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Feb 3, 2026 - World

A treaty between Russia and the U.S. could expire shortly because of a standstill over country membership. An ex-Pentagon official said the potential expiry is a frustrating one, and it appears Donald Trump is caught up in a detail that, to the former official, makes little difference. Kingston Reiff warned the new START deal, which will expire on February 5, had offered valuable insight into what Russia had been doing with its military. He wrote, "So, my net assessment is the treaty reduced uncertainty about Russian strategic nuclear forces and provided us with greater confidence in our own nuclear plans and capabilities."But Reiff has since suggested the deal may lapse because Trump wants to include China in the agreement, something which has puzzled the former Pentagon worker. He wrote, "It was never clear to me why we should jettison all limits on Russian strategic forces because New START wasn’t a panacea that captured all nuclear weapons — which of course it was never intended to be."Same goes for the argument the treaty didn’t include China. During the treaty’s 15-year existence, the limits have been sufficient to meet U.S. deterrence objectives against both Russia and China. (Whether this remains the case is a topic of significant debate.)"In the end, factors outside the scope of the treaty ultimately became too much for it to overcome. These included the onset of the COVID pandemic in early 2020, which put the treaty inspections on ice, and Russia’s unconscionable invasion of Ukraine. "Since New START's entry into force, there has been no real progress on further arms control measures. Moscow and Beijing deserve most of the blame for this. Charting a course to the next chapter will not be easy, but remains a necessary pursuit."Democratic Party representatives are equally concerned, with John Garamendi (CA) suggesting the deal must not collapse. He told Politico, "If we allow New START to lapse without a replacement or an extension, we will be entering a new terrifying world we haven’t seen in decades: a world without limits on the nuclear arsenals of the two largest nuclear powers."

Feb 2, 2026 - World

President Donald Trump unleashed a rant about risky airplane stairs after he was asked to explain his so-called Donroe Doctrine foreign policy.During a Monday interview on The Dan Bongino Show, the host asked the president for his take on the Monroe Doctrine after a U.S. military attack on Venezuela."We were laughed at a year and a half ago. We were laughed at as being stupid people," Trump asserted. "We were laughed at it not as, we see a guy falling up the stairs going into an airplane.""I got to be very careful going in," Trump continued. "Nice and slow. I'm not looking to set any records. You don't want to go down. Could happen. I mean, you'll get up. But it can't happen three times in one shot, okay? The three times going up to say, I don't think you'll ever see anything like that. But it could happen."The president seemed to shift into a story about former President Barack Obama without mentioning his name."That was the one thing I have to tell you," he said. "It's probably the only thing I respected, and yet it didn't look elegant at all. He bopped down the stairs. He would be in the middle. I thought it looked so terrible. You know, I mean, this is the president of the United States. He's bopping down, you know, bop-bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. And I kept waiting for him to fall, and he didn't. So I would rather have other traits than that."

Feb 2, 2026 - World

Here’s a quick civics test for those concerned with the U.S. immigration issue.Q. Donald Trump has publicly stated at least a thousand times that other countries have emptied their prisons and asylums and sent criminals across our border. Name one.Feel free to use any search engine or AI resource you’d like. Just name one prison or asylum anywhere that was emptied to send criminals to America.You can’t do it because it never happened. It’s a pure fiction invented from scratch by Trump and repeated often enough to brainwash millions of people. And it worked.Just like it worked to repeat that 10.5 million people illegally “invaded” during Joe Biden's presidency. Or that thousands of murderers, rapists, and child molesters have been unleashed on America. Or that MS-13 gangs are inflicting a “migrant crime wave” on U.S. cities.All that makes for some fiery speeches and intensely inflamed emotions, even among those who pride themselves on moderation. The lies are compelling.In fact, the entire premise that the U.S. today faces some new existential crisis — unlike anything it’s ever experienced before — could not be more false. It also could not be more believed by millions of Americans.I stumbled upon the best example of this in researching this piece.The most authoritative source on immigration data, Pew Research Center, reported in August 2025 that roughly 14 million undocumented people reside in the U.S. illegally today. Using Pew’s data, we can make an apples-to-apples comparison across decades.In 2007, under President George W. Bush, Pew measured 12.2 million undocumented people — with a total U.S. population of 301 million. Today’s U.S. population is roughly 349 million.Do the math: About 4.05 percent of people living in the U.S. were undocumented in 2007. Today, that figure is 4.01 percent.Let that sink in. The proportion of undocumented people in America hasn’t changed in nearly two decades.Immigration policy has always been contentious, but it wasn’t viewed as an existential crisis back then. It wasn’t a major issue in the 2008 presidential campaign, or the ones after that — not until Trump rode down his infamous escalator and declared that Mexico was sending rapists and other criminals to the U.S.Trump’s demagoguery worked. The previously unthinkable idea of federal agents using storm-trooper tactics to terrorize millions of citizens and non-citizens alike no longer draws the universal condemnation it should. All because the scope and nature of the immigration “problem” have been so badly distorted.Here’s what the actual data shows:Data collected by Texas in 2025 — anything but a liberal source — confirmed what it showed a decade earlier: that undocumented immigrants are arrested at a fraction of the rate of native-born citizens. Nationally, a 2025 Northwestern University study found that immigrants are now 60 percent less likely to be incarcerated than people born in the U.S. Conflating people here illegally with crime is just a talking point.As for the border “invasion,” that 10.5 million figure Republicans cite represents Customs and Border Protection encounters — not unique individuals crossing. It’s like saying that if the St. Louis Cardinals have 3 million in attendance, it means 3 million different people went to the games. Many encounters involve the same individuals being turned back repeatedly. The vast majority were turned away, and many who were admitted came legally seeking asylum under U.S. law.Here’s another fact that rarely gets mentioned: Between 40 and 45 percent of undocumented immigrants didn’t sneak across the border at all. They entered the United States legally on valid visas and simply overstayed.Without question, the Biden administration botched border security and handed Trump the demagogue’s dream: an “invaders” issue. Democrats made it worse by abandoning the Dreamers — young people brought here illegally who grew up thinking they were Americans and loving what they thought was their country.Remember them? In September 2017, 88 percent of Americans — including 79 percent of Republicans — supported allowing Dreamers to stay and apply for citizenship. Support remains strong, with recent polls showing 81 percent overall backing a pathway to citizenship.I wrote a commentary in 2022 for Raw Story criticizing Democrats for “blowing the immigration debate and hurting kids by hiding.” As a candidate for Congress in 2024, my position was straightforward: tighten border security and establish a path to citizenship for the Dreamers.I lost. But my fate was nothing compared to the tragedy of the Dreamers — first deserted by Democrats, and now left as collateral damage in Trump’s authoritarian playbook.Let’s stipulate that any number of people coming to the U.S. illegally and living in the shadows is too many. Let’s also stipulate that if someone here illegally commits a crime — large or small — they should face swift and fair justice.But none of that excuses what’s happening today. And not all the blame belongs to Republicans. Democrats, terrified of looking “soft” on immigration, have internalized the fear. They’ve gone mute while the lies stick — not just with politicians, but with media analysts and average Americans.Is illegal immigration too high? Of course. And it was an unspeakable tragedy that Laken Riley, Rachel Morin and Jocelyn Nungaray lost their lives at the hands of criminals who were in the country illegally — to justifiable outrage across the country.But it does nothing to diminish their suffering to consider that some 5,000 women are murdered annually in the United States, and an estimated 500,000 are victims of rape or sexual assault. Almost exclusively at the hands of U.S. citizens.It is nothing short of despicable to exploit three tragedies as proof of an immigrant crime wave as if those exponentially larger numbers didn’t exist.The horror of what’s happening across the country at the hands of ICE has finally begun to give some leaders the courage to resist Trump’s authoritarian surge. But to find any consensus or intelligent path forward on immigration policy will require a reset that has nothing to do with politics.Instead, America has to start dealing with the truth.Click here to subscribe to Ray Hartmann's Soapbox

Feb 1, 2026 - World

In his recent Davos speech to world leaders in Switzerland, President Donald Trump chastised European countries for falling for the climate-change hoax and wasting billions of dollars on green-energy scams. Trump sees himself on a crusade to disabuse the world of the greatest environmental con in history, having singlehandedly uncovered the Chinese climate-change hoax intended to undermine democratic countries’ economies. Countries around the globe began developing green-energy sources, reduced their reliance on fossil fuels, and undermined their countries’ energy stability. Now, Trump claims to be wisely moving the US in the opposite direction and taking the world with him.A very nervous, twitchy fly on the Oval Office wall provided the following plausibly reliable information on Trump’s fever-dream aspirations for the next 100 days:Beginning his crusade in the US, Trump will sue any newspaper spreading misinformation harmful to Americans that climate change fuels terrible natural disasters. As a case in point, Trump will sue any newspaper that has falsely linked the deadly winter storm currently gripping the US to warming temperatures in the Arctic caused by climate change. “So warmer Arctic weather is causing frigid temperatures in the US,” Trump allegedly guffawed. “What kind of fools do the newspapers and their pseudo scientists take us for?” All newspapers will be forced to publicly retract every word linking the deadly storms to climate change to avoid a $10 billion lawsuit. “Lying to the American people is one thing I won’t tolerate,” said Trump.Trump is also scrubbing false climate-change propaganda from America’s educational system, where he believes an entire generation of young Americans are being fed lies that climate change is this huge existential threat to the planet.A recently enacted executive order requires that all units on climate change be deleted from public-school science textbooks and replaced by an EPA-provided unit entitled, “The Anti-Science Climate-Change Hoax.” In addition, wherever the term “climate change” may appear in any textbook across the curriculum, it must be referred to as “natural climate change,” Mother Nature’s climate change,” or “God-given climate change.” Any school district not complying with the executive order will lose all federal funding and not be allowed to name any school after President Trump. In addition, board members will be investigated by FBI director Kash Patel for possible ties to the Chinese government. Evidence of such ties may include a board member’s abnormal frequenting of Chinese restaurants, an unusual preoccupation with karaoke singing, or large amounts of made-in-China toys and appliances discovered through FBI search-and-seizure operations of board members’ homes. “We will evaluate the evidence,” said Patel, “and never rush to judgment unless examples must be made.”States will also feel the brunt of increasing green-energy production and/or reducing their reliance of fossil fuels. Executive orders will remove all federal funding for states’ green-energy programs, “cap” the amount of green energy-produced Kilowatt hours to 2025 levels, and cut off all green-energy heating in governors’ mansions.In addition, oil-producing states will lose federal funding that don’t increase their oil production and refinement output by 15 percent annually. To ensure compliance, teams of federal agents may be sent to oil-drilling and refinement sites with the power to arrest protestors but without authority to shoot unless provoked by violence or unendurable humiliation. Countries that continue to increase green-energy production will be slapped with additional US tariffs up to 50 percent. However, countries that increase fossil fuel-produced energy will be given “very generous terms” according to President Trump. For replacing green-energy sources with US-purchased oil, countries will receive a 15 percent reduction in established rates for US oil recently produced in Venezuela or confiscated by the US military from Venezuelan tankers. President Trump is taking these critical steps for two reasons: to defeat China’s plan to weaken the democratic world through its climate-change hoax and to ensure the US’s energy independence through greater production and usage of fossil fuels.According to Trump, “America and the rest of the world must dramatically increase our production and reliance on dependable, environmentally enriching fossil fuels or we’ll all be wearing Mao suits tomorrow, which doesn’t flatter my body type. It’s either ‘drill, baby, drill’ across the globe or Chow Mein and fortune cookies three meals a day.”Trump’s crusade to expose man-made climate change as an abominable Chinese hoax is essential to changing worldwide public opinion and rescuing countries from self-inflicted destruction. If Trump is successful, he says, “The time will come when electric cars, wind turbines, solar panels, and hydroelectric plants are as popular universally as Crooked Joe Biden’s “Cup O’ Joe” coffee mugs.”As Trump prophesizes, “The day will come when oil proudly rules the energy world once again, and no one’s in a better position to make a killing than the US. Take that to the bank.”

Feb 1, 2026 - World

A new report about a "secret" and "unprecedented" deal between Donald Trump and a "spy Sheikh" has analysts concerned.According to the Wall Street Journal, "Four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, lieutenants to an Abu Dhabi royal secretly signed a deal with the Trump family to purchase a 49% stake in their fledgling cryptocurrency venture for half a billion dollars, according to company documents and people familiar with the matter."The article continues:"The buyers would pay half up front, steering $187 million to Trump family entities. The deal with World Liberty Financial, which hasn’t previously been reported, was signed by Eric Trump, the president’s son. At least $31 million was also slated to flow to entities affiliated with the family of Steve Witkoff, a World Liberty co-founder who weeks earlier had been named U.S. envoy to the Middle East, the documents said."The report prompted outrage from political insiders and analysts.Gregg Carlstrom of The Economist said, "To call this the most corrupt administration in American history doesn't really do it justice, because no prior president, Republican or Democrat, would have even conceived of a grift on this scale."Ex-GOP lawmaker Barbara Comstock chimed in, "When the Trump corruption story is in the WSJ…are the leaks coming from inside the house?….."Political scientist Brendan Nyhan added Sunday, "Corruption at a level that is unimaginable in any previous admin. People were mad that Hunter Biden sold some mediocre paintings."The Tennessee Holler asked, "So… a bribe? Trump got $500 Million and U.A.E. got 'tightly guarded' A.I. chips. How is this not a bribe, exactly?"Activist Garry Kasparov wrote, "Nearly every day brings a real Trump corruption scandal that is billions beyond even the most creative fantasies about Hunter Biden. US power and influence exchanged to enrich Trump and his family."