente en materia de política exterior.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Biden signs measure to avert shutdown but Ukraine aid remains frozen

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      Joe Biden signed a measure to keep the US government funded on Friday but as Washington shivered under its second major snowfall in a week, the bill did not unfreeze funding for Ukraine.Hard-right House Republicans, led by the speaker, Mike Johnson, are ensuring the chances of more money and weapons for Kyiv in its fight with Moscow hinge on negotiations for immigration reform.On Wednesday, the president welcomed Johnson and other senior Republicans, as well as Democratic leaders, to the White House for talks.Though the meeting ended with the two sides still short of agreement on immigration and the southern border, Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, said he was optimistic a deal could be struck and aid to Ukraine thereby put back on the table.“Once Congress avoids a shutdown, it is my goal for the Senate to move forward to the national security supplemental as soon as possible,” Schumer said. “Our national security, our friends abroad, and the future of democracy demands nothing less.”Biden said a “vast majority” of members of Congress supported aid to Ukraine.“The question is whether a small minority are going to hold it up, which would be a disaster,” Biden added, speaking to reporters at the White House on Thursday.Johnson, however, told reporters: “We understand that there’s concern about the safety, security and sovereignty of Ukraine. But the American people have those same concerns about our own domestic sovereignty and our safety and our security.”Many observers suggest Republicans do not want a deal on immigration and the southern border, instead using the issue, and the concept of more aid for Ukraine, as clubs with which to attack Biden in an election year.“The GOP is more interested in nursing grievances and stoking anger than actually solving problems,” Eugene Robinson, a Washington Post columnist, wrote. “That’s exactly what Donald Trump has trained them to do.”Robinson went on to quote the Texas congressman Troy Nehls, who this month told CNN: “Let me tell you, I’m not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating. I will not help the Democrats try to improve this man’s dismal approval ratings. I’m not going to do it. Why would I?”Amid such familiar dysfunction, one slightly dystopian possibility stood out: Democrats, senior party figures said, might provide the votes to keep Johnson as speaker – against a likely rebellion from his right – should he bring any Senate deal on immigration to the House floor, thereby putting Ukraine aid back on the table.“Our job is not to save Johnson but I think it would be a mighty pity, if he did the right thing … for us not to support him,” Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the ranking Democrat on the House homeland security committee, told Politico. “Up to this point, he’s been a fairly honest broker.”In October, Democrats could have saved Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, from becoming the first speaker ever ejected by his own party – but chose not to.Whether stoked by Trumpist isolationism or by equally Trumpist authoritarianism, and therefore preference for Vladimir Putin and Moscow, resistance to aid for Ukraine remains strong among Republicans in Congress.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the party is not united. On the presidential campaign trail, Trump’s closest challenger for the Republican nomination, the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador Nikki Haley, told voters in New Hampshire on Thursday that though the US did not “need to put troops on the ground anywhere … what you do have to do is deter.“There’s a reason the Taiwanese want the US and the west to support Ukraine. Because they know if Ukraine wins, China won’t invade Taiwan.”Haley also linked Ukraine aid to helping Israel against Hamas – another issue awaiting discussion should immigration talks succeed.In the House, Michael McCaul, chair of the foreign affairs committee, tried a more emotive tactic, appealing to Republicans’ better angels – or at least to their foreign policy traditions.Johnson, McCaul told the Post, “is going to have to make a hard decision about what to do. If we abandon our Nato allies and surrender to Putin in Ukraine, it’s not going to make the world safer, it’s going to make the world more dangerous … [Ronald] Reagan would never have surrendered to the Soviet Union. Maybe that’s a shift in our party.”Most observers would suggest that it is, Republicans long having surrendered to Trump. In his own contribution to the debate over whether to do a deal on immigration and get back to supporting Ukraine, Trump struck a predictably harsh note, clearly meant to stiffen Johnson’s spine.“I do not think we should do a border deal, at all, unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION”, the former president wrote on his social media platform.“Also, I have no doubt that our wonderful speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, will only make a deal that is PERFECT ON THE BORDER.” More

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      With Deal Close on Border and Ukraine, Republican Rifts Threaten to Kill Both

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      A divided G.O.P. coalesced behind a bit of legislative extortion: No Ukraine aid without a border crackdown. Now they are split over how large a price to demand, imperiling both initiatives.Senator James Lankford, the Oklahoma Republican and staunch conservative, this week trumpeted the immigration compromise he has been negotiating with Senate Democrats and White House officials as one shaping up to be “by far, the most conservative border security bill in four decades.”Speaker Mike Johnson, in contrast, sent out a fund-raising message on Friday denouncing the forthcoming deal as a Democratic con. “My answer is NO. Absolutely NOT,” his message said, adding, “This is the hill I’ll die on.”The Republican disconnect explains why, with an elusive bipartisan bargain on immigration seemingly as close as it has been in years on Capitol Hill, the prospects for enactment are grim. It is also why hopes for breaking the logjam over sending more U.S. aid to Ukraine are likely to be dashed by hard-line House Republicans.The situation encapsulates the divide cleaving the Republican Party. On one side are the right-wing MAGA allies of former President Donald J. Trump, an America First isolationist who instituted draconian immigration policies while in office. On the other is a dwindling group of more mainstream traditionalists who believe the United States should play an assertive role defending democracy on the world stage.The two wings coalesced last fall around a bit of legislative extortion: They would only agree to President Biden’s request to send about $60 billion more to Ukraine for its fight against Russian aggression if he agreed to their demands to clamp down on migration at the United States border with Mexico. But now, they are at odds about how large of a price to demand.Hard-right House Republicans, who are far more dug in against aid to Ukraine, have argued that the bipartisan border compromise brokered by their counterparts in the Senate is unacceptable. And they bluntly say they do not want to give Mr. Biden the opportunity in an election year to claim credit for cracking down on unauthorized immigration.Instead, with Mr. Trump agitating against the deal from the campaign trail, they are demanding a return to more severe immigration policies that he imposed, which stand no chance of passing the Democrat-controlled Senate. Those include a revival of the Remain in Mexico policy, under which migrants seeking to enter the United States were blocked and made to stay elsewhere while they waited to appear in immigration court to plead their cases.While Senate G.O.P. leaders have touted the emerging agreement as a once-in-a-generation opportunity for a breakthrough on the border, hard-right House members have dismissed it as the work of establishment Republicans out of touch with the G.O.P. base.“Let’s talk about Mitch McConnell — he has a 6 percent approval rating,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, said of the Senate minority leader. “He wouldn’t be the one to be listening to, making deals on the border.”She said that after Mr. Trump’s decisive win in the Iowa caucuses, “It’s time for all Republicans, Senate and the House, to get behind his policies.”As for the proposed aid to Ukraine, Ms. Greene is threatening to oust Mr. Johnson from the speakership if he brings it to the floor.“My red line is Ukraine,” she said, expressing confidence that the speaker would heed her threat. “I’m making it very clear to him. We will not see it on the House floor — that is my expectation.”House Republicans have opposed sending money to Ukraine without a deal on immigration.Emile Ducke for The New York TimesThe situation is particularly fraught for Mr. Johnson, the novice House speaker whose own sympathies lie with the far right but who is facing immense institutional pressures — from Mr. Biden, Democrats in Congress and his fellow Republicans in the Senate — to embrace a deal pairing border policy changes with aid to Ukraine.Mr. Johnson has positioned himself as a Trump loyalist, quickly endorsing the former president after winning the gavel, and said that he has spoken regularly to the former president about the Senate immigration deal and everything else. After infuriating hard-right Republicans on Thursday by pushing through a short-term government funding bill to avert a shutdown, the speaker has little incentive to enrage them again and defy the wishes of Mr. Trump, who has disparaged the Senate compromise.“I do not think we should do a Border Deal, at all, unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media this week.Democrats already have agreed to substantial concessions in the talks, including making it more difficult for migrants to claim asylum; expanding detention and expulsion authorities; and shutting down the intake of migrants when attempted crossings reach a level that would overwhelm detention facilities — around 5,000 migrants a day.But far-right Republicans have dismissed the compromise out of hand, saying the changes would still allow many immigrants to enter the country each year without authorization.Election-year politics is playing a big role. Representative Bob Good, Republican of Virginia and the chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, said passing the Senate bill would give “political cover” to Mr. Biden for his failures at the border.“Democrats want to look like they care about the border, then run out the clock so Biden wins re-election,” Mr. Good said. “It would be terrible for the country to give political cover to the facilitators of the border invasion.”Representative Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, said that while Mr. Johnson broke with the right on federal spending because he feared a government shutdown, “I think on the immigration issue, there’s more unity.”Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Senate Republican, warned that the immigration compromise was a “unique opportunity” that would not be available to Republicans next year, even if they were to win majorities in both chambers of Congress and win back the White House.“The Democrats will not give us anything close to this if we have to get 60 votes in the U.S. Senate in a Republican majority,” he said.Speaker Mike Johnson has positioned himself as a Trump loyalist. Kenny Holston/The New York TimesMany mainstream House Republicans believe that Mr. Johnson would be making a terrible mistake if he heeded the advice of the most far-right voices and refused to embrace an immigration deal. They argue that doing so would squander an opportunity to win important policy changes and the political boost that would come with showing that Republicans can govern.“Big city mayors are talking about the same thing that Texas conservatives are talking about,” said Representative Patrick T. McHenry, Republican of North Carolina, a close ally of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. “Take the moment, man. Take the policy win, bank it, and go back for more. That is always the goal.”But for some Republicans, taking the policy win is less important than continuing to have a political issue to rail against in an election year.“It’s worse than doing nothing to give political cover for a sham border security bill that does nothing to actually secure the border,” Mr. Good said.Mr. Burchett, one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust Mr. McCarthy, rolled his eyes when asked about Mr. McHenry’s entreaties not to make the perfect the enemy of the good.“McHenry’s leaving,” he said of the congressman, who has announced he will not run for re-election next year. More

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      How Biden’s Immigration Fight Threatens His Biggest Foreign Policy Win

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      The debate over immigration in the United States is spilling over into other parts of President Biden’s agenda, particularly the war in Ukraine.The soaring number of people crossing into the United States from Mexico has been a political vulnerability for President Biden for the past three years, chipping away at his approval rating and opening him up to political attacks.But now, the crisis is threatening to upend America’s support for the war in Ukraine, throwing the centerpiece of Mr. Biden’s foreign policy into jeopardy.After a meeting with Mr. Biden at the White House on Wednesday, Speaker Mike Johnson insisted that the Republican-led House would not pass legislation to send aid to Ukraine unless Democrats agreed to sweeping new restrictions at the U.S.-Mexico border.And even if the two sides do come to some sort of agreement, many Republicans, especially in the House, would be loath to give an election-year win to Mr. Biden on an issue that has given them a powerful line of criticism toward the White House. The issue is also at the center of the candidacy of Mr. Biden’s likely opponent this fall, former President Donald J. Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      At Davos, War Is on the Agenda, but the Focus Is on A.I. and Elections

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      The leaders and executives gathering at the World Economic Forum are obsessed with elections and artificial intelligence, not Ukraine or Gaza.Each day this week has brought a new and fleeting reminder to the executives and politicians at the annual World Economic Forum meeting of the two wars threatening global security and clouding the economy. Ukraine’s president spoke on Tuesday. Israel’s spoke on Thursday.Neither was able to hold the collective attention of a gathering that this year has focused overwhelmingly on artificial intelligence and populist politics.Gaza and Ukraine have made daily appearances on the public agenda in Davos, along with climate change and economic inequality. But in the warm halls and slushy streets around town, conversations almost inevitably turn to the two accelerating trends that are destabilizing business models and democracies.Everyone wants to talk about how A.I. and this year’s elections, especially in the United States, could shake up the world. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel led by Hamas or the ensuing Israeli bombing of Gaza? Drowned out in comparison.“No one is talking about Israel,” said Rachel Goldberg, who came to Davos to urge action to free the more than 100 hostages who were taken on Oct. 7 and continue to be held by Hamas, including her 23-year-old son, Hersh.In an interview on Wednesday, Ms. Goldberg said she was not surprised the war had taken a back seat here. “I think it’s complicated,” she said. “And I think it’s very polarizing.”Davos is many things layered on top of one another. It is a font of wealthy idealism, where the phrase “committed to improving the state of the world” frequently adorns the walls of the main meeting center.The forum is a networking event where chief executives, world leaders, celebrities, philanthropists and journalists speed-date through half-hour coffee meetings. It is a trade show for big ideas, with overlapping panel discussions on topics including gender equity, media misinformation and the transition to green energy.It is also a venue for top government officials to speak on grave issues, including war. That is where much of the Gaza and Ukraine discussion played out this week.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, meeting on Tuesday.Laurent Gillieron/Keystone, via Associated PressPresident Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine called for international aid — but not more weapons — in a packed-house address on Tuesday to hundreds of people. He also took questions from reporters afterward.Without more assistance from the United States and others, Mr. Zelensky said, “a huge crisis will happen.” He added: “We have a war now, and we will have a huge crisis — a crisis for the whole of Europe.”Several leaders spoke about Gaza and the broader conflict it has spawned in the Middle East, though typically to smaller crowds. In a room of about 60 attendees on Wednesday, Mohammad Mustafa, the chairman of Palestine Investment Fund and the former deputy prime minister of Palestine, called for additional international aid for the people in Gaza and for an end to the war.“The military action has got to stop very quickly,” Mr. Mustafa said. “There is no need for anyone to build their political careers at the expense of more Palestinian people.”Hossein Amir Abdollahian, the foreign minister of Iran, blamed Israel for raising tensions in the Middle East in the past several months. “If the genocide in Gaza stops, then it will lead to the end of the other crises and attacks in the region,” he said.In his Thursday speech, President Isaac Herzog of Israel called Iran the center of an “empire of evil” destabilizing the Middle East and displayed a photograph of Kfir Bibas, a 1-year-old hostage being held in Gaza. “We have a very cruel, sadistic enemy who has taken a decision to try to torture the Israeli national psyche as well as the hostages themselves,” Mr. Herzog said.But those speeches rarely dominated the conversations on the sidelines of the event, at the nightly private dinners after the day’s agenda concluded or in most of the storefronts that large corporations paid to transform into branded event spaces along the main promenade in town.President Isaac Herzog of Israel with a picture of Kfir Bibas, a child who was taken hostage by Hamas, on Thursday.Denis Balibouse/ReutersOne possible explanation: Attendees and leaders here do not view either war as a significant threat at the moment to the global economy. Neither Gaza nor Ukraine cracked the Top 10 near-term concerns in the Global Risk Report — a survey of 1,500 global leaders — that the forum released on the eve of the gathering. A World Economic Forum chief economists’ report released this week suggested that growth forecasts for the Middle East had “slightly weakened” amid uncertainties about the war between Israel and Hamas. It did not mention Ukraine.In private conversations around Davos this week, corporate leaders acknowledged the wars in Gaza and Ukraine as one of many concerns. But they grew much more animated about other topics that they said they expected to affect their businesses in the near term — potentially enormously, for good or ill.A.I. topped that list. In interviews, executives expounded, usually with significant enthusiasm, on the benefits and drawbacks of the technology. They also talked politics, exhaustively. Over dinner, they and other attendees debated whether former President Donald J. Trump would win back the White House in November — and how his populist, protectionist policy could roil markets and upend their business models.Some executives explicitly ranked Gaza and Ukraine lower than the American elections on their list of geopolitical concerns. Many attendees lamented that there was not more energy behind war discussions, or recognition of the risks the wars pose to the economy and global security. Last year, concerns about Ukraine shared the spotlight at the gathering, along with a surge of A.I. interest.This year, “everyone is focusing on other subjects,” Pascal Cagni, France’s ambassador for international exports, said in an interview. Economically and politically, he added, Ukraine is “a critical issue.”There were a few exceptions. Supporters of Ukraine opened their own storefront space on the main promenade and staged several events each day to draw attention to the conflict. The technology company Palantir and its chief executive, Alex Karp, hosted Ms. Goldberg and other parents of hostages for events and interviews.Waiting for the arrival of Mr. Zelensky at the Ukraine House in Davos on Tuesday.Gian Ehrenzeller/EPA, via ShutterstockSeveral governments sent leaders to Davos in an attempt to quietly advance back-channel diplomacy in Ukraine or Gaza. That was true of the Biden administration, which sent Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Jake Sullivan, the White House’s national security adviser, to Davos for a flurry of meetings centered on Gaza.In an interview on Wednesday, Ms. Goldberg said she was grateful for all efforts to bring her son and the other hostages home. She wore “103” taped to her sweater, which represented the number of days since her son had been taken.In Davos, Ms. Goldberg was sharing a house with other parents of hostages. “I walked out this morning and here, you know, you have these, like, gorgeous views and beautiful mountains,” she said. She said she had turned to another mother and said: “It’s so beautiful. It’s perverse.”But, she added a moment later: “I’m very grateful that I’m here. Because I am having access to people that I would never have access to. And the goal is to save Hersh’s life, and everyone who is there, their lives. I can only do that if we have access to people who have power. And that’s people who are here.”Reporting was contributed by More

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      Neo-Nazis in the US no longer see backing Ukraine as a worthy cause

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      Two years into the war in Ukraine, once a destination for American extremists, many within the underground far-right movement in the US are avidly disavowing it and advising followers to stay away. Extremists now see the upcoming election year as tailor-made for activism on the home front.At the outset of the war, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued an intelligence bulletin that far-right American extremists were heading to the conflict and could use it to hone terrorist skills to bring back stateside.After an open call for international volunteers, the Ukrainian military attracted nearly 20,000 fighters from around the world. Within weeks, there were already so-called American “Boogaloo Bois” flying out.In a November 2023 audio message on Telegram, the ex-Marine Christopher Pohlhaus – the leader of neo-Nazi network the Blood Tribe known for its racist and homophobic protests across the US – recently told followers he was not allowing his “guys” to join in the conflict.“I will still continue to support the struggle of the people there,” said Pohlhaus before explaining how a disagreement with his personal ally and Russian militia leader fighting for Ukraine, Denis Nikitin (whom Pohlhaus infamously pledged allegiance to over the summer), caused the group to cut ties.“I’m not going to allow our guys, my guys’ efforts and blood to go towards [the war],” he said.According to him, though several of his members had been “super stoked and preparing to go to Ukraine”, they would pivot all of their money and resources to focusing on domestic activism, particularly their hate rallies, seeing no benefit to fighting in the war. In the same message, Pohlhaus, who confirmed the recording to the Guardian via text message, acknowledged that he was one of the last public-facing neo-Nazi leaders in the US to support the war in Ukraine.For its part, the DHS did not respond to multiple emails from the Guardian on whether it was continuing to track rightwing extremists traveling to Ukraine.Whether or not Pohlhaus was serious about the war is another question. Some within the broader US neo-Nazi movement have used the war in Ukraine as a sort of live-action role-playing scheme to build their militant credibility, even if tales of their exploits aren’t true. Kent McLellan, a Floridian who worked with Pohlhaus and is known by the alias “Boneface”, was outed for lying about his Ukraine war bonafides over the summer.For its part, the Kremlin has been a relentless recruiter of neo-Nazis to its cause; the co-founder of the mercenary Wagner Group, Dmitry Utkin, not only named his organization after the Third Reich’s favorite composer but had the logo for the Waffen-SS tattooed on both sides of his neck.The war is also at a crisis point for Ukraine as the mainstream Republican party blocks aid to Kyiv in Congress over demands to first reinforce the southern border with Mexico and make draconian changes to the US’s asylum system.Within the wider web of neo-Nazi militancy, Ukraine chatter has all but evaporated with the conflict in Gaza and domestic issues outshining what was once a well-followed world event. Seeing no value in sending men to gain combat experience on the frontline, with too high a risk of death or arrest upon return, US rightwing extremists see Ukraine as a conflict with little upside.In September, a prominent far-right publication, linked to the disbanded American neo-Nazi terror group Atomwaffen Division, boldly declared that the war not only “doesn’t matter anymore to us”, but it would “like to refocus” on American issues.“Posting about a war half a world away while we have more pressing matters at home is frankly just not in our interests.”It’s a sentiment that recalls statements from the Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy – who have all characterized the war as a faraway problem.But only five years ago, Ukraine was seen as a fertile training ground for far-right extremists.Rinaldo Nazzaro, the Russia-based former Pentagon contractor turned founder of international neo-Nazi organization the Base, told his group in a secret meeting that he saw the war as an opportunity for a potential training pipeline. And one former member of the Base, Ryan Burchfield (a Marine Corps dropout), made the trip to Ukraine in 2019 looking to join an ultranationalist militia. Not long after his arrival, Ukrainian intelligence deported Burchfield and another American for terrorist activities.In texts to the Guardian, Nazzaro explained his view of the conflict.“I think our guys can find adequate training elsewhere without risking their lives in Ukraine,” he said, adding that the war wasn’t being led by forces that had “our best interests in mind”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJoshua Fisher-Birch, an analyst of the extreme right for the Counter Extremism Project, has kept tabs on rightwing extremists and their fascination with Ukraine.“Chatter among the American online extreme right regarding travel to Ukraine to fight against the Russian invasion has decreased in the last year,” he said, pointing out that in some cases talk about venturing to the war was “either never serious” or a blatant “attempt to raise money through crowdfunding, or was abandoned due to the brutal reality of the conflict or no longer seeing a goal for the American movement”.The threat of law enforcement has also acted as a major deterrent to rightwing extremists trying to join the Ukrainian war effort.“It’s also highly likely that efforts from both the US and Ukrainian governments made travel for these individuals more difficult,” he said.For European neo-Nazis, on the other hand, the conflict is on their doorstep. Unchecked Russian imperialism is still regarded as very much a close proximity threat by nationalist movements all over the continent. They see Americans and English speakers within their movement as ignorant to the reality of the Kremlin’s propaganda machine.“We do our best to be understanding of the fact that in the Anglosphere there is a different kind of echo chamber where mostly Kremlin propaganda dominates and that you have probably never even heard the truth,” said one prominent European neo-Nazi account on Telegram in March last year, already noticing the slide away from the conflict among English speakers.“With that said, there is still a limit to how much ignorance we can tolerate,” the post continues. “Note that a lot of our guys have been on the frontlines themselves, and everybody here at least knows somebody who has.”European right nationalists from Scandinavia, Poland, Belarus and Russia, among other places, have served on the frontlines. But for many American extremists, the actual prospect of joining the conflict carries practical and logistical difficulties as well as involving a large degree of risk to life and limb.“We mistake fascination with the conflict or for certain units among the far right online with their actual presence in Ukraine fighting,” said Kacper Rekawek, a senior research fellow and programme lead at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism and an expert on foreign fighters in Ukraine.Rekawek said one of the major inhibitors for Americans joining the war, versus Europeans, is distance and language.“It’s far,” he said, “it’s in a very unknown language and it’s cold out there … It’s lonely out there.” More