President Donald Trump will host DRC President Félix Tshisekedi and Rwandan President Paul Kagame at the White House to sign the US-brokered Washington Accords for Peace and Prosperity, advancing a June agreement to end decades of conflict in eastern DRC amid recent ceasefire violations and M23 rebel advances. The deal includes Rwandan troop withdrawal, FDLR militia disarmament, and economic cooperation on minerals like cobalt and copper to attract Western investment, though the DRC insists on security steps first; separately, civilian representatives from Lebanon and Israel held their first direct talks in 40 years, focusing on ceasefire implementation, Hezbollah disarmament, Israeli withdrawal from five outposts, and initial economic projects like reconstruction in southern Lebanon under US mediation. Hopefully both situations actually resolve themselves as a consequence of diplomatic arrangements, since the violence has had tremendously negative consequences for the people in these locations respectively.

The Gulf Cooperation Council rejected the use of force or threats against any member state during its 46th summit in Manama, Bahrain, declaring that any infringement on a member’s sovereignty poses a direct threat to collective security. The bloc specifically condemned Israeli strikes on Syria as a blatant violation of Syrian sovereignty, territorial integrity, and international law, including UN resolutions, while criticizing Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights, settlement expansion, and control of the border buffer zone as undermining regional stability. Increasingly it appears that survival requires cliquing up, so it seems useful for the Gulf countries to stand in unison and disavow the chaotic and dangerous behavior of the Israeli government.

Developing countries face a record $415.4 billion in debt servicing costs for 2024, with the gap between repayments and new financing reaching a 50-year high of $741 billion from 2022 to 2024, pushing 54% of low-income nations into debt distress or high risk amid rising bond rates near 10% and a 76% drop in bilateral lending. Indonesia committed $1 billion in initial capital over seven years to the BRICS-led New Development Bank upon fully joining as the 10th member in January 2025, aiming to fund sustainable projects and expand ties with Global South nations, while Serbia weighs membership to access similar development financing opportunities. BRICS is perhaps the most important development of the last twenty years, as the construction of the multipolar world truly hinges on dismantling the banking cartel that emerged from the post-WWII consolidation of economic and bureaucratic power.

The New York Times recently filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and spokesman Sean Parnell in US District Court, challenging October 2025 press restrictions that require journalists to sign a 21-page form pledging not to report unclassified information without authorization or seek story tips independently. The policy, which led outlets like the Times and NPR to surrender credentials, grants officials broad discretion to revoke passes, favoring pro-Trump influencers while hindering independent coverage and due process. If we don’t rigorously protect our rights, they will erode over time, so it is important to push back against any government regulations that restrict the public’s ability to understand and critique the behavior of government officials and agencies.

Eleven local governments including Boston, San Francisco, and Santa Clara County, plus nonprofits like the National Low Income Housing Coalition, sued HUD in the US District Court for Rhode Island over November changes to Continuum of Care grants that rescind prior approvals and cap permanent housing funding at 30%, shifting two-thirds to temporary programs and introducing a points system favoring Trump administration priorities on gender, immigration, and diversity. The revisions, issued weeks before fiscal 2025 deadlines, could displace 170,000 people, create funding gaps like $33 million in Santa Clara risking 1,800 households, and shutter programs by January, including Eastern Iowa’s Friends of the Family nonprofit that aids 80–85 domestic-violence-survivor families with $1 million in annual support.

Bloomberg Philanthropies and the City Fund launched a $20 million initiative to establish K-12 charter schools on HBCU campuses nationwide, partnering with the United Negro College Fund to create pipelines offering dual-enrollment courses and internships for Black students. The program begins in Alabama’s Black Belt region, where poverty exceeds state averages, with the I Dream Big Academy opening at Stillman College in August and D.C. Wolfe Charter School near Tuskegee University slated for fall 2026. We stand in full support of HBCUs, seeing them as the most important legacy institutions for Black Americans; however, anything involving billionaires (particularly Bloomberg) has to be treated with the utmost suspicion.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent ordered a federal probe into whether Minnesota tax dollars from welfare and social-services programs were diverted to al-Shabaab, a Somalia-based terrorist group, amid a $1 billion COVID fraud scandal implicating dozens of Somali Americans in schemes like the Feeding Our Future nonprofit that stole $250 million in child food aid. The investigation, duplicating local efforts where 78 people face charges for personal enrichment via lavish purchases but no terrorism ties, deploys 100 agents to detain immigrants in the Twin Cities, where 80,000 residents of Somali ancestry mostly hold citizenship or legal status, despite Governor Tim Walz welcoming scrutiny while decrying demonization and unverified claims from 2018 reports. Crass comments from the president aside, it is important that we maintain institutional integrity and investigate fraud scandals, especially when they go on for this long and at this scale.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer urged the Michigan Public Service Commission to expedite approval for the multibillion-dollar OpenAI Stargate data center in Saline Township, touting it as the state’s largest investment with over 2,500 union construction jobs, 450 permanent roles, and 1,500 indirect positions, plus commitments like a closed-loop cooling system sparing Great Lakes water and $14 million for local fire departments. Residents and advocates raise alarms over massive energy demands potentially hiking rates by 267% in communities, high water and chemical use for cooling that harms ecosystems, noise and air pollution from generators in burdened areas, and risks to the 2040 clean-energy goal without stronger state regulations on renewables, transparency, and subsidies. We routinely highlight battles over data centers because it is an increasingly intractable problem: we are building a world based on advanced computing while in real time trying to create the infrastructure that can sustain such technological development.

St. Louis County confronts an $81 million shortfall, including a $61 million general-revenue gap and $20 million health-fund deficit from persistent overspending and underspent departments seeking more funds, prompting warnings of bankruptcy next year without cuts via attrition from high turnover. The County Council rejected Executive Sam Page’s plan to tap Rams lawsuit settlement funds and impose a $45–75 million annual use tax, opting instead for a new budget emphasizing fiscal discipline and essential services by the December 31 deadline. We continue to stress that the amount of fiscal stress being experienced throughout the country is being under-discussed, as talking heads prefer sensational culture-war issues over discussions of how we might approach creating balanced and sustainable budgets.

Governor JB Pritzker recently signed House Bill 767, empowering the Illinois Department of Public Health director, with input from the Immunization Advisory Committee of doctors and experts, to issue state-specific vaccine guidelines diverging from CDC recommendations using WHO and scientific sources for flu, COVID-19, RSV, MMR, and Hepatitis B. The party-line measure mandates insurance coverage, lowers the pharmacy vaccination age from 7 to 3 for children, and counters federal shifts like FDA withdrawals and HHS misinformation to safeguard public health. One of the clearest warning signs of the collapse of our republic is the increasing politicization of science, particularly medicine, as evident in this case.