ROWLING CALLS OUT ACTIVISTS

NEWSMAX reports: “British author J.K. Rowling on Sunday accused Western human rights activists of hypocrisy, arguing that movements quick to condemn Israel and the West have largely ignored mass protests in Iran.

“In a post on X that quickly went viral, Rowling said activists who claim to defend human rights have exposed their true priorities by remaining silent as Iranians risk their lives demanding basic freedoms under the country’s Islamic government.

“‘If you claim to support human rights yet can’t bring yourself to show solidarity with those fighting for their liberty in Iran you’ve revealed yourself,’ Rowling wrote. ‘You don’t give a damn about people being oppressed and brutalised so long as it’s being done by the enemies of your enemies.’”

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“Those who seek to control others are the ones who most need to be controlled.”

— Plato

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“If printing money would end poverty, printing diplomas would end stupidity.”

— Javier Milei

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

For months now, far-left activists across America have been gathering in groups, seeking out locations where federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers (known as ICE) are conducting raids, hunting down and arresting criminal aliens who are in the country illegally.

They then swarm the ICE action, blowing whistles, yelling and chanting to alert anyone whom the agents might be after, in hopes that the criminals can escape. They frequently use their cars, vans and SUVs in an attempt to block roadways or driveways so that the ICE agents can’t get through, and recently, they’ve even gone so far as to use their own vehicles to ram the agents’ vehicles, or to threaten to run down the agents themselves.

The practice came to a very public head on January 7, when Renee Nicole Macklin Good, an alleged poet and professional leftist activist, tried to run down an agent in the middle of a Minneapolis street, and the agent responded the only way he could to the oncoming vehicle.

The demonic look of glee on her face – as she turned her SUV toward him and hit the accelerator – makes the videos of this incident especially painful to watch; hearing her “wife” egging her on, with the words “Drive, Baby, Drive!” tells us more than we ever wanted to know about the mentality of these radical bands of rent-a-marxists, mobilized at a moment’s notice and given directions, picket signs, and marching orders.

What we have long suspected about these incidents is finally being broadly reported: that these are not organic groups of neighbors, upset at the prospect of the federal government arresting the criminals in their midst.

Rather, these are members of a huge pool of trained – and often compensated – activists, who have drunk the Kool-Aid of the Left, and happily believe everything their trainers tell them, things that we sane and normal onlookers would recognize as a pack of lies in an instant.

Their organizers tell them that ICE has headed somewhere to raid an apartment complex, or business, or shelter, or whatever – so they should rush over there and stage a “protest,” which they define as being a time to harass the agents, to make noise, to use their cars as obstacles, and so forth.

Do the organizers directly tell their foot soldiers that such action is legal? That’s not always clear, but judging from the activists’ action, and from their often obviously absolute confidence when on video or microphone, the activists certainly seem to believe that their actions are perfectly legal.

They arrive at these incidents to cause trouble, as much trouble as possible, with the object of rendering the raids unsuccessful, so that the targeted criminals can get away. They claim to believe that ICE is after innocent families, pure as the driven snow, who are here legally and shouldn’t be “kidnapped” by the feds.

And they appear to believe their mayors’ and congressmen’s rants that the ICE agents are conducting illegal actions.

And they believe that their own actions, their efforts to obstruct these apprehensions, are totally legal, and are protected by the First Amendment protections of the freedoms of speech and assembly.

There’s just one big problem with all that:

Virtually everything they believe – everything they have been told by their superiors, everything they’ve heard on the news and internet, everything they’ve told each other in their excitement to be part of this “resistance” – is a lie.

ICE is there to apprehend violators of federal law, generally not only border jumping but also drug crimes and other serious felonies like human trafficking, child abuse, and interstate gang activity. That’s who ICE is going after.

You might also like Ted Dabrowski Pivoting From Property Taxes to Crime After Poll Shows Him Trailing by 26 Points Pro-Life Leader David Smith Endorses Dabrowski Even as Pro-Choice Democrat Donors Linked to Pritzker, Johnson Bankroll His Campaign Tribal Coalition Seeks Balanced Oversight as Childcare Funding Delays Hit Rural Communities Of course these ICE actions are legal. What’s illegal are the sanctuary policies that so many cities and states have put in place to oppose ICE, without any authority whatsoever to do so; federal law about federal crimes obviously overrules illegal, contradictory state laws and local ordinances.

Yes, there is a right to protest government policy, but that right is limited to normal, legitimate political protests: a rally at the town square, a march in front of a capital, the publication of articles and brochures, etc. That’s not what these “ICE-Watchers” are doing.

What these radical activists are doing, in truth, is obstructing federal law enforcement in the process of arresting criminals. They are aiding and abetting criminals who are resisting and escaping arrest. They are making themselves accessories to the criminals’ escape attempts.

Not only is there no First Amendment protection for any of this at all, in fact, it is specifically illegal, in any state, in any way, for people to get in the way of law enforcement officers who are in the process of catching and arresting suspects.

This shouldn’t be hard to figure out. We should really know from childhood that you mustn’t interfere when law enforcement is doing their job of arresting people, not only because it’s illegal, but because it’s dangerous; you can get in the crossfire, you can get other people in the crossfire, you can get hurt or killed yourself (as Ms. Good discovered when she aimed her 5000 lb vehicle at a federal agent and hit the gas).

Our society needs to figure out why so many thousands of people think it’s okay to deviate from the knowledge of a lifetime of experience, and harass law enforcement officers doing important and dangerous work.

Is it perhaps because their bosses, the radical organizations run by George Soros, the DNC, and other such moneyed interests, have fed them a pack of lies in order to get these things to escalate into bloodshed?

If you want to protest government policy, there IS a path to do so. You can stage rallies downtown, or in front of the state capitol building, or in front of city hall. Sometimes it takes a permit, sometimes it doesn’t; stay off the street and don’t disturb traffic or block the sidewalks or doors, and you’ll usually be fine. You can even get TV coverage.

But it is never – NEVER – acceptable to just “declare a protest” in front of an active law enforcement action, and attempt to disable the law enforcement community in their process of catching criminals.

These activists have been committing hundreds, even thousands, of felonies per day, for quite a while now, and ICE has been lenient with them until now.

But they’ve gone too far, and the word is, now that they’re getting people killed, ICE is finally going to crack down, as they probably should have done long ago.

The place for a protest is City Hall or the local federal building. These ICE-Watchers really aren’t protestors at all; many, if not most, of them are criminals themselves, obstructing federal police business.

Alerting a criminal’s hideout that it’s about to be raided, obstructing law enforcement in the midst of an official ICE action, and using a 5000 lb vehicle as a weapon, are all serious federal offenses.

It’s high time these wannabe revolutionaries are brought to justice.

And maybe it’s time to start investigating the sources and leadership – both the funding and the training – of these mobile bolshevik units as well.

Copyright 2026 John F. Di Leo

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based trade compliance trainer and transportation manager, writer, and actor. Once a County Chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party in the 1990s, after serving as president of the Ethnic American Council in the 1980s, he has been writing regularly for Illinois Review since 2009. Professionally, he is a licensed Customs broker, and has worked in freight forwarding and manufacturing for over forty years. John is available for very non-political training seminars ranging from the Incoterms to the workings of free trade agreements, as well as fiery speeches concerning the political issues covered in his columns.

His book on vote fraud, “The Tales of Little Pavel,” his three-volume political satires of the Biden-Harris regime, “Evening Soup with Basement Joe,” and his 2024 non-fiction work covering the issues of the 2020s, “Current Events and the Issues of Our Age,” are available in eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a presidential memorandum directing the U.S. to withdraw from 66 international organizations that the White House said no longer serve American interests.

The White House said the directive orders all executive departments and agencies to stop participating in and funding 35 non-United Nations organizations and 31 U.N. entities that the administration concluded operate contrary to U.S. national interests, security, economic prosperity, or sovereignty.

The White House said the action follows a review of every international intergovernmental organization, convention, and treaty that the U.S. belongs to, funds, or otherwise supports.

The White House said the withdrawals will end American taxpayer funding and involvement in entities it argues advance globalist agendas over U.S. priorities, or address important issues so inefficiently that federal dollars are better spent elsewhere.

In a fact sheet released Wednesday, the White House said many of the targeted bodies promote radical climate policies, global governance, and ideological programs that conflict with U.S. sovereignty and economic strength.

The White House said American taxpayers have spent billions of dollars on such organizations with little return, while some of those groups criticize U.S. policies, advance agendas contrary to American values, or fail to achieve meaningful results despite large budgets.

Congressional Research Service reporting on U.S. contributions to the U.N. system has noted that American support is delivered through assessed dues for the U.N. regular budget and peacekeeping, along with voluntary contributions to agencies, funds, and programs, meaning funding withdrawals can have broad operational impacts even beyond the specific entities targeted.

The memorandum represents the administration’s most expansive pullback to date from multilateral engagement, extending Trump’s long-running argument that international commitments must produce measurable benefits for Americans and must not constrain U.S. decision-making.

The White House said Trump initiated the withdrawal of the U.S. from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement immediately upon returning to office, framing both steps as necessary to restore national sovereignty over public health and energy policy.

The White House also said Trump notified the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development on day 1 that its global tax deal has no force or effect in the U.S. while directing an investigation into whether foreign tax rules are extraterritorial or disproportionately target American companies.

The administration’s broader posture has included steps to leave or defund politically charged U.N. bodies, including a February 2025 executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the U.N. Human Rights Council and prohibiting any future U.S. funding for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for the Near East.

The White House said Wednesday’s memorandum is designed to save taxpayer money and refocus resources toward America First priorities such as infrastructure, military readiness, and border security, while ending what it views as subsidized hostility toward U.S. interests.

The White House did not immediately provide a detailed public roster of all 66 organizations covered by the withdrawal order, but said agencies have been instructed to wind down participation and funding consistent with the memorandum’s directives.

The administration’s push has drawn objections in prior, similar actions from outside experts and advocacy groups who argue that withdrawing from global institutions can reduce U.S. influence and weaken international coordination on cross-border challenges.

For instance, public health experts warned the administration’s earlier move to pull out of the World Health Organization could weaken U.S. readiness for future outbreaks, with Georgetown University health-law professor Lawrence Gostin telling Kaiser Health News, “It’ll isolate us diplomatically, and it’ll isolate us in pandemic response.”

Amnesty International USA criticized Trump’s decision to withdraw from the U.N. Human Rights Council, with Amnesty’s Amanda Klasing calling it “performative disregard for human rights” in a statement released by the group after the February 2025 order.

Financial analysts have also warned that a sweeping U.S. retreat from multilateral institutions could have consequences beyond diplomacy, with Reuters reporting that S&P Global multilateral-lender analyst Alexander Ekbom said a U.S. withdrawal from the World Bank would be “unprecedented” and could threaten the institution’s top-tier credit ratings.

Supporters of the administration’s approach argue the president is correcting decades of U.S. overcommitment to bureaucratic international bodies that do not serve American workers, taxpayers, or national security.

They argue that in an era of great-power competition, Washington should deploy resources toward bilateral leverage, hard-power deterrence, and direct investment at home rather than underwriting institutions that often turn against U.S. interests.

Critics counter that U.S. exits can reduce America’s ability to shape global standards and norms, while leaving strategic space for rivals to dominate rulemaking in arenas ranging from public health to development policy.

The White House said the withdrawals align with Trump’s longstanding America First doctrine and reflect an effort to ensure every international relationship is judged by outcomes that advance U.S. security, sovereignty, and economic strength.

Implementation now shifts to the federal agencies directed to halt participation and funding, setting up a new phase of scrutiny over which programs are affected, what statutory obligations remain, and how quickly the U.S. can unwind decades of multilateral commitments.

© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Some fun facts: 1. The Insurrection Act has been invoked 30 times by 17 different presidents.

2. In fact, 37% of American presidents have invoked the Insurrection Act.

3. It was invoked to deal with rebellions and uprisings. What are rebellions and uprisings? Examples: – Armed groups openly defied federal law – State or local authorities could not or would not enforce federal law – Violence or organized resistance threatened the authority of the federal government – Courts were blocked, taxes couldn’t be collected, or officials were attacked Look I just described Minnesota.

Defiantly Free

Reading David Mamet’s new book of essays, The Disenlightenment: Politics, Horror, and Entertainment, I was reminded of how loosely jointed and shape-shifting an essay can be. In this collection, a single essay can pivot from palindromes to springboks to why theatrical events always begin a few minutes after the hour. (Without fail, Mamet says, it takes six or seven minutes for the audience to become quiet with anticipation.) This same eight-page piece of writing then launches into an elaborate comparison of our current anxieties about race, sex, and the environment to the feelings that gave rise to the Salem witch trials.

The book’s weird and wide-ranging variety helps make it an unsettling read. There is a conspiracy afoot, you begin to think, of human nature against itself.

Mamet cites the influence of Rebecca West, George Orwell, and Samuel Johnson. Yet his forays more often made me think of Mencken and Nietzsche (whom Mencken admired and popularized) first in their overall mood and darkness of vision, and second in their tightly packed but sometimes puzzling one-liners.

Take the essay that starts, “Some hold that Shakespeare’s plays were not written by him, but by another fellow of the same name.” Yeah, think about that for a moment or two. It seems to be an involuted joke. And nothing else in the paragraphs that follow makes its meaning any clearer. The line just hangs there, uncomfortably in your memory, asking to be filed away as a bit of misdirection or incongruous theme-setting.

Elsewhere this same tendency brings out Mamet’s charming storehouse of weird folk wisdom. In the middle of a denunciation of lawyers and doctors, he pulls over to the side of the road and announces, “The old Vermont folk song had it that there are only two things that money can’t buy: true love and homegrown tomatoes.”

Of course, Mamet’s plays are memorable for their standalone observations which, though framed as dialogue, can be plucked and quoted in other situations. It takes very little prompting to get men of a certain age to repeat Glengarry Glen Ross’s famous salesman shtick. I myself have a weakness for a line in the movie Heist, wherein Joe Moore, played by Gene Hackman, is asked how he came up with an idea. Moore answers, “I tried to imagine a fellow smarter than myself. Then I tried to think, What would he do?”

There is a purpose, Mamet says, that unites his essays as a group. It is an overtly political purpose, a response to the unsettling political and social dramas of the last 10 to 20 years. But not only does he want to survey the damage. He wants to sketch a kind of unified theory to explain what has happened.

“This book is an attempt to identify,” Mamet writes, “a seemingly unconnected set of symptoms as a single disease.”

The symptoms include presidents with unpatriotic agendas: “Obama was a Marxist and Islamist opportunist,” writes Mamet. Elections that can’t be trusted: On the subject of coups he notes that “since the Civil War, we’d had none here until the election of 2020.” Changes in how we think of gender, allowing the “sexual mutilation of minors.” The party of the left: “The totalitarian suppression and brutality of the fascists and communists … describes today’s Democratic Party.” And DEI programs: “Diversity, equity, and inclusion is just thuggery.”

Mamet, whose political conversion to conservatism was announced in 2008, has turned full-on MAGA. He believes the United States is in decline but remains hopeful, saying, “Trump is a hero, and his heirs will, God willing, increase the longevity of the American Experiment.”

What’s behind our political sickness, according to Mamet, if I read him correctly, is a compound of human failings. First, there is the mendacity of politicians whom he compares to the shill in a game of three-card monte—the shill being a person who pretends to be a player, encourages others to risk their money, but is working in cahoots with the dealer. Next is the gullibility of voters about whom it can be said that they basically want to be lied to. Here the similarities between politics and entertainment begin to stand out.

“The lights go down on stage or screen and we are involved in a complicity. We will suspend our disbelief in return for being told a story,” Mamet writes.

Finally, there is the all-too-human desire to be accepted into the tribe. Mamet psychologizes this as a misguided attempt to fit in and survive. “Membership in our various correct-thinking groups is actually an unconscious attempt to reconstitute the family—the group which might offer protection.” This natural urge has been cranked into overdrive by the rise of the internet and those devices that keep us connected to it. “The addictive ‘connectedness’ offered by the computer awakens our human instinct for constant connection to the group.” Mass psychology takes over and people begin denying their own individual or subgroup identities.

Mamet, who has been an outspoken defender of Judaism longer than he has been a conservative, is especially hard on Jewish Democrats. “Today the Democrats have become the party of anti-Semitism,” he writes, complaining especially about Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) “a Jew, representing a significantly Jewish constituency. … Who does he think he is, and what does he think might defend him and his constituents, should the Caliphate come knocking?”

Mamet’s book, even if you disagree with much of it (and I do), offers the frank example of a brilliant writer whose anger and frustration has placed him fully on one side of the great political divide in our polarized era. It is not, however, a work of persuasion. It speaks in its political essays almost only to the converted. But on the margins, especially where politics meets culture and history, it can still be compelling even to those who march to a different drummer.

When the subject turns to theater and show business, however, Mamet speaks with a level of authority that makes him formidable. On method acting, on the power dynamics between actors and directors, on Top Gun: Maverick (“no drama at all,” Mamet says, “Maverick is a computer game”), and a hundred other matters of show business, he is simply more penetrating. More stressed out and battle-scarred, and wise too, reminding you that a man’s politics is not always the most important or interesting thing about him.

The Disenlightenment: Politics, Horror, and Entertainment
by David Mamet
Broadside Books, 238 pp., $32.99

David Skinner is an editor and writer who writes about language, culture, and history. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

This despicably misleading headline is exactly why the American people have completely lost faith in the mainstream media. This journalist knows the facts, was given the truth, and adamantly refuses to report it. Here are the facts: At 6:50 PM CT, federal law enforcement officers were conducting a targeted traffic stop in Minneapolis of an illegal alien from Venezuela who was released into the country by Joe Biden in 2022. In an attempt to evade arrest, the subject fled the scene in his vehicle and crashed into a parked car. The subject then fled on foot. The law enforcement officer caught up to the subject on foot and attempted to apprehend him when the subject began to resist and violently assault the officer. While the subject and law enforcement were in a struggle on the ground, two subjects came out of a nearby apartment and also attacked the law enforcement officer with a snow shovel and broom handle. As the officer was being ambushed and attacked by the two individuals, the original subject got loose and began striking the officer with a shovel or broom stick. Fearing for his life and safety as he was being ambushed by three individuals, the officer fired a defensive shot to defend his life. The initial subject was hit in the leg. All three subjects ran back into the apartment and barricaded themselves inside. The attacked officer and subject are both in the hospital. Both attackers are in custody.

X/Twitter

Greenland’s economy may be small, but its real value is tied to Arctic security and vast mineral reserves. Trump’s interest in it reflects US efforts to counter China’s dominance in sourcing critical raw materials. When Donald Trump once again raised the idea of acquiring Greenland in early 2025, it sounded, at first, like a familiar holdover from his first presidency.

Yet the renewed interest, this time accompanied by reports that Trump’s team had discussed issuing direct payments to Greenlanders, seems to point to a deeper commitment than mere political theatre.

On Wednesday, US vice president JD Vance met with Denmark’s foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Greenland’s foreign minister Vivian Motzfeldt in Washington.

Speaking to reporters, Rasmussen said the two ministers told their US counterparts that “it is not easy to think innovative[ly] about solutions when you wake up every morning to different threats”.

He explained that the talks were constructive, but added that Trump was insisting on an “unacceptable” proposal to conquer Greenland.

France, Germany, Sweden, and Norway, all NATO members like Denmark, have decided to send troops to Greenland to participate in joint exercises with Denmark.

What had long been treated as provocation is now looking like a serious bid for Arctic dominance. At the expense of NATO ally Denmark, it is possible the US is eyeing up Greenland for its mineral reserves — as well as for national security reasons.

Such a move ushers an Arctic chill into the EU’s relationship with the US, particularly at a time when the bloc is struggling to secure raw materials needed to maintain climate goals and digital infrastructure.

Why Trump wants Greenland Greenland is not rich in the conventional sense. Its economy is small, heavily dependent on fisheries, and it survives largely on an annual block grant from Denmark of about DKK 3.9bn (€520mn), equivalent to roughly €9,000 per resident per year.

According to the World Bank, Greenland’s gross domestic product is estimated at around $3.5–4bn (€3.2–3.7bn), serving a population of roughly 56,000 people. Around 90% of exports derive from fishery-related products.

While these attributes remain uninteresting for the Trump administration, the US is seemingly attracted by two factors that have little to do with GDP. One is where it sits on the globe, and the other is what lies hidden beneath its ice.

The island occupies a critical position between North America and Europe, and it is already home to Pituffik Space Base, a cornerstone of US missile-warning and space-surveillance systems in the Arctic.

“If we don’t do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland,” said Trump. “And we’re not going to have Russia or China as a neighbour.”

Resources may add another layer to US motivations — although the president has publicly argued that this isn’t the case. Washington is painfully aware that China dominates rare earth mining and the downstream processing that turns ore into usable inputs.

‘It may be a choice’ between NATO and Greenland, Trump says

Greenland currently produces no rare earths, but the US Geological Survey estimates that it holds about 1.5 million tonnes of mineable rare earth reserves. The Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), on the other hand, estimates that the nation’s rare earth resources amount to around 36.1 million tonnes — a reminder of the gap between what is geologically there and what is commercially mineable.

Research by the GEUS shows that Greenland contains occurrences of 25 of the 34 materials the European Commission classifies as “critical” rare and raw minerals. These materials are used in products ranging from electric vehicle motors to fighter jets. In total, 55 critical-raw-material deposits have been identified in Greenland, yet only one is currently being mined.

The European Union is currently 100% dependent on Chinese imports for heavy rare earths, while the US also relies heavily on foreign supply chains.

China is responsible for around 70% of the rare earth volumes extracted from mines globally, equivalent to 270,000 tonnes in 2024.

Can Greenland replace China in rare earth security? Aside from its rare earth resources, Greenland is also potentially rich in oil and natural gas.

Though exploration was largely frozen following a 2021 moratorium on new oil drilling, legacy estimates by the US Geological Survey suggest Greenland’s offshore basins may contain up to 17.5 billion barrels of oil and 148 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

The raw geological value of Greenland’s known mineral resources could, in theory, exceed $4tr (€3.66tr), according to estimates by a study published by the American Action Forum (AAF).

However, only a fraction of that — around $186bn — is considered realistically extractable under current market, regulatory, and technological conditions.

EU troops might be needed to stop a US showdown in Greenland

While the AAF puts Greenland’s “price tag” at $186bn, hypothetical estimates from commentators differ widely.

Looking at private sector GDP and potential tax revenue from the island, the Economist puts forward a valuation of $50bn.

Other estimates look at historical US transactions, notably the purchases of Alaska, Louisiana, and the Virgin Islands, and adjust these costs to today’s purchasing prices.

The Financial Times has suggested that a valuation of $1.1tr would be appropriate based on the island’s resources, while the New York Times produced an estimate between $12.5bn and $77bn.

The vast disparities between these sums point to the intangible nature of Greenland’s value.

Would cash change Greenlanders’ minds?

The Trump administration is considering direct payments — between $10,000 and $100,000 per Greenland resident — as a way to nudge public sentiment in Greenland toward a US realignment.

Yet polling data strongly suggests such overtures are politically tone-deaf. A January 2025 Verian Group’s poll found 85% of Greenlanders oppose leaving Denmark to join the United States, while just 6% support the idea.

In the US, the idea is equally unpopular. A YouGov poll in January 2026 showed only 8% support for using military force to take Greenland, with 73% opposed.

According to 22V Research economist Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, Copenhagen has shifted from quietly absorbing Donald Trump’s remarks to actively constraining them through law, institutions, and alliances.

The aim is not to win an argument with the White House, but to narrow the space in which it can act.

Congress to the rescue?

Kirkegaard argues that the US Congress is currently more sensitive to presidential overreach after recent events in Venezuela. Last week, the US Senate advanced a war powers measure to curb further military action against the South American country without explicit congressional authorisation.

Any attempt to change Greenland’s status would require congressional consent. Even rhetorical threats against the territory of a NATO ally also risk undermining the alliance itself, a red line for many US lawmakers.

At the same time, Kirkegaard notes, Denmark has room to offer Trump something tangible without touching sovereignty.

Expanded defence cooperation and greater scope for US investment in Greenland’s mineral sector would allow Washington to strengthen its strategic position while staying within existing agreements.

“Trump can therefore put thousands of US troops in Greenland to protect American national security with the full political blessing of Denmark and Greenland, and go on to declare that he has addressed this issue,” Kirkegaard told Euronews.

The expert indicated that under the 1951 US–Denmark defence agreement, Washington has broad latitude to expand its military presence in Greenland without altering its sovereignty.

On the other hand, Kirkegaard is sceptical that an offer “to buy” Greenland would advance.

Any serious financial offer to Greenlanders, Kirkegaard notes, would almost certainly require congressional funding, a hard sell in an election year, given US public opposition and domestic cost-of-living pressures.

Denmark’s current approach, he suggests, intends to allow institutional limits, congressional oversight, and electoral timelines do the work, steadily draining the issue of urgency and turning it into background noise rather than a diplomatic crisis.

Viewed through that lens, Greenland’s value is not about a purchase price. It is about symbolism, strategy and the balance between cooperation and control in an increasingly contested world.

Piero Cingari/Euronews

The number of employees on the federal government’s payroll has dropped by 277,000 since President Donald Trump took office for his second term, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. 

The agency said in its monthly jobs report that federal employment was 2.738 million in November, adjusted for seasonal variations, down from 3.015 million in January. 

Story by Gregory Korte and Adrienne Tong

(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce in 2025 hit every major agency last year — with cabinet departments including Education, Housing and Treasury taking the brunt of the downsizing, according to government data released Thursday.

More than 322,000 employees have left agencies since Trump took office, with departures outpacing new hires by more than three-to-one. The figures from the Office of Personnel Management — the most up-to-date snapshot of federal employment data — show the workforce undergoing its most dramatic transformation in decades. That followed Trump’s move to enact a hiring freeze on his first day in office and put Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk in charge of a wide-ranging effort to cut government spending. 

The Education Department, which Trump has vowed to dismantle, shed some 39% of its headcount between January and November 2025. The workforce shrank 23% at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and was slashed by 21% at Treasury over the same period.

This is more advanced than you think Tesla’s Texas lithium refinery is the first in North America to convert raw spodumene ore directly into battery-grade lithium hydroxide, skipping the intermediate steps the rest of the industry relies on It went from groundbreaking to first production in just 19 months, an unheard-of timeline at this scale The process is cleaner too: no hazardous sodium sulfate waste, and a useful byproduct that can be turned into concrete This single refinery can supply lithium for over 500,000 EVs per year and directly challenges China’s ~60% grip on global lithium refining One of the biggest bottlenecks in the EV supply chain just got an upgrade.

XFreeze/X

Amid all the talk about the ethnicity of Jesus – whether black, white or somewhere in between – some appear to be ignoring the fact he was Jewish.

The debate around Christ’s skin colour, which has arisen out of the Black Lives Matter protests, has now been taken up by clergymen desperate to project the church as relevant in an increasingly volatile environment. The incoming Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, recently told The Times, “Jesus was a black man”.

Jesus came for everyone, and it’s understandable that different cultures should want to present him in their own image. Here in the UK, for example, Jesus has typically been depicted as a white Westerner. But such unhelpful representations often ignore the fact that Jesus is Jewish. He came “to his own” (John 1:11) as the long-promised Jewish Messiah, and will return to Jerusalem as a Jew, specifically, “the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David”. (Revelation 5:5)

As the Brighton-based author and speaker David Hoffbrand puts it in his book The Jewish Jesus, we need to strip away the layers that have increasingly masked Jesus over the centuries so we can see him as he really is. In one ancient Byzantine church, a fresco depicted Jesus as blond-haired and blue-eyed. Hoffbrand reports how several layers of paintings were found underneath, which dated back to as early as 600 AD. “The interesting thing was,” Hoffbrand writes, the further the archeologists went, “the more like a typical Jewish man Jesus looked [in the painting], with dark brown hair, brown eyes and olive skin.”

Jesus came for both Jews and Gentiles (Luke 2:32). It was his Jewish disciples who brought the light of the gospel to the world at large – all but one of the Bible’s 40 authors were Jewish. Our Lord was steeped in all the ways and customs of the Jews and, apart from a brief exile in Egypt as an infant, never set foot outside Israel. And when, aged 30, he began his ministry as a rabbi, he said he had not come to abolish the Law of Moses, but to fulfil it (Matthew 5:17). In fact, he went on to emphasise the importance of every jot of the law’s requirements (v18). His family attended the major feasts in Jerusalem, requiring a considerable 70-mile journey (probably on foot) through rugged hill country. He himself fulfilled the feasts, in being sacrificed as our Passover Lamb and in rising from the dead on the feast of first-fruits. These facts are often ignored and overlooked in the current discussions.

Jesus focused on the Old Testament command to love our neighbour as ourselves (Leviticus 19:18). But he went further by urging us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:44). This surely applies to the victims of prejudice today, not least our fellow Christians who are being butchered to death by the thousands in oppressive regimes around the world. Sadly, the age-old problem of Jewish persecution is also a reality in our world today. Although they should now be safe in their own land once more, they instead face repeated threats of extermination from their enemies – most notably Iran. Yet wonderfully and miraculously, in a country where following Jesus is extremely dangerous, a huge army of Iranian believers has emerged from the darkness of this rogue regime. Most significantly, it is reported that when these new Christians in Iran realise that Jesus is Jewish, it changes their whole perspective on the people they have been brainwashed to see as their enemies. With melted hearts, they are falling in love with the Jewish people whose Messiah has freed them from fanatical Islam’s chains of imprisonment.

Like these Christians in Iran who are engaged in persistent prayer for Israel, I have found it to be true that, if you love Jesus, you will love the Jews – his brothers in the flesh.

Jesus is Jewish. Focusing on this truth will not only increase our knowledge but also greatly enrich our faith.

Charles Gardner is South African-born journalist based in Yorkshire, England. He became a Christian at the outset of his career 40 years ago and has developed a particular love for Israel and the Jewish people. He is author of Israel the Chosen and King of the Jews