Why Trump's Cabinet is ‘designed for U.S. consumption', and not solving national security issues
There are new warnings of a wider conflict coming to Europe as Ukrainian President Zelenskyy says in a new interview his country has belief Russia may attack Poland or Lithuania, both NATO members, as early as the summer. Atlantic staff writer Tom Nichols reacts to this revelation and shares his concerns around the qualifications of Defense Department officials being put in place by the Trump administration.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Newsweek
24 minutes ago
- Newsweek
Has Russia Moved Strategic Aviation Nearer to Alaska? What We Know
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Russia has likely not moved one of its nuclear-capable heavy bombers further from Ukraine, analysts and satellite imagery indicate after reports suggested Moscow had transferred one of its hefty Tu-160 supersonic aircraft closer to Alaska following extensive Ukrainian strikes on Russian airfields. Ukraine said it hit 41 of Russia's expensive, hard-to-replace warplanes on June 1 in a meticulously timed operation across three different time zones using drones smuggled over the border. Ukrainian outlet Defence Express reported on Thursday that Russia had relocated one of its Tu-160 strategic bombers to the Anadyr airfield in Russia's far eastern Chukotka region, citing satellite imagery captured by the European Space Agency's Sentinel satellites on June 4. Satellite imagery provided to Newsweek by Planet Labs, captured of Anadyr on May 26 — prior to the audacious Ukrainian strikes — showed three aircraft lined up on the main apron. The image, while low quality, does not indicate the presence of the distinctively shaped Tu-160s, analysts said. A separate image from June 3 showed four aircraft on the main apron of the base, but none of the aircraft — including the one that appeared since May 26 — appear to be the world's heaviest operational bomber, experts told Newsweek. A Tupolev Tu-160 heavy strategic bomber and an Ilyushin Il-78 aerial refueling tanker take part in a dress rehearsal of a military parade marking the 77th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World... A Tupolev Tu-160 heavy strategic bomber and an Ilyushin Il-78 aerial refueling tanker take part in a dress rehearsal of a military parade marking the 77th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, in Moscow, Russia, on May 7, 2022. More Anton Denisov / Sputnik via AP It is fairly standard practice for militaries to move aircraft around and may not indicate anything more than a "sensible approach to looking after your aircraft," said Frank Ledwidge, a senior lecturer in Law and War Studies at Portsmouth University in the U.K. and a former British military intelligence officer. Under the New START Treaty limiting nuclear weapons, strategic bombers have to be kept out in the open, Ledwidge added. Russia will likely move around its aircraft more following the success of the Ukrainian strikes, retired Air Marshal Greg Bagwell, a former senior commander in the U.K.'s Royal Air Force, told Newsweek. Kyiv said after the strikes, it had targeted at least one of Moscow's scarce A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft and several long-range, nuclear-capable bombers across four air bases thousands of miles apart. Russia reported drone assaults on five bases, including strikes on a long-range aviation hub in the country's far east that Kyiv did not publicly acknowledge. One Ukrainian official said 13 aircraft had been destroyed. Satellite imagery from the Siberian air base of Belaya and Olenya, an Arctic base in Murmansk—just two of the targeted bases—showed several destroyed Tu-95 and Tu-22 bombers. Ukraine said it had also attacked the Ivanovo airbase northeast of Moscow and Dyagilevo in the Ryazan region. The Belaya airfield sits just shy of 3,000 miles from Ukraine. Satellite imagery, provided to Newsweek by Planet Labs, shows four aircraft on the main apron at the Anadyr airbase in Russia's Chukotka region close to Alaska on June 3, 2025. None of the aircraft pictured... Satellite imagery, provided to Newsweek by Planet Labs, shows four aircraft on the main apron at the Anadyr airbase in Russia's Chukotka region close to Alaska on June 3, 2025. None of the aircraft pictured are Russia's Tu-160 heavy nuclear-capable bombers, analysts said. More Planet Labs At least six Russian Tu-95MS and four Tu-22M3 aircraft appear to have been destroyed, Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow for airpower at the U.K.-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), said in recent days. While unlikely to hack away at how many aerial assaults Russia can mount on Ukraine, the simultaneous strikes known as Operation Spiderweb caused roughly $7 billion in damage, according to Kyiv, and exposed how vulnerable airfields and their aircraft now are to drone strikes while landing an embarrassing slap on the Kremlin. U.S. President Donald Trump said earlier this week that Russian President Vladimir Putin had "very strongly" insisted he would retaliate for the strikes. Satellite imagery, provided to Newsweek by Planet Labs, shows three aircraft on the main apron at the Anadyr airbase in Russia's Chukotka region close to Alaska on May 26, 2025. Satellite imagery, provided to Newsweek by Planet Labs, shows three aircraft on the main apron at the Anadyr airbase in Russia's Chukotka region close to Alaska on May 26, 2025. Planet Labs The main base in Russian territory where the operation was masterminded was "directly next to" an FSB regional headquarters, Ukraine's President, Volodymyr Zelensky, said as he praised the "brilliant" operation. Russia's FSB domestic security agency is the main descendant of the Soviet-era KGB. Russia used a Tu-160 in intensive overnight missile and drone strikes across Ukraine, Kyiv's air force said on Friday. Moscow fired more than 400 attack drones, six ballistic missiles, 38 cruise missiles and one anti-radar air-to-surface missile at the war-torn country overnight, according to the air force. Ukraine's military separately said on Friday it had hit Dyagilevo in fresh strikes and the Engels long-range aviation hub in the Saratov region. Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.
Bloomberg
29 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
What Trump's FEMA Cuts Mean for Hurricane Season
The Atlantic hurricane season started June 1 and is predicted to be more active than usual this year. A busy hurricane season would test the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the aftermath of President Donald Trump's dramatic cuts to its disaster programs. FEMA — the nation's top agency for response and recovery work — has endured significant upheaval since Trump's return to the White House, including firings, voluntary staff departures, grant freezes and canceled initiatives. Instead of nominating a full-term administrator to lead FEMA, which sits under the Department of Homeland Security, Trump has selected a rotating cast of interim chiefs with little disaster response experience.
Yahoo
33 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump adds Ireland to trade ‘blacklist'
Donald Trump has added Ireland to the White House's official blacklist of countries for the nation's trade surplus with the US. Ireland joins fellow new entrant Switzerland in the US treasury's bad books, on a list that includes regular US targets including China, Japan, Germany, Vietnam and South Korea. Appearing on the watchlist puts Ireland, whose dominant industries are pharmaceuticals and technology, at the front of the queue of countries likely to attract Mr Trump's ire. If escalated, it can open the door to tariffs and other sanctions. The US president has previously singled out Ireland as a country whose trade surplus hurts the US economy. 'We do have a massive deficit with Ireland, because Ireland was very smart. They took our pharmaceutical companies away,' he told Micheál Martin, the Irish Taoiseach, in the Oval Office in March. He even considered putting a 200pc tariff on US pharmaceutical imports from Ireland. 'We don't want to do anything to hurt Ireland. We do want fairness,' he said. Ireland's goods exports to the US surged by 49pc in the first quarter of 2025 from the same period a year earlier, the country's statistics office reported this week, as exporters scrambled to get shipments off before any of Mr Trump's tariffs kicked in. The export surge fuelled a 9.7pc bounce in Ireland's GDP in the first quarter. Irish exports are under dire threat from Mr Trump's potential tariff of 50pc on goods imports from the EU. Dublin and other European capitals are now sweating on Brussels' negotiations with Washington to avoid this levy hitting the bloc in early July. On Friday, the German central bank warned that if the two sides did not strike a deal, Europe's biggest economy would remain mired in recession until 2027. German data issued on Friday showed a 1.4pc drop in factory output in April and a 10.3pc slump in German exports to the US from a month earlier, as pre-tariff, front-end loading of trans-Atlantic shipments came to a halt. The two sides' trade negotiators met in Paris this week. Maros Sefcovic, the EU trade commissioner, said afterwards that talks were 'advancing in the right direction at pace', while Jamieson Greer, the US trade representative, declared himself 'pleased that negotiations are advancing quickly'. They have slightly more than four weeks until the expiry of a 90-day pause on Mr Trump's tariffs on July 9. The president has frequently expressed hostility towards the EU over its trade policies, but was peaceable towards a visiting Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, at a meeting in the Oval Office on Thursday. 'We'll end up hopefully with a trade deal,' he told reporters. 'I'm OK with the tariffs, or we make a deal with the trade.' The US treasury's report on Friday – a twice-yearly 'Monitoring List of major trading partners whose currency practices and macroeconomic policies merit close attention' – had some advice for both Germany and Ireland. Dublin was urged to focus on boosting activity in its domestic economy', to help Ireland 'address its over-reliance' on export-focused multinational companies. Berlin was told that Germany's unbalanced trade with the US was caused by German businesses and consumers failing to open their wallets and spend their savings. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
