Articles & Videos

Spirit Airlines’ failed government bailout shows the limits of Trump’s no-recourse business approach.

If you thought Downton Abbey was juicy, just wait until you've borne witness to Jenner's toxic housekeeper cinematic universe.

Test your knowledge of American spies, the Iran war, and other issues that really matter.

Test your knowledge of American spies, the Iran war, and other issues that really matter.

An unintended side effect of using GLP-1 drugs for weight loss may be hair loss as well, according to a new study.

Test your knowledge of American spies, the Iran war, and other issues that really matter.

President Trump announced new tariffs against European car imports Friday, threatening to mess with the economy further. In a Truth Social post, Trump announced that he is “pleased to announce that, based on the fact the European Union is not complying with our fully agreed to Trade Deal, next week I will be increasing Tariffs charged to the European Union for Cars and Trucks coming into the United States.”“The Tariff will be increased to 25%. It is fully understood and agreed that, if they produce Cars and Trucks in U.S.A. Plants, there will be NO TARIFF,” Trump posted. “Many Automobile and Truck Plants are currently under construction, with over 100 Billion Dollars being invested, A RECORD in the History of Car and Truck Manufacturing. These Plants, staffed with American Workers, will be opening soon — There has never been anything like what is happening in America today! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”Why Trump would be “pleased” with the move is one thing, but his claim that several auto plants are currently under construction is misleading at best. Industry experts say that most automakers are not building new plants, but are instead planning to shift their investments years from now. While some car manufacturers have pledged to spend more money in the U.S., they haven’t announced new facilities or manufacturing plants, and their plans may not even happen. “They will be looking at models that will be coming to the end of their natural cycle, something that occurs at five or so year intervals, and getting ready to announce ‘investments’ to continue the new version of the model at those plants,” Greig Mordue, a manufacturing policy professor at McMaster University, told Al Jazeera. On top of that, Trump’s decision to roll back much of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act killed projects to build domestic auto plants, including a $200 million hydrogen fuel cell factory in South Carolina and a $2.5 billion battery factory in Georgia. It also forced American car companies to eat investments they made in electric vehicles. Ford canceled a $1.5 billion investment in electric vehicles while General Motors had to absorb a $6 billion hit. Meanwhile, Chinese electric vehicles are the most popular in the world, and are beginning to dominate the market. All these tariffs will do is drive up prices in the U.S., and consumers will have to resort to buying more used cars, or hold off on purchases altogether. Fuel prices are still high thanks to the war in Iran, which Trump is trying to wish away without any real action. This move, at best, is a long-term plan, and at worst, won’t bring any relief or benefits to the average American.This story has been updated.

The Trump administration massively restructured the FBI in order to accommodate its deportation goals.More than 6,000 FBI agents were diverted to handling “immigration-related matters” during the first nine months of Donald Trump’s second term, reported The Intercept Friday. The seismic shift has practically redefined the agency and its work.Prior to January 2025, just 279 agents were assigned to immigration cases. By September, that number was above 6,500, growing the task force by a factor of 23. In total, 9,161 people at the FBI—nearly a quarter of the bureau’s 38,000 staffers—worked on immigration during Trump’s first nine months in office.The change is larger than previously understood. In October, The Washington Post reported that some 3,000 agents had been reassigned to cover immigration, based on FBI data obtained and circulated by Senator Mark R. Warner.  “That is a huge, huge number of people,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told The Intercept of the 6,500-plus figure. “This is just a somewhat shocking scale that we’re looking at.”The structural shift toward immigration cases is monumental: As the nation’s premiere law enforcement agency, the FBI has historically focused the bulk of its resources on crime. The bureau expanded to include counterterrorism and national security in its purview after 9/11. It has never dedicated this much time and attention to civil matters, sparking concern that the new modus operandi could hinder its criminal investigative work.“That’s a striking diversion of resources away from public safety,” David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian thinktank the Cato Institute, told The Intercept. “We’re talking about the FBI diverting people away from criminal investigations and ongoing criminal activity and into civil immigration enforcement. “This is showing the extent to which the resources of the FBI were put at the disposal of Immigration and Customs Enforcement contrary to the intent of Congress, and the abuse of the funds that Congress grants the FBI to accomplish its mission,” Bier noted.The FBI is not the only federal agency to massively reorient itself toward immigration since Trump’s inauguration. The Justice Department dropped thousands of criminal cases last year in an attempt to funnel its efforts—almost singularly—toward convicting immigration cases. Altogether, the chief law enforcement agency closed some 23,000 criminal cases in the first six months of Trump’s term, including investigations into terrorism, white-collar crimes, and drugs, while prosecuting 32,000 new immigration cases.The shift in priorities is an indication that “making America safe again” is not necessarily as much of a goal for the current administration as Trump has promised. At the president’s direction, federal authorities have arrested thousands of noncriminal immigrants across the country, despite repeated pledges that the deportation purge is focused on the “worst of the worst”—such as “murderers, pedophiles, rapists, gang members, and terrorists.”