Warner Bros. Discovery recommended on Wednesday that its shareholders reject Paramount’s offer to buy the company and instead accept Netflix’s offer.

According to Warner Bros., a Netflix takeover would better serve both the company’s interests and its audiences.

In a letter to its shareholders, Warner Bros. called Paramount’s offer “inferior,” also adding it included “significant risks and costs” due to its reliance on borrowed funds.

However, Netflix’s offer is backed by a streaming giant worth more than $400 billion (€340 billion).

“We are confident that our merger with Netflix represents superior, more certain value for our shareholders,” Warner Bros. said.

Warner Bros. agreed to Netflix’s 72-billion-dollar offer, which includes both cash and stocks, so that the latter would purchase its movie studios, as well as HBO’s catalogue.

Paramount’s offer was labeled “inferior” by the Warner Bros. board [FILE: October 2025]Image: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Separating cable channels from company

The Warner Bros. shareholders will have until January 8 to respond to the offer, with the company’s board also voicing its worries about foreign investors being involved.

Whichever offer that ends up being accepted is set to be subjected to scrutiny by the authorities in the US. Paramount argued its offer is more likely to have an easier path to the authorities’ approval.

Warner Bros. will have to sell its cable TV assets, which include news outlet CNN and science channel Discovery, which would have to be completed before a potential Netflix purchase..

Critics of the deal say a Netflix purchase of Warner Bros. would result in a significant market dominance by the streaming company, a sentiment also echoed by US President Donald Trump, who said such a deal “could be a problem.”

Edited by: Dmytro Hubenko

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Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia’s goals in Ukraine are unchanged and will be accomplished either through negotiations or by further military advances if diplomatic efforts fail.

Putin, speaking at an annual board meeting of the country’s Defense Ministry, touted Russia’s military progress on the battlefield and technological advancements as his war in Ukraine grinds on into a fourth year.

“The goals of the special military operation will undoubtedly be achieved,” he said, using the Kremlin’s term to refer to Moscow’s 2022 full-scale invasion.

“We would prefer to accomplish this and address the root causes of the conflict through diplomatic means. However, if the opposing side and its foreign patrons refuse to engage in substantive dialogue, Russia will achieve the liberation of its historical lands by military means,” the Russian leader told military officials, according to a transcript of the speech released by the government.

PUTIN CALLS TRUMP’S PEACE PLAN A ‘STARTING POINT’ AS HE WARNS UKRAINE TO PULL BACK OR FACE ‘FORCE’

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chief of the General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov attend the annual board meeting of the Defense Ministry in Moscow Dec. 17, 2025. (Alexander Kazakov/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Putin also took aim at Kyiv and its European allies for “whipping up hysteria” about Moscow as the Trump administration works to end the war. 

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte warned allies last week that Russia could be ready to use military force against the alliance within five years and urged members to boost defense spending and production, so their armed forces have the resources to protect their homelands.

Putin referred to European leaders as “piglets” during the Defense Ministry meeting, according to a translated video of the remarks posted by Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

TRUMP TOUTS ‘TREMENDOUS PROGRESS’ BUT SAYS HE’LL MEET PUTIN AND ZELENSKYY ‘ONLY WHEN’ PEACE DEAL IS FINAL

Russian troops stand for a moment of silence at the annual board meeting of the Defense Ministry in Moscow Dec. 17, 2025. (Alexander Kazakov/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

The comment was part of a broader tirade against the West, with Putin accusing European governments of helping Washington try to weaken and divide Russia.

“They were hoping to profit from the collapse of our country. To get back something that was lost in previous historical periods and try to take revenge,” said Putin. “As it has now become obvious to everyone, all these attempts and all these destructive plans towards Russia completely failed.”

The remarks come as U.S., European, Russian and Ukrainian officials engage in a flurry of diplomacy over potential paths to ending the war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his negotiating team met in Berlin Sunday with Jared Kushner and U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine.

(Front row from left) Finnish President Alexander Stubb, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and (back row from left) Jonas Gahr, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, Ursula von der Leyen, Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson stand together in the chancellery in Berlin, Germany, on Dec. 15, 2025. (Markus Schreiber, Pool/AP)

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Witkoff and Kushner previously held a five-hour meeting in Moscow with Putin and top foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov in early December to hash out elements of a revised peace proposal after the original leaked 28-point draft drew criticism for being too favorable to the Kremlin.

Ushakov said the Russian side received four documents from the U.S. envoys during the meeting, including one that consisted of 27 points, but he declined to go into detail of what they contained.

Ashley Carnahan is a writer at Fox News Digital.

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During a press conference on Dec. 11, 2025, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced there was good news on the state of the economy.

“Inflation as measured by the overall CPI has slowed to an average 2.5% pace,” she said, referring to the consumer price index. “Real wages are increasing roughly $1,200 dollars for the average worker.”

When CNN political correspondent Kaitlan Collins attempted to ask a follow-up question, Leavitt pivoted to an attack. Not on Collins, a frequent target of White House ire, but on Leavitt’s predecessor in the Biden White House, Democrat Jen Psaki.

Psaki, claimed Leavitt, stood at the same lectern a year before and told “utter lies.” In contrast, Leavitt insisted, “Everything I’m telling you is the truth backed by real, factual data, and you just don’t want to report on it ’cause you want to push untrue narratives about the president.”

The “real, factual data” that underpinned Leavitt’s statement was specious at best. The actual inflation rate for September was 3%, not the 2.5% figure cherry-picked from economic data. The rise in real wages? CNN business editor David Goldman writes that in the past year, U.S. workers have experienced “the lowest annual paycheck growth that Americans have had since May 2021.”

I’m a historian who has written about the enduring legacy of George Orwell’s ideas about truth and freedom. Listening to Leavitt assert a “truth” so obviously discordant with people’s lives, I was reminded of the repeated pronouncements from the Ministry of Plenty in Orwell’s “1984.”

Leavitt is a master of the art of political language and deflects attention from administration scandals (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

“The fabulous statistics continued to pour out of the telescreen,” Orwell wrote. “As compared with last year there was more food, more clothes, more houses, more furniture, more cooking-pots, more fuel, more ships, more helicopters, more books, more babies — more of everything except disease, crime, and insanity. Year by year and minute by minute, everybody and everything was whizzing rapidly upwards.”

The novel’s doomed hero, Winston Smith, works in the Records Department that produces these fraudulent statistics – figures that are so far divorced from reality that they “had no connection with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie.”

In the world of “1984,” not only are statistics invented, they are continually reinvented to serve the needs of Big Brother’s regime at any given moment: “All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.”

Transparency as doublespeak

The lack of transparency depicted in “1984” has an uncanny echo in our current political moment, despite Leavitt’s repeated assertions that President Donald Trump is the “most transparent president in history.”

Leavitt has made that claim countless times, including in her public defense of Trump’s “Quiet, Piggy!” dismissal of Bloomberg News journalist Catherine Lucey last month.

In Leavitt’s usage, “transparency” has become a form of Orwellian “doublespeak,” a word or phrase which through the process of “doublethink” had come to encompass its exact opposite meaning.

“Doublethink,” in Orwell’s writing, was the mechanism of thought manipulation that allowed someone “to know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them.”

Doublethink was the mechanism that enabled the citizens of Oceania, the Anglo-American superstate governed by Big Brother’s authoritarian regime, to accept that “WAR IS PEACE; FREEDOM IS SLAVERY; IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”

And it is the mechanism that allowed Leavitt to proclaim, in defending Trump’s unwillingness to release the Epstein files, “This administration has done more with respect to transparency when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein than any administration ever.” That claim was pronounced “fabulously audacious” by The Guardian’s Washington bureau chief, David Smith, in a story headlined “Nothing to see here: Trump press chief in full denial mode over Epstein.”

About the author

Laura Beers is a Professor of History at American University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Making ‘lies sound truthful and murder respectable’

In his famous essay “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell wrote that “political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Over the past 10 months, Leavitt has, among other things, claimed that the now dismantled U.S. Agency for International Development – USAID – provided a grant of $32,000 for a “transgender comic book” in Peru. Not true. She has misrepresented the “One Big Beautiful Bill” as fully eliminating taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security. In reality, deductions for these are capped. She claimed that Trump coined the motto “peace through strength.” He didn’t. The phrase has been in circulation for decades, used most prominently by Ronald Reagan during his presidency.

And she recently sought to delegitimize U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly and colleagues’ plea to servicemen and women not to obey illegal orders by suggesting tautologically that “all lawful orders are presumed to be legal by our servicemembers,” and hence Kelly’s plea could only serve to provoke “disorder and chaos.”

All governments lie. But Leavitt has become a master of the art of political language, wielded to aggrandize her boss, belittle his opponents and deflect attention from administration scandals.

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NEED TO KNOW

• Aris Smith Kopiec was trying to enjoy her vacation in Georgia with her three kids
• But when she breastfed her baby at the table, she was kicked out of the restaurant
• Now, the mom tells PEOPLE that she hopes her experience will create more empathy for others who are breastfeeding

Aris Smith Kopiec was just trying to enjoy her vacation with her family when the unthinkable happened.

Back in November, the mom was on a weekend vacation in Blue Ridge, Ga. with her husband and three kids — ages 4 months, 2, and 4 — when they decided to dine at Toccoa Riverside Restaurant.

Seated in the enclosed porch area at a corner table with some family friends, Smith Kopiec tells PEOPLE that her kids were well-behaved. While coloring, playing with stickers and stringing beads, they remained in their chairs except for bathroom breaks. But during the meal, her 4-month-old began to get fussy.

“My husband handed her to me, and I latched her on,” Smith Kopiec recalls to PEOPLE. “My husband then handed me a blanket to cover. I was seated with my back facing the rest of the restaurant. After a short time, my baby fell asleep and I continued holding her, no longer nursing.”

Once they were finished with their family, Smith Kopiec and her friend took their kids outside to go look at the river. As she stood, she accidentally bumped into a chair or person and turned to apologize.

“At that moment, the restaurant owner was standing over me and began yelling, saying, ‘You can’t do that here. Go to the corner,’ ” she claims. “I told him I was not actively breastfeeding at that moment, but he continued yelling that breastfeeding was not allowed and that he needed to ‘protect his restaurant.’ ”

“I explained that I was trying to exit through the side door, but he was blocking the doorway,” Smith continues. “He eventually moved aside and said, ‘Good, go on.’ ”

A rep for the restaurant did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

When she was outside the restaurant, it became more clear to her that she’d been asked to leave because she was breastfeeding. Smith Kopiec told her friend what happened, and they returned inside to get their belongings and find their husbands, who had been paying the bill. At that time, their husbands said while they were outside, another employee of the restaurant came up to them to apologize.

“As we were leaving through the front of the restaurant, I saw the owner standing near the entrance,” Smith Kopiec says, recounting that she “calmly approached him and told him that breastfeeding is legally protected in Georgia and that if he wanted to protect his business, he should follow the law.”

She claims, “At that point, he became increasingly aggressive, repeatedly stating that he did not have to allow breastfeeding and that it was not his responsibility to ‘raise my children.’ ”

Aris Smith Kopiec and her family.

Shyla Keiper with Shyla Shoots Photography

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Per Georgia law, “a mother may breastfeed her baby in any location where the mother and baby are otherwise authorized to be.” However, it does not stipulate any penalties for businesses that violate the state’s code.

At that moment, Smith Kopiec decided to record their interaction and share the video on her social media. The video soon went viral, garnering over 14,000 likes since it was posted to Instagram on Nov. 23. The mom of three said she felt like she was in shock during the altercation.

“I knew breastfeeding was legal, but I wasn’t prepared to be confronted so aggressively while simply feeding my baby,” she says. “I also felt vulnerable because my children were watching, and I didn’t want to escalate the situation or put them in a dangerous position.”

After sharing her video, Smith Kopiec received a lot of support from commenters who were just as shocked as she was. “The support has been overwhelming, and I’m incredibly grateful for it,” she tells PEOPLE. “At the same time, I’ve been surprised by how many people are openly uncomfortable with breastfeeding, even when it’s legal and discreet.”

“Reading those comments really reinforced for me why sharing this mattered — not to provoke anyone, but to highlight how much education and empathy are still needed around something as basic as feeding a baby,” she says.

Aris Smith Kopiec and family.

Shyla Keiper with Shyla Shoots Photography

She also underscores that she didn’t record and share the video to shame people, but rather to educate on what breastfeeding actually looks like. “I think what’s important to add is the gap in between knowing your rights and knowing how to exercise them in real time,” Smith Kopiec explains. “I knew that I could not legally be asked to leave for breastfeeding, but at that moment it wasn’t clear what that actually meant.”

“Was I supposed to sit back down and refuse to move? Was law enforcement going to be called? And if they were, would they even know the law? All of that was running through my mind while my children were standing there watching a grown man yell at their mother,” she says.

Smith Kopiec says at that moment, her first priority was to make sure she was protecting her kids and getting them out of a potentially dangerous situation as calmly as possible. “That’s why I chose to share the video afterward. Not to shame, but to educate — for moms, for business owners and even for law enforcement — so that everyone understands what breastfeeding protections actually look like in real life, not just on paper,” she says.

Smith Kopiec adds, “If this helps even one parent feel more confident feeding their baby or standing up for themselves, then something meaningful came out of a really uncomfortable experience.”

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Crowds lined the streets to pay their respects as Lance Corporal George Hooley, 28, was repatriated at at RAF Brize Norton after a ‘tragic accident’ in Ukraine last week



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China has accused the US of “bullying” Venezuela, after Donald Trump ordered a “total and complete” blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela.

In a phone call on Wednesday, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi told his Venezuelan counterpart, Yvan Gil, that Beijing supported Caracas in defending its sovereignty.

Mr Wang labelled Washington’s military presence in the area – which includes the USS Gerald R Ford aircraft carrier and its support group – as “unilateral bullying”.

“China believes the international community understands and supports Venezuela‘s position in defending its legitimate rights and interests,” Mr Wang said.

Image:
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi says the international community supports Venezuela’s position. Pic: Reuters.

The message of support came as the US president declared late on Tuesday that he had ordered the “blockade” on oil tankers into and out of the South American country.

He said the US military would remain in place until Venezuela returns “all of the oil, land, and other assets that they previously stole from us”.

In the social media post following months of escalating tensions in the Caribbean, Mr Trump said Venezuela was surrounded by the “largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America”.

“It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before – until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us,” he said.

Image:
Mr Trump doubled the reward offered for the arrest of Mr Maduro to $50m. Pic: Reuters

The US military seized a Venezuelan oil tanker on 11 December, in an escalation of the crisis involving the country that is rich in fossil fuels.

Mr Trump’s campaign has included more than two dozen strikes on boats in the both the Caribbean and the Pacific that the US says were trafficking drugs, killing at least 90 people.

Mr Trump has repeatedly accused Caracas of using boats to smuggle drugs into the US, defending American actions as being in the interest of national security.

The US has released no evidence to support its assertions that those killed in the boats were “narco-terrorists”, as the administration has called them.

Image:
Mr Trump’s campaign has killed at least 95 people in 25 known strikes on vessels.

Image:
Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves.

Venezuela’s government has accused Mr Trump of “violating international law, free trade, and the principle of free navigation” with “a reckless and grave threat” against the South American country.

Washington has announced sanctions on numerous oil tankers, shipping companies and family members of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Image:
Mr Maduro has accused Mr Trump of seeking to overthrow him. Pic: Reuters.

“The illegitimate Maduro Regime is using oil from these stolen oil fields to finance themselves, drug terrorism, human trafficking, murder, and kidnapping,” Mr Trump said.

The statement seemed to confirm Mr Trump’s goal was to remove Mr Maduro from power and likely replace him with a friendlier regime.

Mr Maduro has been in power since 2013, and was re-elected in 2024 in a contest marred by accusations of fraud.

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Trump’s three aims for Venezuela

He has accused Mr Trump of seeking to overthrow him after the US president approved CIA operations in the South American country.

Read more:
Is this what the beginning of a war looks like?
Analysis: Trump says the quiet part out loud on Venezuela
US military says eight ‘narco-terrorists’ killed in strikes

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Analysis: Trump pressure on Venezuela

Mr Trump doubled the reward offered for the arrest of Mr Maduro to $50m (£37.2m) in August.

In October, Mr Trump appeared to confirm reports that Mr Maduro had offered a stake in Venezuela’s oil and other mineral wealth to ease mounting pressure from the United States.

“He’s offered everything,” Mr Trump said at the time. “You know why? Because he doesn’t want to f*** around with the United States.”

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Mr Trump has said the US will move its campaign against Venezuela beyond the water and start strikes on land.

Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves and produces about one million barrels a day. It has relied on oil revenue to support its economy.

Since the Trump administration began imposing oil sanctions on Venezuela in 2017, Mr Maduro’s government has relied on a shadowy fleet of unflagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains.

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The board decision comes a day after Affinity Partners, a fund backed by Trump’s son in-law Jared Kushner, pulled out of the deal.

Warner Bros Discovery’s board has rejected Paramount Skydance’s $108.4bn hostile takeover bid and accused the studio giant of misleading shareholders about its financing.

In a letter to shareholders on Wednesday, the Warner Bros board wrote that Paramount “consistently misled” Warner Bros shareholders that its $30-per-share cash offer was fully guaranteed, or “backstopped”, by the Ellison family, led by billionaire Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, whose son David runs Paramount Skydance.

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Paramount has been in a race with Netflix to win control of Warner Bros and its prized film and television studios, HBO Max streaming service and franchises like Harry Potter. After Warner Bros accepted the streaming giant’s offer, Paramount launched a hostile offer to outdo that bid.

“It does not, and never has,” the board wrote of the guarantee of Paramount’s offer, noting that the offer posed “numerous, significant risks”.

The board said it found Paramount’s offer “inferior” to Netflix’s $27.75 per share offer, which is a binding agreement that requires no equity financing and has robust debt commitments, the board wrote.

The board also said the offer could be terminated or amended at any time before the deal’s completion, which is not the same as a binding merger agreement.

Warner Bros has not yet set a date for a shareholder vote on the deal, but it is expected to happen sometime in spring or early summer, its chairman, Samuel Di Piazza, said in an interview with CNBC.

The Ellisons have cited their relationship with United States President Donald Trump as a reason why the deal would face an easier regulatory path.

“The Warner Bros Discovery Board reinforced that Netflix’s merger agreement is superior and that our acquisition is in the best interest of stockholders,” its co-CEO Ted Sarandos said in a statement.

Netflix is already talking with the US Department of Justice and the European Commission, its other co-CEO, Greg Peters, told CNBC while expressing confidence in how regulators would view the deal.

Netflix has told Warner Bros it would keep releasing the studio’s films in cinemas in a bid to ease fears that the deal would eliminate another studio and major source of theatrical films, according to people familiar with the matter.

Paramount’s case

Paramount last week took its case directly to Warner Bros shareholders, arguing it had arranged “air-tight financing” to support its bid with $41bn in new equity assured by the Ellison family and RedBird Capital and $54bn of debt commitments from the Bank of America, Citi and Apollo.

The board decision came a day after Affinity Partners, a fund backed by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and one of the funding sources of the Paramount offer, pulled out of the deal. The amount Affinity Partners was contributing to the offer was not disclosed in Paramount’s latest filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“With two strong competitors vying to secure the future of this unique American asset, Affinity has decided no longer to pursue the opportunity,” the firm said in a statement.

“The dynamics of the investment have changed significantly since we initially became involved in October. We continue to believe there is a strong strategic rationale for Paramount’s offer.”

The Warner Bros board countered that Paramount’s latest offer included an equity commitment “for which there is no Ellison family commitment of any kind” but rather the backing of “an unknown and opaque” Lawrence J Ellison Revocable Trust, whose assets and liabilities are not publicly disclosed and are subject to change.

“Despite having been told repeatedly by WBD how important a full and unconditional financing commitment from the Ellison family was, … the Ellison family has chosen not to backstop the PSKY offer,” the Warner Bros board wrote.

“A revocable trust is no replacement for a secured commitment by a controlling shareholder.”

Paramount had submitted a total of six bids to acquire the entire Warner Bros studio, including its television networks, such as CNN and TNT Sports.

It has previously said the Ellison family trust – which Paramount says contains more than $250bn in assets, including about 1.16 billion shares of Oracle – is more than adequate to cover the equity commitment.

Warner Bros had raised questions about Paramount’s financial condition and creditworthiness. The offer relied on a seven-party, cross-conditional structure with the Ellison Revocable Trust providing 32 percent of the required equity commitment while capping its liability at $2.8bn, Warner Bros said. It noted that the trust’s assets could have been withdrawn at any time.

On Wall Street, Paramount Skydance’s stock tumbled on the news. It was down 3.8 percent from the market open. Warner Bros Discovery was down 0.4 percent while Netflix was surging – up 2.8 percent.

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So it appears Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, agrees with many of us: she thinks Donald Trump’s cabinet is bonkers.

From that bombshell Vanity Fair interview, which featured some truly terrifying close-up photos, we learned that Wiles considers JD Vance to have been “a conspiracy theorist for a decade”. She believes Elon Musk to be an “odd, odd duck”. Russell Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget, is, in Wiles’ view, “a right-wing absolute zealot”.

Pam Bondi, the attorney general, “whiffed” her handling of the Epstein files, Wiles said. And Trump? He has “an alcoholic’s personality”, and is “wrong” about Bill Clinton having visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island.

It was pretty incendiary stuff from a woman previously known for her calmness and aversion to drama. Wiles, who appears to retain the support of Trump, has responded by calling the Vanity Fair article “a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest president, White House staff, and cabinet in history”, without pointing to any quotes or reporting that was incorrect.

The whole thing might have served as a useful distraction for Trump though, because – whisper it – things are not actually going that well.

A long overdue jobs report found this week that 41,000 jobs were lost across October and November. Manufacturing jobs are at a 3.5-year low, according to CNN, despite Trump promising a “manufacturing renaissance”, and pledging that his tariffs would create “millions and millions of blue-collar jobs and jobs of every type”.

“If we’re judging by these numbers, Americans are completely dissatisfied with the way things are happening in this country.”

It’s not ideal. And it gets worse.

The unemployment rate hit 4.6% in November, a four year high. Recent Republican election losses have sparked fears over next year’s midterm elections. Trump’s own party defied him over releasing the Epstein files; health subsidies are due to expire at the end of next year, which would send insurance premiums soaring for 22 million Americans; and Trump’s vendetta-driven lawsuits against the New York attorney general, Letitia James, and the former FBI director, James Comey, have been thrown out by courts.

The Trump administration isn’t having a great time of it, in other words. And people are starting to take notice. Fifty-seven percent of Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling the economy, an area which was supposed to be his strength: only 36% approve.

An NBC poll found that more than half of low- and middle-income Americans have changed which groceries they buy to stay within their budgets, and a majority of Americans plan to spend less on Christmas or holiday gifts. Regarding his overall performance, 54% of Americans disapprove of Trump: just 43% approve.

“If we’re judging by these numbers, Americans are completely dissatisfied with the way things are happening in this country,” Emmitt Riley III, a professor of politics at Sewanee: The University Of The South and the chair of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, told me this week.

Riley said there’s good reason for that.

“If we think about the rate of inflation, if we think about the cost of living, if we think about how Americans are experiencing rising costs in groceries, rent, cars, what have you, then we would have to give him an F.”

Even his support among his base has dropped. In April, 78% of people who consider themselves Maga Republicans strongly approved of Trump – that’s fallen to 70%.

“It appears that Americans who – for whatever reason – believed that a billionaire would be a champion for the poor and working class have now grown sour on the actual implementation of the Trump agenda,” Riley said.

Trump’s response appears to be to tell people not to believe their own eyes and bank accounts, that, actually, the economy is doing great. The president has dismissed concerns about prices as a “hoax” and a “con job”, even as his vice-president this week asked people for “a little bit of patience” before they see an economic upturn.

With Trump due to deliver a live address from the White House on Wednesday night, perhaps he will adopt a more contrite tone. But this is Donald Trump, so I wouldn’t bet on it.

And while we’re discussing the lived experience of White House policies, I should point you to the stunning work of my colleagues, who have been documenting the impact of the Trump administration on real people.

One day in Trump’s America

‘We’re back at stage one’: Trump cuts rock Louisiana town plagued by gun violence

She has stage four cancer. Her husband is a federal worker. Will she survive the Trump administration?

The chaotic life of an immigration lawyer in Trump’s America: ‘Some days you break down in tears’

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The prime minister has said Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich must “pay up now” to victims of the war in Ukraine or face court action.

Mr Abramovich, the former owner of Chelsea Football Club, pledged in 2022 that the £2.5bn he made from the sale of the club would be used to benefit victims of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

But there has been a delay in releasing the funds, which are currently frozen in a British bank account, due to a standoff over how exactly they should be used.

Sir Keir Starmer told the Commons on Wednesday: “My message to Abramovich is clear: the clock is ticking.”

The government wants the money to be used for humanitarian aid, but Mr Abramovich insisted it should be used for “all victims of the war” – meaning that Russians could also benefit.

The oligarch cannot access the money under UK sanctions but the proceeds from the Chelsea sale still legally belong to him.

Updating MPs, Sir Keir said the UK had issued a licence “to transfer £2.5bn from the sale of Chelsea Football Club that’s been frozen since 2022.”

And, in a warning to Abramovich, he said: “Honour the commitment that you made and pay up now, and if you don’t we’re prepared to go to court and ensure that every penny reaches those whose lives have been torn apart by Putin’s illegal war.”

And Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told the BBC Mr Abramovich “needs to honour that commitment, pay that money”.

Asked if a legal battle could drag out the process for years, Ms Cooper said: “I’m urging him not to try and pursue further court action.”

But she confirmed the government will take the matter to court if he does not act.

Mr Abramovich’s representatives declined to comment.

The Treasury said that under the terms of the licence, the money must go to “humanitarian causes” in Ukraine and cannot benefit Mr Abramovich or any other sanctioned individual.

The government first threatened to sue Mr Abramovich in June.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: “It is unacceptable that more than £2.5bn of money owed to the Ukrainian people can be allowed to remain frozen in a UK bank account.”

Mr Abramovich – a Russian billionaire who made his fortune in oil and gas – was granted a special licence to sell Chelsea following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, providing he could prove he would not benefit from the sale.

He is alleged to have strong ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, something he has denied.

It is understood that Mr Abramovich has 90 days to act before the UK considers taking legal action.

On Thursday, EU leaders are set to review proposals to use proceeds from frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine’s huge budget and defence needs. Russia has fiercely opposed the proposals.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded that Western countries immediately take action to battle antisemitism and ensure the safety of Jews around the globe.

“I demand that Western governments do what is necessary to fight antisemitism and provide the required safety and security for Jewish communities worldwide,” he said, according to the prime minister’s office, which issued the English translation of the remarks that Netanyahu delivered in Hebrew in a video posted on Tuesday.

“They would be well-advised to heed our warnings. I demand action from them — now,” he added.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is welcomed to the Pentagon with an official ceremony on July 9, 2025. (Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Netanyahu’s demand came in the wake of the heinous Sunday terror attack in Australia.

That attack was “deliberately targeted at the Jewish community on the first day of Hanukkah,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has noted.

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President Donald Trump greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he arrives at the West Wing of the White House on Sept. 29, 2025. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

During remarks Tuesday at a White House Hanukkah reception, President Donald Trump claimed that Congress “is becoming antisemitic.”

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participates in a joint press conference with President Donald Trump in the State Dining Room of the White House on Sept. 29, 2025. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

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“You have AOC plus three. You have those people,” he said, referring to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and the progressive “Squad.”

“Ilhan Omar: She hates Jewish people,” he added, referring to the Minnesota congresswoman.

Alex Nitzberg is a writer for Fox News Digital.

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