Politics

Vice President Vance is currently receiving visitors at an 18th-century Georgian manor in the Cotswolds, an implausibly quaint patch of the English countryside. Petitioners so far have included James Orr, the Cambridge academic and right-wing activist, Robert Jenrick, likely the next leader of Britain's Tories, and Nigel Farage, likely the next UK Prime Minister. Also on the list was one Thomas Skinner, a gregarious wide boy from East London turned e-celebrity turned patriotic influencer. After a stint as a pillow and mattress merchant Skinner, 34, found fame as a contestant on the 15th series of the British version of The Apprentice.

When President Trump said in July that he planned to host a Ultimate Fighting Championship event on the White House lawn next year as part of the U.S.A.’s 250th birthday celebrations, people dismissed it as a typical piece of hyperbole and bluster. “We have a lot of land there,” Trump said, which is somewhat true, but that doesn’t mean that you can plop down an Octagon, right? Well, as it turns out, that’s exactly what it means. Trump is like that boy in the old Twilight Zone episode. Whatever he wishes, comes true. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, UFC boss Dana White, one of Trump’s biggest supporters, said that the UFC 250th anniversary (of the U.S.) is definitely going to happen. “Fighters will be warming up in the White House,” White said.

Cockburn and his colleagues are currently obsessed with the new ICE recruitment video that’s gone viral online. “Allow me to introduce myself, my name is HO HO H to the O V,” Jay-Z, who currently lives comfortably in a Tribeca penthouse with Beyonce, raps over grainy footage of camo-clad soldiers busting open shipping containers, riding rough in the backs of open trucks, and flying in helicopters. It all takes place in dark warehouses or under a dusty, cloudless skies, until the scene shifts to nighttime, and the soldiers raise their hands, getting ready to do violence while lit up in dystopian reds and blues. Denis Villeneuve, who made Sicario, couldn’t have directed it any better.  https://twitter.com/dhsgov/status/1954556388522291682?

Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation whom President Trump appointed last month as temporary leader of NASA, has issued a directive to fast-track efforts to put a nuclear reactor on the moon. “To properly advance this critical technology to be able to support a future lunar economy, high power energy generation on Mars, and to strengthen our national security in space,” he says.A small nuclear reactor on the moon is a good idea, but the directive is about more than that: it is about renewing America’s leadership in space exploration that, with its magnificent achievements receding into the past, looks vulnerable. Bill Nelson, NASA’s last leader, didn't mince his words when it came to the new rivals, China. “It is a fact: we’re in a space race.

Now comes word that Attorney General Pam Bondi is opening a grand jury investigation into the attempt to falsely dragoon President Donald J. Trump with criminal Russian meddlers during the 2016 presidential election. In attempting to direct some measure of sunlight to ground that has been well trod and littered with distracting debris, the US Department of Justice will be facing a significant uphill battle. First, various government officials planted seeds of disinformation and sowed misdirection during the first Trump administration, aided and abetted by the Biden administration in subsequent years. Robert Mueller was appointed in May 2017 to investigate alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and purported ties to the Trump campaign.

Mount Ararat rises over Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, its peak often lost in clouds. It is the country’s national symbol, yet it stands across the border in Turkey. That border has been closed since the early 1990s, when Turkey sided with Azerbaijan against Armenia – cutting Armenia off from its largest western neighbor and leaving it dependent on narrow trade corridors through Georgia and Iran. For three decades, the conflict shaped the politics of the South Caucasus, drawing in Russia, Turkey and Iran. The peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, signed today in Washington, represents more than the end of a long-standing territorial dispute.

Already the Kremlin is setting the terms of the forthcoming summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Steve Witkoff, Trump's emissary, set the meeting in motion with his mission to Moscow on Wednesday, which Trump called “highly productive.” But productive of what? Putin’s foreign-policy adviser Yuri Ushakov stated today that it was the White House, not the Kremlin, that wanted the meeting. He went on to dismiss Trump's proposal that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky could take part in a tripartite negotiation, noting that “for this to happen, certain conditions must be created. Unfortunately, such conditions are far away yet.” Those conditions remain the complete surrender of Ukraine.  The Kremlin, in other words, has a strategic plan.