Mexico is developing a cellphone app that will allow migrants to warn relatives and local consulates if they think they are about to be detained by the U.S. immigration department, a senior official said Friday.
The move is in response to President-elect Donald Trump’s threats to carry out mass deportations after he takes office on Jan. 20.
The app has been rolled out for small-scale testing and “appears to be working very well,” said Juan Ramón de la Fuente, Mexico’s secretary of foreign affairs.
He said the app would allow users to press a tab that would send an alert notification to previously chosen relatives and the nearest Mexican consulate. De la Fuente described it as a sort of panic button.
“In case you find yourself in a situation where detention is imminent, you push the alert button, and that sends a signal to the nearest consulate,” he said.
U.S. authorities are obliged to give notice to home-country consulates when a foreign citizen is detained. Mexico says it has beefed up consular staff and legal aid to help migrants in the legal process related to deportation.
De la Fuente expects the app to be rolled out in January. He didn’t say whether the app has a de-activation tab that would allow someone to rescind an alert if they weren’t really detained.
The government says it has also set up a call center staffed 24 hours a day to answer migrants’ questions.
The Mexican government estimates there are 11.5 million migrants with some form of legal residency in the United States, and 4.8 million without legal residency or proper documents.
This may be one of those years Britain’s royal family will not want to dwell on. Few of the Windsor clan would have anticipated the challenges they’d have to face in the infancy of King Charles III’s reign.
It was perhaps best summed up by his heir apparent, Prince William, who candidly categorized 2024 as “brutal” and probably “the hardest year in my life.”
For Russell Myers, the royal editor of Britain’s The Mirror newspaper, the past 12 months have been astonishing. “It’s been a simply unprecedented time for both the individuals who have had separate health ailments, but also, in a wider sense, (a) really testing time for other members of the family.”
Myers recalled the hurricane of unfounded, and at times ludicrous, conspiracy theories that swirled around Catherine earlier this year. “In all my years in the job, I’ve never known a period of hysteria like it and a lot of people forgot that at the center was a young mother who had undergone a serious operation and needed time to recover,” he continued.
The King and his daughter-in-law’s diagnoses stunned royal-watchers, but their disclosures also heralded a change in the royal modus operandi.
“We saw a real openness with the royal family that we haven’t seen quite so much of before,” said Lizzie Robinson, a royal journalist for Britain’s ITV News, recalling the Princess of Wales’ video messages and the monarch’s disclosure that he had initially gone to hospital for a corrective procedure for an enlarged prostate.
“He wanted to help raise awareness and was keen to encourage other men who might be experiencing symptoms to get checked. After he made his announcement, there was a significant rise in the searches on the NHS website,” Robinson added. “I think that showed the royal family were maybe taking a more modern approach in the way they deal with some things.”
Amid the health issues, Prince William also took a step back from his royal duties to support his family, leaving the 1,000-year-old institution without three of its most senior members.
“Camilla really kept that royal show on the road for quite a few months,” Robinson said, before adding that she was, of course, supported by other Windsors, including Princess Anne and the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh.
Myers points out that Queen Camilla “wouldn’t have expected to be front and center of the institution at large.”
He added: “Camilla’s transition over the last couple of decades has been extraordinary because at one point in the not too distant history she was public enemy number one. There were questions over whether she would be accepted by the British public and beyond and now she is this pillar of the institution.”
William returned to public engagements in April and has since deftly juggled his work and personal life. As he picked up extra childcare duties behind the scenes while Kate continued to recuperate, he also twice stepped up to represent the King at state events in France. The pressure on the heir would have been considerable, both personally and professionally.
When he stood shoulder to shoulder with heads of state at the D-Day commemorations in June and again at the reopening of Notre Dame cathedral in December, we got a glimpse of how the monarchy may feel when he eventually takes the crown. He would have been aware of the optics of those moments and considered how he wanted to play them.
Ahead of William’s Notre Dame appearance, a royal source pointed to the “evolution of the Prince of Wales as a global statesman” in the past two years and how this was a further example of him “stepping up onto the world stage to represent the United Kingdom.”
Any heir to a throne must always have their destiny in the back of their minds. But with his father’s reduced travel schedule, William has been getting some practice sooner than he might have imagined.
When they met in Paris, US President-elect Donald Trump said William was “doing a fantastic job,” illustrating the soft power the British royal family still wields.
Challenges for the Windsors weren’t confined to Britain. Across the Atlantic, Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex embarked on several trips abroad to Nigeria, Canada and Colombia to promote their charity work, and projects such as Invictus and online child safety. While they weren’t official visits on behalf of the UK government, there was an air of traditional royal tour about them, complete with stately welcomes and meetings with high-profile figures.
The visits illustrated how the couple can operate outside the royal infrastructure and promote their causes and initiatives, while simultaneously demonstrating that they can still draw crowds.
The Sussexes have also continued to push forward with their business endeavors. In March, Meghan returned to Instagram after a six-year hiatus to tease a new lifestyle venture, “American Riviera Orchard.” She then sent out what appeared to be a sample of what was to come – jars of strawberry jam – to friends and influencers, but movement on the project at least in public has stalled in the months since.
Their latest Netflix offering, which gave viewers an inside look at the world of professional polo, received mixed reviews when it was released in December. Meanwhile, Netflix’s mid-year data dump of streaming figures for the second half of 2023 revealed that their “Heart of Invictus” series, which premiered on the platform last August, racked up just 300,000 views, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“The next phase was starting all these businesses and things,” he explained. “Sympathy can turn to skepticism very quickly and people can think that you’re doing a little too much to cash in on these family problems.”
Back in England, after being relegated to the shadows following earlier scandals, Prince Andrew had almost managed a quiet 2024. That is, until a High Court hearing revealed his close relationship with an alleged Chinese spy. Yang Tengbo was the co-founder of Pitch@Palace China, an initiative for entrepreneurs Andrew set up a decade ago.
The hearing upheld an earlier decision to bar Yang from the UK, but disclosed that he had been authorized to act on the duke’s behalf during business meetings with potential Chinese investors in the UK, and had been invited to Andrew’s 60th birthday party in 2020. The duke’s office subsequently told British media that the royal had “ceased all contact” when concerns had been raised about Yang. But the developments once again called into question his judgement and the company he has chosen to keep.
He said it was too early to understand the scandal’s effect on the monarchy but suggested it could be a wake-up call for the duke “that he would be much better completely withdrawing from public life, and any sense that he may have had that there was a route back for him is completely extinguished now.”
By year’s end, King Charles and Queen Camilla had resumed overseas visits, carrying out a 10-day trip to Australia and Samoa. Robinson, who was one of the many royal reporters on the tour, described a “real warmth and appreciation” that they’d made the long-haul journey while Charles was still undergoing cancer treatment.
“Going into 2025 we already know that the King is working on a full overseas tour program as long as there’s doctors’ approval, that Prince William has spoken about how hopefully he and Catherine will have some more trips lined up,” she said. “They will be hoping that things can return to some sort of normal again.”
A man who killed 35 people by plowing his car into a crowd at a sports center in southern China has been sentenced to death, state media reported on Friday.
Fan Weiqiu, 62, rammed his car into people exercising at the outdoor venue in the city of Zhuhai last month, in the country’s deadliest known act of violence against the public in a decade.
China has been gripped by a surge of sudden episodes of violence targeting random members of the public – including children – in recent months as economic growth stutters, unnerving a public long accustomed to low violent crime rates and ubiquitous surveillance.
Fan was sentenced at the Zhuhai Intermediate People’s Court on Friday after pleading guilty earlier in the day, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Shortly before 8 p.m. on November 11, Fan drove his car into the crowd, in a rage caused by his failed marriage and what he saw as an unfair divorce settlement, the court concluded.
As his small off-road vehicle mowed across the grounds of Zhuhai Sports Center, he hit dozens of people exercising around a track.
After the attack, officers found Fan in the car trying to injure himself with a knife and took him to hospital, police said in their previous statement.
“The court finds that defendant Fan Weiqiu’s criminal behavior was despicable; the nature of the crime particularly was brutal; the way the crime was committed was particularly cruel,” the court said, as quoted by CCTV.
The attack had the highest such death toll has seen since 2014, when a string of attacks rocked the far western region of Xinjiang.
The hit-and-run prompted Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who described the attack as “extremely vicious,” to call for severe punishment, CCTV previously reported.
Fan’s sentencing came just days after another Chinese court handed down a suspended death sentence to a man who rammed his car into crowds outside a primary school in central Hunan province injuring 30 people, including 18 students.
Since taking power in 2012, Xi has launched a sweeping campaign against graft and disloyalty, taking down corrupt officials as well as political rivals at an unprecedented speed and scale as he consolidated control over the party and the military.
Now well into his third term, the supreme leader has turned his relentless campaign into a permanent and institutionalized feature of his open-ended rule.
And increasingly, some of the most fearsome tools he has wielded to keep officials in line are being used against a much broader section of society, from private entrepreneurs to school and hospital administrators – regardless of whether they are members of the 99-million-strong party.
The expanded detention regime, named “liuzhi,” or “retention in custody,” comes with facilities with padded surfaces and round-the-clock guards in every cell, where detainees can be held for up to six months without ever seeing a lawyer or family members.
It’s an extension of a system long used by the party to exert control and instill fear among its members.
New detention regime
For decades, the party’s disciplinary arm, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), had run a secretive, extralegal detention system to interrogate Communist Party cadres suspected of corruption and other misdeeds. Officials under investigation were disappeared into party compounds, hotels or other covert locations for months at a time, with no access to legal counsel or family visits.
In 2018, amid growing criticism over widespread abuse, torture and forced confession, Xi scrapped the controversial practice known as “shuanggui,”or “double designation” –a nod to the party’s power to summon members for investigation at a designated time and place.
But the Chinese leader did not abolish secret detention, which had been a potent weapon in his war on corruption and dissent. Instead, it was codified by law, given a new name and placed under the purview of a powerful new state agency, the National Supervisory Commission (NSC).
Founded in 2018 as part of the constitutional revision that cleared the way for Xi to rule for life, the new agency consolidated the government’s anti-graft forces and merged them with the CCDI. The two agencies work hand in glove and share the same offices, same personnel and even the same website – an arrangement that expands the remit of the party’s internal graft watchdog to the entire public sector.
The new liuzhi detention regime has kept many features of its predecessor, including the power to hold suspects incommunicado in custody and a lack of independent oversight.
The lawyer, who requested anonymity due to fears of retribution from the government, said many of their clients had detailed abuse, threats and forced confessions while in liuzhi custody.
“Most of them would succumb to the pressure and agony. Those who resisted until the end were a tiny minority,” the lawyer said.
Liuzhi casts a much wider dragnet than shuanggui, targeting not only party members, but anyone who exercises “public power” – from officials and civil servants to managers of public schools, hospitals, sports organizations, cultural institutions and state-owned companies. It can also detain individuals deemed to be implicated in a graft case, such as businessmen suspected of paying bribes to an official under investigation.
High-profile liuzhi detainees include Bao Fan, a billionaire investment banker, and Li Tie, a former English Premier League soccer star and coach of China’s national men’s team. (Li was sentenced to 20 years in prison for corruption this month.) At least 127 senior executives of publicly listed firms – many of them private businesses – have been taken into liuzhi custody, with three quarters of detentions taking place in the past two years alone, according to company announcements.
State media says the expanded jurisdiction fills longstanding loopholes in the party’s anti-corruption fight and enables graft busters to go after everyday abuse of power endemic in the country’s behemoth public sector, from bribes and kickbacks in hospitals to misappropriation of school funds.
Critics say it is another example of the party’s ever-tightening grip over the state and all aspects of society under Xi, China’s most powerful and authoritarian leader in decades.
Some of the detention centers built or expanded in China since 2018
The real number is likely much higher, as many local governments don’t publish tender notices online, or delete them after the bidding is finished.
The spate of construction appears to be largely driven by a surge in demand for detention cells due to the NSC’s new broad remit, as well as efforts to make liuzhi facilities more standardized and regulated than the hotels and villas often used for shuanggui, the documents revealed.
Soft padded rooms
An analysis of the tender notices shows a lull in construction during the pandemic, but the number of projects picked up again in 2023 and 2024. More detention centers have been built, and more funds have been allocated, in provinces and regions with a higher percentage of ethnic minorities.
Shizuishan, a city in the northwestern region of Ningxia – the official heartland of the Hui Muslim minority – was approved to build a 77,000 square feet liuzhi site with a budget of 20 million yuan ($2.8 million) in 2018, according to a government notice.
The document provides a rare glimpse into what the interior looks like. All detention cells, interrogation rooms, and the infirmary must have fully padded walls, cabinets, tables, chairs and beds, with all edges rounded for safety.
No exposed electrical wiring or power sockets are allowed, and floors must be treated with anti-slip surfaces. All ceiling-mounted installations, including surveillance cameras, lights, fans and loudspeakers, must incorporate “anti-hanging designs.” In the bathrooms, washbasins and stainless-steel toilets must be fully padded too, while showerheads and surveillance cameras must be mounted on the ceiling, according to the notice.
These maximized safety features are designed to prevent detainees from taking their own lives – an issue that had long dogged shuanggui detentions.
But Shizuishan’s liuzhi center turned out to be too small for the influx of detainees. In June, the city published another notice seeking to expand the facility to address the problem of “insufficient facilities and equipment.” The project includes a new building for interrogation, a new staff canteen and reconfiguration of existing buildings to create more detention cells.
The party never published official figures on shuanggui detention, and the numbers on liuzhi are nearly as elusive. In 2023, the only year national data was available, 26,000 people were detained by the NSC and its local branches across the country.
Provincial data, although patchy, has pointed to a sharp increase in the number of detentions. In the northern region of Inner Mongolia, 17 times more people were placed under liuzhi custody in 2018 than those subject to shuanggui in 2017, according to the region’s supervisory commission.
Dingxi, one of the poorest cities in the northwestern province of Gansu, said its 305-million-yuan ($42 million) detention center would be built following requirements specified by the CCDI and NSC to achieve the “standardized, law-based, and professional operations” of the liuzhi facility.
The massive complex, featuring 542 rooms, will include 32 detention cells, accommodation for investigators and guards to live on site, as well as other facilities to meet their daily needs, according to a 2024 budget document of the city’s anti-graft agency.
Life under liuzhi
Chinese officials and state media have hailed the transition from shuanggui to liuzhi as a crucial step toward what they describe as “the rule of law in anti-corruption work.”
The shuanggui system had long been criticized for using threats, intense pressure or even torture to secure confessions. A 2016 report by Human Rights Watch documented 11 deaths in shuanggui custody from 2010 to 2015, and numerous instances of abuse and torture.
Unlike shuanggui, which had no legal basis, liuzhi is inscribed in the national supervision law – introduced in 2018 to regulate the NSC.
The law bans investigators from collecting evidence through illegal means such as threats and deception; it prohibits insulting, scolding, beating, abusing and any form of corporal punishment of those under investigation. The law also requires interrogations to be recorded on video.
But legal experts say the legislation only wraps a thin veil of legality around a detention regime that operates outside the judicial system, lacks external oversight and remains inherently prone to abuse.
“In the past, it was extra-legal. Now, some critics call it ‘legally illegal,’” said a Chinese legal scholar who has studied the NSC. They spoke on condition of anonymity, citing fears of government retribution.
China’s opaque court system, which answers to the Communist Party, already boasts a conviction rate above 99%.
But unlike criminal arrests, liuzhi takes place outsidethe judicial process and does not allow access to legal representation, raising concerns for potential abuse of power, said a second Chinese scholar who also requested anonymity.
In September, Zhou Tianyong, a top economist and former professor at the elite Central Party School, where the Communist Party trains its senior officials, warned that local authorities had been using corruption probes to extort money from private entrepreneurs to fill their strained coffers.
In a viral article that was later censored, Zhou called for an end to the practice by local anti-graft agencies of detaining businessmen on suspected or trumped-up bribery charges and forcing them to pay for their release. “If (this trend) spreads, it will undoubtedly lead to another disaster for the national economy,” Zhou wrote.
In recent years, allegations of abuse and forced confessions have emerged in multiple liuzhi cases publicized online.
Among them is Chen Jianjun, an architect-turned-local official who claimed he was deceived and forced into making false confessions of bribe-taking while detained under liuzhi in 2022 in the northwestern city of Xianyang.
During his six months of detention, the 57-year-old was watched by rotating pairs of guards around the clock and forced to sit upright for 18 hours a day without moving or speaking, with any slightest bending of his back immediately met with reprimands from the guards, according to a written account of his experience posted on social platform WeChat.
Chen was only allowed to sleep for less than six hours a day under bright lights that were never switched off; in bed, he must lie on his back and keep his hands above the blanket in sight of the guards, he wrote.
“The prolonged torment left me physically and mentally exhausted, with blurred consciousness, a mental breakdown, chaotic thoughts and hallucinations,” Chen wrote, adding that by the time he emerged from liuzhi, he had lost 15 kilograms.
In 2023, Chen was sentenced to six years in prison for accepting bribes of 2.5 million yuan ($340,000). He appealed and is waiting for a ruling, according to Caixin, a business magazine known for its investigative reporting.
The Chinese lawyer who represented officials in court after they were released from liuzhi custody said it was common for detainees to be forced to sit in one position for up to 18 hours a day.
“They had to sit continuously without moving, causing severe pressure ulcers on their buttocks. Some medicine would be applied, but they were made to continue sitting, leading to further deterioration. It was extremely torturous,” they said.
Some clients were also given very little food until they confessed, causing malnutrition and a host of other health problems, the lawyer said. “Many people eventually developed auditory hallucinations and felt like they were losing their minds,” they said.
According to the lawyer, another tactic commonly used by investigators was to detain an official and their spouse simultaneously, even if the spouse did not hold public office.
It’s a two-pronged approach: investigators can try to gather clues about the official’s alleged transgression from the spouse; while the spouse can be held hostage to pressure the official to confess, the lawyer explained.
In some cases, investigators had also threatened to detain officials’ children for interrogation, the lawyer added.
A draft amendment to the national supervision law, which is under review by China’s top legislature, appears to nod to concerns of potential abuse. It added a clause that requires investigators to carry out investigations in a “lawful, civilized and standardized manner.”
But the draft proposal has ignored calls to allow access to legal counsel during liuzhi detention. Instead, it has suggested extending the maximum detention period from six months to eight months, if the suspect is likely to be sentenced to a prison term of 10 years or longer; the entire liuzhi period can be reset and restarted if new offenses are discovered, meaning a maximum of 16 months of custody, according to the proposal.
The draft amendment has sparked heated debate and criticism from Chinese lawyers and legal scholars, who say the powers granted to investigators during liuzhi have far outweighed the protection of detainees’ rights.
“Prolonged detention and interrogation present an extreme test that surpasses the physical and mental limits of the detainee,” Dacheng, a Beijing-based law firm, said in an article on its social media account.
“Under such extreme conditions, where both the body and the mind are pushed to their limits, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell whether the detainee is giving an ‘honest confession’ based on facts or opting for ‘full cooperation’ by compromising the truth under unbearable pressure.”
JERUSALEM—President-elect Donald Trump’s slated revival of his maximum pressure campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran coupled with a chronic gas shortage in the nation could be the one-two punch that topples the world’s worst state-sponsor of terrorism, according to one prominent expert.
‘This gas shortage inside Iran is highly significant and exposes the regime’s growing vulnerabilities across multiple fronts. From the defeats of Hezbollah and Hamas in their conflicts with Israel, to the losses of the Houthis in Yemen and the collapse of the Syrian regime under Assad, we see a consistent erosion of the regime’s influence,’ Lisa Daftari, an expert on Iran and editor-in-chief of The Foreign Desk, told Fox News Digital.
She continued, ‘Add to this the plummeting Rial and the staggering mismanagement of resources despite the loosening of sanctions and billions handed over through lopsided deals under Biden’s watch—it’s no surprise the regime is under immense pressure.’
‘With President Trump likely to return to a leadership stance that emphasizes maximum pressure, the Iranian people could find themselves in an environment ripe for demanding regime change, Daftari said.
The widespread blackouts and severe gas shortages for households have jolted Iran’s rulers. Acute anxiety about social and political unrest is on the minds of the rulers who control Iran and are quick to impose violence on mass dissent.
Nationwide protests over fuel prices and the violent repression of women for not properly wearing the compulsory hijab have rocked the Tehran regime in 2019 and 2022.
In 2019, Fox News Digital reported that Iran’s regime killed at least 106 people who protested against an increase of fuel prices. Three years later, in 2022, the regime’s infamous morality police murdered a young woman, Masha Amini, for not adequately covering her hair. The 2022 protests morphed into widespread calls across the nation for the dissolution of the Islamic Republic.
According to a Tuesday report in the London-based Iran International news organization, the head of Iran’s judiciary sent a directive to prevent unrest because of the power and gas outages.
Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, the head of Iran’s judiciary reportedly said ‘The Attorney General and prosecutors across the country, in direct cooperation with the intelligence, security, and law enforcement agencies, should take all appropriate measures and arrangements to stabilize and strengthen the security of the people and citizens, and, as in the past, and even with greater firmness, take the relevant measures so that the enemy’s conspiracy to create insecurity…is neutralized.’
Despite Iran’s vast natural gas and oil reserves, years of underinvestment, economic mismanagement, corruption and sanctions have left the energy sector ill-prepared for seasonal surges.
The Islamic Republic has also pumped massive funds into its terrorist proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, over the years. Matthew Levitt, a counter-terrorism expert for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, has said that Iran funnels roughly $700 million to $1 billion a year to Hezbollah and Hamas secures $100 million a year.
The Iranian rial on December 18 fell to its lowest level in history, losing more than 10% of value since Trump won the presidential election in November and signaling new challenges for Tehran as it remains locked in the wars raging across the Middle East.
Iran’s Central Bank has in the past flooded the market with more hard currencies in an attempt to improve the rate.
The currency plunged as Iran ordered the closure of schools, universities, and government offices on Wednesday due to a worsening energy crisis exacerbated by harsh winter conditions. The crisis follows a summer of blackouts and is now compounded by severe cold, snow and air pollution.
Our country is rapidly evolving into two Americas.
One America consists of less than a thousand billionaires who have an unprecedented amount of wealth and power and have never ever had it so good.
The other America, where the vast majority live, consists of tens of millions of families who are struggling to put food on the table, pay their bills and worry that their kids will have a lower standard of living than they do.
In the first America, the uber-wealthy buy $500 million yachts with helicopter pads, $270 million mansions with 30 bedrooms, private islands, a fleet of jets to take them all over the world and rocket ships that blast off to the edge of outer-space. They receive the best health care money can buy, send their kids to the best schools and can expect to live very long lives.
In this America, the three wealthiest men (Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg) own more wealth than the bottom half of our society – over 165 million people. And their wealth is skyrocketing. Musk, alone, is now worth over $450 billion and, combined, these three men are worth $955 billion.
And it is not just these three men. The top 1% now own more wealth than the bottom 90% – and the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider every day.
In the other America, the working class struggles just to provide for the basic necessities of life. In this America, over 60% of our people live paycheck to paycheck, millions work for starvation wages, 85 million are uninsured or underinsured, more than 20 million households spend over half of their limited incomes on rent or a mortgage and over 60,000 die each year because they can’t afford to go to a doctor on time.
In this America, 25% of our seniors try to survive on less than $15,000 a year and parents try to raise their kids in a nation that has the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth. And, because of stress and inadequate health care, working people live far shorter lives than the rich.
In this America, workers are scared to death that if your car breaks down, if your kid gets sick, if your landlord raises the rent, if you get divorced, if you become pregnant, if for whatever reason you lose your job, you will find yourself in the midst of a financial catastrophe.
But let’s be clear. Our country is not just experiencing an unprecedented level of income and wealth inequality. Today, we also have more concentration of ownership than we have ever had.
In sector after sector – health care, agriculture, financial services, energy, transportation – a handful of giant corporations control what is produced and how much we, as consumers, pay for their products. Unbelievably, just three Wall Street firms (BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street) control assets of more than $22 trillion. These three Wall Street firms are the major shareholders in about 95% of S&P 500 companies, exerting enormous control over the largest corporations in the world.
And that’s not all.
Never before in American history have so few media conglomerates, all owned by the billionaire class, had so much influence over the public. It is estimated that six huge media corporations now own 90% of what the American people see, hear and read. This handful of corporations determines what is ‘important’ and what we discuss, and what is ‘unimportant’ and what we ignore.
If you use a social media account to get your news, chances are it is owned by billionaires Musk, Zuckerberg or Trump. If you read the Washington Post, Fox or the Los Angeles Times, your news is owned by billionaires Bezos, Murdoch or Patrick Soon-Shiong.
But it’s not just the billionaire ownership and control over the economy and the media that should concern us. The uber-rich are also buying our government and undermining American democracy.
Never before in American history have we seen a ruling class with so much political power. As a result of the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, billionaires and their super-PACs can spend unlimited sums of money on political campaigns.
And that’s exactly what they are doing. During the 2024 election cycle, just 150 billionaires spent nearly $2 billion to buy politicians who support their agenda and to defeat candidates who oppose their special interests. Billionaires who represent just .0005% of our population accounted for 18% of total campaign spending.
That is not democracy. That is not one person, one vote. That is not what this country is supposed to stand for. In his Gettysburg Address in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln spoke about ‘a government of the people, by the people, for the people.’ Well, today, we have a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, for the billionaire class.’
We are in a pivotal and unprecedented moment in American history. Either we fight to create a government and an economy that works for all, or we continue to move rapidly down the path of oligarchy and the rule of the super-rich.
The choice is clear. We must stand together for democracy and justice.
China has launched the first of its new line of amphibious assault ships and its biggest warship yet, strengthening what is already the world’s largest navy.
The Sichuan, a type 076 new-generation amphibious assault ship, was put into the water at a launch and naming ceremony on Friday.
With a full load displacement of 40,000 tons, the warship ranks among the world’s largest amphibious assault ships, featuring a dual-island superstructure and full-length flight deck, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) said in a statement.
China Bugle, an news outlet associated with the PLAN’s news media center, reported the ship will play a key role in transforming and developing the Chinese navy and enhancing its combat capabilities in the far seas.
The Sichuan is capable of launching fighter jets and unmanned drones from an electromagnetic catapult. It is designed to carry ground troops in landing craft with air support.
The ship also features ‘arrester technology’ that Chinese researchers boast will allow fighter jets to land on its deck, similar to an aircraft carrier.
China launched its first amphibious assault ship, a type 075 class warship called the Hainan, in 2019.
The PLANmi has been working on modernizing its forces for more than a decade, with the aim of being able to operate globally rather than being restricted to waters near the Chinese mainland. China first managed to launch fighter jets with the new electromagnetic technology on its homemade aircraft carrier, the Fujian, which launched two years ago.
The Sichuan will now undergo additional tests at sea.
China has the largest navy in the world and is consistently trying to upgrade its fleet. Recently, researchers found that the country is working on designing a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, which would allow it to deploy its ships in distant waters without needing a base to refuel.
The U.S. Navy currently has 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers deployed in strategic locations globally, including in the Asia-Pacific.
President Biden is seen in newly uncovered photos meeting with Hunter Biden’s Chinese business associates in China while he served as vice president, bringing further scrutiny to his claim he ‘never’ discussed business with his son.
The photos, obtained by conservative-leaning America First Legal through litigation against the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), appear to show then-Vice President Biden introducing his son to Chinese President Xi Jinping and then-Vice President Li Yuanchao. Other photos show Joe Biden posing with Hunter’s business associates from BHR Partners, including Jonathan Li and Ming Xue.
‘These images shed light on the connections between then-Vice President Biden, Hunter and his Chinese business associates, and Chinese government officials including President Xi Jinping,’ America First Legal said in a press release this week. ‘Lawyers and representatives for President Biden and President Obama delayed NARA’s release of these photographs, as they did with other records, until after Election Day.’
‘These photos corroborate the House Oversight Committee’s investigative findings that Hunter Biden arranged for his father to meet with Jonathan Li and other BHR executives during the 2013 China trip, where ‘Mr. Li sought— and received — access to Vice President Biden’s political power, including, for example, preferential access to then-U.S. Ambassador to China Max Baucus … a condition of Hunter Biden and his associates participating in the BHR deal,’’ America First Legal wrote.
America First Legal also wrote that, according to the committee’s investigation, ‘the Biden Family benefited from their business dealings with BHR.’
Hunter Biden was asked earlier this year by the House Oversight Committee about his meetings while traveling to Asia with his father.
‘When we returned from an event to the hotel, there was a rope line, and Jonathan Li was in the lobby of the hotel where I was going to meet him for coffee,’ Hunter Biden said at the time. ‘In that line, I introduced my dad to Jonathan Li and a friend of his, and they shook hands and I believe probably took a photograph. And then my father went up to his room, and I went to have coffee with Jonathan Li.’
Hunter Biden added that he didn’t tell his father ‘anything’ about who Li was.
Joe Biden has repeatedly denied any role in his son’s businesses.
‘I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,’ Joe Biden said on the presidential campaign trail in 2019.
But emails sent to and from Hunter Biden have cast doubt on that, including a 2017 email obtained by Fox News that shows Hunter requesting keys for Joe and Jill Biden, along with his uncle, Jim Biden, for space he planned to share with an ’emissary’ to the chairman of a now-bankrupt Chinese energy company.
In another 2017 email also obtained by Fox News, Biden wrote to the same Chinese energy company’s chairman extending ‘best wishes from the entire Biden family,’ and urging the chairman to ‘quickly’ send a $10 million wire to ‘properly fund and operate’ the Biden joint venture with the company.
Devon Archer, a former business partner and longtime friend of Hunter Biden, sat for hours before the House Oversight Committee in a closed-door hearing last year and contradicted the president’s claim, saying Hunter put his father on speakerphone while meeting with business partners at least 20 times.
Archer described how Joe Biden was put on the phone to sell ‘the brand.’
The photos drew strong criticism on social media in light of President Biden’s frequent claims he never discussed business with his son.
‘Astonishing,’ Red State writer Bonchie posted on X.
‘These photos are incredibly damning and speak volumes,’ author and journalist Peter Schweizer posted on X.
‘It is such a disgrace that only through litigation, and only at the conclusion of the Biden administration is its corruption by ties to the Chinese Communist Party fully coming into focus,’ Real Clear Politics editor Benjamin Weingarten posted on X.
‘The Biden Crime Family Christmas card just dropped,’ GOP Rep. Eric Burlison posted on X.
‘China has the Bidens in its back pocket,’ Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton posted on X.
The newly unearthed photos of the Bidens meeting with Hunter’s Chinese business associates renews scrutiny of an email exchange previously reported by Fox News Digital. The 2014 email exchange reveals Hunter Biden once said he would be ‘happy’ to introduce his business associates to a top Chinese Communist Party official to discuss potential investments after that official allegedly sat at Hunter’s table during a 2013 dinner in Beijing to welcome his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden.
Hunter’s 2014 email exchange with James Bulger referred to the same China trip referenced in the America First Legal press release.
Bulger, who goes by ‘Jimmy,’ served as the chairman of Boston-based Thornton Group LLC, a firm that joined forces with Hunter’s now-defunct Rosemont Seneca to launch its joint venture with Chinese investment firm Bohai Capital to create BHR Partners shortly after the Bidens traveled to China. BHR Partners is controlled by Bank of China Limited.
In the 2014 email, Bulger asked Hunter to introduce BHR CEO Jonathan Li and Andy Lu, who was a BHR committee member, to ‘Mr. Tung,’ which refers to C.H. Tung, a former governor of Hong Kong and billionaire who served as vice chairman of the CCP-linked Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, to discuss ‘BHR investment targets’ and ‘fundraising.’
The email alleged Hunter sat next to Tung at the December 2013 dinner welcoming Vice President Joe Biden to Beijing. Fox News Digital previously reached out to the White House multiple times requesting the seating chart for the Beijing dinner, specifically Hunter’s table, but it did not respond.
‘It is my understanding that during the trip to Beijing that you made with your father, President Xi hosted a welcome dinner,’ Bulger wrote. ‘[A]t that dinner, you were seated right next to Mr Tung, therefore J and Andy believe it would be very helpful if you could please send a brief email to Mr Tung laying out that you are a partner and Board Member of BHR and that You would be grateful to Mr Tung if he could meet your local partners to discuss the Fund.
‘Please let me know if you can introduce these two to Mr Tung by email it is very important to our BHR intiative [sic] at this moment.’
Hunter responded that he was ‘happy’ to fulfill the request but said he couldn’t recall the names of the gentlemen who sat next to him at the dinner.
It appears that the Beijing ‘welcome dinner’ hosted by President Xi that Bulger was referencing in his initial email occurred during the evening of Dec. 4, 2013, after then-Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao met with Joe Biden earlier in the day to discuss strengthening U.S.-China relations.
President Biden pardoned his son earlier this month for any crimes potentially committed dating back to 2014.
‘Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter,’ Biden wrote in a statement at the time. ‘From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted.
‘There has been an effort to break Hunter — who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution,’ the 82-year-old father wrote. ‘In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me — and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.’
Fox News Digital has previously reached out to the White House about why the pardon was so broad but did not receive a response.
‘Even while President Biden has pardoned his son, Hunter, for anything and everything ‘he has committed or may have committed or taken part in’ going all the way back to the year 2014, more evidence comes out each day showing how his family leveraged Joe Biden’s even longer career in public office for private gain,’ America First Legal Counsel Michael Ding said in a statement.
‘America First Legal will not stop fighting to uncover the full story of the Biden Family’s corruption.’
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House, Hunter Biden’s legal team and the Chinese businessmen in the photos but did not receive a comment.
Fox News Digital’s Jessica Chasmar Brooke Singman, and Tyler Olson contributed to this report
Russia is willing to work with President-elect Donald Trump to help improve relations with Ukraine so long as the U.S. makes the first move, Kremlin officials said this week, adding fresh momentum for the possibility of peace talks as its war in Ukraine threatens to stretch into a third year.
Speaking to reporters Thursday in Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated that Russia could be ready to come to the negotiating table regarding its ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine— echoing the phrasing used by the Kremlin to describe its war in Ukraine — so long as the U.S. acted first.
‘If the signals that are coming from the new team in Washington to restore the dialogue that Washington interrupted after the start of a special military operation [the war in Ukraine] are serious, of course, we will respond to them,’ Lavrov said in Moscow.
But he stressed that the U.S. should move first, telling reporters that ‘the Americans broke the dialogue, so they should make the first move.’
His remarks come after Trump’s pick for Ukraine envoy, retired Lieutenant-General Keith Kellogg, told Fox News in an interview this month that both Russia and Ukraine appear to be willing to negotiate an end to the war — citing heavy casualties, damage to critical infrastructure, and a general sense of exhaustion that has permeated both countries as the war drags well past the thousand-day mark.
‘I think both sides are ready,’ Kellogg said in the interview. ‘After a thousand days of war, with 350,000, 400,000 Russian [soldiers] down, and 150,000 Ukrainian dead, or numbers like that — both sides are saying, ‘okay, maybe this is the time, and we need to step back.’’
To date, Russia has lost tens of thousands of soldiers in the war. As of this fall, an average of 1,200 soldiers were killed or injured per day, according to U.S. estimates.
In Ukraine, the country’s energy infrastructure has seen extreme damage as the result of a protracted Russian bombing campaign, designed to collapse portions of the power grid, plunge the country into darkness, and ultimately, wear down the resolve of the Ukrainian people.
Most recently, Russia launched a Christmas Day bombardment against Ukraine’s power grid, directing some 70 cruise and ballistic missiles and 100 strike drones to hit critical energy infrastructure in the country.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Christmas Day timing was a ‘deliberate’ choice by Putin. ‘What could be more inhuman?’ he said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military has lost around 40% of the land it seized in Russia’s Kursk region — a loss that could further erode morale.
Lavrov’s remarks also come as Kellogg prepares to travel to Ukraine in January for what he described to Fox News as an information-gathering trip.
He declined to elaborate further on what he will aim to accomplish during the visit, saying only that he believes both countries are ready to end the protracted war — and that incoming President Trump could serve as the ‘referee.’
‘Think of a cage fight. You’ve got two fighters, and both want to tap out. You need a referee to kind of separate them.’
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that he is open to having the peace talks in the third country of Slovakia, citing an offer made by the country’s prime minister during a visit to the Kremlin earlier this week.
It is unclear whether Ukraine would be willing to have the talks held in Slovakia, a country whose leaders have been vehemently opposed to sending more EU military aid to Ukraine.
Ukraine did not immediately respond to Fox News’s request for comment on the peace talks, or whether it would be open to Slovakia’s offer to host.
Congressional Democrats’ use of X, formerly Twitter, has significantly dropped off in the years since Elon Musk took over the social media platform, a new report suggests.
Significantly more Republican lawmakers used X in 2024 than their Democratic colleagues, public affairs firm Quorum calculated. Of the top 20 most active accounts for members of Congress, just one – Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla. – hails from the left, at No. 15.
It’s a stark change even from Quorum’s 2023 report, which came out just over a year after Musk bought the site – at the time. The top 10 most active congressional accounts were nearly split evenly with six Republicans and four Democrats on the list. Now, they are all Republicans.
Many on the left have decried Musk’s ownership of X, accusing him of using it to bolster President-elect Donald Trump and right-wing causes. But Musk and his allies have insisted that he is creating a more user-controlled experience that promotes free speech.
The report pointed to a 2023 survey that showed a stark decrease in Americans who identify as Democrats using the app.
‘The use of X is on the decline among the general public after Elon Musk’s takeover — with Democrats driving the exodus, according to one survey conducted early last year,’ the report said.
‘After looking at the data, it’s clear that the decline in usage isn’t just coming from the general public. Public officials, particularly those on the left, are also changing their social media habits.’
Rep. Dwight Evans, D-Pa., for example, was the most active Democratic lawmaker on X in 2023 before his post frequency fell sharply by 66% this year, the report said.
Activity on X accounts for California Reps. Robert Garcia and Ted Lieu, both Democrats, fell by 35% and 26%, respectively.
In 2024, the most frequently active X accounts were those for Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
Republican lawmakers, as a whole, made up 54.4% of X posts by members of Congress in 2024, compared to 45.1% for Democrats.
In 2023, congressional Democrats made up 50.8% of lawmakers’ activity on X, compared to 48.8% being by Republicans, Quorum’s previous report said.
It’s worth noting that it’s standard practice for congressional lawmakers to hand control of either their professional or personal X accounts – frequently both – to their staff.
But some lawmakers like Cruz and Roy, as well as the third-ranked most active X poster, Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., are known for frequently engaging with other X users directly.
Frost, the lonely Democrat in the top 20 most frequent congressional X users of 2024, warned fellow liberals not to cede the popular app to Republicans, in an interview with Politico last month.
‘If we leave X, it will help Elon with his goal of making the platform void of any progressive ideology or the way we think about the world,’ he said.
