Announcing the move, staff at the outlet said ‘authoritarian regimes are already celebrating’ its potential demise.
Radio Free Asia (RFA) will shut down its news operations on Friday, citing the government-funded news outlet’s dire financial situation caused by funding cuts under President Donald Trump’s administration and the ongoing US government shutdown.
Bay Fang, RFA’s president and CEO, said in a statement that “uncertainty about our budgetary future” means that the outlet has been “forced to suspend all remaining news content production”.
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“In an effort to conserve limited resources on hand and preserve the possibility of restarting operations should consistent funding become available, RFA is taking further steps to responsibly shrink its already reduced footprint,” she said on Wednesday.
Fang added that RFA would begin closing its overseas bureaus and would formally lay off and pay severance to furloughed staff. She said many staff members have been on unpaid leave since March, “when the US Agency for Global Media [USAGM] unlawfully terminated RFA’s Congressionally appropriated grant”.
On March 14, Trump signed an executive order effectively eliminating USAGM, an independent US government agency created in the mid-1990s to broadcast news and information to regions with poor press freedom records.
Alongside RFA, USAGM also hosts sister publications Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE) and Voice of America (VOA).
Following March’s executive order, RFA was forced to put three-quarters of its US-based employees on unpaid leave and terminate most of its overseas contractors.
Another round of mass layoffs followed in May, along with the termination of several RFA language services, including Tibetan, Burmese and Uighur.
Mass layoffs also took place at VOA in March when Trump signed another executive order placing nearly all 1,400 staff at the outlet – which he described as a “total left-wing disaster” – on paid leave. It has operated on a limited basis since then.
Trump has said operations like RFA, RFE/Radio Liberty and VOA are a waste of government resources and accused them of being biased against his administration.
Since its founding in 1996, RFA has reported on Asia’s most repressive regimes, providing English- and local-language online and broadcast services to citizens of authoritarian governments across the region.
Its flagship projects include its Uighur service – the world’s only independent Uyghur-language outlet, covering the repressed ethnic group in western China – as well as its North Korea service, which reports on events inside the hermit state.
An announcement penned by RFA executive editor Rosa Hwang, published on the outlet’s website on Wednesday, said, “Make no mistake, authoritarian regimes are already celebrating RFA’s potential demise.”
“Independent journalism is at the core of RFA. For the first time since RFA’s inception almost 30 years ago, that voice is at risk,” Hwang said.
“We still believe in the urgency of that mission – and in the resilience of our extraordinary journalists. Once our funding returns, so will we,” she added.
RFE/Radio Liberty, which went through its own round of furloughs earlier this year, said this week that it received its last round of federal funding in September and its news services are continuing for now.
“We plan to continue reaching our audiences for the foreseeable future,” it said.
It’s not immediately clear why RFA and RFE/Radio Liberty – which share the same governing and funding structure, but are based in the US and Europe, respectively – are taking different approaches.
The United States Department of Justice has reportedly placed two federal prosecutors, Samuel White and Carlos Valdivia, on administrative leave after they referred to the participants in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as “a mob of rioters”.
Documents the two prosecutors had filed in advance of a Thursday sentencing hearing were also amended to remove references to the January 6 attack.
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The new filings were made on Wednesday, the same day that the prosecutors received their notices and were locked out of their government devices.
Both were members of the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, according to sources who spoke to Reuters and The Associated Press, on condition of anonymity.
The punishment they faced was the latest instance of the administration of President Donald Trump taking action against federal prosecutors who participated in cases the Republican leader perceives as unfavourable.
Trump has long defended the participants in the January 6 attack, going so far as to pardon more than 1,500 rioters who had pending criminal charges or convictions during the first day of his second term.
Another 14 rioters had their sentences commuted. In a presidential statement, Trump called the prosecutions a “grave national injustice”.
The attack on the Capitol was prompted by Trump’s false claims that his defeat in the 2020 presidential election had been “rigged”. Spurred by the misinformation, thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on the day that lawmakers inside were certifying the Electoral College votes.
More than 100 police officers were hurt, and multiple deaths were attributed to the attack, including a protester who was shot while trying to enter the Speaker’s Lobby and a police officer who collapsed and suffered multiple strokes, potentially due to the stress of being assaulted.
Some officers were beaten with flag poles, fire extinguishers and hockey sticks.
Security footage at the US Capitol shows Taylor Taranto entering the federal building as part of a crowd of rioters on January 6, 2021 [Department of Justice/AP Photo]
The Justice Department has yet to comment on Wednesday’s suspensions of the two prosecutors.
The lawyers were previously scheduled to appear on Thursday in federal court for the sentencing of Taylor Taranto, a Navy veteran who was among those pardoned by Trump for participating in the January 6 attack.
During that clash, he was observed attempting to breach the Speaker’s Chamber, a restricted area. Taranto had been charged with four misdemeanours for those actions before Trump pardoned his charges.
In May, Taranto was convicted on unrelated charges, including illegally carrying two firearms, the unlawful possession of ammunition, and spreading false information and hoaxes.
Taranto had been arrested on June 29, 2023, near an address in Washington, DC, supposedly linked to former President Barack Obama, one of Trump’s political rivals.
Trump had posted the address on social media, and Taranto proceeded to drive to the area, livestreaming his progress, in an attempt to seek out “tunnels” to enter the residence.
Upon exiting his vehicle and entering a restricted area, he was confronted by Secret Service agents. He allegedly told them, “Gotta get the shot, stop at nothing to get the shot.”
There were reportedly more than 500 rounds of ammunition in his van.
A day earlier, Taranto had also recorded a “hoax” video claiming that a car bomb was headed to the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Taranto’s defence lawyers have described him as a “journalist” and “comedian”. But prosecutors have sought a sentence of more than two years in prison for Taranto.
That sentencing recommendation was kept in the revised documents submitted on Wednesday.
At Thursday’s hearing, US District Judge Carl Nichols praised the suspended prosecutors, White and Valdivia, saying they did a “commendable and excellent job” and displayed the “highest standards of professionalism” in the case.
Nichols ultimately sentenced Taranto to 21 months in prison. Since Taranto has already been in custody for 22 months, he will not serve any additional time.
Career prosecutors are assigned to criminal cases regardless of the presidential administration in power.
But the Trump White House has repeatedly sought to sideline, if not fire, those who prosecuted cases that run contrary to the Republican president’s interests.
In January, for instance, nearly two dozen employees of the US Attorney’s Office in Washington, DC, were fired, many with links to the January 6 prosecutions carried out under former President Joe Biden.
And in June, another three prosecutors involved in the January 6 cases were reportedly fired.
As the presidents of China and the US meet in South Korea, Zongyuan Zoe Liu at the Council on Foreign Relations says China may offer concessions on its rare earth minerals.
As the presidents of China and the US meet in South Korea, Zongyuan Zoe Liu at the Council on Foreign Relations says China may offer concessions on its rare earth minerals.
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The White House claimed, without providing evidence, the vessel was operated by a ‘designated terrorist organisation’.
Published On 30 Oct 202530 Oct 2025
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The White House has said United States forces have bombed another alleged drug smuggling vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing four men, just days after confirming it killed 14 people in three separate strikes on vessels in the area.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said in a post on X late on Wednesday that the “Department of War”, the new name for the recently rebranded Department of Defense, had “carried out a lethal kinetic strike on yet another narco-trafficking vessel”.
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Hegseth said “four male narco-terrorists” were killed aboard the vessel, which was “operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization”. He did not provide an exact location for the attack, but said it was conducted in international waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
“This vessel, like all the others, was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics,” Hegseth said, posting aerial footage of the strike.
None of the victims of Wednesday’s attack have been identified.
Earlier today, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War carried out a lethal kinetic strike on yet another narco-trafficking vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO) in the Eastern Pacific.
The strike occurred at a time when US President Donald Trump was on the last leg of a three-nation trip in Asia. On Thursday, Trump met Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea, their first summit since 2019. Trump also visited Malaysia and Japan before South Korea.
Earlier this week, Hegseth said US forces carried out three lethal strikes against boats accused of trafficking illegal narcotics on Monday. The attacks, which also took place in the eastern Pacific Ocean, reportedly killed 14 people and left one survivor.
Following the strikes, Hegseth said that “the Department has spent over TWO DECADES defending other homelands. Now, we’re defending our own”.
Since September 2, the US military has carried out at least 14 strikes targeting some 15 maritime vessels in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean.
At least 61 people have now been confirmed killed by the two-month-long campaign, which has also seen the US bolster its military presence in the Caribbean to unusually high levels.
The White House has yet to provide any evidence to the public for any of the strikes to substantiate its allegations of drug trafficking.
The Trump administration has framed the strikes as a national security measure, claiming the alleged drug traffickers are “unlawful combatants” in a “non-international armed conflict”.
Critics have called the unilateral strikes a form of extrajudicial killing and a violation of international law, which largely prohibits countries from using lethal military force against non-combatants outside a conflict zone.
“We continue to emphasise the need for all efforts to counter transnational organised crime to be conducted in accordance with international law,” Miroslav Jenca, the United Nations’ assistant secretary-general for the Americas, told the UN Security Council this month.
Kennedy, a top health official, urges ‘cautious approach’ after Trump baselessly claimed taking Tylenol is linked autism in children.
United States Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has partially walked back his warning that taking Tylenol during pregnancy is directly linked to autism in children.
In a news conference on Wednesday, Kennedy struck a more moderate tone than he generally has in his past public appearances.
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“The causative association between Tylenol given in pregnancy and the perinatal periods is not sufficient to say it definitely causes autism,” Kennedy told reporters. “But it’s very suggestive.”
“There should be a cautious approach to it,” he added. “ That’s why our message to patients, to mothers, to people who are pregnant and to the mothers of young children is: Consult your physician.”
While some studies have raised the possibility of a link between Tylenol and autism, there have been no conclusive findings. Pregnant women are advised to consult a doctor before taking the medication.
The World Health Organization reiterated the point in September, noting that “no consistent association has been established” between the medication and autism, despite “extensive research”.
But claims to the contrary have already prompted efforts to limit the availability of Tylenol, a popular brand of acetaminophen, a fever- and pain-reducing medication.
On Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched a lawsuit accusing Johnson & Johnson and Kenvue, the companies behind the over-the-counter pain reliever, of deceptive practices.
In doing so, he reiterated misinformation shared by President Donald Trump and government officials like Kennedy.
“By holding Big Pharma accountable for poisoning our people, we will help Make America Healthy Again,” Paxton said in a statement, giving a nod to Kennedy’s MAHA slogan.
The suit alleges that Johnson & Johnson and Kenvue violated Texas consumer protection laws by having “deceptively marketed Tylenol as the only safe painkiller for pregnant women”.
It was the latest instance of scientific misinformation being perpetuated by top officials. Both Trump and Kennedy have repeatedly spread scientific misinformation throughout their political careers.
Trump linked autism and the painkiller during a news conference in September, without providing reputable scientific findings to back the claim.
“[Using] acetaminophen – is that OK? – which is basically, commonly known as Tylenol, during pregnancy can be associated with a very increased risk of autism,” Trump said on September 22. “So taking Tylenol is not good. I’ll say it. It’s not good.”
Kennedy has offered his own sweeping statements about Tylenol and its alleged risks, despite having no professional medical background.
“Anyone who takes this stuff during pregnancy, unless they have to, is irresponsible,” he said in a cabinet meeting on October 9.
Kennedy also mischaracterised studies on male circumcision earlier this month. He falsely said the studies showed an increase in autism among children who were “circumcised early”.
“It’s highly likely because they’re given Tylenol,” he added.
Kenvue stressed in a statement on Tuesday that acetaminophen is the safest pain reliever option for pregnant women, noting that high fevers and pain are potential risks to pregnancies if left untreated.
“We stand firmly with the global medical community that acknowledges the safety of acetaminophen and believe we will continue to be successful in litigation as these claims lack legal merit and scientific support,” Kenvue said.
Candidate Kat Abughazaleh decried the charges as ‘political prosecution’ amid a Trump standoff with Democratic cities.
A Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives has been indicted by the Department of Justice in connection with a protest in front of a federal immigration facility in Illinois.
On Wednesday, in a post on social media, Kat Abughazaleh, 26, announced that she had been charged alongside five other protesters.
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“This political prosecution is an attack on all of our First Amendment rights,” Abughazaleh, a progressive influencer and journalist, said in the post. “I’m not backing down, and we’re going to win.”
Currently, Abughazelah is running for an open seat representing Illinois’s ninth congressional district, to the north of Chicago. She is slated to appear on the Democratic primary ballot in March.
Federal prosecutors, however, have accused her and her co-defendants of having “physically hindered and impeded” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers at a detention facility in Broadview, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.
The indictment said they surrounded a government vehicle, “banged aggressively”, stopped the agent from driving forward, and etched “PIG” on the body of the vehicle. It further alleged that the group broke the vehicle’s side mirrors and a windshield wiper.
Abughazaleh was charged with “conspiracy to impede or injure an officer” and “assaulting, resisting or impeding” a federal agent for the September 23 incident.
I have been charged in a federal indictment sought by the Department of Justice.This political prosecution is an attack on all of our First Amendment rights. I’m not backing down, and we’re going to win.
Those charged alongside Abughazelah include Michael Rabbitt, a Democratic politician in Chicago’s 45th Ward, and Catherine Sharp, a Democrat running for a seat on the Cook County Board of Commissioners.
The charges come as the administration of President Donald Trump surges federal agents to Democrat-run cities as part of a large-scale deportation drive.
Several Democratic lawmakers have been charged after participating in counterprotests, including Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, and US Representative LaMonica McIver. Baraka has since seen the charges against him dropped.
Trump has also sought to deploy the National Guard to several cities, including Chicago, but has been repeatedly blocked by the courts. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling in the Chicago case, which could have wide-ranging implications for the future of such deployments.
A federal appeals court was also set to hear a Trump administration challenge on Wednesday to a lower court’s ruling barring the National Guard deployment to Portland, Oregon.
As part of those cases, the Trump administration has faced scrutiny over its treatment of immigrants and protesters alike.
The administration has also been criticised for comparing protesters to “terrorists” and pursuing disproportionate charges in court.
Even Abughazelah’s opponent in the 2026 Democratic primary, Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, was among those condemning Wednesday’s indictment.
“The only people engaged in violent and dangerous behavior at Broadview have been ICE,” Biss said in a statement carried by the local news site Evanston Now.
Biss noted he had also protested the “kidnapping of our neighbours” at the facility multiple times.
“Now, the Trump Administration is targeting protestors, including political candidates, in an effort to silence dissent and scare residents into submission,” Biss said. “It won’t work.”
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Donald Trump Jr. on Wednesday mocked protesters who took part in “No Kings” demonstrations across the United States while praising his father’s business-first approach to the Middle East during a visit to Saudi Arabia.
Trump spoke before business leaders and Saudi officials at the Future Investment Initiative, the brainchild of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who feted President Trump during his Mideast tour in May to the kingdom, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
Trump backed the prince during his first presidential term even after the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi officials at he kingdom’s consulate in Turkey. Prince Mohammed plans a trip to Washington next month as well.
Speaking alongside Omeed Malik of 1789 Capital, Donald Trump Jr. criticized Democratic Party policies and protesters targeting his father. Trump invests in 1789 and continues to work in the real estate arm of the family, the Trump Organization, which has expanded its Mideast offerings even as his father serves his second term in the White House.
In particular, Trump mocked the “No Kings” protests which drew millions of people to demonstrations across the U.S., claiming it was “not an organic movement, it’s entirely manufactured and paid for by the usual puppets around the world and their” groups.
“If my father was a king, he probably wouldn’t have allowed those protests to happen,” he said. “You saw the people that were actually protesting — it’s the same crazy liberals from the ‘60s and ’70s, they’re just a lot older and fatter.”
Trump made the comments while visiting a nation ruled by an absolute monarchy where dissent is criminalized.
The “No Kings” demonstrations, the third mass mobilization since his father’s return to the White House, came against the backdrop of a government shutdown that is testing the core balance of power in the United States in a way protest organizers warn is a slide toward authoritarianism.
Trump separately acknowledged it was his first trip to Saudi Arabia and praised the changes he saw in the kingdom.
“When my father came here, unlike the last presidents who visited here, it wasn’t an apology tour,” Trump said. “It was, ‘How do we work together? How do we grow our respective economies? How do we create peace and stability in the region?’”
“There can be ‘America-First’ component to that, but there also can be a ‘Saudi-First’ component to that and everyone can actually benefit,” he added.
The United States has revoked the visa of Nigerian author and playwright Wole Soyinka, who became the first African writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986.
Speaking at Kongi’s Harvest Gallery in Lagos on Tuesday, Soyinka read aloud from a notice sent on October 23 from the local US consulate, asking him to arrive with his passport so that his visa could be nullified.
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The author called it, with characteristic humour, a “rather curious love letter” to receive.
“We request you bring your visa to the US Consulate General Lagos for physical cancellation. To schedule an appointment, please email — et cetera, et cetera — in advance of the appointment,” Soyinka recited, skimming the letter.
Closing his laptop, the author joked with the audience that he did not have time to fulfil its request.
“I like people who have a sense of humour, and this is one of the most humorous sentences or requests I’ve had in all my life,” Soyinka said.
“Would any of you like to volunteer in my place? Take the passport for me? I’m a little bit busy and rushed.”
Soyinka’s visa was issued last year, under US President Joe Biden. But in the intervening time, a new president has taken office: Donald Trump.
Since beginning his second term in January, Trump has overseen a crackdown on immigration, and his administration has removed visas and green cards from individuals whom it sees as out of step with the Republican president’s policies.
At Tuesday’s event, Soyinka struck a bemused tone, though he indicated the visa revocation would prevent him from visiting the US for literary and cultural events.
“I want to assure the consulate, the Americans here, that I am very content with the revocation of my visa,” Soyinka said.
He also quipped about his past experiences writing about the Ugandan military leader Idi Amin. “Maybe it’s about time also to write a play about Donald Trump,” he said.
Playwright, political activist and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka attends the PEN America Literary Gala on October 5, 2021, in New York [Evan Agostini/Invision/AP]
Nobel Prize winners in the crosshairs
Soyinka is a towering figure in African literature, with a career that spans genres, from journalism to poetry to translation.
He is the author of several novels, including Season of Anomy and Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, as well as numerous short stories.
The 91-year-old author has also championed the fight against censorship. “Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth,” he wrote.
He has lectured on the subject in New York City for PEN America, a free speech nonprofit. As recently as 2021, he returned to the US to present scholar and former colleague Henry Louis Gates Jr with the nonprofit’s Literary Service Award.
But Soyinka is not the first Nobel winner to see his US visa stripped away in the wake of Trump’s return to office, despite the US president’s own ambitions of earning the international prize.
Oscar Arias, a former president of Costa Rica and the winner of the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize, also found his visa cancelled in April.
Arias was previously honoured by the Nobel Committee for his efforts to end armed conflicts in Central American countries like Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.
While the letter Arias received from the US government gave no reason for his visa’s cancellation, the former president told NPR’s Morning Edition radio show that officials indicated it was because of his ties to China.
“During my second administration from 2006 to 2010, I established diplomatic relations with China, and that’s because it has the second-largest economy in the world,” Arias explained.
But, Arias added, he could not rule out the possibility that there were other reasons for his visa’s removal.
“I have to imagine that my criticism of President Trump might have played a role,” Arias told NPR. “The president has a personality that is not open to criticism or disagreements.”
Soyinka likewise has a reputation for being outspoken, both about domestic politics in his native Nigeria and international affairs.
He has, for example, denounced Trump on multiple occasions, including for the “brutal, cruel and often unbelievable treatment being meted out to strangers, immigrants”.
In 2017, he confirmed to the magazine The Atlantic that he had destroyed his US green card — his permanent residency permit — to protest Trump’s first election in 2016.
“As long as Trump is in charge, if I absolutely have to visit the United States, I prefer to go in the queue for a regular visa with others,” he told the magazine.
The point was, he explained, to show that he was “no longer part of the society, not even as a resident”.
In Tuesday’s remarks, Soyinka reaffirmed that he no longer had his green card. “Unfortunately, when I was looking at my green card, it fell between the fingers of a pair of scissors, and it got cut into a couple of pieces,” he said, flashing his tongue-in-cheek humour.
He also emphasised he continues to have close friends in the US, and that the local consulate staff has consistently treated him courteously.
His work had long caused him to face persecution in Nigeria — though, famously, during a stint in solitary confinement, he continued to write using toilet paper — and eventually, in the 1990s, he sought refuge in the US.
During his time in North America, he took up teaching posts at prestigious universities like Harvard, Yale and Emory.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate and two-time Costa Rican President Oscar Arias has also had his US visa cancelled [Manu Fernandez/AP Photo]
Targeting ‘hostile attitudes’
The Trump administration, however, has pledged to revoke visas from individuals it deems to be a threat to its national security and foreign policy interests.
In June, Trump issued a proclamation calling on his government tighten immigration procedures, in an effort to ensure that visa-holders “do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles”.
What qualifies as a “hostile attitude” towards US culture is unclear. Human rights advocates have noted that such broad language could be used as a smokescreen to crack down on dissent.
Free speech, after all, is protected under the First Amendment of the US Constitution and is considered a foundational principle in the country, protecting individual expression from government shackles.
After Arias was stripped of his visa, the Economists for Peace and Security, a United Nations-accredited nonprofit, was among those to express outrage.
“This action, taken without explanation, raises serious concerns about the treatment of a globally respected elder statesman who has dedicated his life to peace, democracy, and diplomacy,” the nonprofit wrote in its statement.
“Disagreements on foreign policy or political perspective should not lead to punitive measures against individuals who have made significant contributions to international peace and stability.”
International students, commenters on social media, and acting government officials have also faced backlash for expressing their opinions and having unfavourable foreign ties.
Earlier this month, Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino voiced concern that members of his government had seen their visas cancelled over their diplomatic ties to China.
And in September, while visiting New York City, Colombian President Gustavo Petro saw his visa yanked within hours of giving a critical speech to the United Nations and participating in a protest against Israel’s war in Gaza.
The US Department of State subsequently called Petro’s actions “reckless and incendiary”.
Separately, the State Department announced on October 14 that six foreign nationals would see their visas annulled for criticising the assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk, a close associate of Trump.
Soyinka questioned Trump’s stated motives for cancelling so many visas at Tuesday’s literary event in Lagos, asking if they really made a difference for US national security.
“Governments have a way of papering things for their own survival,” he said.
“I want people to understand that the revocation of one visa, 10 visas, a thousand visas will not affect the national interests of any astute leader.”
US president muses about a third term in office despite the constitution barring him from doing so.
Published On 28 Oct 202528 Oct 2025
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United States President Donald Trump has ruled out running for vice president in the 2028 election but said he “would love” to serve a third term in office.
The comments on Monday came despite the US Constitution barring anyone from being elected to the country’s presidency for a third time.
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Trump, who first served as president from 2017 to 2021, began his second term in January.
The 79-year-old has repeatedly flirted with the idea of serving beyond the constitutionally mandated two terms, joking about it at rallies and teasing supporters with “Trump 2028” hats.
Some allies have taken those signals seriously, suggesting that they are exploring legal or political pathways to make it happen.
Some have said that one way around the prohibition would be for Trump to run as vice president, while another candidate stood for election as president and resigned, letting Trump again assume the presidency.
Asked whether he would run for vice president in November 2028, Trump told reporters on board Air Force One on Monday that he “would be allowed to do that”.
But, he added, he would not go down that route.
“I wouldn’t do that. I think it’s too cute. Yeah, I would rule that out because it’s too cute. I think the people wouldn’t like that. It’s too cute. It’s not – it wouldn’t be right.”
An attendee at a Diwali celebration in the Oval Office wears a ‘Trump 2028’ hat, in Washington, DC, on October 21 [Allison Robbert/EPA/Pool]
Scholars, however, say Trump is barred from running for vice president, too, because he is not eligible to be president. The 12th Amendment to the US Constitution reads, “No person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”
Referring to the possibility of a third term as president on Monday, Trump said: “I would love to do it. I have my best numbers ever.”
When pressed by a reporter whether he was not ruling out a third term, he said, “Am I not ruling it out? I mean, you’ll have to tell me.”
Asked about whether he would be willing to fight in court over the legality of another presidential bid, Trump responded, “I haven’t really thought about it.”
The US president also said that Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were “great people” who could seek the presidency in 2028.
“I think if they ever formed a group, it’d be unstoppable,” he said. “I really do. I believe that.”
Trump made the comments on board the Air Force One as he flew from Malaysia to Japan.
He attended the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Kuala Lumpur over the weekend and, following a stopover in Tokyo, will fly to South Korea to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.
On Sunday, Argentinians voted in midterm elections that attracted an uncommonly high level of international attention. This was in part due to the potential $40bn bailout promised to cash-strapped Buenos Aires by Washington. Ahead of the vote, United States President Donald Trump had made clear the cash injection was contingent upon the election results.
And Trump’s far-right buddy Javier Milei, the equally uniquely coiffed president of Argentina, did not fail to deliver. Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza, pulled off a rather startling win, scoring more than 40 percent of the votes cast, according to early results. Half of the seats in Argentina’s lower Chamber of Deputies and a third of the seats in the Senate were up for grabs.
Trump naturally wasted no time in appropriating the electoral feat as a personal victory, claiming that Milei “had a lot of help from us. He had a lot of help.”
Before the election, Trump explained that his generous gesture to Milei – made even as the US president was overseeing sweeping cuts to healthcare and other services at home – was his own way of “helping a great philosophy take over a great country”.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent similarly contended that the “bridge” the US was extending to Milei was in the hopes “that Argentina can be great again”.
Call it MAGA – the South American version.
But as is the case with the US itself, it’s not quite clear when, precisely, in history Argentina was ever so “great”. Of course, there were the good old days of the US-backed Dirty War when a right-wing military dictatorship murdered and disappeared tens of thousands of suspected leftists, many of them dropped from aircraft into the ocean or Rio de la Plata.
As historian Greg Grandin documented in his biography of eternal US diplomat Henry Kissinger, the statesman advised the junta’s foreign minister, Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti, in 1976: “If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly.”
Another great “philosophy”.
Now, Trump stands poised to preside over a renewed era of US influence in the South American nation. And while the days of dropping bodies from airplanes may be over, there is still plenty of room for right-wing brutality.
Milei, who self-defines as an “anarcho-capitalist” and who assumed the presidency in 2023, made a charming habit of wielding a chainsaw at political rallies to symbolise his approach to governance – which has been to slash spending on healthcare, education and other public services while overseeing mass layoffs and pension cuts.
In the first six months of Milei’s austerity programme, poverty in Argentina soared to nearly 53 percent. Inflation has dropped, but so has purchasing power, and surveys indicate that most Argentines do not earn enough to pay their monthly expenses. Sunday’s legislative win – pardon, Trump’s victory – was crucial to maintaining the “chainsaw” strategy, which anyway has worked out just fine for certain elite sectors of the Argentinian populace.
Until now, Milei’s party commanded less than 15 percent of the seats in Congress. This meant that the president was forced to govern at the mercy of an opposition that insisted on overturning his vetoes on things like increasing benefits for people with disabilities and restoring congressional funding for paediatric healthcare and universities.
Naturally, Milei’s sociopathic efforts are near and dear to Trump’s heart, and the US head of state has repeatedly come out in his defence: “Everybody knows he’s doing the right thing. But you have a radical-left sick culture that’s a very dangerous group of people, and they’re trying to make him look bad.”
To be sure, it takes a hell of a “radical-left sick culture” to say that children should have healthcare or that folks with disabilities should be lent a hand.
Incidentally, Milei’s government has effectively done its part to increase the number of Argentinians with disabilities by, inter alia, wantonly firing rubber bullets and tear gas at pensioners and other demonstrators protesting against violent austerity measures. In March, 33-year-old Jonathan Navarro was blinded in one eye by a rubber bullet while protesting on behalf of his father and other retirees.
For his part, Trump, who no doubt sympathises with the need for militarised responses to peaceful demonstrators, recently graciously joked with Milei about the possibility of sending Tomahawk missiles to Argentina: “You need them for your opposition, I guess.” Trump and Milei also see eye to eye on the subject of Israel, and in August, the Argentinian president proposed a $1m initiative to boost relations between Latin America and the genocidal state.
The list of similarities goes on. Trump has never been one to look down on corruption or nepotism – as long as he’s the one benefitting – and Milei wasted no time in appointing his own sister as secretary-general to the presidency. Karina Milei has played the starring role in one of various scandals to have rocked her brother’s administration – scandals that were supposedly threatening to jeopardise his party’s performance in Sunday’s midterms.
In August, leaked audio recordings featured Diego Spagnuolo, who at the time was the head of Argentina’s National Disability Agency, discussing bribes allegedly pocketed by Karina Milei in exchange for pharmaceutical contracts concerning the procurement of medications for people with disabilities.
Anyway, only a “radical-left sick culture” would have been bothered by such an arrangement.
Now that the midterm elections appear to have breathed new life into Milei’s unhinged free-market experiment, impoverished Argentinians certainly have a lot to lose. But Washington has much to gain, as Trump made clear in his victory speech after the results were released: “We’ve made a lot of money based on that election because the bonds have gone up. Their whole debt rating has gone up.”
The president went on to add that the US was “not in that for the money, per se”. Remember those words as Argentina is chain-sawed to greatness again.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
Argentina’s President Javier Milei sang to his supporters after early results showed he had won the country’s midterm elections, bolstering his push for radical economic reforms closely watched by the US.
Hundreds gather to express opposition to US president’s attendance at ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters have held demonstrations opposing United States President Donald Trump’s visit to Malaysia for the ASEAN summit.
Protesters gathered in Kuala Lumpur’s Independence Square and the Ampang Park area of the city in separate demonstrations on Sunday morning and evening to oppose Trump’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
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Trump was in Kuala Lumpur to attend the 47th ASEAN summit, where he oversaw the signing of a ceasefire deal between Cambodia and Thailand and announced a number of trade deals.
In Independence Square, protesters wearing keffiyehs braved the midday sun while chanting “Free, Free Palestine”.
Protesters rally against US President Donald Trump’s visit to Malaysia at Kuala Lumpur’s Independence Square on October 26, 2025 [Erin Hale/ Al Jazeera]
Asma Hanim Mahoud said she had travelled 300km (185 miles) from the state of Kelantan in northeast Malaysia to attend the protest and another demonstration on Friday in front of the US embassy.
“People who have a conscience know that Trump is a genocide enabler. Without him, Israel cannot kill all the children and people in Gaza,” she told Al Jazeera.
“It’s not rocket science.”
Mahoud was dismayed that the morning protest had been moved by authorities from Ampang Park, close to the venue of the ASEAN summit, where protests earlier in the week had taken place.
Police said they had expected between 1,000 and 1,500 protesters at the anti-Trump rally on Sunday, according to Malaysia’s Bernama news agency.
The turnout, while much lower, drew from a diverse swath of Malaysian society.
Choo Chon Kai, a leader of the Socialist Party of Malaysia, said he was attending the rally to protest US foreign policy in the Middle East and elsewhere.
“This is a solidarity rally against US imperialism, as well as solidarity with the people of Palestine and people all over the world who are victims of US imperialism,” Choo told Al Jazeera.
Choo also said he was disappointed the protest had been moved from the vicinity of the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre, where Trump and other leaders gathered for the summit.
Protesters later gathered at Ampang Park, the original gathering site for the protest, in the evening to demonstrate against the US president’s visit.
Asma Hanim Mahoud (left) travelled several hundred kilometres to attend a demonstration against US President Donald Trump in Kuala Lumpur on October 26, 2025 [Erin Hale/ Al Jazeera]
“We just want to make a point that we are against the US policies, but unfortunately, our police have been very hostile to the protest and even shut down the area where we were going to protest,” Choo said.
Kuala Lumpur resident Mursihidah, who asked to be referred to by one name, said she and her husband had been attending pro-Palestine demonstrations since 2023.
Mursihidah said protesters should no longer have to take to the streets after more than two years of war.
Israel and Hamas signed a ceasefire agreement earlier this month – an agreement also overseen by Trump – but violence has continued, with each side accusing the other of breaching the truce.
“I honestly don’t know why we’re still doing this,” she told Al Jazeera.
“This shouldn’t be happening, but somebody has to be their voice. We have to be their voice because they don’t have a voice.”
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has said the United States government is “fabricating” a war against him as Washington sent the world’s biggest warship towards the South American country.
It signals a major escalation of the US’s military presence in the region amid speculation of an attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government.
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Maduro said in a national broadcast on Friday night that US President Donald Trump’s administration is “fabricating a new eternal war” as the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford, which can host up to 90 aeroplanes and attack helicopters, moves closer to Venezuela.
Trump has accused him, without providing evidence, of being the leader of the organised crime gang Tren de Aragua.
“They are fabricating an extravagant narrative, a vulgar, criminal and totally fake one,” Maduro added. “Venezuela is a country that does not produce cocaine leaves.”
Tren de Aragua, which traces its roots to a Venezuelan prison, is not known for having a big role in global drug trafficking but for its involvement in contract killings, extortion and people smuggling.
Maduro was widely accused of stealing last year’s election in Venezuela, and countries, including the US, have called for him to go.
Tensions are mounting in the region, with Trump saying he has authorised CIA operations in Venezuela and that he is considering ground attacks against alleged drug cartels in the Caribbean country.
Since September 2, US forces have bombed 10 boats, with eight of the attacks occurring in the Caribbean, for their role in allegedly trafficking drugs into the US. At least 43 people have died in the attacks.
United Nations officials and scholars of international law have said that the strikes are in clear violation of US and international law and amount to extrajudicial executions.
Venezuela’s Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez said Saturday the country is conducting military exercises to protect its coast against any potential “covert operations”.
“We are conducting an exercise that began 72 hours ago, a coastal defence exercise … to protect ourselves not only from large-scale military threats but also to protect ourselves from drug trafficking, terrorist threats and covert operations that aim to destabilise the country internally,” Padrino said.
Venezuelan state television showed images of military personnel deployed in nine coastal states and a member of Maduro’s civilian militia carrying a Russian Igla-S shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile.
“CIA is present not only in Venezuela but everywhere in the world,” Padrino said. “They may deploy countless CIA-affiliated units in covert operations from any part of the nation, but any attempt will fail.”
Since August, Washington has deployed a fleet of eight US Navy ships, 10 F-35 warplanes and a nuclear-powered submarine for anti-drug operations, but Caracas maintains these manoeuvres mask a plan to overthrow the Venezuelan government.
Maduro said on Saturday he had started legal proceedings to revoke the citizenship and cancel the passport of opposition politician Leopoldo Lopez, whom he accuses of egging on an invasion.
Lopez, a well-known Venezuelan opposition figure who has been exiled in Spain since 2020, has publicly expressed his support for the deployment of US ships in the Caribbean and attacks on suspected drug trafficking vessels.
The opposition leader reacted on his X account, dismissing the move because “according to the Constitution, no Venezuelan born in Venezuela can have their nationality revoked.” He once more expressed support for a US military deployment and military actions in the country.
Lopez spent more than three years in a military prison after participating in antigovernment protests in 2014. He was sentenced to more than 13 years in prison on charges of “instigation and conspiracy to commit a crime”.
He was later granted house arrest and, after being released by a group of military personnel during a political crisis in Venezuela, left the country in 2020.
In the meantime, the US has also put Colombia’s leadership in its crosshairs.
The US Department of the Treasury slapped sanctions on Colombian President Gustavo Petro, his family and the South American country’s interior minister, Armando Benedetti.
Friday’s decision marked a significant escalation in the ongoing feud between the left-wing Petro and his US counterpart, the right-wing Trump.
In a statement, the US Treasury accused Petro of failing to rein in Colombia’s cocaine industry and of shielding criminal groups from accountability.
The Treasury cited Petro’s “Total Peace” plan, an initiative designed to bring an end to Colombia’s six-decade-long internal conflict through negotiations with armed rebels and criminal organisations.
Petro, a prolific social media user, quickly shot back that the Treasury’s decision was the culmination of longstanding Republican threats, including from US Senator Bernie Moreno, a critic of his presidency.
US President Donald Trump broke into dance with local performers as he arrived in Malaysia for the ASEAN summit. It marks his first trip to the Asia Pacific since his re-election.
Donald Trump’s effort to overcome his deep unpopularity among female voters was dealt a setback Friday as decades-old domestic violence allegations surfaced against Stephen K. Bannon, the controversial new chief executive of his campaign.
In January 1996, according to a police report, Bannon grabbed his wife’s wrist and neck, then smashed a phone when she tried to call 911 from their Santa Monica home. Police photographed “red marks on her left wrist and the right side of her neck,” the report said.
Years earlier, three or four other arguments also “became physical,” Bannon’s wife, Mary Louise Piccard, told police. The couple divorced soon after the 1996 altercation.
Bannon was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence, battery and witness intimidation, and the Los Angeles Municipal Court issued a domestic violence protective order against him, according to a statement Santa Monica city officials issued Friday. Bannon pleaded not guilty, records show.
The case was dismissed when Piccard did not show up for trial in August 1996, according to the statement. Politico and the New York Post first reported on the case Thursday.
Details of the case emerged just hours after Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, faulted him for hiring Bannon last week in the latest shake-up of his campaign’s high command.
Clinton portrayed Bannon as a right-wing extremist who promoted racist, “anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-women” ideas as chairman of the Breitbart News Network website.
Bannon, 62, took a leave from Breitbart last week to serve as CEO of the Republican presidential nominee’s campaign. The Trump campaign did not respond to inquiries about the police report.
Alexandra Preate, Bannon’s spokeswoman at Breitbart, declined to comment on the specific allegations, apart from noting that the charges were dismissed.
“He has a great relationship with his ex-wife,” she said.
The abuse allegations against Bannon surfaced as Clinton and her allies have been highlighting Trump’s history of making derogatory remarks about women. Clinton led Trump among female voters 58-35% in a Washington Post/ABC News poll at the beginning of August, and 60% of those polled overall said they saw Trump as biased against both women and minorities,
In March, police filed a battery charge against a previous Trump campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, after he yanked and bruised the arm of Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields at a Trump event in Florida. Prosecutors declined to prosecute the case.
If Trump had vetted Bannon before hiring him, his ex-wife’s accusations should have been disqualifying, said Katie Packer, who was deputy campaign manager for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and led an effort to block Trump from getting the GOP nomination.
“Given the questions that women already have about how Trump views women and how he has treated women historically, elevating someone like this to such a high position only reinforces the idea that Trump doesn’t respect and value women,” Packer said.
Charlie Black, a Republican strategist who has informally advised the Trump campaign, said the allegations against Bannon fell into a “gray area” because the charges were dropped. But “of course it’s an issue,” he added, “because he’s in a position of CEO of the campaign.”
Piccard, who was Bannon’s second wife, did not respond to a phone message seeking comment.
She and Bannon, a former investment banker, were married in April 1995, three days before their twin daughters were born. Shortly before 9 a.m. on New Year’s Day 1996, police received a 911 call from their home in Santa Monica, but the line went dead. The police report gave this account:
An officer went to the front door and was greeted by Piccard, who appeared “very upset.” She burst into tears and took several minutes to calm down.
Bannon had slept on the living-room couch the night before, and he “got upset” in the morning when Piccard made noise while feeding the twin babies. When Bannon started to leave, she asked for a credit card for groceries, but he refused and went to his car, Piccard told police.
She followed him outside, told him she wanted a divorce and said he should move out. He laughed at her and told him he would never leave, according to Piccard. She said she spat at him when he was sitting in the driver’s seat of his car.
“He pulled her down, as if he was trying to pull [her] into the car, over the door,” the report said. Bannon grabbed her neck, pulling her toward the car again, and she struck him in the face and ran back into the house. She told Bannon she was dialing 911, and he “jumped over her and the twins to grab the phone.”
“Once he got the phone, he threw it across the room,” the report said. “After this, Mr. Bannon left the house.”
Piccard, whose name was blacked out in the police report, “found the phone in several pieces and could not use it.”
“She complained of soreness to her neck,” the officer wrote in the police report. “I saw red marks on her left wrist and the right side of her neck.”
Court papers in the divorce and child custody proceedings show Bannon was living primarily in Tucson at the time, to work on Biosphere 2, a desert refuge enclosed in a glass dome for research.
Piccard won custody of the twins in the divorce. During Bannon’s visit with the babies about nine months after the incident, in September 1996, he spanked one of them, Piccard wrote in child custody court papers. The twins were 17 months old at the time.
“I restrained him and told him that it was not acceptable to hit our daughter (he believes in corporal punishment),” Piccard wrote. Bannon “screamed at me” and “stormed out of the house.”
In March 1997, Piccard wrote that she only wanted to restrict Bannon’s visits with the children to neutral sites because he “has been verbally abusive to me in front of the girls and I do not feel safe meeting him” elsewhere.
US president says fraudulent advertisement featuring the late President Ronald Reagan to blame for termination of talks.
Published On 24 Oct 202524 Oct 2025
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United States President Donald Trump said all trade talks with Canada have been terminated following what he called a fraudulent television advertisement in which the late President Ronald Reagan spoke negatively about tariffs.
“The Ronald Reagan Foundation has just announced that Canada has fraudulently used an advertisement, which is FAKE, featuring Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about Tariffs,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform late on Thursday.
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“The ad was for $75,000. They only did this to interfere with the decision of the US Supreme Court, and other courts,” Trump wrote.
“Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED,” Trump added.
Earlier on Thursday, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute said on social media that a TV advertisement created by the government of Ontario in Canada “misrepresents the ‘Presidential Radio Address to the Nation on Free and Fair Trade’ dated April 25, 1987.”
The foundation also said that Ontario had not received its permission “to use and edit the remarks” of the late US president.
The foundation added that it was “reviewing legal options in this matter” and invited the public to watch the unedited video of Reagan’s address.
Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford said earlier this week that the advertisement in question – featuring President Reagan criticising tariffs on foreign goods while saying they caused job losses and trade wars – had caught Trump’s attention.
“I heard that the president heard our ad. I’m sure he wasn’t too happy,” Ford said on Tuesday.
In an earlier post on social media, Ford posted a link to the advertisement and the message: “Using every tool we have, we’ll never stop making the case against American tariffs on Canada. The way to prosperity is by working together,” he said.
It’s official: Ontario’s new advertising campaign in the U.S. has launched.
Using every tool we have, we’ll never stop making the case against American tariffs on Canada. The way to prosperity is by working together.
Trump’s announcement on the end of trade talks also followed after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he aimed to double his country’s exports to countries outside the US because of the threat posed by the Trump administration’s tariffs.
Carney also told reporters that Canada would not allow unfair US access to its markets if talks on various trade deals with Washington fail.
Canada and the US have been in talks for weeks on a potential deal after Trump imposed tariffs on Canadian steel, aluminium and autos earlier this year, prompting Canada to respond in kind.
The Canadian prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s announcement that all talks had ended because of the advertisement.
More than three-quarters of Canadian exports go to the US, and nearly 3.6 billion Canadian dollars ($2.7bn) worth of goods and services cross the border daily.
![Protesters rally against US President Donald Trump's visit to Malaysia at Kuala Lumpur's Independence Square on October 26, 2025. [Erin Hale/ Al Jazeera]](https://www.occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/prtoestsss-1761470438.jpeg)
![Asma Hanim Mahoud (left) travelled several hundred kilmetres to attend a demonstration against US President Donald Trump in Kuala Lumpur on October 26, 2025. [Erin Hale/ Al Jazeera]](https://www.occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/protest-1761470410.jpeg)
