Trump and the UN come to a head
The Trump administration will always couch even its most reasonable decisions in the most dramatic terms possible, and so it was with a State Department announcement that the U.S. would be sending a significantly smaller humanitarian aid package to the United Nations: “Individual U.N. agencies will need to adapt, shrink, or die.” The $2 billion announced this week is down from $3.8 billion in 2025 and a major reduction from America’s contributions under President Joe Biden, which peaked at $17 billion in 2022. It’s easy to write this off as a shortsighted America First policy, ...
Trump’s mass firing of diplomats dangerous
President Trump, would-be peacemaker on a global scale, has apparently decided he can fulfill that role with a decimated diplomatic corps that by mid-January will see more than half of the U.S. embassies around the world lacking an ambassador. Nearly 30 ambassadors were told just before Christmas to pack up and leave their postings this month, adding to the 79 ambassadorial vacancies already on the books, according to the Ambassador Tracker maintained by the American Foreign Service Association, the union that represents career diplomats. The United States at full complement has some ...
AAA suggests four 2026 safe driving resolutions
AAA Michigan has offered some grim arguments for making safer motor vehicle practices part of your New Year's resolutions for 2026. Preventable crashes claim lives and devastate families every day, AAA states in a news release. "These tragedies are not accidents; they are the result of choices made behind the wheel," AAA warns. "That’s why AAA urges drivers to make safety their top priority in 2026." In 2024, more than 39,000 people were killed in U.S. traffic crashes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. On average, someone is killed in a car crash ...