“Bitcoin prices rallied to a 2025 high of $109,000 on reports that Trump will sign an executive order to reverse Biden policies that severed crypto trading from traditional banking operations, as well as an order to override the current accounting system that classifies crypto as liabilities on the balance sheets of financial institutions. Trump is also planning to replace outgoing Securities and Exchange Commission head Gary Gensler—a fierce critic of crypto who pursued aggressive prosecutions of the currency’s abuses—with crypto cheerleader Paul Atkins, the former cochair of the crypto-promoting group Token Alliance. For good measure, Trump has named David Sacks—the Muskovite investment banker who had been a charter member of Silicon Valley’s PayPal mafia—as his AI and crypto czar. It’s of course telling that crypto markets are so erratic that they flounder on a snub in an inaugural speech—yet after seeing his own branding empire briefly goosed on an epic scale by crypto largesse, Trump is certain to continue delivering just the sort of deregulatory handouts that crypto barons have craved. Crypto deregulation is also a prime order of business in the recently convened 119th Congress—far from a shocking development, since the crypto industry was the biggest source of political donations in the last election cycle.” (Chris Lehmann/The Nation)
“Military spending debates will loom in 2025, largely because of threats made by Donald Trump regarding allies and partners not spending enough on their own defence. In some cases, his remarks have already sparked increases in spending. The combination of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine and Trump’s remarks about NATO in his first term are the principal drivers for an increase in NATO spending in the past decade. Trump has already forecast that he will continue to pressure allies to spend more on defence, describing a target of 5% of GDP for NATO members. A decade ago, only 3 of 31 NATO members spent 2% of GDP; now, all but eight meet or exceed this baseline. NATO is already reviewing whether the 2% baseline should be increased. And given that Australian defence spending only just meets 2%, and an increasing proportion of the budget is being absorbed by submarines, Australia will not be immune from US pressure to increase spending … There is a growing debate about the magnitude of the threat posed by the alignment of Iran, North Korea, China and Russia. These nations share a desire to overturn the post-Second World War global order and return the world to a darker era in international affairs. These nations are conducting joint training activities, such as China-Russia joint bomber patrols and naval exercises, fighting together (North Korean troops aiding Russia’s Ukraine campaign), and have formed a learning community to gain a better understanding of how Western nations fight, make political and strategic decisions, and support each other.” (Mick Ryan/The Interpreter)
“As snow fell in a wooded area of Ukraine, the long-range attack drones accelerated one by one down an unlit, abandoned road and their whirring engines propelled them into the night sky. The unmanned aircraft carrying explosive warheads are part of a Ukrainian campaign of long-range drone attacks that aim to inflict blows on Russia far behind the front line as Moscow's troops advance in the east. ‘Our main goal is to conduct strikes to hit logistics hubs in the rear, ammunition warehouses and decrease our enemy's pressure on the front,’ said the battalion commander of the Ukrainian drone unit, who gave only the call sign Casper. Kyiv's military granted Reuters exclusive access during the launch of the drones, but said the location and date of the strike could not be disclosed for security reasons. Ukraine has kept much of its wartime drone programme secret, seeing it as an invaluable way to chip away at Russia's vast military industrial base despite it lacking the huge arsenal of long-range missiles that Russia has. Moscow conducts long-range drone attacks on a nightly basis, while Kyiv has stepped up its own drone strikes in recent weeks, with U.S. President Donald Trump pushing to halt the nearly three-year full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine.” (Vladyslav Smilianets and Sergiy Karazy/Reuters)
“Exhausted yet? It’s been three full days since Donald Trump returned to the Presidency, and so far he has pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate treaty and the World Health Organization; announced the unilateral cancellation of the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship; reversed an order lowering prescription-drug prices for seniors; threatened a trade war with Canada and Mexico starting February 1st and an actual war with Panama if it doesn’t hand over the Panama Canal; declared an emergency at the southern border and moved to order thousands of U.S. military personnel there; eliminated federal government programs to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion and demanded that employees snitch on anyone inside the bureaucracy who might be tempted to continue doing such work anyway; and pardoned the vast majority of the pro-Trump insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, at his behest. And that was in between sword-dancing onstage to the Village People at an inaugural ball; cashing in on the Presidency by marketing the $TRUMP cryptocoin, currently worth billions of dollars; and getting in a pissing match with an Episcopalian bishop who dared to question him to his face. Eight years after the first Trump Inauguration, we know the drill. He loves to drown us in outrage. The overwhelming volume is the point—too many simultaneous scandals and the system is so overloaded that it breaks down. It can’t focus. It can’t fight back. The distractions are just too damn distracting. Who has time to point out that Trump also promised to end the war in Ukraine and bring down inflation on his first day back in the Oval Office? And yet drones are still firing on Kyiv and eggs are still crazy expensive.” (Susan B Glasser/NYer)
“Michelee ‘Shelly’ Cruz-Crawford proudly boasts a tattoo of Nevada on her arm. Crawford, who moved from Tucson to Las Vegas when she was 6, considers herself to be a Nevada native. She remembers spending long nights as a child at the Riviera Hotel, a now defunct Strip casino, watching shows with her mom, a wigs and costume designer, and her stepdad, a sound engineer. ‘I thought that was normal,’ said Cruz-Crawford, 41. Now, after years of working in education, the newly elected Democratic senator for District 1 said she was inspired to run to address challenges she regularly saw pop up while working as a principal at C.C. Ronnow Elementary School in Las Vegas and serving as Nevada’s first Latino regent (she’s 100 percent Mexican). She’s intimately acquainted with the city’s educational landscape, having gone through the Clark County School District, UNLV and the College of Southern Nevada. ‘I knew that I had a unique understanding of some of the issues that we have as a state,’ Cruz-Crawford said. ‘When a family is in crisis, like when a kid has a mental health issue, or a parent is deported, or they can't pay their power bill, they actually come to us and say, ‘Hey, Dr. Crawford, can you help with this?’ Cruz-Crawford is a member of the Nevada National Guard, where she serves as an equal opportunity officer. She said that has been a bit tricky, considering that many of her loved ones are in the process of becoming documented and Gov. Joe Lombardo has said he’d be willing to deploy the guard to support deportation efforts. She has been married to her husband, Michael, who is a fifth generation ironworker for over 22 years.” (Nevada Independent)
“SAB 121 had ‘created a punitive framework that effectively prevented US banks from offering custody services for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies’, said Mark Palmer, an equity research analyst at The Benchmark Company. ‘Traditional banks will now be able to offer crypto custody services without facing de facto penalties.’ Even before the SEC took action, big US banks were eagerly anticipating the ability to court crypto customers as Trump and his allies in the executive and legislative branches smoothed the road for digital assets. ‘We do want to have the ability to offer spot crypto, and our expectation is that at some point, the regulations around crypto are going to allow us to do that,’ Rick Wurster, chief executive at Charles Schwab, told analysts on a call this week. The American Bankers Association and other industry lobbyists last year called on Biden to formally disapprove of the SEC guidance after measures to do so passed both houses of Congress in May 2024. ‘This is a step in the right direction,’ said Kevin Fromer, president of the Financial Services Forum, which represents the biggest banks. Brian Daly, a lawyer at Akin Gump, noted that custody services were ‘a predicate to everything’ for financial institutions when offering crypto services to customers. The old rule ‘basically made it impossible for all the responsible banks and broker-dealers and financial intermediaries that we rely on to be crypto custodians’, Daly said. The price of bitcoin rose more than 1.5 per cent on Friday to about $105,800, shy of its all-time high of around $109,000.” (Will Schmitt and Brooke Masters/ FT)
“Rebels from the Rwanda-backed M23 have killed a military governor as they advanced through eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the army has confirmed. Maj Gen Peter Cirimwami, North Kivu's Governor, was shot by M23 fighters when visiting the frontline on Thursday … More than 400,000 people have fled their homes since the start of this year as the M23 advances on the city of Goma, the UN reports. As they moved towards Goma, the M23 captured the towns of Masisi and Minova. More than 200 civilians have been killed in areas captured by the M23, local leaders said on Thursday … The M23 has taking control of vast swathes of mineral-rich eastern DR Congo since 2021. As a consequence, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced. Last year, it was also feared the rebels would seize Goma. There was a lull in fighting in late July, but heavy fighting resumed in October, and worsened towards the end of the year. The DR Congo and the UN say the M23 is backed by Rwanda. The Rwandan authorities neither confirm nor deny this. UN experts say Rwanda has between 3,000 and 4,000 troops operating alongside the M23 in eastern DR Congo.” (Wedaeli Chibelushi & Marina Daras/BBC)
“‘Eight years after the first Trump Inauguration, we know the drill,’ (Susan) Glasser wrote. ‘He loves to drown us in outrage. The overwhelming volume is the point — too many simultaneous scandals and the system is so overloaded that it breaks down. It can't focus. It can't fight back. The distractions are just too damn distracting.’ With 45 now back in office as 47, journalists are getting back on Trump Time (conveniently, Trump has licensed his name to a watchmaker) and going back to some of the debates that defined his first term. Should his remarks be shown live? Yes, sometimes. Should his deceitful claims be debunked by reporters? Yes. Should he dictate what's considered ‘news’ at any given moment? No. The biggest news story right now isn't Trump per se, it's Trump's impacts on ordinary people in the U.S. and beyond. ‘After a four-year hiatus, we are once again compelled to go spelunking into the deeper caverns of Donald Trump's brain,’ NYT columnist David Brooks wrote yesterday. Columnists are back to ‘what did he say’ versus ‘what did he mean’ conjecture. Television news producers are back to blowing up show rundowns at the last minute. Day four ‘feels like month four,’ Puck's Tara Palmeri quipped. Trump may be going back to his old playbook, but media outlets need a new one to cover this presidency: Newsrooms are leaner than they were four years ago, and audiences are tuned out. The key for journalists: Focus on what Trump's policies mean for readers and viewers – not on the shock value of what he says.” (Brian Stelter/Reliable Sources)
“Regulators and law enforcement in many jurisdictions are increasingly turning their attention towards groups that fall outside the traditional definitions of terrorism, but still pose risks due to their transnational influence and reach. Unlike internationally recognized terrorist organizations like the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS) or Boko Haram, which are defined by direct acts of violence and meet explicit government-defined criteria, many groups espousing extremist ideology advance their agendas without directly engaging in violence themselves … Groups espousing extremist ideology have increasingly turned to cryptocurrency as a means of securing financial support, particularly after being excluded from traditional financial institutions (FIs). Many of these groups have faced debanking, forcing them to seek alternative methods of funding. For example, one U.S.-based white supremacist group explicitly cited their loss of access to traditional payment rails, redirecting donors to cryptocurrency … Despite the cumulative growth in contributions, the average payment size generally has remained in the hundreds of dollars each year (with the exception of 2022). This suggests that grassroots campaigns, consisting of small contributions from individual donors, continue to drive cryptocurrency funding for ideological groups. However, there was a notable increase in cumulative contributions and average payment amount during the COVID-19 pandemic era, circa 2020-2022 — a time marked by heightened ideological divisions and the rapid spread of misinformation. This growth reflects an expansion in both the number of donors and the size of individual contributions. The spike in average annual deposit amount in 2022 is anomalous. That year, the far-right conspiracy theory and disinformation platform InfoWars received an $8 million contribution from a single donor. This coincided with a series of legal losses related to the Sandy Hook defamation case, significantly skewing the data for that year.” (Chainalysis)
“The US president spoke to Mette Frederiksen, the Danish premier, for 45 minutes last week. The White House has not commented on the call but Frederiksen said she had emphasised that the vast Arctic island — an autonomous part of the kingdom of Denmark — was not for sale, while noting America’s ‘big interest’ in it. Five current and former senior European officials briefed on the call said the conversation had gone very badly. They added that Trump had been aggressive and confrontational following the Danish prime minister’s comments that the island was not for sale, despite her offer of more co-operation on military bases and mineral exploitation. ‘It was horrendous,’ said one of the people. Another added: ‘He was very firm. It was a cold shower. Before, it was hard to take it seriously. But I do think it is serious, and potentially very dangerous.’ The details of the call are likely to deepen European concerns that Trump’s return to power will strain transatlantic ties more than ever, as the US president heaps pressure on allies to give up territory … Many European officials had hoped his comments about seeking control of Greenland for ‘national security’ reasons were a negotiating ploy to gain more influence over the Nato territory. Russia and China are both also jostling for position in the Arctic. But the call with Frederiksen has crushed such hopes, deepening the foreign policy crisis between the Nato allies. ‘The intent was very clear. They want it. The Danes are now in crisis mode,’ said one person briefed on the call. Another said: ‘The Danes are utterly freaked out by this.’” (Richard Milne, Gideon Rachman and James Politi/ FT)
“At the peak of his literary fame, James Baldwin yearned for seclusion. He found it in Istanbul, where he lived on and off between 1961 and 1971. Baldwin was suffering from writer’s block when he arrived in the Bosporus-divided city thirteen years after settling in Paris. Soon after, he completed Another Country, a manuscript that had long been haunting him. In Istanbul, the author found the time and inspiration for some of his career-defining works, and he later wrote about the city in an unfinished novel. He also made friends, among them Sedat Pakay, a young engineering student and amateur photographer who was twenty years his junior. The pair met through a mutual friend at a party in 1964. The younger man, then a member of his university’s photography club, offered to shadow Baldwin with his camera. Baldwin accepted. Over the next several years, Pakay accompanied Baldwin as he wandered across Istanbul, producing a series of photographs as well as an eleven-minute-long film, James Baldwin: From Another Place (1973), that document Baldwin’s time in the city. Pakay’s photographs of Baldwin are currently on view in Turkey Saved My Life: Baldwin in Istanbul, 1961–1971, an exhibition at the Brooklyn Public Library. The show was organized by Atesh M. Gundogdu, the publishing director of the website Artspeak NYC, along with the library’s Cora Fisher and Lászlo Jakab Orsós, and it occurs in the middle of what would have been Baldwin’s one hundredth year. (He died in 1987, at the age of sixty-three.) The pictures displayed narrate Baldwin’s unlikely bond with a young man from Turkey who had a discerning lens.” ( Osman Can Yerebakan /The Paris Review)
“Yes, EO 11246 was amended in 2014 by President Barack Obama to add sexual orientation and gender identity to prohibited grounds for discrimination. But Trump didn’t bother to amend the amendment to return to the earlier language; he struck down the order entirely and replaced it with the abovementioned injunction to destroy DEI policies. What this suggests is that Team Trump objects not just to recent alleged ‘excesses’ in the pursuit of nondiscrimination but to the basic idea that the federal government has the obligation to fight it. That’s not entirely surprising when you look at all the polling of MAGA folk showing that they perceive discrimination against white people as a bigger problem than discrimination against non-white minority groups. And, indeed, an emerging talking point among Trump advisers that may explain the action on EO 11246 is the Orwellian claim that any effort to reduce discrimination against particular people itself violates ‘color-blind’ civil-rights laws. In this view, legal neutrality toward old-school racial discrimination in employment is the only guarantee we have that ‘merit’ is rewarded. If that’s the case, you wonder how long it will be before MAGA folk decide that civil-rights laws should be turned upside down to ban anti-discrimination policies altogether as inherently discriminatory. It’s bad enough that Trump and his advisers believe the official discrimination against Black people that characterized U.S. laws and politics from the founding of the Republic until the 1960s is not a problem worth addressing anymore. It’s even worse to claim that the only way to prevent discrimination is to get rid of any effort to address it. That way lies a return to white supremacy in the guise of color-blind ‘meritocracy.’ And it’s also a terrible trend for the women and LGBTQ+ folk who have benefited from the same laws and policies as they were extended into the 21st century.” (Ed Kilgore/NYmag)