Top World News

Oct 8, 2025 - World

A history professor is abruptly leaving the U.S. after a conservative group founded by the late Charlie Kirk singled him out for persecution, according to a report on Wednesday. Mark Bray, who has taught about antifascist movements at Rutgers University since 2019, notified students Sunday that his courses would immediately move online as he and his family prepared to flee the country for their safety, reported the Washington Post.“Since my family and I do not feel safe in our home at the moment, we are moving for the year to Europe,” Bray told students by email. “Truly I am so bummed about not being able to spend time with you all in the classroom.”Far-right social media accounts called attention to Bray in late September, after news outlets quoted his remarks about President Donald Trump’s executive order designating antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization," and the Washington Post confirmed three death threats sent to the professor since Sept. 26.One online activist called him a “domestic terrorist professor," while another shared his home address in New Jersey, and the Rutgers chapter of the conservative student group Turning Point USA, which was founded by the late Kirk, launched a petition Thursday demanding Bray's firing, referring to Trump's executive order and smearing the educator as a threat to their safety.Bray decided to move his family to Spain for the rest of the year, and he's optimistic they'll be able to return one day. “I’m hopeful about returning, and I’m hopeful — and I say this as a history professor — that someday we will look back on this as a cautionary tale about authoritarianism,” Bray said.The university told the Post that administrators were aware of the Turning Point USA petition and Bray's message to students. “We are gathering more information about this evolving situation,” the university said in a statement.Bray, the author of four books on anarchism and antifa, also faced widespread criticism when he told NBC News’s “Meet the Press” in 2017, while a lecturer at Dartmouth University, that violence was sometimes justified, after the deadly “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.Dartmouth's president at the time condemned Bray in a statement and accused him “supporting violent protest," but more than 100 of the university's faculty members rallied around him.Turning Point USA did not respond to requests for comment on the report, but the Trump administration justified the threats he received by blaming Kirk's assassination, which remains under investigation, on "Democrat violence," but Bray characterized the threats chasing him to Europe as part of the president's crackdown on academic freedom.“There’s been a concerted attack on universities, and I feel like this is a facet of that," Bray said, "to make it so that professors who conduct research on protest movements don’t feel safe sharing their research or teaching about topics that the administration doesn’t like.”

Oct 8, 2025 - World

The holidays are about to more difficult and more expensive, warned importers speaking to CNBC for a Wednesday report. President Donald Trump's tariffs are leading to complications for countries that don't know how to submit funds that come as a result of the tariffs. While Trump has boasted that trillions of dollars are coming in from his tariffs, in August, at least 30 countries simply gave up and suspended or restricted all shipments to the United States. U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods mean that the world's largest Christmas tree manufacturer will face an extra 57.6% tariff, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics.“We brought in about 25% less product,” said Chris Butler, CEO of National Tree Company, when speaking to CNBC about the matter. “We are definitely going to see a short supply this year. So if you’re a consumer and you are in the market for Christmas goods this year, I would definitely act now and get ahead of the curve.”Butler leads "the Christmas Trade Group," which is a group of organizations with over 1,000 employees who generate $1 billion in revenue annually. He explained that Black Friday is usually a big day for purchases on Christmas décor and trees are just scratching the surface of the smaller amount of items being imported. The reduction of imports means such items will likely sell out quickly. “I would get ahead of that. So buy now, buy early is what I would say to consumers,” Butler said.He went on to say that prices will be increased by at least 10% as a result of Trump's trade war. “I think most consumers will be able to weather the 10% price increase, but consumers at the lower end of the economic spectrum may struggle,” he continued.Butler has already met with the the Trump administration twice about his hope to "save Christmas." “This is why we are having conversations with the [Trump] administration so we can potentially save Christmas going forward and give American consumers the low prices that we think they deserve,” he said.Read the full report here.

Oct 6, 2025 - World

Flanked by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump hosted a White House dinner with some of the richest and most powerful leaders of the world’s tech giants.To Fraser Patterson, CEO and founder of Skillit, an AI-powered construction hiring platform, it was no coincidence that after the meeting last month of more than 30 Silicon Valley power players and Trump advisers, the administration unveiled a plan to charge $100,000 one-time application fees for H-1B visas, which tech companies typically use to employ highly skilled foreign workers.“It can appear as though, rather than it being an improvement to immigration policy, it feels a little more like a labor war strategy,” Patterson said.“Isn't one of the great tenets of the American way of life and Constitution the separation of church and state? Wouldn't that extend to business, too, between business and state?”Patterson’s New York-based company employs eight — an infinitesimal fraction of the workforce at giants like Amazon, with more than a million employees and nearly 15,000 H-1B visa holders.“The largest technology companies are going to be able to hoard the best global talent, and I think it's easy to be able to draw a straight line between that and shutting out the smaller startups and the smaller firms that can’t enforce that price tag,” Patterson said. “I think it scales back the competitiveness of the technology industry, broadly speaking.”‘Global war on talent’The Trump administration says the current H-1B visa program allows employers “to hire foreign workers at a significant discount to American workers,” and the program has been “abused.”Last week Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) reintroduced bipartisan legislation, The H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act, to close loopholes in programs they say tech giants have used while laying off Americans.But, Patterson said, limiting H-1B visas will effectively end up “closing the door on skilled workers” and “gift Europe the best possible opportunity to label itself as the tech talent hub. “The general consensus is this is going to narrow the pool,” Patterson said. “There's going to be just fewer nationalities represented, fewer ideas. The U.S. becomes less of a magnet.”Rich Pleeth, CEO and founder of Finmile, an AI-powered logistics and delivery software, agreed that the fee might tilt the scales of tech dominance away from the U.S., where places like San Francisco and New York have long been considered global hubs for innovation.“The global war on talent is real,” Pleeth said. “Europe has a golden opportunity … Canada, Singapore, Berlin, they're all going to benefit.” Rich Pleeth (provided photo)Finmile employs 15 people in the U.K., seven in Romania and two in the U.S.“It's very challenging for smaller companies like us,” Pleeth said. “Talent is everything, and if the U.S. makes it harder to bring in the world's best talent, where do you set up headquarters?”While the Trump administration says the new H1-B fee will help American workers, particularly recent college graduates seeking IT jobs, Patterson said it would have the opposite effect, likely leading to “greater offshoring.”Thanks to Trump’s array of trade tariffs, which he says will bring jobs back to the U.S., many American small businesses are already struggling to survive as they face increased costs.“In reality, it's probably going to lead to labor shortages,” Patterson said. “You can't just turn on a faucet overnight to really highly skilled local workers.”Nicole Whitaker, an immigration attorney in Towson, Md., said the proposed $100,000 fee sends the message to foreign workers seeking job opportunities in the U.S. that "our doors are closed ... find another country.""This is a part of a bigger and broader push by this administration — even if things don't go into effect— to make it look like we are shutting down our borders. We are not open, and we're not welcoming toward immigrants," Whitaker said.‘The next Googles’ Pleeth, a former marketing manager at Google, pointed to tech leaders including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who were born in India but came to the U.S. for college and to work.“If you suddenly make it hard for talented people to come in, the next Googles are not going to be built in the U.S.,” Pleeth said. “Talent is the oxygen for the tech industry. For decades the U.S. had an open pipeline … we don't expect the $100K toll to hit the tech companies who are the ones who can afford it the most.”Skillit currently does not have any employees sponsored through the H-1B visa program but Patterson said he had used it when the fees were more reasonable, around $2,500.Patterson, who was born in Scotland, came to the U.S. on an O-1 visa for foreign workers of “extraordinary talent.” He is now close to becoming a U.S. citizen. Fraser Patterson (provided photo)“Very onerous, nerve-racking, even to get here … but I would say it wasn't disproportional to the value of coming here,” he said.Pleeth wants to move from the U.K. to the U.S. with his wife, two daughters and dog, a process he expects some challenges with but is hopeful will “eventually move forward.”“It's just going to become a lot harder for junior people who can share cultures, can come in with new ideas,” Pleeth said. “It's a talent tax.”

Oct 5, 2025 - World

Donald Trump on Sunday was warned about yet another criminal prosecution that's coming his way.Eugene Kontorovich, a professor at George Mason University Scalia Law School and a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, over the weekend published a piece called "The Next Prosecution of Donald Trump" in which he claims "plans are under way to try him in the International Criminal Court.""This time he can strike first," Kontorovich argues.According to Kontorovich's analysis, the international court will try to "find a jurisdictional hook" in the president's actions."Before his second term began, President Trump was prosecuted repeatedly in state court, federal court and the Senate. After it ends, he could face trial in another venue, the International Criminal Court in The Hague," Kontorovich said. "The U.S. didn’t sign the Rome Statute and therefore doesn’t belong to the ICC, but the court can find a jurisdictional hook in actions the administration has taken abroad in ICC member states."Specifically, Kontorovich says Trump may have opened the door to his future prosecution with the recent attacks on purported smuggling boat operations."The strikes on Venezuelan narcoterror smuggling boats provide one possible avenue. Shortly after the U.S. Navy destroyed the first such vessel, Ken Roth, a former head of Human Rights Watch, endorsed ICC intervention. 'Trump just did what the International Criminal Court has charged former Philippines Pres. Duterte with doing—ordering the summary execution of alleged drug traffickers,' Mr. Roth tweeted," the professor wrote. "Venezuela is a Rome Statute party, which in the court’s thinking gives it jurisdiction over U.S. officials and servicemen involved in the attacks. The ICC has already launched an investigation against a nonmember state (Israel) based on a single boarding of a vessel flagged by a member state, so it has all the precedents it needs."He goes on to offer advice for how Trump can attack the ICC and circumvent the future prosecution.Read the piece here.

Oct 5, 2025 - World

President Donald Trump used profane language to scold Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for trying to downplay progress on ending the war in Gaza.According to Axios, Trump expected Netanyahu to declare victory after Hamas agreed to return the remaining hostages, but wanted to negotiate other parts of the peace deal. Netanyahu, however, discounted the importance of the progress."Bibi told Trump this is nothing to celebrate, and that it doesn't mean anything," one source told Axios."I don't know why you're always so f------ negative. This is a win. Take it," Trump reportedly fired back.Netanyahu eventually accepted the conditions and ordered an end to air strikes in exchange for the hostages.In an interview with Axios on Saturday, Trump said that the deal gave Israel a "chance for victory." And he said Netanyahu had eventually agreed to get on board."He was fine with it. He's got to be fine with it. He has no choice. With me, you got to be fine," the U.S. president insisted.