Secretary of State Marco Rubio, left, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, right, have been key players, alongside the presidential adviser Stephen Miller, in President Trump’s escalating conflict in Venezuela.
Political power shifts dominated 2025 as Trump pushed redistricting battles and Democrats overperformed in elections, setting the stage for 2026 midterms.
Immediately following surprise U.S. strikes targeting militants in Nigeria, it remained unclear who or what was actually hit as Washington and Abuja told slightly different stories. Read More
Russia pummelled Ukraine's capital with drones and missiles on Saturday, killing a woman and cutting power to hundreds of thousands, ahead of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's latest talks with U.S. leader Donald Trump. Read More
On Saturday, The Washington Post editorial board praised President Donald Trump's Christmas airstrikes against ISIS targets in Nigeria, arguing that the efforts must be sustained.
Using the presidency as a branding opportunity, Trump is slapping his name on buildings, monuments and projects
In 2011, Donald Trump published a book with the self-help guru Robert Kiyosaki titled Midas Touch. It’s a typical self-empowerment manual in which the pair expound on the secrets of entrepreneurial success while drawing on their personal experiences. At one point, they write: “Building a brand may be more important than building a business.”
That was certainly Trump’s approach to business: he was the New York real estate tycoon who turned his fame into a brand that symbolized luxury and savvy strategy – even if his companies filed for bankruptcy six times. Trump spent decades trying to use his name to turn a profit: he owned an airline and a university, and slapped his moniker on vodka, steaks, neckties, board games and even bottled water. Leveraging the fame he gained from the Apprentice TV show, he expanded to licensing Trump-branded global real estate projects built by other developers. In many of these ventures, Trump collected licensing fees, rather than investing his own money, ensuring that he profited even if the businesses collapsed.
Rightwing parties want to follow in US’s footsteps of minimal government intervention, but at what cost?
Next month, Donald Trump will welcome a poverty-stricken family to peruse his plans for a $300m glitzy state ballroom in the White House. The event will be staged as part of National Poverty in America Awareness Month, the time every year when charities document the number of US residents surviving on low incomes.
Of course, the president will do no such thing, preferring to summon the press to watch him rub shoulders with the billionaire class as he did at last month’s black tie dinner for the Saudi ruler and his entourage.
Drummer Chuck Redd decided to cancel his yearly Jazz Jam after Donald Trump added his name to the venue
The president of the Kennedy Center has demanded $1m in damages and fiercely criticized a musician’s sudden decision to cancel a Christmas Eve performance at the venue days after the White House announced that Donald Trump’s name would be added to the facility.
“Your decision to withdraw at the last moment – explicitly in response to the Center’s recent renaming, which honors President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure – is classic intolerance and very costly to a non-profit Arts institution,” the venue’s president, Richard Grenell, wrote in a letter to musician Chuck Redd that was shared with the Associated Press.
Russian drone and missile attack on Kyiv reportedly kills one, injures 27 as Ukraine's president prepares for crucial Trump meeting with peace proposal.
Investigation exposes broadcast media's partisan tilt through 2025 examples, including NPR CEO Katherine Maher's testimony and Jimmy Kimmel's brief suspension.
Trump's 2025 peace agenda produced mostly positive results with new ceasefires in Gaza and other regions, but major conflicts like Ukraine remain unresolved.
The year 2025 saw a Swift engagement, a rapid rollback of rights and a slow release of the heavily redacted Epstein files
The year 2025 would have been far better if we could have sent a few billionaires and world leaders into intergalactic exile. Instead, we had to make do with Katy Perry spending 11 minutes on the edge of space as part of Blue Origin’s all-female crewed mission. Perry promised us all that, in service of women’s empowerment, the crew would “put the ‘ass’ in astronaut” and “make space and science glam”. Truly, one giant leap for womankind!
Space may have got glam, but it was another glum year for many on Earth. The war in Ukraine continued, with increasing numbers of women volunteering to fight. The civil war in Sudan raged on, with the UN urging the world not to ignore harrowing details of targeted sexual violence, torture, and abductions from the region. The slaughter in Sudan is so extreme that the blood can even be seen from space. Although I’m not sure the billionaires and celebs doing celestial joyrides in their expensive rockets are particularly bothered by that view.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist and the author of Strong Female Lead
President Trump has driven illegal crossings at the border to record lows, helped bring about an uneasy cease-fire in Gaza and upended the global trading system.
Economist Stephen Moore says economic momentum is building under President Donald Trump, but lingering voter pessimism and cost-of-living concerns are creating a messaging challenge.
Kentucky’s Thomas Massie used the president’s insult to raise funds to run against a Trump-endorsed candidate
A Kentucky congressman singled out by Donald Trump on Christmas as a “lowlife” after co-authoring a law requiring the federal government to release all of its Jeffrey Epstein files says the president attacked him for keeping a commitment to “help victims”.
Thomas Massie then successfully sought donations for his run for another term in the 2026 midterm elections against an opponent that Trump – his fellow Republican – has already endorsed.
Attacks leave hundreds of thousands without heating as Ukrainian leader readies for intense weekend of diplomacy
A third of Kyiv is without heating after a Russian drone and missile barrage on the Ukrainian capital cut off power supplies, leaving hundreds of thousands of people facing freezing temperatures.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Moscow had used nearly 500 drones and 40 missiles, including ballistic missiles, in the overnight attack. “The primary target is Kyiv – energy facilities and civilian infrastructure,” he said in a post on X.
As Americans tire of Donald Trump, a Democratic midterm ‘tsunami’ could sweep the GOP out of power
It was a wake-up call for America. In January, Donald Trump took the oath of office, declared himself “saved by God to make America great again” and issued a barrage of executive orders. In the ensuing months the US president and his allies moved at breakneck speed and seemed indomitable.
But as 2025 draws to a close with Trump struggling to stay awake at meetings, the prevailing image is of a driver asleep at the wheel. Opinion polls suggest that Americans are turning against him. Republicans are heading for the exit ahead of congressional contests next November that look bleak for the president’s party.
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