Speaking at a press conference in Budapest on Wednesday alongside Alice Weidel of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Orban expressed doubt about the ability of the current leadership in Brussels to effectively defend the bloc’s interests in economic disputes with Washington.

He went on to suggest that the EU’s two largest economies, Germany and France, should take the initiative. “There’s no mercy for the weak,” warned Orban, urging the EU to proactively present its own proposals to Washington regarding import tariffs.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated on Tuesday that the "tariffs would not go unanswered,” and would “trigger firm and proportionate countermeasures” from the bloc. Additionally, Trump has proposed implementing “reciprocal tariffs” that would match the duties that other countries impose on American exports. In December, Trump warned Brussels that if it did not increase its purchases of American oil and gas, he would impose additional levies on goods from the EU.

“We are taking steps to protect Americans, American citizens, and Angel Moms like the mom standing right behind me,” Bondi stated in reference to Angel Mom Tammy Nobles, whose daughter was brutally raped and murdered by an illegal alien. Nobles told the story of her 20-year-old daughter, who was “viciously strangled” and raped in Maryland by an El Salvadorian MS-13 gang member, who “left her on the floor like trash,” says Nobles, after Health and Human Services allowed him into the country.

This comes after Pam Bondi filed a lawsuit against the State of Illinois, Cook County, and the City of Chicago over their sanctuary laws.

"Violent criminals, gang members, drug traffickers, human smugglers, will no longer terrorize the American people, and that is why we are here today," she said. "You will be held accountable if you do not follow federal law. It's over, it ends, and we're coming after you." Bondi has also ordered the DOJ to stop all federal funding of sanctuary cities as well as the prosecution of any jurisdiction impeding immigration enforcement.

The group is neither an alliance nor a bloc, and it is not against the United States; many of its members have good relations with the US. But it does seek to end the American-led unipolar world and replace it with a world with many poles and many nations with equal voices. Indonesia joining BRICS is significant both because another country joined BRICS and, specifically, because Indonesia joined BRICS.

Indonesia is the fourth largest country and the seventh largest economy in the world. Three of the four largest countries in the world are now members of BRICS, which now represents half the population of the world and 41.4% of GDP.

At its fifteenth annual summit in 2023, Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and Ethiopia joined BRICS. Now Indonesia has joined, and “more than 30 more states are showing interest in participating in” BRICS. The continued expansion of BRICS is a loud expression of an increasingly confident and vocal global majority’s support for multipolarity and dissatisfaction with American hegemony.

“I would hope that someday this church would see the possibility of changing that word because it is a stumbling block for so many who want to be here,” he said in a sermon posted on X this week, noting that he was “raised a strict fundamentalist Baptist.” “It is a stumbling block for people to do interfaith work — how do we explain that word with Muslims and to Jews and to Hindus?” asked the reverend, who has been married to another man since 2006.

The minister explained that many people who come to his church first check the website to see what the church is about, and many have found the word “Savior” to be problematic, because they “don’t believe that everyone has to accept Jesus as personal Lord and Savior like the fundamentalists say.”

A growing number of individuals around the world have rejected their human identity, claiming instead that they feel more comfortable being thought of as cats, dogs, horses. There is even one woman who indeed appears to have self-identified as llama.

Online, thousands of young people calling themselves 'therians' or 'furries', gather to share tips on 'trotting', feeding, and suggestions on how to persuade their school or workplace to let them use a litter tray rather than a human toilet.

The term therian refers to people who identify as non-human animals on a deep level and engage in behaviours associated with their animal identity. They differ from furries, who see their animal persona as a character - with or without a sexual element - while therians innately feel animal characteristics.

That Britain — the Britain of Churchill, of moral clarity, of unshakable defiance in the face of evil — is needed once more. The images emerging from Israel should be enough to rouse even the most indifferent among us. Men and women, dragged from captivity after 490 days in Hamas’ dungeons, their bodies skeletal, their eyes hollow, their survival a miracle and an indictment all at once.

And yet, where is Britain? Where is the nation that once prided itself on standing against barbarism? Where is the outrage? Where is the action? For months, this government has spoken of balance, of de-escalation, of the need for peace. But what peace can exist when hostages are still rotting in the tunnels of Gaza?

There is an illusion — one that Britain, along with the wider West, has clung to for far too long — that Hamas is merely another player in a political conflict, that with the right incentives, the right words, the right diplomatic mechanisms, it can be reasoned with.

This is the great lie of modern foreign policy.

Hamas is not a government.

Hamas is not a resistance movement.

Hamas is not a liberation force.

It is a terrorist empire built on the bones of its victims, sustained by an industry of deceit, and protected by the very institutions that claim to champion human rights.

It is an empire that kidnapped a grandmother and slaughters babies, that rapes women and burns people alive, that hides behind children while launching rockets at civilians — and then dares to speak the language of victimhood. And that empire is laughing at Britain and the rest of the West for a very simple reason. Because we let them.

Then the music changed. Over the weekend, the jihadis released three Israeli men who were so emaciated that they evoked widespread comparisons to Holocaust survivors. Propaganda points were lost: previously, the terror group had carefully crafted the impression that the hostages had been well cared-for, forcing them to smile and wave and presenting them with grotesque mementos of their time in captivity.

Until that point, the devil had been grinning from ear to ear. The handover ceremonies, which aped the bureaucratic trappings of a legitimate state, were built around a signing ritual against a backdrop of chilling jihadi slogans. Shamefully, they were given legitimacy by the Red Cross, which sent its officials to take part despite the fact that the humiliation of hostages is a war crime under the Geneva Convention. Hamas must have struggled to believe their luck. Yes, the way in which some hostages were made to run the gauntlet of the mob allowed the mask to slip. Overall, however, the idiots of the world – who, let’s face it, comprise the vast majority – were now inclined to look more favourably upon the jihadis.

The sight of those gaunt, hollow-eyed men being paraded like animals by cowardly terrorists in hoods undid all that. Then the testimonies came: Ohad Ben-Ami, 56, Eli Sharabi, 52, and 34-year-old Or Levy had been hung upside down, burned, gagged to the point of suffocation and starved, all the while being taunted and mocked. They had to learn to walk again before their release, they said.

Suddenly, the veneer had split and the dark face of evil came leering through. On social media, the idiots, or some of them at least, began to finally realise what Israel had been facing all this time. They began to wonder whether perhaps those who expressed sympathy for Hamas might have been getting it wrong. It achieved, to the chagrin of the jihadis, “cut-through”. Even the United Nations called the pictures “deeply distressing”.

“If they don’t agree, I would conceivably withhold aid,” Mr Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday evening. The US president made the threat on the eve of what is likely to be a tense meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah, who has condemned any attempt to annex land or displace Palestinians. The Jordanian monarch is expected to tell Mr Trump that his redevelopment plan would spur radicalism, spread chaos in the region and jeopardise peace with Israel.

About half of the kingdom’s population is estimated to have Palestinian roots dating back to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which has driven tensions over national identity. In the 1994 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan, the latter insisted on a clause that guarded against the involuntary mass transfer of people that could “adversely prejudice the security” of either country.

The hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) will come second, roughly doubling its vote share from the last Bundestag election, though no other party has openly said it is willing to work with AfD — yet.

This is anything but a snoozefest, however. The largely stagnant polls belie a moment of political upheaval. The economy is tanking, a series of terrorist attacks and other violent crimes by immigrants have fired up an argument about asylum policy, and a large chunk of the electorate has lost faith in the political system and even in democracy itself. This all means that small shifts in the parliamentary arithmetic can make a huge difference to Germany’s future.

The AfD has now firmly established itself as the strongest party in the former East Germany, but the stereotype of the typical AfD voter as an older, poorer, white man from the east is long out of date. In absolute terms, the party draws most of its support from the west and relies heavily on skilled industrial workers. It has also made substantial gains with younger and middle-aged adults and does well with some immigrant groups, especially those with roots in Turkey, the Middle East and Russia.

They could scarcely be clearer or more consistent. If they are correct, Merz and the CDU-CSU (the CSU is the CDU’s Bavarian cousin) will win first place, with about 30 per cent. The AfD is inching upwards and on course to come second, in the low twenties. The SPD is likely to edge out the Greens in the contest for third place, in the mid-to-high teens.

One reason may be that politics doesn’t provide anything like the level of preparation and training given in other professions. A YouGov poll that Civic Future publishes today reveals that fewer than a third of MPs think their newly elected colleagues receive enough training. Around 40 per cent believe there is a need for more training in basic economics and policy.

MPs form the pool from which ministers are chosen. It is bizarre that the people in charge of multibillion-pound government departments, legislating for new technologies or even deciding whether we go to war, lack expertise. No other profession or industry would be so blasé about its senior ranks.

The talent problem is not unique to Britain and other countries are finding their own, sometimes radical, solutions. In the United States, President Trump has chosen a vocal outsider, Elon Musk, to drive the DOGE project to eliminate waste. Singapore has long had a policy of attracting business and military leaders into government, providing training and paying high salaries. It has helped this small island state move from third world to first in less than a generation.

More than 200,000 Danes have signed A SATIRICAL PETITION to buy California from the US. “Have you ever looked at a map and thought, ‘You know what Denmark needs? More sunshine, palm trees, and roller skates.’ Well, we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make that dream a reality,” the petition reads. “Let’s buy California from Donald Trump!”

“Let’s be honest – Trump isn’t exactly California’s biggest fan. He’s called it ‘the most ruined state in the union’ and has feuded with its leaders for years. We’re pretty sure he’d be willing to part with it for the right price.”

Commenting on the chicken nuggets case, Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, said it was “mind-boggling” that food was being used as an argument to prevent deportation. “It’s ludicrous that a judge would entertain it. Cases like this make us a laughing stock. It’s an insult to the British public that our immigration laws are being abused in such an outrageous way,” he said.