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British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is facing growing questions about his pledge to deploy boots on the ground and planes in the air over Ukraine when the UK Armed Forces has seen the number of soldiers dwindle to the lowest since the Napoleonic era and other services hollowed out. After months of declining support amid domestic failures, Prime Minister Starmer has recently attempted to recast himself as an international leader through the war in Ukraine. The leftist PM has joined with French President Emmanuel Macron — who has also suffered domestically over the past year — in offering up...

UK Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer said ahead of a Lancaster House summit on Sunday that Britain and France will work to craft a Ukraine ceasefire deal that would be presented to the United States. Echoing the language of former U.S. President George W. Bush, the Labour Party leader said that London and Paris will seek to build a “coalition of the willing” to enforce a peace in Ukraine. The UK and France have already committed to sending troops into the former Eastern bloc nation to act as peacekeepers, but other European nations, notably Italy, Germany, and Poland, have so...

Hyundai Motor Company and Kia aim to boost American automobile production to avoid President Donald Trump’s planned 25 percent auto tariff, according to a report. Trump on Tuesday said the tariff rates on auto imports will be “in the neighborhood of 25 percent,” with more details to come in early April. He noted that he will give auto manufacturers time to avoid the tariff. “If they have a plant and factory here, there will be no tariff,” the 47th president remarked.

Former national security adviser John Bolton called President Trump’s positioning on ending the war in Ukraine “pretty close to surrender” in an interview released Thursday. “I think Trump’s remarks and that of [Secretary of Defense] Pete Hegseth and others come pretty close to surrender,” he told Politico. “It’s a position that’s similar to what [Vice President] JD Vance announced during the campaign about Ukraine: There’d be a ceasefire in place, a militarized zone would be created, negotiations would begin, Ukraine would agree not to join NATO.” Trump and Hegseth made waves last week with comments that broke starkly with U.S....

Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Friday unveiled a 61-page budget resolution that would lay the groundwork for the Senate to pass a special budget reconciliation bill that would provide $175 billion to secure the southern border and $150 billion to beef up national defense. “To those who voted for and support real border security and a stronger defense in a troubled world, help is on the way,” Graham said in a statement. “This budget resolution jumpstarts a process that will give President Trump’s team the money they need to secure the border and deport criminals, and make...

Former Education Secretary Arne Duncan said President Trump’s plan to eliminate the Department of Education is “not going to happen,” citing necessary congressional action. “First of all, (the Trump administration) cannot eliminate the Department of Education,” he told “NewsNation Now,” on Wednesday. “That takes an act of Congress. That’s not going to happen.” Duncan, however, stressed that the White House could still move to neuter the department. “Could they weaken the department? Could they move functions to other agencies — to Health and Human Services, to the Labor Department, to Treasury? That is possible,” he said. Trump is preparing to...

The US Department of Defense is developing plans to withdraw all US troops from Syria, NBC News reported on Wednesday, citing two US defense officials. President Donald Trump and officials close to him recently expressed interest in pulling US troops out of Syria, leading Pentagon officials to begin drawing up plans for a full withdrawal in 30, 60 or 90 days, the report added.

The jihadist terror organization Hamas reacted with outrage to President Donald Trump’s unprecedented proposal on Tuesday for the United States to seize the Gaza Strip and turn it into a global resort destination, calling Trump “irresponsible.” Hamas is a genocidal radical Islamist terror group backed by Iran whose objective is the destruction of the Israeli state. Gaza was plunged into a brutal war following Hamas’s decision to invade Israel on October 7, 2023, killing an estimated 1,300 people and abducting dozens of others. Hamas terrorists tortured, gang raped, abducted, and desecrated the corpses of their victims, the vast majority of...

The plan will feature a governing alternative to that of Hamas in the Gaza Strip which will include a reformed Palestinian Authority as well as elements from the international community and Arab states. With only a week left in office, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will present his plan post-war Gaza on Tuesday, Axios reported citing three US officials. .....

The House on Friday will make another attempt at passing legislation to avert a government shutdown, staging a vote on a revamped spending proposal that excludes the debt limit hike initially demanded by President-elect Trump, three sources told The Hill. The package would fund the government at current levels through March 14, extend the farm bill by one year and appropriate billions of dollars in disaster aid and assistance for farmers — the same provisions that were in Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) plan B proposal that failed on the House floor Thursday night.

Germany is working on a ‘bunker plan’ including a smartphone app to direct citizens to the nearest shelter in case of an emergency, a report claims, after Russian President Putin said he reserved the right to bomb the allies of Ukraine. The Bundesamt für Bevölkerungsschutz und Katastrophenhilfe — it really rolls off the tongue — better known as the BKK or the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance has embarked on a project to figure out where the country’s remaining bomb shelters are and how many are still fit for use. As well as now long-neglected facilities designed...

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was set to at least partially unveil a plan to win the war against Russia to his country’s Parliament on Wednesday after weeks of dropping hints about the blueprint to lukewarm Western allies, including U.S. President Joe Biden. The plan – comprising military, political, diplomatic and economic elements – is considered by many as Ukraine´s last resort to strengthen its hand in any future cease-fire negotiations with Russia. Thus far, however, no country has publicly endorsed it or commented on its feasibility.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is plowing ahead with his plan to avert a government shutdown despite GOP opposition that is large enough to tank the effort, setting the stage for a potentially embarrassing vote on the House floor that will foil the Speaker’s funding strategy. At least six Republicans, including hard-line conservatives and defense hawks, have said they will vote against Johnson’s government funding gambit, which pairs a six-month continuing resolution (CR) with a Trump-backed bill requiring proof of citizenship to vote. Republicans can only afford to lose four of their members if all Democrats vote “no” and there is...

Billionaire investor Mark Cuban warned Thursday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that Vice President Kamala Harris’ capital gains tax plan would “kill the stock market.” Cuban said, “What I told them is if you tax unrealized gains, you’re going to kill the stock market, and it’s going to be the ultimate employment plan for private equity because companies are not going to go public because you can get whipsawed.” He added, “Based off the unrealized gains, I would have had to borrow money and I effectively would have been in hawk just to pay my tax bill instead of trying to...

The Biden-Harris administration said Tuesday that it opposed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to hold onto the Gaza-Egypt border — known as the Philadelphi Corridor — to ensure weapons cannot be smuggled into Gaza. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a briefing with reporters on Tuesday that the U.S. opposed any long-term Israeli presence in Gaza. He also said that Israel had agreed to a U.S. “bridging” proposal last month that would have required the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to withdraw from “densely populated areas,” which Miller said “includes the Philadelphi Corridor.”

The Supreme Court declined on Wednesday to lift a sweeping block on President Joe Biden’s student loan repayment plan that aims to slash monthly payments and quicken the path to loan forgiveness. The high court turned down a request from the Biden administration to put the plan back in play after lower courts blocked it this summer in a legal challenge to the plan brought by GOP-led states. There were no noted dissents in the brief order

During an interview with ABC News on Monday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said that when 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris gives her economic plan to Congress and “when she wins, she’s going to have more details around it.” Host Kayna Whitworth asked, “I do want to ask you about what Vice President Harris said yesterday. She was asked how she would pay for her quite ambitious economic plan that was unveiled on Friday, and she said return on investment is how she would plan to pay for that. Can you elaborate for us on what that means?”

Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that people were “reading too much” into the specifics of the price-gouging plan from Vice President Harris. Whitmer said, “Well, I think people are reading too much into what has been put out there. We know that Kamala Harris is going to be focused on building up more affordable housing. We know that Kamala Harris has already delivered on making sure that healthcare is more accessible and affordable for Americans and will protect Obamacare.”

Former Secretary of Labor for President Bill Clinton, Robert Reich, commended Vice President Kamala Harris for her newly outlined economic plan targeting big monopolies. “I think it’s a very important plan, because what Kamala Harris is doing, building upon the very important work that was done by [President] Joe Biden, is to attack the source, one of the most important sources of high prices, and that is monopoly power,” Reich told NBC News’ Valerie Castro Friday on “NBC News Now.” Harris, the current presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, unveiled her economic plan at a rally in North Carolina on Friday. She...

Vice President Kamala Harris kicked off her campaign speech in North Carolina on Friday announcing her new economic plan that would give about $1.7 trillion in handouts to those struggling in the current Biden-Harris economy and set price controls on groceries. Her economic plan includes measures to ban federal “price gouging” – stopping sellers from setting unfair prices on groceries – giving out $25,000 to help first time home owners with their down payments and up to a $6,000 tax break for lower and middle income families who have a child in their first year of life. The Trump campaign...