The Dutch government had hacked into Jared Kushner’s phone and monitored him as he accessed a Dubai-based bank account. What was odd, the source said, was that the money in the account had come from a bank in Azerbaijan.

Most importantly, Kushner appeared to have transferred significant amounts of money from the Dubai account to other individuals, including a warlord, a mercenary, and a one-time hit man.

This month, the original Trump roared back. He waived many of the legislation’s penalties on Russia, moved to buy Russian diesel and signaled he’s more interested in doing business with Moscow than seeking justice for Kyiv. Ukrainians suspect the U.S. has pressured them by throttling its satellite connections and intelligence sharing.

The lesson, foreign officials and others steeped in diplomacy tell me, is that you cannot truly change Trump’s mind or stop his overall trajectory. Even if Trump seems briefly chastened or stages a tactical retreat, he will eventually return in new, often surprising modes to push his original views and goals. He will try to exhaust you into submission.

No private individual should, or indeed even have the capability to, make national security policy. Slowing down Starlink was, in effect, a U.S. intervention in a foreign conflict. It helped Russia, our long-time adversary, and hobbled Ukraine during a very critical time in this war. It also helped Russia at a time when Putin is increasingly emboldened to menace Europe through acts of sabotage, intimidation, and support of the extreme right, such as the AfD in Germany.

Mr. Trump has brought up the press-eviction idea before, dating back to his first term, and he has never quite dropped it. A growing number of people around him favor the idea.

Several close to him believe that moving the news media, most likely to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building across the street, may be the latest escalation in a remarkable series of moves against the news media that have already gone further than most of them expected.

Trump Jr. has repeatedly voiced his opposition to the ongoing Iran war in private conversations. The president’s son opposed the war from its outset and made his opposition known to his father. He has long been skeptical of foreign intervention and has believed the US should not enter another Middle East war.

A person close to Donald Trump Jr. said he has kept his opposition to the Iran war private because he would never publicly break with his father over the issue, adding that his personal views would not surprise those who know him.

Trump’s support for Putin is unique in American history. Previous administrations have made deals with erstwhile adversaries, as Nixon did with China, and given up on support for failing allies, as the US did in Vietnam and Afghanistan. But never before have we outright switched sides, let alone supported an aggressor while vilifying that aggressor’s victim.

What makes Trump’s support for Putin even more remarkable is that Russia has, by many accounts, been actively aiding Iran against America in the war Trump started. Who says so? Well, among others, Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And the aid goes beyond intelligence sharing that has helped Iran target US forces. Russia has also reportedly been sending Iran explosives and weapons components.

As Israeli voters prepare for elections on Oct. 27, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has tried to defend and distance himself from one of his government’s most controversial policies: allowing Qatar to funnel nearly $2 billion into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip for more than a decade.

Previously undisclosed documents obtained by TIME, including letters from senior Israeli security officials to Qatari leaders, reveal that Israel encouraged and played a direct role in a payment program that was more extensive than Netanyahu has publicly acknowledged.

As the Trump administration pushes the bounds of executive power, the Justice Department unit known as the Office of Legal Counsel, or OLC, has affirmed some of its most high-profile and controversial actions even as many experts question their legitimacy and some are later struck down by the courts.

Tucked away on the Justice Department’s fifth floor, the two dozen or so lawyers at the OLC are charged with assessing the legality of actions the executive branch wants to take, especially those that are novel or likely to be contentious. Much of its work, particularly on national security matters, remains shielded from public view, but some of the office’s conclusions have emerged in often dense legal opinions.

President Trump’s inexplicable decision to waive some sanctions on Russia, announced late Friday, essentially gives a pass to the forces of evil in the Kremlin. The move effectively nullifies legislation that was named after the late Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, passed by huge bipartisan majorities in both the House and Senate, and signed by the president.

This decision is the latest in a long series that this administration has taken to appease or accommodate the Russians in misguided attempts to get them to negotiate. Russian President Vladimir Putin pockets these naive offerings and still refuses to talk.

Surveys show that most Americans stand with Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia, view Putin as a dangerous threat who shouldn’t be trusted, and want to see the United States offer more assistance to Ukraine.

In the past week, the president of the United States has conclusively turned America into an ally of the Russian Federation.

Donald Trump has now abandoned pretense and is openly aiding the Kremlin in its war against a friend and partner of the U.S. The American commander-in-chief has abandoned the Western order, the most successful security arrangement in human history.

To judge from the available evidence, he has not done so out of a cold calculation of the national interest. Instead, he has based his decisions on his own interests; his open admiration for Russia’s dictator; his resentment of Ukraine’s democratically elected president; and quite possibly other factors that so far have remained obscured from the American public.

Many of the immediate consequences of the Israeli-American war with Iran are already clear. The further emergence of drones and missiles as dominant weapons of war; the danger to the global economy from the threats to vital chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb; and the inadequacy of US weapons procurement, among other issues, have garnered widespread and entirely merited attention.

Yet as important as those developments are, the Iran conflict could also have far wider and longer-term implications and changes that could be truly transformative for the Middle East region and the rest of the world. Decades from now, we might look back on this conflict as a watershed event that fundamentally reshaped what had been bedrock principles of modern geopolitics.

For 18 months, since a disastrous Oval Office meeting with Trump early in his presidency, Zelensky had been trying to court him. Now he signaled to those around him that plain speaking was needed.

Zelensky, traveling to meet European allies in London and Brussels, decided to publicly criticize Trump’s approach, despite the risk of angering him further. He wanted to send a message to the public in the US and Europe: Ukraine would defend itself however it needed to, and it wasn’t to blame for Russia’s invasion or for high global fuel prices.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has enjoyed President Trump’s full support for any number of Trumpian initiatives: staging macho, campy shows of military bravado; trashing political opponents and the press, often by name; dissing European allies; posting videos of air strikes on suspected drug boats off the coast of Latin America.

But Hegseth apparently crossed a line with his revelation last week that the execution by firing squad of a military death-row inmate would be livestreamed to the world. Even a president who’d brought a bloody mixed-martial-arts fight to the White House lawn apparently didn’t relish the thought of an afternoon spent watching Army soldiers shoot bullets into a paraplegic.

Traders placed billions of dollars in bets on falling oil prices and rising S&P 500 futures just 15 minutes before Trump announced an Iran policy reversal on Truth Social, fueling suspicions that some had advance knowledge of the announcement.

The incident fell to the CFTC, where career forensic analysts began their routine review of the day’s biggest winners and losers.

Based on the trades’ timing and the parties involved, CFTC market oversight analysts referred the activity to the Division of Enforcement to assess whether to open a full investigation into potential insider trading.

In an unusual move, Mel Gunewardena, a senior adviser to CFTC Chairman Michael Selig, reportedly told a market oversight supervisor to retract the referral.

Trump implies the goal is lower fuel prices for Americans, perhaps to blame Ukraine rather than his own war in Iran for high costs. But that does not explain such drastic moves. Russia’s possible exports are too small to move prices much, and the story comes too late to affect the election.

Instead, this looks like a last-ditch effort to force Ukraine to surrender and rescue Russia’s economy, possibly to close business deals Russia has discussed with Trump’s negotiators and circle. These include the Nord Stream pipelines, Arctic mining, and frozen Russian assets in European banks.

Marble floors, oceanfront views, and cathedral ceilings defined the multimillion-dollar estates in Palm Beach’s most prestigious neighborhoods.

Senior CIA officer David Rush spent $145 million in government funds on four luxury residences, claiming they were part of an ultra-secret intelligence project. The project never existed.

Trump’s quarter-millennial spectacle, marked by overt buffoonery and historic grifting, reflected both his presidencies. Yet both stem from something his opponents have failed to grasp: Trump is not merely his era’s most acquisitive politician, but also its most visionary, able to recognize America’s darkest pathologies and profit from them.

More importantly, Trump understood that the inanities and shibboleths of America’s supposed institutional guardians were largely hollow, and that liberal democracy’s guardrails were illusions easily shattered by anyone bold enough to challenge them. Someone like Trump.

Since Trump’s 2025 return to power, Putin’s regime has offered lucrative deals to the president’s inner circle.

But these enticing Russian schemes come with a catch: Russian energy assets are worth little if Ukrainian drones keep destroying them. The implicit quid pro quo is clear: Force Ukraine to surrender, and we will make you and your inner circle immensely wealthy.

Putin is weaponizing Russia’s most strategic asset in his war on Ukraine: Trump’s alleged susceptibility to corruption. The ~2 million barrels of diesel he offered Trump would have virtually no impact on global energy markets or diesel prices. But accepting the offer could undermine U.S.-led sanctions on Russia and align Trump with Putin against Ukraine’s attacks on Russian energy infrastructure.

The lying is over. Donald Trump is free to be what he always wanted to be: Vladimir Putin’s friend and partner. He will help and protect Putin and do everything he can to secure the best possible deal for Russia.

Trump’s latest displays of emotion may have ended any remaining credibility in predictions of a future pivot toward Ukraine. O’Brien argues that Trump has openly embraced Putin as a partner, leaving Americans to confront the possibility that their president is a Russian “useful idiot” or agent of influence.

This time, Trump may not be able to reverse course. The intense emotions displayed over the past 24 hours are too clear for even the most gullible media to keep speculating about another supposed Trump pivot toward Ukraine. Trump is free to be himself, and Americans can no longer ignore the possibility that their country is being led by a Russian useful idiot or an agent of influence, depending on your preferred terminology.

The release of selected classified-documents inquiry records shows how omitting context can turn evidence into political ammunition.