Category World News

Under the Trump administration, Greene wrote in a protracted resignation statement on social media late on Friday, saying that loyalty should be a two-way street, while Congress “has mostly been sidelined.”

The Georgian congresswoman, 51, claimed in her video statement that she had “always represented the common American man and woman as a member of the House of Representatives, which is why I’ve always been despised in Washington, DC, and never fit in.”

She stated, “My last day is January 5, 2026, and I’ll be resigning from office.”

Greene reaffirmed that she did not want her supporters and family to go through “the President we all fought for’s hurtful and hateful primary.”

President Trump responded to the news by saying, “I think it’s great news for the country.”

Trump reportedly said in an interview, “It’s great,” according to ABC News.

My message to America’s 14th district in Georgia.
Thank you. pic. twitter.com/tSoHCeAjn1

Greene, a former leader of Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, had a very public disagreement with the president after he announced earlier this month that he would withdraw all support for the congresswoman he referred to as “Wacky Marjorie.”

Greene has cited as a reason why she disagrees with Trump her outspoken support for the release of Jeffrey Epstein’s government records.

Trump had criticized the Epstein controversy as a “Democrat hoax” and has struggled with unrest in his MAGA base as a result of his U-turn on his pre-election promise to release the case’s government files.

Trump signed a bill this week to release the Epstein files, but it came under increasing pressure from Democrats and members of his own party. Its motion passed in the House and Senate with unanimous support.

Greene mentioned the Epstein controversy in her resignation statement.

The president of the United States, for whom I fought, should not condemn me for standing up for American women who were raped at the age of 14 and used by wealthy, powerful men, Greene said.

Greene also became the first Republican lawmaker to refer to Israel’s attack on Gaza as a genocide this year.

Trump’s continued criticism of Greene as a “lightweight” and even a “traitor” to the Republican Party comes after his earlier withdrawal earlier this month from his Truth Social platform.

Following that, Greene claimed that a string of threats were threatening her.

In light of Trump’s warm White House meeting with New York’s leftist Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani earlier on Friday, Greene’s decision to step down from Congress before the 2026 midterms is the clearest sign yet of a growing split in the MAGA community.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s Friday ruling will remain in effect for at least the next few days as the court considers whether to allow the new map, which favors Republicans, to be used in the US midterm elections in the future.

The lower court’s “injunction against Texas’s map” was temporarily halted by the ruling, which was welcomed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

“Radical left-wing activists are abusing the US Supreme Court to derail the Republican agenda and smuggle Democrats’ House.” In a previous social media post, Paxton stated, “I am fighting to stop this blatant attempt to upend our political system.

In order to maintain a slim Republican majority in the House of Representatives in the upcoming midterm elections, Texas redrew its congressional map in August, sparking a bipartisan bipartisan bifight nationwide.

Republicans were given five additional House seats by the new redistricting map in Texas, but a panel of federal judges in El Paso ruled 2-1 on Tuesday, citing the likelihood that the civil rights organizations that had filed the map’s challenge on behalf of Black and Hispanic voters would prevail.

According to the court, the redrawn map was likely to be discriminatory in terms of the US Constitution.

The Texas Tribune, a non-profit news outlet, reported that the state is now temporarily voting on its 2025 congressional map because the Supreme Court hasn’t yet decided which map to use, and that the “legality of the map” will be decided in court in the coming weeks and months.

Texas was the first state to comply with Donald Trump’s redistricting demands. Following Texas, Missouri and North Carolina released new redistricting maps that would each add an additional Republican seat.

California’s voters approved a ballot initiative to increase Democrats’ five seats there in response to those moves.

In California, Missouri, and North Carolina, redrawn voter maps are currently up for challenge in court.

In the second half of his most recent administration, Trump’s legislative agenda would be hampered by the fact that Republicans currently control both chambers of Congress, and that they would lose control of either the House or Senate in the November 2026 midterm elections.

The Supreme Court has been the subject of numerous legal battles for decades over the practice known as gerrymandering, which involves drawing electoral district boundaries to deceive a particular group of voters and limiting their influence on others.

The court’s most significant ruling on the issue was made in 2019, and it stated that federal courts could not rule on gerrymandering for partisan reasons to improve one’s own party’s electoral chances and weaken a political opponent.

On Saturday, November 22, 2018, this is how things are going.

Fighting

• On the eastern bank of the Oskil River, in the eastern Kharkiv region of Ukraine, Russian forces are entangling about 5, 000 Ukrainian troops, according to Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin. The Ukrainian military did not respond right away.
• The Donetsk region’s Yampil, Stavky, Novoselivka, and Maslyakivka villages, as well as the nearby Dnipropetrovsk village, were taken by Russia’s Ministry of Defense.
• Overnight, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, 33 Ukrainian drones were intercepted and detonated over five Russian regions, as well as Crimea and the Black Sea.
• According to Russia’s aviation watchdog, at least eight Russian airports were ordered to halt operations as a result of the nighttime attack.
• Ukraine claimed that its forces were blocking Russian troops’ advances and were maintaining defensive lines in the northern portion of Pokrovsk, the city’s tense eastern city.
• For months, Moscow’s forces have been fighting for control of Pokrovsk, a hub for Ukrainian military logistics, to open the “gateway” to the country’s industrial Donbass region.

plan of peace

• According to President Donald Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has until this coming Thursday to approve a Russia-backed peace plan.
• After meeting with Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City, on Friday, Trump said, “We have a way of getting peace, or we think we have a way of getting to peace. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, will have to approve it.
• Zelenskyy said he would work with Washington on the peace plan quickly and constructively, but he also said he would not disregard the interests of his country.
• Zelenskyy urged Ukrainians to stay united during what he described as one of the most difficult times in their nation’s history in a video statement, adding that he anticipated more political pressure the following week.
• Zelenskyy added that Ukraine would work with Washington and Europe on an advisory level in order to create a peace plan after an hour-long phone call with US Vice President JD Vance.
• Zelenskyy claimed to have spoken with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte about the “available diplomatic options” for ending his nation’s conflict with Russia, including the “plan proposed by the American side.”

• According to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Moscow has not yet received a peace plan from the US.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin stated to senior Russian officials at a Security Council meeting that a Russian military might use the US proposal as the framework for a peace solution. However, if Kyiv rejected the proposal, Russian forces would advance even further.
• Following a phone call between Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and Zelenskyy, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer stated that any peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine must guarantee the country’s future security.
• The leaders “underlined their support for President Trump’s drive for peace,” according to Starmer’s office, and they “recognized that any solution must fully involve Ukraine, guard its sovereignty, and safeguard its future security.”
• According to Kaja Kallas, the EU’s director of foreign policy, Ukraine and the EU both want peace, but they won’t tolerate Russian aggression.
• “This is a very dangerous time for everyone,” Kallas said. “We all want this war to end, but it matters how it ends.” In the end, Ukraine must decide the terms of any agreement because Russia has no legal right to any concessions from the nation it invaded.

Sanctions

• According to the Department of the Treasury, the US has issued a general license allowing certain transactions to be done with the Hungary-based Paks II civil nuclear power plant project.
• Transactions involving Gazprombank, VTB Bank, and the Russian Central Bank are permitted under the license, which also includes those relating to the nuclear power plant project.
• Teboil, a subsidiary of Russia’s Lukoil, is the first major Russian oil company to announce its intention to shut down as a result of the sanctions the US put on Lukoil last month, according to news agency STT.
• Due to US sanctions, Lithuanian state-owned railroad LTG announced that it will stop Lukoil’s oil shipments to Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave.
• Kaliningrad, which is located on the coast of the Baltic Sea, can get direct shipments from its own country via the coast, but most of its supplies come from Russia via rail transit through Lithuania, which is a member of NATO.

Corruption

By the end of this year, Ukraine’s government plans to appoint a new supervisory board at Energoatom, the state nuclear company at the center of a corruption scandal, according to Economy Minister Oleksii Sobolev.
• A scandal involving senior energy figures and a former Zelenskyy business associate has rocked Ukraine.

Economy

• According to import data from transit operators, Ukraine will significantly increase gas imports through the southern Trans-Balkan route, which connects it to Greece.
• Kyiv has recently lost at least half of its own gas production as a result of Russian drone and missile attacks on its energy infrastructure, forcing it to import an additional four billion cubic meters of gas over the winter heating season.

Regional security

• According to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, “state terrorism” is the term used to describe sabotage activities carried out by Russia that aim to destabilize and weaken Poland.
• An explosion that occurred last weekend caused damage to railroad tracks on the Warsaw-Lublin route, which runs from the Polish capital to the Ukrainian border, according to Tusk as an “unprecedented act of sabotage”.
• After admitting to taking up to 40, 000 British pounds ($52, 344) in bribes to deliver pro-Russian speeches and statements, Nathan Gill, a former member of the British Parliament and former leader of the populist Reform UK in Wales, was sentenced to a more than 10 year jail term.

The BBC board’s director general quit, and Shumeet Banerji has since criticised governance issues at the organization. This is the most recent blow to the broadcaster.

Banerji resigned on Friday, according to the BBC, who announced his departure just weeks before the end of his four-year term.

Banerji resigned from the organization after declaring his dissatisfaction with the organization’s governance.

He added that, according to BBC News, he had not been informed about important news that occurred with the abrupt departures of director general Tim Davie and executive director Deborah Turness.

Both resigned on November 9 after receiving growing criticism for the broadcaster’s handling of political coverage, including the editing of a Donald Trump speech delivered shortly before his supporters stormed the US Capitol.

No legal justification

On November 13, the BBC apologized for how Panorama’s investigative program edited the video. However, it argued that Trump’s lawsuit for defamation had “no legal basis.”

The conflict centers on the Panorama documentary Trump: A Second Chance?, which was broadcast in October 2024, just before Trump won re-election.

Nearly an hour apart, the movie combines two lines from Trump’s January 6 speech to give the impression that he urged supporters to “fight like hell” as they approached the Capitol.

Trump’s supporters claim the speech’s context was removed and the sequence was misleading.

They contend that Trump also urged supporters to “cheer on our brave senators, Congressmen, and women” and “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard” in front of the crowd. They claim that the edited version promoted more direct violence.

Trump praised Mamdani, the Muslim politician who he once hailed as a “jihadist” and threatened to depose him of his US citizenship, in a press release on Friday after their discussion.

“We just had a fantastic, extremely productive meeting,” the statement read. We all share the desire to do very well in this city of ours, according to Trump, who was born and raised in New York, adding that Mamdani had won an “incredible race” and defeated his rivals “easily”.

Mamdani responded, stating that he had a good time with the president and that the meeting was productive and focused on New York City, a place where they shared admiration and love.

Mamdani, a democratic socialist who supported the existence of a community made up of people from all over the world and who vehemently defended Palestinian rights, disagrees politically with Trump, whose nativist policies have portrayed immigrants as a dangerous internal threat and have previously advocated for a Muslim ban on entering the US.

Mamdani said he hoped to work together despite their differences when asked about areas in which he disagreed with Trump, such as immigration enforcement.

He referred to a video he shared in November 2024 where he discussed issues like affordability and US involvement in foreign conflicts with Trump supporters following the 2024 presidential election. Ammadani said he now hopes to find a solution to the US “forever wars” and lower living costs.

“I believe that both President Trump and I have strong positions and opinions. And what I really appreciate about the president is that the meeting focused on the shared goal of serving New Yorkers rather than on the many points where there are disagreements.

One in four people in poverty, according to he said, “that could change the lives of 8.5 million people who are currently in a cost-of-living crisis.”

Despite his previous controversies, Trump has recently spoken out in favor of Mamdani’s emphasis on cost-of-living issues in response to polls that are raising questions about the state of the US economy.

At the COP30 summit in Belem, Brazil, negotiators held closed-door discussions on Friday evening as they tried to resolve differences and reach an agreement that included concrete steps to address the climate crisis.

Climate activists and other experts are concerned about a draft proposal that was made public earlier this day because it made no mention of fossil fuels, which is the main cause of climate change.

Before releasing them for further negotiations, COP30 President Andre Correa do Lago said, “This cannot be an agenda that divides us.” We must reach a consensus, he says.

The conflict over the future of coal, oil, and gas has raised the difficulty of reaching a consensus at the annual UN conference, which demonstrates how globally determined we are to stop global warming from having the worst effects.

According to Monica Yanakiew of Al Jazeera from Rio de Janeiro on Friday afternoon, “many countries, especially oil-producing nations or countries that depend on fossil fuels, have stated that they do not want this to be mentioned in a final agreement.”

In addition, dozens of other nations have stated that they will not support any agreement that doesn’t outline a plan for the elimination of fossil fuels, according to Yanakiew.

This is a significant divisive point, she said, adding that the transition from fossil fuels has also been a key topic at the climate conference.

Many developing nations, including those with higher risk of climate change, including more severe weather events, have argued that they want wealthy countries to bear more of the cost of the crisis.

“So there is a lot being discussed, and negotiators say this could likely continue over the weekend,” said Yanakiew.

The UN Environment Programme has issued a warning ahead of COP30 that the world will “very likely” exceed the 1.5-degree Celsius (2. 7-degree Fahrenheit) warming limit&nbsp, which is a goal that has been agreed upon by the Paris Agreement, within the next ten years.

At least two billion people, or one-quarter of the world’s population, are at risk from the expansion of fossil fuel projects, according to Amnesty International’s recent report.

Nafkote Dabi, the climate policy lead at Oxfam International, said it was “unacceptable” for any final agreement to exclude a plan to phase out fossil fuels in a statement released on Friday.

According to Dabi, “a roadmap is necessary, and it must be just, equitable, and supported by real support for the Global South.”