www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/26/african-men-tricked-into-fighting-ukraine-for-russia
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www.nytimes.com/2026/01/26/opinion/trump-foreign-policy-neo-royalist.html
For decades, the United States has championed a rules-based international order. Mr. Trump has wasted little time taking a wrecking ball to it and was typically blunt in declaring, “I don’t need international law.”
To interpret Mr. Trump’s approach, the administration and pundits have been quick to turn back the clock to 19th-century models of international affairs. The purported Donroe Doctrine (aping the Monroe Doctrine of 1823) aims to secure a sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere to counter the influence of Russia and China. We are back to a world, the president’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, said, that is “governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. ”
But what we are seeing is not great-power competition in any traditional sense. Instead of securing the region from narcotrafficking, Mr. Trump went after one autocrat in Venezuela and pardoned a former Honduran president who said he wanted to “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses.” Mr. Trump claims that taking over Greenland is “psychologically needed,” even though the United States already has a military presence on the island and an open invitation to expand its bases. And he has struck deals with great-power rivals that undermine U.S. influence, reportedly promising Vladimir Putin territorial gains in Ukraine and approving Nvidia’s bid to sell its high-end semiconductor chips to China.
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While Mr. Trump boasts that the Venezuela intervention will increase American prosperity, there is actually little promise of national benefit. Instead, the gains appear to be flowing to Mr. Trump and his insiders. Amber Energy, an affiliate of Mr. Singer’s hedge-fund company,won an auction for Citgo, the U.S. subsidiary of the Venezuelan state-owned oil company, a few months ago and is now strategically positioned to play a key role in refining and distributing that oil. As a down payment, Mr. Trump announced that up to 50 million barrels would be sold and that “that money will be controlled by me.” The first sale was routed through the company of another megadonor, leading Senator Chris Murphy to conclude, “Trump took Venezuela’s oil at gunpoint and gave it to one of his biggest campaign donors.” Fifty million barrels is a mere two and a half days’ worth of domestic consumption, but it would be well more than what Mr. Trump spent on his 2024 election campaign — a pot of patronage rather than a national investment.
Mr. Trump’s trade policy follows a similar
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www.theguardian.com/news/2026/jan/22/gullah-geechee-georgia-development-referendum
The community is home to the Gullah Geecheepeople, descendants of enslaved west Africans who worked on cotton, indigo and rice plantations from North Carolina to Florida. In places like South Carolina’s Hilton Head Island, the Gullah Geechee population was nearly wiped out by development starting in the 1960s.
On Sapelo Island, post-enslavement, freed Black folks were granted land in Hogg Hummock in part because it was seen as marshy and less desirable than the rest of the island. It is the only remaining sea island community of Gullah Geechee people in Georgia.
‘On Sapelo Island, post-enslavement, freed Black folks were granted land in Hogg Hummock in part because it was seen as marshy and less desirable.’ Photograph: Joshua Parks/The Guardian “All that’s family,” Grovner summed up. “All those people who want to build houses here ain’t gonna close me in.”
Outsiders building large vacation houses was what was at stake in Tuesday’s election in McIntosh county, where Sapelo is located – only the second citizen referendum on a county plan or policy in Georgia history. (Nearby Camden county voters defeated a county plan to build a rocket-launching pad through a referendum in 2022.)
The referendum, brought about after more than 2,000 registered voters in the county signed petitions, allowed residents to vote on whether they were for or against a zoning amendment increasing the amount of residential square footage permitted in Hogg Hummock from 1,400 to 3,000.
Unofficial results released on Tuesday evening showed that nearly 85% of 1,869 county voters opposed the zoning increase.
Allowing larger houses to be built on the island would have opened the door to developers – “all those people” Grovner named – which then would raise taxes, making it harder for Gullah Geechee
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An autopsy from the county medical examiner said the detainee, Geraldo Lunas Campos, was asphyxiated and restrained by law enforcement. Federal officials described his death as a suicide.
Listen to this article · 4:29 min Learn more
Published Jan. 21, 2026Updated Jan. 22, 2026, 9:27 a.m. ET
A Cuban immigrant’s death in an El Paso detention center this month was ruled a homicide, according to an autopsy report released Wednesday by the county medical examiner’s office.
The detainee, Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, became unresponsive while he was physically restrained by law enforcement on Jan. 3 at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility called Camp East Montana, the report said. Emergency medical workers tried to resuscitate him, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.
The autopsy listed the cause of death as “asphyxia due to neck and torso compression.” The report also described injuries Mr. Lunas Campos had sustained to his head and neck, including burst blood vessels in the front and side of the neck, as well as on his eyelids.
The determination by the medical examiner’s office does not necessarily indicate criminal culpability. It is a classification of how a person died, not a legal determination of guilt.
Nyt
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“Iran was nothing like it was three years ago. The people’s attitude, the people’s words, I could clearly sense that no one is truly satisfied anymore. The city felt like fire under ashes.
Fire under ashes. This is the voice of an Iranian graduate student currently living and studying in the US. She asked that we refer to her as Kay.
Back in early December, during her university’s holiday break, she and her husband went back to Iran to visit family. They planned to stay a month. This was her first time back in three years.
She says Iran kind of felt like a tinderbox when she got there.
Not only because of economic problem or economic crisis, but also because of the suffocating atmosphere and the lack of civil freedoms.
We will not be sharing her name because she asked to remain anonymous in order to protect her family in Iran.
When I went to the supermarket or hospital or bank, I’ve seen a conversation, I’ve heard a conversation that people talk about Iranian currency and why it’s really low and it’s getting worse and what’s going to happen. They didn’t see any future upon them.
Over the last[…]”
From Throughline: Iran Protests Explained, Jan 22, 2026
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/throughline/id1451109634?i=1000746132750&r=19
This material may be protected by copyright. -
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January 2026
Wednesday 14 January 2026
A representative from Denmark and one from Greenland made statements in Washington, D.C. today. They noted that the discussions between them and Marco Rubio and the el Crapo J. D. Vance ended without agreement. It was a sad event to watch. Neither Vance nor Rubio stood with them. They were just left out there alone in front of some cheap steel-framed building to read their statements
The woman from Greenland had her brows so furrowed, there were deep lines on her forehead. The diplomat from Denmark had evidently been at the diplomatic game for a long time and even though he didn’t look happy, he maintained a stoic expression. You could tell it was taking a lot of energy out of him.
It is just all so absurd. The two representatives evidently had to assure the Americans that Chinese and Russian war ships were not cruising around right off Greenland’s shore. I’m sure the U.S. intelligence community had no idea that Trump’s accusation that this was going on was false. I mean, they would have told him, wouldn’t they?
Because of the greedy, grasping nature of the rest of us, the Arctic is warming at least twice as fast as the rest of the planet. This means that the Arctic is more accessible and also a more strategic target for graphite, zinc and rare earths (Sengupta, Somini, NYT, 1/14/26).
As a former Pentagon official said to the NYT: “His (Trump’s) fixation on Greenland is an admission that climate change is real. And, of course, “some of Mr. Trump’s allies have invested in mining interests in and around Greenland. Greenland, evidently populated with reasonable people has banned uranium mining because of the risk of environmental damage. The same considerations have prevented Greenland from granting oil exploration licenses (noting also “economic common sense) (Sengupta, 1/14/26).
NOTES ON GREENLAND (NYT, 1/14/26)
• Greenlanders have free health care, free education and a strong safety net.
• “Greenland still relies on hundreds of millions of dollars each year in Danish subsidies.”
• “Under a Cold War treaty, American forces already enjoy almost unfettered military access” to Greenland.
• Relations between officials in Greenland and Denmark are not always amicable. In one meeting recently a Greenlandic official “raised her voice and pounded the table, accusing her Danish colleagues of acting neocolonialist.” (NYT 1/14/26).
• Trump seems to feel that NATO should be the real estate agent helping him acquire Greenland. “NATO should be leading the way for us to get” Greenland, Trump commented on the 14, the day of the meeting. (NYT, 1/14/26)
• There is concern within NATO that if Trump were to invade Greenland, Russia might seize the opportunity to send forces into alliance territory (NYT, 1/14/26)
NOTES FROM THE NEWS (NYT 1/14/26)
• Trump cuts $2 billion in federal funding for mental health and substance abuse.
• Immigrant visa processing is to be halted for 75 countries.
Notes on the News: Georgia 2020 Election (Fausset, Richard and Danny Hakim, In Secret Testimony…” NYT, 1/13/26)
• In 2023 Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County District Attorney, brought a case against Trump and 18 allies on election interference charges. The case was dismissed in November.
• Evidence was presented before a special grand jury which recommended indicting more than twice as many Trump allies as Willis eventually charted.
• Quote from Lindsey Graham’s interview: “If you told him Martians came and stole votes, he’d be inclined to believe it.”
• Ralston, the Georgia House Speaker received a phone call from Trump urging him to call a special session of the state legislature to overturn Georgia’s election results.
• Kemp said that Trump had “urged him to convene a special legislative session, and to order an audit of ballot signatures.” Kemp reportedly said in his interview of Trump:”I repeatedly told him…what the law was here.”
QUOTES OF THE DAY
• Donald Trump: “My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” (NYT, 1/14/26)
• Jamelle Bouie: “Trump’s assertion of unlimited authority…is a total rejection of popular sovereignty and the logic of the Constitution.” (NYT, 1/14/26)
• Jamelle Bouie: “Trump does not see himself as a constitutional officer. His power, as he sees it, flows from his person – not the office and certainly ot the people, whose only role, in his view, is to legitimize his desires” (NYT, 1/14/26)
• Jamelle Bouie: “The American public…is left not with a president but with a man who imagines himself master and behaves like a tyrant.” (NYT, 1/14/26).
• Pipaluk Lynge, one of Greenland’s top officials: “We’re not going to sell our soul. We’re not stupid.” (NYT, 1/14/26)
• Donald Trump: We’re going to “do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not.” (NYT, 1/14/26).
• Greenlander: “We’ve never heard anyone talk like that about another country before.” (NYT, 1/14/26)
• “I think NATO is too important for the united States to throw it away.” (NYT, 1/14/26)
GOOD READS
Bouie, Jamelle (1/14/26) “This is Not how a Normal President Speaks.” New York Times.
Steele, Christopher (2023) “Unredacted: Russia, Trump, and the Battle for Democracy.”
Isikoff, Michael () “find Me the Votes.”
Law, Power, and Justice 