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Torrential downpours cause deadly mudslides in southern Peru, while more than 300 districts across the country declare states of emergency.

Peruvian authorities say they have recovered the bodies of a father and son who died in a mudslide triggered by heavy rains, which have battered the country’s southern regions of Ica and Arequipa, affecting an estimated 5,500 homes and forcing many people to evacuate.

Authorities in Arequipa have called on the country’s interim president to declare a state of emergency in the region as the governor announced that multiple shelters were being opened to house those fleeing the floods.

Peru’s Council of Ministers said on Monday that more than 700 districts nationwide have been declared in emergency status.

In Cayma, Arequipa, a vehicle was seen semi-buried under mud, and homes teetered on the verge of collapse after flash floods swept away the earth and destroyed roadways, the Reuters news agency reported.

According to the Associated Press news agency, the bodies of a father and son were recovered after being swept away by a landslide.

The recovery came a day after 15 people were killed when a military helicopter crashed while providing rescue services during the flooding.

Rescue teams found the wreckage of the helicopter in the Chala district, officials said. Seven children were among the 11 passengers and four crew members who died, according to the AFP news agency.

Torrential downpours have caused widespread damage across southern Peru, affecting about 5,500 homes and forcing many residents to evacuate.

Images shared by Peruvian media showed streets torn up in the affected areas and vehicles buried deep in the mud slides as rescue workers attempted to clear streets using mechanical earth movers.

The El Niño Costero (coastal) climate phenomenon has been the cause of the recent weeks of heavy rain in Peru, weather forecasters report, and is expected to strengthen slightly next month, threatening more heavy rain.

While El Niño is a natural cycle that has existed for millennia, scientists increasingly link its severity to climate change. Rising global temperatures provide a warmer “baseline” for the ocean, making it easier for these extreme heating events to reach record-breaking thresholds and increasing the atmosphere’s capacity to hold the moisture that fuels torrential rain and catastrophic flooding.

President Trump’s aura of invincibility is starting to vanish. Three new polls — including the usually Trump-hospitable Rasmussen — suggest that Joe Biden did a better job as president.

Worse still (for Trump), he’s underwater on immigration, foreign policy and the economy — the very trifecta that powered his return. An incumbent taking on water like that is no longer steering the ship of state, he’s bobbing in the deep end, reaching for a Mar-a-Lago pool noodle.

To be fair, Democrats have a proud tradition of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. But suppose — purely hypothetically — that this sticks. Suppose Democrats win the midterms. And suppose a Democrat captures the White House in 2028.

Then what?

Trumpism isn’t a political movement so much as a recurring event. You don’t defeat it; you board up the windows and wait.

Even if Trump does not attempt a third term (a gambit the Constitution frowns upon), he will remain the dominant gravitational force in Republican politics for as long as he is sentient and within Wi-Fi range.

Which means any Democratic administration that follows would be well-advised to consider it is governing on borrowed time. In American politics, you are always one scandal, one recession or one deepfake video away from packing your belongings into a cardboard box.

Trump’s MAGA successor (whoever he or she might be) will inherit millions of ardent believers, now seasoned by experience, backed by tech billionaires and steeped in an authoritarian worldview.

So how exactly does the country “move on” when a sizable slice of its elite class appears to regard liberal democracy as more of an anachronism than a governing philosophy?

This is not an entirely new dilemma. After the Civil War, Americans had to decide whether to reconcile with the rebels or punish them or some mix of the two — and the path chosen by federal leaders shaped the next century through Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the long struggle for civil rights.

At Nuremberg, the Allies opted for trials instead of firing squads. Later, South Africa’s post-apartheid government attempted to achieve reconciliation via truth.

Each moment wrestled with the same problem: How do you impose consequences without becoming the very thing you were fighting in the first place — possibly sparking a never-ending cycle of revenge?

Which brings us to even more specific questions, such as where does Trumpism fit into this historical context — and should there be any accountability after MAGA?

Start with Trump himself. Even if he is legally immune regarding official acts, what about allegations of corruption? Trump and his family have amassed billions since returning to office.

It is difficult to picture a future Democratic administration hauling him into court, especially if Trump grants himself broad pardons and preemptive clemency on his way out of office.

So if accountability comes, it would probably target figures in his orbit — lieutenants, enablers, assorted capos not covered by pardons. But is even this level of accountability wise?

On one hand, it is about incentives and deterrence. If bad actors get to keep the money and their freedom, despite committing crimes, they (and imitators) will absolutely return for an encore.

On the other hand, a Democratic president might reasonably decide that voters would prefer lower grocery bills to more drama.

Trump himself offers a cautionary tale. He devoted enormous energy to retribution, grievance and settling scores. It is at least conceivable that he might have been in stronger political shape had he devoted comparable attention to, say, affordability.

There is also the uncomfortable fact that the past Trump indictments strengthened him politically. Nothing energizes a base like the words “They’re coming for me,” especially when followed by the words “and you’ll be next,” next to a fundraising link. Do Democrats want to create new martyrs and make rank-and-file Americans feel like “deplorables” who are being persecuted for their political beliefs?

So perhaps the answer is surgical. Focus on ringleaders. Spare the small fry. Proceed in sober legal tones. Make it about the law, not the spectacle.

Even this compromise would invite a backlash. Democrats, it seems, are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

The good news is that smart people are actively debating this topic — far better than trying to improvise a solution on Inauguration Day — just as similar questions were asked after Trump lost in 2020. A few weeks ago, for example, David Brooks and David Frum discussed this topic on Frum’s podcast.

Unfortunately, there is no tidy answer. Too much punishment risks looking like vengeance. Too little risks sparking another sequel.

It may sound melodramatic to say this might be the most important question of our time. But while this republic has endured a lot, it might not survive the extremes of amnesia or revenge.

Choosing the narrow path in between will require something rarer than a landslide victory: justice with restraint.

But do we have what it takes?

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

Two competing visions for the EU’s economic future are set to collide on Thursday, when the bloc’s leaders gather for an informal retreat to discuss reviving the bloc’s competitiveness.

On one side stands France; on the other, a newly aligned Germany and Italy.

Paris made a last-minute move to join an informal pre-summit scheduled by Berlin and Rome ahead of the retreat on Thursday morning in an unusual bid to coordinate their positions before leaders convene.

The French intervention followed remarks on Tuesday from President Emmanuel Macron to several European media outlets, and amounts to an effort to assert Paris’ agenda in response to a document circulated in recent days by Germany and Italy that lays out a sharply different vision for the EU economy.

In doing so, the French president has flipped the script and introduced firmly on the table one of the most divisive matters for EU leaders: pooling debt to prop up the bloc.

The timing is no coincidence either.

Earlier this month, Mario Draghi, called on the EU to work as a true union and urged leaders to implement a “pragmatic” federalist approach to survive in a new, more brutal world.

The retreat in Alden Biesen, Belgium comes a year and a half after a landmark report by Draghi warned of a bleak outlook for Europe’s economy unless decisive steps were taken to boost competitiveness.

Since the report’s publication in 2024, the global geo-economic landscape has shifted dramatically, with the US and China’s aggressive agendas adding pressure on the EU’s 27 countries.

Macron is the most loyal to Draghi’s ambitions but also the weakest leader at home compared to Meloni and Merz.

Divisions expected on eurobonds

During the retreat, leaders will focus “on strengthening the Single Market, reducing barriers to growth and enhancing Europe’s strategic autonomy,” according to the agenda presented by the Cypriot EU presidency.

Draghi, along with another former Italian prime minister, Enrico Letta – who published his own landmark report on the Single Market the same year – will attend parts of the discussions.

Still, a senior EU official said the time for diagnosis was over, and that leaders now need to take “concrete measures” to move the EU’s economic agenda forward.

Reaching consensus, however, will be difficult. The EU’s Franco-German engine appears to be sputtering, with Paris now facing a fresh Berlin-Rome alliance. On 23 January, Germany and Italy agreed to coordinate their push to deregulate industry.

The first flashpoint is expected to be Macron’s call, made Tuesday, for issuing common EU debt – eurobonds – to finance the massive investments needed to lift competitiveness. Draghi’s report in 2024 put those needs at between €750 billion and €800 billion a year.

“We have three battles to fight: in security and defence, in green transition technologies, and in artificial intelligence and quantum technologies. In all of these areas, we invest far less than China and the United States,” Macron said, adding: “If the EU does nothing in the next three to five years, it will be swept out of these sectors.”

Berlin, however, has long resisted repeating the joint borrowing used to fund the €750 billion post-Covid recovery plan.

Instead, Germany and Italy are expected on Thursday to call for expanded venture-capital financing and stronger exit options for investors. The document circulated by Rome and Berlin suggests “the creation of a pan-European stock exchange, a pan European secondary market, and a review of capital requirements for lending without impeding financial stability”.

On eurobonds, Nordic countries have traditionally sided with Germany.

Still, the same senior EU official noted that “when the European Union needs to take those decisions, it has taken so,” adding that joint borrowing remains an option after the bloc again turned to it at the end of 2025 to support Ukraine. “There is no dream of European debt. There is European debt out in the markets and we’ve just increased by 90 billion last December.”

In a letter sent to leaders on Monday, Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen did not mention joint borrowing, doubling down on cutting excessive regulation and integrating the 27-nation single market.

In the run-up to a meeting with European industry leaders, she also appealed to establish the so-called 28th regime to harmonise rules for companies operating across Europe.

Germany’s strict conditions

France is also pressing for a long-standing priority: a European preference, or “Made in Europe,” policy that would favour EU-content products in public procurement.

“It’s defensive, but it’s essential, because we are facing unfair competitors who no longer respect the rules of the World Trade Organization,” Macron said on Tuesday.

While the idea has gained traction in EU capitals and at the European Commission, Nordic and Baltic countries as well as the Netherlands warned in a non-paper circulated ahead of the summit that the European preference “risks wiping out our simplification efforts, hindering companies’ access to world-leading technology, hampering exchange with other markets and pushing investments away from the EU.”

Germany, meanwhile circulated a document seen by Euronews in December as part of discussions among the 27 laying out strict conditions. Berlin wants the European preference to be time-limited, broadly defined, and applied only to a narrow list of products. It also favours a “Made with Europe” approach, open to countries with EU free-trade agreements and other “like-minded” partners.

Italy, the EU’s third-largest economy, has sided with Germany. Both countries say their priority is not only to support European businesses but also “to attract new business from outside the EU,” according to their document to other capitals.

Macron appeared to partially align with that view on Tuesday, saying the European preference should focus on limited sectors such as clean tech, chemicals, steel, automotive or defence. “Otherwise Europeans will be swept away,” he said.

Berlin and Rome want more deregulation

At the retreat, Berlin and Rome are also set to push a deregulatory agenda. As the European Commission rolled out several simplification packages in 2025, the two countries are calling “for further withdrawals and simplifications of EU initiatives across the board”.

They also propose an “emergency brake” allowing intervention if legislation raises “serious concerns regarding additional administrative burden both on enterprises and on national authorities”.

Last but not least, the Mercosur trade agreement looms large. During the retreat, the Commission plans to consult EU countries on its provisional implementation after a judicial review triggered by the European Parliament suspended ratification of the deal, signed with Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.

France remains firmly opposed to the Mercosur agreement, citing farmers’ fears of unfair competition from Latin American imports. But the deal nonetheless won backing from a majority of member states in January after Italy gave its support.

Berlin and Rome leave little room for doubt in their document: “We call for an ambitious EU trade policy taking full account of the potentials and needs of all economic sectors, including agriculture. The finalisation of the EU-Mercosur Agreement was an important step in that direction.”

Feb. 6 (UPI) — A group of prominent Nigerian religious and traditional leaders visited Washington, D.C. this week seeking understanding and support for addressing their country’s critical security situation as a result of ethnic and religious based violence.

The group comprised three Christian leaders, both Catholic and Protestant, and three Muslim imams, one of whom is also a traditional ruler in Zamfara state in northwestern Nigeria.

Last Wednesday they briefed international stakeholders on the current state of the security crisis in Nigeria and discussed interfaith action priorities with potential international partners.

Ambassador Sam Brownback, former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, and chairman of the 2026 International Religious Freedom Summit underscored the urgency of the situation. He told the working group, “If this moment is not wisely used, you could lose the country. I fear this is the road this is starting down without sustainable solutions. You don’t have a lot of time.”

The virtual disappearance of state sovereignty in certain rule areas where armed groups extort taxes, requisition harvests, and hijack local government was a central issue of concern. In addition, estimates of internally displaced people, or IDPs, as a result of armed conflict range from 3.5 to 8 million. Most IDPs are forced to live in hastily assembled refugee camps.

“This should not be possible in 2026,” said Cardinal John Onyaikan, one of the visiting faith leaders.

Nigeria’s fragile security situation had directly affected members of the visiting group. Alhaji Hassan Attihuru, the Emir of Bungudu, in Zamfara state, challenged the idea that kidnappings and killings were targeted on religious grounds. He himself had been kidnapped by members of his own Fulani people who were fellow Muslims.

Rev. John Hayab is a Baptist minister in Kaduna State, and the country Director of Global Peace Foundation Nigeria. Students at a school his church ran were kidnapped and held for ransom. His son was one of a small group that managed to escape into the nearby forest.

The group’s visit to America was a follow-up to the Abuja High-Level Interfaith Dialogue, convened by the Global Peace Foundation Nigeria last December. The meeting produced a blunt statement challenging the federal government to do more to combat the violence.

It also established a Joint Interfaith Advocacy Committee on Freedom of Religion and Belief that agreed to increase peace messaging to affected communities and track progress on reducing incidents of violence.

Attending the dialogue in D.C. from the American side were representatives of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, Global Impact, Religious Freedom Institute, Alliance Defending Freedom, the U.S. State Department, and American University.

Cardinal Onyaikan told those present, “Our problems are self-inflicted so we need our own solutions. But no nation is an island, so we also need support.”

The dialogue was co-sponsored by the Global Peace Foundation, Religious Freedom Institute, and Pepperdine University.

Summing up the meeting, Fr. Canice Enyiaka, Global Peace Foundation Director of African Peace Initiatives said, “Bringing the experience and insights of faith leaders here to Washington is very important because of the seriousness of the current crisis. Religious faith is a powerful force in Nigeria and I am grateful for all the organizations supporting religious freedom and human rights represented here.”

Yesterday, the Nigerian group met with Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV)who has been vocal about the violence suffered by Christians in Nigeria. He is said to be preparing a report on the security threats to Nigerian Christians for President Trump with options for how the U.S. government should respond.

The visiting group briefed him on the complexities of the situation and the role that interfaith cooperation at the leadership level can play in addressing it. Moore agreed to continue to receive their input after their return to Nigeria.