Breaking News
Breaking News
from Washington and beyond

Trump Proves He’s Totally Clueless With Dangerous Nuclear Comments

Donald Trump doesn’t appear to fully understand how disarmament works.

Donald Trump is seen on a screen speaking at a podium during a virtual appearance at the Davos World Economic Forum
Stefan Wermuth/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to have successfully convinced Donald Trump that diminishing America’s nuclear weapons reserves would be a good thing.

Speaking before the World Economic Forum on Thursday, the forty-seventh president said that Putin had warmed to the idea of “denuclearization” between the two countries.

“We’d like to see denuclearization,” Trump told the conference. “I will tell you that President Putin really liked the idea of cutting way back on nuclear, and I think the rest of the world, we would have gotten them to follow.

“And China too, China liked it,” Trump added.

On Monday, Putin indicated that he was ready to discuss nuclear arms control, the war in Ukraine, and other security issues with Trump, reported Reuters.

The last and only remaining nuclear arms deal between the U.S. and Russia—the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, otherwise known as New START—is set to expire on February 5, 2026. The deal capped the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the two nations could deploy, as well as the number of land and water vehicles used to deliver them.

Legitimate international disarmament would, of course, be a good thing. But whether Putin would actually follow through on diminishing his nation’s nuclear stockpiles is unclear. For decades, Russia has spent millions working to replace and upgrade its strategic and nonstrategic nuclear systems.

As of early 2024, Russia possessed a total of 5,580 nuclear warheads, the most of any country in the world, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The nonprofit organization argued that the war in Ukraine had drastically depleted Russia’s “conventional forces,” pushing it to deepen its reliance on nuclear weapons for its national defense systems.

“Russia’s nuclear modernization programs—combined with frequent explicit nuclear threats against other countries in the context of its large conventional war in Ukraine—contribute to uncertainty about the country’s long-term intentions and have generated a growing international debate about the nature of its nuclear strategy,” read a Bulletin column.

The global security group further argued that the U.S. ballistic missile system could stand in the way of Russia’s eventual nuclear disarmament, claiming that the missile system “constitutes a real future risk to the credibility of Russia’s retaliatory capability.”

Some of Trump’s domestic decisions prior to entering the White House were reportedly “thrilling” to Russian mouthpieces. Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of the Russian state-controlled broadcaster RT, mocked American politicians in December for their stupidity while claiming that some of Trump’s more unqualified choices for his Cabinet—such as onetime DOGE co-chair nominee Vivek Ramaswamy and director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard—are friendly faces that bring the Kremlin “lots of joy.”

Well, Well, Well: Trump Can’t Lower Egg Prices After All

Egg prices have hit an all-time high on the third day of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Donald Trump poses with groceries during a campaign speech at his Bedminster, New Jersey, club about rising food costs
Bing Guan/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Donald Trump’s decision to press pause on communications from health organizations amid an escalating bird flu breakout could take America’s soaring egg prices and make them even worse.

The consumer price index found that egg prices have increased 36.8 percent from this time last year, and experts believe the increase in price is the result of avian influenza, which is rapidly depleting the supply of chickens.

If one bird is infected, farms are required by law to cull the entire flock. Axios reported Tuesday that in the previous 30 days, the bird flu affected nearly 12 million birds, according to data from USDA. If nothing changes, egg prices will only continue to rise. Trump, who brags that he won the presidency by promising to lower the prices of groceries, is obviously acting swiftly and effectively to address the issue, right?

Not quite. On Tuesday, the acting director of the Department of Health and Human Services paused the release of “regulations, guidance documents, and other public documents and communications” from all U.S. health and science agencies.

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had been planning to publish an issue of their “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,” which contained several items pertaining to the bird flu outbreak and dairy and poultry farms. But as all communications have been put on hold, the issue was not released, according to The New York Times.

Meanwhile, the bird flu has already infected at least 67 people, resulting in its first human death last month.

Trump’s Repulsive Pardon of Two Police Officers Who Killed a Black Man

These may be the most shocking pardons not on the January 6 list.

Donald Trump holds up a signed executive order during his inaugural parade
Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

On Wednesday, Donald Trump pardoned two Washington, D.C., police officers convicted of the 2020 killing of 20-year-old Karon Hylton-Brown, a young Black man.

Officers Terrence Sutton and Andrew Zabavsky were sentenced last September to 66 and 48 months in prison, respectively, for an “unauthorized police pursuit.” The two cops pursued Hylton-Brown after spotting him driving a moped without a helmet, and pursued him for 10 blocks, including going the wrong way down a one-way alley, until another vehicle hit and killed him.

Trump’s pardon came after Sutton and Zabavsky were unanimously found guilty by a federal grand jury in 2022 of conspiracy to obstruct and obstruction of justice over the incident, as well as second-degree murder in Sutton’s case. The D.C. Police Union asked for a pardon for the pair.

On Monday, Trump pardoned more than 1,500 of his supporters involved in the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection, including violent criminals and people accused of attacking police officers. That drew a (delayed) condemnation Tuesday from the Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Chiefs of Police, two police unions that endorsed Trump in the 2020 election.

The pardons to Sutton and Zabavsky indicate that the Trump administration is reviving its full-throated support of law enforcement, even when crimes are committed, with the lone exception for anything that goes against the right-wing culture war. Crimes committed by MAGA will also not be considered crimes, so long as they serve President Trump.

Trump’s Weird Rant About Coal at Davos Is Proof He’s Losing It

Donald Trump was talking about his AI initiatives.

Donald Trump speaks at a podium during a virtual appearance at the Davos World Economic Forum
Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images

Donald Trump is promising the dawn of a new digital age for his second term, even if it means polluting the nation’s air and taxing its infrastructure.

During a speech at the World Economic Forum on Thursday, the forty-seventh president ranted and rambled through dozens of talking points related to a flurry of executive orders he signed earlier in the week. But he also elucidated some of the details related to his plan to expand the nation’s burgeoning artificial intelligence sector, including a pledge to use an emergency declaration to rapidly produce “electric generating plants” in support of the tech industry.

“We need double the energy we currently have in the United States—can you imagine?—for AI to really be as big as we want to have it,” Trump said. “So I’m going to give emergency declarations so they can start building them almost immediately.

“I think it was largely my idea because nobody thought this was possible,” Trump continued. “It wasn’t that they’re not smart because they’re the smartest. But I told them that what I want you to do is build your electric generating plant right next to your plant and connect it. And they said, ‘Wow, you’re kidding,’ and I said, ‘No, no, I’m not kidding.’”

Trump then went on to criticize the nation’s electric grid, calling it old while noting that he would allow the tech companies to rely on any fuel that they want to run the plants. And if the energy plants fail, Trump claimed the country could return to “good clean coal.”

“Coal is very strong as a backup,” Trump told the conference. “Nothing can destroy coal, not the weather, not a bomb, nothing. It might make it a little smaller, might make it a little different shape, but coal is very strong as a backup. It’s a great backup to have that facility … and we have more coal than anybody. We also have more oil and gas than everybody.”

On Tuesday, Trump announced Stargate—a public-private joint AI venture between the federal government, OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle, which the fory-seventh president claimed could invest as much as $500 billion in the bubbling tech sector over the next four years.

OpenAI and SoftBank are set to lead the project, with SoftBank taking on Stargate’s financial responsibility, according to Fortune. OpenAI’s chief Sam Altman called the venture the “most important project of this era.”

Stargate involves an initial private investment of $100 billion into America’s AI infrastructure, a move that would begin a digital “re-industrialization of the United States,” ushering in “hundreds of thousands of American jobs,” OpenAI said in a statement Tuesday.

However, just hours after the deal was announced, Trump’s closest tech adviser—world’s-richest-man Elon Musk—told users on his social media platform that the effort was a dud.

“They don’t actually have the money,” Musk wrote on X, in response to a post from OpenAI announcing the digital infrastructure deal. “SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority.”

RFK Jr. Takes Trump Corruption to Next Level With Vaccine Pledge

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is openly vowing to make money off vaccine lawsuits if confirmed as the next HHS secretary.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks and points while standing at a lectern during a Trump campaign rally.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The Trump administration is already parading its corruption in all of our faces.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has disclosed that even if he’s confirmed as health secretary, he will continue to collect payment from the law firm suing the pharmaceutical company Merck over its HPV vaccine—which Kennedy incorrectly believes is a “dangerous and defective” vaccine that causes cancer in children.

This means that Kennedy would be making money off an anti-vaccine lawsuit while having direct control of the nation’s vaccine policy.

“Pursuant to the referral agreement, I am entitled to receive 10% of fees awarded in contingency fee cases referred to the firm,” wrote Kennedy in a signed ethics agreement. “I am not trying these cases, I am not an attorney of record for the cases, and I will not provide representational services in connection with the cases during my appointment to the position of Secretary.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts called RFK Jr.’s fee collections “outrageous conflicts of interest that endanger public health.”

“This disclosure shows that R.F.K. Jr. made millions off of peddling dangerous anti-vaccine conspiracies,” Warren said. “Even worse, if he is confirmed, his finances will still be tied to the outcomes of anti-vaccine lawsuits—even as he’d be tasked with regulating them as health secretary.”

The HPV vaccine protects against most cases of cervical cancer. *

* This article has been updated to note the efficacy of the HPV vaccine.