Missiles target Kyiv and wound 5 as Ukraine prepares for talks with Russia and the US
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Missile explosions struck across Ukraine Saturday, wounding at least nine people, as Kyiv and Moscow prepared for new talks next week with the United States.
Negotiators from Russia, Ukraine and the U.S. are to meet on Tuesday in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, for talks aimed at ending the war. The new round of negotiations would be the fourth brokered by the Trump administration, the most recent having been in Geneva in February.
Western governments backing the peace initiative are seeking a new formula to break the impasse while acknowledging that territorial and security questions remain unresolved.
The Russian missiles that hit the Ukrainian capital Kyiv overnight damaged homes and commercial properties, triggering new power and water outages, national and city authorities said.
Strikes also prompted officials to close Kyiv's Northern Bridge, a major route that allows commuter traffic in the capital to cross the Dnipro River.
Stephen Miller replaces Susie Wiles as Trump's White House chief of staff after GOP's midterm defeat
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday that Stephen Miller was replacing Susie Wiles as White House chief of staff, installing as his closest adviser a loyal, combative bulldog for his “America First” agenda as the president prepares to stare down a newly empowered Democratic Congress next year.
Miller, long a member of Trump’s tight inner circle, is a key architect of the administration’s hard-line immigration policies. He is one of Trump’s longest-serving aides, joining his long-shot 2016 presidential campaign as a speechwriter. He most recently has served as White House deputy chief of staff for policy and oversees a broad portfolio, though he is best known for his role in Trump’s immigration policy.
The staff shuffle signals that Trump, whose Republican Party was handed monumental defeats in Tuesday's midterm elections, is resisting a conciliatory approach to Democratic lawmakers who are eager to investigate the administration — including Miller himself as a top target. Miller, 41, is a dogged defender of Trump and has built a deep and sophisticated understanding of a president's executive power and how the federal government operates, portending a potential burst of executive actions in the final two years of Trump's presidency.
Wiles gave Trump her resignation Thursday night, a person familiar with the events told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the private conversation. Trump praised Wiles and said she’d continue to work for his political organization.
Trump on Friday night denied that he made the change because he was unhappy with his team after the deep losses his party suffered.
Trump’s arch is blocked for now, but a glitzy new website highlights the plans
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal court has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from breaking ground for his towering memorial arch, but that hasn't stopped his administration from pushing forward with the plans for building it, starting with a glitzy new website launched Friday.
The site's debut is yet another sign of how much Trump is leaning into his efforts to make over the White House and Washington to his own gilded tastes, even after his party lost control of Congress in a midterm-election drubbing. It was the fourth day this week alone that the administration promoted his projects.
The website declares that the 250-foot (76-meter) structure — which is slated to rise in a mass of blindingly gold ornamentation and stately gray granite between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery — will be formally known as the United States Military Triumphal Arch.
Describing the arch as “an American vision finally realized,” the site offers bird's-eye views of the proposal from many angles and shows off the declarations it will feature: “One Nation Under God” on one side and “Golden Age of America” on another. It's also set to have towering gold doors complete with panels of sculptures at its base.
At its very top, the structure features a golden-hued cherub hoisting a flaming torch that recalls a smaller version of the Statue of Liberty.
Trump's midterm drubbing adds to the populist right's losses. France’s Le Pen could still win
PARIS (AP) — A decade ago, U.S. President Donald Trump ’s victory sent a populist shock wave across the West. Now, Europe is asking whether the midterm rout of his Republican Party will send one back.
European opponents of right-wing populism see the U.S. vote as the latest sign of its faltering advance. Since April, voters have ousted Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, ended Aleksandar Vucic’s long grip on Serbia and blocked the Bolsonaro family’s return in Brazil.
“When cracks in power become more visible, this can trigger a cascade effect,” said Péter Krekó, director of Budapest’s Political Capital Institute.
Nowhere would such a cascade matter more than in France, where nationalist Marine Le Pen is the front-runner in a presidential election six months away that could put the European Union’s only nuclear arsenal, and a U.N. Security Council veto, in far-right hands.
The populist right’s recent defeats could rattle the woman vying to become France’s first Madame la Présidente. But the anger punishing populists in power from Budapest to Belgrade could carry her to power — precisely because her National Rally party has never governed France.
The US election showed growing frustration with Israel on both sides of the aisle
JERUSALEM (AP) — In the space of about 24 hours, U.S. President Donald Trump suggested cutting off aid to Israel, a staunch critic of Israel won a key Senate race and the vice president partly blamed his own party's landslide defeat on U.S.-Israel relations.
The rupture caused by Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza and the jointly launched war with Iran has shredded bipartisan U.S. support for Israel that goes back decades. Democrats are fiercely divided over Israel, and Republicans are increasingly critical of its actions.
In Israel, critics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accuse him of having mismanaged relations with the country’s closest ally. But the divide runs much deeper, and is likely to persist even if a new government is formed after last week’s elections.
On the left, Americans increasingly see Israel as an international pariah because of the war in Gaza and violent settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank. On the right, some see Israel as having undermined Trump’s “America First” pledge, accusing it of dragging the U.S. into a costly and unnecessary war with Iran.
“Something fundamental has shifted,” said Michael Oren, a historian and former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. “My working assumption is that the call to cut off military aid is just the beginning.”
After the US midterm rout of Trumpism, the world struggles to trust America again
LONDON (AP) — For Joe Reeve, the midterm afterglow faded fast.
The London startup founder was among the wave around the Trump-weary world awakening to the stunning news that Americans had sharplyrejected President Donald Trump's fist-in-the-eye stewardship of the United States that had started a war with Iran, forged no peace in Ukraine or the Mideast and made gas and food so expensive.
Voters, Reeve saw online, had flipped control of both houses of Congress, handing the power to check the president to his rival Democrats. American democracy, 250 years on, had survived the Trump era.
But a deep and profound distrust of the United States had survived the vote, too. And from national leaders to aspiring American immigrants, no one seemed confident that change was afoot.
“What everybody’s learned,” Reeve, 29, the husband of a Ukrainian, said a day later in an interview, “is that America’s system does allow for these wild swings. We all know, no