Questions or comments on this article? E-mail us at feedback@sciencenews.org | Reprints FAQ E. McClymont et al. The role of vaccination in maternal and perinatal outcomes associated with COVID-19 in pregnancy. JAMA. Published online December 15, 2025. doi: 10.1001/jama.2025.21001. S.A. Irving et al. Effectiveness of 2024–2025 COVID-19 vaccines in children in the United States — VISION, August 29, 2024–September 2, 2025. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Vol. 74, December 11, 2025, p. 607. doi: 10.15585/mmwr.mm7440a1. L. Semenzato et al. COVID-19 mRNA vaccination and 4-year all-cause mortality among adults aged 18 to 59 years in France. JAMA Network Open. Vol. 8, December 4, 2025. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.46822.

The biggest story of 2025, to judge from the number of people who sent it to me, was this raccoon: In case you somehow missed this story: In late November, this raccoon got into a state liquor store in Ashland, Va., by falling though the ceiling. Once inside, the raccoon ransacked the store, leaving a trail of broken bottles... ...and apparently consuming a large quantity of booze before passing out in the bathroom next to the toilet. That’s where the raccoon was found by a store employee, who called an animal-control officer, who took it to an animal shelter. When the raccoon finally sobered up, it was hired as director of security by the Louvre Museum. No, seriously, it was released into the wild. But the photo went majorly viral, and the raccoon became a huge celebrity. We, the American people, LOVE this raccoon. And I think I know why: After the year we’ve been through, we can relate to it. We have had way too much of 2025; it has left us, as a nation, lying face-down on the floor of despair, between the wastebasket of stupidity and the commode of broken dreams. How did we get here? Perhaps it will help (although I doubt it) if we look back on the events of this insane year, starting with... ...in which outgoing President Joe Biden, preparing to wander out of office, pardons pretty much everybody he has ever shaken hands with — Not that anybody did anything wrong! — thus clearing the decks for America’s new leadership team of President Donald Trump and Executive President Elon Musk. Even before taking office Trump is working on big things, HUGE things, INCREDIBLE things, including a goal that has been shown, in poll after poll, to be the number one priority of the American public: purchasing Greenland. We need Greenland because it is a vital strategic resource that produces nearly 70 percent of the world’s supply of frostbite. Technically Greenland belongs to Denmark, which doesn’t want to sell it to us, but the harsh military reality is that the entire Danish army has fewer weapons than the entourage of a mid-tier American rap artist. Trump also wants to take possession of the Panama Canal, which was built by Americans and therefore needs to be physically relocated to the United States; and to rename Mount Denali and the Gulf of Mexico, both of which were also built by Americans. On January 20 Trump is sworn into office and — after unsuccessfully attempting to kiss his wife, Melania, who as a defensive measure is wearing the wide-brim style of hat popularized by both the Hamburglar and Zorro — he pardons pretty much everybody who was not pardoned by Biden, including the January 6 rioters Capitol tourists, among them the bare-chested, face-painted guy with the horned headpiece, who needs to be out of prison because he is our new ambassador to Great Britain.Photo by Julia Demaree Nikhinson - Pool/Getty Image In keeping with presidential tradition, Trump signs executive orders reversing all the Biden executive orders that reversed all the previous Trump executive orders that reversed all of Barack Obama’s executive orders that reversed all of George W. Bush’s executive orders that reversed all of Bill Clinton’s executive orders, and so on back to George Washington. Meanwhile Elon Musk and an elite squadron of really smart 13-year-olds set about the task of making the federal government less wasteful by eliminating the root cause of inefficiency: employees. To accomplish this goal, the Musk team offers buyout agreements to all two million federal workers. The first person to accept is Melania. No, that’s a joke, obviously. She was third. In other Washington news, the hearings for Trump’s cabinet nominees produce the greatest oratorical moment in the history of the U.S. Senate, if not the world, when Bernie Sanders, questioning Robert F. Kennedy Jr., points to photographs of two infant garments with anti-vaccination slogans and demands to know “ARE YOU SUPPORTIVE OF THESE ONESIES?”Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images If these words are not, some day, engraved on the front of a major federal building, we have to wonder why we even HAVE federal buildings. Which brings us to... ...when President Trump threatens to slap tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada and China, all of which were originally built by Americans. Tariffs are taxes, so this would mean that the American consumer would pay more for these goods. To understand why this is a shrewd business tactic, consider an analogy: You’re in a dispute with your neighbor, Bob. So you go to Bob’s house and ring his doorbell. When he opens the door, you turn around and punch the American consumer in the face. Take that, Bob! Meanwhile, as Elon and the Musketeers continue whacking away at the federal government, the Washington Post publishes a front-page story that begins: “A 19-year-old acolyte of Elon Musk known online as ‘Big Balls’ has taken on new roles as a senior adviser at the State Department and at the Department of Homeland Security....” This is followed by several days of cable-TV news coverage featuring platoons of Serious Commentators, frowning to indicate the magnitude of their concern, talking about: Big Balls. They are obsessed with Big Balls. They cannot get enough of Big Balls. The only thing that could have made this episode more magical would have been if there had been a Senate hearing in which Bernie Sanders demanded to know if Big Balls was supportive of the onesies. Speaking of the Democrats: Recognizing that their main message in 2024 — that anybody who would vote for Donald Trump is a racist idiot — failed badly, the Democrats have decided to win voters back with a more positive message, namely, that they are positive that anybody who would vote for Donald Trump is a racist idiot. This is the kind of tactical shrewdness that makes the Democratic Party such a formidable foe of the Democratic Party. In yet another alarming aviation mishap, a Delta regional jet attempting to land in Toronto flips over and slides down the runway upside-down, coming to a stop only inches from a waiting clot of personal-injury attorneys. A spokesperson for the Federal Aviation Administration, seeking to reassure the public, notes that “many flights are still landing right-side up.”Photo by Katherine KY Cheng/Getty Images Speaking of Canada, in… …the Trump administration ramps up the trade war against Canada and Mexico, which used to be friendly neighboring nations where vacationing Americans went to shoot moose and throw up on the beaches respectively, but which now apparently are our arch-enemies. We’re also in a feud with Europe, because for decades we’ve been spending billions of dollars protecting Europe from the Russians while the Europeans were lounging around cafes without leaving tips. Our new foreign policy is: Protect your own selves, Europeans! We’re not going to fight the Russians for you! In fact now we LIKE the Russians! We’re chatting on the phone with them right now about how much of Ukraine they can keep! At least that appears to be our foreign policy at the moment. There’s a lot of confusion about exactly what our strategy is: Either we’re playing four-dimensional chess, or somebody’s slipping Ecstasy into the White House Diet Coke supply. Either way it’s exciting! In domestic news, President Trump marks his sixth week in office by giving a speech to Congress lasting for much of the seventh week, the gist of which is that he is, in all modesty, doing a better Job than all the other presidents combined plus Jesus Christ. This message does not go unchallenged by the Democratic members of Congress, who, in a bold display of Resistance reminiscent of the civil-rights marches of the Sixties, take courageous high-impact action in the form of... Holding up little paddles. Really. That’s the protest they came up with. They also considered wearing their underpants on their heads, but decided that wouldn’t look ridiculous enough.Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images Speaking of ridiculous: A group of high-level Trump administration officials, including Secretary of Defense War Pete Hegseth, hold a group chat on the Signal app to discuss a sensitive military operation against the Houthis and somehow — this actually happened — include the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg. Despite widespread criticism of this blunder, the administration insists that it was no big deal, and that it’s pure coincidence that shortly after the chat, U.S. military drones destroyed the offices of the New Yorker. On a happier note, two astronauts finally return to Earth after being stranded aboard the International Space Station for nine months. They say they’re “happy to be home,” but add “that’s the last time we’re booking on Spirit.” Speaking of space exploration, in… …a Blue Origin rocket blasts off from west Texas, carrying a historic six-woman celebrity crew on a historic mission that lasts for nearly 11 historic minutes, including nearly three historic minutes in actual space, before setting them safely down in… west Texas. Not only does this mission result in a breakthrough scientific discovery — namely, that space is located directly above west Texas — but it also serves as an inspiration to every little girl who has ever looked up at the heavens and dreamed that some day, somehow, she would grow up and become engaged to Jeff Bezos. Speaking of things going up and down: the stock market is bouncing around like a kangaroo on meth as the financial community, along with the rest of the world, frantically tries to understand President Trump’s tariff strategy, which changes almost hourly as he responds, as a shrewd negotiator, to random neural firings in his brain. Now he’s raising tariffs! Now he’s lowering tariffs! Now he’s raising tariffs again, but only for countries with predominantly blue flags and large yak populations! As the public sees TariffPalooza disrupting the economy, Trump’s poll numbers begin to slide, presenting the Democrats with a golden opportunity to take advantage of Trump’s vulnerability by offering Americans the one thing that they crave most in these uncertain economic times: a really long speech. This bold stroke is executed by New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who sets a U.S. Senate record by speaking for more than 25 hours without peeing, forever transforming the lives of the estimated three interns who were listening. The excitement continues in... ...when the Washington press corps is rocked by the revelations in “Original Sin,” a bombshell new book by veteran journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, which reveals the shocking revelation that during his presidency, Joe Biden was suffering from dementia, but this was covered up so effectively that nobody noticed it except for everyone on the planet who is not a member of the Washington press corps. The question now is: If Biden was incapacitated, who was actually running the government? We can rest assured that we will soon have an answer, now that the Washington press corps has been alerted. Meanwhile President Trump takes a break from changing his mind about tariffs to receive the gift of a luxury jet plane from Qatar, a generous nation that expects nothing in return. “Just treat us exactly the same way as you would anybody else who gave you a $400 million gift,” is the selfless attitude of the Qataris. Also definitely not expecting any special favors are the 200 people who spend an average of more than a million dollars each on Trump’s cryptocurrency meme coin — which is named (really) “$TRUMP” — so they can attend a dinner with the president at the Trump National Golf Club. This is totally ethical. In fact having a personal cryptocurrency has been a U.S. presidential tradition dating all the way back to the Abraham Lin¢oin. Speaking of Lincoln: On Memorial Day, a somber occasion when America honors its war dead, Trump posts a social-media message strongly reminiscent of the Gettysburg Address in its dignity and thoughtful eloquence. It begins (really): “HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE SCUM THAT SPENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY THROUGH WARPED RADICAL LEFT MINDS...” ...and so on for 109 thoughtful capitalized words, not one of which mentions our nation’s war dead, but you only have so much space on social media. Meanwhile the Democrats, according to the New York Times, are spending $20 million on a research project code-named SAM, which stands for “Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan,” intended to figure out how the party can appeal to young men. So far the researchers have come up with a campaign based on the slogan: “The Democratic Party will hit a touchdown out of the ballpark for America! Because, like young males, we enjoy athletic sports games!” The Democrats plan to workshop this slogan with actual young males, once the researchers find out where they live. In transportation news, Newark’s Liberty International Airport (motto: “Our Motto Has Been Canceled”) is plagued by flight disruptions after staffing problems reduce the number of available air-traffic controllers to one, Marty Fleegleman, who is unable to leave his post and has been peeing into a Gatorade bottle since Christmas. A spokesperson for the Federal Aviation Administration says “there is no reason for airline passengers to be concerned” and reminds pilots planning to land in Newark to “buzz the tower first in case Marty has dozed off.” In a historic action, the College of Cardinals chooses the first U.S.-born pope, Robert Francis Prevost. The new pontiff, whose official name is Pope Bob I, pledges to reinvigorate the College of Cardinals football program, which last season had zero wins and 12 losses, including a 63-0 shellacking by the Sisters of Mercy. Speaking of shellackings, in... ...seven American B-2 stealth bombers, operating under conditions of strictest secrecy, take off from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri and, in a surprise attack that shocks the world, drop 14 massive “bunker buster bombs,” each weighing 30,000 pounds, on the headquarters of the personal-injury law firm Morgan and Morgan. No, sorry, wishful thinking. In fact the bombs are dropped on Iran, which the Trump administration claims is trying to build nuclear weapons, although Iran insists that it is enriching uranium for, quote, “peaceful purposes such as agriculture.” The bombing mission is called “Operation Midnight Hammer,” a name that was chosen over these candidates: -- “Operation Big Stomping Boot of Consequences.” -- “Operation FAFO.” -- “Operation You Talkin’ To ME?” -- “Operation We Have Come To Chew Bubblegum And Destroy Your Nuclear Facilities, And We Are All Out Of Bubblegum.” -- “Operation Enrich THIS, Motherf****rs.” Trump claims that the strike “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, but Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a brief public appearance that is cut short when an Israeli drone flies out of his turban, downplays the damage and warns that Iran’s nuclear program will soon be restored, and it will be “more peaceful than ever.” In another controversial military operation, Trump sends National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell civil unrest, but by the time the troops are able to reach the scene, after spending 14 hours gridlocked on the 101 freeway, the unrest has pretty much quelled itself. Basically Iran is a more mission-friendly environment. In politics, New York City Democratic primary voters pick, as their mayoral candidate and almost-certain future mayor, Zohran Mamdani, an attractive and hip young social-media-savvy fellow with an exciting new idea for governing that has never before been proposed and appears to have no downside: giving away free stuff. Among his novel ideas is to have the city operate grocery stores, which would no doubt provide New York food shoppers with a consumer experience every bit as pleasant as the one they currently enjoy in the city’s legendarily reliable, safe and hygienic subway system. Speaking of financial responsibility, in... ...a heated debate rages in Washington over the budget bill, as two competing ideologies clash over the nation’s financial future: — One side believes that the federal government, for a variety of reasons, must continue to spend way more money than it actually has; — Whereas the other side believes that the federal government, for somewhat different reasons, must continue to spend way more money than it actually has. It comes down to the wire, but after many hours of passionate debate Congress passes, and President Trump signs, a bill under which the federal government will continue to spend way more money than it actually has. Both sides congratulate themselves, secure in the knowledge that they will be comfortably retired or dead when the massive ticking debt bomb they have helped create explodes all over whatever future generations are stupid enough to not have been born earlier. With that pesky chore out of the way, Washington resumes being fixated on what Washington has clearly decided is the most important issue facing the nation: Jeffrey Epstein. He is the financier/dirtbag who died in 2019 in a New York City jail cell in what the Medical Examiner’s Office ruled was a suicide, although many people are skeptical, largely because immediately after the word “suicide” on the death certificate are the words “wink wink.” The federal government allegedly has a massive trove of Epstein-related documents that allegedly either do or do not implicate many alleged individuals, including, allegedly, Donald Trump, who at one time said he was in favor of releasing the documents but is now saying we should forget about them and just move on, thereby guaranteeing that this is the only thing Washington can think about. If a Chinese nuclear submarine surfaced in the Houston Ship Channel, Washington’s main concern would be how it would affect the release of the Epstein files. In business news, an incident at a Coldplay concert serves as a reminder to corporate executives of the number one rule of career success: Stay off the Kiss Cam. Speaking of scandals, at the end of the month Eagle Jeans releases an ad featuring actress Sydney Sweeney, who makes a play on words involving “jeans” and “genes.” Naturally, this being 2025, some leading thinkers conclude that the ad is LITERALLY NAZI PROPAGANDA. The professional opinion-having classes spew out thousands of words about this controversy, as Sydney Sweeney and her jeans get sucked into the vast swirling cyclone of crazy that constitutes American political discourse, which is why the overwhelming majority of Americans want nothing to do with it. Speaking of controversy, in... ...President Trump orders National Guard troops into Washington, D.C., to try to make everybody for God’s sake stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein. Tensions mount until, in a climactic confrontation, a heavily armed Guard unit storms the U.S. Capitol and finds itself in a dramatic standoff with Sen. Chuck Schumer, who addresses the guardsmen through a bullhorn at close range for more than three hours, ultimately forcing them to go lie down. Meanwhile federal ICE agents, in a raid strongly condemned by civil-liberties organizations, deport the entire California state legislature. But by far the biggest story in August, if not of all time, is that OMG OMG OMG Taylor Swift announces her engagement to the Future Mr. Taylor Swift, who presents her with an engagement ring believed to be the first piece of manmade jewelry visible from space.Source: NASA In culture-war news, the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain makes what in a sane era would be viewed as a minor change to its logo. Naturally this sparks a massive backlash, this one coming from the opposite side in the culture war from the one that started the Sydney Sweeney backlash. After a few days of being backlashed, Cracker Barrel announces that it will keep the old logo, and the culture warriors resume their ceaseless hunt for a new thing to be outraged about. This hunt does not take long, because lurking just over the horizon is... ...when conservative activist Charlie Kirk is assassinated while speaking at Utah Valley University. Everyone agrees this is wrong. I am of course joking. This is 2025, so a disturbing number of Americans think it’s OK to murder someone for expressing the wrong political views. Maybe you can find some humor in this. On the Jeffrey Epstein front, a hearing of the House Oversight Committee exposes the world to this classy image:Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images On display at this hearing is an enlargement of a naughty birthday message to Epstein that was allegedly drawn and signed in the pubic region by Donald Trump. Trump vehemently denies that he created it, even though we all know he did, and has sued everybody involved for a jillion dollars. Whether or not the drawing is authentic, the photo above is a perfect visual representation of the nation’s current level of political debate. The only way to make it more perfect would be to somehow incorporate Bernie Sanders demanding to know whether the birthday card had anything to say about the onesies. And the federal excitement continues in... ...when Congress, which at this point is focusing almost exclusively on Jeffrey Epstein, is unable to pass a funding bill, thereby forcing the federal government to shut down. As a result hundreds of millions of Americans suddenly find themselves forced to try to figure out what, exactly, the federal government does, because pretty much everything seems to go on as usual except for Yellowstone National Park, where the buffalo, upon realizing that they are not being paid, refuse to roam. Meanwhile it’s an up-and-down month for President Trump. On the upside, he brokers a historic ceasefire deal in the Israel-Hamas conflict that promises to bring permanent lasting peace to the Middle East for the next 25 or possibly even 30 minutes. However this achievement is overshadowed by Trump’s decision to demolish the East Wing of the White House so he can build a huge and classy new ballroom with gold plating on every visible surface including the urinals. The project is expected to cost $300 million, to be provided by generous private donors who simply have a passion for ballrooms and expect nothing in return. Nevertheless polls show that the public largely disapproves of the East Wing demolition, forcing the administration to quietly shelve, at least for now, plans to modernize other aging Washington structures. Abroad, thieves stage a daring daylight robbery of more than $100 million worth of rare jewelry from the Louvre Museum, which turns out to have the same level of security as a Coke machine. Louvre officials are deeply embarrassed by the brazen theft, and their humiliation only worsens when they discover that the Mona Lisa has also been stolen and replaced by a photograph of Bernie Sanders asking about the onesies, but everybody was too busy taking selfies to notice.Getty Images In sports news, federal authorities indict more than 30 people in connection with an alleged insider betting scandal involving the National Basketball Association. The NBA is shocked, shocked to learn that there is gambling going on, as are its official betting partners, FanDuel and DraftKings. Speaking of surprises, in... ...Congress, after pausing briefly to fund the federal government, resumes the crucial work of obsessing about Jeffrey Epstein. The House Oversight Committee releases more than 20,000 pages of Epstein’s texts and emails, which reveal that right up until he got whacked his suicide, Epstein, despite being a convicted dirtbag, somehow managed to remain remarkably influential, corresponding regularly with many prominent people and serving as lieutenant governor of at least three states. Meanwhile tensions are mounting in the Caribbean, where the Trump administration is using U.S. military forces to deter suspected Venezuelan drug traffickers by vaporizing them and their boats with Hellfire missiles. Some critics charge that these strikes violate international law, but Secretary of War and Hair Gel Pete Hegseth insists that they’re completely legal, noting that all of the missiles clearly display the Miranda Warning. On a more nostalgic note, it’s the end of an era for the most venerable of all U.S. coins as the Philadelphia Mint produces the last-ever penny, which is presented, in a formal ceremony, to U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach, who throws it into a wastebasket. Speaking of ceremonies, in.... ....President Trump, attending the ceremonial FIFA World Cup ping-pong-ball draw, is finally recognized for his tireless, unstinting and selfless efforts to win a major peace award by being presented with the “FIFA Peace Prize,” which is an extremely prestigious and historic honor that has been in existence since approximately 15 minutes before the ceremony began, and which is MUCH CLASSIER than the so-called “Nobel Peace Prize” because in addition to a medal you get a big-ass gold trophy AND a certificate. The climatic close of the ceremony is a performance of the song that, more than any other, expresses the true spirit of both world peace and international athletic excellence: “YMCA,” by the Village People. Meanwhile in the Caribbean, tensions continue to mount as a U.S. Coast Guard cutter attempts to seize a 250,000-ton cruise ship, the Bloat of the Seas, which Pete Hegseth says is believed to be carrying “a substantial number of suspected Venezuelan cigars.” The mission has to be aborted when the Coast Guard boarding party, attempting to ascend the side of the ship, is driven back by a torrent of buffet selections rained down on them by cruise passengers wielding dinner plates the size of manhole covers. In another foreign-policy development, Secretary of State Marco Rubio issues a memo directing all U.S. embassies and diplomatic posts to use the Times New Roman 14-point font. I am not making this up. Rubio’s memo reverses a 2023 memo by Anthony Blinken ordering everybody to use Calibri, a sans-serif font. Within hours Russia, a nation that historically has always respected and feared the serif, withdraws all of its troops from Ukraine. In Washington, the Department of Justice releases several hundred thousand more Jeffrey Epstein documents, of which there seems to be an inexhaustible supply. If all the Epstein documents that have been released to date were printed out, they could cover the entire state of Vermont with a document blanket 11 feet high, of which at least two feet would be photos of Bill Clinton. None of these documents is expected to lead to criminal prosecution, but nobody cares; we’ve reached the point where releasing Jeffrey Epstein documents is simply one of the many things that the federal government does for some long-forgotten reason, which is also why we have a Department of Commerce. Christmas Eve provides a much-needed break from politics, as children everywhere eagerly anticipate the arrival of Santa Claus, soaring south from the North Pole on his magical, toy-laden sleigh, getting as far as Milwaukee, where he and his undocumented reindeer are taken into custody by ICE. So it has not been a stellar year. But it’s almost over, thank God. It’s time, at last, to put 2025 behind us and look ahead to the year to come, which is bound to be better, right? RIGHT? Anyway, that’s what we’ll all be hoping for, as we gather on New Year’s Eve with our friends and loved onesies to watch the big ball drop. I’ll conclude by wishing a Happy New Year to all of you Substack readers, especially you wonderful paying subscribers. Thank you for your support, and please be kind to each other in the comments. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.I'm Scottish, and I am offended. Leave a comment Share

The worst of the worst, ranked 1-25.

ALT: a south park character says come on dude while wearing a green shirt

MAGA Weaponized the Epstein Files Only to Have It Blow Up in their Faces

A decade after an investment firm was created to help save Sears from its inevitable demise, both are now in their last gasps. Five Sears stores are still operating in the country, but they won’t be around much longer, industry experts predict. Neither will Seritage Growth Properties, the real estate investment trust created to cash in on the value of the retailer’s properties. It abandoned its somewhat audacious plan to turn Sears’s rich real estate holdings into dazzling mixed-use properties. Today, Seritage is offloading the last of its assets as it pays down a $1.6 billion term loan from Warren E. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. “The goal is to sell the remaining Seritage assets as quickly and profitably as possible, but we are also very open to an alternative transaction that could enhance shareholder value,” Adam Metz, chief executive of Seritage, said in an interview. The winding down of both companies in tandem brings to an end a two-decade saga that the hedge fund magnate Edward S. Lampert started when he bought Sears in 2005. When Mr. Lampert combined Sears with Kmart, which he had bought out of bankruptcy in 2003, investors were betting that the retailers would be better off dead and their land repurposed. At the time, Sears owned most of its more than 3,400 stores. Sears’s market value soared past $20 billion in those early days of Mr. Lampert’s ownership as the company slashed costs and investors anticipated cashing in on its valuable holdings. Within a decade, though, Sears was flailing and Mr. Lampert had embarked on a plan to sell hundreds of stores to Seritage. The fund’s shares, now trading at less than $4, hit more than $50 in the years after Seritage was formed. So what went wrong with Mr. Lampert’s big promise?ImageA Sears department store in Miami. When Mr. Lampert bought Sears in 2005, he was betting that the retailer would be better off dead and its land repurposed.Credit...Scott McIntyre for The New York Times Bad timing and an egregious conflict of interest involving Mr. Lampert at the helm of both entities are to blame, industry experts say. Through Mr. Lampert’s hedge fund, ESL Investments, which was a major lender to Sears, he was the retailer’s biggest creditor and shareholder. Over the years, he was also Sears’s chairman and chief executive, and until 2022 was chairman of Seritage. This unusual setup put him on both sides of transactions and led to accusations that he prioritized his fund’s interests over Sears’s financial health, something that prompted lawsuits by Sears’s creditors after the company filed for bankruptcy. Mr. Lampert and his hedge fund had stakes in the businesses that were spun off, and he collected hundreds of millions of dollars in interest and fees from the retailer. Mr. Lampert’s formation of Seritage in 2015 was promising enough to attract prominent backers, including Mr. Buffett, who took an 8 percent stake in the company and later lent it almost $2 billion to fund the redevelopments. Mr. Lampert’s success at ESL Investments, including a big win with AutoZone, had made him something of an investing legend and once even prompted comparisons to Mr. Buffett. There were red flags from the beginning, though. Sears’s “finances were more fragile than they let on,” said Victor Rodriguez, senior director of market analytics at CoStar Group, a commercial real estate data and analytics firm. And Seritage’s fortunes were too closely tied to those of Sears, once the country’s leading retailer. The retailer was hemorrhaging cash after years of struggling to compete against larger rivals like Walmart and Home Depot. Mr. Lampert sold or spun off assets, including its Lands’ End clothing brand, to stanch the losses. The explosion of online shopping would put Sears even further behind as it fought to stay relevant.SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Lampert’s effort to revive Sears included programs like online ordering, in-store pickup and a loyalty program. Many former executives said Mr. Lampert’s strategy was to compete with Amazon.ImageAfter Sears filed for bankruptcy, its estate sued Mr. Lampert and directors, accusing them of stripping $2 billion in assets in a series of insider deals while lacking a realistic plan to turn Sears around.Credit...Scott McIntyre for The New York Times The problem with that plan, though, was that most Sears customers still preferred shopping in person, but the stores were poorly maintained as the company was spending little on upkeep. Neither Mr. Lampert nor Transformco, the company that currently operates Sears, responded to requests for comment. In 2015, Sears said it was selling about 250 stores to Seritage for $2.7 billion. Most of those would be leased back to Sears, and the rent would provide an income stream for Mr. Lampert’s plan to redevelop stores. The new developments would then command higher rents — and more revenue for Seritage. But Seritage couldn’t depend on Sears’s rent payments; the retailer’s continued troubles led to the closing of hundreds of stores. “Seritage was in a very tough spot — you have all your income tied to dying retailers,” said Vince Tibone, a managing director at Green Street, a commercial real estate research and consulting firm. “They just couldn’t replace the lost income from Sears fast enough.” Sears filed for bankruptcy in 2018, with more than $11 billion in losses and about 700 stores remaining — roughly one-fifth of its size at the time Mr. Lampert bought it. ImageCredit...Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesImageCredit...Scott McIntyre for The New York Times Mr. Lampert started Transformco, another ESL-controlled entity, to buy Sears’s assets out of bankruptcy. The Sears estate and the company’s creditors sued Mr. Lampert and Sears Holdings’ directors, including former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, as the bankruptcy played out, accusing them of stripping $2 billion in assets in a series of insider deals while lacking a realistic plan to turn Sears around. In one legal filing, creditors accused Mr. Lampert of plundering the company by selling and spinning off assets in a yearslong “Shakespearean tragedy.” The suit was settled in 2022 with a $175 million payment. Today, the handful of remaining operating Sears stores are under Transformco’s ownership, which is also selling and redeveloping old stores. More recently, Seritage has been able to take advantage of higher real estate values amid a scarcity of land and construction, said Brandon Svec, national director of U.S. retail analytics at CoStar. Still, it serves an example of a real estate strategy gone wrong. “By the time Seritage got started, it was a decade too late to extract the most value possible for these assets,” Mr. Svec said. Rents for retail space peaked around the time Seritage was created, Mr. Tibone of Green Street said, before a wave of bankruptcies and store closures curbed demand. In hindsight, it may have been better to split Seritage into two businesses — one concentrating on smaller and simpler projects requiring less investment, such as renovating and re-leasing old Sears stores, Mr. Tibone said. The other could have navigated the longer-term, large-scale, capital-intensive projects that are difficult to execute even in the best of times.ImageCredit...Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesImageCredit...Scott McIntyre for The New York Times Recent visits to two Sears stores and the last operating U.S. Kmart, in Florida, revealed sites almost devoid of shoppers. Julio Guzman and his family were the only shoppers at a Sears store on a recent weekday at the otherwise lively Florida Mall in Orlando. Mr. Guzman said he was delighted to discover a Sears that was still operating after he moved to the area this year. “It was very convenient to have Sears almost around the corner,” said Mr. Guzman, who said he had been a loyal customer for 30 years, relying on the merchant for electronics, appliances and tools. “Unfortunately, our kids are not going to remember.”ImageJulio Guzman has been a loyal Sears customer for 30 years, he said.Credit...Zack Wittman for The New York Times

Inside Trump’s Second Term: Power Plays, Proxy Wars, and the Enforcers Behind the Chaos

MAGA strikes abroad, secrecy deepens, institutions buckle, and loyalists like Rubio turn Trump’s second term into a global and domestic pressure campaign.

Two weeks ago, President Donald Trump said he saw "no problem" with releasing the full video of the newly controversial September 2 operation that inaugurated his deadly military campaign against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific. But on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said no one aside from a select group of lawmakers would be allowed to see the video, which shows a second missile strike that blew apart two survivors of the initial attack as they clung to the smoldering wreckage. "In keeping with long-standing…Department of Defense policy, of course, we're not going to release a top secret, full, unedited video of that to the general public," Hegseth said after he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed senators on the boat attacks, which so far have killed 95 people in 25 operations. But the fact that the video currently is deemed "top secret" should not be decisive, since Hegseth has the power to declassify it. He is using vague national security concerns as an excuse to conceal footage that might undermine public support for Trump's murderous anti-drug strategy by vividly showing what it looks like in practice. "Will you release video of that strike so that the American people can see for themselves?" ABC's Selina Wang asked Trump on December 3. "I don't know what they have," Trump replied, "but whatever they have, we'd certainly release, no problem." Hegseth contradicted that commitment three days later. "President Trump said he would have no problem if the full video of the strike is released," Fox News reporter Lucas Tomlinson noted during a Q&A session on December 6. "When can we see that video? When will you release it?" Hegseth implied that Tomlinson was mistaken in taking the president at his word. "We're reviewing it right now to make sure sources [and] methods" are not compromised, Hegseth said. "I mean, it's an ongoing operation….We've got operators out there doing this right now. So whatever we were to decide to release, we'd have to be very responsible about it. We're reviewing that right now." Two days later, Trump himself retreated from his promise of transparency. "Mr. President, you said you would have no problem with releasing the full video of that strike on September 2nd off the coast of Venezuela," ABC's Rachel Scott reminded him. Trump denied that he had said what he said: "I didn't say that. You said that. I didn't say that. This is ABC fake news." Then he announced a new position: "Whatever Hegseth wants to do is OK with me." When Scott pressed Trump on whether he would order Hegseth to release the video, he unloaded on her: "You're the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place. Let me just tell you, you are an obnoxious—a terrible, actually, a terrible reporter. And it's always the same thing with you. I told you, whatever Pete Hegseth wants to do is OK with me." Given that green light, Hegseth evidently decided he did not need to offer any specific rationale for refusing to release the video. Like Trump's promise that "we'd certainly release" it, Hegseth's talk of "reviewing" the footage with an eye toward redacting clues about "sources [and] methods" has gone down the memory hole. Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R–Okla.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and an enthusiastic supporter of summarily executing suspected cocaine couriers, told reporters on Tuesday the issue with the video is "the sensitivity" of "the assets used" in the boat strike. "It is a classification issue," said Mullin, who had not seen the video. "I don't make the classification….If you don't like the classification, talk to the White House about it." Rep. Adam Smith (D–Wash.), who as the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee was allowed to see the video during a closed-door briefing on December 4, thinks the claim that releasing it would compromise "sources and methods" is "ridiculous." The Pentagon could easily "make sure that nothing in that video…shows anything [sensitive]," Smith said during a December 7 interview on ABC's This Week. "If they showed…just the portion that we saw, those two on the boat, it's no different [from] any of the dozen-plus videos they've already released." While the military rationale for concealing the video is dubious, the political rationale is pretty clear. "They don't want to release this video because they don't want people to see it," Smith said. "If they release the video, then everything that the Republicans are saying will clearly be [seen] to be completely false." Like the Trump administration's position on releasing the video, its justification for the second strike is a moving target. Rep. Jim Himes (D–Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has noted the Pentagon's "shifting explanations." Immediately after the attack, Himes recalled during a December 7 interview on the CBS show Face the Nation, members of Congress were told U.S. forces "needed to clear the wreckage so that there wasn't a danger to navigation." Then "right before we watched the video," Himes said, the explanation was that the unarmed survivors "might have had a radio," "might have been radioing a boat," and "might have been trying to recover the cocaine." But "when you actually watch the video," he noted, "you realize they don't have a radio" and are "barely hanging on" to what remains of the boat. Then the claim became that they were "trying to right the boat," even though "the conflagration" from the first missile strike "probably destroyed everything in that boat." The latest explanation illustrates the alarming implications of conflating drug smuggling with violent aggression. Adm. Frank Frank M. Bradley, who commanded the operation, reportedly told lawmakers he ordered the second strike because he worried that the two floundering survivors could have salvaged whatever cocaine might have remained in the capsized bow of the boat, which was all that was left after the first strike. Trump, who last month said he "wouldn't have wanted" a second strike, alluded to Bradley's rationale for it during his vituperative December 8 exchange with Scott, the ABC reporter. "I saw the video," he said. "They were trying to turn the boat back to where it could float. And we didn't want to see that, because that boat was loaded up with drugs." Trump was echoing Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who after watching the video on December 4 claimed the helpless survivors were "trying to flip the boat" so they "could stay in the fight"—a "fight" that did not actually exist, since neither those two men nor the nine others killed in the attack were engaged in combat with U.S. forces. Cotton later qualified his claim on NBC's Meet the Press, saying "they looked at one point like they were trying to flip the boat back over, presumably to rescue its cargo and continue their mission." It is at least as plausible, of course, that "they were trying to flip the boat back over" in an effort to avoid drowning. In any event, Cotton said, "it doesn't really matter what they were trying to do." Since part of the boat was still afloat, he averred, "that boat, its cargo, and those drug traffickers remained valid targets….It was entirely appropriate to strike the boat again to make sure that its cargo was destroyed. It is in no way a violation of the law of war." Himes disagrees. "Any American who sees the video that I saw will see the United States military attacking shipwrecked sailors," he told reporters. According to the Defense Department's Law of War Manual, "orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal." The manual says individuals are deemed "shipwrecked" when they are "in distress at sea," "helpless," and "in need of care and assistance," provided they "refrain from any hostile act." Beyond the issue of whether Bradley violated that rule, Cotton's claim that the two survivors "remained valid targets" raises the question of whether they were ever valid targets. The answer depends on whether you accept Trump's preposterous premise that supplying Americans with cocaine amounts to "an armed attack on the United States." If you don't, you will see a problem not only with this particular attack but with Trump's general policy of treating criminal suspects as "combatants" in a nonexistent "armed conflict," which he thinks justifies killing them from a distance without legal authorization or any semblance of due process. The video that Hegseth refuses to release would dramatically illustrate the consequences of that logic. Cotton, who told reporters he did not see "anything disturbing" in the video and said "I personally don't have any problem with" releasing it, is confident that Americans will share his morally and legally bankrupt take on the cold-blooded murder of defenseless people. Hegseth seems less sure.

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WASHINGTON, Dec 24 (Reuters) - The White House has ordered U.S. military forces to focus almost exclusively on enforcing a "quarantine" of Venezuelan oil for at least the next two months, a U.S. official told Reuters, indicating Washington is currently more interested in using economic rather than military means to pressure Caracas. "While military options still exist, the focus is to first use economic pressure by enforcing sanctions to reach the outcome the White House is looking (for)," the official said on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Reuters Tariff Watch newsletter is your daily guide to the latest global trade and tariff news. Sign up here.While President Donald Trump has been publicly coy about his precise aims regarding Venezuela, he has privately pressured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to flee the nation, Reuters has reported. Trump said on Monday it would be smart for Maduro to leave power. "The efforts so far have put tremendous pressure on Maduro, and the belief is that by late January, Venezuela will be facing an economic calamity unless it agrees to make significant concessions to the U.S.," the official said. Trump has accused the South American country of flooding the U.S. with drugs, and his administration has for months been bombing boats originating in South America that it alleges were carrying drugs. Many nations have condemned the attacks as extrajudicial killings. Trump has also frequently threatened to start bombing drug infrastructure on land, and has authorized covert CIA activity directed at Caracas.So far this month, the U.S. Coast Guard has intercepted two tankers in the Caribbean Sea, both fully loaded with Venezuelan crude. The comments by the White House official on Wednesday come after Reuters reported that the Coast Guard was waiting for additional forces to carry out a third seizure, first attempted on Sunday, against an empty sanctioned vessel known as the Bella-1. Venezuela's U.N. Ambassador Samuel Moncada said on Tuesday: "The threat is not Venezuela. The threat is the U.S. government." The White House official did not elaborate on precisely what it meant for the military to focus "almost exclusively" on interdicting Venezuelan oil. The U.S. military's footprint sprawls across the globe, and most missions and capabilities are unrelated to maritime interdiction. The Pentagon has amassed a huge military presence in the Caribbean with more than 15,000 troops. That includes an aircraft carrier, 11 other warships and more than a dozen F-35 aircraft. While many assets can be used to help with enforcing sanctions, many others, like fighter jets, are not well-suited for that task.On Tuesday, the United States told the United Nations it will impose and enforce sanctions "to the maximum extent" to deprive Maduro of resources. Earlier this month, Trump ordered a "blockade" of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela, but the White House official's use instead of the word "quarantine" appears to echo language used during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the administration of U.S. President John F. Kennedy wanted to avoid an escalation. Robert McNamara, Kennedy's defense secretary at the time, said in 2002: "We called it a quarantine because blockade is a word of war." U.N. experts on Wednesday condemned the blockade, saying such a use of force is recognized "as illegal armed aggression". Reporting by Steve Holland; Writing by Gram Slattery; Additional reporting by Jasper Ward; Editing by Michelle Nichols, Edmund Klamann and Saad Sayeed Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

JABO, Nigeria (AP) — Sanusi Madabo, a 40-year-old farmer in the Nigerian village of Jabo, was preparing for bed Thursday night when he heard a loud noise that sounded like a plane crashing. He rushed outside his mud house with his wife to see the sky glowing a bright red. The light burned bright for hours, Madabo said: “It was almost like daytime.” He did not learn until later that he had witnessed a U.S attack on an alleged Islamic State camp. U.S. President Donald Trump announced late Thursday that the U.S had launched a “powerful and deadly strike” against forces of the Islamic State group in Nigeria. The Nigerian government has since confirmed that it cooperated with the U.S government in its strike. Residents of Jabo, a village in the northwestern Nigerian state of Sokoto, told The Associated Press in interviews Friday that they were seized with panic and confusion at the airstrikes. Police Anti-Bomb squad inspect the site of a U.S. airstrike in Northwest, Jabo, Nigeria, Friday, Dec. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/ Tunde Omolehin) They also said the village had never been attacked by armed gangs as part of the violence the U.S. says is widespread, though such attacks regularly occur in neighboring villages. “As it approached our area, the heat became intense,” recalled Abubakar Sani, who lives just a few houses from the scene of the explosion. “Our rooms began to shake, and then fire broke out,” he told AP. “The Nigerian government should take appropriate measures to protect us as citizens. We have never experienced anything like this before.” The Nigerian military did not respond to an AP request asking how many locations were targeted. It’s a ‘new phase of an old conflict’ The strikes are the outcome of a monthslong tense diplomatic clash between the West African nation and the U.S. The Trump administration has said Nigeria is experiencing a Christian genocide, a claim the Nigerian government has rejected. But now Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the strikes resulted from intelligence sharing and strategic coordination between the two governments. Yusuf Tuggar, Nigeria’s foreign minister, called the airstrikes a “new phase of an old conflict” and said he expected more strikes to follow. “For us, it is something that has been ongoing,” Tuggar added, referring to attacks that have targeted Christians and Muslims in Nigeria for years. People visit the site of a U.S. airstrike in Northwest, Jabo, Nigeria, Friday, Dec. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/ Tunde Omolehin) Bulama Bukarti, a security analyst on sub-Saharan Africa at the Tony Blair Institute, said the fear of residents is compounded by a lack of information. Residents say there were no casualties, and security operatives have cordoned off the area. But the Nigerian government has not released information about the militants who were targeted or any post-strike assessment of casualties. “What can help in dousing the tension is for the American and Nigerian governments to declare who was targeted, what was attacked, and what has happened so far,” Bukarti said. Such information is “still missing, and the more opaque the governments are, the more panic there would be on the ground, and that is what will escalate tension.”Foreign fighters operated in Nigeria Analysts say the strikes might have been intended for the Lakurawa group, a relatively new entrant to Nigeria’s complex security crisis. The group’s first attack was recorded around 2018 in the northwestern region before the Nigerian government officially announced its presence last year. The composition of the group has been documented by security researchers as primarily consisting of foreigners from the Sahel region of Africa. However, experts say ties between the Lakurawa group and the Islamic State are unproven. The Islamic State West African Province, a branch of ISIS in Nigeria, has its strongholds in the northeastern part of the country, where it is currently involved in a power struggle with its parent organisation, Boko Haram. “What might have happened is that, working with the American government, Nigeria identified Lakurawa as a threat and identified camps that belong to the group,” Bukarti said. Meanwhile, some local people feel vulnerable. A boy picks debris at the site of a U.S. airstrike in Northwest, Jabo, Nigeria, Friday, Dec. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/ Tunde Omolehin) Aliyu Garba, a village leader in Jabo, told AP that debris left by the strikes was scattered, and residents rushed to the scene. Some picked up pieces of the debris, hoping for valuable metal to trade, and Garba said he fears they could get hurt. For 17-year-old Balira Sa’idu, the strike rattled her as she prepared to get married. “I am supposed to be thinking about my wedding, but right now I am panicking,” she said. “The strike has changed everything. My family is afraid, and I don’t even know if it is safe to continue with the wedding plan in Jabo.” ___ Adetayo reported from Lagos, Nigeria. ___ This story has been corrected with the proper spelling of the name of analyst Bulama Bukarti. Previous versions incorrectly spelled the last name as Burkati.

Alex Shephard/Illustration by Lauren Kolesinskas Early this year, having lost their majority in the November election, Senate Democrats put up a fight over a number of President Trump’s Cabinet picks. But Marco Rubio wasn’t one of them. The Senate unanimously confirmed him as secretary of state in January—for two reasons. First, Rubio spent over a decade in the Senate, which is one of the world’s chummiest and most insular legislative bodies. And second, the former Florida senator had built a reputation as level-headed, reasonable, and compromise-minded—at least by the standards of the MAGA-era Republican Party. Senate Democrats no doubt were relieved to have Rubio running the State Department rather than, say, Steve Bannon. You no doubt remember the “adults in the room” reporting meme during Trump’s first term: a reference to establishment figures in the administration who, it was believed, brought much needed stability and experience to a presidency that sorely lacked both; these men would temper Trump’s worst instincts. But come January, Trump 2.0 was shaping up much differently. He was sick of adults; his administration was going to be stuffed to the gills with crazies, losers, and incompetents. Rubio was an exception, however. He would be an adult in the room—perhaps the only one. One could argue that has been true. Yes, Rubio—who has since added the titles of acting national security advisor and acting national archivist to his portfolio—has had his share of foolish moments, like his recent order changing the State Department’s default communications font to Times New Roman because Calibri font was too woke. But for the most part, especially compared to colleagues like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (a murderous dimwit) or Attorney General Pam Bondi (just a dimwit, but a very big one), Rubio has run a tight ship. While Trump’s second term has been defined by gross overreach, incompetence, and chaos, the State Department has largely gone about its business without drawing controversy. But that’s the problem—Rubio’s work this year should be controversial. Since assuming office, he has transformed the State Department into a ruthless and effective arm of the administration’s larger push to quash dissent and demonize and punish immigrants, both legal and undocumented. Perhaps more surprising, given his long record as a foreign policy hawk, he has slavishly worked to remake American foreign policy to Trump’s precise specifications: unraveling longstanding alliances and cozying up to dictatorial regimes while making the world a more dangerous and unstable place. Now, as the year draws to a close, he is pushing the United States toward war.Less than a decade ago, Rubio saw Trump with clear eyes. Trump, he argued during his doomed campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, was a demagogue. “This is a political candidate … who has identified that there’s some really angry people in America,” Rubio said. “They feel as if they’ve been mistreated by the culture, by society, by our politics, by our economy… And along comes a presidential candidate and says to you, ‘You know why your life is hard? Because fill in the blank – somebody, someone, some country – they’re the reasons for it. Give me power so I can go after them.’” It was telling that Rubio didn’t fill in the blanks. On some level, he knew that directly calling out Trump for vilifying Mexicans, Muslims, immigrants would have been the kiss of death for a campaign that was already on life support. But Rubio understood that Trump was preying on the racism and resentment of the Republican base to accrue power; he knew that Trump’s project would not end there. Having told his voters that he was the solution to all of their problems—and that minority groups were their principal cause—Trump and his movement could only move in one direction: despotism. In the desperate, final days of his 2016 campaign, Rubio likened Trump to a “third-world strongman.” He was right. A decade later, Trump is leading an increasingly authoritarian administration that is defined by fascistic shows of force, brazen and historic corruption, and a fierce determination to undo the American constitutional order and remake the federal government in his own image. But now, one of his most effective allies in that project is Rubio himself. Rubio spent the spring engaged in a draconian crackdown aimed at foreign college students, many of whom attracted the ire of the administration for engaging in constitutionally protected free speech related to the United States’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. After having their visas revoked by the State Department in response to pro-Palestine activism, graduate students were, in some cases, essentially disappeared: Detained and escorted into unmarked cars by plainclothes officers who neither identified themselves nor presented a warrant. Rubio’s war against foreign students had two primary goals: to create a chilling effect by using the full force of the government against those who spoke out against it; and to make it clear that the United States, which once warmly welcomed millions of foreign students, was closed. On both counts, it worked. Rubio not only ordered this crackdown, he eagerly and effusively defended it, claiming that it was a foreign policy necessity to remove students whose nonviolent activism he insisted was terroristic and fundamentally un-American. The students, Rubio said, had been given visas to study not to “become a social activist tearing up our campuses.” Never mind that the students whose visas he revoked had never been accused of violence or hate speech. Rubio also played a key role in the administration’s deportation of people to a notoriously violent superprison in El Salvador. In February, he met with Nayib Bukele, the country’s crypto-obsessed (and very corrupt) president, who offered to jail undocumented migrants in the U.S. who have been convicted of crimes. Rubio touted it as “an act of extraordinary friendship” and “an example for security and prosperity in our hemisphere.” Of course, we know what then happened: Many of the people the U.S. sent to El Salvador had never been convicted of crimes, and some were sent there accidentally.Despite his long record as not just a foreign policy hawk but as a particularly fierce critic of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, Rubio has enthusiastically worked to advance Trump’s larger goal of ending the war in Ukraine on terms that are remarkably friendly to Russia. Though Putin started the conflict by invading Ukraine, Rubio has aped Trump, insisting it is “not our war” while blindly regurgitating Moscow’s blinkered description of it as a “proxy war” that Ukraine (and its NATO allies) was actually responsible for starting. Rubio has not only demanded Ukraine make concessions to the nation that invaded it, but repeatedly threatened to cut off aid if it does not. All the while, he has worked to cut it out of negotiations to end the war altogether, crafting settlements directly with Russia that are then foisted on the Ukrainians as a fait accompli. It is a “peace” that would double as a Russian victory, a settlement that would only make a future, more destructive conflict between Russia and the West more likely. As with the centerpiece of Trump’s pathetic campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize—the absurd claim that he has “ended” eight wars—Rubio’s interventions in Ukraine are misleading. American foreign policy is more transactional under Rubio and Trump, but is not more isolationist or less hawkish—or, for that matter, more oriented toward peace. Far from it. In June, Rubio risked a regional war by backing the U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities; over the course of the year, he has made a global war more likely by increasing tensions with China. Now he is steering the U.S. toward regime change, this time in Venezuela. Hegseth will be take the lion’s share of blame if the U.S. ends up in a military quagmire in Venezuela, since he’s overseeing the military buildup in the southern Caribbean and illegally blowing up boats that he claims are drug traffickers tied to Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government. But make no mistake: Regime change in Venezuela is Rubio’s project. Rubio has reportedly spent months building the case for taking out Maduro, who has ruled the country since 2013, and only found success after he hit on a preposterous rationale that nevertheless convinced Trump: Venezuela is shipping huge quantities of drugs to the United States. (Never mind that Venezuela doesn’t produce fentanyl, and probably less than 10 percent of the cocaine in the U.S. passes through that country.)The son of Cuban exiles, Rubio is deeply committed to ending communism in his parents’ homeland. He considers the Maduro regime evil because it is socialist, and—preposterously—believes that overthrowing it would weaken Cuba. As The New York Times recently reported Rubio “is a primary architect of an escalating military pressure campaign against Venezuela. And while pushing out Mr. Maduro appears to be one immediate goal of U.S. policy, doing so could help fulfill another decades-long dream of Mr. Rubio’s: dealing a critical blow to Cuba.” This obsession with ending communism and socialism is one way in which Rubio has not changed since Trump’s rise, and it might lead to another stupid, avoidable war that causes untold death and destruction. It’s worth revisiting the old Rubio, from 2016. Has he really changed? Or was it foolish to ever believe he was a principled politician? Rubio has long desired political power beyond the Senate, and has tried to play the angles in Washington accordingly. The Rubio who called Trump a “third-world strongman” was making a bet that Trump would fail—and that, when he did, his fellow Republicans would turn to someone who had seen the light before they did. Someone like Marco Rubio. That turned out to be a terrible bet, as Trump is now ruling America very much like a strongman. Rubio is helping him because he’s making another bet: that voters will reward his work as one of that strongman’s most effective lieutenants. He was only ever ambitious, it turns out. He has no principles to betray—except one, which may end up getting a lot of people killed. Read More: Politics, Marco Rubio, State Department, ICE, Immigration, Palestine, Gaza, Ukraine, Venezuela, Cuba, Communism, Year In Review 2025

President Trump’s first year back in office saw a whirlwind of executive actions, the passage of a major reconciliation bill and the rapid remaking of the federal government. Trump campaigned in 2024 on bringing down prices, implementing the largest deportation program in American history and rolling back various initiatives that took hold during the Biden administration. Here’s a look at where Trump stands on some of those key campaign promises after one year back in office. Immigration and cracking down on the border has been a signature issue for Trump since he entered the political arena, and that was true for his 2024 campaign. “We’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country,” Trump said at a rally in 2024. The Department of Homeland Security said earlier this month that it had deported more than 605,000 people from the U.S. since Jan. 20, when Trump took office. It also said 1.9 million people voluntarily self-deported in that time. Border crossings have plummeted during Trump’s year in office. Customs and Border Patrol data showed agents had fewer than 12,000 enforcement encounters at the southern border in September, down from roughly 96,000 last December in the final year of the Biden administration. Trump has taken various actions to limit who can enter the country as well. Trump has set the refugee cap to its lowest level in history, allowing the U.S. to admit just 7,500 refugees — down from the 125,000 cap set under Biden. He has imposed a travel ban affecting dozens of countries, and he has limited which asylum-seekers can enter the U.S. It hasn’t always been smooth sailing, however. Trump has run into numerous legal roadblocks as judges block certain attempts to deport migrants. In one of the most high profile examples, the administration acknowledged it wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a notorious prison in El Salvador. The government has since been targeted with multiple rebukes from judges over their handling of the case. The economy and inflation were two central issues to the 2024 election, and Trump made repeated vows to “end inflation” and “immediately bring prices down” if elected. After one year back in office, it’s been something of a mixed bag for Trump in delivering on that pledge. Data from November showed prices growing at a slower rate than expected. Trump also got good news when data showed the U.S. economy grew at a 4.3 percent annual rate in the third quarter. But while Trump said in a recent prime-time address that “inflation is stopped,” the data shows that certain prices are still rising. The November inflation report showed that food prices were up 2.6 percent annually with prices for meat, fish, poultry and eggs together up 4.7 percent. Energy prices were up 4.2 percent annually last month. The White House has pointed to other specific areas where prices have come down. Gasoline in particular has been a bright spot. A gas price tracker from AAA showed that the average cost of a regular gallon of gas was $2.85 as of Dec. 24, down roughly 20 cents from a year ago. Trump has often been dismissive of concerns about high costs even as it is expected to remain a central issue for the midterm elections. He has called questions about affordability a “hoax” perpetuated by his political opponents. “We inherited a mess, now prices are coming way down,” Trump said Monday. Another pledge Trump made on the campaign trail repeatedly was that he would end the war in Ukraine within a day of taking office, even suggesting at some points he could broker a truce between Election Day and Inauguration Day. But Trump has been stymied by his attempts to end the fighting in Ukraine, which has been raging since Russian forces invaded in February 2022. “We solved all these wars. The only one I haven’t solved yet is Russia-Ukraine,” Trump told reporters Monday. Trump has projected the image of a peacemaker during his first year back in office, boasting of his role in ending conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan; Thailand and Cambodia; India and Pakistan; Rwanda and Congo; and Israel and Hamas. But the war between Ukraine and Russia has proven more difficult to end. Trump has met multiple times with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, including a now-infamous White House meeting in February. He met in-person with Russian President Vladimir Putin in August in Alaska. Those meetings failed to yield any concrete results. Trump has at times blamed Zelensky for the conflict and argued the Ukrainian leader lacks leverage. He has at other times expressed frustration with Putin for his refusal to make a deal, while experts have warned Putin is stringing the U.S. along to continue the conflict. U.S. negotiators have met in recent days with Ukrainian and Russian officials, with both American and Ukrainian officials voicing optimism about a potential deal being within reach. But any final agreement will require buy-in from all involved parties. Two of Trump’s key economic proposals during the 2024 campaign were to extend the tax cuts he signed into law during his first term and to eliminate taxes on tipped wages. Each of those were accomplished in July when Trump signed into law the massive tax and spending package that Republican lawmakers passed through Congress via the reconciliation process. The tax cuts Trump oversaw in 2017 were set to expire at the end of 2025. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Trump signed into law extends those tax cuts. Budget experts have said the law could add trillions to the national debt. The law allows people under a certain income threshold to deduct up to $25,000 in qualified tipped wages per year through 2028. The law also included another campaign proposal of Trump’s: eliminating taxes on overtime wages. Certain people who qualify under the Fair Labor Standards Act are eligible to deduct up to $12,500 per year in overtime compensation. Trump made good on his first day in office one of his more controversial campaign promises, pardoning nearly all defendants who had been charged in connection to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The Jan. 6 riots led to Trump’s second impeachment, a wave of criticism from fellow Republicans and the possibility that he would be cast out of politics. But during the 2024 campaign, Trump aggressively sought to re-cast the event, describing those charged in connection to the violence that day as “hostages” and telling supporters he would consider granting them clemency. In an interview after winning the 2024 election, Trump said he intended to pardon most of the rioters “in the first hour” of his second term. While it wasn’t in the first hour, it was among a slew of actions on his first day back in office. Trump granted roughly 1,500 “full, complete and unconditional pardons” for rioters charged in connection with the Capitol attack. There had been 1,583 total defendants charged. About 600 were accused of assaulting, resisting or impeding police. Ten defendants were convicted of sedition. One of Trump’s most audacious campaign promises came last summer as he sought to win over voters worried he would restrict access to reproductive healthcare. Trump had said that if elected, the government or insurance companies would cover the cost of in vitro fertilization (IVF), which can cost between $15,000 and $20,000 for a single cycle. That proposal drew skepticism from even some Republicans, who questioned how the government would afford such costs. The president has not delivered on a plan to fully cover the cost of IVF, but he has taken action to potentially make the procedure more accessible. Trump in August announced his administration was issuing guidance that would allow employers to offer IVF coverage as a benefit as part of company insurance plans. He also announced an agreement with EMD Serono to offer its fertility drugs, including Gonal-F, as part of a “most favored nation” plan that stipulates certain medications cannot be sold to Americans for more than the highest price overseas. Trump in 2024 repeatedly vowed to tackle major culture war issues animating his base, such as outlawing transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports and eliminating diversity initiatives in the workplace. One year into his second term, Trump has made good on those promises. Among the most consistent applause lines in Trump’s stump speech last year was his pledge to “keep men out of women’s sports.” The president in February signed an executive order barring transgender athletes from competing in girls and women’s sports. The administration has taken other actions targeting the transgender community. Trump signed an executive order declaring the government recognizes only two sexes, male and female; the Pentagon moved to reinstate a ban on transgender troops; and the Department of Health and Human Services has moved to withhold Medicare and Medicaid funding for hospitals and doctors that perform gender-affirming care on transgender minors. Another major target for Trump in 2024 was diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Trump repeatedly spoke on the campaign trail about returning to what he called a “merit system,” and he has moved swiftly to dismantle DEI efforts that aimed to increase opportunities and representation for minority communities. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in January ordered the head of every federal department and agency to terminate all DEI offices within 60 days. Trump has similarly put pressure on corporations and universities to end any DEI practices, or face the potential loss of federal funding. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

The loudest question in Washington right now is whether Donald Trump is going to invade Venezuela. The quieter, and far more dangerous, reality is this: he probably won’t. Not because he cares about Venezuelan lives, but because he has found a strategy that is cheaper, less politically risky at home, and infinitely more devastating: economic warfare. Venezuela has already survived years of economic warfare. Despite two decades of sweeping US sanctions designed to strangle its economy, the country has found ways to adapt: oil has moved through alternative markets; communities have developed survival strategies; people have endured shortages and hardship with creativity and resilience. This endurance is precisely what the Trump administration is trying to break. Rather than launching a military invasion that would provoke public backlash and congressional scrutiny, Trump is doubling down on something more insidious: total economic asphyxiation. By tightening restrictions on Venezuelan oil exports, its primary source of revenue, Trump’s administration is deliberately pushing the country toward a full-scale humanitarian collapse. In recent months, US actions in the Caribbean Sea, including the harassment and interdiction of oil tankers linked to Venezuela, signal a shift from financial pressure to illegal maritime force. These operations have increasingly targeted Venezuela’s ability to move its own resources through international waters. Oil tankers have been delayed, seized, threatened with secondary sanctions, or forced to reroute under coercion. The objective is strangulation. This is illegal under international law. The freedom of navigation on the high seas is a cornerstone of international maritime law, enshrined in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Unilateral interdiction of civilian commercial vessels, absent a UN Security Council mandate, violates the principle of sovereign equality and non-intervention. The extraterritorial enforcement of US sanctions, punishing third countries and private actors for engaging in lawful trade with Venezuela, has no legal basis. It is coercion, plain and simple. More importantly, the intent is collective punishment. Trump’s calculation is brutally simple: make Venezuelans so miserable that they will rise up and overthrow Maduro. By preventing Venezuela from exporting oil, which is the revenue that funds food imports, medicine, electricity, and public services, the Trump administration is knowingly engineering conditions of mass deprivation. Under international humanitarian law, collective punishment is prohibited precisely because it targets civilians as a means to achieve political ends. And if this continues, we will see horrific images: empty shelves, malnourished children, overwhelmed hospitals, people scavenging for food. Scenes that echo those coming out of Gaza, where siege and starvation have been normalized as weapons of war. US actions will undoubtedly cause millions of Venezuelans to flee the country, likely seeking to travel to the United States, which they are told is safe for their families, full of economic opportunities, and security. . But Trump is sealing the US border, cutting off asylum pathways, and criminalizing migration. When people are starved, when economies are crushed, when daily life becomes unlivable, people move. Blocking Venezuelans from entering the United States while systematically destroying the conditions that allow them to survive at home means that neighboring countries like Colombia, Brazil, and Chile will be asked to absorb the human cost of Washington’s decisions. This is how empire outsources the damage. But these countries have their own economic woes, and mass displacement of Venezuelans will destabilize the entire region. Venezuela is a test case. What is being refined now—economic siege without formal war, maritime coercion without declared blockade, starvation without bombs—is a blueprint. Any country that refuses compliance with Washington’s political and economic demands should be paying attention. This will be the map for 21st century regime change. And this is how Trump can reassure the United States Congress that he is not “going to war” with Venezuela. He doesn’t need to. Economic strangulation carries none of the immediate political costs of a military intervention, even as it inflicts slow, widespread devastation. There are no body bags returning to US soil, no draft, no televised bombing campaigns. Just a steady erosion of life elsewhere. Trump’s calculation is brutally simple: make Venezuelans so miserable that they will rise up and overthrow Maduro. That has been the same calculation behind US policy toward Cuba for six decades—and it has failed. Economic strangulation doesn’t bring democracy; it brings suffering. And even if, by some grim chance, it did succeed in toppling the government, the likely result would not be freedom but chaos—possibly a protracted civil war that could devastate the country, and the region, for decades. Tomorrow, people in Venezuela will celebrate Christmas. Families will gather around the table to eat hallacas wrapped with care, slices of pan de jamón, and dulce de lechoza. They will share stories, dance to gaitas, and make a toast with Ponche Crema. If we oppose war because it kills, we must also oppose sanctions that do the same, more quietly, more slowly, and with far less accountability. But if this economic siege continues, if Venezuelan oil is fully cut off, if the country is denied the means to feed itself, if hunger is allowed to finish what bombs are no longer politically useful to accomplish, then this Christmas may be remembered as one of the last Venezuelans were able to celebrate in anything resembling normal life, at least in the near future. Polls consistently show that nearly 70 percent of people in the United States oppose a military intervention in Venezuela. War is recognized for what it is: violent, destructive, unacceptable. But sanctions are treated differently. Many people believe they are a harmless alternative, a way to apply “pressure” without bloodshed. That assumption is dangerously wrong. According to a comprehensive study in medical journal The Lancet, sanctions increase mortality at levels comparable to armed conflict, hitting children and the elderly first. Sanctions do not avoid civilian harm—they systematically produce it. If we oppose war because it kills, we must also oppose sanctions that do the same, more quietly, more slowly, and with far less accountability. If we don’t act against economic warfare with the same urgency we reserve for bombs and invasions, then sanctions will remain the preferred weapon: politically convenient but equally deadly.

The U.S. strikes against the Islamic State in northwestern Nigeria followed President Trump’s threat earlier this year to take military action if Nigeria’s government did not stop the killing of Christians by Islamist militants. Mr. Trump did not specify which attacks he was referring to, nor did he cite evidence for the claim, made by several of his political allies, that Christians are being targeted in Nigeria.The strikesTrump’s threatNigeria’s responseViolence in Nigeria More than a dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from a Navy ship in the Gulf of Guinea, striking two ISIS camps in Nigeria’s Sokoto State, according to a U.S. military official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. The strike killed “multiple” ISIS terrorists, according to an initial assessment by U.S. Africa Command. Announcing the strikes on social media, Mr. Trump said “the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria,” accusing the group of “targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians.” What you should know. The Times makes a careful decision any time it uses an anonymous source. The information the source supplies must be newsworthy and give readers genuine insight.Learn more about our process. The Defense Department said it worked with the Nigerian government to carry out the strikes, which the Nigerian Foreign Ministry confirmed in a statement. On Nov. 1, Mr. Trump said that if Nigeria’s government continued to “allow the killing of Christians, the USA will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing.'” “I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action,” he wrote. “If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth responded to the president’s post by writing, “Yes sir,” adding that the Pentagon was “preparing for action.” A day earlier, the Trump administration said it would reinstate Nigeria as a “country of particular concern,” a designation that the U.S. government applies to nations deemed to have “engaged in severe violations of religious freedom.” Mr. Trump took a similar step in 2020, near the end of his first term, which was reversed during the Biden administration. Mr. Trump’s threat of military intervention was a substantial escalation. When asked last month about specifics of his plan, he replied: “I envisage a lot of things. They’re killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers. We’re not going to allow that to happen.” In the days leading up to Mr. Trump’s threats, several of his political allies made similar accusations. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas accused Nigeria of “facilitating the mass murder” of Christians.ImageTrump’s threats dominated newspaper front pages in Lagos, Nigeria, on Sunday.Credit...Sodiq Adelakun/Reuters Nigeria has denied the accusations. In a statement on Friday, the Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said terrorist attacks against Christians, Muslims, or any community were “an affront to Nigeria’s values and to international peace and security.” The characterization of Nigeria “as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality,” President Bola Ahmed Tinubu said in a statement in November, citing what he described as sustained efforts by the government to safeguard freedom of religion and belief for all Nigerians. Nigeria, home to around 220 million people, has large populations of Christians and Muslims. The U.S. strikes on Thursday occurred in a region along Nigeria’s border with Niger, where a branch of ISIS called the Islamic State-Sahel has attacked both government forces and civilians. Parts of the country have long suffered violence from extremist groups, including Boko Haram, an Islamist terror group based in northeastern Nigeria that has attacked both Christians and Muslims it does not consider faithful enough. A splinter group, the Islamic State West Africa Province, has carried out similar attacks. Source: ACLED (Armed Conflict Location and Event Data) Agnes Chang/The New York Times

President Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida on Wednesday. Alex Brandon/AP The U.S. launched strikes on Islamic State targets in Nigeria to protect the country’s Christian population from the terrorist group, President Trump said Thursday. “The United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight there was.” The strike comes after Trump said last month that he had instructed the Pentagon to prepare for possible military action in Nigeria. The U.S. could go in “guns-a-blazing” with the goal of wiping out Islamist militants in the country, he said. Trump also threatened to halt all aid and assistance to the country if it “continues to allow the killing of Christians.” A Defense Department official said Nigeria’s government approved the Christmas Day strikes and worked with the U.S. to carry them out. Trump’s post offered no further details about the action, including how many people were killed. “The President was clear last month: the killing of innocent Christians in Nigeria (and elsewhere) must end,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X after Trump’s announcement. U.S. Africa Command, which conducted the strike, said it was directed at militants “in known ISIS camps in Nigeria” and used intelligence from U.S. and Nigerian forces. Nigeria has a population of 237 million people, roughly split between Muslims, who are predominant in the north, and Christians. Violence against Christians has escalated in northern Nigeria during the past decade, as Islamic extremists such as Boko Haram wage an insurgency against the country’s secular government and expand their influence in the region. Trump’s base within the U.S. Christian political right has been calling for America to take action against the killings of Christians in Nigeria, including by reinstating Nigeria’s designation as a “country of particular concern,” which Trump also did last month. Some activists have referred to the killings as a “Christian genocide,” though the White House hasn’t used that language. Nigerian officials have said the strife is more complicated than that. Write to Sadie Gurman at sadie.gurman@wsj.com and Lara Seligman at lara.seligman@wsj.com

Rumors flew in the hours after a shooting at Brown University killed two students on Dec. 13. One falsehood had it that one of the victims, a leader of the college Republican Club, was “targeted for her conservative beliefs, hunted, and killed in cold blood.” Another was that it had been a terrorist attack, a claim that made the rounds when a Palestinian student was identified as a possible suspect two days later and hounded on the internet. A churn of disinformation after a major news event is hardly a surprise anymore, but its spread after the Brown killings was not limited to the dark fringes of the internet. It was fueled by prominent figures in business and government whose false statements or politically charged innuendo compounded public anger and anxiety. Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

Nike NKE 4.64% has done a lot to relaunch its cult-classic Total 90 soccer line ahead of next year’s World Cup: a reimagined, streetwear version of the retro-styled cleat, new jerseys and balls, and planned events in cities such as Melbourne and Milan. It let one thing slip: renewing the U.S. trademark rights for the early-2000s brand. Hugh Bartlett, an engineer and youth soccer coach with no affiliation to Nike, didn’t. A year ago, the 35-year-old from New Orleans emailed Nike’s legal team to say he had registered the Total90 trademark, after Nike’s registration had lapsed in 2019. Bartlett had since developed his own “Total90” clothing and shoe line and suggested the two sides join up. “Given the exciting potential for collaboration, I would welcome a call at your earliest convenience to explore how we can best work together,” he wrote, signing the letter as the chief executive of Total90 LLC. Instead of a collaboration, the back-and-forth culminated in Bartlett’s Total90 suing Nike for trademark infringement in November. Now Nike faces the prospect of a legal cloud hanging over its World Cup marketing efforts in the run-up to the tournament next June. This month, Nike won an initial round when a federal judge in the Eastern District of Louisiana rejected Bartlett’s motion to temporarily restrain Nike from selling its Total 90 products. The judge said Bartlett’s company hadn’t provided evidence that it competes with Nike or that consumers might confuse their products, as it had argued. Still, the tussle is an unexpected thorn in Nike’s efforts to capitalize on the World Cup being hosted in North America next year. The tournament is an especially important marketing battleground for Nike and its arch rival Adidas, both longtime sponsors of many World Cup teams. At the crux of the dispute is whether Bartlett can show Nike abandoned the trademark after it failed to renew its registration. Nike, which has petitioned to cancel Bartlett’s Total90 registrations, said in court filings that it “permitted” the Total 90 trademark to lapse. But, it added, it never gave up plans to use it and retains common-law rights. In her ruling, the judge agreed that Nike had continued to use the mark after the lapse, in part by licensing it to videogame maker Electronic Arts. The two sides also disagree on Bartlett’s motives. Nike, in court documents, portrays him as an extortionist who seized on the lapsed trademark for money. The company offered in October to buy the mark from Bartlett for about $80,000, emails included in court documents show. Bartlett and his lawyer eventually came back with an ultimatum: $2.5 million—or risk a temporary restraining order. Bartlett, on the other hand, says he is a longtime soccer aficionado who stumbled upon the canceled Total 90 trademark while looking up names for a soccer fantasy app he wanted to develop. “This is crazy, I can’t believe Nike is letting this go,” Bartlett said he thought to himself. Bartlett got into soccer as a child cheering for the Italian club AC Milan. He played in a student-organized league in college until an injury steered him into coaching. Today he coaches and is the director for 10 soccer teams for children ages 8 to 10 because that is when “they get bitten by the bug.” Like other superfans of the sport, he said he once owned a pair of Nike’s Total 90 cleats. Named after the full time of a soccer match, the shoe was considered a revolutionary product when it first came out in 2000. Its asymmetrical lacing design gave players a larger striking surface on the inside of the foot, enhancing the control of the ball. Roberto Carlos of Real Madrid in 2000. Shaun Botterill/Allsport/Getty Images Memorable ads featuring soccer legends such as Luis Figo, Ronaldinho, Edgar Davids and Thierry Henry helped fuel the Total 90 brand’s cult following. “It was definitely a brand that was just iconic,” Bartlett said. Bartlett purchased a website for the brand in 2021 and filed to register the trademark the next year, he said. When media reports of Nike’s Total 90 relaunch plans surfaced in 2024, Bartlett said he contacted Nike about a collaboration but it was clear the sneaker giant wasn’t interested. “I have some really good ideas that I think would benefit them way more than me, but it would require us to work together, and that was probably the one that hurt my heart the most,” Bartlett said. He filed his lawsuit in November the same day Nike rejected his $2.5 million proposal, according to court documents. It isn’t uncommon for people or entities to buy up patent rights and use them to request settlements. Doing so with trademarks, especially against bigger companies, is less common, said Alexandra Roberts, a law professor specializing in trademark law at Northeastern University. She said Nike is likely to prevail because letting a registration lapse isn’t necessarily evidence of abandonment. “You can’t just pick up something that somebody else dropped immediately,” she said. Bartlett’s attorney, Jarred Bradley, disagrees. “It’s our right to say that they are now infringing on our brand,” said Bradley, who met Bartlett four years ago when Bartlett coached his son. Bartlett said he still plans for his soccer fantasy app to be ready in time for the World Cup. Meanwhile, he is selling his own products with the “Total90” logo on his website. “This is the opportunity to really get the next generation of kids in America to fall in love with soccer,” Bartlett said of next summer’s tournament. “That’s all my goal is.” A laser-light display promoting the New Nike Total 90 design at Giuseppe Meazza Stadium in Milan in September. Jonathan Moscrop/Getty Images Write to Inti Pacheco at inti.pacheco@wsj.com

Holiday jackpots, heroic generosity, speedy fixes, ageless wisdom, and small lifelines that made a big Christmas difference.