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Test of a Russian ICBM, launched on October 26, 2024. Since invading Ukraine, Russia has placed its nuclear forces on ready and has increased testing and development of its ICBMs.

Russia MOD via EYEPRESS, from Reuters.

Anyone who watches soccer – “football”, whatever – knows that the wildest part of the game is always the last five minutes.

That’s when both teams, knowing that the end is near, take bigger risks. They open up on the field. They make longer passes, attempt crazier shots. And they usually score more goals.

There’s actually data to support this. One guy ran the numbers on more than forty thousand goals scored in international matches since the 19th century and found that yes, there is more scoring in the final moments of a game. After all, with the whistle about to blow, what’s a team got to lose?

That’s what’s happening in Ukraine right now.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant attend a ceremony for the 70th cohort of military combat officers, at an army base near Mitzpe Ramon, Israel, October 31, 2024.

REUTERS/Amir Cohen

The International Criminal Court on Thursday issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of “crimes against humanity and war crimes” in Gaza — including using “starvation as a method of warfare” and “intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population.”

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Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., withdrew his bid to become attroney general on Nov. 21 over continuing allegations of sexual impropriety. President-elect Donald Trump appointed him on Nov. 13, 2024.

USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect

Matt Gaetz announced Thursday that after meeting with senators, he would not go through with the nomination process to become Donald Trump’s attorney general, claiming he did not wish to be a “distraction.” In other words, at least four GOP senators couldn’t approve a man in the midst of a federal sex-trafficking investigation and accused of sex with a minor to lead the Justice Department. Gaetz’s nomination lasted just 0.8 Scaramuccis (the standard measure of Trump appointment ephemerality).

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Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum speaks, on the day of the 114th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, in Mexico City, Mexico November 20, 2024.

REUTERS/Raquel Cunha

The lower house of Mexico’s Congress approved the text of a constitutional proposal to scrap oversight bodies on Wednesday, a first step in the ruling Morena party’s goal of eliminating autonomous institutions and consolidating power.

The change is just the latest in a series of reforms begun under former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and carried out by his successor, Claudia Sheinbaum. Plans include overhauling the energy sector and judicial system, and guaranteeing a minimum wage that stays above inflation.

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Supporters of India's main opposition Congress party hold placards during a protest against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, after he was indicted in New York over his role in an alleged multibillion-dollar bribery and fraud scheme, in New Delhi, India, November 21, 2024.

REUTERS/Anushree Fadnavis

250 million: The US Department of Justice charged Indian billionaire Gautam Adani for his alleged role in a yearslong bribery scheme, which included promising $250 million to Indian government officials for solar energy contracts. Adani is a key ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the opposition Indian National Congress is calling for a parliamentary investigation into the affair.

2: Nicaragua may soon have two presidents if Daniel Ortega’s proposal to elevate his wife to a “co-president” position passes the legislature, which is likely. The couple will also see their terms expanded to six years from five, deepening Ortega’s control over the small Central American state.

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World leaders assemble for a group photo at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on November 19, 2024. The gathering was overshadowed by Donald Trump's impending return to the White House.

REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes

At the G20 gathering this week in Brazil, a key question emerged: Has Donald Trump already cowed world leaders, two months before he even takes power? It certainly seems like it.

The G20 leaders arrived in Rio de Janeiro to deliver their best ideas for how, collectively, to solve urgent global problems like poverty, climate change, inequality, and war.

These summits are always a little about the old ultra-verbiage, sure, but they are also meant to burnish the legitimacy and importance of multilateral approaches to global challenges.

This time, the G20 got Trumped. Loudly. The president-elect’s America First 2.0 agenda hung over the proceedings like the fearsome black cloud in Don Dellilo’s novel White Noise.

How do we measure the Trump cloud’s impact? Just look at the summit’s final communiqué, the pre-negotiated summary these gabfests always release. They merit attention not only for what they say, but also for what they don’t. This time, what it didn’t say was a lot.

Take Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, for example. With Kyiv now using Western-made long-range missiles, and Putin responding by hinting at a nuclear response and flinging larger and larger missiles of his own, the communiqué’s authors played dentist, carefully extracting any teeth that might nip at the Russian leader, who of course did not attend.

“We highlight the human suffering and negative added impacts of the war with regard to global food and energy security, supply chains, macro-financial stability, inflation and growth,” it said, clearly using the secret diplomatic formula for verbal vanilla. If that alone weren’t enough for the toothless, it continued by calling for “the promotion of peaceful, friendly, and good neighborly relations among nations.”

No mention of Russia by name.
No mention of the illegal invasion.
No reminder that Putin continues to slaughter civilians and wreck critical infrastructure.
Nothing about human rights abuses.

This alone was a triumph for Putin as he eagerly awaits the return of Trump, who ran in part on questioning support for Ukraine and pledging to end the war in “24 hours.”

No one saw this more clearly than Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“G20 countries are sitting in Brazil. Did they say something?” he asked. “Nothing.”

The impotence of the G20s Ukraine statement was probably best summed up by a man who is himself hanging by a thread politically these days: German Chancellor Olaf Sholz, who muttered, “It is too little when the G20 cannot find the words to make it clear Russia is responsible.”

Too little.

That might be the epitaph of this pre-Trump G20.

Knowing that Donald Trump will not continue support for Ukraine, and highlighting the truth that the Global South has never supported the US and EU’s hardline views of the Russian invasion, the G20 slinked away from calling out Moscow, just as they did last year. This signals that a Trump-brokered ceasefire, which will likely give Russia much of what it wants in terms of Ukrainian territory and neutrality, looks much more likely.

But Ukraine was just the start of the smallness.

The language on the Israel-Gaza war was a boilerplate call for a two-state solution and more humanitarian aid, without a mention either of the Hamas-held hostages, the Oct. 7 attack, or the 40,000 dead in Gaza. The statement on a global billionaire tax — a decades-old idea that was particularly dear to summit host and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — was equally eye-glazing: “We will seek to engage cooperatively to ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed.” OK … and then what?

Perhaps the only real positive was the launch of the Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, in order to deal with the stunning fact that over 733 million people face food shortages every year. That could mean microfinance, food programs, and investment in sustainable food production. It is a good thing to see countries sign on to this even if the failure to eradicate hunger and poverty is, sadly, perennial.

Watching the leaders try to spin the summit’s accomplishments was like watching Rafael Nadal retire from tennis: a once-powerful champion reduced to swatting at balls he can’t reach, limping off the court to applause not for what he just did, but for what he no longer can do.

Like Nadal, these leaders know they are ceding the world to a new champion for the next four years, and they still have no idea what to do about it, except duck, stall, evade, and suck up.

Was there any pushback from these multilateral champions against a world shifting toward strongman isolationism, tariffs, and an American president who will begin the great retreat from the global stage of cooperation?

Not much.

The next G20 will be very different from this one, where leaders gazed up to see Rio’s famous Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking their meeting.

At the next one, they might need to find the Patron Saint of Lost Causes.

Trump and Trudeau on opposite sides of a border wall.

Jess Frampton

Donald Trump’s radical plan to crack down on undocumented immigration has sparked widespread concerns across the US. Beyond the human rights implications, there are serious questions regarding the potential economic toll of Trump’s immigration proposals. Trump has promised mass deportations and this week confirmed plans to involve the military. He has vowed to begin deportations on his first day in office.

State and municipal leaders are already taking steps to protect immigrants ahead of Trump’s inauguration. Earlier this week, Los Angeles passed a sanctuary city ordinance codifying the rights of migrants. Governors in California, Massachusetts, and Illinois are considering plans of their own to protect migrants at the state level, setting up a showdown between the federal government and state and local governments.

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