𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Trump boasted on Saturday about having “terminated the ridiculous and incredibly wasteful green new scam.”

“Wasn’t the environment supposed to eat us up like in 12 years, but that was like 13 years ago? What happened?” he asked. “We’re still here. Remember, we have 12 years to live. Remember that was done by somebody that never even took a course on the environment.”

Trump opened his speech about taxes in Las Vegas by claiming that his inaugural address “got the highest ratings in the history of Fox.”

“Can you believe it? That’s nice,” said Trump.

“I just came here because I wanted to thank the people of Nevada for giving us such a big win,” Trump said, referring to his 2024 victory in the state.

One hundred and fifty-seven years ago, the United States adopted a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing citizenship to people born on U.S. soil, one of the American bedrocks of equality.

Now, that guarantee is under attack.

Gates was asked about the shift in Silicon Valley from the focus on tech nerds to tech bros. Industry leaders have made clear that they want to be in President Donald Trump’s good graces, with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai all attending Trump’s inauguration on Monday.

“Well, I think they’re still nerds. As I can tell, they don’t deserve some new term, Jesus. They’re just as nerdy as they ever were,” said Gates.

The president spoke to Fox News host Sean Hannity this week and blamed Zelensky’s failure to preemptively capitulate to Russia invading Ukraine, even though Russian forces have occupied parts of the country since 2014.

“Zelensky was fighting a much bigger entity, much bigger, much more powerful,” Trump told Hannity. “He shouldn’t have done that, because we could have made a deal, and it would have been a deal that would have been, it would have been a nothing deal.”

In the last few days, there has been a change of tone. Suddenly, Sir Keir Starmer and his colleagues are talking about building infrastructure projects and removing the obstacles in their path. Airport expansion, nuclear power stations and new highways are determinedly on; nimbyism and “excessive” legal challenges are off. Simultaneously, Rachel Reeves is to water down her non-dom tax reforms.

It’s a marked shift. Ever since Reeves’s first Budget, which caused howls of protest among the business community, she has refused to relent. That Budget, too, contained precious little mention of major public construction schemes that would galvanise the economy. Instead, it was all about cutting and scrimping.

Partly, it could have something to do with Reeves’s presence at Davos. She’s been at the World Economic Forum, trying to impress upon international financiers and business leaders that Starmer’s government is pro-commerce, that Britain very much desires their investment. Is there another influence behind the switch?

He told an audience of leading rightwing Brits, a GB News film crew and a plethora of Trump supporters including members of the incoming president’s trusted circle that he believed he will win the next general election. But, he, added: “I just hope it happens while Donald Trump is still president.”

Trump’s presidency is set to run out in 2028, a year before Keir Starmer has to go to the country in the UK. So was it Farage optimism or was there something else at play? This was not just a piece of wishful thinking said in a vacuum, it reflected a virulent mood amongst Trump’s supporters and advisers.

The Senate has voted to break a filibuster on Scott Bessent’s nomination to be Trump’s treasury secretary by a vote 67 to 23.

It’s an important step to confirmation for Bessent on his path to join Trump’s cabinet.

He’s expected to be confirmed in a Monday night vote.

The chancellor said people should be “shouting from the rooftops” and banging the drum for the UK following her trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, where she met global investors in her latest attempt to boost the economy after new figures showed only slight growth.

The remarks are a change in tune for the under-pressure chancellor, who has previously been accused of “talking Britain down”.