BRIDGEWATER, N.J. (AP) — NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is set to meet President Donald Trump this week on the heels of the U.S. leader announcing plans to sell NATO allies weaponry that they can then pass on to Ukraine. Rutte will be in Washington on Monday and Tuesday and plans to hold talks with Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as well as members of Congress. “I’m gonna have a meeting with the secretary general who’s coming in tomorrow,” Trump told reporters as he arrived in Washington on Sunday night. “But we basically are going to send them various pieces of very sophisticated (weapons) and they’re gonna pay us 100% for them.” A top ally of Trump, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, […]

A united conservative majority of the Supreme Court ruled Friday that federal judges lack the authority to grant nationwide injunctions, but the decision left unclear whether President Donald Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship could soon take effect in parts of the country. The outcome represented a victory for Trump, who has complained about judges throwing up obstacles to his agenda. Nationwide, or universal, injunctions had emerged as an important check on the Republican president’s efforts to expand executive power and remake the government and a source of mounting frustration to him and his allies.But the court left open the possibility that the birthright citizenship changes could remain blocked nationwide. Trump’s order would deny citizenship to U.S.-born children of people who are in the country illegally or temporarily.The cases now return […]

Chloe Dalton was taking a winter walk near her farmhouse when she encountered it: a tiny baby hare — known as a leveret — lying huddled and alone in the middle of a narrow country lane. A London political adviser who was living in the English countryside during the pandemic, Dalton knew next to nothing about hares. Yet when she found that the leveret hadn’t moved for hours, she decided to take it home and try to save it — despite her fears that by interfering she might hurt its ability to return to the wild. What follows, as recounted in the new memoir, “Raising Hare,” was an unexpected experiment in coexistence. The book is part of a timely genre: true stories about people who open a window into the […]

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Tulsi Gabbard to be Director of National Intelligence in a 52-48 vote, making Donald Trump’s controversial nominee — whose approval appeared unlikely just weeks ago — the nation’s spy chief. Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii and an Army combat veteran, passed out of the Senate Intelligence Committee in a 9-8 party-line vote last week. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the former Senate majority leader, appeared to be the GOP’s only “no” for Gabbard during the final vote. “The [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] wields significant authority over how the intelligence community allocates its resources, conducts its collection and analysis and manages the classification and declassification of our nation’s most sensitive secrets. In my assessment, Tulsi Gabbard failed to demonstrate that she is prepared […]

A handful of employees inside the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency focused on countering disinformation, misinformation and related influence operations were recently put on administrative leave, a DHS spokesperson confirmed to Nextgov/FCW Wednesday. The statement confirmed earlier reports about staff being sidelined, a move that comes as DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has vowed to overhaul and reshape the scope of the cyber agency amid GOP concerns that its past efforts to reduce false information on social-media sites helped censor conservative voices. “The agency is undertaking an evaluation of how it has executed its election-security mission with a particular focus on any work related to mis-, dis-, and malinformation,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said. “While the agency conducts the assessment, personnel who worked on mis-, dis-, and malinformation, as well […]

COPENHAGEN—When the United States asked its friends for help earlier in this century, Denmark stepped forward, sending troops to fight and sometimes die in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now Danes face threats and intimidation from the United States in the form of President Donald Trump’s demand that Denmark sell or cede Greenland, against the apparent wishes of the Greenland people. That’s a shameful prospect for those who remember that the United States rose to world leadership by standing for something more than great-power bullying, à la greedy European kings and dynasties that the United States was founded to leave behind. Trump claims to put “America first.” There is a better way to advance US interests. I spent the last days of January in Copenhagen, Denmark, meeting with Danish officials, experts, and old friends […]

President-elect Donald Trump’s recent refusal to rule out going to war to annex Greenland and reoccupy the Panama Canal, and his threats to use economic pressure to annex Canada, may be mere trolling. Trump seems to relish saying things that send people scurrying, chattering, and expressing outrage. Trump may also be seeking, as former Congressman Tom Malinowski shrewdly suggested, to distract from the difficulty of fulfilling the promises that got Trump elected, like lowering prices.  Trump’s threats may also be designed to throw Canada, Denmark and Greenland, and Panama off balance as a prelude to some sort of negotiation under pressure, which Trump can then tout as a success for “America First.” The United States is unlikely to start wars against allies and friends. For one thing, Trump would own the consequences, which […]

The December 7 trilateral meeting between French President Emmanuel Macron, US President-elect Donald Trump, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral signaled a possible convergence of views regarding a way forward in Russia’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine. The meeting might have helped dissipate the widespread fear among Europeans that the president-elect would settle for a deal throwing Ukraine to the wolves. It also alleviated some US perceptions that Ukrainians were too demanding in their approach to a deal and that Europeans were unwilling to commit. Several European nations have been clear that their end goal is a strategic victory for a Ukraine integrated in the Western security order. Beyond its general support for this goal, France has repeatedly engaged with other European leaders on future legal, political, military, […]