President Donald Trump may allow the United States’ last remaining nuclear arms control treaty with Russia to lapse. The New START agreement runs out on Feb. 5, but “if it expires, it expires,” Trump said to The New York Times. If the agreement, signed in 2010, is not renewed or replaced, it would leave the world’s two biggest nuclear powers “free to expand their arsenals without limit, for the first time in half a century.” The two nations have about 87% of the world’s nuclear warheads. 

What is New START? 
The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty is a series of bilateral nuclear arms control treaties between the U.S. and Russia, which began with START I in 1991. It aims to limit and reduce the number of nuclear weapons held by both countries. 

Will it be replaced? 
Moscow and Washington haven’t “held any talks on a successor treaty,” said Reuters, although there have been some informal statements. In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed that both parties adhere to the limits for an additional 12 months. He also argued that the nuclear stockpiles of Britain and France should be up for negotiation. 

France and Britain rejected that suggestion, and Western experts are “divided” on it, said Reuters. Although it would send a “political signal that both sides want to preserve a vestige of arms control,” it would also allow Russia to keep developing weapons systems outside the scope of the treaty. 

Then there’s China. One U.S. analyst said agreeing to Putin’s proposal would “send a message” to Beijing that Washington would not “build up its strategic nuclear forces in response to China’s fast-growing nuclear arsenal,” per Reuters. 

What does it mean for the world? 
Trump has previously said he would like to pursue “denuclearization” with Russia and China to reduce the “tremendous amounts of money” each nation spends on nuclear weapons. But Beijing’s accelerating nuclear program may push the U.S. to increase its stockpile, said Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research, to Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty. This could lead to a “Cold War-like arms race.”

America’s housing affordability crisis is mostly a supply-and-demand problem: Not enough houses, too many people needing a place to live. President Donald Trump has an unexpected solution. He wants to take on Wall Street.

Trump last week said he would “ban Wall Street firms from buying up single-family homes” to ease affordability issues, said Reuters. Big institutions like Blackstone, American Homes 4 Rent and Progress Residential have “bought thousands of single-family homes” since the Great Recession, and now own about 3% of all single-family rental homes. The threatened move to ban big investors would align Trump with Democrats who have long “criticized corporate homebuying, claiming it has helped stoke housing costs.”

Defending the American dream?
“It’s about time,” said Brian Hamilton at The Hill. Institutional investors own more than 15% of rental housing in cities like Atlanta, Jacksonville, Tampa and Charlotte — a fact that is probably connected to the 55% rise in real estate prices over the last half-decade. The big investors “buy up supply and basically corner the market” in some cities, driving up prices or turning potential homeowners into renters. Wall Street “must be thwarted to preserve and defend the American Dream.”

Big institutional landlords are “not the cause of the nation’s housing crisis,” said Binyamin Appelbaum at The New York Times. The best way to make housing more affordable is to “build more housing,” and that is unlikely to be helped by using private investors as a scapegoat with policy that “reduces investment in housing.” Trump has so far failed to “put forward any meaningful plans to increase housing construction.” 

“Scapegoating investment bankers is always politically popular,” said The Washington Post editorial board. But there is “no correlation” between housing shortages in any given state and its “share of homes owned by large investors.” Democrats have frequently criticized institutional investors, but Trump coming to a similar conclusion may give them space to acknowledge that the blame is “populist claptrap.”

Mom-and-pops still welcome
Trump’s proposed ban has “raised alarms across the real estate investment industry,” said Business Insider. But White House officials say the proposal is “forward-looking” and will not result in a “forced sale of current holdings,” said Bloomberg. The final proposal will be designed to exclude institutional investors while keeping “mom-and-pop” landlords in the market.

Power station staff check solar panels above a lake where local farmers raise fish, in a hybrid project in Tianchang, east China. The East Asian nation is the world leader in renewables and holds more than half of the total installed solar capacity.
AFP / Getty Images

The cooking of Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson at their Los Angeles restaurants, Kismet and various locations of Kismet Rotisserie, is zippy, homey and satisfying. The duo’s 2024 debut cookbook, “Kismet: Bright, Fresh, Vegetable-Loving Recipes,” shows home cooks how to achieve the same effect at home.

Schmear and dip and repeat
Kramer and Hymanson are sauce-and-dip obsessed, which tracks, knowing the pair’s fondness for food of the Levant and Middle East. So the book devotes an entire chapter to the topic.

Tahini sauce is mounded with honeyed kumquats. Or the sesame seed puree is blitzed with Tuscan kale and completed with tangy pomegranate molasses. Or it’s finished with chunks of Castelvetrano olives and Calabrian chiles. On the dip front, there is a smoked trout dip, the fish luxuriating in a base of yogurt and sour cream, and garnished with fresh tarragon and Aleppo pepper. At Kismet, everything is fair game in the name of flavor.

Simple tricks, big results
The book is also filled with plenty of stripped-down recipes that reveal the liberating power of good cooking technique. Kramer makes a case for throwing out the flour and eggs when making latkes and serving them year-round with everything from pickled chiles to loads of dill and basil, and, of course, labneh. 

Even garlic gets the Kismet rethinking. The pair notes that a finishing touch of raw garlic grated on a Microplane grater provides "pleasant sharpness and earthy funk.” A fine truth — and an apt alternate subtitle for the book.