“Incel” is a portmanteau of “involuntary” and “celibate.” Over the past decade, the once-fringe community has gained prominence in popular culture, largely through the vector of online influencers like self-described incel and Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes. Incels are, typically, extremely online men who have given up on ever having sexual relationships with women and who have crafted an elaborate and insular worldview to justify and rationalize their lack of success or interest in dating.

Though some of these terms are used in other parts of the online “manosphere,” they go a long way toward helping understand the strange and toxic atmosphere of incel culture, which has been linked to acts of violence including the 2014 mass shooting perpetrated by Elliot Rodger.

Ascending

An incel who has “ascended” is someone who is able to “leave the bounds of inceldom and have sex with a woman (without payment being given),” said Safeguarding Network. Some incels use the term in a derogatory fashion, believing those who aspire to ascension are delusional.

Alpha and Beta

“Alpha,” or alpha male, is a term derived from discredited research about wolf packs by evolutionary biologists. An alpha is “in charge, has his pick of sexual partners and has ultimate control, both of themselves and others,” said The Conversation. A “beta” is “number 2 in the wolf pack or the baboon troop,” said The New York Times. An incel believes himself to be in the latter group, although some aspire to join the former.

Becky

A “Becky” is a comparatively plain or unglamorous woman, as compared to a “Stacy” who is more conventionally attractive and successful with men. “Incels feel they’re ‘owed’ sex and relationships from Beckys, as they’re seen as inferior” to higher-status women, said Education Against Hate.

Blackpilled and redpilled

This is the concept that forms the bedrock of the destructive incel ideology. It refers to a “nihilistic world view among incels that one’s romantic prospects are biologically determined; that inferior men have no chance of ever having sexual relationships with women,” said UN Women. The concept is akin to a gateway drug in terms of an individual’s descent into this community. Someone who is “blackpilled” accepts that they are hopelessly consigned to Beta status, as opposed to someone who is “redpilled” and merely recognizes the existence of these dynamics but believes that they can escape them by securing a higher status.

Chad

A “Chad” is someone who meets the standards of a prototypical alpha male. It refers to “​​muscular, popular men who are presumed to sleep with lots of women,” said Vox. If you consider yourself an incel, you definitely don’t think of yourself as a Chad. The term was appropriated from ’90s-era Chicago culture, where a “Chad” was a wealthy but basic North Sider who went to a Big Ten school and then worked in finance or law.

Foid

A combination of “female” and “humanoid,” the term “foid” is used by incels to degrade and debase women. The term is “derogatory and is used to reduce women to a subhuman group,” said the Anti-Defamation League. Another way of expressing this concept is to use the term “femoid.”

Gymcel

“An incel who is trying to ascend” and is doing so by “going to the gym as much as possible,” said Vice. Such a person is engaging in gymmaxxing and is thought to be redpilled rather than blackpilled, given their hope that transforming their body can allow them to join the Chads and Alphas on top of the social hierarchy.

Hypergamy

Another theory burbling around incel circles, “hypergamy” refers to the idea that “women are more sexually selective and will leave less suitable men for men who are more physically attractive and have a better socioeconomic standing,” said the Journal for Deradicalization and Democratic Culture. It is part of the community’s belief ecosystem and is meant to discourage its members from trying — and failing — to join or rejoin normie society.

Looksmaxxing

The phenomenon of looksmaxxing is brought to us by a “cohort of painfully online young men who obsess over physical self-improvement in the hope that it’ll improve their dating odds,” said GQ. Popularized by the racist, misogynist influencer Braden Peters, aka “Clavicular,” it refers to the idea of going to great lengths to look as perfect as possible. Looksmaxxers may use something called the PSL Scale, which “seeks to provide a supposedly empirical assessment of facial attractiveness,” said GQ.

Jestermaxxing

Another piece of incel jargon that has “broken containment to normies,” jestermaxxing is “being pushed by people who are chasing dollars, not just lols,” said Business Insider, including clippers who snip and caption existing videos for clicks and influence. It means “using humor to gain the attention of women,” said The Atlantic, and it is one of the many reasons that “we can shed the pretense that internet life is reasonable, level-headed or healthy.” The term is sometimes used interchangeably with “jestergooning.”

Mewing

Redpilled incels will sometimes engage in the practice of mewing, or “putting pressure on the roof of your mouth with your tongue to try and change the shape of your face,” said Vice, presumably to give yourself better or more chiseled cheek bone structure. To say that this idea is scientifically dubious is putting it lightly.

MGTOW

An acronym that means “Men Going Their Own Way,” it is an expression of a kind of male separatism and is representative of the hopeless nihilism of incel culture. It is an “online community of male supremacists who advocate self-empowerment by eschewing most relationships with women,” said the Southern Poverty Law Center. They “embrace a toxic form of traditional masculinity and define themselves by their lack of relationships and hatred of women.”

Mogging

A word that is sometimes attached as a suffix to others to create new jargon (like frame-mogging), “mogging” comes from the initialism AMOG, which means “alpha male of the group.” And to be “mogged is to be shown up by another more masculine male,” said NPR. Frame-mogging is a term associated with — who else? — Clavicular to describe being photographed with someone who is better looking than you.

Normie

“Normie” is not a term that is unique to incel culture, and it has a fairly well-established meaning in broader society. But for incels, it simply refers to someone outside of the community who lives a normal life as most people would understand it. Normies have not been blackpilled and are living a lie according to incel dogma.

Sexual Market Value (SMV)

Calculating your “Sexual Market Value” is a way of figuring out where you stand in what incels call the “sexual marketplace.” For incels, this is the “primary measure of an individual’s worth,” said the Journal for Deradicalization and Democratic Culture.

Soy boy

A “soy boy” is a man who subscribes to leftist or feminist beliefs about relations between men and women or lacks the qualities that incels ascribe to alpha males. “There is some reported connection” between the term and the scientifically dubious “idea that soy products increase men’s estrogen levels,” said The Independent. A similar idea is expressed by the term “simp.”

Stacy

The counterpart of a Chad, a “Stacy” is a woman deemed conventionally attractive in the warped worldview of incel culture. A “Stacy” is an “idealized, highly attractive woman that is considered unattainable,” by incels, said UN Women. In the original Chicago slang that produced Chad, the female counterpart was typically a Trixie rather than a Stacy.

Wagecuck

Wagecucks are men with conventional jobs and, presumably, conventional lifestyles and home lives. It refers to “someone who works for a living,” as opposed to the supposedly entrepreneurial influencer lifestyle promoted by people like Clavicular, said The New York Times. Removing oneself from the workforce is, however, unlikely to be a successful ascending strategy.

White knighting

An intellectual cousin of the idea of “virtue signalling,” another idea that migrated from far right to mainstream spaces, “white knighting” is an insult lobbed at men who defend women or espouse feminist or progressive ideas. Incels believe that “men who treat women more respectfully” are “putting on a mockable façade of chivalry,” said Jia Tolentino at The New Yorker

Taylor Swift is the biggest name in music right now, and she is also one of the defining entertainers of the 21st century. No other pop star has captured the global zeitgeist quite like the Pennsylvania country singer-turned-pop superstar. Swift broke dozens of records in 2024 and has already been continuing her success in 2025, which isn't new for her; she has been breaking records since the time she first came on the scene in the early 2000s.

Swift's globetrotting "Eras" tour became its own cultural phenomenon and defined her status as perhaps the most dominating musician of her generation. It was the highest-grossing concert tour in history and the first to surpass $1 billion in sales. But this was only the latest in a string of record-breaking successes for Swift, who has been setting precedents in the music industry since practically her first song, making waves at record stores, movie theaters and more.

"The Tortured Poets Department," was released in 2024 following massive anticipation. Swift's popularity only grew when she announced her next album, "The Life of a Showgirl," which was released Oct. 3. The album is largely inspired by her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, whom Swift recently became engaged to.

First and only female artist to surpass 100 million RIAA album sales

It's no shocker that Swift's albums fly off the shelves, and she reached a major milestone in September 2025, becoming the first and only female artist to surpass 100 million certified album sales, as confirmed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The singer has currently sold 105 million RIAA-certified albums, according to the association's website. Her 2024 album "1989" was the one that "moved the most units with 14 million," said People.

Youngest artist to win Entertainer of the Year at the Country Music Association Awards

Swift "made history at 19 by becoming the youngest artist ever" to win the CMA's Entertainer of the Year accolade, said Prestige. This is one of several awards she garnered at the CMAs that year, including Female Vocalist of the Year and Music Video of the Year.

Most American Music Awards in history

With 40 awards, Swift has taken the lead as the artist with the most American Music Awards in history. She surpassed Michael Jackson, the male artist with the most awards at 26, and Whitney Houston, who has 22. She was also recognized with the AMA's "Artist of the Decade" award in 2019 and performed a medley of some of her most popular tunes at the ceremony that year.

Most weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for a solo artist

In January 2024, Swift saw her music reach the top of the Billboard 200 chart for the 68th week. This surpassed Elvis Presley's 67 weeks, giving Swift the most weeks at the top of the chart ever for a solo artist. While not consecutive, this means that Swift is behind only The Beatles, The Kingston Trio and the Rolling Stones to have the most No. 1 weeks, period.

First woman with 4 albums in Billboard chart top 10 simultaneously

When "Speak Now (Taylor's Version)" debuted in July 2023, it was Swift's fourth album to occupy the Billboard 200 chart's top 10 at the same time, alongside "Midnights," "Lover" and "Folklore." This made her the first woman to have four albums in the Billboard chart's top 10 simultaneously and only the second living artist to do so after Herb Alpert in 1966. Prince also previously achieved this after his death in 2016.

"It's a pretty amazing feat," Alpert said to The New York Times. "With the way radio is these days, and the way music is distributed, with streaming, I didn't think anyone in this era could do it."

Additionally, Swift set a record for most albums by a female artist to chart on the Billboard 200 in a single week with 11. According to Billboard, since 1963, Prince and The Beatles are the only other artists who charted more albums simultaneously.

Most No. 1 albums by a woman in history

Swift's re-recording of her album "Speak Now" debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart when it was released in July 2023. This was the singer's 12th album to debut at number one, breaking the record for most number one albums by a female artist in history. This record was previously held by Barbra Streisand.

Most Grammy nominations for Song of the Year

Swift is breaking records even with her nominations. The singer has earned eight Grammy nods for Song of the Year, the most in the history of the category. However, this marks one of the rare instances in which there is something she hasn't accomplished, as Swift has never actually won the award. Prior to 2024, she "shared the record with Paul McCartney and Lionel Richie, who have six nominations in the category," said Business Insider.

Longest song ever to reach No. 1

This may not be a record most people think of, but it stands nonetheless: Swift's "All Too Well (10 Minute Version)" is the longest song ever to top the Billboard charts at No 1. The song is slightly over 10 minutes long and beat out one of the most famous songs in history: Don MacLean's "American Pie," which is about eight minutes long.

First woman with new number one albums in five consecutive years

Swift is the only woman to chart a new number one album on the Billboard 200 in five consecutive calendar years with 2019's "Lover," 2020's "Folklore" and "Evermore," 2021's "Fearless (Taylor's Version)" and "Red (Taylor's Version)," 2022's "Midnights," and 2023's "Speak Now (Taylor's Version)," according to Billboard. The only other artists to achieve this feat are The Beatles, Drake, Jay-Z and Paul McCartney.

Swift also became the only act to have nine records sell half a million copies in one week in the U.S. since at least 1991, when Luminate started tracking the sales, per Billboard.

Second most Hot 100-charting songs ever

When "Speak Now (Taylor's Version)" dropped in 2023, all 22 songs from the album debuted on Billboard's Hot 100. This means Swift has released 212 Hot 100-charting songs in her career, the second most of all time after she surpassed the cast of "Glee," Billboard said. She's second only to Drake, making her number one for a female artist.

First woman to dethrone herself on Hot 100

Swift shook it off in 2014 when her song "Blank Space" debuted at the top of the Billboard Hot 100. The artist she was replacing: herself, as Swift's song "Shake It Off" had previously held the top spot on the list. This makes her the only female singer to dethrone herself on top of the list.

Only artist to win Album of the Year Grammy four times

Swift made history at the 2024 Grammy Awards when she took home the Album of the Year for "Midnights," becoming the first and only person to have won the award four times. She previously won AOTY for "Fearless" in 2010, "1989" in 2016, and "Folklore" in 2021. Her win for "Folklore," which she wrote and produced during the Covid-19 lockdown, made her the first woman to win AOTY three times.

Youngest artist to win Album of the Year

Not only has she won the award four times, but Swift also became the youngest person to win an Artist of the Year Grammy when she earned her "Fearless" award in 2010 at the age of 20. This is one of the few records Swift no longer holds, as Billie Eilish "won the Grammy for her debut album, 'When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?'" in 2020 at the age of 18, said Business Insider.

Most attended concert by a female artist in the U.S.

According to Capital FM, the opening night of Swift's Eras Tour in Glendale, Arizona, in March 2023, set a record for the most attended U.S. concert by a female artist with a crowd of 69,000. Madonna reportedly held this record since 1987.

Swift's tour went on to continue breaking numerous attendance records, including at Texas' AT&T Stadium, Tennessee's Nissan Stadium, and Pennsylvania's Acrisure Stadium. "Apparently, you have broken the attendance record for any event in Pittsburgh ever," Swift told the crowd at Acrisure Stadium, adding, "No group of people this big has ever gotten together for one thing in Pittsburgh ever."

First concert tour to gross $1 billion

One of Swift's biggest milestones was setting the record for the highest-grossing music tour ever after her "Eras" tour became the first to surpass $1 billion in revenue, according to the Guinness World Records. The international tour earned $1.04 billion as of the halfway point in December 2023, according to Pollstar. She broke the record set by Elton John with his "Farewell Yellow Brick Road" tour, which lasted from 2018 through 2023 and grossed $939 million. The tour, which ended in December 2024, generated over $2 billion total, which is "double the gross ticket sales of any other concert tour in history and an extraordinary new benchmark for a white-hot international concert business," said The New York Times.

Highest-earning female musician in the industry

In October 2023, Forbes reported that Swift became a billionaire, making her the highest-earning female musician in the industry, with an estimated net worth of $1.1 billion. She is also the first person to reach billionaire status with her music alone, driven in part by the success of her "Eras" tour.

Biggest vinyl sales week of modern times

Out of the 1.5 million copies in "Tortured Poets" first-week sales, 700,000 were vinyl records, breaking her record for the biggest sales week for an album on vinyl since Luminate began tracking data in 1991, Billboard said. Her latest album's sales beat the 693,000 sold by "1989 (Taylor’s Version)" in its first week in 2023.

One of the best-selling artists ever

Since the start of her career, Swift has sold an estimated 114 million albums worldwide, according to U.K. radio station Rayo. While the exact number is unclear, this makes her one of the best-selling artists of all time. She still has a long way to go to catch the number one act, The Beatles, who have reported sales of more than 230 million albums globally (though some reports say they've sold up to 600 million albums).

Most streams in a single day on Spotify

Spotify said "Tortured Poets" broke the record for most streams in a single day in the platform's history less than 12 hours after its release and was the first ever to amass over 300 million streams in a single day. The record was previously held by Beyoncé's "Cowboy Carter" album.

Relatedly, the opening song on the album, "Fortnight," broke Spotify’s record for the most streams ever gained by one song in a day.

Highest-grossing concert film of all time

Given the popularity of the Eras Tour, it shouldn't be surprising that the tour's movie became the highest-grossing theatrically released concert film ever. The film, shot during one of Swift's Los Angeles shows, reportedly "earned approximately $250 million in sales, making it the highest-grossing concert film of all time," said CBS News.

Historic Billboard 200 debut

The release week of "Tortured Poets" was a smashing success, with the album debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 chart in its first week. The album also "nabbed the record for largest streaming week ever for an album since the chart started measuring by units in December 2014," Billboard said. The first-week total reached 2.61 million units, with album sales accounting for 1.914 million. With this being her 14th chart-topper, Swift now ties with Jay-Z for most number one debuts among solo artists.

Most new albums to generate Hot 100 number ones

With "Fortnight" at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, Swift broke Rihanna's record for most albums with all-new material with at least one number-one hit on the chart, as "TTPD" brought her to eight. As her seventh song to debut at the top of the Hot 100, "Fortnight" helped Swift tie with Ariana Grande for most chart-toppers among women. Drake has the most overall, with nine, but "Fortnight" also ties Swift with him for the most Hot 100 number ones this decade, as both of them have seven.

Most views for a podcast on YouTube

Forget about music — Swift is busy breaking all kinds of records. She appeared on an episode of "New Heights," a podcast hosted by her fiancé Travis Kelce and his brother Jason Kelce, in August. The episode, during which Swift announced her 2025 album, earned the "most concurrent views for a podcast" on YouTube, said Guinness World Records, with 1.3 million people tuning in at once. The podcast episode has been viewed on the platform nearly 21 million times.

People agree that smoking is bad for you, but nicotine has far from gone up in smoke. Levels of American adults smoking cigarettes hit a record low in 2024, but nicotine products like vapes, patches and gum are alive and well.

Of the wide array of nicotine products, none have been picking up speed the way pouches like Zyn and On! have. These products are usually the size of a piece of gum and are held in the mouth between the gums and teeth, which slowly releases nicotine into the body. While mainly touted as a method to quit smoking, the pouches have made their way into the wellness spaces and are also being used as a tool to improve concentration.

How are nicotine pouches gaining popularity?

For those looking to quit smoking, nicotine pouches are considered to be the “least harmful nicotine option” because they are not known to “cause cancer, lung disease or other ailments,” by themselves, said The Wall Street Journal. But nicotine pouch usage is not exclusive to those trying to quit smoking.

The addictive chemical has a new lease on life, with many touting its benefits. Some studies have found that nicotine can improve cognitive performance, including attention, memory and learning. Nicotine has also been “linked to weight loss and reduced appetite,” as it “appears to influence the parts of the brain that control hunger and makes the body burn more energy,” Dipa Kamdar, a senior lecturer in Pharmacy Practice at Kingston University, said in an article for The Conversation. The pouches have similar effects to GLP-1s, which have been used for weight loss.

Nicotine pouches have since been touted as a powerful wellness compound, especially in the right-wing and biohacking spaces. It is a “life-enhancing, God-given chemical,” right-wing media personality Tucker Carlson said on Instagram. He claims that nicotine can treat erectile dysfunction and released his own brand of pouches called ALP, in collaboration with the tobacco giant Turning Point Brands. Over time, many media personalities have “advocated for nicotine use, not just as a way to get a buzz but as a cure for ailments ranging from whooping cough to atrial fibrillation,” said Salon.

The nicotine pouch hype has also skipped into the workplace. Rather than strictly drinks and snacks, the tech company Palantir began stocking nicotine pouches as a job perk, hoping to increase workers’ focus and productivity. Nicotine startups Lucy and Sesh have “installed branded vending machines in Palantir’s Washington, D.C., office,” said Fortune. This is “just one of the ways biohacking has taken the Silicon Valley tech space by storm.”

Is there merit to the benefits?

Any health benefits associated with nicotine are “frequently overblown or misinterpreted” and “outweighed by the problem of addiction,” said Stat. These effects are particularly dangerous as young people and those who have never smoked are picking up the habit. The chemical’s addictive nature can “become a gateway for someone to start using more harmful forms of nicotine, including cigarettes,” said the Journal. Most nicotine pouches on the market are also not FDA-authorized. Only certain Zyn and On! products have received authorization. Still, authorization differs from approval, as “all tobacco products are harmful and potentially addictive,” said the FDA.

Regarding cognitive enhancements, “people who already have cognitive difficulties have more room to improve, while those with healthy brain function are already performing close to their best,” said Kamdar. Nicotine is ”unlikely to offer any real benefit to people who don’t have cognitive impairments.”

What most experts agree on is that nicotine pouches are one of the better ways to quit smoking because most of the danger from cigarettes comes from the combustion of tobacco and not the nicotine itself. Evn though nicotine can cause other issues like nausea, vomiting, harm to blood vessels and an increased risk for heart attack and stroke. “Wellness trends come and go,” said Kamdar, “but addiction is far harder to shake.”

Billionaires have proven a popular punching bag in entertainment in recent years, from movies like HBO Max's dark comedy "Mountainhead" to apocalypse-themed billionaires-in-a-bunker series like Hulu's "Murder at the End of the World" and "Paradise." These depictions have generally not been positive, and the reputation of many wealthy elites was further degraded by the recent political frenzy around the U.S. Department of Justice releases on Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier whose 2019 suicide triggered many conspiracy theories. The Epstein files have implicated or embarrassed countless people on lists of the world's richest, including Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and New York Giants chairman Steve Tisch.

Yet the ultra-rich are shrugging off their declining popularity — in part, by flexing their muscle in American politics. A recent analysis by The New York Times showed that just 300 billionaires and their relatives made nearly 20% of all political contributions in the 2024 election cycle that resulted in a Republican trifecta in Washington and the election of President Donald Trump for a second term. The $3 billion they spent influencing elections up and down the ballot was a 12,000% increase from 2008. Still, most global billionaires and their families prefer to operate in relative obscurity, collecting luxury automobiles, private jets and coveted art rather than direct political influence.

At a time when the economy is being powered by the spending habits of the 1%, the world's richest 500 people collectively added $2.2 trillion to their fortunes over the course of 2025 alone — an extraordinary upward redistribution of wealth. The Trump administration's February 2026 decision to begin a bombing campaign against Iran, though, could soon change things; it has snarled shipping and air traffic in and around the Persian Gulf, rattling financial markets and spiking prices for oil and other critical commodities.

Our list only looks at families where the wealth is already intergenerational; this means that we exclude, for example, the family of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, given that his phenomenal riches have yet to be passed down to heirs. The economic boom driven by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs that began in the late 20th century created an entirely new class of moneyed elites, most of whom did not start out in life with anything like the riches they have now. Many of them, like Oracle founder Larry Ellison, are also still alive. As a consequence, this list is likely to evolve when individuals from the current cohort of elderly billionaires, like investor Warren Buffet, pass away and distribute their fortunes to their children and extended families.

The Walton family ($513.4 billion)

Sam Walton opened his first discount variety store in Bentonville, Arkansas, in 1962 and turned it into a retail empire "by buying up low-cost goods and selling them at lower prices than his competitors," said Fox Business. Today, Walmart operates more than 10,500 stores in 19 countries, and Walton's heirs are worth $513.4 billion. There are now three Waltons — Jim, Rob and Alice — who are worth more than $100 billion each, and their largesse "largely stems from the Walmart shares given to them by their father," said Business Insider. One of the family's heiresses, Christy Walton, made waves when she "promoted a planned nationwide protest against President Trump by placing a full-page advertisement that ran in the New York Times" in June 2025, bucking a trend of the country's wealthiest elites seeking to curry favor with the president.

The al-Nahyan family ($335.9 billion)

The discovery of oil in the 1960s set off a "breathtaking transformation" of the United Arab Emirates from a society of subsistence "date farmers, camel herders and pearl fishermen" to one of the richest countries in the world, said The New York Times. The al-Nahyan family is the hereditary monarchy of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, which has increased its natural resource wealth with its pioneering sovereign wealth fund, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA). Among many other endeavors, the ADIA purchased a stake in the city of Chicago's parking meters in 2008, and now the "revenue from these meters has reportedly reached over $150 million annually — all flowing to the investor group led in part by ADIA," said Driven Magazine. Adding to the good times is the fact that the United Arab Emirates "has become a hub for the Trump Organization's international expansion," said Forbes, and in 2025 alone the president and his family "entered into at least nine agreements with ties to the gulf nation — some involving government entities in the country, many stemming from business relationships developed there."

The Emirates, and the al-Nahyan family, have much at stake following the descent of the Persian Gulf into war in February 2026, having turned the country into a commercial, banking and aviation hub. In particular, Iran's "attacks on Dubai are a major pain point for the UAE, which relies on the city's reputation as a business and tourist hub," said The Atlantic Council.

The Al-Saud family ($213.6 billion)

Perhaps the only family in the world with a country named after them, the Al-Saud dynasty completed their conquest of the Hejaz (now Saudi Arabia) in the 1920s. While this wasn't clear then, over the years Saudi Arabia would come to control "about 20-25% of all the world's oil reserves while producing about 10-15% of the world's daily oil consumption," said Epicenter. Because the "family contains as many as 15,000 extended members," it is challenging to "accurately assess the wealth of the House of Saud," said Investopedia. The Saudis also threw themselves into the movie business in 2025, and the country's "sovereign wealth fund now backs some of Hollywood's biggest deals, including a $24-billion financing package for Paramount's $78-billion Warner bid," said The Los Angeles Times.

Saudi Arabia, like many Gulf countries allied with the United States, has been subject to retaliatory attacks following President Trump's decision to launch a regime decapitation strike against Iran on February 28, 2026. The outbreak of violence will complicate the country's political strategy, as well as the Saud family's wealth trajectory.

The al-Thani family ($199.5 billion)

Another family of Gulf royalty has turned natural resource wealth into a multifaceted and growing portfolio. "No ruling dynasty in the Arab Gulf has played a seemingly weak hand with more skill" than the al-Thani family, said Manara Magazine. The country's diplomatic and investment strategies are all about "building Qatar into an international brand that can underpin its existence and the family's longevity," said Bloomberg. Former Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani is a superyacht enthusiast who owns the Katara, a "$400 million mega yacht" that "comfortably accommodates up to 34 guests in 14 cabins serviced by 95 crew members," said the South China Morning Post. The family is so flush that Qatar "gave America a $200 million jet that could eventually be used as Air Force One" in May 2025, said Politico.

Iran has also targeted Qatar for retaliation following the Iran war outbreak, and severely damaged a major Liquid Natural Gas facility on March 18, 2026, with uncertain consequences for the country's economic future.

The Hermès family ($184.5 billion)

Thierry Hermès was the "sixth child of an innkeeper," said Vanity Fair, who "went to Paris an orphan, proved gifted in leatherwork and opened a shop in 1837." He and his descendants built a luxury fashion empire that has survived world wars, multiple French regime changes, and an era of globalization that has led to dizzying change and competition. The luxury brand's business model is the polar opposite of Walmart, which presumably would not have much luck selling scarves that cost $4,125 each. Sales remained strong in 2025 despite a price hike in the U.S. "aimed at passing on the burden of tariffs to its clients," said Reuters. While Hermes stock tumbled along with many other continental luxury brands when President Trump issued a threat of new tariffs against eight countries in the European Union in January 2026, they recovered when the president appeared to walk back his stance a few days later.

The Koch family ($150.5 billion)

The Kochs began their ascent to the top of the global wealth hierarchy when Fred Koch "used his training in chemical engineering to develop an improved method of turning oil into petrol" and built oil refineries in Stalin's Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany, said the BBC. His son Charles was "groomed as Koch's successor, becoming president of the family business after his father died in the 1960s" and diversified the family's interests into "energy, chemicals, agriculture, finance and electronics, producing everything from toilet paper to steak." The Kochs spent more than $49 million in the 2024 election cycle, donating almost exclusively to Republicans and sending $40 million alone to the right-wing SuperPAC Americans for Prosperity Action. The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), a conservative group funded in part by Koch family money, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in April 2025 contesting the legality of the president's new tariff regime. When those tariffs were overturned in a landmark February 2026 Supreme Court decision, the NCLA indicated it was looking into challenging the legal basis of the Trump administration’s next round of tariffs.

The Mars family ($143.4 billion)

You may never have heard of the Mars family, but you've almost certainly eaten its candy. The family's company, Mars Inc., based today in Virginia near the CIA's headquarters, "was founded in 1911 when Frank Mars started selling candy out of his kitchen in Tacoma, Washington," said Forbes. The family's vast confectionery empire includes Halloween staples like Snickers and M&Ms and operates 135 factories in 68 countries, employing more than 140,000 people. These bonbon barons do not enjoy the limelight and are known as a "reclusive dynasty of billionaires who spend a good deal of time on a remote ranch in Wyoming," said The Guardian. Amid the global upheaval over tariffs, the Mars empire was well-positioned to benefit from the Trump administration's changing, given that the company claims to "make 94% of its U.S. products locally," said Yahoo Finance. Still, the price of the company's Halloween-themed candy variety packs rose 12% in 2025, meaning that "working families will keep getting spooked at the checkout line," said The Century Foundation. The Mars family, however, will be just fine.

The Ambani family ($105.6 billion)

The Ambanis are the richest family in Asia, and their empire, which includes oil and gas, telecommunications and retail businesses, has a "valuation that is equivalent to 10% of India's Gross Domestic Product," said The Independent. It all started in 1958, when Dhirubhai Ambani launched a company based in Gujarat, India, that "began as a small firm trading commodities like spices and polyester yarn" and gradually expanded to make Reliance Industries a "global powerhouse," said People. Scion Anant Ambani's 2024 reception following his wedding with Radhika Merchant was "attended by over 14,000 people" and featured "60 floral animal sculptures" that each required "over 100,000 flowers to make," said Vanity Fair. It's safe to assume that the Ambanis' soirée substantially exceeded the 2024 average U.S. wedding cost of $33,000.

The Bettencourt Meyers Family ($93.8 billion)

Françoise Bettencourt Meyers is considered the wealthiest woman in the world and is the heiress to the fortune first amassed by the founder of cosmetics empire L'Oréal, Eugène Schueller. She plays a "pivotal role in preserving the family fortune" through her role as a L'Oréal board member and "serves as the chairwoman of the family's lucrative holding company, Téthys Invest," said Yahoo Finance. In recent years, L'Oréal has consolidated its control over the global cosmetics industry by acquiring competitors like the Australian luxury brand Aesop, hair care company Color Wow and cologne brand House of Creed, among many others. Bettencourt Meyers is "known to play the piano for several hours a day and has written two books — a five-volume study of the Bible and a genealogy of the Greek gods," said the BBC. She has two sons with her husband Jean-Pierre Meyers, Jean-Victor and Nicolas, and rarely engages with the press. In 2025, Jean-Victor Meyers succeeded his mother as vice chairman of the L'Oréal board of directors.

The Wertheimer family ($85.6 billion)

In 1925, "Pierre Wertheimer, and his brother Paul struck a deal with Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel" to create "Société des Parfums Chanel with the aim of selling and producing Chanel beauty products," said Business Insider. That history means that the Wertheimer family's "destiny has been intertwined with the world's second-largest luxury brand for a century," said Women's Wear Daily. The Wertheimers are oenophiles in an era of declining wine-drinking and have acquired a large luxury wine empire, including Domaine de l'Ile on the island of Porquerolles in Provence, as well as three estates in Bordeaux and St. Supéry Estate Vineyards and Winery in California's Napa Valley, said Wine Spectator.

Industry sources speculate that current Chanel owners Alain and Gérard Wertheimer are preparing to hand the reins to their 39-year-old nephew Arthur Heilbronn, who has "taken on management positions overseeing his and his relatives' real estate, banking and media investments" in recent years, said Business Standard. If so, that would be "another quiet move in a succession symphony that's decades in the making," said Yahoo Finance.

The United States has generally had a more forgiving set of regulations governing the use of additives, preservatives and other chemicals in food and drinks than the European Union (EU). The difference has begun to narrow, however, both because some U.S. states are banning ingredients that the federal government allows, and because the Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., pledged to more aggressively prohibit some of these substances as part of his Make American Healthy Again (MAHA) movement.

Some substances that were once legal to use in foods in the U.S. but not in Europe, like partially hydrogenated oils as well as brominated vegetable oil (BVO), were banned in the U.S. prior to the second Trump administration. They included a food dye called Red No. 3, which was banned by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on January 15, 2025. In April 2025, Secretary Kennedy announced plans to work with the food industry to voluntarily phase out six other petroleum-based food dyes, all of which are already banned for use in foods in the EU.

Azodicarbonamide (ADA)

ADA is used in the U.S. to “whiten cereal flour and improve baking bread dough,” said CBS News, but is banned for use in food by the EU, where it is considered a carcinogen. ADA has become increasingly controversial, however, and some companies have rolled back its inclusion in certain products.

In 2014, for example, Subway announced that it would no longer use ADA in its bread products, which turned out to be the leading edge of a trend. The American Bakers Association announced in 2026 that most of its members had already phased out the use of ADA, with the remainder doing so by the end of the year. The FDA is currently reviewing information about ADA.

Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA)

BHA “is a preservative used in cured meats and other foods,” said the Environmental Working Group, a U.S.-based nonprofit. It is “subject to severe restrictions in Europe” but continues to be added to American food products under the FDA’s GRAS (Generally Regarded as Safe) principle, said The New York Times. The National Toxicology Program deemed it a likely human carcinogen decades ago. In February 2026, the FDA ordered a new safety review of BHA, “pointing to long-standing concerns that the food additive might cause cancer in humans,” said NBC News.

Butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT)

BHT is an “antioxidant that helps stabilize vegetable oils so they stay fresh longer and is often used in crackers and cereals to extend their shelf life,” said Tasting Table. The antioxidant’s presence in the popular cracker Wheat Thins, for example, is the reason you won’t be able to find them in Europe. Due to “concerns related to potential endocrine-disrupting properties,” BHT is banned for use in foods in the EU, said the European Commission. In August 2025, the FDA launched a “postmarket assessment of the safety of BHT as used in food and food contact materials,” said the FDA.

Potassium bromate

Potassium bromate is a substance that is found “usually in the form of fine crystals or powder, to strengthen dough” in more than 100 products sold in the U.S., said CBS News. It has been used for more than a century in breadmaking, but the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada and most other countries in the world consider it a human carcinogen.

While Secretary Kennedy’s HHS has not taken any direct action against potassium bromate, he has stated that he wants to eliminate the program under which it is used in the U.S., under the FDA’s GRAS designation. Critics say that GRAS allows companies to include ingredients that were “greenlit for use not by the FDA but by the food and chemical industry,” said CNN.

Propylparaben

The chemical is deployed in more than “50 products in U.S. grocery stores,” said Consumer Reports, “including many packaged corn tortillas, baked desserts and cake icing.” Propylparaben helps “stop the growth of microorganisms in most packaged foods,” said The Cleveland Clinic, but may “interfere with your endocrine system, which includes glands and the hormones they send out to tell organs and tissues what to do.” The EU banned the inclusion of propylparabens in food in 2006. A 2024 FDA review did not lead to any new regulatory action.

Titanium dioxide

The “naturally occurring oxide of titanium,” titanium dioxide “has been used for decades to impart white color to many foods, from baked goods and sandwich spreads to soups, broths, sauces, salad dressing and food supplements,” said the European Commission. The EU banned its use in food products in 2022, citing the “possibility that the use of titanium dioxide as a food additive might cause DNA or chromosomal damage.” In the U.S., the “chemical seems to be largely surviving the food-dye purge” spearheaded by Kennedy, said The Atlantic, although some companies, including the maker of Skittles, are phasing it out voluntarily in expectation of future regulatory action.

President Donald Trump has called himself the “peace president,” but throughout his second term in office he has demonstrated an ongoing willingness to use the military in overseas operations. Ecuador and Iran represent the latest conflicts the United States has engaged in, but they are just two of several countries to become entangled with the U.S. military once Trump reentered the White House

Ecuador

In March 2026, the Trump administration launched a military operation in another country, though not against its government: The White House “announced it is collaborating with Ecuador to combat ‘terrorists’ in the South American country,” said Al Jazeera. Joint military efforts have already started in Ecuador, with operations launched against “designated terrorist organizations.”

Several questions remain, as “both Ecuador and the United States haven’t specified who they’re targeting, locations of operations or the scope of military actions,” said USA Today. But Trump’s decision to send in the military marks an “embrace of past American strategies fighting drug traffickers in Latin America.”

Iran

Trump has been jawing at Iran since retaking office over the country’s alleged attempts to develop a nuclear weapon. Following a bombing campaign in June 2025 that destroyed several of Iran’s nuclear facilities, in February 2026 the U.S. “joined Israel and attacked more than 1,000 targets in Iran,” said Reuters. This full-scale assault killed several of Iran’s top officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

While Republican officials and members of the Trump cabinet have variously called the Iran conflict a “mission” or “defense operation,” Trump himself has repeatedly used the term “war.” Trump’s calculation “has been that he can launch military operations with the loss of few American lives and minimal disruption to the economy,” said The New York Times, but the “opening days of the war in Iran are challenging that assumption.” No American ground troops “have yet been sent to Iranian soil,” but “the administration has not ruled out deploying soldiers.”

Venezeula

As with Iran, Trump also pushed to remove the leader of Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro, alleging that he was a national security threat. Trump accomplished this goal in January 2026 when the U.S. “launched an incursion” into Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, that captured Maduro and left the “country in a state of uncertainty over its political and economic future,” said Time.

Maduro was brought to the United States to face charges of narco-terrorism, but Trump “has never formally declared war on Venezuela, despite overseeing an aggressive military campaign on the South American country,” said Time. The White House has “justified its attacks using the president’s Article II constitutional powers, which give the president the authority to defend the country against threats.” Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, has since taken over Venezuela. Meanwhile, Trump “has offered conflicting statements on the future of U.S. involvement in the country,” said the Council on Foreign Relations.

Syria

In response to an attack by the Islamic State militant group, Trump in January 2026 “carried out large-scale strikes against Islamic State group targets in Syria,” said BBC News. These strikes were “conducted in an effort to combat terrorism and protect U.S. and partner forces in the region.” The initial strike involved more than 90 munitions fired at more than 35 Syrian targets, according to BBC News.

It later came out that the Islamic State’s assault was performed by a “member of Syria’s security forces slated for dismissal over his extremist views,” said the Times, though the Islamic State itself “has not claimed responsibility for the attack.” While White House officials have continued to say they will seek vengeance, the “Syrian leadership has pledged continued cooperation with the United States and its allies to combat ISIS in the country,” said the Council on Foreign Relations.

Caribbean territories

While not an attack against one specific country, more than 40 U.S. strikes against alleged drug trafficking boats “have been carried out in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since September 2025,” said NBC News. Democrats in Congress have criticized the strikes, which have reportedly left over 130 people dead, though Trump “has repeatedly argued that the strikes are preventing illicit drugs from entering the U.S.”

Though most Caribbean nations have criticized the use of U.S. military force, at least one has sung a different tune: Trinidad and Tobago “came out strongly on Washington’s side” with a “full-throated endorsement of President Donald Trump’s belligerent drug policy in the region,” said Bloomberg. This makes the nation one of the only Caribbean locales to take Trump’s side.

Yemen

From March to May 2025, the United States “launched naval and airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels in what was code-named Operation Rough Rider,” said Time. This was, up to that point, Trump’s largest military operation of his second term. The strikes were aimed at a variety of Houthi targets in the country, including “radar systems, air defenses, and missile and drone launch sites” in response to the Houthi’s attack on international ships in the Red Sea.

At least one of these attacks by the U.S. “caused dozens of civilian casualties and significant damage to port infrastructure,” said Human Rights Watch, and the event should be “investigated as a war crime.” This assault, in the town of Hodeidah, targeted the port through which 80% of Yemen’s humanitarian assistance arrives, Human Rights Watch reported. U.S. officials have denied any wrongdoing.

Iraq

A more minor military incursion took place in March 2025, when the military “conducted a precision airstrike in Al Anbar Province, Iraq,” that killed the Islamic State’s second-in-command, Abdallah Makki Muslih al-Rifai, according to the U.S. Central Command. Al-Rifai was “one of the most important ISIS members in the entire global ISIS organization. We will continue to kill terrorists and dismantle their organizations,” Gen. Michael Kurilla of the U.S. Central Command said.

After the Iran conflict broke out in February 2026, Trump administration officials also had discussions “with Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq and northwestern Iran about potentially arming groups opposed to the Iranian regime,” said NBC News. This would be the latest in a decades-long saga of military action between the U.S. and Iraq.

Somalia

Since February 2025, just weeks after taking office, Trump “has been conducting strikes in Somalia to target ISIS and al-Shabaab,” said NewsNation. There have been “more than 100 strikes launched, mostly using drones.” As with Ecuador, Somali officials seem receptive to the military usage.

The operation “reinforces the strong security partnership between Somalia and the United States in combating extremist threats,” Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said in a post on X. Somalia “remains resolute in working with its allies to eliminate international terrorism and ensure regional stability.” An “initial assessment by the Pentagon indicated that ‘multiple’ operatives were killed in the operation,” said Deutsche Welle. It also stated that “no civilians were harmed in the strikes.”

Paramount Skydance appears to have won the bidding war to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery. If the $110.9 billion deal goes through, it will place a vast media kingdom in the hands of Paramount CEO and staunch Trump administration supporter David Ellison, with his father, billionaire Larry Ellison, also likely to play a role. This includes nearly unprecedented access to a variety of news organizations and Hollywood tentpoles.

CBS News

CBS is already under the auspices of Paramount as the company’s flagship network. Under Ellison’s tenure, the Tiffany Network has undergone major changes; Paramount’s prior owners controversially announced the cancellation of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” with some, including Colbert, alleging this came at the behest of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. After Ellison purchased Paramount, he “subsequently made additional pledges to the FCC’s Carr to win support,” said NPR.

Ellison also “promised the cessation of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives throughout Paramount and the addition of an ombudsman to field complaints of ideological bias,” said NPR. Under Ellison, Paramount named Bari Weiss, the founder of the right-leaning site The Free Press, the new editor-in-chief of CBS News. Weiss “contended CBS and much of the rest of the media has been too reflexively hostile to conservatives and the president, and she’s sought to revamp the newsroom.”

CNN

A Paramount-Warner Bros. merger would give the Ellisons command of another major news network: CNN. Following the revamping of CBS by Bari Weiss, the “concern is that similar changes could be in store for CNN,” said the Los Angeles Times, with Weiss potentially playing a major role at that network too. CNN, even more so than CBS, has been in President Donald Trump’s crosshairs, and he has “personally called for the ouster of hosts at the network who have questioned his policies.”

Employees at CNN should not “jump to conclusions about the future,” CNN CEO Mark Thompson said in a memo in an attempt to calm the waters. Ellison has also said CNN will remain editorially independent. Still, reporters have “expressed a combination of fear and concern,” seven current CNN employees said to NBC News. The mood inside CNN is “shaken” and “depressing,” the employees added, as “no one wants to work for the Ellisons. And if Bari is going to be running CNN, expect people to leave.”

HBO Max/Paramount+

The merger would give the Ellisons control of two major streaming services, HBO Max and Paramount+. These platforms will be “combined into one streaming service if regulators approve” the deal, said CNBC, citing a conference call from Ellison. This would create a streaming behemoth unlike any in Hollywood today, as the “service would have about 200 million subscribers given existing totals.”

No details have yet been given on any potential price increases for the merged streamer, but HBO is “likely to be a sub-brand within the larger service,” said CNBC, though Ellison has said he doesn’t want to disrupt HBO’s programming. The “streaming environment has already become more consolidated in recent years,” said The Washington Post, most notably in the form of Hulu and Disney+. Disney “offers streaming bundles to customers who want to subscribe to both and another with ESPN+.”

Warner Bros. Studios

Besides CNN, Warner Bros. Studios is likely the gem the Ellisons are going after the most, as Warner Bros. owns the “second-biggest trove of movie properties after Disney,” said The New York Times. This includes major Hollywood franchises like “The Lord of the Rings,” “Batman” and “Harry Potter,” with HBO Max currently developing the latter into a television series.

While most think of Warner Bros. as a film studio, the combination with Paramount could “cause a major reset of the TV studio business,” said The Hollywood Reporter. The two studios have “more than 100 series currently airing or about to premiere and another 25 to 30 more either greenlit for future dates or in development.” The two studios’ “output touches almost every part of the TV landscape,” and this could remain true for the foreseeable future if the deal closes.

Paramount Pictures

With the Ellisons’ current Paramount projects looking to get absorbed into Warner Bros. Studios, questions have swirled about theatrical releases, especially among movie fans. The combined company has “no intention to pull back on production. We obviously intend to make 30 movies a year, basically 15 films from Paramount, 15 films from Warner Bros,” Ellison told reporters.

Given this intention, the major question is “how do you pull off a major studio release schedule of 30 titles considering the most that have unspooled recently by a major studio was Universal’s 20 titles last year (a total that included Focus Features),” said Deadline. Some in the movie industry don’t think it’s possible, and “‘there aren’t 30 dates on the calendar’ is a common criticism heard among many studio sources.”

DC Studios

Within Warner Bros., there is one entity that is being watched closely amid merger talks: DC Studios. While “Superman” director James Gunn is currently at the studio’s helm with plans for an extended DC universe, a merger “may result in changes to whatever plans DC Studios has for its superhero franchises,” said Forbes. This could include potential changes to the upcoming “Superman” sequel, as well as plans for characters like Batman.

If Ellison inks the deal, he will “obtain a newly minted DC superhero cinematic universe that’s already flying high at the box office and enjoying immense critical and mainstream audience approval,” said Forbes. But when it comes to Gunn, he could end up butting heads with Ellison; it is “no secret he’s not a fan of the current presidential regime, and he’s already been targeted by MAGA once,” said Comics Beat. Even so, keeping a “steady supply of hit DC superhero movies would seem to be a desired outcome no matter who buys the studio.”

Cable networks

A unified Paramount-Warner Bros. would also open up the floodgates to a wide variety of cable offerings. While cable has largely ceded way to streaming in recent years, the Ellisons are “betting they can wring some life out of” these networks, said the Times. Paramount currently owns major channels like MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and BET. A purchase of Warner Bros. would add HGTV, the Food Network, Discovery, TLC, Adult Swim, Turner Classic Movies, Cartoon Network, TBS and TNT to its list.

But this consolidation is providing “another source of fear that more massive job losses are on the horizon for a division that has already faced steep cuts in recent years,” said Variety. Most of Paramount’s current cable channels “run with skeleton staffs.” As of now, Ellison has said he does not plan to sell any cable channels if a deal goes through.

Since he took office for his second term in January 2025, President Donald Trump has secured funding for a dramatic expansion of Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (ICE) operations, and Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem has overseen an aggressive campaign of enforcement and detention across the country. The scale of the operation has, unsurprisingly, led to a number of deaths and injuries, both in the streets and in the expanding network of detention facilities financed by the extraordinary increase in ICE funding as part of the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

While no official tally of fatal shootings or injuries is available, a number of media and activist organizations have offered estimates. Some incidents are difficult to categorize. For example, Elena Catarina Morales-Chan, a 29-year-old Mexican national, drowned along with a 14-year-old boy when the SUV they were traveling in crashed into a canal after fleeing from Border Patrol agents. For this list, we have compiled only confirmed shooting deaths and injuries by both ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents since Jan. 20, 2025, as well as confirmed deaths in ICE detention facilities.

Fatal shootings

According to The Week’s research, eight people have been fatally shot by ICE or CBP agents since President Trump’s second inauguration. The first “officer-involved” immigration killing of Trump’s second term happened on Jan. 20, 2026, when CBP agents got into a shootout near the Canadian border in Vermont, killing German national Ophelia Bauckholt and wounding the driver of the car, Teresa Youngblut. A CBP agent, David “Chris” Maland, was killed in the altercation. Bauckholt and Youngblut were both tied to a cultlike group known as the Zizians, which has been “linked to six killings, one attempted murder and at least one faked death,” said NBC News. Unlike the other killings on this list, Bauckholt’s death was not linked to the Trump administration’s stepped-up interior enforcement campaign.

On March 15, 2025, a U.S. citizen, 23-year-old Ruben Ray Martinez, was shot and killed by an ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent in South Padre Island, Texas. The killing followed “what ICE described as a failure to follow law enforcement instructions during a traffic incident as agents worked with local police on immigration enforcement,” said Newsweek. However, sources confirm that HSI was assisting with traffic control following a major accident rather than conducting immigration enforcement operations as ICE claimed. The Department of Homeland Security did not acknowledge the killing until media outlets broke the story in February 2026.

On July 7, 2025, CBP officers shot and killed 27-year-old Ryan Luis Mosqueda after he opened fire on a CBP facility in McAllen, Texas. One McAllen police officer, one Border Patrol officer and one Border Patrol employee were wounded. “The suspect’s vehicle was spray-painted with the phrase “Cordis Die,” which appears in a Call of Duty video game, according to a local law enforcement official,” said CNN.

Silverio Villegas González, a 38-year-old undocumented immigrant from Mexico, was shot and killed on Sept. 12, 2025. He “allegedly resisted arrest and attempted to drive his car into officers, dragging one officer,” before he opened fire, said ICE officials. But that account was disputed by witnesses, who “cast doubts on the narrative put forth by DHS,” said the Chicago Sun-Times.

While conducting enforcement operations along the Rio Grande, a CBP agent shot and killed 31-year-old Mexican national Isaias Sanchez Barboza, who had just crossed the border with a group of people. The officer “engaged in an active struggle with the man for two minutes and ultimately discharged his CBP-issued firearm,” said U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

An off-duty ICE officer shot and killed Keith Porter Jr., a 43-year-old father of two in the Northridge neighborhood of Los Angeles on Dec. 31, 2025. Porter’s “family and local activists have argued that, contrary to the DHS’s portrayal of the events, Porter was not threatening anyone and was celebrating the new year” by firing shots into the air, said The Guardian. There is no body camera footage of the killing, which remains the subject of active litigation.

An unarmed 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother of three, Renée Nicole Good, was killed by an ICE agent on Jan. 7, 2026 in the Central neighborhood of Minneapolis, where the Trump administration had dispatched a large number of federal agents as part of a broader operation. Good was observing ICE’s operations as part of the city’s activist response to enforcement operations, and the circumstances of her death remain hotly disputed. Good wielded her car in an “attempt to kill or to cause bodily harm to agents, an act of domestic terrorism,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Witnesses and video footage of the shooting called that account into question, as Good appeared to be attempting to drive away from the officer when she was shot and killed. A “much more complicated picture is revealed” by the available video evidence, said The New York Times. Her death triggered nationwide protests.

A 37-year-old nurse with Veterans Affairs and U.S citizen, Alex Pretti, was shot and killed on Jan. 24, 2026, in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis. Video footage of the killing showed that while Pretti was legally carrying a firearm, he never unholstered it and had been disarmed when the officers fired on him. Footage shows CBP agents firing “at least 10 shots in a span of five seconds” at Pretti while he was already subdued on the ground and seems to “contradict the Department of Homeland Security’s account of the encounter, which the agency said began after an individual armed with a handgun approached the federal agents with the intent to “massacre” them,” said The New York Times.

Deaths in detention

32 people died in ICE detention facilities in 2025, all after President Trump was sworn into office for his second term, according to an analysis in The Guardian. They “died of seizure and heart failure, stroke, respiratory failure, tuberculosis or suicide. Some died at ICE detention centers and field offices, others after they had been transferred to hospitals but were still under ICE custody.” It was the highest number of deaths in detention since 2004. The large number of deaths has sparked criticism from advocates and human rights activists who say that the scale of the Trump administration’s enforcement operation — and the haste with which some new facilities are being opened — will lead to unnecessary deaths.

Many of these deaths are shrouded in mystery. The agency’s “public disclosures often come late and have little information,” said The American Immigration Council. Official explanations are frequently contradicted by independent observers. One example is the case of 29-year-old Genry Ruiz-Guillen, who died in ICE custody on Jan. 23, 2025, at the Krome Service and Processing Center in Florida. He had been transferred to ICE after an arrest for domestic battery in October 2024. The official cause of death was “complications of schizoaffective disorder,” according to the Miami-Dade medical examiner. Toxicology reports “showed an excessive mix of antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs, and doctors suspect neuroleptic malignant syndrome, a treatable but potentially fatal reaction to medication,” said Know Your Rights Report. The “autopsy, toxicology and death reports” available in Ruiz-Guillen’s case “raise questions about his treatment and subsequent death,” said the Miami Herald.

As of Feb. 23, 2026, an additional seven detainee deaths have been reported since the new year, most recently 59-year-old Cambodian national Lorth Sim. His death is under investigation. ICE is “committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments,” said ICE in a statement announcing Sim’s death in ICE custody and referring to him as a “convicted alien felon.” (This tally does not include deaths in CBP facilities.)

Woundings

As of Feb. 23, 2026, at least 19 people have been wounded in shootings by ICE or CBP officers since President Trump took office in January 2025. One of them was a 30-year-old U.S. citizen named Marimar Martinez, who was driving in the Brighton Park neighborhood of Chicago, warning neighbors that ICE agents were in the area on Oct. 4, 2025. The precise sequence of events remains disputed, but Martinez was shot five times and survived. While the CBP officer involved in the shooting, Charles Exum, did not have his body camera turned on, another video of the incident shows that he “pulled up behind her, aimed an assault rifle and shouted ‘do something, bitch’ before opening fire,” said The Trace.

Existing evidence appears to “contradict Exum’s account that Martinez tried to run him over and instead indicates she was attempting to drive away,” said Block Club Chicago. Martinez and her attorneys also claim that “recently released evidence showed that Exum and others lied to justify her shooting,” said the Chicago Sun-Times. Federal prosecutors filed assault charges against Martinez but dropped the case on Nov. 20, 2025. (A number of such injuries at the hands of ICE or CBP agents are the subject of ongoing litigation.)

Amazon’s fawning documentary “Melania” opened in January to withering reviews and receipts unlikely to offset its $75 million budget. But losing tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars on a movie isn’t easy or particularly common.

For our list, we took a list of the movies that lost the most money since 2000, adjusted for inflation, and highlighted the top eight with Rotten Tomatoes critical scores of less than 30%. This avoids ensnaring perfectly serviceable movies that never found an audience, like 2012’s “John Carter,” or ones caught up in culture-war drama, like Disney’s 2022 “Strange World.”

‘Mortal Engines’ (2018, $219M loss)

Young adult dystopias have been a cash cow ever since “The Hunger Games,” but they aren’t guaranteed success. In “Mortal Engines,” a cataclysmic war has led cities, including London, to mount themselves on wheels (don’t ask how this works because it’s never explained), prowling around “absorbing” smaller towns for fuel and resources.

In one settlement set to be devoured by London, Hester (Hera Hilmar) is waiting to exact revenge against Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaving) for killing her mother, and young historian Tom Natsworthy (Robert Sheehan) joins her incipient rebellion. After a promising first act, director Christian Rivers’ film “devolves rapidly into a generic YA story with bland characters, poorly set up motivations and plans, and a general lack of personality,” said Tom Bedford at Film Inquiry. (Prime Video)

‘Pan’ (2015, $199M loss)

This dreadful prequel of sorts to J.M. Barrie’s classic children’s story is set in Blitz-era London, where an orphaned Peter (Levi Miller) is sold by the crooked orphanage housemother Barnabas (Kathy Burke) to pirates and whisked off in some kind of floating steampunk vessel that dodges Spitfires en route to the magical world of Neverland.

There, Peter is forced to mine fairy dust and meets a young James Hook (Garrett Hedlund), and together they fight their evil overlord Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman). Featuring bizarre anachronisms (at one point the Neverland child laborers sing Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”), it is an “embarrassing pastiche” whose plot mechanics and mind-numbing CGI effects “leech the wonder out of the material and leave it bone dry,” said Andy Crump at Paste Magazine. (HBO Max)

‘The Adventures of Pluto Nash’ (2002, $168M loss)

This 2002 Eddie Murphy vehicle features one of the lowest Rotten Tomatoes scores (currently 6%) of any major studio release ever — and deservedly so. Set in 2087 on the moon, it involves nightclub owner Pluto Nash (Murphy) trying to defend his establishment against encroachment from greedy casino owners led by Mogan (Joe Pantoliano).

He eventually goes on the run with one of his waitresses, Dina (Rosario Dawson). The reviews were so bad that “anyone involved with ‘Pluto Nash’ has tried to absolve themself of any responsibility,” said Nick Rogers at Midwest Film Journal. (Tubi)

‘X Men: Dark Phoenix’ (2019, $167M loss)

The 12th installment in Marvel’s “X-Men” franchise and another box office bomb whose struggles were telegraphed by production and release delays. Sophie Turner plays a young Jean Grey, who may have been responsible for the car crash that killed her parents and orphaned her years ago.

Under the tutelage of Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), her telekinetic powers become difficult to control after she is struck by solar flares while rescuing the space shuttle Endeavor. She flees as factions vie to use her powers for their own ends. The “worst movie ever in the X-Men series,” director Simon Kinberg’s film is so wretched that it “suggests the X-Men series is played out and beyond saving,” said Peter Travers at Rolling Stone. (Disney+)

‘Jupiter Ascending’ (2015, $159M loss)

Expectations were understandably high for a big-budget science fiction film from “The Matrix” creators the Wachowskis. Mila Kunis plays Jupiter Jones (one of the film’s least silly character names), a Chicago housecleaner who discovers that she shares identical DNA with a dead intergalactic monarch and may be the heiress of her malevolent empire.

Channing Tatum is Caine Wise, a half-wolf, half-human being who joins forces with Jupiter to save the human race from its destiny of getting harvested for a liquid that makes the galaxy’s rulers immortal. An unwatchable movie that is “inane from first frame to last,” it is festooned with “squiggly CG aliens and actors in costumes that would be laughed out of a Greenwich Village Halloween parade,” said David Edelstein at Vulture. (Prime Video)

‘Ben-Hur’ (2016, $157M loss)

It’s not at all clear why Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel, “Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ,” needed a fifth film adaptation (to say nothing of a lackluster 2010 limited series). Jack Huston plays Jewish prince Judah Ben-Hur, who is betrayed to the Romans by his adopted brother, Messala (Toby Kebbell), and sold into slavery and then returns years to Jerusalem seeking revenge.

This somehow involves competing against Messala in an elaborate and brutal chariot race, with Morgan Freeman serving as Ben-Hur’s trainer Ilderim. This “Ben-Hur” is an “epic fail,” and a film ”that should be seen on a plane, on the 6-by-8 screen on the back of an airline seat, probably at 2 a.m. on a transatlantic flight, accompanied by a complimentary sachet of salty cashews, a vodka and tonic and then a meal of mechanically reconstituted chicken in a fillet-style serving,” said Peter Bradshaw at The Guardian. (Prime Video)

‘The Alamo’ (2004, $156M loss)

Disney’s historical epic was plagued by production delays after its original director Ron Howard departed the project. Emilio Echevarría plays the Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who led the brutal, 13-day, 1836 siege of the rebel-held Alamo fort.

Dennis Quaid and Billy Bob Thornton play, respectively, Sam Houston and Davy Crockett in a film that bombed spectacularly at the box office despite competent execution of the titular battle. For better or worse, “every generation gets the movie it deserves,” said Keith Uhlich at Slant Magazine, including this “candidate for worst movie of the year.” Its depiction of Mexicans proves that “racism can be as much an unintentionally passive act as an intentionally active one.” (Prime Video)

‘Stealth’ (2005, $155M loss)

Lt. Ben Gannon (Josh Lucas), Lt. Kara Wade (Jessica Biel) and Lt. Henry Purcell (Jamie Foxx) are fighter pilots assigned in the near future to fly a new stealth strike fighter for the U.S. Air Force, which they inexplicably use to bomb a terrorist meeting in Myanmar and then to avert a vague nuclear catastrophe in Tajikistan before a showdown with some kind of nefarious AI embedded in an unmanned version of the craft.

The plot makes zero sense, nor is it ever explained why these three pilots are used like some kind of global SWAT team. The film is an “offense against taste, intelligence and the noise pollution code” with a story that “doesn’t merely defy logic, but strips logic bare, cremates it and scatters its ashes,” said Roger Ebert at the time. (Prime Video)

When “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie’s 84-year-old mother, Nancy, was kidnapped on February 1, 2026, it was the first major kidnapping to spark a media frenzy in many years. Such episodes, prior to the ubiquity of surveillance cameras and advances in forensics, were much more common, including these watershed events.

Charles Lindbergh, Jr. (1932)

The abduction and murder of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh’s infant son on March 1, 1932, was at the time considered the “crime of the century.” Lindbergh’s 1927 journey from New York to Paris was the first successful solo transatlantic flight and made him a household name.

“Awareness of the case was such that anyone seen with a small blonde child was looked at twice,” said Kase Wickman at Vanity Fair. Despite a frantic search that involved more than 100,000 people, the boy had likely been killed the night of the kidnapping, and his body was discovered 72 days later near the family’s home in Hopewell, New Jersey. A German immigrant named Bruno Richard Hauptmann was tried, convicted and executed for the crime.

Adolph Coors III (1960)

On February 9, 1960, 44-year-old Adolph Coors III, the grandson of the company’s founder, vanished. His car was found on the Turkey Creek Bridge near Denver, where he had been abducted by an escaped murderer, Joseph Corbett, looking for a quick get-rich scheme.

“The attempt went awry though and ended right there on that bridge” when Corbett shot Coors to death, said Colorado Public Radio. His wife, Mary, received a $500,000 ransom demand the next day, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover dispatched an enormous operation to find the beverage heir. Coors’ body was discovered on September 15, 1960, and the FBI later traced a car matching a witness description to Corbett. Corbett was convicted and sentenced to life in prison but released on parole in 1980.

Frank Sinatra, Jr. (1963)

19 year-old Frank Sinatra, Jr., the son of one of the most renowned musicians and actors of his generation, was kidnapped from a hotel in Lake Tahoe, California, on December 8, 1963. Two men, Barry Keenan and Joe Amsler, tied up Sinatra, Jr.’s friend, John Foss, and spirited the singer to Canoga Park, California, where they contacted his father and issued a demand for a $240,000 ransom, which Sinatra delivered early in the morning on December 11.

A third conspirator, John Irwin, spilled the beans to his brother, who contacted the police. The three men were sentenced to life in prison, though none served even five years. At his trial, Keenan “testified that the crime was a hoax, a publicity stunt coordinated with people tied to the family,” an allegation that was later disproven, said Esquire.

Paul Fronczak (1964)

A woman posed as a nurse at Chicago’s Michael Reese hospital and made off with a 1-day-old infant named Paul Fronczak on April 27, 1964, triggering what was then the largest manhunt in the city’s history. Two years later, the FBI found a child that they believed to be Paul in New Jersey and he was returned to his parents, Dora and Chester Fronczak.

But in 2012, Fronczak took a DNA test that proved he was actually Jack Rosenthal, an Atlantic City child who had vanished in 1965 along with his twin sister, Jill (who has still not been found). In 2019, it was revealed that the real Paul Fronczak had been raised as Kevin Baty by a woman named Lorraine Fountain. By then, both Baty and Fountain had passed away, and the original kidnapper remains unknown. Rosenthal still goes by Paul Fronczak and published a memoir in 2022.

John Paul Getty III (1973)

Getty III, the grandson of petroleum magnate John Paul Getty, was abducted by Italian gangsters in Rome on July 10, 1973, when he was 16. The kidnappers demanded $17 million, but the elder Getty initially refused, suspecting his wayward grandson of complicity and saying “If I pay one penny, I’ll have 14 kidnapped grandchildren.”

He only agreed later to dispatch $2.2 million — after he received his grandson’s ear in the mail — the highest amount that could at the time be considered tax-deductible. Getty III struggled with drug and alcohol abuse and suffered a stroke in 1981 that would leave him disabled for the rest of his life until his death in 2011. The story was made into a 2017 film, “All the Money in the World,” as well as a 2018 FX limited series, “Trust.”

Patricia Hearst (1974)

On February 4, 1974, 19 year-old Patricia Hearst, the heiress to William Randolph Hearst’s media dynasty, was kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California, by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a far-left radical group. Two months later, she participated in a bank robbery, after which she was considered a fugitive until her September 1975 arrest.

Hearst maintained that she was coerced, but she was convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison. “Hearst’s decision to stay with her kidnappers was a deeply symbolic transgression, one that articulated the anger so many felt against the American establishment,” said Smithsonian Magazine. She was released in 1979 after President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence, and she went on to perform in a number of Hollywood films, including the 1990 film “Cry-Baby.”

Shin Sang-ok (1978)

On January 11, 1978, South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee was abducted in Hong Kong by North Korean agents and taken to the North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang. Six months later, North Korea succeeded in kidnapping her husband, renowned director Shin Sang-ok, in Hong Kong as well.

Held for eight years at the behest of North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung’s son and heir apparent, Kim Jong Il, Shin was forced to make seven films for his captors, including “Pulgasari,” a movie known as the “socialist Godzilla.” Kim “sought to create a film industry that would allow him to sway a world audience to the righteousness of the Workers’ Party of Korea,” said The Guardian. In March 1986, Shin and Choi escaped while in Vienna, Austria, where they were ostensibly seeking funding for a new project.

Aldo Moro (1978)

On March 16, 1978, during Italy’s so-called “Years of Lead,” former Prime Minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped by the far-left terrorist group The Red Brigades while he was trying to broker the inclusion of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in a coalition government. He was executed by the Brigades on May 9, and his body was discovered in the trunk of a car in Rome.

There are still “unanswered questions” about the episode that remains “arguably the darkest episode of Italy's postwar history,” said The Guardian. Widespread revulsion at the assassination led to a crackdown on the Red Brigades and the beginning of the end of the group’s influence.

Abilio Diniz (1989)

Diniz, the co-founder of the Brazilian grocery chain Pão de Açúcar, Diniz was kidnapped on the morning of December 17, 1989, when the country was holding its first democratic presidential election after decades of autocracy. The 52-year-old Diniz was “dragged out of his Mercedes-Benz as he went to work and taken away in a station wagon disguised as an ambulance,” said The New York Times, and then held in a house in São Paulo before he was freed by authorities a week later.

The kidnappers were part of an ongoing abduction ring that had netted around $65 million. The group was connected to and included several members of the Chilean radical group the Movement for the Revolutionary Left.

Jaycee Dugard (1991)

11-year-old Jaycee Dugard was walking to a school bus stop in Lake Tahoe, California, when she was abducted by a couple, Phillip and Nancy Garrido. Phillip, already a convicted sex offender, and Nancy held Dugard for 18 years in a hidden backyard structure.

She was repeatedly raped and forced to carry two of Phillip’s children. The case attracted even greater attention when she was found in 2009. Authorities “discovered a hidden backyard compound made up of ramshackle tents and sheds, including a small, sparsely furnished two-room building” where she and her children were held, said The New York Times. Dugard founded a non-profit to help people recover from similar horrors and has understandably kept her daughters’ identities a secret. The Garridos remain in prison.

Elizabeth Smart (2002)

On June 5, 2002, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was abducted from her bedroom in the family’s Salt Lake City home by Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee. Mitchell, who had religious delusions, had previously worked as a roofer on the family’s house.

Though the case drew widespread national scrutiny, Smart remained in captivity for nine months, suffering daily sexual assaults, until she was recognized in Sandy, Utah, on March 12, 2003, and rescued by police. “Smart had to summon tremendous physical stamina to survive her captivity,” said Margaret Talbot at The New Yorker. Smart founded a non-profit to combat sexual exploitation and is now married with three children. Mitchell remains in federal prison; Barzee was granted parole in 2018.

When the once-niche statistic of WAR (Wins Above Replacement) slowly became the most important way teams and fans evaluated players over the course of this century, it also revealed players who were overlooked in their heydays, especially by Hall of Fame voters.

While some of the best players in baseball history, like Alex Rodriguez, remain outside of Cooperstown due to their association with the sport’s steroid scandal (or because of gambling, like Pete Rose), these ten players were clean — and deserve their Cooperstown spots.

Curt Schilling (79.5 WAR)

Perhaps the only player in baseball history whose retirement exploits seem to have cost him his place in the Hall of Fame, hurler Curt Schilling didn’t become a full-time starting pitcher until age 25. Nevertheless, Schilling racked up 216 career wins, over 3,000 strikeouts and was an absolute beast in the postseason, starring for three world championship-winning teams (including the 2004 Boston Red Sox club that broke the “Curse of the Bambino”) and posting a 2.23 ERA in 19 playoff starts. Schilling’s “inflammatory, intolerant and conspiratorial statements” unfortunately overshadowed his playing career and his status as a “top-20 or top-30 pitcher of all time,” said Ben Lindbergh at The Ringer.

Lou Whitaker (75.1 WAR)

On-Base Percentage (OBP) was one of the statistics that was traditionally undervalued, until Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane (of “Moneyball” fame) led a perception revolution. Second baseman “Sweet Lou” Whitaker, who played his whole career with the Detroit Tigers, is someone whose value would have had a better chance of being elected by the Baseball Writers Association of America if OBP had been properly appreciated.

Whitaker slowed down as he aged, but he got even better at getting on base, putting up a 6.8 WAR season in 1991 at age 34 on the strength of a .391 OBP. While he may never have been the best player in the league, “he was always really good, always played at an All-Star level, and when you play 15 years at an All-Star level you are a Hall of Famer in my view,” said Joe Posnanski at The Athletic.

Bobby Grich (71.1 WAR)

Grich, a second baseman, spent most of his career with the California (now Los Angeles) Angels, who made only three postseason appearances in his ten years there. But while his counting stats look like they fall short, including just 1,833 hits and 1,033 runs, he was a gifted defender who won four gold gloves and made enormous contributions to his teams’ run prevention efforts.

His WAR totals put him ahead of the best second basemen of the subsequent era, including Craig Biggio and Ryne Sandberg, both players who are in the Hall. Grich was “one of the most underrated players of the last 40 years,” said Bruce Markusen at The Hardball Times.

Rick Reuschel (69.5 WAR)

Like Kevin Brown, the burly Reuschel was largely unappreciated during his time. A pitcher who lacked overpowering velocity and extended his career by refining pinpoint precision, Reuschel pitched in parts of 19 seasons for the Chicago Cubs, San Francisco Giants, Pittsburgh Pirates and New York Yankees and was often “treated as a curiosity rather than a talent,” said Tim Castelli at The Society For American Baseball Research.

That was before the analytic revolution of the early 2000s prompted a “reevaluation of Reuschel’s career and his place in baseball history.” A reserved person who didn’t enjoy spending time with the press, he won 214 games pitching for mostly terrible teams and garnered less than 1% of the vote in his one year on the Hall of Fame ballot.

Kenny Lofton (68.4 WAR)

A slick-fielding, base-stealing center-fielder, Lofton holds the distinction of being the player with the most postseason at bats in baseball history without playing on a championship winner. Mostly a leadoff hitter, Lofton posted OBPs over .400 in four separate full seasons, and served as the offensive sparkplug for the powerhouse Cleveland Indians teams of the 1990s.

Even past his peak, though, Lofton was a valuable player and a deserved fan favorite who ranks seventh in stolen bases among players in the post-WWII era. He was “overshadowed since he played in the steroid era” and remains “one of the most egregious exemptions from the Hall of Fame,” said Drew Thirion at Deadspin.

Kevin Brown (67.8 WAR)

Possibly the most notable instance of a player falling off the ballot after a single year, pitcher Kevin Brown seemingly had it all — several top five Cy Young Award finishes, 211 career wins, a championship with the 1997 Florida Marlins and two years leading the league in WAR for pitchers.

He’s a surefire Hall of Famer, and it’s “not unreasonable to argue that he’s one of the 50 greatest pitchers of all-time,” said Dayn Perry at Fangraphs. Brown being generally regarded as unfriendly by reporters (who are tasked with the Hall of Fame voting for the Baseball Writers Association of America) probably did not help his case.

Dwight Evans (67.2 WAR)

Evans spent all but his final season with the then-luckless Boston Red Sox, racking up 385 home runs, 2,446 hits and nearly 1,500 runs scored and finishing his career with an elite .370 OBP. He also has a good case as the rightful winner of the 1981 American League MVP Award and led all of baseball in extra-base hits during the 1980s.

In addition to his offensive exploits and status as one of the most feared hitters of the era, he starred on defense, winning eight Gold Glove Awards. Evans “wasn’t just a good outfielder, he was great, playing in a Fenway Park right field that might have been the toughest in the sport,” said Peter Gammons at The Athletic.

Luis Tiant (66.1 WAR)

The Cuba-born Tiant had his best season in 1968, a year that was so bad for offense that it prompted baseball to lower the height of pitching mounds. His struggle with Cooperstown voting is often attributed to him sharing the limelight with too many slam-dunk Hall of Fame pitchers of his era, like Jim Palmer and Tom Seaver. The “winningest Cuban-born pitcher in major league history” was also a beloved, “larger-than-life character, so inseparable from his trademark cigars that he chomped them even in postgame showers,” said Jay Jaffe at Fangraphs.

Tommy John (61.9 WAR)

John won 288 games and has the seventh highest WAR total of any pitcher not in the Hall. But John’s name is also indelibly associated with the modern sport.

In 1974, John was in the midst of his 12th season when he blew out his pitching elbow and elected to undergo the then-experimental ligament-replacement surgery that still bears his name. After missing the 1975 season, John returned to play 14 more seasons, winning 20 games three times — all after the surgery. This surgical miracle’s place in the game’s lore alone should make him a Hall of Famer. “Tommy John isn’t famous because of the surgery that bears his name. Instead, the surgery is famous because of John’s performance afterward,” said Mark Bennett at Yahoo Sports.

While millions will tune in to watch the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots battle it out in Super Bowl LX, just as many are excited for Bad Bunny’s highly anticipated halftime show. The Puerto Rican singer is the latest in a long line of superstar musicians to make their mark at the Big Game. From Prince to Katy Perry, Super Bowl halftime shows have a long history of memorable moments.

Historical firsts

While modern Super Bowls are thought of as platforms for major acts, this wasn’t always the case; the majority of early halftime shows were performed by college marching bands. The first major pop group to headline a Super Bowl was New Kids on the Block, who performed during the game in 1991. The boy band performed alongside a choir of kids singing songs like “It’s a Small World.” But while the show was historic, it was also not well-received, even by the band. “I don’t know how much pride I take in the actual performance,” frontman Donnie Wahlberg once told Playboy. “But I take pride in the fact that we were the first ones to do it.”

When pop stars began regularly performing at the Super Bowl, they were exclusively English-language singers — until 1999, when Gloria Estefan headlined the halftime show. Estefan had previously made an appearance at the 1992 Super Bowl show, and as “part of the ‘A Celebration of Soul, Salsa and Swing’ halftime show in Miami, Estefan performed her single ‘Oye,’ which blends Spanish and English lyrics,” said ESPN. Ahead of Bad Bunny’s performance, Estefan also had some advice for the Latino singer. “Enjoy every second because it really goes by so fast,” she said to E! News. “In those minutes, he’s gonna have the ability to impact the world.”

While the Super Bowl is a uniquely American phenomenon, another barrier was broken in 2000 when Phil Collins became the first non-U.S. citizen to headline the halftime show. The British singer, known for his work with the rock band Genesis as well as solo songs like “In the Air Tonight,” performed alongside Christina Aguilera and Enrique Iglesias. After this, the floodgates opened for a slew of British icons to perform at Super Bowls, including Paul McCartney, The Who and The Rolling Stones.

Record-breaking performances

Given the hype and cultural status of the Super Bowl, it should be no surprise that the halftime show is often one of the year’s most-watched events. Millions of people tune in annually, but one concert stands above the others: Kendrick Lamar’s 2025 performance is the most-watched Super Bowl halftime show in history. Lamar’s show was watched by an estimated 133.5 million people, according to Billboard. The rapper “came into the gig riding sky high” following a big Grammys weekend and “wowed viewers with intensely satisfying versions” of his songs, said The Mercury News, including his hit diss track “Not Like Us.”

And while The Weeknd’s 2021 performance didn’t include a diss track, it does carry another distinction: It’s the most expensive halftime show of all time. The total cost was reportedly a staggering $17 million. Performing at the Super Bowl is so desirable that the Canadian performer “used $7 million of his own money to fund his incredible production,” said the South China Morning Post. This is “on top of the estimated $10 million the NFL is believed to allow for a halftime show budget.” The high price shouldn’t be surprising; airing a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl “costs about $8 million on average,” according to USA Today, and some companies are “paying $10 million or more.”

These shows are also known for incorporating many big-name artists into one act. This was never more apparent than during the 2022 halftime show, which featured the largest ensemble of performers at a Super Bowl. The show, which honored host city Los Angeles’ rap roots, was headlined by Mary J. Blige, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Eminem and Kendrick Lamar, with a surprise appearance by 50 Cent. The “spectacular, high-energy performance was a powerful celebration of hip hop and its evolution over the last three decades,” said Time, and also “marked the first time the halftime show lineup consisted entirely of hip hop headliners.”

Super Bowl superlatives

While Tom Brady is widely considered the football GOAT, there has been debate as to which halftime show can truly be called “the greatest.” However, many analysts consider the 2007 performance featuring Prince to be the best Super Bowl halftime show ever. There was a “great deal of anticipation for Prince’s performance,” said The Athletic, and the legendary singer delivered, as “no one before nor after has gotten close to him.” His rendition of his iconic song “Purple Rain,” which happened to occur during a rainstorm, created a “performance for the ages.”

Not all superlatives are positive; many shocking and unexpected moments have happened at halftime shows, too. The most jaw-dropping incident likely came during the 2004 show featuring Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake. During the pair’s performance, Timberlake accidentally ripped a piece of Jackson’s shirt, which “saw her right breast briefly exposed to 70,000 in-person spectators and more than 140 million TV viewers,” said The Guardian. The controversial moment “left Jackson, then 37, blacklisted from a significant portion of the music industry for years,” though she would later have a career resurgence.

And for as many halftime shows that have been lauded, there have also been some that have been questioned. The 2015 show, headlined by Katy Perry, is often considered the “campiest” in Super Bowl history. The show was filled with “Perry’s top songs, an entrance on top of a lion,” and costumes described as peak camp, said 303 Magazine. Given Perry’s history of concert performances, her Super Bowl outing “wasn’t too different than what we’ve seen from Perry previously.” But for many, it “seemed like they broadcast from one of Perry’s concerts instead of planning something new.”

Super Bowl shows have also had their fair share of daring, sometimes even death-defying moments. When it comes to stunts, many people think of Rihanna’s 2023 Super Bowl halftime show, when she entered the stadium from above on a platform suspended by cables. From there, the Barbadian singer carried out a 13-minute intense dance routine to rave reviews. But it was only when the show started that viewers realized Rihanna was also doing all of this while pregnant. Overall, the performance garnered critical acclaim, as Rihanna “graciously granted us a medley of her biggest hits,“ said Buzzfeed News.

Fresh from his online mauling at the hands of Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary, the world’s richest man can take some consolation. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is reportedly “lining up” four Wall Street banks to advise on “a record-breaking IPO”, and it could make the rocket group – already the world’s most valuable startup – the biggest flotation in history, valued as highly as $1.5 trillion, said the FT.

No final decision has been taken, but the float may come as soon as this year. SpaceX’s soaring valuation has been driven by its “cemented” status as the leading US developer of commercial rockets for space exploration – and its Starlink satellite service. Markets were already anticipating a feast of “US mega listings”, with two big beasts of generative AI – OpenAI and Anthropic – also plotting potential floats.

Still, don’t get too “starry-eyed”, said Katie Prescott in The Times. Both are growing at a rate of knots: OpenAI’s annualised revenues rose above $20 billion in 2025. But they’re spending billions more. Staying private would keep “a comfortable cloak of secrecy over their operations”, giving time “to unpick their devilishly complex corporate structures”.

Much of the secrecy around OpenAI has already been blown open by the “increasingly public legal beef” between CEO Sam Altman and Musk, said Bloomberg. Musk, who is suing OpenAI for $134 billion, accuses its management of violating original promises about its governance (he was an early investor) and he has been providing “a steady drip of juicy internal documents”. Altman counters that Musk wants to take OpenAI down to boost his own xAI business. Certainly, this suit “poses an existential threat to OpenAI”, said Danny Fortson in The Sunday Times. “It could prove decisive in the battle for who prevails in the multitrillion-dollar race for AI dominance.”

President Donald Trump has long bragged that he is the healthiest and strongest president in U.S. history, and while this claim has been almost universally met with skepticism, he isn’t the only one to make this assertion. White House officials during both of Trump’s terms have made grandiose statements about the president’s health. But at 79, some people are questioning how healthy the oldest person ever elected president truly is.

Harold Bornstein: ‘healthiest individual ever elected’

In 2015, prior to Trump being elected for the first time, his then-physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein, released a letter with a glowing endorsement of his health. Trump “has had no significant medical problems,” and if “elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” Bornstein said in his letter. He also claimed that Trump’s blood pressure and lab results were “astonishingly excellent” and said Trump had lost 15 pounds during the prior year.

But several years later, Bornstein revealed that the letter was actually written by Trump. “He dictated that whole letter. I didn’t write that letter. I just made it up as I went along,“ Bornstein said to CNN. Bornstein also revealed that he wrote the letter “in just five minutes while a limo sent by the candidate waited outside his Manhattan office,” the doctor said to NBC News. However, Bornstein, who died in 2021, also claimed that he stood by the overall assessment of Trump’s health.

Ronny Jackson: Trump is in ‘excellent health’

During Trump’s first term in 2018, the then-White House doctor, Dr. Ronny Jackson, gave similarly glowing reviews to Trump’s health that prompted skepticism. There is “no evidence that the president has any issues whatsoever with his thought process,” and Trump has a “lot of energy and stamina,” Jackson said to reporters at a White House press briefing. Jackson also said that he administered a cognitive exam to Trump, which he passed.

The internet also met with further doubt the idea that Trump was 6’3” and 239 pounds, which put his body mass index “just below the 30.0 threshold for him to be officially described as obese, rather than merely overweight,” said The Washington Post. Jackson’s press conference occurred the same month a tabloid-style book, “Fire and Fury,” was released, which “led to speculation about Trump’s mental fitness for office,” said NPR. The release of the book led to the infamous moment when Trump called himself a “very stable genius” on social media.

Stephen Miller: Trump is ‘superhuman’

Many people in Trump’s circle have championed his supposed vitality in his second term, none more so than White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. Miller, who is no stranger to controversial remarks, has claimed that Trump has near-godlike abilities. The president “can work harder and he has a better memory and he has more stamina and has more energy than a normal mortal,” Miller said in an interview with New York magazine. “The headline of your story should be ‘The Superhuman President.’”

But these “strenuous assertions came alongside signs that made Trump seem more mortal than ever, from his dismal approval rating to the growing likelihood that Republicans will lose control of at least one chamber of Congress,” said New York. The president seemed undeterred. If “you’re going to write a bad story about my health, I’m going to sue the ass off of New York magazine,” Trump told the outlet.

James Jones: Trump in better health than Obama

Former President Barack Obama is known for his vigorous fitness routine and healthy habits, but according to at least one doctor, Trump is the healthier person. Dr. James Jones, the White House physician’s assistant, chose Trump when asked in the same New York magazine interview who was in better health. When the question was asked, Trump, who was in the room, “stared across the desk, making eye contact with Jones. Jones didn’t hesitate. ‘President Trump,’ he said.”

Some may find this hard to believe, as Obama is a “fitness fanatic rumored to allow himself precisely seven almonds a night,” said New York magazine. But Trump’s EKG shows that he is “14 years younger. So age 65,” James said to the outlet. “His stamina demonstrates that. We get a view that nobody else does. Nobody can stay up with him. The rest of the staff is tired; we are too. And he’s not.”

Trump: ‘physical specimen’

Trump himself has compared his physique not only to Obama but also former President George W. Bush. Dr. Ronny Jackson claimed that Trump was the “best physical specimen” of the three presidents, Trump said during a 2025 speech in Norfolk, Virginia. Jackson believed that Trump was in the “best shape, the healthiest,” and the “best physical specimen,” Trump added.

This is not the first time Trump has championed his physicality in public, with another notable moment coming during his 2024 debate with former President Joe Biden. “I think I’m in very good shape. I feel that I’m in as good a shape as I was 25, 30 years ago,” Trump said during the debate, while also bragging about a series of cognitive tests he took during his first term.

Trump: meetings are ‘boring as hell’

Given Trump’s age, concerns arose during his second term when video appeared to show him falling asleep during a Cabinet meeting, his eyes closing as he apparently struggled to stay awake. But the White House — and Trump himself — said this was not the case and that he was only closing his eyes because he was bored.

The Cabinet meetings are “boring as hell; I’m going around a room, and I’ve got 28 guys — the last one was three and a half hours. I have to sit back and listen, and I move my hand so that people will know I’m listening,” Trump said to New York magazine in the same interview. “I’m hearing every word, and I can’t wait to get out,” he added. But this did little to assuage the mounting “speculation about the president’s ability to deal with chronic venous insufficiency and lead the country by past staffers, political strategists and the public,” said The Hill.

Trump: ‘I don’t want thick blood’

Further eyebrows were raised when Trump made more comments on his health during an interview with The Wall Street Journal. The most notable revelation was that Trump takes 325 milligrams of aspirin daily; the most common daily dosage is only 81 milligrams, according to the Mayo Clinic. But Trump takes a higher dosage because “aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don’t want thick blood pouring through my heart,” the president said to the Journal, claiming this was what caused excessive bruising on his hands.

Beyond the aspirin, people around Trump “say they often have to speak loudly in meetings with the president because he strains to hear,” the Journal reported. Trump also “doesn’t get regular exercise, and he is known to consume a diet heavy on salty and fatty foods, such as hamburgers and french fries.” Despite this, Trump is in“exceptional health and perfectly suited to execute his duties,” Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, Trump’s doctor, told the Journal.

“Help is on its way,” Donald Trump told the people of Iran on Tuesday as he urged them to keep protesting and “take over your institutions”. The US president had earlier declared that America was “locked and loaded”, ready to intervene militarily in Iran if the authorities started killing peaceful protesters en masse, and announced 25% tariffs, “effective immediately”, on any nation that did business with Iran.

More than 2,500 people, including security personnel, have died in the unrest, according to human rights groups, although many fear the true toll is much higher than that. The demonstrations, which seem to have partially subsided in recent days, began in the bazaars of Tehran on 28 December, fuelled by anger over Iran’s collapsing currency, and spread across the country.

The regime responded last week by imposing an internet blackout and stepping up its repressive tactics. In a defiant address last Friday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called protesters “troublemakers”, who were trying “to please the president of the US”. The regime warned that, in the event of a US attack on Iran, it would consider Israel and all US bases to be “legitimate targets”.

No clear alternative

The bravery of Iranian protesters in standing up to their “murderous regime” is extraordinary, said The Daily Telegraph. Alas, it has cost them dear. Security forces have fired on crowds, leaving hospitals overwhelmed. Bodies recovered by families show that some victims were shot at close range and in the eyes; parents have been told they can’t take children home for burial. We can only hope that these terrible scenes mark the death throes of the mullahs’ 47-year rule. Iran has suffered enough, agreed The Independent. “That the fall of the Islamic Republic would cause jubilation in Washington and Jerusalem is not a reason to oppose or regret it.”

It’s unclear where Iran’s protests will go from here, said The Economist. Some Iran-watchers fear it is entering a long period of internal strife that will consolidate the power of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its brutal militia, the Basij, resulting in months or years of martial law. Others think the IRGC is too weak to resist a full-blown uprising. The worry then, though, is that there’s no clear alternative to the regime, which could mean chaos. Although some protesters have been chanting the name of Reza Pahlavi, the former crown prince of Iran, he lives in the US and isn’t thought to have sufficient sway to return to Iran and take control.

Conditions are dire in Iran, said Alireza Nader and Nik Kowsar on Foreign Policy. Even once comfortably middle-class households now struggle to feed themselves properly. Tehran is facing rolling electricity blackouts and water rationing. But if these pressures are to precipitate regime change, Iran will first need a united opposition with a credible “day after” plan.

Rotting republic

Trump is in a similar position to Barack Obama in 2013, when he warned that the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime in Syria would cross a “red line”, said Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh in The Wall Street Journal. Obama didn’t act on his words, but Trump must. Iranians would likely cheer US strikes on IRGC bases, and such interventions “could tip the balance” against the regime. The case for surgical strikes on Iran’s “machinery of repression” is overwhelming, agreed David Patrikarakos in the Daily Mail. The aim would not be to conquer or occupy, but to help “create the conditions for regime collapse from within”.

While the “moral imperative for targeting Tehran may be compelling”, US strikes would likely achieve little beyond temporarily disrupting the crackdown, said Suzanne Maloney in The New York Times. “Regime change is not a one-and-done matter.” Even taking out the regime’s top leadership wouldn’t make that much difference. “Tehran has patience and a deep bench.” Khamenei presides over a vast power structure of officials who have much to lose from the fall of the theocracy. Rather than intervening militarily, and risking retaliation from a desperate regime, the US should stick to cyberattacks and applying economic pressure.

It is division among the leadership, rather than the loss of legitimacy, that ultimately dooms tyrannical regimes, said William Hague in The Times. “So far, the Ayatollah, the IRGC and their cronies have stuck together.” But for how much longer will that last, asked David Ignatius in The Washington Post. Iran’s rulers must understand that these escalating protests keep happening because the republic “is rotting, politically and economically, and the whole country knows it”. While neighbouring nations are embracing a dynamic economic future, they’re clinging to a “repressive, retrograde regime” that can’t even provide basic services. That’s unsustainable.

All eyes are on the Beehive State, as Utah has emerged as a powerhouse in the media sphere in recent years. While interest in wholesome family content, particularly of the Mormon variety, has garnered the region growing attention, not all aspects of the state’s popularity have panned out so well, leading to a new set of laws to protect Utah children.

Social media hub

Amid the trad wife phenomenon and advent of mommy influencers, Utah has become “known as a hotspot for social media content creators,” Fox 13 said. It is a “really unique part of Utah that makes it stand out amongst other states,” Mariah Wellman, an assistant professor at Michigan State University who researches the influencer industry, said to Fox. Utah is a hub for Mormons, and the Church of Latter-day Saints has been a “source of public fascination for years,” said A Frank Voice. LDS culture has always “emphasized documentation, memory-keeping and family presentation,” so when social media came along, “many LDS women were basically already halfway to being influencers.” Platforms such as Instagram and TikTok have become a “digital extension of an existing cultural practice.”

The stars of the Hulu series “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” epitomize the popularity of Utah momfluencers as the faces of #MomTok. Another popular Mormon creator, Hannah Neeleman — a former Juilliard ballerina turned farmer and parenting influencer with a family of 10 — has gained an immense following by chronicling her life on the aptly named Ballerina Farm. Local organizations within the LDS Church are also adopting social media platforms; the Young Women Worldwide Instagram account, which launched in 2023, has gathered tens of thousands of followers, positioning itself as a “safe space” for young LDS women, leaders and parents.

Utah educators are also embracing social media. This is a “legitimate career, and we have to start to accept it, it’s not going away,” said Charity Richins, an influencer marketing teacher at North Summit High School, to Fox 13. The classes received approval from the Utah State Board of Education last year and are now being offered in schools across the state. The course is part of Utah’s Career and Technical Education program, designed to provide students with real-world skills.

Reality TV staples

Beyond social media stardom, Utah is also a hotbed for reality television. “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” made headlines for following a #MomTok group navigating faith, relationships and public perception after a swingers scandal. The show has led to additional projects for some of the stars, including Taylor Frankie Paul, who was named the newest star of “The Bachelorette” for Season 22, and rivals Whitney Leavitt and Jen Affleck, who both competed on Season 34 of “Dancing with the Stars.”

Reality TV staple Bravo has two Utah-based shows: “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” debuted in 2020 and “Sold on SLC” in 2024, the latter putting a “Utah spin on ‘Selling Sunset,’” Collider said. Salt Lake City is the “hidden gem of reality television,” with multiple networks already tapping into its potential. The casts of these shows stand out because they have to “battle between the religious and social standards in Utah” and “external temptations from the media and pop culture.” The conflict creates a welcome new dynamic for reality TV, since the “shadiest drama, the darkest secrets and the biggest fights come from the people you least expect.”

Viral product marketing

Utah creators have used their influence to help several products go viral. Most notably, Utah was at the forefront of the Stanley cup craze. These water bottles were designed in 1913 and introduced their modern 40-ounce version in 2016, which saw limited sales. Then in 2017, they were featured on The Buy Guide, a popular Utah-based shopping blog and Instagram account launched by three former Brigham Young University students. Over the next few years, the cups became a “signature momfluencer accessory” that “paired nicely with Utah’s ‘dirty soda’ craze,” Axios said.

Other viral products have also come from Utah-based companies, including Owala water bottles and HydroJug water tumblers. Both cups have followed Stanley mugs to become the preferred beverage carriers of the social media set. Crumbl Cookies, a bakery company that was founded in Logan, Utah, in 2017 and later expanded nationwide, also soared to popularity in recent years, even featuring a collaboration with the Kardashian-Jenner family.

Thanks to influencer culture and reality TV, Utah has emerged as a center for “aesthetic influence” in the beauty industry, Glamour said. Utah’s beauty obsession is not new. During the 2010s, beauty influencers from the state “captured our timelines and built big followings from their long mermaid hair, tanned skin and fluffy eyelashes.” Now, a “new crop of Utahns are bringing the aesthetic to the next generation,” but instead of bloggers, “it’s mostly TikTok influencers and reality TV stars driving the shift.” Thanks to the popularity of Utah creators and reality stars, the “hyperfeminine, done-but-not-overdone vibe” that characterizes Utah beauty has “emerged as highly influential for women across the country.”

The popularity backlash

Even as family vloggers and parenting influencers surge in popularity, a pall has been cast over the community due to some recent developments. Ruby Franke, a Utah mother of six, gave parenting advice to millions on YouTube before her arrest for child abuse in 2023. Franke and her partner in crime, therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, have become the subject of documentaries exposing the abuse, including the Hulu docuseries “Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke” and the Netflix doc “Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story.”

Last year, Utah added new protections for the children of online content creators following Franke’s conviction. Gov. Spencer Cox (R) signed a law “under the encouragement of Franke’s now ex-husband” that gives adults a path to “scrub from all platforms the digital content they were featured in as minors” and requires parents to set aside money for kids featured in content, said The Associated Press. Children cannot “give informed consent to be filmed on social media, period,” Kevin Franke said to lawmakers. “Vlogging my family, putting my children into public social media, was wrong, and I regret it every day.”

Throughout his time as a real estate mogul, President Donald Trump became famous for stamping his name on hotels and casinos throughout the United States. Trump has ramped up this practice in his second term in the White House, but this time it’s government-related venues that have been renamed for the 47th president. And these renamings are not without their fair share of controversy.

John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

In December 2025, the White House announced its decision to change the name of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts to the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. The change was voted on unanimously by the Kennedy Center board of trustees, which was handpicked by Trump. A spokesperson for the Washington, D.C., building said the name change “honors Trump’s work at the center since taking over early in his second term,” said CNN. The center’s website was also changed to say the Trump-Kennedy Center.

Just a day later, workers “added ‘The Donald J. Trump and’ to the facade of the building just above the current signage,” said ABC News. The change generated anger among Democrats (and some Republicans), given that the building was designed as an official memorial to former President John F. Kennedy. It also appears to be illegal, as Trump has “no authority to actually rename the Kennedy Center in the absence of legislative action,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told reporters. The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts is officially designated as such by U.S. code, and Trump “cannot rename the building itself or the center itself,” Georgetown Law professor David Super told ABC.

US Institute of Peace

As with the Kennedy Center, Trump placed his name on the headquarters of the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), a congressionally funded think tank, in December 2025. Lettering soon went up on the building to reflect the change. And in another similarity to the Kennedy Center, this change came after Trump “fired the institute’s board in the spring,” as well as every employee, and the Washington, D.C., headquarters was “turned over to the General Services Administration,” said The Associated Press.

Unlike the Kennedy Center, the USIP website does not reflect the name change, though the site also says it is under maintenance. But the change also comes “despite an ongoing fight over the institute’s control” in court, said the AP. The building has become a “flashpoint of what former board members have described as a hostile takeover of the federally funded independent nonprofit in Trump’s second term,” said Fast Company. As with the Kennedy Center, Democrats have noted that the name change is likely illegal.

‘Trump-class’ battleships

December 2025 was a busy period for Trump’s name to make its mark, as the president also announced a new fleet of U.S. Navy vessels to be called Trump-class battleships. The first ship in the future line, the USS Defiant, will be part of a “class of American-designed battleships that will be the most lethal surface combatant ever constructed,” said the Navy in a press release. If built, the USS Defiant would be the “biggest warship the U.S. has constructed since WWII,” Forbes said.

But critics noted several flaws with this plan. For one, these new ships will be “vulnerable to blistering missile attacks, the way once-mighty traditional battleships were to aircraft attacks,” said Forbes. And while much of the reporting has focused on the alleged “impropriety of a president’s naming a military program after himself,” a larger issue is that these “big and overarmed behemoths have been obsolete in warfare for many decades,” said the Los Angeles Times. And because of expected rising costs, future presidential administrations will likely “cancel the program before the first ship hits the water,“ said Mark F. Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies to the Times.

Washington, DC banners

At different points in 2025, people began noticing that there were “large banners with President Donald Trump’s face that can be seen on three federal buildings” throughout Washington, D.C., said CNN. Opponents say the banners “carry authoritarian undertones.” On at least one of these buildings, the U.S. Department of Labor headquarters, a banner of Trump was hung alongside a banner of former President Abraham Lincoln.

Soon after the banners came out, a report spearheaded by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) was released, titled “Propaganda: How the Trump Administration is Breaking the Law and Wasting Taxpayer Dollars with Giant Banners of Donald Trump.” The banners are “being made at the public’s expense, with the first three signs costing at least $50,000 in taxpayer funds,” the report alleged, despite a “longstanding legal prohibition against the use of federal funds for propaganda and self-aggrandizement purposes.” The White House has denied that the banners break the law.

Trump Accounts

During his second term, Trump announced the launch of new savings and investment accounts targeted toward children — and he unsurprisingly named them after himself. These Trump Accounts are “tax-advantaged savings accounts available for every American child up to the age of 18, and parents can put in up to $5,000 annually,“ said PBS News. Kids born between 2025 and 2028 can automatically get $1,000 in an account.

The program got a boost from tech mogul Michael Dell, who announced he would be investing about $6 billion into Trump Accounts, or about $250 for 25 million children. While questions remain about how exactly these accounts will work, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said they will have essentially no restrictions. They will be a “piece of the American economy for every child, and they will be able to take it out when they're 18,” Bessent said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” When asked by the show’s Margaret Brennan if there would be conditions on using the money for college tuition or a first house, Bessent replied, “no.”

National park passes

The design for America’s national park pass, which provides access to over 2,000 nature areas across the country, typically featured images of the natural landscape. But upon taking office, the White House unveiled new designs for the passes; one features both Trump’s face and George Washington’s face, while another shows Trump saluting. The passes were “reintroduced as part of a broader rebranding effort by the administration,” said Newsweek.

Conservation groups have “filed a lawsuit in federal court, calling the move ‘the most ego-driven action yet’ and arguing it politicizes public lands and violates federal neutrality rules,” said Newsweek. There have been reports of some people also using stickers to cover up Trump’s face on the pass, but it seems the White House is trying to stop this; the U.S. Department of the Interior “recently updated its ‘Void if Altered’ rules for 2026, explicitly flagging stickers and other coverings as alterations that could invalidate the pass,” SFGate said.

TrumpRx

While the president has repeatedly stated he has a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, one of his largest efforts surrounding health care in his second term has simply been the creation of TrumpRx. This website, operated by the federal government, is an “online platform that consumers can use to search” for discounted prices on brand-name prescription drugs “when paying without using insurance,” said health policy organization KFF.

But although Trump claims that the website “offers Americans the world’s lowest prices on prescription drugs,” this is “not true,” said The New York Times, as they still “can cost American patients up to hundreds or thousands of dollars.” The most recognizable drugs available on the website are the weight-loss medications Wegovy and Zepbound; compared to some other Western countries, Americans “pay about twice as much as patients overseas.” In Japan, for example, Wegovy costs $163, according to the Times, so the $349 TrumpRx customers pay is more than double.

Of all the tools and executive authorities available to President Donald Trump, perhaps none has been wielded with as much naked transactional ambition as his ability to effectively pardon any federal convict for virtually any crime. Domestically, Trump’s penchant for pardoning has seen commutations extended to celebrities and lawmakers alike, often coming with an explicit expectation of quid pro quo. However, Trump’s use of political pardons hasn’t stopped at the nation’s borders; the president is increasingly using pardons with an international theater in mind, letting the world know that crossing America’s justice system may not be as final an act as it once was.

Here are the influential foreign figures Trump has pardoned over his two terms in office.

Changpeng Zhao

Although Trump has extended clemency to several cryptocurrency-associated figures over the years, his October 2025 pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao sparked the “most intense backlash of all crypto pardons,” said Benzinga. The move raised “immediate criticism” from lawmakers who said the pardon risked “serious ethical concerns.” Zhao, who was born in China before moving to Canada as a child, had previously pleaded guilty to charges that he enabled financial fraud and money laundering at the “world’s largest exchange for cryptocurrency or digital money on the internet,” CBS News said.

The “self-dealing aspect” of Trump’s pardoning of Zhao, in terms of the “benefit that it conferred on Trump and his family, and people in his inner circle,” is “unprecedented,” said former Justice Department pardon official Elizabeth Oyer to CBS. The pardon came amid the president’s pivot toward a “more friendly stance toward cryptocurrency than his predecessors,” the BBC said.

Juan Orlando Hernández

Elected as president of Honduras just two years before Trump, Juan Orlando Hernández, commonly known as JOH, earned his “place in infamy for the one-time U.S. ally in the war on drugs” in 2024 when he was convicted in New York City for cocaine trafficking, The Guardian said. Hernández’s actions “paved a cocaine superhighway to the United States,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob Gutwillig claimed during the trial, in part by protecting certain traffickers “with the full power of the state.”

Trump’s December 2025 pardon of Hernández came after the former Honduran leader “sent the president a four-page letter casting himself as a victim of ‘political persecution’” while “comparing his fate to that of the American president,” The New York Times said. Speaking about the pardon, Trump affirmed a sense of kinship with Hernández, who was, he said, “treated like the Biden administration treated a man named Trump.”

Aviem Sella

While not a widely known figure himself, Israeli businessman and former IDF officer Aviem Sella played a central role in one of the biggest intelligence breaches in American history, serving as recruiter and handler for American intelligence analyst-turned-spy Jonathan Pollard. Sella was indicted in absentia on multiple espionage counts in 1987, but was not required to be extradited to the United States for what U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova said was a “political offense,” said The New York Times.

Trump’s surprise pardon for Sella, delivered in the waning hours of his first term, was “requested” by Israeli officials to “close this unfortunate chapter in U.S.-Israel relations,” the White House said in a statement announcing the action. The pardon was “supported by the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer, the United States Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and Miriam Adelson.”

Ben Delo

Along with fellow BitMex founders Arthur Hayes and Samuel Reed, British tech entrepreneur Ben Delo pleaded guilty in 2022 to violating the Bank Secrecy Act, failing to enact requisite money laundering protections at the widely used crypto exchange. The Biden administration’s investigation and prosecution of BitMex and its founders was “among the first and most significant” legal actions to “target the crypto market,” said Bloomberg. Trump’s March 2025 pardon of Delo, along with a host of other finance and entrepreneurial figures, showed there’s “never been a better time to be a white-collar crook,” Axios said.

In a statement thanking Trump for the pardon, Delo said his company had been targeted for being the “most successful crypto exchange of its kind,” with him and his colleagues “wrongfully made to serve as an example, sacrificed for political reasons and used to send inconsistent regulatory signals.”

On Jan. 3, 2026, President Donald Trump authorized an attack on Venezuela that resulted in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his rendition to New York. Once there, he and his wife, Cilia Flores, were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of drug trafficking and narco-terrorism.

While the episode was a departure from more recent, comparatively hands-off American policy in the region, it was very much aligned with a long post-World War II history of U.S. interventions designed to change unfriendly regimes into friendly ones. In addition to direct military interventions, the CIA supported numerous coups across the region during the Cold War.

Guatemala, 1954

The first major post-World War II intervention was in Guatemala. “Using psychological warfare, propaganda and economic pressure, the CIA helped create a rebel army that toppled the Guatemalan government” of Jacobo Árbenz in 1954, said Responsible Statecraft. The leader’s land reforms had been “met with fierce opposition from Guatemala's elite and the U.S. government, which had economic interests” tied to the United Fruit Company. As a ploy for stability, it didn’t work — Guatemala suffered through a 36-year civil war that began in 1960 and experienced multiple coups.

Cuba, 1961

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy authorized a covert program to train 1,400 Cuban exiles in Guatemala to invade and topple the still-young communist regime of Fidel Castro. A series of strategic errors, including the failure to keep the plans a secret along with a misappraisal of the Castro government’s military capabilities, led to an embarrassing disaster.

The exile force landed at the Bay of Pigs on the morning of April 17 and was immediately pinned down. More than 100 were killed and Kennedy was forced to bargain for the more than 1,200 survivors who were taken prisoner. A “major embarrassment for the United States and the Kennedy administration,” the Bay of Pigs fiasco “strengthened Castro’s power in Cuba and pushed him to pursue closer relations with the Soviet Union,” said The New York Times.

Brazil, 1964

In 1964, the U.S. threw its support behind a military coup to oust Brazilian President João Goulart. The U.S. “launched Operation Brother Sam, a plan to lend logistical support to the Brazilian military’s effort to take control of the Brazilian government,” said the Library of Congress, although “additional material support proved unnecessary” to complete the coup. The military would rule for the next 21 years as a close Cold War ally of the United States before a transition to democracy took place in 1985.

The Dominican Republic, 1965

In 1963, the U.S. had backed a coup against the democratically elected leftist government of Juan Bosch. In 1965, pro-Bosch military forces launched their own rebellion against the junta and the country was plunged into civil war. Under the pretext of protecting American citizens and preventing the emergence of another Castro-like regime, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson authorized the deployment of 42,000 Marines to the capital of Santo Domingo on April 28, 1965, where they collaborated with forces loyal to the junta and quickly defeated the rebels.

The following year, Bosch was defeated at the ballot box by junta-backed former president Joaquín Balaguer. During 12 years of “harsh rule” under Balaguer, “democracy was trampled, corruption ran rampant and social reform was denied,” said The Wilson Center.

Bolivia, 1971

While much less well-known than the 1973 coup in Chile, the CIA also provided support in 1971 to oust the leftist government of President Juan José Torres in Bolivia. Torres was replaced by a lengthy military dictatorship led by Hugo Banzer, during which “more than 14,000 Boli­vians were arrested with­out a judi­cial order, more than 8,000 were tortured — with elec­tric­ity, water, beatings — and more than 200 were exe­cuted or dis­ap­peared,” said Harper’s Magazine. The country remains politically troubled today.

Chile, 1973

The CIA backed the ouster of the democratically elected government of socialist President Salvador Allende in 1973. While the agency had a more prominent role in a failed 1970 coup attempt ordered by U.S. President Richard Nixon, the 1973 coup is widely considered one of the worst offenses of American foreign policymakers during the Cold War. Allende committed suicide that year when it was clear the coup had succeeded. His successor, General Augusto Pinochet, ruled with an iron fist for 17 years, leaving behind a trail of “40,175 victims, including torture, executions, detentions and disappearances,” said Amnesty International.

Nicaragua, 1979

A socialist government led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front took power in Nicaragua in 1979, and the recently inaugurated administration of Ronald Reagan wanted to overthrow the government as part of its Cold War policy of “rollback” against communist regimes. Reagan “approved an operation in which the CIA would aid Nicaraguan rebel insurgents — who were fighting the newly established socialist Sandinista government — with the goal of preventing the spread of Communism,” said The Miller Center. Because Congress refused to allocate money for Reagan’s Nicaragua venture, the campaign also led to the Iran-Contra scandal when the U.S. sold weapons to Iran and used the proceeds to back the Contras.

Grenada, 1983

The long shadow of the Bay of Pigs could be seen in the U.S. invasion of the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada, with a population of less than 100,000 people, in 1983. A socialist government had seized power in a bloodless coup in 1979, led by Prime Minister Maurice Bishop. Fearing a growing alliance with Castro’s Cuba and fixated on Bishop’s plans to build an international airport capable of accommodating Soviet aircraft, President Ronald Reagan planned for an invasion and finally got his opportunity when military hardliners deposed and later executed Bishop. On Oct. 25, 1983, Reagan dispatched a small combined military force to overthrow the regime. The intervention was “popular within the United States, serving as proof of concept that Reagan was a tough anti-Communist,” said The National Interest.

Panama, 1989

Before the Persian Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush authorized an invasion of Panama to topple the country’s de facto dictator, General Manuel Noriega. It was a dizzying turn of events, given that Noriega was only recently considered a reliable Cold War ally and CIA informant who had provided intelligence to the U.S. about leftist movements for decades. But his deepening involvement with Colombia’s Medellín Cartel and increasingly authoritarian rule triggered a crisis that Bush resolved with a swift invasion that began on Dec. 20, 1989, and concluded with Noriega’s surrender to U.S. forces just two weeks later. His overthrow was a “decisive assertion of U.S. military force for a new American president in a moment of global tumult,” said The New Yorker.

Haiti, 1994

In 1991, the democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was overthrown in a military coup. The resulting military junta compiled a horrific human rights record and instigated a mass migration of Haitians to the United States, which became a campaign issue in the 1992 presidential election. The new administration of Bill Clinton began preparing to overthrow the junta. Ultimately, the U.S. did not have to fire any shots. With “American planes in the air” carrying 3,900 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division, the “generals buckled and agreed to leave” on Sept. 16, 1994. U.S. forces ended up facilitating the transfer of power back to Aristide rather than fighting the Haitian military. The intervention “has been all but forgotten by many Americans,” but may have been a “key contributor to many of the problems that now endure in Haiti,” said Time.

In the hands of someone as transactionally motivated as President Donald Trump, the presidential prerogative to pardon and commute federal convictions has become a powerful tool. Throughout his first term, and again in his second, Trump regularly uses his pardon powers to reward allies and curry favor among Washington’s long list of criminally associated figures.

Although the president’s pardons frequently extend beyond the halls of political power to include international figures and celebrity notables, Trump has made a particular point of clearing the slate for elected officials with whom he often empathizes as fellow alleged victims of overzealous prosecution.

Rod Blagojevich

After initially commuting a raft of sentences (including wire fraud, solicitation of bribes, and lying to the FBI) against disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich in 2020, Trump waited until Feb. 10, 2025, to fully pardon the Democratic lawmaker. The self-proclaimed “Trumpocrat” hailed the president as a “great effing guy” in response.

Following his initial commutation, Blagojevich had become a “fierce defender of Trump as the president has faced his own legal battles,” Politico said. The pair’s relationship stretches back to Blagojevich's time as a cast member of Trump's popular NBC reality competition “The Apprentice,” from which he was fired in the fourth week.

George Santos

During his brief stint in Congress, former Republican Rep. George Santos made a name for himself as one of the most transparently fraudulent lawmakers in recent memory, while also luxuriating in the intense public spotlight. Nevertheless, Trump’s October 2025 decision to commute Santos’ seven-year prison sentence for wire fraud was the “latest in his flagrant misuse of the pardon power,” USA Today said. The commutation is further proof that Trump sees the justice system “through a pretty clear lens” as being “weaponized against people who Democrats politically disagree with,” said The New York Times reporter Michael Gold to NPR.

Rudy Giuliani

The former New York City mayor-turned-Trump-attack-dog Rudy Giuliani was already among the president’s highest-profile associates even before the president pardoned his onetime attorney for Giuliani’s role in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. The pardon, which came alongside similar acts of clemency for Trump’s other 2020 electoral associates in November 2025, is “primarily symbolic” since “none of those named” in the latest batch of pardons are “currently facing federal charges,” The New York Times said. The federal pardons, then, are “part of a long-shot gambit” to “influence the state-level charges” faced by Giuliani and others by serving as a “persuasive authority for the argument that the cases should be tossed out,” said The Independent.

Henry Cuellar

Just weeks before ending the first year of his second term in office, Trump shocked many by pardoning Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, who at the time faced bribery and corruption charges for allegedly influencing legislation on behalf of Azerbaijani and Mexican interests. Cuellar was indicted because the Biden administration “weaponized the justice system,” and targeted the lawmaker because he “bravely spoke out against” liberal immigration policies, Trump said. The pardon “may prove a headache for House Republicans,” said Axios, as the party had been eyeing Cuellar’s seat to expand its “agonizingly narrow majority.” Just days after his pardon, however, Trump “went after Cuellar on social media,” accusing the lawmaker of a “lack of loyalty” for running for reelection as a Democrat, said Texas Public Radio. He has since endorsed one of Cuellar’s opponents for the seat.

Glen Casada

Just two months after former Republican Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada was sentenced to three years in prison on federal corruption charges, Trump pardoned both Casada and his former chief of staff. In a statement, the White House said the pair had been “significantly over-prosecuted” by the Biden administration for a “minor issue.” The initial investigation into Casada began “during Trump's first term,” NBC News said, while the January 2021 raid on Casada’s home occurred “while Trump was still in office.” Casada’s trial and sentencing were overseen by a Trump-appointed judge, as well.

John Rowland

At one time the nation’s youngest governor, Republican John Rowland had his “promising political career” completely “upended by a corruption scandal” and subsequent prison terms before he received a presidential pardon in May 2025, said The Associated Press. Having already served his time in prison, the “practical impact” of the pardon is “limited,” said CT Mirror. Under state law, Rowland’s right to vote “already had been restored.”

Michele Fiore

In October 2024, former Republican Las Vegas City councilor and onetime gubernatorial candidate Michele Fiore was convicted for her role in a charity fundraising scheme that had bilked donors with the promise of a memorial “honoring two Las Vegas police officers who had been killed in the line of duty,” said the Justice Department. Just a few months later, Trump wiped Fiore’s legal slate clean in the “latest example of the president using his pardon power to reward allies,” said Politico at the time. “Notably,” said The Nevada Independent, Trump’s pardon came shortly after he’d named Sigal Chattah the interim U.S. Attorney for Nevada. Chattah “also serves as the state’s Republican National Committeewoman,” and is “friends with Fiore.”

Michael Grimm

Former Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.) raised eyebrows in 2014 after he overcame his November indictment for tax fraud by handily winning reelection — only to plead guilty on one count and resign in January 2015. As a lawmaker, Grimm “made headlines” for “threatening to throw a reporter off a balcony in the Capitol,” said The Associated Press, after the journalist “asked about the long-running FBI investigation into his campaign finances.” Trump’s pardon of Grimm in 2025 stems from his “constitutional authority to right the wrongs of Americans who’ve been impacted by this corrupt system,” a White House spokesperson told The New York Times.

This article appeared in History of War magazine issue 146.

In May 1939, the US Senate debated a proposal to purchase the territory of Greenland from Denmark. The War Department was consulted, but ultimately vetoed the project based on its conclusion that the territory lacked suitable locations to build facilities for aviation and naval forces.

This event was one of a series of historical attempts to purchase the island stretching back to 1867.

Within the first week of his second term as President of the United States, Donald Trump was energising the mainstream media by declaring his intention to buy Greenland, a scheme that was met with hostility from the Danes.

While the Senate of 1939 debated from a viewpoint of political expediency, the Trump administration’s perspective was apparently more about economic than political benefit. Yet this search for economic gain has a historical precedent rooted in the United States’ wartime requirement for aluminium to feed its burgeoning aircraft industry.

By 1943 America was the world’s largest producer of aluminium with an output of 43 percent of global production. Aluminium is manufactured by refining bauxite ore into alumina, which is then smelted into pure aluminium through an electrolytic process that requires large quantities of the mineral cryolite.

Cryolite is a rare mineral of the sodium group with small deposits found in Spain, the United States and Canada; however, until the late 1980s the largest seams of cryolite anywhere in the world were located in western Greenland.

Greenland is situated in the Western Hemisphere which under the terms of President Franklin D Roosevelt’s Neutrality Act of November 1939 was protected by the policy of “joint defence of the Western Hemisphere”.

On 9 April 1940, the day that Denmark fell to the Nazi war machine, the Danish envoy to the United States, Henrik Kauffmann, in violation of his diplomatic status, signed an agreement authorising the US to act as defenders of Greenland and build military installations there.

American military investment in the autonomous Danish territory was not entirely based on altruism as they eyed the seemingly endless source of cryolite being excavated from the mine at Ivigtut on Greenland’s southwest coast.

A formal request for US assistance endorsed the political agreement on 3 May and an invitation to establish a consulate was accepted, and the United States Coast Guard (USCG) vessel Comanche sailed for Ivigtut with the newly minted US consul and staff onboard.

In June 1940 the USCG icebreaker Northland was also ordered to Greenland under the command of Edward ‘Iceberg’ Smith and continued sailing to and from Greenland in support of the US mission there.

In May 1940 en route to the island, Northland found itself caught up in the death ride of the German battleship Bismarck as it was attacked by aircraft from the British carrier HMS Victorious. Smith reported with typical understatement: “It is fortunate that there were no accidents and mistaken identities when all parties were more or less on a hair trigger.”

Much of Western Europe’s weather originates in Greenland, drifting east on Katabatic winds, and Danish and Norwegian meteorologists had built weather stations on Greenland’s mainly uninhabited east coast to monitor and forecast conditions, transmitting the resulting data.

After occupying Norway and Denmark, the Nazi authorities saw an opportunity to infiltrate the territory. As a result, German and Quisling personnel entered into the weather stations during the traditional summer rotation of staff, simultaneously establishing a small military presence.

The first US air base, designated Bluie West One, was under construction in July 1941, becoming Greenland Bases Command and the HQ of the US Army Air Corps and the USCG Greenland Patrol.

However, the facilities were rapidly relocated to the more suitable airstrip and weather station 30 miles (48km) north of the Arctic Circle at Sondre Stromfjord.

US personnel lived a monotonous existence, contact with the islands’ population being strictly forbidden, exemplified by reassurances to the American public by US Consul James Penfield: “Our Arctic soldiers live in model camps in a womanless world,” going on to proudly extol the available facilities: “Like other American camps, this one boasts a motion picture theatre, barber shop and an excellent library.”

There had been some sporadic military activity, with the British-controlled free Norwegian gunboat Fridthof Nansen boarding and capturing the German-controlled trawler Vesle Kari and taking prisoner the men at the weather station at Myggbukta, but there appears to have been an element of ‘live and let live’ between the opposing forces.

The harsh weather conditions of Greenland’s northeast coast enabled naval access for three summer months of the year, prompting Smith to create the Sledge Patrol in August 1941 to observe German weather stations and their personnel. Sledge Patrol was crewed by Danish meteorologists, hunters and trappers operating along a 400-mile (645km) stretch of the northeast coast.

Greenland’s southwest was surveyed by teams from the USCG cutter Cayuga, supported by Northland’s seaplane, and suitable air base sites at Narsarsuak and Kipisako were chosen for expansion.

On 9 April 1941 the US Secretary of State and Kauffmann signed an agreement conferring American protectorate status on Greenland and the US Navy took over operational control of the area from the coastguard.

After American (and therefore Greenland’s) entry into the war in December 1941, German military personnel were sent to the northeast coast to reestablish weather stations and provide protection for them. Yet they were confined to the east by rapid US expansion which brought storage depots, artillery positions and further ports and air bases.

During the early years of the conflict, German U-boat operations had wrought havoc with Allied shipping. The convoys plying their way across the Atlantic supplying Britain and the Soviet Union suffered grievous losses to the Kriegsmarine’s wolf packs, losses which were mitigated to an extent by Royal Air Force Coastal Command patrols.

The lack of range of Coastal Command aircraft left an undefended area known as the Mid-Atlantic Gap, rendering merchant shipping and their escorts without air cover and vulnerable to attack. Greenland’s air bases plugged this gap by mid-1943 and Allied shipping losses decreased correspondingly.

Cryolite exports to Canada, USA and Portugal reinvigorated the national economy and assured the success of the US military aviation industry which produced over 50,000 aluminium-skinned aircraft annually throughout the Second World War.

The cryolite mine at Ivigtut ceased operations in 1987, but the fact that Greenland continues to be rich in mineral deposits, including the largest sources of rare earth elements outside China, will continue to make it an attractive proposition for the US.

This article originally appeared in History of War magazine issue 146. Click here to subscribe to the magazine and save on the cover price!

It’s probably not a great sign for the relationship between labor and management that most of the workplace neologisms associated with Gen Z are about finding ways not to go to work, or to go to work but to have your mind be somewhere else. Gen Z is taking a lot of heat for these practices, but they might also be on to something profound about redefining our relationship between work and life into something healthier and more sustainable.

Acting your wage

When you’re “acting your wage” you’re pegging your effort to your salary. Someone stuck in a low-paying job, or someone who believes they should’ve received a promotion, and thus a wage, may engage in this practice. It sounds similar to the “quiet quitting” trend that got so much attention in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic, when employees were briefly in the driver’s seat of a very tight labor market. “Acting your wage” means “doing the core requirements of your role without going above and beyond to please your employer or clients,” said Business Insider.

Bare minimum Mondays

A tool to manage the so-called Sunday Scaries — when the looming arrival of the workweek causes anxiety that ruins your Sunday — “Bare minimum Mondays” means starting out on the first day of the week with small, achievable tasks and low expectations, punctuated perhaps by completing some household tasks that went unaddressed over the weekend. Coined by Tik Tok influencer Marisa Jo, the practice might help ease some into the workweek but also “could lead workers to procrastinate to avoid stress,” said CNBC.

Boreout

Boreout is like burnout, but instead of feeling exhausted and overwhelmed, an employee is apathetic and uninterested in the work they’re doing. It goes beyond the occasional feeling of disengagement and means that “boredom becomes a regular feature of work, a chronic condition that can zap people’s motivation,” said Inc. Someone suffering from boreout might also model the so-called Gen Z stare, a blank expression designed to communicate disinterest or contempt.

Career cushioning

The employee using a sick day or a personal day might actually be on a job interview, engaging in what is known as “career cushioning.” Employees who are dissatisfied with their work or just want to have multiple options available in a time of economic upheaval and AI-driven disorientation want to have multiple jobs lined up, just in case. That’s because even “those employees who have experienced steadiness in employment can feel nervous about their future within their company,” said U.S. News & World Report.

Coffee badging

A term that arose out of struggles between companies and employees over returning to the office in the wake of the Covid pandemic, “coffee badging” refers to someone who shows up to work to be seen quickly, swipe their badge and perhaps pour themselves a coffee in front of their co-workers before jetting back home for the day. It’s a way of maintaining the “freedom to work remotely while adhering to the rules,” said Yahoo Finance.

Downshifting

For most people, the career ladder is climbed in only one direction. But a new trend has emerged, particularly as AI cuts into career mobility opportunities for college-educated workers: downshifting, part of a larger trend of career minimalism.

It can mean either reducing hours and commitment in an existing job, avoiding management positions in what’s known as conscious unbossing, or even moving into trade work. Today it is “increasingly common to see interior designers become bakers, ex-bankers opening up cheese shops and marketing officers taking up electricians’ tools,” said The Conversation.

Microbreak

The hours-long, three-martini lunch has been dead for years, but younger workers are changing the workplace in even more significant ways. One is the practice of taking very short breaks, or microbreaks, during the workday rather than — or even in addition to — a long, somnolent lunch break. Microbreaks are “effective energy management strategies and help employees bounce back from fatigue,” said Forbes. They can also help address many other pathologies of workplace culture against which Gen Z seems to be rebelling.

Quiet firing

The counterpart to “quiet quitting,” this practice is often seen in remote workplaces in which an employee is being ignored by their boss, and not receiving the support, mentoring or guidance they need to succeed. Sometimes supervisors will even “allow employees to have truly toxic or miserable experiences at work as a way to squeeze them out,” said Gallup.

Rage applying

When someone is particularly aggrieved about something at their current job, they may engage in “rage applying,” which means firing off multiple applications for new positions elsewhere. In a world in which employers are increasingly using AI to sift through applications, or even posting fake jobs, this approach might not be particularly effective, but it “can be cathartic for dissatisfied employees,” said Xref.

Resenteeism

A play on the word “absenteeism,” and another sibling of “quiet quitting,” it refers to workers who show up to the job but don’t want to be there and therefore don’t work hard or effectively. The rise of resenteeism is part of a “widening perception gap between organizational leaders, employees and their managers,” said Forbes. If this is how employees are feeling, a company is clearly doing something fundamentally wrong.

Snail girl

A "snail girl” is the counterpart to the Millennial “girlboss” archetype. Instead of pursuing career ambitions at all costs, a snail girl prioritizes work-life balance and works to live rather than lives to work. It’s the “antidote to years of perpetually hustling,” said Fortune, although the practice isn’t necessarily a “death knell to ambition.” It is also sometimes rendered as someone being in their “snail girl era” to suggest that the condition is temporary.

Taskmasking

Also known as “productivity theater,” taskmasking is a way for employees to look like they are busy or engaging in work when they are actually checked out or even doing other things, like watching Netflix or running errands. It might be someone who is logged into Slack and occasionally responding to messages but who fundamentally isn’t there. For in-person settings, that might mean “moving quickly though the office while carrying a laptop or clipboard,” said The Guardian. This is also known as live action role-playing or “larping” your job.

Toxic productivity

The obsession with constantly working and the accompanying paranoia about whether you’re doing enough, even on nights and weekends, is known as “toxic productivity.” It’s a term that many Gen Z workers think applies to their Millennial and Gen X colleagues and supervisors who seem to value career advancement above all else. It’s a phrase used by those who believe that while “working hard and chasing dreams is a good thing, pursuing it in unhealthy ways as we sacrifice our well-being and mental health is not,” said Trill Mag.

“Overall, it feels like last year was the prologue and this year is the first chapter, one in which the storylines can really get some momentum behind them,” said Russh.

The magazine was describing horoscope forecasts for the coming year, but it could just as easily have been talking about how politics and the global economy will be shaping up in 2026.

Last year, The Week accurately predicted Donald Trump’s tariffs, the first signs of an AI stock market bubble, the rise of the far-right in the UK and Europe, and a ceasefire in Gaza. So what could 2026 have in store?

Politics

UK local and devolved elections in May are being seen as a make-or-break moment for Keir Starmer and the Labour government.

Squeezed from the right by Reform UK and from the left by a revived Green Party and the new Your Party (as well as Plaid Cymru in Wales and the SNP in Scotland), it is already looking like being a torrid night of results for Labour. Across the board, the party faces “potential collapse” and, for the first time in a century, losing control of its Welsh heartland, said Parli-Training. Were that to happen, Starmer could be forced out of Downing Street by the summer, with Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood among the favourites to replace him.

US midterm elections are also looking pretty bleak for the incumbent Republicans. With Donald Trump’s approval ratings continuing to fall, Democrats have opened up a double-digit lead in voting intention for the congressional races in November, said the Marist Poll.

“Everywhere Republicans look, they see big political trouble,” said Axios, with poll after poll showing support among swing voters down “on just about everything Republicans do, other than fighting crime and shutting the southwest border”.

In Europe, all eyes will be on the Hungarian parliamentary election in April, where Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule could end. Elsewhere, global research firm BMI sees a “greater likelihood of victories by the centre-right/right-wing opposition” in Brazil, Colombia and Peru, “while Israel could also see a political shift”.

The opaque process to select the next UN Secretary-General also takes place over the coming year, with the successful candidate formally taking up their post on 1 January 2027. Among those already declared or expected to throw their hat in the ring is Michelle Bachelet, former president of Chile and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Jacinda Ardern, former PM of New Zealand, and Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Economics

Following a bumpy year in which Trump’s tariff war played havoc with trade but markets continued to post record returns driven by AI investment, the outlook for the global economy in 2026 remains “dim”.

That is the assessment of the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook, which “makes for sobering reading”, said Love Money. Growth is forecast at 3.2% next year, with “much of the drag” stemming from “US tariffs and the wider shift towards protectionism, which is sapping international trade, undermining confidence, and rattling markets”.

Interest rates (in the US, UK and elsewhere) are expected to continue to fall, however, while fears persist that this is the year the AI bubble could finally burst. Analysis from financial services firm Wedbush, reported by Investing.com, predicts tech stocks will be “up another 20% in 2026 as this next stage of the AI Revolution hits its stride”.

“Don’t count on the AI bubble popping immediately – but don’t count it out, either,” said Mashable, with chip maker Nvidia’s next quarterly earnings report, due in January, being a key moment to watch out for.

Conflicts

Despite repeated attempts to agree an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine, fighting continues to rage in what is now Europe’s bloodiest conflict since the Second World War.

With Kremlin forces making slow but steady gains but at a terrible cost to life, the “arithmetic of attrition suggests that 2026 will bring either glacial progress, a conflict frozen from exhaustion, or some sort of deal”, said The Economist. “Two other scenarios are possible: a Ukrainian frontline or political collapse, aided by Kremlin subversion; or Russia’s economy buckling as aerial attacks shut down its oil industry”, but “either of the two would have massive consequences for Europe, and the world”.

Other conflict hotspots include India/Pakistan following a deadly skirmish in 2025, Congo/Rwanda, and the ongoing civil war in Sudan. Tensions are mounting between China and Taiwan, although 2027 is seen as the more likely date for an invasion as it marks the centenary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.

Donald Trump continues to threaten conflict against Venezuela but if he is persuaded to back down, manages to maintain the Gaza ceasefire and negotiates an end to the war in Ukraine, he could be in the running for next year’s Nobel Peace Prize announced in October.

On the pitch and out of this world

Fresh from winning the inaugural Fifa Peace Prize, Trump will be looking to use the 2026 men’s football World Cup – this year jointly hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico – to push his Maga agenda even further.

Sixteen venues across the continent will host the biggest-ever edition of the tournament, with the number of teams increasing from 32 to 48 and the tally of games upped from 64 to 104. While it is still six months until the first ball is kicked, sports statistics platform Opta Analyst has crunched the numbers and predicted that Euro 2024 champions Spain are the most likely to win the Jules Rimet trophy, followed by France, England, Argentina and Germany.

Before that, there is the small matter of the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics taking place in February.

A little further from home, the Nasa-led Artemis II mission will attempt the first manned orbit of the Moon in over half a century. The four-person crew will embark on a 10-day flight to “explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars”, said the BBC Sky at Night Magazine.

Originally planned for April 2026, the mission could now launch as early as 5 February. And while it “won’t land on the lunar surface” it will take astronauts 5,000 nautical miles past the Moon and “further into space than any human has gone before”.

The outgoing year was a mixed one in the fight against global warming. While some countries, including the UK, continued to make positive steps towards net zero, the return of Donald Trump to the White House exacerbated an already fraying international climate consensus. But a series of scientific breakthroughs in 2025 holds out some hope for a greener future. Here are seven of the most promising:

Carbon dioxide satellite tracking

A novel satellite-based method to track fossil fuel CO2 emissions with greater precision than ever before marks a “significant advancement for climate monitoring”, said Open Access Government. “Traditional methods” such as “ground-based measurements and bottom-up inventories, are often resource-intensive and prone to inaccuracies”.

Researchers at Tsinghua University used nitrogen dioxide – which has a shorter atmospheric lifetime and enhanced detectability – as a “proxy” for CO₂, to successfully trial a “more reliable and scalable solution for monitoring emissions”.

Automated food waste upcycling

AI-powered food waste management uses real-time data and predictive analytics to monitor, categorise, and reduce food waste. Food scraps can effectively be upcycled into resources for “composting and biogas systems”, said The Sweaty Penguin environmental podcast.

One of the 10 environmental tech breakthroughs for 2025 compiled by the World Economic Forum and published in science journal Frontiers, this technology can also support “nutrient cycling” by enabling food waste to be returned to soil systems. Automated waste sorting can also “separate food waste from plastic waste, reducing plastics and organics going into landfills, producing quality compost for agriculture, while helping slash methane, CO2 and nitrous oxide emissions”.

Gene variant protects rice from rising temperatures

After more than 10 years, Chinese researchers led by plant geneticist Yibo Li of Huazhong Agricultural University have discovered a naturally occurring gene variant that can preserve both the yield and quality of rice from excessive heat. Rising temperatures are a “major and growing threat to rice production”, said Science, citing a 2004 study that found yields fell by 10% for every degree Celsius average night-time air temperature rose.

The impact of this “major breakthrough” could “ultimately be even broader than rice” as the same gene variant can be found in other cereals, such as wheat and corn, that are at a similar risk from heat, said Argelia Lorence, a plant biochemist at Arkansas State University.

Sodium batteries make electric flight possible

The sodium-air fuel cell – designed by a team led by Yet-Ming Chiang, a professor of materials science and engineering at MIT – works by combining liquid sodium with oxygen drawn from the air in a continuous reaction. The device is “based on well-established electrochemical principles”, said The Times, but “unlike conventional batteries, which must be recharged, it is designed to be refuelled, with its energy-rich material being replaced as it is consumed”.

While still in the experimental stage, sodium batteries could eventually lead to electric-powered flight which is more sustainable and much cheaper even than non-petroleum aviation fuel. In laboratory tests, the MIT sodium-air fuel cell prototype delivered more than five times as much energy per kilogram as the lithium-ion batteries currently used in electric cars. It also produces sodium hydroxide as a by-product which could be used to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere or turned into sodium bicarbonate which could help de-acidify the ocean, a problem caused by carbon emissions. It is an “essentially free” by-product, “producing environmental benefits at no cost”, said Chiang.

Microplastic referencing

The dangers of microplastics to the environment and human health are well documented, but tracking microplastic pollution remains complicated. Now, in a world first, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre has developed reference material to measure polyethylene terephthalate (PET) particles, commonly found in packaging and textiles, in water.

Already being used to update key EU regulations such as the revised EU Drinking Water Directive, the JRC’s reference material “lays the groundwork for coordinated global action” on microplastics, said Open Access Government.

Clean energy from toxic waste

Bio-tar – the thick liquid by-product produced when heating biomass and organic matter – has long been viewed as toxic to the environment and an unavoidable cost of renewable energy production. But new research by scientists at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences has found that instead of being treated as waste, bio-tar can be converted into “bio-carbon”, a “novel material with applications ranging from water purification to clean energy storage”, said Science Daily.

“Turning bio-tar into bio-carbon not only solves a technical problem for the bio-energy industry, but also opens the door to producing advanced carbon materials with high economic value,” said senior author Dr Zonglu Yao.

Green concrete

Manufacturing Portland cement, the key binding ingredient in concrete, currently contributes around 8% of global CO2 emissions. The development of “novel cement-free green concrete technologies” offer an “alternative by eliminating Portland cement altogether and instead using binders derived from industrial byproducts or construction and demolition waste”, according to a World Economic Forum report.

This process “not only eliminates emissions from traditional cement production but also creates a permanent storage route for captured CO₂”. Together, these advances “cut demand for extracted raw materials and ease pressure on planetary boundaries related to climate change, land-system change, and biogeochemical flows”.

Donald Trump ramped up the pressure on President Nicolás Maduro by ordering a “total and complete” blockade of oil tankers subject to US sanctions heading to or from Venezuela. He accused Maduro’s government of using “stolen” oil to “finance themselves, drug terrorism, human trafficking, murder and kidnapping”.

Referring to the US deployment to the region of a dozen warships and more than 14,000 troops, Trump wrote that Venezuela was “completely surrounded by the largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America”.

Oil prices jumped in the wake of Trump’s blockade order, which came days after US forces had seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. Since September, the US military has killed around 100 people in more than two dozen strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.

Trump has also threatened to strike drug-related targets inside Venezuela. Caracas denounced his “warmongering threats” and called on oil workers to organise a worldwide protest “against the piracy of those who believe they have a licence to plunder the world’s resources”.

Drug blockades

Trump is tightening the screws on Caracas, said The Wall Street Journal – and not before time. While Maduro is accusing the US of piracy, he’s the one who “stole Venezuelan democracy” by refusing to cede power after losing the 2024 presidential election. More than eight million Venezuelans have fled his police state. Trump isn’t concerned about Maduro’s authoritarianism, said The Guardian. Nor is this about tackling drug cartels: Venezuela isn’t a big supplier of drugs to the US. Trump is driven mainly by the desire to stem refugee flows and get rid of the socialist Maduro, a long-term target.

The US blockade carries some risks, said The Washington Post. It could provoke a marine confrontation that drags the US into a land war in South America. And by reducing the regime’s main source of revenue, it could exacerbate a humanitarian crisis. Still, it’s a more “legally defensible” strategy than the US air strikes on alleged drug smugglers. Given that about 80% of Venezuela’s oil is sold on the black market, and that most tankers stopping there are sanctioned, Trump “can argue that he’s merely stepping up enforcement”. His first-term effort to oust Maduro failed because “his attention drifted”. Will he stay the course this time?

Squeezing Venezuela’s oil trade

Maduro is vulnerable, said Andrew Neil in the Daily Mail. Venezuela has the world’s largest-known oil reserves and used to be one of the region’s richest countries. But more than 25 years of hard-left rule, initially under Hugo Chávez and then his protégé Maduro, have driven it to ruin. Its poverty rate is now about 80%. People talk about the danger of civil war if Maduro is ousted, but this isn’t a divided country. Nobel Prize-winner María Corina Machado would have coasted to victory had she not been barred from standing in last year’s election. In a recent poll, nine out of 10 Venezuelans said they believed that the man who won that vote by a landslide – Machado’s chosen candidate, Edmundo Gonzáles – is their rightful president.

Trump is hoping that his “drip-drip pressure campaign” can bring about a coup without the need for direct US military force, said Tom Rogan in the Washington Examiner. US navy jets are wearing down Venezuelan defence units by forcing them to remain at a state of high readiness, and CIA assets inside the country are no doubt encouraging top officials to move against Maduro. It’s the right approach. If Maduro is ousted, there’s a good chance that there will be an insurgency involving narco-traffickers and at least some unreconciled elements of the old regime. Given Venezuela’s “abundance of deep jungles and sprawling favelas”, the US doesn’t want to get entangled in any counter-insurgency campaign.

Trump is squeezing Venezuela’s oil trade, said Keith Johnson in Foreign Policy. Activity in its ports has sharply reduced and multiple inbound tankers have turned around mid-voyage in recent days. Some oil is still flowing, said a report in the Financial Times. US-based Chevron, which accounts for about a quarter of Venezuela’s oil production, still has a licence to sell oil; tankers not included in the US’ expanding list of sanctioned vessels can still ply their trade. If the US keeps tightening the noose, though, it will create enormous difficulties for Maduro’s regime. “But given that the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ started by Chávez has survived for a quarter of a century, few are willing to bet on the Venezuelan regime collapsing” without direct US military action.

Lack of storage capacity

Trump says the US military build-up will continue until Caracas returns “all of the oil, land and other assets they previously stole from us”. Under Chávez, Venezuela expropriated assets belonging to US oil companies. Trump hasn’t given any further details about how the US blockade on sanctioned tankers will be enforced.

Until recently Venezuela produced about 0.8% of global crude oil output, exporting some 900,000 barrels a day. Most of this ended up in China. Last week, Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA, said that crude exports were “continuing as normal”, but experts believe it will soon have to halt production owing to a lack of storage capacity.

Australia’s government announced plans to strengthen the country’s gun control laws, following Sunday’s terrorist attack at Bondi Beach, in Sydney.

In the 20-minute rampage, a father and son opened fire on a crowd of about 1,000 people who had gathered to celebrate the first day of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. The father, Sajid Akram, 50, had licences for six firearms, the number recovered at the scene. He was shot dead by police; his son, Naveed Akram, 24, was arrested and taken to hospital. They appear to have been inspired by Islamic State.

The victims of the attack – Australia’s deadliest mass shooting since 1996 – included two rabbis, a Holocaust survivor and a ten-year-old girl. Many more might have died had it not been for the heroism of a bystander, Ahmed al-Ahmed, who crept up behind Sajid Akram and seized his rifle. This week, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, announced extra funding for measures to protect the country’s Jewish community.

‘Indelibly stained with tragedy’

This attack on ordinary Jewish people, as they marked the first night of the “Festival of Lights”, was shocking in its malevolence, said The Australian. Bondi is home to many of Australia’s 117,000 Jews; the beach is also a place where people from all creeds and backgrounds congregate. Now, it will be “indelibly stained with tragedy”.

Australia ranks as one of the world’s safest nations, said The Independent. Its gun laws – tightened after the mass shooting in Tasmania 29 years ago – are already among the strictest anywhere. If Jews aren’t safe there, they may now reasonably ask “where in the world they can be safe”.

Australia’s government has suggested that the shooters “weren’t part of a wider cell”, said The Sydney Morning Herald. But the discovery of Islamic State flags in their car, and the revelation that the two men had recently travelled to the Philippines, parts of which are rife with “Islamic extremism”, may be telling.

In 2019, the younger man was actually investigated by Australia’s security services, owing to his links to Islamic State members, said The Times. But he was deemed not to be a threat – an assessment that has “proven to be tragically flawed”.

The global surge in antisemitism

There was a celebratory atmosphere at Bondi on Sunday, said The Economist. “Children wearing face paint crowded a petting zoo. Families held balloons and bubble wands.” Yet as the sun began to dip, two men armed with long-barrelled rifles began firing from a footbridge into the crowd; and the death toll could have been even higher, had they detonated the improvised explosives later found in their car.

It was an appalling tragedy, made worse by its predictability, said Limor Simhony Philpott on UnHerd. Australia’s Jewish community has endured a five-fold surge in antisemitic incidents since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023. Jewish schools, synagogues and homes have been firebombed; protesters have chanted “Fuck the Jews” outside the Sydney Opera House. In the summer, Australia’s government kicked out Iran’s ambassador, after accusing Tehran of orchestrating antisemitic attacks on its soil. But it has done little else to curb antisemitism. Instead it has alienated Israel, its former ally, by making the misguided decision to join the UK and others in recognising a Palestinian state.

This attack reflects a broader crisis for the world’s Jewish population, said Jonathan Sacerdoti in The Spectator. In the past two years, there have been murderous attacks on Jews on five continents. This summer, there were two in cities in the US, and on Yom Kippur in October, two people were killed in the attack on the Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester.

When it comes to antisemitic terror, violent words can lead to violent actions, said Dave Rich in The Guardian: hence the anger felt by many Jews when they see banners at pro-Palestine marches demanding an “Intifada revolution” or bearing Hamas symbols.

The frightening reality, said Daniel Finkelstein in The Times, is that calls to “Globalise the intifada” and the like have made Jews the target of “warped killers” who think that, by unleashing terror, they are “doing the world a favour”. I will carry on lighting candles in the days ahead, and singing the Hanukkah songs. “But I admit that this year, for the first time in my life, I do feel just a little fear as I do it.”

Reform UK has received a record £9 million donation from Christopher Harborne, a British-Thai cryptocurrency mogul, according to the latest quarterly declarations to the Electoral Commission.

It’s the largest-ever single donation by a living person to a British political party. News of the gift comes at a time when Reform is leading in the national polls, but has been forced onto the defensive over a series of other, less welcome, stories.

‘Toxic’ and ‘divisive’

Last week Nigel Farage denounced what he called “a false story” in the Financial Times, which reported that he had told donors that he expected “a deal or merger” between his party and the Tories ahead of the next general election. “The idea I’d work with them is ludicrous,” he said. Reform also faced more questions about Farage’s alleged behaviour at school.

Twenty-eight former pupils and teachers now claim to have witnessed racist or antisemitic behaviour by him at Dulwich College in south London. Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader, said Farage’s accusers were peddling “made up twaddle”.

Farage has admitted that he was “offensive” at school, but insists he never made comments “with malice”. He angrily accused the BBC of “double standards and hypocrisy”, saying it should apologise for all the politically incorrect programmes it broadcast during the same era, such as “The Black and White Minstrel Show” and “It Ain’t Half Hot Mum”.

Farage faced separate accusations of racism last week over a campaign video in which he lamented the “cultural smashing of Glasgow”, citing the recent finding that nearly one in three school pupils in the city speak English as a second language. The comment prompted Keir Starmer to call Farage a “toxic, divisive disgrace”.

This week, it emerged that Farage had been reported to the police over claims of falsified election expenses. A former member of his campaign team, Richard Everett, says the Reform leader exceeded the £20,660 local election spending limit during his successful bid for the Clacton constituency last year by about £9,000, because some costs – including the refurbishment of a Reform-themed bar in the campaign office, and the loan of an armoured Land Rover used in a rally – weren’t declared. A Reform UK spokesman denied any wrongdoing.

This article appeared in History of War magazine issue 153.

In September 2025 President Donald Trump signed an executive order renaming the Department of Defense to the 'Department of War', reverting to the original name established during the Revolutionary War. While such a change would officially require Congressional approval, the president cited a tradition of military strength and preparedness as essential to US national security.

"The Founders chose this name to signal our strength and resolve to the world," the order declared. "The name 'Department of War', more than the current 'Department of Defense', ensures peace through strength as it demonstrates our ability and willingness to fight and win wars on behalf of our nation at a moment's notice, not just to defend."

The department originally underwent a rebrand during a radical reorganisation of the US military after the end of the Second World War.

As the free world continued to count the cost the war, the most devastating armed conflict in human history, and the early vestiges of the Cold War loomed, President Harry Truman told the American people of his intent to reshape the US military establishment.

In the autumn of 1945 he declared: "I stated that I would communicate with Congress from time to time during the current session with respect to a comprehensive and continuous program of national security. I pointed out the necessity of making timely preparation for the nation's long-range security now – while we are still mindful of what it has cost us in this war to be unprepared."

Among Truman's priorities were a reorganisation of the American armed forces hierarchy to achieve efficiency, co-ordination and unity of command while reinforcing the venerable concept of civilian control of the military.

In December 1945, Truman added: "I recommend that the Congress adopt legislation combining the War and Navy Departments into one single Department of National Defense. Such unification is another essential step – along with universal training – in the development of a comprehensive and continuous program for our future safety and for the peace and security of the world."

The National Security Act of 1947 did in fact create the National Military Establishment (NME) with a framework that separated the US Air Force from control of the US Army and established the position of Secretary of Defense.

This new cabinet post would ostensibly supervise the subordinate offices of the individual branch secretaries. The incumbent was required to be a civilian or to have been retired from the military for at least ten years. This second proviso was later modified to seven years.

Another significant component of the 1947 act was the establishment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, composed of high-ranking military officers, the Central Intelligence Agency (preceded by the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS) and the National Security Council, an advisory body for the president in consideration of domestic, foreign and military policy.

Two years later the NME was formally renamed the Department of Defense. The entire executive initiative had been prompted not only by the command challenges of the Second World War but also in preparation for a potential war with the Soviet Union. Truman's perspective demanded an enhanced national military preparedness and response capability.

While the change of designation from War Department to National Military Establishment and then Department of Defense might be construed at first glance as an effort to quell the connotation of belligerence held with the word 'war', it was in fact necessary to differentiate the new structure from the previous alignment that had endured in various iterations since the 18th century.

Some sources claim that the change from NME to Department of Defense was necessary to eliminate the negative sound when the acronym was pronounced aloud. It simply sounded too much like 'enemy'.

The War Department had been created on 7 August 1789 during the first session of the Congress in the administration of President George Washington. Its purpose was clear: replacing the Board of War and Ordnance that had been created in the midst of the American Revolution in 1776.

The War Department was initially also known as the War Office in a nod to the British influence in North America. The fledgling US Navy was given a separate cabinet post in 1798 and encompassed the command of the US Marine Corps.

Therefore the National Security Act of 1947 effectively separated the Department of the Army from the Department of War and created the Department of the Air Force as a separate branch of the military.

The amended National Security Act, which Truman signed on 10 August 1949, brought the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force directly under the Secretary of Defense and established the post of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The president explained that the revisions constituted a "unification… increased efficiency and economy and greater coordination of our military forces".

In fact, some observers conclude that the comprehensive restructuring fostered an unprecedented era of inter-service rivalry as exemplified in the competition between the Air Force and Navy as the primary custodian and potential deliverer of the American nuclear weapons arsenal during the burgeoning years of the Cold War.

However, such a rivalry may well have been unavoidable and the effectiveness of the realignment remains the subject of debate as it continues to function today.

This article originally appeared in History of War magazine issue 153. Click here to subscribe to the magazine and save on the cover price!

Much has been made of convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged ties to Donald Trump, but the president is only one of numerous people with connections to the disgraced financier. The latest revelations, courtesy of a massive batch of Epstein’s emails released by the House Oversight Committee, show that many famous public figures had significant ties to Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019.

While these communications do not necessarily prove guilt, they have raised more questions as the Epstein scandal continues to brew. Notably, all of these email exchanges “took place years after Epstein became a registered sex offender in 2008,” said USA Today.

Lawrence ‘Larry’ Summers

Summers, a former Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration who was also once president of Harvard University, was shown to have corresponded with Epstein over at least seven years. While it was previously reported that the men knew each other, the emails “indicate the two met for dinner frequently, with Epstein often trying to connect Summers to prominent global figures,” said BBC News.

Summers, a Democrat, largely used the email communications to criticize Trump’s agenda but also talked to Epstein about nonpolitical issues. On one occasion, he “appeared to seek advice from Epstein about a romantic relationship he was interested in initiating with a female economist,” said USA Today. After the emails were made public, Summers announced he was stepping back from most of his public positions, including resigning from the board of OpenAI and his professorship at Harvard. “I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused,” Summers said to The Harvard Crimson.

Steve Bannon

Presidential adviser-turned-MAGA-influencer Steve Bannon was found to have been “workshopping legal and media strategies to protect Epstein from the legal and publicity quagmire that enveloped him in the last year of his life,” said The Guardian. Bannon, who served in Trump’s administration during his first term, was “devising responses to the gathering storm of public outrage about Epstein’s criminal history” in an effort to help Epstein craft a defense. Both of the men were also “strategizing how best to promote Bannon’s right-wing populist agenda and the political fortunes of its standard bearer, Donald Trump.”

There was also evidence that Bannon used Epstein to strengthen his ties with global figures. In one notable exchange from 2018, Epstein emailed Bannon to let him know “‘there are many leaders of countries we can organize for you to have one-on-ones’ with if Bannon agreed to spend eight to 10 days in Europe,” said Politico. In at least one email, Bannon, who has declined to comment on the relationship, also refers to Epstein as an “amazing assistant.”

Noam Chomsky

Like Summers, famed linguistics professor Noam Chomsky was known to have had a relationship with Epstein. When asked about the pair’s relationship in 2023, Chomsky told The Wall Street Journal his “first response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s. Second is that I knew him, and we met occasionally.” However, the new emails reveal that the pair’s relationship may have been more involved than previously thought. This is part of a new light that is being cast on Epstein’s “deep involvement with prominent scientists and scholars,” said Scientific American.

This includes allegations that the association between Chomsky and Epstein “went deeper than the occasional political and academic discussions the former had previously claimed to have with the latter,” said The Guardian. This includes being close enough to discuss potential vacation plans. Chomsky also “reportedly acknowledged receiving about $270,000 from an account linked to Epstein while sorting the disbursement of common funds,” though the 96-year-old has maintained that none of the money came directly from Epstein himself.

Kathryn Ruemmler

Another politically adjacent name who moved to the private sector, Kathryn Ruemmler was White House general counsel during the Obama administration before taking a job as the top lawyer for investment bank Goldman Sachs. When Ruemmler “needed to vent about Donald Trump’s rise in politics, she turned to their mutual acquaintance Jeffrey Epstein,” said Business Insider.

As with other Epstein associates, the new emails “suggest a deeper relationship between Ruemmler and Epstein than was previously known,” said Business Insider. Ruemmler “confided in Epstein when a rival law firm tried to poach her, when looking for a New York City apartment and when she was being vetted for consideration as attorney general.” Goldman Sachs has stood by Ruemmler as this information has come out. These emails “were private correspondence well before Kathy Ruemmler joined Goldman Sachs,” a spokesperson for the bank told CNBC. Ruemmler herself told The Wall Street Journal in 2023, “I regret ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein.”

Peter Thiel

While Peter Thiel is best known as the cofounder of PayPal and technology company Palantir, the billionaire has found himself ingrained in conservative politics through his association with figures like Vice President JD Vance. But the new emails show that Thiel may have had a close relationship with Epstein as well. In at least one instance, Epstein appeared to invite Thiel to his private Caribbean island, writing, “Dec visit me Caribbean.”

This island “near St. Thomas in the Caribbean has long been the subject of speculation about which possible conspirators may have visited the island, which Epstein allegedly used to conceal his criminal behavior,” said Politico. Epstein also previously “put $40 million into two funds managed by Valar Ventures, a New York firm that was cofounded by Mr. Thiel,” said The New York Times. Thiel has said he never visited Epstein’s island and has denied any wrongdoing.

Peggy Siegal

Peggy Siegal is one of the most recognizable entertainment publicists and has spent decades crafting a media empire. But she has also generated a fair share of controversy due to her “longtime association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein,” said The Hollywood Reporter in 2019. Siegal reportedly “helped facilitate Epstein’s return to elite social circles after his conviction through private gatherings she organized at his Upper East Side home.”

But the recent tranche of emails reveals that Siegal and Epstein may have had a closer relationship than many previously believed. In at least one newly revealed email, Epstein wrote to Siegal “with an ask: Could she reach out to media mogul Arianna Huffington to enlist her help in clearing his name?” said Politico. Epstein also asked Siegal if Huffington, the cofounder of HuffPost, could send reporters to investigate one of his most notable accusers, Virginia Giuffre. Siegal “offered to send the message to Huffington on her own behalf if Epstein fixed the grammar,” but both Siegal and Huffington have said nothing ever came of the request.

After days of frantic diplomacy, Donald Trump claimed this week that his negotiators had made “tremendous progress” towards ending the Ukraine War. The Ukrainian leadership indicated that it had accepted the “core terms” of a US-backed peace plan – and Trump said that his envoy, Steve Witkoff, would be dispatched to the Kremlin for talks with Vladimir Putin next week. However, significant doubts remained, both about the exact terms of the deal, and about Russia’s position. On Wednesday, Russian officials indicated that the deal was not acceptable.

Last week, Trump had piled great pressure on Kyiv to sign up to a 28-point plan that the US had drawn up following Witkoff’s talks with Russian envoys in Miami. That proposal echoed Moscow’s maximalist war aims, by calling for Kyiv to cede the rest of the Donbas region, and to limit its army to 600,000 personnel. It caused alarm among Ukraine’s European allies, whose 19-point counter-proposal is believed to form the basis of the deal Kyiv later accepted.

Pro-Russia bias

Effectively, the US-Russia peace plan amounted to a demand for Ukraine’s “outright surrender”, said The Times. It would have handed over Ukraine’s “fortress belt” in the Donbas, which it has spent years defending, and denied it meaningful security guarantees. If Zelenskyy had bowed to Trump’s ultimatum to agree to its terms by Thanksgiving, 27 November, or lose access to US weapons and intelligence, he’d surely have had to resign.

This peace plan was reportedly leaked by Moscow, said The Economist – and AI analysis suggests it was translated from the original Russian. Either way, it again “betrayed” Trump’s pro-Russia bias, and his indifference to Ukraine; as did his dismissive suggestion that Zelenskyy can “fight his little heart out” if no deal is struck, and his grousing on social media that “UKRAINE ‘LEADERSHIP’ HAS EXPRESSED ZERO GRATITUDE FOR OUR EFFORTS.”

Sobering question

There was a “grim familiarity” to events last week, said The Guardian. As in August, when Trump hosted Putin in Alaska, Kyiv and its European allies had been excluded from talks which would decide their future, and were left scrambling to improve a Moscow-friendly deal.

Europe’s leaders were confronted with a sobering question, said Michael D. Shear in The New York Times: was the US about to force Ukraine to “capitulate”, to the detriment of Nato and the benefit of Putin – “all without even bothering to consult with them”? It looked that way for a while; but by Tuesday, the crisis had been averted by European leaders who have honed their “how-to-handle-Trump playbook” during a year of similar episodes. Rather than lashing out, they “embraced” the plan to keep Trump onside, while insisting that it was only a starting point for negotiations. “The goal was to slow the process and eliminate some of the provisions they saw as crossing Europe’s red lines.”

The Europeans succeeded in shrinking the 28-point plan to 19 points, said Roger Boyes in The Times. But several of Russia’s key demands remained: no Western military presence in Ukraine, no Nato membership. And the fundamental questions – how to divide the land, and security guarantees against future invasions – remained apparently unresolved. As usual with Trump’s “drive-by diplomacy”, nothing adds up.

‘Miserable choice’

With the knotty questions about territory yet to be resolved, Russia is “trying to pour cold water on the prospects of an imminent peace breakthrough”, said Samuel Ramani in The Daily Telegraph. It continues to bombard Ukrainian cities; its officials have dismissed the new proposals as “not constructive”.

For Kyiv, the risk now is that Putin will talk Trump into backing favourable terms for Russia, said Tim Ross et al in Politico. That would leave Zelenskyy with a “miserable choice”: either take an offer “cooked up by Trump and Putin”, or hope that his European allies finally make good on their bold promises of help.

Sooner or later, though, he’ll have to make a deal, said Gideon Rachman in the FT. During four years of war, Ukraine has sustained hundreds of thousands of casualties. Millions of its citizens have fled abroad, and its economy lies in ruins. A bad settlement could imperil its future as a “genuinely independent” nation. But make no mistake: “the continuation of the war is also deeply damaging to Ukraine”.

This article appeared in History of War magazine issue 152.

CIA analysts gathered around U-2 spy plane photographs taken of Cuban military facilities. With horror, they realised they had just discovered Soviet medium-range and intermediate-range nuclear missiles – weapons that were capable of targeting most of the continental US.

The next morning, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy briefed President John F Kennedy. A naval quarantine of Cuba, and the closest the world has ever come to all-out nuclear conflict, followed.

The Cold War pivoted on the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The USA and the Soviet Union looked into the terrifying void and decided to collaborate on limiting horizontal (the number of nations with access to nuclear weapons) and vertical (the size of nuclear powers’ arsenals) proliferation.

International agreements followed, including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, gradually bringing the world closer to safety. However, Serhii Plokhy, Cold War historian and author of The Nuclear Age, told History of War that our contemporary nuclear age has become significantly more dangerous.

“None of these treaties have continued. We are back to where we were before the Cuban Missile Crisis.” he explains. “We have entered the second nuclear arms race, and it’s more dangerous than the 1950s, because there are more players and no regulations in place.”

In the past, nuclear powers have pondered using force to limit proliferation. Advisers in Kennedy’s administration considered using covert special operations deployments to stop China from acquiring nuclear weapons.

This planning has escalated to deadly action in the post-Cold War nuclear age, including the invasion of Iraq and US strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2025.

Yet the main danger may not lie in the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other nations. “Today, we think that the world will end if Iran acquires nuclear weapons,” says Plokhy.

“We have been in Iran-type moments in history many times, and the world didn’t come to an end because there was no monopoly on the use of nuclear weapons. Whatever country acquires them exists in a world with other players that are much more powerful.”

The proliferation of nuclear weapons to other nations has diluted the nuclear monopoly, an essential condition for mutually assured destruction, but that alone has not made the world safer.

Plokhy explains: “The balance of nuclear weapons continues between the U.S. and Russia, who are the nuclear superpowers more than three decades after the Cold War, but the balance of fear has disappeared.

During the Cold War, countries that had nuclear weapons were equally as concerned about the dangers of nuclear conflict. However, “Russia behaves as if it’s the only country with nuclear weapons,” Plokhy explains.

Vladimir Putin appears to have lost his fear of nuclear destruction because economic weakness has backed him into a corner; Russia has not yet fully recovered economically from the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“There is an enormous imbalance between the economic and nuclear power of Russia,” says Plokhy. “Nuclear power has become the only card they can play in the global arena and during the Russo-Ukrainian war.” Other nuclear powers have recently taken actions to assert their nuclear readiness, which could lead to a resurgence of Russian fears.

Plokhy indicates that the West also needs to show conventional military readiness: “If Russian drones attack NATO countries and NATO countries don’t send their drones into Russia, that causes a problem with the balance of fear. Russia is not the only country that can send drones into the territory of other states.”

As nuclear powers seek to return to a safe world, Plokhy positions the Cold War not as a “horribly dangerous period in international relations”, but as a “success story” from which “new generations can relearn the lessons that helped their grandparents to survive”.

He explains: “If we look at the Cold War through that perspective, we can ask questions like: ‘Was it just luck that we survived, or did we do something right?’ One of the things that was done right was the balance of fear necessary for equilibrium in international relations.”

Plokhy makes it clear that regenerating the right kind of nuclear terror can make the world a safer place. Whether that will happen before another event like the Cuban Missile Crisis brings the world back to the brink remains to be seen.

This article originally appeared in History of War magazine issue 152. Click here to subscribe to the magazine and save on the cover price!

The biological world is always expanding as research is constantly being done. Because of this, many findings often fall under the radar despite having the potential to change the world. Here are some of the most groundbreaking discoveries in biology from the past year.

Slowing Huntington’s disease

Scientists have found a way to slow the progress of Huntington’s disease, a deadly neurodegenerative disorder, by 75%. The disease is largely hereditary and causes a gradual decline in mental and physical functions. Until now, there have been very minimal treatment options.

The new gene therapy treatment, called AMT-130, is “delivered deep into the brain during an eight- to 10-hour surgery,” said Scientific American. A “safe virus” that has been genetically altered to contain a specific DNA sequence is “infused,” where it “acts like a microscopic postman” by “delivering the new piece of DNA inside brain cells,” said the BBC. The treatment “turns the neurons into a factory for making the therapy to avert their own death.” AMT-130 is still in clinical trials and not yet widely available. “We’ve had so many failures, and there’s been a lot of heartbreak over many years in this community,” neurologist Victor Sung said to Scientific American. “So to have something that at least really appears to be having [an] impact is really significant.”

Understanding cell mechanisms

Researchers may be able to see what proteins are doing inside cells more accurately, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications. The new method uses “natural proteins produced by a cell as tiny sensors to report on their environment and interactions,” said an article by Cornell University. It does so “without traditional invasive techniques that could interfere with a cell’s normal biology and skew research results.” The scientists were able to track flavoproteins, which are in many organisms and contain magnetic properties that can be detected using a technique called electron spin resonance spectroscopy.

Being able to understand the cell’s internal functions is “mainly useful for understanding new biological mechanisms, such as those that could be involved in disease states like cancer or during infection,” Brian Crane, a professor in Cornell’s Department of Chemistry and the author of the study, said in the article. “One could conceivably track the assembly of a virus using this method to understand how and where its components are built within cells.”

Kangaroo IVF

Scientists, in a hopping success, were able to produce the world’s first kangaroo embryo using IVF. This could be a significant step toward protecting endangered species in Australia. The researchers “assessed how kangaroo eggs and sperm developed in a laboratory, before injecting a single sperm directly into a mature egg, using a technique known as intracytoplasmic sperm injection,” said CNN.

While the eastern grey kangaroo is not endangered, other marsupial species are. “Our ultimate goal is to support the preservation of endangered marsupial species like koalas, Tasmanian devils, northern hairy-nosed wombats and Leadbeater’s possums,” Andres Gambini, who led the research, said to CNN. Australia has a higher extinction rate than any other continent on Earth in recent history, largely because many species are endemic to the region.

Oldest microbial DNA

Researchers “sequenced the DNA of various mammoths — including 440 that had never been sequenced or published before,” as well as “identified DNA from 310 different microbes living on or in the animals’ tissues,” said Smithsonian Magazine. The findings were published in the journal Cell.

While much of the bacteria appeared after the mammoths’ deaths, the scientists also “identified six ‘host-associated’ microbial groups that likely colonized the mammoths when they were still alive” over one million years ago. Host microbes may have “shaped how these Ice Age herbivores digested food, resisted infections and coped with shifting climates,” said Earth.com. “The same methods could be applied to other frozen or well-preserved remains, from ancient horses to extinct cave bears.”

Virtual scientists

Future research could be done in a virtual lab, according to a study published in the journal Nature. Researchers trained AI large language models (LLM) to “mimic top-tier scientists in the same way that they think critically about a problem, research certain questions, pose different solutions based on a given area of expertise and bounce ideas off one another to develop a hypothesis worth testing,” said Stanford Medicine. This essentially led to the creation of a virtual lab, which “consists of an LLM principal investigator agent guiding a team of LLM scientist agents through a series of research meetings, with a human researcher providing high-level feedback,” said the study.

The researchers then had the “lab” devise a new vaccine basis for Covid-19. It created a method using nanobodies that was potentially viable. These types of labs could allow for research to be done quickly, especially when done in collaboration with humans. “Good science happens when we have deep, interdisciplinary collaborations where people from different backgrounds work together, and often that’s one of the main bottlenecks and challenging parts of research,” said James Zou, an associate professor of biomedical data science and lead author of the study.

Of all the scandals that have plagued Donald Trump throughout his lifetime in the public eye, his extensive and well-documented relationship with disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein presents the most clear and immediate danger to the president. While Trump has long denied any wrongdoing, the public contours of his association with Epstein paint a compelling — if frustratingly incomplete — picture of two men with years of shared history. Despite the president’s repeated claims that he and Epstein were mere social acquaintances who suffered a falling out of sorts over a young woman in Trump’s former employ, the steady drip of Epstein-related material from Congress, coupled with Trump’s conspicuously ardent reactions thereof, suggest a much more robust bond.

As the president fends off a growing bipartisan push for full governmental transparency on a scandal that shows little sign of abating, here is what we know about Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein’s long, complicated friendship.

1980s

While it’s unclear exactly when and where Trump and Epstein first met , Trump in a 2002 New York magazine interview said he’d known “terrific guy” Epstein “for fifteen years,” placing their initial point of contact in the mid-to-late 1980s. This was “around the time” of Trump’s 1985 purchase of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, where Epstein “was also living,” said Forbes. “In my mind,” Epstein was Trump’s “best friend, you know,” former Trump Plaza Hotel and Casinos COO Jack O’Donnell said to CNN in 2025.

1992

Trump and Epstein are filmed together during a party for a segment of Faith Daniels’ talk show, “A Closer Look,” about Trump’s life post-divorce from first wife Ivana. This “most widely circulated footage” of the pair shows the two men “evidently assessing” the women at the event, which included NFL cheerleaders in town for a game, Rolling Stone said. At one point, Trump is “seen gesturing to a woman” and tells Epstein, “Look at her, back there .… She’s hot,” NBC News said. Trump later “said something else into Epstein’s ear,” prompting the financier to “double over with laughter.”

That same year, Florida-based businessman George Houraney flew 28 women to Trump’s estate for a “Calendar Girl” competition. Aside from the women, The New York Times said, the “only guests were Mr. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.” Describing the incident to the Times, Houraney claims he said, “Donald, this is supposed to be a party with VIPs. You’re telling me it’s you and Epstein?’”

1993-2000

Trump and Epstein’s relationship continued through the ’90s, with the pair appearing in a photograph with Trump’s children Eric and Ivanka at a Harley Davidson Cafe opening in 1993. That same year, Epstein was photographed attending Trump’s second wedding to model Marla Maples. “I wish now I took more of him with Trump,” photographer Dafydd Jones said to CNN.“I had the job of photographing the Trump wedding, so I stood with the press and photographed him.”

In the subsequent four years, Trump would fly seven times on Epstein’s infamous aircraft, according to flight logs released during the trial of accomplice sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.

1997 also saw Trump photographed alongside Epstein at a Victoria's Secret party in New York City. In 2000, Trump, Epstein, Maxwell and soon-to-be Trump spouse Melania Knauss posed for a series of pictures together at a party at Mar-a-Lago also attended by Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince of England, who was stripped of his royal titles this year for sexual abuse and his relationship with Epstein.

2000-2006

At the dawn of the new millennium, Trump and Epstein’s apparent friendship appeared to be going strong. In 2000, though, the seeds of discontent between the two patricians were planted when Virginia Giuffre, then a teenager working as a Mar-a-Lago spa attendant, was hired away from Trump by Maxwell and Epstein as a masseuse. Giuffre, one of Epstein and Maxwell’s “most well-known sex trafficking accusers,” took her own life in early 2025, The Associated Press said. While her allegations were not part of Epstein’s criminal prosecutions, she has become “central to conspiracy theories about the case.”

By 2002, however, Trump was still singing Epstein’s public praises, describing him as a person who was a “lot of fun to be with” and who “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” to New York magazine.

The next year, the pair connected again for Epstein’s 50th birthday, for which Trump penned a poem written out and formatted to look like the body of a naked woman. Trump, who initially denied The Wall Street Journal’s report on the card’s existence, signed the message “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

In 2004, whatever friendship existed between Trump and Epstein seems to have suffered a fatal blow when both men competed to purchase the enormous Maison de l’Amitie, an exclusive Palm Beach property that ultimately sold to Trump for more than $41 million. Two weeks after Trump obtained the property, Palm Beach police “fielded a tip that young women were seen coming and going from Epstein’s home,” said The Washington Post. Several months later, the local police received another complaint about Epstein, and by 2006 a grand jury had indicted him for solicitation.

2007

Trump finally “severed ties” entirely with Epstein in 2007, allegedly after the then-indicted financier “hit on the teenage daughter of a Mar-a-Lago member,” thereby damaging the “Trump brand of glitz and glamour,” The Miami Herald said. In 2025, Trump insisted that he’d made Epstein a persona non grata for “taking our people” from Mar-a-Lago, and has “long maintained” that his relationship with Epstein ended before the latter’s 2006 indictment, NPR said. But journalists who viewed Mar-a-Lago’s membership log said Epstein’s account at the club wasn’t closed until October 2007, “more than a year after he was indicted and released on bail,” said The Daily Beast.

2010

During a filmed deposition, Epstein is questioned about his relationship with Trump, and asked whether the pair had “socialized in the presence of females under the age of 18?” Epstein demurred from answering the question, citing his constitutional rights.

2015-2019

Now-shuttered media publication Gawker obtained and published Epstein’s infamous “black book” of contacts, as well as the passenger logs for Epstein’s private aircraft, in 2015. Mentioned alongside international notables like Mick Jagger and Prince Andrew, Trump’s name, among others, appeared circled in the book by Epstein’s (since-deceased) housekeeper, “supposedly to identify them as potential ‘material witnesses,’” Vanity Fair said.

The following year, an unidentified plaintiff using the name “Katie Johnson” sued both Trump and Epstein multiple times, alleging the pair raped her in 1994 when she was a 13-year-old aspiring model. The suits were all eventually withdrawn or dismissed, and to date, it is “still not clear who Katie Johnson was, or if she ever existed,” said the San Francisco Chronicle.

In 2019, Epstein was arrested and held on federal sex trafficking charges. In response to questions about their relationship, Trump said he “was not a fan of his” in an effort to “further distance himself from his former friend,” said Rolling Stone. One month later, Epstein would be dead from an apparent jail cell suicide that has provided fresh fuel for Epstein-associated conspiracy theories in the years since.

2019-2024

Trump was reportedly “shocked” at Epstein’s jailhouse death, and “believed conspiracy theories would inevitably follow,” said The Daily Beast. Trump had the “same reaction I did,” former Attorney General Bill Barr said to congressional investigators during a deposition in the summer of 2025. “How the hell did that happen, he’s in Federal custody?”

The following year, Trump surprised observers with an “unusual detour” to offer “warm words” for Maxwell, who had been arrested that past July, the Times said. Asked whether he thought Maxwell might publicly name names connected with Epstein, Trump said, “I haven’t really been following it too much. I just wish her well, frankly.” The remarks “renewed attention” on the Trump-Epstein relationship, the Times said, particularly after the president had “sought to distance himself from the disgraced financier.”

In 2024, just days before Trump was to win reelection, model Stacey Williams alleged that Trump had inappropriately groped and fondled her during a visit to Trump tower with Epstein, whom she was casually dating at the time. “I had this horrible pit in my stomach that it was somehow orchestrated,” Williams said in an interview with The Guardian. “I felt like a piece of meat.”

Now

Since returning to the White House for the second time, Trump has gone out of his way to portray himself as maximally transparent regarding Epstein, even as his efforts highlight the degree to which his administration seems unwilling to act accordingly. Schisms within the Justice Department over the White House's handling of the case quickly threatened to overshadow the administration’s attempts to rerelease tranches of largely-public Epstein-related material to select right-wing influencers. At the same time, the White House’s conspicuous efforts to court a now-imprisoned Maxwell, and her congruent efforts to secure favorable treatment, have only accentuated Trump’s associations with her and Epstein.

In early November of 2025, after weeks of congressional wrangling and dueling public statements, lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee released huge swaths of Epstein-related items, including evidence that the disgraced sex trafficker remained in close contact with many in Trump’s orbit long after he and the president had fallen out. In the aftermath of those revelations, both the House and Senate passed a bill to release the extent of the government’s Epstein documents, with key exceptions for protecting witnesses, issues of national security and other sensitive matters. In a post on Truth Social, Trump confirmed he’d signed the bill into law, but stressed that “Democrats have used the ‘Epstein’ issue, which affects them far more than the Republican Party, in order to try and distract from our AMAZING Victories.”

The sports world was shocked following the recent indictments against an NBA head coach and players over allegations of illegal gambling operations. But while the scope of these indictments seemed unprecedented in professional leagues, there is a long history of sports betting scandals in the United States — and around the world. Some of these date to the earliest days of organized sports, and these types of scandals remain commonplace.

NBA Mafia indictments

In October 2025, the NBA was rocked by one of the largest betting scandals in the history of sports: Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and former NBA player Damon Jones were “among 34 people indicted in connection with two separate federal gambling investigations,” said CNN. The arrests came following a multi-year investigation that spanned 11 states and involved numerous Mafia members, including “members of the notorious Bonanno, Genovese, Gambino and Lucchese crime families.”

The members of these families allegedly “fixed illegal poker games as part of a highly sophisticated and lucrative fraud scheme to cheat victims out of millions of dollars and conspired with others to perpetrate their frauds,” said U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. in a press release. The NBA players involved would “lure unsuspecting victims to high-stakes poker games, where they were then at the mercy of concealed technology” that “ensured the victims would lose big,” Nocella alleged.

The arrests “roiled the league, from players to front offices to agents,” said NBC News. There was additional anger because Jones was “accused of disclosing privileged information to bettors about the injury status of a player.” This is a “very serious situation,” said Indiana Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle during a press conference. A day before the indictments were announced, the team’s “general counsel came down and read us all the regulations on gambling and warned our coaching staff, our players, our support staff about all these different things.”

Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter

Los Angeles Dodgers slugger Shohei Ohtani is considered one of the greatest players in modern baseball, but his interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, was fired by the team in 2024 after an investigation “revealed he sent millions in wire transfers from Ohtani's account to an illegal bookmaker,” said ESPN. Mizuhara eventually “pleaded guilty to bank fraud and filing a false tax return,” admitting to filing nearly 19,000 illegal bets that involved stealing nearly $17 million from Ohtani. He is currently serving a 57-month prison sentence.

The bookmaker, Matt Bowyer, was “sentenced to just over a year in prison, a result that gave him an odd bit of freedom,” said NPR. When it came to Mizuhara’s bets, there “had to be zero handicapping on what he was picking, and the parlays were just long shots. I mean, you might as well just take 10 grand and light it on fire,” Bowyer said to NPR. Ohtani himself was never implicated in the scandal.

Phil Mickleson

Like Ohtani, Phil Mickelson is considered one of the greatest players ever in his respective sport, golf; he is one of only 17 players to win at least three of the four major golf tournaments. But a 2023 book alleged that Mickelson “bet more than $1 billion on football, basketball and baseball over the past three decades,” said ESPN. One of his bets even involved a “$400,000 wager on Team USA in the 2012 Ryder Cup in which he participated.”

The book, “Gambler: Secrets from a Life at Risk,” was written by famous sports gambler Billy Walters. Mickelson “made a staggering 7,065 wagers on football, basketball and baseball,” with losses totaling nearly $100 million, according to an excerpt from the book. In 2011 alone, Mickelson “made 3,154 bets — an average of nearly nine per day.”

Mickelson had previously admitted to struggles with sports gambling, writing on social media that he was “so distracted I wasn’t able to be present with the ones I love and caused a lot of harm.” But Mickelson also “denied the claims he tried to bet on the 2012 Ryder Cup,” said CNN.

Pete Rose

Pete Rose is indelibly linked to the Cincinnati Reds, helping make the Big Red Machine one of the best dynasties in baseball history. But unlike other superstar-caliber players, Rose isn’t found in the National Baseball Hall of Fame; in the early 1990s, he “came under scrutiny by the league for allegations over placing bets on baseball after several betting slips belonging to Rose were found in an Ohio restaurant,” said The Sporting News.

As the controversy grew, Rose remained adamant that he did not bet on baseball games. This came even as an independent report “ultimately found evidence to indicate Rose gambled on baseball while he was a manager of the Reds, including while he was a player-manager,” said The Sporting News. Rose was eventually declared permanently ineligible for the Hall of Fame.

Years later, Rose finally admitted to the gambling, revealing that he “bet on the Reds ‘every night’ while he was manager of the team,” said ESPN. Rose died in 2024 at the age of 83, and MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred removed him from the ineligible list for the Hall of Fame, reportedly at the insistence of President Donald Trump. Rose “will have an opportunity in two years to be inducted,” said PBS News.

Paul Hornung and Alex Karras

Two of the best football players of the early NFL, Paul Hornung and Alex Karras, were suspended for “betting on league games and associating with gamblers or ‘known hoodlums,’” said The New York Times in a 1963 article. Hornung, a star halfback for the Green Bay Packers, was accused of a “pattern of betting and transmission of specific information concerning NFL games for betting purposes,” while Karras, a star defensive tackle for the Detroit Lions, had allegedly “made at least six significant bets on league games since 1958.”

It was revealed that at least “five members of the Detroit Lions bet $50 apiece on the Green Bay Packers to win the NFL championship,” said Time, revealing a wider-scale scandal than previously thought. Both Hornung and Karras served one-year suspensions from football. Hornung “returned to help the Packers win NFL championships in 1965 and 66,” said CBS Sports; Karras was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2020.

Chicago Black Sox

There is perhaps no greater encapsulation of a sports scandal than this one. Given the scandal, involving the 1919 Chicago White Sox, occurred over a century ago, the exact details are unclear. But “one central and indisputable truth endures: Talented members of that White Sox club conspired with professional gamblers to rig the outcome of the 1919 World Series,” said the Society for American Baseball Research.

Eight players on the team, who were nicknamed the Black Sox by the media, were originally implicated in the scandal, most notably baseball legend Shoeless Joe Jackson. In court, prosecutors claimed that each of the players was “promised up to $20,000 to throw games and possibly the entire series,” said the Chicago History Museum.

A grand jury indicted the players on charges of conspiracy to defraud. But when the case went to trial, the jury “acquitted the players on all charges,” said the Chicago History Museum, and “no other charges were ever brought about for anyone else involved in the scandal.” The players were eventually banned from baseball and the Hall of Fame, but their eligibility was reinstated alongside Pete Rose’s.

The Duke of York has been marched down the honours hill, and persuaded to give up his royal titles after continued accusations about his association with the sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein.

It is a remarkable fall from grace for the late Queen’s favourite son, who was once second in line to the throne and widely feted as a Falklands War hero. Here’s how he went from popular prince to public pariah:

1999: first meets Epstein

Andrew is introduced to Epstein by Ghislaine Maxwell. The British socialite, daughter of press baron Robert Maxwell, was Epstein's girlfriend at the time and had met Andrew when she was at university.

The trio quickly develop a “close friendship”, according to The Independent. Andrew is said to have invited the couple to Balmoral, his mother’s Scottish residence, that same year. In June 2000, Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell are guests at a party hosted by Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle and, that December, Epstein joins Andrew at a shooting weekend at Sandringham, the royal family’s Norfolk estate.

2001: infamous Virginia Giuffre photo taken

According to Virginia Giuffre, then known as Virginia Roberts, this is when she first meets Andrew. In a lawsuit filed in 2019, she said that, after a sweaty night of dancing at London’s Tramp nightclub, Andrew had sex with her at Maxwell’s townhouse – where the now-infamous photo of the three of them was allegedly taken. On two other occasions – in Epstein’s New York flat and at an “orgy” on Epstein’s private Caribbean island – she is forced to have sex with Andrew, she alleged. At the time, she is 17, and a minor under US law.

2008: Epstein jailed for sex offences

Epstein is charged by Florida prosecutors with “soliciting prostitution” and “soliciting prostitution with a minor”. He pleads guilty, after making a controversial plea deal that gives him immunity from other federal sex abuse charges, and is sentenced to 18 months in prison.

2010: Epstein released

Shortly after Epstein’s release from prison, Andrew is photographed walking with him in New York’s Central Park. Andrew later claimed his sole purpose in meeting Epstein then was to end their friendship.

2015-2016: Andrew linked to Epstein in court documents

In 2015, Buckingham Palace denies “any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors” on the part of the prince, after he was named in US court papers related to an Epstein legal case.

A year later, Andrew is again named as part of a defamation suit brought by Giuffre against Maxwell, with Giuffre claiming she was paid $15,000 (£11,180) to have sex with the prince. But these court documents are sealed, and not released until 2019.

2019: Epstein dies; Newsnight interview

In August, the court documents from the Giuffre v Maxwell case are unsealed on public interest grounds. The next day, Epstein is found dead in the New York jail cell where he had been awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. He has apparently committed suicide.

In November, Andrew gives a wide-ranging interview with BBC Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis. He says he has "no recollection" of ever meeting Giuffre, and could not have sex with her in March 2001 because he was at Pizza Express with his daughter on the day in question. He also refutes Giuffre’s description of him sweating while dancing because, he said, he has been unable to sweat since serving in the Falklands War.

The interview is widely seen as disastrous. Four days later, Andrew announces that he will be stepping back from public duties,

2021-2022: Giuffre sues; royal status downgraded

In August 2021, Giuffre files a civil suit against Andrew in the US, alleging that she was forced to have sex with him in the early 2000s. Andrew’s status as a member of the royal family is downgraded in early 2022, after a US judge rules that the case can go ahead. Andrew is stripped of his military affiliations, his royal patronages and the use of his HRH title, after more than 150 veterans write to the Queen.

In February, Andrew settles the civil case brought against him by Giuffre with an out-of-court payment of £12 million but no apology and no admission of liability.

2025: Guiffre dies; Andrew gives up titles

In April, Giuffre dies by suicide, aged 41, at her farm in Western Australia. In a statement, her family say that “she lost her life to suicide, after being a lifelong victim of sexual abuse and sex trafficking”.

In October, the Mail on Sunday publishes a newly unearthed email proving that Andrew continued contact with Epstein after the 2010 New York meeting at which he’d claimed to end the friendship. The mail, dated 28 February 2011, says “we are in this together”. The BBC says the allegations are “intensely damaging” for the prince.

Just days later, after a “discussion” with the King and the Prince of Wales, Andrew gives up the use of his Duke of York title, as well as all his other remaining honours, including his membership of the Order of the Garter. It’s understood that he will not attend royal family events over Christmas. For the time being, he will continue living at Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park.

In Giuffre’s memoir, published posthumously in late October, she claims that Andrew considered it “his birthright” to have sex with her. The release of the memoir adds to the “air of gloom at Buckingham Palace, which has tried to distance itself from Prince Andrew” and “heaps further pressure on the institution of monarchy”, said ITV News.

The Conservatives used their annual party conference to outline key policies they would implement if they were elected.

New economic ‘golden rule’

Kemi Badenoch’s keynote speech confirmed a new “golden rule” designed to cut government borrowing and taxes. Half of all savings in any future Tory government would go towards reducing the gap between spending and tax revenues, and the other half would fund economic policies such as tax cuts.

Stamp duty

The party will abolish the “unconservative” stamp duty tax that people pay when buying a property. The “surprise announcement” from Badenoch yesterday was “warmly welcomed” by conference attendees, said Sky News, and would be paid for by £47 billion of planned spending cuts.

Young buyers’ tax rebate

A £5,000 tax break would be offered to young people who get their first full-time job, to put the money towards a deposit on their first house. Funds would be “diverted” into a “long-term savings account”, said ITV News. But it isn’t yet clear what would happen for first-time workers “not looking to buy a home”.

Sentencing Council

Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said the Tories would scrap the Sentencing Council, described as “not fit for purpose”, in favour of offering ministers the power to issue guidelines to English and Welsh courts. Former Tory ministers “expressed disbelief” at the plan, said The Guardian. Ex-attorney general Dominic Grieve said it was “bonkers”.

Energy bills

A future Tory government would cut energy bills by 20% by axing the carbon tax and wind farms. The party has promised the measure would save the average family £165 a year, while there are also plans to scrap Great British Energy – a Labour initiative.

Digital addiction is a broad term for unhealthy behaviors related to spending too much time on the internet, in particular when a person cannot stop these behaviors despite experiencing negative consequences. The addiction can take many forms and is becoming more common.

The basics

Digital addiction can come in many forms, including excessive interaction with social media, internet gaming, online gambling, online shopping and online pornography. As with gambling and pornography, the internet can amplify addictions by increasing accessibility. Some people can be especially vulnerable to falling into digital addiction, like “those with high levels of internet use for socialization, education and entertainment,” said Psychiatry.org.

Those who struggle with digital addiction may “compulsively” feel the urge to check notifications or need to “spend increasing amounts of time online to achieve satisfaction,” said Northwestern Medicine. They may also tend to lose track of time while on the internet and feel “restless, moody, depressed or irritable” when attempting to cut back on phone or internet usage.

Addictive by design

It is not surprising that the internet has become so addictive. After all, it was designed that way. Many social media apps use what is called the Hook Model to keep users on their apps. In this model, the app will first trigger a person to interact, like with a notification. This, in turn, will prompt someone to enter the app. Then, the app will use a variable reward system to prompt a user to remain there. “Even if users open a social media app because of a notification, they’ll likely engage with other parts of the app as they seek additional rewards,” like endless scrolling content, said ADDitude. In a vicious circle, the users will like, save and share content that gives the app’s algorithm knowledge about what keeps them hooked.

Another way websites and apps keep people hooked is through gamification, which turns internet interactions into a game. Social media is not the only area of the internet using gamifying techniques; online shopping also employs the method. The way the shopping app Temu prices and promotes products is “deliberate,” with the company “pushing the exact consumer psychology buttons necessary to keep shoppers shopping,” said the BBC. “Customers are encouraged to keep shopping with the introduction of bonuses and coupons that mimic the rewards you might accumulate in a video game.”

Population problem

While some populations use the internet more than others, digital addiction is “not limited to a specific demographic group, and it is increasing across diverse populations,” said Psychiatry.org. More than 50% of Americans believe they are addicted to their phones, and up to 60% of teens show signs of cell phone addiction, according to research from 2024. In addition, at least 10% of American social media users are addicted to it.

Teens and young adults are some of the groups most addicted to the internet, but there has also been a stark rise in addiction for baby boomers. A recent report found that approximately 50% of the mostly baby boomer–polled sample “reported spending more than three hours daily on their smartphones” and “roughly 20% spent more than five hours per day,” said Newsweek. This suggests that a “notable portion of the Baby Boomer generation exhibits patterns associated with digital addiction,” the report said.

The consequences

Digital addiction can significantly affect a person’s mental health. Excessive internet use can lead to anxiety and depression, exacerbated by the isolating nature of the addiction. It can also cause “dishonesty, anxiety, aggression and mood swings,” said the Addiction Center. Digital addiction can affect physical health as well and lead to “body aches, carpal tunnel syndrome, insomnia, vision problems and weight gain/loss.” In the worst cases, it can lead to suicide.

Teens, in particular, “may frequently fall behind on schoolwork, stay up late and fight with parents,” said ADDitude. Adults may neglect their jobs and other responsibilities in favor of spending time on the internet, which could lead to unemployment and even homelessness. Those with ADHD may also “spend more time on digital media and have more severe symptoms of problematic internet use” compared to those without the diagnosis.

AI and addiction

The rise of AI may also be exacerbating digital addiction and potentially leading to worse mental health problems. Chatbots like ChatGPT have led many to psychosis by feeding delusions and offering unsound medical advice. A new subset of digital addiction, known as AI addiction, has become prevalent. Those who identify as AI addicts tend to use AI applications for extended periods “despite attempts to control or cut back,” said Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous. They also reported finding that their “sense of validation and emotional regulation” was tied to their use of AI models.

Still, AI may eventually lead to a decrease in digital addiction. The internet is “already so woven into every part of our lives that going cold turkey is pretty much impossible,” said The Atlantic. But the “internet’s new era may push AI skeptics to spend less time online, while another group ramps up their AI-mediated screen time.” The prevalence of AI may make people turn to the real world again, viewing it as more trustworthy. “Where going online once evoked a wide-eyed sense that the world was at our fingertips, now it requires wading into the slop like weary, hardened detectives, attempting to parse the real from the fake.”

Preventing addiction

The key to keeping internet use healthy is to establish balance, boundaries and communication, according to Psychiatry.org. Families should “consider approaches ensuring children get adequate sleep, daily physical activity, time for play and reading and discovery, time with people they care about and time to focus on learning without multitasking.”

Adults could track their screen time and try to match it to time spent off-screen. “If you have an hour online, spend an hour outside or an hour reading a book,” Lisa Strohman, a clinical psychologist and the author and founder of the Digital Citizen Academy, said to NBC News. “You want to make it at least equal to the time you’re spending on your phone.”

If you find that your internet use is affecting your life or you are unable to stop, consider addiction therapy. Therapy can “help uncover the underlying issues that may be contributing to your addictive behaviors,” said the Addiction Center. This is important if digital addiction is occurring alongside another mental illness.

Each generation develops its own dating mores, lingo and modes of operation. When two Baby Boomers were in a long-term relationship, for example, they were “going steady,” a term that seems to have no meaningful analogue today. Today’s retirees might have a particularly hard time understanding what their grandchildren are talking about, given how much contemporary dating culture is both produced and reinforced by the apps that nearly everyone uses to meet their significant other these days.

Beige flag

Everyone knows what a red flag is — maybe it’s someone who has completely lost custody of a child from a past relationship, or doesn’t exist on the Internet at all. For Gen Z, a beige flag is more innocuous. It could be someone offering a cringe or basic answer to a dating app question, or someone who owns the entire DVD set of “The Big Bang Theory.” But we should be careful not to throw too many beige flags and in the process “overlook the beauty of embracing our partners’ quirks,” said The New York Times.

Benching

Benching should be familiar to older generations as a form of “taking a break,” as in the famous Ross-and-Rachel episode of the 90s-era sitcom “Friends.” But in this case it’s unilateral — one person pressing pause on a relationship because the other “may have done something you don’t like or that has upset you” but not ending it altogether, said Essence.

Breadcrumbing

To breadcrumb someone means to give them just enough attention and communication to keep them interested in pursuing a relationship but not enough to move things forward in a meaningful way. It’s not considered a very nice thing to do because “people who have been breadcrumbed tend to feel more lonely, more helpless and less satisfied with life,” said Psychology Today.

Cuffing season

Cuffing season is the “time when many people think more deeply about romantic connections as the year winds down,” said Hinge. The term is derived from “handcuffs,” which is perhaps not the healthiest metaphor about the consequences of getting into a long-term relationship. But the idea has nevertheless taken hold with younger dating cohorts. It refers loosely to the period between Halloween and Valentine’s Day, when much of the Northern Hemisphere is cold or at least chillier than usual and when people seem to crave companionship more than usual.

Cushioning

To employ cushioning means to be dating one main person with one or more people to fall back on so you don’t get hurt. The cushion is a metaphor for a soft landing. While the technique could be employed in bad faith, it also “​​can potentially be a good thing if you’re not sure where you stand in a relationship,” said Men’s Health.

Freak matching

Are you someone who is completely obsessed with the idea that the American Deep State might be hiding a secret cache of classified information about the 1937 disappearance and presumed death of aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart? If it’s important enough to you that you seek other Earhart Truthers in a romantic partner, you’re engaging in freak matching. A recent survey showed that almost 40% of respondents have “connected with someone based on this kind of offbeat compatibility,” said Vice. Bonding over shared dislikes, on the other hand, is known as “grim keeping.”

Ghosting

To ghost someone means to disappear from a relationship abruptly, with no explanation and no effort to help the other person understand why. It’s widely considered cruel and cowardly, especially because it “can lead people to question their self-worth and value as a human being,” said The New York Times.

Groundhogging

Named after the beloved 1993 Bill Murray time-loop comedy, groundhogging means to seek out the exact same type of person in a relationship over and over again — even after repeated failures or disasters. This common behavior means that you’re “stuck somewhere between a largely unsuccessful pattern and the fear of trying something new,” said The Independent.

Ick

To give someone “the ick” is to accidentally drive them away with behavior that they find gross, off-putting or cringe. This often happens for a “reason that seems pretty innocuous,” said Parents. In the 2024 Netflix comedy “Nobody Wants This,” for example, Joanne (Kristen Bell) gets “the ick” when Noah (Adam Brody) goes way over the top in an effort to impress her Mom (Stephanie Faracy). Joanne gets over it, but not everyone does.

Kittenfishing

If “catfishing” is creating an entirely fake profile to lure someone into a relationship or scam (or to get a job), “kittenfishing” is the milder version. It means to stretch the truth about certain elements of a dating profile to make yourself look better. It “involves minor stretches of truth or sugarcoating the reality of things,” said The Knot. One example: claiming to hold a job title that is higher-status than the one you have.

Love bombing

A love bomber is someone who is too much, too soon — blitzing a new love interest with texts and requests to hang out, and making florid declarations of love when most people are still trying to figure out if and how they fit together. This could describe someone who is well-intentioned but overbearing. It is more often “considered to be an abuse tactic, wherein one person showers the other with affection, compliments, gifts and attention in order to gain their trust and control or manipulate them,” said Cosmopolitan.

Orbiting

Orbiting refers to an ex who has stopped seeing you or communicating with you in the real world but who nevertheless follows and occasionally interacts with you on social media. It’s confusing behavior for the recipient because it raises the question of whether or not the person is still interested in you. For the orbiter, “checking an ex-love’s social media profiles can provide dopamine boosts, acting as a reward for curiosity,” said Forbes.

Roommate syndrome

A tale as old as romance is the charged magic shared between a new couple vanishing as soon as they move in together or marry. The term refers to relationships that begin with a “lot of passion and exciting intimacy” that often “fades over time as the rigors of life kick in,” said The Gottman Institute.

Slow fade

“The slow fade of love/its soft edge might cut you,” sang Jenny Lewis of the early-aughts alt-rock band Rilo Kiley. Today the idea of a “slow fade” has been seized by younger daters to describe the practice of diminishing communications and get-togethers rather than ghosting someone or explicitly breaking up with them. You’re “disappearing from a former romantic interest's life passively over a prolonged period of time” rather than suddenly, said Self.

Submarining

A delightfully evocative term, “submarining” means to resurface — like an underwater naval vessel coming up to refill its oxygen tanks — in a former romantic’s partner’s life after ghosting or breaking up with them. The person in question typically shows up “with no apology and acts as if no time had passed,” said NPR.

Speculation is rife about what could be in chancellor Rachel Reeves’ much anticipated Autumn Budget.

Reeves will deliver her latest fiscal update on 26 November and there are likely to be “significant changes to wealth and property taxes”, said BDO, with changes to pension tax reliefs and inheritance tax also a possibility.

The chancellor is facing pressures of a fragile global economy and “anaemic” UK growth, said Fidelity, so while everything is just speculation for now, she will be looking for “new ways to raise revenue this year”.

Here is how you can prepare.

1. Hurry up your home sale

There have been reports that property taxes could be reformed, replacing stamp duty, plus capital gains tax could be charged on the sale of certain homes.

It could be worth “pushing to complete before November” if you are currently selling, said The Times, so that you still get the capital gains tax exemption.

2. Top up your pension

Pension rules are often a source of speculation ahead of the Budget, said BBC News, with possible changes such as “tax relief available to savers and the level of the tax-free lump sum which can be withdrawn”.

It is “rarely a bad idea to top up your pension”, said Continuum, as pensions are an “incredibly tax-efficient way to save for the future”.

You could also withdraw more now before any reported restrictions but it’s “really important not to rush in”, said Rest Less, as anyone who takes money out of their pension is putting it into a taxable environment.

3. Boost ISA contributions

There is “widespread speculation”, said Fidelity, that the overall £20,000 ISA limit could be cut for cash ISAs amid a government review.

It “makes sense to make the most of the ISA system as it stands”, said Saga, by making full use of your allowance.

Stocks and shares ISAs “typically return higher growth over time” compared with cash ISAs, but may not be suitable if you may need money in a hurry “or if you’re not comfortable with a level of risk”.

4. Make use of tax allowances

Reeves may have “unfinished business” with capital gains tax, said AJ Bell, having “pushed rates up a bit” in the previous Budget.

It is worth planning how to use your £3,000 capital gains allowance, said Continuum, plus spouses and civil partners can transfer assets to each other tax-free, “letting you benefit from their allowance as well as your own”.

The “easiest way to protect your money” from tax rises is to make use of “all your allowances”, said The Times, including the £20,000 you can put in an ISA, £60,000 that can go into pensions and the £500 that can be earned in dividends outside an ISA tax-free.

5. Consider inheritance tax

Inheritance tax may be another target for the chancellor, having already used the previous Budget to apply the charge to pensions.

If she wants to “target inheritances again”, said AJ Bell, she could either reduce inheritance tax thresholds or extend the “seven-year rule” for lifetime gifts.

Making any “significant gifts” before the Budget could help “secure today’s more generous rules”, said Clarke & Wright, but “be strategic, not hasty” as acting too quickly could cause tax charges and “leave you short of funds you may need in the future”.

6. Don’t panic

Any changes may not be “implemented immediately”, said CheltenhamIFA, so it is important not to panic.

You will usually have time to digest the changes and “carefully consider how you’ll respond”. Plus, it may be worth speaking to a financial planner “rather than making a snap decision”.

It sent shockwaves through Hollywood when Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” was taken off the air following controversy over comments made by the host about the killing of right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk. Many in the industry, citing alleged pressure by the Trump administration’s FCC, called for the show’s network, ABC, to reverse its decision. But Kimmel is just the latest in a long line of television pundits and cable hosts (including Stephen Colbert this summer) who have faced criticism.

Jimmy Kimmel

“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was suspended this month “after comments that he made about Charlie Kirk’s killing” caused a backlash among conservatives, said The Associated Press. The late-night host’s commentary was not about the actual shooting of Kirk, but rather about the right-wing reaction to it. “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said during his monologue.

The comments “led a group of ABC-affiliated stations to say it would not air the show and provoked some ominous comments from a top federal regulator,” said the AP. The decision, made by TV station conglomerate Nexstar, came hours after FCC Chair Brendan Carr “suggested Jimmy Kimmel should be suspended and said, ‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way’” during an interview, said CNN. The decision to ax Kimmel’s show “raised serious First Amendment concerns” among free speech watchdog groups.

Brian Kilmeade

Brian Kilmeade, a morning host on the Fox News show “Fox & Friends,” garnered a barrage of criticism after asserting on-air this month that mentally ill homeless people should be executed. Homeless people should either accept help or “decide that [they] are going to be locked up in jail. That’s the way it has to be now,” said co-host Lawrence Jones during a discussion about a North Carolina woman allegedly murdered by a mentally ill homeless man. “Or involuntary lethal injection or something. Just kill ’em,” Kilmeade replied.

Anger toward Kilmeade didn’t occur “until a few days later, when clips of the comments spread quickly on social media,” The New York Times said. Once the video made the rounds, though, “heavy criticism followed” and “some called for his dismissal.” Amid the uproar, Kilmeade offered an apology days later. He “wrongly said” homeless people should get lethal injections, and apologized for the “extremely callous remark,” Kilmeade said. However, some thought the apology didn’t go far enough and urged Fox to fire him regardless.

Jimmy Fallon

While Jimmy Fallon may be known for his consistently laughing and bubbly personality on “The Tonight Show,” the host came under fire in 2023 after a report from Rolling Stone seemingly documented the show’s problematic workplace. The show has been a “toxic workplace for years — far outside the boundaries of what’s considered normal in the high-pressure world of late-night TV,” said Rolling Stone’s report.

This was due to Fallon’s “erratic behavior, and has trickled down to its ever-changing leadership teams — nine showrunners in the past nine years — who seemingly don’t know how to say no to Jimmy,” said Rolling Stone. The show’s employees claimed they were “belittled and intimidated by their bosses, including Fallon himself.” After Rolling Stone published its story, Fallon reportedly “apologized to his colleagues” during a Zoom call and said he “did not intend to ‘create that type of atmosphere for the show,’” said CNN.

Chris Cuomo

CNN anchor Chris Cuomo was a mainstay on the network for years. But his career with the channel came to an end in 2021 after Cuomo allegedly “aided his brother, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, when the then-governor was accused of sexual harassment,” said CNN. The network fired Cuomo over conflict-of-interest concerns because there was “new information that came to light about his involvement with his brother’s defense.”

After being fired, Cuomo claimed CNN used him as a scapegoat and sued the network because it “repeatedly breached its agreement,” lawyers for the anchor said in a lawsuit. Cuomo became “untouchable in the world of broadcast journalism” because of CNN’s “efforts to tar and feather him.” But Cuomo eventually landed another job and currently hosts “Cuomo” on NewsNation.

Ellen DeGeneres

“The Ellen DeGeneres Show” became a daytime television staple during its 19-season run, with the eponymous host always signing off by urging her viewers to “be kind to one another.” But in 2020, this came crashing down as “DeGeneres and several senior staffers have been accused by current and former employees of fostering a toxic work environment,” said Entertainment Weekly.

The allegations of workplace misconduct and bullying arose at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and crew members were “distressed and outraged over their treatment from top producers amid the coronavirus pandemic,” said Variety. The crew members claimed they “received no written communication about the status of their working hours, pay, or inquiries about their mental and physical health from producers for over a month.” Several years after the controversy arose, in 2024, DeGeneres claimed she “got kicked out of show business for being mean.”

Matt Lauer

Matt Lauer was one of the most recognizable names on television for years as a co-host of NBC’s “Today.” But his career seemed to be irreparably damaged in 2017 after numerous women “identified themselves as victims of sexual harassment by Lauer, and their stories have been corroborated by friends or colleagues that they told at the time,” said Variety. This conduct allegedly ranged from gifting a “colleague a sex toy as a present” to a time when he summoned a “female employee to his office, and then dropped his pants.”

NBC fired the host after the allegations came to light. A later investigation found that the “allegations were credible, but that the conduct in question was never specifically reported to human resources or to senior NBC News executives,” said NPR. But at least one other media individual, former CNN anchor Don Lemon, thinks Lauer could make a comeback despite his conduct. Lauer “can set his own course” in digital news media, Lemon said.

Billy Bush

As a nephew of former President George H.W. Bush and cousin of former President George W. Bush, Billy Bush’s last name already made him famous, and he gained further notoriety as a correspondent for “Access Hollywood” and “Today.” But Bush found himself in the middle of a significant controversy in 2016, when a resurfaced 2005 clip from “Access Hollywood” showed him having a lewd conversation with Donald Trump.

The infamous tape, in which Trump boasts that he can grab women “by the pussy” because “when you’re a star, they let you do it,” also damaged Bush’s image. Bush was suspended by “Today” and soon afterwards fired. But had that tape “leaked out when it actually occurred in 2005, I would’ve been fired for an entirely different reason — killing their cash cow,” Bush said on Rob Lowe’s podcast in July 2025.” Trump “was a protected, revered source. He was a hundred million dollars in profit for NBC.”

Days after Polish and Nato forces scrambled to shoot down Russian drones that had flown into Poland’s airspace, Russian troops gathered in neighbouring Belarus for largescale war games; Indian and Iranian troops also participated. The Zapad 2025 exercises included a simulated nuclear strike. Although they were billed as defensive, analysts said they were designed to intimidate Europe.

In total, 19 drones crossed into Poland last Wednesday. Moscow’s allies claimed that they had strayed there accidentally, but days later, another Russian drone violated Romanian airspace. Warsaw said the incursion was a test of Nato’s defensive capabilities, and invoked Article 4, which brings a threat to the attention of its council. Nato then launched an operation to bolster its eastern flank. Donald Trump said he would impose tougher sanctions on Russia – but only if all Nato members stop buying Russian oil and gas and slap heavy tariffs on China.

‘Chinks in the alliance’s armour’

The sheer scale of the incursion into Poland makes it clear that this was a “calculated escalation” by Vladimir Putin”, said The Daily Telegraph. Emboldened by Trump’s indulgence, he wanted to see if Nato had the resolve to respond. Poland has painful recent experience of invasion and occupation, said The Independent. So its PM Donald Tusk’s warning that the prospect of conflict in Europe is “closer than at any time since the Second World War”, has to be taken seriously: this was the first time in Nato’s history that its member states have had to directly attack Russian forces, albeit unmanned ones.

Fortunately, for all Trump’s vacillations, Nato was still strong enough to answer the call. Yet there are “chinks in the alliance’s armour”, said The Times. Two of its members, Hungary and Slovakia, are “virtual allies of Russia”. And the leader of the US, its most powerful member, treats the Ukraine War as a “business opportunity”. Trump is making European nations buy US weapons to give to Kyiv; now he’s trying to stop them buying Russian gas, to boost sales of US liquefied natural gas.

Warning shots

Ever since Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Western strategists have been asking who the Kremlin would target next, said Mark Almond in the Daily Mail. The consensus was that “small, militarily weak nations on Russia’s border”, such as Latvia or Estonia, would be the target. Yet instead, Putin picked Poland, a country which spends nearly 5% of its GDP on defence – the highest share of any Nato member – and has the third-largest standing army in the alliance, after the US and Turkey.

Does this suggest we are “teetering on the edge of World War Three”? These warning shorts certainly expose our weaknesses, said Edward Lucas in The Times. “The US insists (rightly) that Europe must take the lead in standing up to Russia.” But without it, there is nothing like a unified European alliance. Political stances vary wildly, while even supportive nations, such as France, Spain and Belgium, flinch at the risk and the cost.

Trump’s ‘latest wheeze’

Europe’s Nato powers have more than enough air power to keep the Russians out, said Hamish de Bretton-Gordon in The Daily Telegraph. But they should go further, by establishing a no-fly zone in western Ukraine. This would save thousands of lives; and as a display of power, it could be the “catalyst to get Putin around the negotiating table”.

Nonsense, said Jennifer Kavanagh on UnHerd. Ukraine – in dire straits militarily – has an interest in exaggerating the Russian threat to Europe, to scare the continent into giving more aid. Instead of responding in a bellicose fashion, and risking a wider war, Western leaders should tamp down their rhetoric and “double down on diplomacy”.

Unfortunately, any diplomatic efforts are liable to be scuppered by Trump, said Jason Corcoran in The Moscow Times. His “latest wheeze” – promising to ramp up sanctions on Russia if Nato imposes tariffs of 50% to 100% on Chinese imports – is a “cynical stalling tactic”. He knows that this would be economic suicide for Europe. He is letting Moscow “off the hook, granting Putin much-needed breathing room as the war rages on”.

India’s participation in the Zapad war games, led by the highly respected Kumaon Regiment, has “raised eyebrows” amid signs that the US may be losing a “key ally” in Asia, says Lorraine Mallinder on Al Jazeera. But despite recent tensions over US tariffs, Trump confirmed last week that India and the US were continuing negotiations. Denmark announced on Wednesday that it would buy long-range precision missiles and drones, for the first time, to combat the threat from Russia. “Russia is testing us,” said Danish PM Mette Frederiksen.

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This article appeared in History of War magazine issue 151.

On 2 September 1945, Japanese forces officially surrendered to the Republic of China, ending the brutal occupation which began in 1937. Since the end of the subsequent Chinese Civil War, this victory has been marked separately by the People's Republic of China, and the Republic of China (Taiwan).

In mainland China, the communist government's role in the victory over Japan has been largely overemphasised over the decades, while the nationalist contribution has been downplayed or even extinguished from commemorations.

However, it was the nationalist government, the Kuo-min-tang (KMT), under Chiang Kai-shek, that led the main military campaigns of resistance against the Japanese and formally accepted their surrender in 1945.

Dissonance over who fought the Japanese harder, the KMT or the communists, or who is properly honoured in war memorials, now extends to the Taiwan question. Since the 1990s the island nation's politics has drifted away from the militaristic KMT and the Democratic Progressive Party now sees Japan as a diplomatic ally.

Meanwhile, China's state-owned media and its adjacent entertainment industry have fused the historical narrative of the war into a unified struggle that echoes the brief accommodation the communists and nationalists reached by 1938.

This has resulted in modern China marking the beginning of the war from 1931, when Japan seized Manchuria, until 1945 – labelling this a 'Chinese people's war of resistance' greater in scope than the previous 1937-1945 framing.

As far as the mainland is concerned, all of China was swept by the terrible ordeal and Japan's crimes are a timeless evil that sullied the course of Chinese history – never mind who was in charge of the government at this time.

The end of Japanese occupation

It took three weeks for the KMT to formalise the total surrender of all Japanese forces and civilians in 1945. Although Tokyo announced its decision to the allies on August 10 it was not until September 3 that Japanese soldiers in China were ordered to lay down their arms and a few more days passed until a formal agreement was smoothed out.

To mark the occasion a nationalist general with a sizeable retinue was sent to the former capital Nanking, still occupied by 70,000 Japanese soldiers. The venue itself was emblematic of modern China's statehood, being a war college for nationalist officers.

The once unrepentant General Yasutsugu Okamura and his staff were seated along a table and signed the act of surrender that was delivered to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek on the same day: September 9, 1945.

Japan's capitulation in China was far from straightforward. By Chiang Kai-shek's reckoning there were 1.3 million enemy soldiers left in the mainland. When the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria in early August it quashed and captured the million-strong Kwantung Army.

An estimated one million Japanese civilians were scattered among China's ravaged cities and 170,000 more soldiers were garrisoned in Formosa. Annexed by Japan in 1895 and subjected to a brutal ethnic cleansing, the fate of this island known today as Taiwan was decided at the Cairo Conference in 1943 when Chiang himself agreed on post-war territorial arrangements with Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt.

The calamity of the war against Japanese aggression, which is how China recognises the conflict from 1937 until 1945, took such a severe toll on the country's population, that there was little to no relief once the Japanese left.

Impact of WWII on China

China began sliding toward a new crisis soon after the KMT finalised a treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union, while allowing 50,000 U.S. marines to land in the north and help repatriate Japanese POWs home.

The economic and humanitarian cost to China during WWII was immense, with 2 million soldiers perishing along with 14 million civilians. Contemporary historians now revise the death toll as high as 18 to 20 million (according to the Library of Congress Asian Reading Room), on par with the Soviet Union's losses during the war. Nonetheless, as soon as the mutual enemy was defeated, the civil war between the communists and nationalists simmered anew.

The communist leader and firebrand Mao Zedong shredded the KMT's tepid announcement of Japan's defeat in mid-August. Rather than the generous reassurance that China would not seek revenge on Japan, as uttered by Chiang himself, Mao blamed the KMT for their lack of co-operation and constant intrigues.

According to Mao, it was the communist forces who kept the Japanese divisions away from southern China's 'free' heartland where 200 million Chinese were spared the horrors of conquest.

This was a bizarre claim to make. In fact, the communists had fought short-lived campaigns against the Japanese in the early 1940s, which mostly took place in central China and the northeast.

Furthermore, the Imperial Japanese Army had reached the southern coast of China by late 1944 and even Hong Kong and Hainan island were seized as early as 1941 and 1939, respectively.

By 1947 the civil war was once again in full swing, despite heroic attempts by the U.S. envoy Gen. George C. Marshall to organise a coalition government.

In circumstances that echo current world politics, the United States was trying to solve the China question by bringing together two irreconcilable factions. Once the communists triumphed, and Mao Zedong and his circle were ensconced in Peking (Beijing) by October 1949, the entire fabric of China's national politics was in tatters.

The reeling nationalists of the KMT rebuilt their state on Formosa and organised a string of small garrisons on outer islands facing the Chinese coast as a primary line of defence for a coming invasion.

In supreme irony, by the early 1950s as the U.S. was extending support for the KMT in Taiwan, retired Japanese army generals were visiting Taipei incognito for briefings with their temporary secret allies.

The coming decades made the Peking-Taipei-Tokyo axis a complicated one. In his final years even Mao Zedong revised his views on Japan and welcomed a restoration of diplomacy. So did his successors, despite constant efforts in China to memorialise Japanese atrocities during the war of aggression, including the controversy surrounding 'comfort women' or the enslavement of women in Japanese-occupied areas.

Since the 1990s, immense monuments and exhibitions have emerged chronicling this painful and dark history, while at the same time Japan became the most reliable foreign investor in the mainland.

This article originally appeared in History of War magazine issue 151. Click here to subscribe to the magazine and save on the cover price!

Most of us could clear out a room by attempting to sing a karaoke rendition of "I Got You Babe" or give a dramatic reading of Jack Nicholson's courtroom speech from "A Few Good Men." But a handful of artists have excelled at both music and acting. For these singers turned actors, performing on-screen is not just something they dabbled in, but rather an entire second career. Some such musicians became arguably more renowned for their movie roles than for their exploits in music.

Cher

Cher rose to fame as one half of the musical duo Sonny & Cher alongside her first husband, Sonny Bono. But in the 1980s, she branched out into serious acting starting with the biographical drama "Silkwood" (1983). She later won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as Loretta Castorini in the 1987 romantic comedy "Moonstruck," a movie that "celebrates the family over the romantic couple" and felt "completely true to people as they are: ridiculous and passionate, in search of answers and solutions, and taking what they can get," said B. D. McClay at The New Yorker. After starring in the 1990 comedy "Mermaids," Cher refocused her career on music and has only appeared in a handful of feature films since then, most recently 2018's "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again."

Doris Day

Doris Day earned her first big hit in 1945 with "Sentimental Journey" and became a huge pop star before starring in film musicals like "Love Me or Leave Me" (1955). She headlined a number of romantic comedies in the 1950s and 1960s, including "Pillow Talk" (1959) and "Send Me No Flowers" (1964). She also starred in Alfred Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1956). Day was "surprisingly effective as the mother who is frantic about her child" in Hitchcock's thriller, said Bosley Crowther at The New York Times. Her final screen credit was the sitcom "The Doris Day Show," which ran from 1968 to 1973. After retiring from acting, she became an animal welfare activist.

Lady Gaga

One of the biggest established music superstars to ever make the pivot into acting, Lady Gaga's feature film debut was in director Robert Rodriguez's 2013 "Machete Kills." She later appeared in two seasons of the anthology series "American Horror Story" — but her big screen breakout came in 2018 when she played Ally in the most recent remake of the Hollywood classic "A Star Is Born" opposite Bradley Cooper. In a "transcendent Hollywood movie," Gaga delivered a "fetching and accomplished debut" playing a waitress thrust into the limelight following a chance meeting with Cooper's jaded country musician, said Owen Gleiberman at Variety. She has also scored leading roles in "House of Gucci" (2021) and "Joker: Folie à Deux" (2024) while continuing to churn out chart-topping albums.

Whitney Houston

Houston was a pop megastar with multiple #1 Billboard hits to her name, including "The Greatest Love of All," when she starred in the smash 1992 romance "The Bodyguard" as Rachel Marron, a pop star who falls in love with her bodyguard (Kevin Costner). A movie "mocked by the critics and loved by the public," said Peter Bradshaw at The Guardian, it was buttressed by the "powerhouse punch of Whitney Houston's showcase musical numbers." While her performance drew some criticism — she was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress — it also helped make her one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood. After starring in the hit "Waiting to Exhale," Houston won an NAACP Image Award for her performance in "The Preacher's Wife" (1996). She died tragically in 2012 at the age of 48.

Jennifer Hudson

Hudson is one of the few stars who launched a career by getting eliminated from a season of "American Idol." Her shocking 2004 exit from the show had fans outraged, and she parlayed that fame into a multi-dimensional career as an actor and recording artist. While her Oscar-winning turn in "Dreamgirls" (2006) predated the release of her first album, she was known at the time for her singing. Her "pure delight to watch" of a performance in a film about a Supremes-esque Motown group called The Dreams meant that viewers could "finally experience the completion of the collective star-making fantasy" of "American Idol," said Dana Stevens at Slate. Hudson has subsequently "received the coveted EGOT for all four major entertainment awards, Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony," said People.

Janelle Monáe

A highly regarded musical artist, Janelle Monáe won a Grammy in 2008 for her song "Many Moons" and later released several acclaimed studio albums. After doing voice work for the animated film "Rio 2," she broke out with roles in the 2016 films "Moonlight" and "Hidden Figures." In the latter, Monáe gave one of several "superb, luminous performances" as Mary Jackson, a member of a "trio of math whizzes" tasked with assisting early NASA space missions in the 1960s, said Stephanie Zacharek at Time. Her performance earned her a Critics Choice Awards nomination, and she scored another for her supporting role in "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery" (2022). She continues to do prolific work in both film and music.

Dolly Parton

Few performers are so successful that they spawn their own theme park with millions of visitors per year. But Dollywood is part of what makes Dolly Parton one of a kind. Beginning with her 1968 duet with Porter Wagoner, "The Last Thing on My Mind," Parton became a country music sensation and one of the best-selling musical artists of all time. She made her feature film debut in the 1980 workplace comedy "9 to 5" and received a Golden Globe nomination for her role as Mona Stangley in the 1982 musical comedy "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas." She also turned in a memorable performance in the 1989 melodrama "Steel Magnolias," a movie that "belongs to its actresses, who have tapped into some fundamental truths about the strength women derive from one another," said Peter Travers at Rolling Stone.

Diana Ross

Motown megastar Diana Ross rose to fame as a member of The Supremes, known for chart-topping hits like "You Can't Hurry Love" and "Baby Love." In 1972, she made her film debut as Billie Holiday in the biopic "Lady Sings the Blues." Ross delivered "one of the great performances of 1972," said Roger Ebert, in part because "she never tries to imitate Holiday, but she sings somehow in the manner of Holiday." She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for the role. While other films she appeared in, like "Mahogany" (1975) and "The Wiz" (1978), were less lauded at the time, they now have devoted followings. Ross also starred in two made-for-TV films in the 1990s, but has otherwise focused on music.

Frank Sinatra

Ol' Blue Eyes was a well-established music star when he moved into acting, and the singer eventually "became admired for a screen persona distinctly tougher than his smooth singing style," said All About Jazz. Starting with lighthearted musicals like "Anchors Aweigh," Sinatra gradually took on meatier roles, including in 1953's "From Here to Eternity." Perhaps his most memorable turn was in 1962's "The Manchurian Candidate," a thriller in which Sinatra plays Captain Bennett Marco, who thwarts an assassination attempt by an unwitting communist sleeper agent. Sinatra here gave a "reasoned and in many ways more mature performance than he has ever done before," said The Hollywood Reporter.

Will Smith

As one-half of the legendary hip-hop duo DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Will Smith had won a Grammy award for the song "Summertime" before launching his acting career on the 1990 sitcom "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." A ratings success, the show led Smith to big roles in studio films like "Six Degrees of Separation," (1993) in which he plays a young conman pretending to be Sidney Poitier's son to insinuate himself into a wealthy, white family.

Smith has been an action star in movies like "Bad Boys" (1995), but has also turned in a number of critically praised dramatic performances, most recently in "King Richard" (2021), as tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams' father. This was a movie about a "fraught but loving family relationship at a pivotal time in all their lives," highlighted by Smith's "poetic physicality" in a "touching turn," said Bilge Ebiri at Variety. Smith won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 2022 for his role.

Barbra Streisand

Broadway star Barbra Streisand made her film debut in 1968's "Funny Girl," an adaptation of the stage musical she also starred in, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Streisand later played the idealistic young leftist Katie Morosky in the bittersweet 1973 romance "The Way We Were," acting opposite Robert Redford as her more conservative love interest Hubbell Gardiner. In that film, Streisand proved herself to be the "brightest, quickest female actress in movies today," said Roger Ebert at the time. She was able to inhabit her "characters with a fierce energy" yet also be "touchingly vulnerable." Streisand has been choosy about her cinematic roles since then, last appearing in 2012's "Guilt Trip."

Special mention for musical stars

In the heyday of the Hollywood musical, a number of stars emerged as staples of the genre, seamlessly blending the roles of musician and actor on and off screen. One of the most successful was Judy Garland, who toured as part of a musical vaudeville act with her sisters before signing with MGM at the age of 13 in 1935. She went on to star in more than two dozen film musicals, including the 1939 cultural touchstone "The Wizard of Oz." Garland was nominated for an Academy Award for one of her only roles in a non-musical; she played Irene Hoffmann, who was convicted by a Nazi kangaroo court, in "Judgment at Nuremberg"(1961). The film offered a "dramatic statement of moral probity," said Bosley Crowther at The New York Times.

A similar trajectory was enjoyed by Bing Crosby. While he was a more established musician than Garland had been before launching his acting career, Crosby is primarily known and remembered for his roles in musical films like "The Bells of St. Mary's" (1945), for which he earned an Academy Award nomination. He was again nominated for his portrayal of an alcoholic, down-on-his-luck actor in 1954's "The Country Girl."

Julie Andrews, who rose to musical stardom on Broadway as a child in the 1940s, struck gold in Hollywood with "Mary Poppins," her 1964 film debut in which she played the titular character, a nanny with magic powers. Her performance was a "signal triumph and she performs as easily as she sings," said Variety. She then starred in the beloved 1965 musical "The Sound of Music" and has since worked in a variety of settings, including television, film and voice work (she was Gru's Mom in the "Despicable Me" and "Minions" children's movie franchises). Incredibly, Andrews is still working at the age of 89.

This article originally appeared in History of War magazine issue 131.
Mark Galeotti is the author of Putin’s Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine, published by Osprey and out in paperback now

For all that he can scarcely walk past a tank or a fighter jet without a photo opportunity of him peering out of the cupola or ensconced in the cockpit, Vladimir Putin is no soldier.

He did his bare minimum reserve officer training at university, being assigned a technical rank of lieutenant, but abandoned it as soon as he could. He shows little sign of understanding the realities of warfare, from strategy and tactics to the unavoidable necessities of logistics.

This is something even Russian soldiers – even before the current war in Ukraine – uncomfortably acknowledge. Once, I was talking to a couple of officers, and when we had got past their inevitable wariness at talking to a Westerner (some drinks helped) it became clear that they had a complex attitude towards their commander-in-chief: at once respecting him as a strong and capable national leader, but at the same time unconvinced he truly understood warfare.

The irony is that, for all but three of the 25 years Putin has now directly and indirectly ruled Russia, he has been at war, declared or undeclared, domestic or foreign. Most of these wars were, in one way or another, victories, especially because they were limited in scale and objectives.

Nonetheless, it seems clear that the lessons Putin derived from them, sometimes accurate but often deeply mistaken, led him to his fateful decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022, and shaped his thinking as to how that should best be done.

The Second Chechen War: 1999 – 2009

When Putin first came to power, the challenge was to fight a domestic war with what he had at his disposal, after at least 20 years of catastrophic military decline. The rebellious Chechen people of southern Russia had in essence fought Moscow to a draw in the First Chechen War (1994-96), and even while still prime minister and president-in-waiting in 1999, Putin was determined to address this challenge.

In September 1999, a series of explosions in apartment buildings across Russia killed more than 300 people. The Chechens were blamed, and this was used to justify a renewed campaign. In October, Russian troops crossed the Chechen border, in a war that would be the making of Putin's reputation as a tough, ruthless and indomitable leader.

Unlike the previous war, the Second Chechen War was backed by massive force, supported by a comprehensive information campaign to justify its brutal methods, and also drew on Chechens willing to fight for Moscow.

This was an ugly conflict, even by the standards of civil wars. The Chechen capital, Grozny, was flattened. Chechen men were rounded up for infamous 'filtration camps', The official death toll was 5,200 Russian soldiers and police and over 16,000 rebels, but estimates of the civilian casualties range from 30,000-80,000.

Nonetheless, Moscow had demonstrated that it had the will and ability to keep its provinces in line. Most importantly, Putin felt he had proven not just that the Russian bear still had its claws, but that the ruthless use of force worked.

So long as he kept hostile journalists out and pitched this as simply a policing action against terrorists and jihadists, then his people would be happy and the West would do little but complain, and wring its hands when Russia presented it with a fait accompli.

The Georgian War: 2008

Chechnya, though, was at least legally part of the Russian Federation. What would happen when Moscow launched an operation abroad? Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili had long been a thorn in Putin's side, with his vehement anti-Russian rhetoric and his eager courtship of NATO.

To Putin – at the time technically just the prime minister, not the president, but still the undisputed master of Russia – Georgia needed to be reminded that it was part of Moscow's sphere of interest, not least to provide a warning to other neighbouring states thinking of challenging the self-proclaimed regional hegemon.

Two break-away regions of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, would be the pretext. Saakashvili was provoked into attacking South Ossetia, Moscow denounced this as an act of aggression and invaded, pushing government forces out of the break-away regions.

From Putin's point of view, this was another triumph. His personal bête noire Saakashvili was humbled and Georgia's drift towards the West halted. He seemed less than concerned with the details, which were rather more mixed.

Of course, Russia was always going to be able to beat tiny Georgia, whose total military amounted to just 30,000 troops, of whom many of the best were serving in the multinational force in Iraq.

However, it turned out not to have been as easy as anticipated, with the Russian offensive dogged by blunders. Half its aircraft losses were to friendly fire incidents, for example, and generals found themselves having to borrow journalists' satellite phones to give orders.

That said, this gave then-Defence Minister Serdyukov and his Chief of the General Staff Nikolai Makarov the opportunity finally to force serious reform on the conservative generals. It was seriously overdue: only 17 percent of the Ground Forces and 3 percent of the Air Force's regiments were combat ready and half the Navy's ships were not seaworthy.

The so-called 'New Look' reforms were meant to create more capable, mobile, flexible and professional forces based on smaller brigades and battalion tactical groups rather than the old divisions. This entailed shrinking the total armed forces by 130,000 men, especially by pruning the top-heavy officer corps (one in three were dismissed), while increasing the proportion of volunteer kontraktniki to conscripts.

These reforms, ironically, possibly even undermined Russia’s capacity to fight a mass war, geared as they were to generating forces able to deploy in small-scale interventions. Many of the reforms have been subsequently reversed since the invasion of Ukraine.

Crimea and Syria: 2014-15

Under Serdyukov and his successor, Sergei Shoigu, real progress was made. However, it was at best partial. In effect, by 2014 Russia had two armies: one which had been quite successfully reformed, largely comprising the special forces and other elite units, and a rump that was still quite some way from the 'New Look' ideal.

Nonetheless, this was enough for the seizure of Crimea following Ukraine's 'Revolution of Dignity' at the start of 2014.

The Crimean Peninsula was strategically and politically crucial to Putin: home of the Black Sea Fleet and something almost every one of his subjects considered rightly theirs (it had been Russian until 1954).

When Kyiv was taken over by a new government keen on getting closer to the West, Putin decided that Crimea ought to be 'returned' and what followed was a textbook military operation. The so-called 'little green men' – Russian special forces – took over the peninsula almost without a shot being fired and it was then annexed.

One would have been hard-pressed to imagine more propitious conditions for such a coup de main: the Ukrainian military was in disarray, the new government was weak, the West did not want a confrontation, and thousands of Russian troops were already present on the peninsula.

It was a genuine triumph, but it was not a true test of the whole Russian military machine. Nonetheless, Putin was to gain an exaggerated sense of Russia's military capabilities, not fully appreciating just how unusual the circumstances were and how far its small scope required the deployment of just the best of the best.

Much the same could be said of the military deployment in Syria from 2015. Faced with the risk that Bashar al-Assad's brutal regime could fall to popular revolt, and also eager to hit back against a West that was trying politically to isolate Russia since its Crimean annexation, Moscow decided on a limited intervention.

In September 2015, Russian combat aircraft flew to their new base at Khmeimim in Syria, in the start of an operation that would see the ruthless use of air power, mercenaries and special forces to secure the regime.

While Syria was the most asymmetric of conflicts, where Russian air power was virtually unchallenged and where the enemy was divided, a militarily prepared and unified Ukraine was able to deny air superiority to its enemy.

This article originally appeared in History of War magazine issue 131. Subscribe to the magazine and save on the cover price!

Forged In War by Mark Galeotti, published by Osprey, is on sale now

This article originally appeared in History of War magazine issue 149.

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, shocked the world. It marked the dangerous new dawn of nuclear weapons, and foreshadowed the horrific potential of World War Three should it ever break out.

The atomic bomb was a catastrophic escalation that preceded the end of the Second World War; however it followed years of escalating conventional aerial bombardment of Japan by the Allies. "If they were prepared to firebomb the country to its knees, why wouldn't they drop an atomic bomb?" historian Iain MacGregor told History of War magazine.

He adds that the firebombing of Japanese cities was the point of no return that made atomic bombing acceptable to the American leadership. "It was just another piece of ordnance."

During the Spanish Civil War, Hitler's Condor Legion devastated Guernica with high-explosive and incendiary bombs. Hamburg, Dresden, Cologne, Coventry and other European cities followed in the Second World War.

In the Pacific Theatre, hundreds of thousands died in Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe and more when incendiary bombs ignited wooden homes into unstoppable firestorms. The crescendo of this devastating strategy came when the atomic bombs Little Boy and Fat Man were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

At the outset of the Second World War President Franklin D. Roosevelt implored the belligerents to avoid civilian casualties when bombing. Yet even as he made this plea, one of the USA's greatest aviation achievements and the eventual bearer of weapons of mass destruction, the B-29 Superfortress, was already in development.

The B-29 strategic bomber

"The strategy would be that machines do the fighting to save a hell of a lot of casualties. That doctrine dominated American policy even before Pearl Harbor," says MacGregor, whose book The Hiroshima Men chronicles the stories of the key figures involved in the atomic bomb.

He also notes the economic significance of an aircraft programme that cost more than the Manhattan Project: "Investing that kind of money meant rejuvenating America's economy.

"The aircraft industry had taken a pounding during the Great Depression. They deliberately made sure to build the plane in middle America, partly for security — no saboteur could get near it — but also because it revived entire regions of the Midwest."

It was two-and-a-half years after the attack on Pearl Harbor that the U.S. unleashed the destructive capabilities the B-29, forced by the blood-soaked Asia-Pacific campaign. During the war, Japan's military culture was ruled by a "suicidal urge", as co-author of Victory '45 Al Murray puts it. This meant any advances towards the Home Islands had a staggering cost.

"The Japanese also believed that the American psyche wouldn't have the stomach for the brutal, attritional warfare needed to get to the Home Islands. The next three years proved them wrong," says MacGregor, noting that the U.S. took more casualties in the first six months of 1945 than in the previous three years combined.

U.S. commanders looked to the B-29 as the weapon that could crush Japanese resistance and minimise Allied casualties. The Americans had outfought Japanese expectations, but U.S. deaths in the Asia-Pacific, rapidly approaching their final total of over 100,000, were making people back home queasy.

"The next jump-off point was an amphibious assault on the Japanese mainland. Military reports suggested that in the first few months there could easily have been a million Allied and four million civilian casualties," says MacGregor. In New Mexico, the world's greatest physicists were secretly working on a weapon of mass destruction that could avoid America's bloodiest campaign yet.

The firebombing of Tokyo

In August 1944 General Curtis LeMay took charge of XX Bomber Command, responsible for the bombing campaign against Japan. He found that the powerful jet stream winds over the Home Islands made high-altitude precision bombing almost impossible. So instead of relying on accuracy, he harnessed the destructive potential of tonnes of incendiary bombs.

This was most terribly demonstrated during Operation Meetinghouse, a large raid on the capital Tokyo on the night of March 9-10, 1945. This bombing raid destroyed vast swathes of the capital and killed over 100,000 people, mainly civilians, more than four-times the estimated deaths during the bombing of Dresden a month earlier.

Meetinghouse was a new and terrible milestone in the destructive capability of air power, leaving more than an ambiguous question mark over the legality and morality of the tactic. "If we lose, we'll be tried as war criminals," LeMay soberly remarked.

Over the following five months, B-29 raids turned 66 Japanese cities to ash. Traditional wood and paper housing erupted into flames across the country. Estimates of the deaths from the bombing campaigns against Japan in the United States Strategic Bombing Survey reports range from 333,000 to 900,000, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

LeMay's use of napalm was horrifically effective, with 56-84 percent of the fatalities caused by burns. Despite the destruction, firebombing proved a failure in forcing the Japanese government to surrender. Unimaginable casualties, and the evacuation of a quarter of Japan's urban population, could not end support for the war effort.

"The Japanese were controlling information so tightly that the population didn't even know they were losing," Al Murray told History of War. "[But] perhaps there was a sneaking suspicion in the backs of their minds that the war wasn't going as well as it could." The Allies needed a more destructive weapon to break the Japanese government's ironclad commitment to fight to the bitter end.

This article originally appeared in History of War magazine issue 149. Click here to subscribe to the magazine and save on the cover price!

This article originally appeared in History of War magazine issue 149.

The border clashes between Thailand and Cambodia in July 2025 originate in the region's colonial era over a hundred years ago. At least 12 Thai nationals and an unknown number of Cambodians were killed during the fighting, according to the BBC. The attacks took place in a disputed region known as the 'Emerald Triangle', which lies between Cambodia and Thailand.

The area is home to the Preah Vihear temple complex, a UNESCO heritage site dating back to the 11th century. Tensions between the two countries persisted throughout the 20th century, and was preceded by French and British colonial interests and interventions in southeast Asia. Tensions on the border escalated during the chaotic periods of the Vietnam War, Cambodian–Vietnamese War, and the Khmer Rouge dictatorship.

Origins of the Thailand-Cambodia dispute

In the early 20th century Thailand was still known as Siam, a kingdom that while under economic control of the British Empire and its unstoppable merchant fleet, had largely preserved its independence. The kingdom spent decades refashioning itself into a modern state, aided in the process by treaties with England and France that agreed on lasting borders.

Having formulated the borders of Indo-China (Vietnam) from the mid-19th century onward, France also wrangled distant Siamese provinces with treaties in 1904 and 1907. Similar arrangements were settled with the British in 1909, which ended years of incursions from the Malayan peninsula, as well as from Burma (Myanmar) in the northwest.

After renaming itself Thailand in 1939, modernisation progressed with the usual characteristics of Southeast Asian countries – foreign investment and centralised government – helped along by the country's location. Its capital Bangkok not only flourished at the mouth of a river delta but also had access to a vast gulf.

The country's interior was neatly bracketed by dense forest and mountains, leaving uninterrupted wetlands suited for large-scale rice cultivation. These advantages gave its borders paramount importance, even during the Second World War. The non-aligned Thai state fought Vichy forces in 1940 in a sudden rebuke to decades of amity.

With as many as a dozen coup d'etats sweeping its government since the 1930s Thailand's democratic tradition is unchanged today: civilian leadership in name only, while former generals enjoy important government positions with the monarchy's blessing. This age-old problem metastasised as the Cold War loomed over Southeast Asia.

By the 1960s, Bangkok's pseudo-military junta, where former generals monopolised the civilian high offices with the explicit backing of the monarch, eagerly joined any arrangement to keep the ongoing war in Vietnam at bay. This meant the unfailing support and largess of the United States.

Thailand was also briefly a member of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and managed to shape the newly minted Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regional bloc that brought it in league with Indonesia, a country that swayed from one alliance to the next depending on its leaders' calculations.

But the 1970s and the victory of North Vietnam in 1975, as well as communists seizing Laos and Cambodia that same year, unravelled Thailand's hedging. By the middle of that decade a refugee crisis almost overwhelmed its eastern provinces as exiles from Cambodia and the fallen Republic of Vietnam arrived by any means necessary.

Isolated and enjoying diplomatic support from China, the murderous Khmer Rouge regime that dominated Cambodia was now a heavily armed menace, and the Thai army had the thankless task of keeping them at bay.

Cambodian–Vietnamese War

In 1979 Vietnam launched a surprise invasion of Cambodia, which created another refugee crisis and replaced the challenge of an unstable regime with a Vietnamese occupation now on Thailand's doorstep.

Just as in the early 20th century, Bangkok preserved its strength and sought compromise. With a communist rebellion snuffed out through amnesty and cash handouts in 1982, heartfelt diplomacy with China became essential.

The re-emergence of a viable Cambodian state in the late 1990s and its modest prosperity was not the godsend Thailand needed. Having grown to the second-largest economy in the region and with its political fault lines unresolved, Bangkok had the twin headaches of rampant drug trafficking on the Myanmar border and a post-war refugee crisis on the Cambodian border.

The independence of the kingdom once known as Kampuchea, later subsumed by French colonialism in the late 19th century, always left endangered borders where rebellion and illicit trade flourished. The risk was always too great for Bangkok to withstand, whether in the primacy of the Chakri kings or today's thinly veiled junta, so the occasional show of force was almost inevitable.

Successive prime ministers cultivated their counterparts in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, including the affable and nepotistic Hun Sen (his son has since replaced him), but the lingering question of the border remained, especially in the romanticised 'Emerald Triangle'.

While neither country sees the status of their border and its landmarks as existential — both have an abundance of arable land blessed by fair weather all year round — the stark ruins of heritage sites like the Preah Vihear temple complex become flash points because of overzealous border policing.

The 2025 border clash

The Royal Thai Armed Forces have sought to contest the 'emerald triangle' region several times in 30 years but have never launched a full-scale war. Prudence has often prevailed because the army is preoccupied with domestic politics in an affluent society.

If revisionism were the cause of the border dispute, it is a very mellowed-down version as neighbouring countries in the ASEAN bloc insist on mediation.

The problem endures as the modern statehood of Cambodia and Thailand demands that present borders be revised, with the view from Phnom Penh favouring international court rulings while Bangkok prefers the historical approach of bilateral agreements. The Thais are sticking to their successful compromises with colonial powers and Cold War rivals.

When cross-border artillery duels erupted in the middle of 2025 the almost quarter-million Cambodian and Thai civilians who fled for their lives hastened a summit organised by Malaysia over a weekend.

When a smiling Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim eventually settled the conflict with vague promises and glowing news coverage it seemed the world breathed a sigh of relief. At the very least, the worst was averted for a time.

This article originally appeared in History of War magazine issue 149. Click here to subscribe to the magazine and save on the cover price!

The natural churn of language from one generation to the next is an inevitability that should be familiar to virtually everyone. Decades ago, young Baby Boomers would describe something cool or unusual as "far out" to their puzzled Silent Generation parents. And today's young adults are largely raised by members of Generation X, who once conveyed their disgust with something gross to their Boomer Moms and Dads by exclaiming "Gag me with a spoon!" Inventing or repurposing language to express the interests, fears, obsessions and aversions of a new generation is therefore nothing new — but it certainly feels like the pace of linguistic evolution has quickened in the digital age. Generation Z, commonly defined as those born between 1997 and 2012, have unveiled a seemingly endless stream of new or altered words and phrases that predictably flabbergast their elders. If you're over the age of 30 and feel like you need a glossary to communicate with your kids or grandkids, you are not alone.

Ate

To say that something "ate" means that it was great. For example, if someone gives a particularly strong musical performance, you might greet them afterward and say, "You really ate that song." "It can also be abbreviated to “they ate” or even 'left no crumbs,'" said Education First.

Bed rotting

If you sit around in your pajamas all day scrolling TikTok and eating Frito-Lay Minis, you are engaging in "bed rotting," or what older folks used to call "lounging" "or lying around." The phrase "deliberately evokes a sense of grossness" and cultivates a "sense of rebellion" against "language surrounding mental health and self-care," said Refinery29. Bed rotters might experience "JOMO," or the "joy of missing out," or more miserably suffer from "brain rot" as they mindlessly consume online content. They also might be staying home as a deliberate choice to avoid spending money.

Big yikes

"Big yikes" is a phrase used in response to "something that's really embarrassing, disturbing or shocking," said Reader's Digest. Using it "expresses a strong sense of cringe, awkwardness or disapproval," said the International Center for Language Studies.

Bussin'

An adjective that means "amazing, fantastic, lovely and cool," the word "bussin'" is commonly traced to a 2021 Tik Tok trend, said Today. "It can also be used as a verb, in the form of "buss," said Parents, and like so many words on this list, "it actually has origins in African American Vernacular English.

Cheugy

"Cheugy" is an adjective that is "used to describe someone or something that's outdated or trying too hard," said The Cut. A high school student named Gaby Rasson is credited with inventing the term in 2013, and it is most frequently applied to dated fashion like skinny jeans and "outmoded trappings of the millennial lifestyle," said Vogue.

Clanker

As social media feeds, college entrance essays and even job applications are filled with same-sounding AI slop, the neologism industrial complex has delivered this wonderfully evocative and versatile word. A "derogatory term for robots that stems from the Star Wars universe," the term 'clanker' has become an all-purpose insult to be hurled at anything that feels like AI but purports to be human, said NPR.

Coworker core

Gen Z seems to take particular delight in highlighting the shortcomings and banality of older generations. "Coworker Core" is another way of saying something is "normie" or indicative of someone with conventional or boring taste. The idea is based on a coworker "who sometimes shows you a meme or video that could be considered" cringe.

Cringe

Another word that Gen Zers will reach for when they want to lob an insult, "cringe" means something that is embarrassing for someone else, a someone who typically is not aware that what they are saying or doing is problematic or dated. It can be applied to a wide range of situations, including a "superstitious email chain from your mom" or accidentally double-tapping an old picture in the middle of a deep dive into someone's Instagram," said Bustle.

Drip

A term for "a cool or sexy trend/style," said Parade, "drip" refers to a person's overall look. If someone is looking particularly good, you can also say that they are "drippin." It "isn't a new slang term, but it has experienced a renaissance in hip-hop over the past few years," said Genius.

Flex

A "flex" is a "showcase of accomplishments and self-promotion," said Forbes. The term is generally reserved for situations in which a person unnecessarily communicates information that makes them look good or highlights an achievement, similar to a "humblebrag."

Glow up

A way of referring to a makeover or transformation, "glow up" can also mean to "go from the bottom to the top to the point of disbelief," said Her Campus. A trend that has emerged in response has been to "glow down," which means to remove the "desire for physical improvement from the center of your life," said The Cut.

Hits different

When they want to say that something is "significantly better than usual or is way better," members of Gen Z will reach for the phrase "hits different," said Urban Dictionary. It is for situations in which a song, article of clothing or food "appeals to you in a unique way," said BBC. For example, we're hoping this article hits different than other efforts to document Gen Z slang.

Menty B

A catch-all term that applies to someone experiencing anxiety or depression, "menty b" is an abbreviated version of "mental breakdown." It has "become shorthand for something less than a full meltdown," said The Wall Street Journal, although some people worry that its overuse risks trivializing the kind of deeper emotional distress that is on the rise for younger people, driven by worries over, for example, climate change and elections.

Mid

A word that expresses disappointment, "mid" refers to "things that are essentially average or slightly below," said The New York Times. "It is one of Gen Z's favorite insults," said Politico, and young people seem to take particular delight in aiming it at the bad taste of their elders.

Neurospicy

As societal awareness of what is now called "neurodivergence" expands, young people have tried to put a more positive spin on the idea by dubbing it "neurospicy." It is a "way of describing a person who experiences multiple forms of neurodivergence," said The Conversation, although the term is not without its critics in the disability rights community.

No cap

Unlike some of Gen Z's other slang innovations, "no cap" isn't an abbreviation or appropriation of existing language. It means "no lie" and "​​often follows an unbelievable statement or serious question," said Bustle. And "if you say someone is 'capping,' then you are saying they are lying," said USA Today.

Pick-me

An adjective that refers to someone who is desperate for attention or positive reinforcement, "pick-me" is most frequently "used to describe a girl who does everything for external, mostly male validation," said CNN. Because of the term's negative connotations, it has generated backlash for being "problematic and misogynistic and has even given rise to an anti-pick-me trend on social media."

Rizz

Oxford's 2023 Word of the Year, "Rizz" is simply a "shortened form of 'charisma'" that "emerged out of internet and gaming culture," said The New York Times. The word "comes from Black cultures, as most American neologisms do" said Vox. Someone with a great deal of charisma can be called a "rizzler."

Sending me

When people want to say that something is cracking them up, they can remark that it is "sending me." The phrase is "the Gen Z equivalent of LOL," said Fortune. And while "there is no official confirmation of where the phrase originated," said The Daily Dot, its frequency of use rose in the "late 2010s."

Stan

Meaning to be a fan or enthusiast of something, "Stan" has its roots in an Eminem song "about a man who was pushed to the edge when his idol wouldn't answer his fan mail," said NPR. While it originally had somewhat negative connotations, today it "can describe any fan, regardless of dedication," and does not necessarily imply obsessiveness, said USA Today.

Sus

Another word that is essentially just an abbreviation for a longer one, "sus" is short for "suspicious" or "suspect." The neologism is traced to the "online game 'Among Us,' in which players try to determine who is an imposter working to sabotage their progress," said Business Insider. Like "mid," it has emerged as a top-tier barb wielded by Gen Zers.

Treatler

When food delivery services exploded during the Covid-19 pandemic, this new word emerged to describe people who don't recognize or appreciate the labor of DoorDash or Grubhub workers (who in this lingo operate "burrito taxis"); treatlers mistakenly believe that their indulgence is somehow more cost-effective than cooking. You are especially vulnerable to being tagged as a "treatler" — a "portmanteau of 'treat' and 'Hitler'" — if you "post online about your dissatisfaction with a gig worker," said The Standard.

Understood the assignment

If you do what you are expected to do, you have "understood the assignment." It is a "popular way to praise someone who is going above and beyond to do a good job," said Yahoo. It can also be a way of making a comparison, like someone on the political left saying that voters who cast a ballot for Kamala Harris in 2024 despite reservations about her position on the war in Gaza "understood the assignment."

Vibe

A vibe is "the overall atmosphere or feeling of a situation, person or place," said Forbes. The word is typically modified to be a phrase, including the "vibes are off" as a way of saying that someone does not feel good about a situation or development. Especially in its use as a verb to mean "to kick back and hang out, or to get along," the usage is novel, said Oprah Daily.

Yeet

"Yeet!" is something you exclaim when you're happy, excited or surprised. Confusingly, it can also be a verb, meaning to throw or eject something. The term broke into the mainstream after it appeared in a 2020 Saturday Night Live skit "starring Pete Davidson and Timothée Chalamet as rappers who broke a record for most streams on SoundCloud, yelled 'yeet' on repeat," said Today.

This article originally appeared in History of War magazine issue 138.

The Kinmen Islands is a small Taiwanese territory located a few miles off the coast of mainland China, in Xiamen Bay. The largest island is encircled by a sandy shoreline and studded by rocks. The island is 93 miles (150km) away from the Taiwan main island (formerly called Formosa), but being so close to the Fujian coast of mainland China it has historically been within range of communist artillery batteries and surveillance.

The close proximity of the Kinmen Islands to mainland China has placed it on the frontline of several conflicts between the People's Republic and the Republic of China, meaning it could be the target of any future Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

First attack on the Kinmen Islands

In 1949, Republic of China leader Chiang Kai-shek retreated his forces to the island of Formosa (the Chinese name Taiwan was rarely used at this time) after being forced to withdraw from the mainland by the communist offensive.

The defence of Formosa required a perimeter in the form of the offshore islands. Most precarious among these was the fishing community that inhabited Quemoy, or Kinmen.

Since 1948 the reeling Nationalists planned, albeit in haphazard fashion, on withdrawing from the mainland and to scatter their army's veteran divisions among China's coastal or offshore islands. By April the following year it was reported that nearly two million Nationalist soldiers and civilians had evacuated to Formosa.

When the new Communist rulers in Peking (Beijing) declared the People's Republic in October 1949, Mao Zedong was determined to quash every last vestige of the defeated Kuomintang (KMT).

With its ranks numbering in the millions, the People's Liberation Army had its orders and remained on the offensive. The Battle of Guningtou on Kinmen spanned the last weeks of October and was underway once communist troops had occupied Xiamen, the island barely 2.5 miles (4km) from Kinmen.

On 22 October it was believed at least two infantry divisions were prepared for a crossing. By the reckoning of the nationalists this force numbered at least 20,000 Communist soldiers. The amphibious operation was underway from 24 October unpredictable fighting lasted until 28 October.

Contrary to the myth of their limited skill at naval warfare, the Communists reached the shore unopposed and assaulted a spit of rock-strewn beach on the island's northern shore: this was Guningtou.

How the battle unfolded on the first day is poorly recorded, although it's known that the nationalists were caught by surprise and initially put up a feeble defence with just machine guns. The communists took appalling losses but, undeterred, moved inland on foot. The close-quarters fighting dragged on until the next day, when artillery from the Chinese coast hammered the defending KMT troops.

Less is known about the communist forces than the nationalists, who were led by trusted veterans of the KMT armed forces such as Chiang Wei-kuo, the adopted son of the dictator Chiang Kai-shek. As an officer in the Nationalist army who had trained in Germany and commanded a tank unit, he utilised what little armour could be mustered to scatter the Communists.

Another stalwart who joined the battle was no less than General Hu Lien, who had served the KMT since the 1930s and had arrived on the second day of hostilities. Communist troops had almost overrun the village of Guningtou and were halted by the timely appearance of Lien's 12th Brigade.

The balance of manpower between the communists and nationalists at Guningtou makes for a baffling assessment as both sides had troops to spare. What decided the outcome were tanks and bomber aircraft, neither of which the Communists could bring to the theatre.

In the case of the nationalists these were outdated American-made M5A1 Stuart tanks commanded by Chiang Wei-kuo. Even Wei-kuo's half brother, Chiang Ching-kuo, had a role in the fighting, although this was obscured for the sake of his political career. Having spent his formative years in the Soviet Union as a de facto hostage, he returned to China with a Russian wife and was given a suitable rank in the army.

To their credit the Chiang brothers had a profound influence preparing the offshore islands against fresh invasion attempts and the work continued after 1951 when American advisers were embedded with Nationalist units.

According to Taiwanese accounts the Battle of Guningtou lasted 56 hours. Both sides suffered appalling losses, with the communists coming off worse; their entire invasion force was decimated and some 10,000 stragglers surrendered.

The nationalists' remaining light bombers, flying in from airstrips 60 miles (100km) away, helped scatter the enemy and prevent their evacuation attempts.

For decades this attempted communist landing, memorialised by the KMT regime in Taiwan, was ignored by the Western press and only considered a smaller clash in the long struggle for Kinmen and the offshore islands.

When it was finally immortalised by Taiwan's press as a lasting victory against communism it served to bookend the defeat suffered in the mainland and raise a new 'origin story' for local heroism against invasion. It was a narrative that was acceptable for a Taiwanese citizenry fed with constant warnings about the mainland's designs on their way of life.

American intervention

During the 1950s the Taiwan Strait became the Cold War's deadliest flashpoint and a potential theatre for a nuclear showdown. Since 1949, when the Kuomintang (KMT) retreated to Formosa (Taiwan) and other offshore islands, the communists in Beijing slowly overwhelmed these garrisons. The greatest prize was the capture of sprawling Hainan in 1950 just months before one million Chinese troops, dubbed 'people's volunteers', attacked UN forces in Korea.

By 1951 President Harry S Truman's administration pivoted back to supporting the KMT after its abandonment in the late 1940s. The cherry on top was assigning the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet to sail its aircraft carriers across the strait separating the main island of Formosa from the Chinese coast, which effectively blocked any invasion attempt.

The Truman administration, then the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration later on, maintained a pro-KMT stance with the caveat that fighting would not embroil U.S. air and naval assets in Japan and the Philippines. But this is exactly what happened in the final months of 1954 when Beijing moved its forces from Korea to the coastal southern provinces.

The rationale from their perspective was clear: since 1949 KMT-backed 'guerrillas' – smuggling rings in the offshore islands such as Kinmen – had been blockading China's port cities. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) struck on 5 September with a bombardment of Formosa's island chain: the Kinmen and Matsu clusters. The Dachen, or Tachen Islands, located some 250 miles (400km) from the Taiwan coast, were pummelled into submission.

By January 1955 dozens of U.S. Navy ships organised as Task Force 502 evacuated 30,000 soldiers and civilians from the Dachens in the most brazen American intervention yet. The risk of a crossing by PLA divisions on boats panicked Taipei and the ageing Chiang Kai-shek wanted immediate American reinforcements.

A subtler approach prevailed. In a matter of weeks the superior air and naval resources of the U.S. military reinforced the Kinmen garrison with fresh artillery rounds for 6.1in (155mm) M1 Long Tom and M114 howitzers. A rare gift of the U.S. Army to their Formosan allies were divisional 8in (203mm) howitzers that had the range for hitting mainland China if they were positioned in concrete forts on the Matsus.

Over the years hundreds of U.S. advisers under the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) relocated to Taiwan. The risk to Americans embedded with KMT command staff meant there had to be strict guidelines on decision-making, so the Eisenhower administration wrung a promise from Chiang Kai-shek: there would be no attempts at a counter-invasion on the mainland in order to avoid starting World War III.

What became the First Taiwan Strait Crisis (1954-55) was portrayed by the global press as a high-risk skirmish that ebbed as a result of decisive American intervention. But neither Taipei or Beijing de-escalated in the ensuing years. Both sides grew their militaries, with the KMT fielding between 400,000 to 600,000 troops in its army, including airborne and marine units patterned after their American equivalents.

The remaining offshore islands, Kinmen and the tiny Matsu cluster, were reinforced with tunnel complexes and artillery. Constant surveillance and close calls with enemy aircraft were ever-present. A Mutual Defence Treaty and other obligations allowed the U.S. to deliver hundreds of brand new aircraft, including jets, to Taiwan's Republic of China Air Force.

By the summer of 1958 the intelligence from the Chinese coast set Taipei and Washington, D.C. on edge. The PLA was assessed to have collected almost 200,000 troops and hundreds of artillery pieces in Fujian for an upcoming operation. Its navy had grown by leaps and bounds with new gunboats armed with torpedoes.

Even more troubling was the rise of its air force, with 1,000 new Soviet fighters – the MiG-15 and MiG-17 – and the Ilyushin-28 medium-range bomber. Matters got out of hand once again on 23 August 1958 when coastal batteries hammered Kinmen with 40,000 shells inside 24 hours.

A shaken and injured Defence Minister Yu Ta-wei returned from Kinmen and met with the international press to make Taiwan's case: Beijing was ready to launch a full-scale assault. The 7th Fleet performed its usual mission reinforcing the islands while the ROC Air Force tangled with its rival on the mainland using air-to-air missiles. This time around the pinnacle of U.S. military technology was lavished on Taiwan.

The non-stop shelling of the Kinmen islands lasted 44 days, with the 7th Fleet taking pains to avoid getting within howitzer range as it escorted the resupply missions, while the sky buzzed with Taiwanese Saber jets. Aerial clashes with Chinese MiGs began at the start of August and lasted two months (the Cold War's first dog fights involving air-to-air missiles). The siege was lifted by October, but the circumstances remain debatable.

Did Beijing hesitate and order a cessation when its army began to run low on artillery shells? Or did the implied threat of nuclear attacks on Chinese airfields serve as enough warning from the Americans? After all, the deployment of Matador cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads on a Taiwanese air base was a poorly kept secret.

Other contingencies involved tactical nuclear warheads for 8in (203mm) howitzers and the arming the Honest John rockets destined for Taiwan with the same. The PLA continued raining artillery shells on the Kinmen islands. When President Eisenhower visited Taipei in June 1960 the PLA signalled its displeasure with 86,000 shells on Kinmen.

The pattern continued every week, albeit with fewer shells and on select days, for two decades. But the Eisenhower administration encapsulated the Taiwan Strait crises as separate campaigns of Chinese aggression.

The truth was more complicated as the two regimes that once fought a civil war on the mainland continued their struggle in the nuclear age with the world's most advanced technology. But the course of history, as always, took unexpected turns in the following decades.

By the 1960s the Chinese mastered nuclear weapons and secret diplomacy was carried out with the Americans in the years after. On 1 January 1979 the bombardment of the Kinmen islands stopped as Beijing and Washington, DC entered a new era of economic co-operation.

This article originally appeared in History of War magazine issue 112. Click here to subscribe to the magazine and save on the cover price!

Despite Formula 1 being a cultural touchstone for millions across Europe, the sport has historically struggled to gain significant traction in the United States. That has been flipped upside down in recent years. The open-wheel racing organization is gaining steam in the U.S., where NASCAR has long dominated the auto racing market.

Thanks to some key marketing and business decisions, Formula 1 has finally cracked the code on getting eyeballs and market share in the U.S. Crucially, the Netflix show "Formula 1: Drive to Survive" introduced millions of Americans to the sport. But while Formula 1 has undoubtedly experienced an increase in its U.S. viewership, some industry experts say there may be nowhere left for it to go.

How popular is Formula 1 in the US?

Formula 1 fandom in the U.S. has been growing rapidly over the past few years. The 2025 Global F1 Fan Survey, performed by the organization itself, polled Formula 1 fans in 186 countries. Of all of these nations, the U.S. "accounts for the largest share of respondents of any individual country," said the survey.

Younger audiences have largely been pushing this wave of Formula 1 popularity, and in the U.S., at least 70% of Gen Z fans "engage with F1 content daily," said the survey. Many fans seem to enjoy the races not only on television, but also in person. Among all U.S. respondents to the survey, at least "73% plan to attend a US race in the future" and "37% have purchased F1 merchandise."

In all, there are about "52 million F1 fans in America, an increase of more than 10% from 2024," said Motorsport.com. On ESPN, which broadcasts races in the U.S., the network's "live race audience has doubled since 2018 and so far this year there has been a noticeable increase in viewers for the opening five rounds of the championship."

Why has Formula 1 become more popular in the US?

The Netflix series "Formula 1: Drive to Survive" certainly played a role, and has been "credited with everything from helping F1 crack the U.S. to rejuvenating the sport itself," said CNBC. But the "Netflix effect" is only part of the reason why Formula 1 has taken off stateside.

Formula 1 has made inroads in the U.S. due to a "blend of pivotal elements — strategic maneuvers that recalibrated its course, collaborative efforts that enhanced captivating broadcasts and the burgeoning emergence of American talents" in a sport still dominated by Europeans, said USA Today. One notable decision that precipitated Formula 1's rise was the "expansion of Formula 1 races going beyond the United States Grand Prix, growing from two events in 2017 to three by 2023." These circuits "played a pivotal role in enhancing the sport's appeal" and "didn't just host races; they became epicenters of electrifying events."

American companies have also been getting in on the action by partnering with Formula 1 races and teams, creating sponsorships to draw in more fans. Since "2018, the number of American-based partners has more than doubled," said Bjorn Stenbacka of Spomotion Analytics to Motorsport.com. To "see the reach of American brands, Ferrari is a great example." Ferrari's racing division, Scuderia Ferrari, is widely considered the most iconic and popular Formula 1 team in history, and Italy has been the "number one country on its partnership list" from the beginning. But in 2024, the "U.S. passed Italy — a historical switch — and this year, so far Italy and the U.S. are equal."

Today, the team is officially known as Scuderia Ferrari HP after a branding deal with American technology company HP. All of these factors combined have resulted in a major boom in U.S. viewership. The 2024 Miami Grand Prix "attracted the largest live U.S. television audience on record for F1 as an average of 3.1 million viewers watched," said ESPN. As with other races, younger people made up a majority of the viewership; the "audience in the persons ages 18-49 demographic averaged 1.3 million."

Has this popularity plateaued?

Despite Formula 1's obvious U.S. growth, there are concerns that its popularity may have reached its peak. This was especially evident after the 2023 racing season, because while "attendance at live events stayed relatively strong in 2023, American TV ratings tumbled a bit," said The Athletic. The numbers increased in 2024, but there are still viewership oddities, particularly when it comes to the Miami Grand Prix.

That race "averaged 3.1 million viewers (a record for an F1 event)" in 2024, but "this year the number was about 30% lower, though that still makes it the year's most viewed race," said Bloomberg. However, there may be a simple explanation for why Formula 1 saw a tapering off: a lack of competition on the course.

This is largely because of the on-track supremacy of Max Verstappen. The 27-year-old Dutch-Belgian phenom has become a dominant force driving for Red Bull Racing and has become the face of Formula 1. Throughout 2023 and 2024, there was "consternation within the sport that Verstappen's stranglehold on the competition could jeopardize F1's hard-fought expansion of its U.S. fan base," said Front Office Sports. Verstappen drove to victory so regularly (particularly in 2023 when he won 19 out of 22 races) that any race he is a part of is "never going to be the best to watch, and the only exciting races have been the ones that Max is not in," said McLaren driver Lando Norris.

But while Verstappen dominated in 2023 and 2024, his 2025 has been far less successful, and he has only won two Formula 1 races in the first half of the year. This means that the races are getting more competitive and as a result, viewership could rise again. Verstappen's "lack of dominance has been a positive development toward making the sport feel less formulaic," said Bloomberg. And a tapered fandom could be burst wide open if an American were to see the kind of on-track successes that Europeans do.

If "you do get a U.S. driver and they are flamboyant, loud and successful, which is the most important piece, it could unlock a new level of viewership," John Suchenski, ESPN's senior director for programming and acquisitions, told Bloomberg. "I don't think it's necessary for the sport to thrive, because it does well with these international stars and the teams' brands are so strong, but it's an opportunity for growth if it were to happen."

The odds that an American driver dominates Formula 1 are probably low. A U.S. driver has not won a Formula 1 race in nearly five decades — Mario Andretti was the last to do so in 1978. While 58 American-born drivers have participated in Formula 1 races, the sport does not currently have any drivers born in the United States.