It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, January 23, 2026
FASCIST FILIPINO COURT
Philippine journalist found guilty of terror financing
Filipino journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio arrives at Tacloban Regional Trial Court in Leyte island on January 22, 2026 - Copyright AFP Jam STA ROSA Cecil MORELLA
A young Philippine journalist who spent nearly six years in a crowded provincial prison was found guilty of terror financing on Thursday in a case rights groups and a UN rapporteur had labelled a “travesty of justice”.
Community journalist and radio broadcaster Frenchie Cumpio, 26, and former roommate Marielle Domequil broke down in tears and hugged each other as the guilty verdict was read and they were sentenced to up to 18 years by judge Georgina Uy Perez of the Tacloban regional court.
They were both acquitted on a lesser weapons charge. The case has been closely monitored by human rights groups including Amal Clooney’s Clooney Foundation for Justice, which in October questioned the lengthy detainment, citing “repeated postponements and slow progress”. UN Special Rapporteur Irene Khan had previously said the charges against Cumpio appeared to be “in retaliation for her work as a journalist”.
Cumpio and Domequil were arrested in February 2020 on weapons charges, accused of possessing a handgun and a grenade.
More than a year later, a charge of terror financing, with a potential 40-year jail sentence, was added.
On Thursday, Beh Lih Yi, Asia-Pacific director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, condemned the court’s decision.
“This absurd verdict shows that the various pledges made by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to uphold press freedom are nothing but empty talk,” she said.
“The ruling underscores the lengths that Philippine authorities are willing to go to silence critical reporting.”
Outside the courthouse, riot police blocked a crowd of supporters that included Cumpio’s mother, Lala, from entering the courtyard.
‘They poisoned us’: grappling with deadly impact of nuclear testing
The US military conducted nuclear tests on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean in July 1946 - Copyright US Defense Nuclear Agency/AFP -
Nina LARSON
Nuclear weapons testing has affected every single human on the planet, causing at least four million premature deaths from cancer and other diseases over time, according to a new report delving into the deadly legacy.
More than 2,400 nuclear devices were detonated in tests conducted worldwide between 1945 and 2017.
Of the nine countries known to possess nuclear weapons — Russia, the United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea — only Pyongyang has conducted nuclear tests since the 1990s.
But a new report from the Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) humanitarian organisation, provided exclusively to AFP, details how the effects of past tests are still being felt worldwide.
“They poisoned us,” Hinamoeura Cross, a 37-year-old Tahitian parliamentarian who was aged seven when France detonated its last nuclear explosion near her home in French Polynesia in 1996.
Seventeen years later, she was diagnosed with leukaemia, in a family where her grandmother, mother and aunt already suffered from thyroid cancer.
The explosions are known to have caused enduring and widespread harm to human health, societies and ecosystems.
But the NPA report details over 304 pages how an ongoing culture of secrecy, along with lacking international engagement and a dearth of data, have left many affected communities scrambling for answers.
“Past nuclear testing continues to kill today,” said NPA chief Raymond Johansen, voicing hope the report would “strengthen the resolve to prevent nuclear weapons from ever being tested or used again”.
– ‘Very dangerous’ –
The issue has gained fresh relevance after US President Donald Trump’s suggestion last November that Washington could resume nuclear testing, accusing Russia and China of already doing so — charges they rejected.
“This is very, very, very dangerous,” warned Ivana Hughes, a Columbia University chemistry lecturer and head of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, who contributed to the NPA report.
“The nuclear testing period shows us that the consequences are extremely long-lasting and very serious,” she told AFP.
The heaviest burden of past tests has fallen on communities living near test sites, today located in 15 different countries, including many former colonies of nuclear-armed states.
Survivors there continue to face elevated rates of illness, congenital anomalies and trauma.
The impact is also felt globally.
“Every person alive today carries radioactive isotopes from atmospheric testing in their bones,” report co-author and University of South Carolina anthropology professor Magdalena Stawkowski told AFP.
– Millions of early deaths –
Hundreds of thousands of people around the globe are known to have already died from illnesses linked to past nuclear test detonations, the report highlighted.
It pointed to strong scientific evidence connecting radiation exposure to DNA damage, cancer, cardiovascular disease and genetic effects, even at low doses.
“The risks that radiation poses are really much greater than previously thought,” report co-author Tilman Ruff told AFP.
The atmospheric tests alone, which were conducted up to 1980, are expected over time to cause at least two million excess cancer deaths, he said.
And “the same number of additional early deaths (are expected) from heart attacks and strokes”, said Ruff, a Melbourne University public health fellow and co-founder of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.
Ionising radiation, or particles that can snap DNA bonds in cells and turn them cancerous, is “intensely biologically harmful”, he said.
“There is no level below which there are no effects”.
The risks are not uniform, with foetuses and young children most affected, and girls and women 52-percent more susceptible to the cancer-inducing effects of radiation than boys and men.
– Culture of secrecy –
The NPA report documented a persistent culture of secrecy among states that had tested nuclear weapons.
In Kiribati, for instance, studies by Britain and the United States on health and environmental impacts remain classified, preventing victims from learning what was done to them.
And in Algeria, the precise sites where France buried radioactive waste after its tests there remain undisclosed, the report said.
None of the nuclear-armed states has ever apologised for the tests, and even in cases where they eventually acknowledged damage, the report said compensation schemes have tended to “function more to limit liability than to help victims in good faith”.
Local communities, meanwhile, frequently lack adequate healthcare and health screening, as well as basic risk education — leaving people unaware of the dangers or how to protect themselves.
“The harm is underestimated, it’s under-communicated, and it’s under-addressed,” Stawkowski said.
– ‘Guinea pigs’ –
When Cross was diagnosed with leukaemia aged 24, she did not immediately blame the nuclear explosions in French Polynesia decades earlier.
“France’s propaganda was very powerful,” she told AFP, adding that in school she had only learned about the tests’ positive economic impact for France’s South Pacific islands and atolls.
She was later “shocked” to discover that rather than a handful of harmless “tests”, France conducted 193 explosions in French Polynesia between 1966 and 1996.
The biggest was around 200 times more powerful than the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
“These weren’t just tests. They were real bombs,” she said, charging that her people had been treated as “guinea pigs” for decades.
– ‘Trauma’ –
Other communities near test sites have also borne a heavy burden.
Hughes pointed to the impact of the United States’ 15-megaton Bravo test at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands on March 1, 1954 — “equivalent to 1,000 Hiroshima bombs — an absolute monstrosity”.
It vaporised one island and exposed thousands nearby to radioactive fallout.
Rongelap, about 120 kilometres (75 miles) from Bikini, saw “vaporised coral atoll mixed in with radioactive isotopes falling onto the island from the sky, with the children thinking it was snow”, Hughes said.
The report criticised the “minimal” international response to the problem.
It especially highlighted the nuclear-armed states’ responsibility to scale up efforts to assess needs, assist victims and clean up contaminated environments.
“We want to understand what happened to us,” Cross said.
Aerial view showing the charred remains of destroyed homes after a wildfire ravaged Lirquen, a town in Penco near the city of Concepcion, Chile, on January 20, 2026 - Copyright AFP DJ MILLS
Police in south-central Chile have arrested a man on suspicion of starting one of the recent wildfires that killed 21 people and razed entire neighborhoods, the government said Wednesday.
Security Minister Luis Cordero said the suspect used a liquid accelerant to start fires in a wheat field, with authorities seizing five liters (more than a gallon) of fuel from him.
He was arrested at dawn in the town of Perquenco in Araucania region, south of Biobio.
The fires began simultaneously on Saturday in various parts of Biobio and Nuble regions, about 500 kilometers (310 miles) south of the capital Santiago.
Fanned by strong winds and high temperatures, the flames quickly ripped through the coastal towns of Penco, Lirquen and Punta de Parra, leaving a blackened landscape of smoldering ruins.
Interior Minister Alvaro Elizalde told a press conference on Wednesday that an estimated 20,000 people suffered property damage from the fires, including some 800 homes that were destroyed.
President Gabriel Boric visited Biobio on Wednesday, where he said: “We’re working with heavy machinery to clear streets andremove debric, and we continue fighting the fire.
“We’re still in a state of emergency,” he added.
Other fires were later reported further inland, in the Biobio town of Florida, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of the city of Concepcion and in Araucania.
Cordero said substances used to start fires, including plastic containers containing accelerant, were found in Concepcion.
Firefighters were still battling 35 blazes Wednesday — 22 in Biobio, five in Nuble and eight in Araucania, according to national forestry officials.
A drop in temperature in recent days has helped ease the situation.
“We managed to reduce the intensity of the fire,” Carlos Zulieta, a firefighter in Florida told AFP, adding that it was now advancing “more slowly.”
The government said it would pay compensation of $700 to $1,500 to victims.
Aid began trickling into affected areas on Wednesday.
Municipal workers and private companies were delivering portable toilets and generators to Lirquen, where some families are camped out in the ruins of their homes.
In February 2024, wildfires broke out around the coastal resort of Vina del Mar, 110 kilometers from Santiago, leaving 138 dead.
Investigations revealed that firefighters and forestry brigade members started the fire, which spread rapidly due in part to high temperatures during the southern hemisphere’s summer.
Arctic blast to wallop N. America — is climate change to blame?
People brave the cold on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City ahead of Winter Storm Fern - Copyright AFP CHARLY TRIBALLEAU
Issam AHMED
An unusually brutal winter storm is set to pummel more than 160 million Americans from Friday, as a stretched “polar vortex” sends a devastating blast of Arctic air, bringing heavy snows and freezing rains.
Winter Storm Fern is forecast to engulf an area well over half the length of the continental United States, stretching from Texas and the Great Plains region to the mid-Atlantic and northeastern states.
Scientists say the increasing frequency of such disruptions of the polar vortex may be linked to climate change, though the debate is not yet settled and natural variability also plays a role.
– What is the polar vortex? –
The polar vortex is a large region of cold, low-pressure air that circulates counterclockwise high above the Arctic, in the stratosphere some 10 to 50 kilometers (six to 30 miles) above Earth’s surface.
In a typical winter, it forms a relatively compact, circular system that helps lock in the coldest air to high northern latitudes.
“Usually the vortex spins merrily along and has little effect on our weather, but occasionally it moves or stretches southward over North America, bringing with it a jolt of cold,” Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, told AFP. – What happens when it stretches? –
At times, big atmospheric waves that form closer to the ground can travel upward and knock the polar vortex out of whack.
Rather than completely breaking down — as happens during dramatic “sudden stratospheric warming” events — the vortex can stretch out into a more oval shape.
“Think of it like a rubber band being pulled,” Judah Cohen, a climate dynamics scientist at MIT, told AFP.
“That allows the cold air to expand much further south, like we’re like we’re seeing this week here in the United States.”
Jason Furtado, a meterologist at the University of Oklahoma whose research focuses on long-range forecasting, said these stretching events aren’t as long-lasting as complete breakdowns, but are significant nonetheless, especially for North America.
-Is it linked to climate change? –
This is where the science becomes more debated.
There is broad agreement — reflected in assessments by the UN’s climate science body — that the Arctic is warming much faster than the global average, through a process known as Arctic amplification, and human-caused climate change is behind it.
Cohen argues that this uneven warming helps amplify large atmospheric waves over Eurasia, which in turn makes the polar vortex spill more frequently over North America.
“Studies suggest these aberrations in the vortex are happening more often in a warming world, which favors more frequent winter extremes,” said Francis.
Furtado said observations from the past 20 years do show an increase in such events, but he cautioned against drawing strong long-term conclusions tying them directly to human-caused climate change.
“In my opinion, it’s harder to make that connection going out much further, simply because I think we just don’t have enough data.”
Athens hit with several months of rain in one day: expert
The fire department said it had responded to over 900 flood-related emergency calls across the capital - Copyright AFP Aris MESSINIS
A deadly storm this week dumped nearly six months of rain on the Greek capital Athens in less than a day, one of the country’s top weather experts told AFP on Thursday.
Wednesday’s storm lashed the country and left two dead, with disaster crews spending Thursday cleaning up debris.
Kostas Lagouvardos, research director at the National Observatory in Athens, said the “extreme” weather phenomenon had dumped up to 170 millimetres of rain on the capital.
That amounted to “about 40 percent of the rain that falls annually in Athens”, he told AFP on the sidelines of a presentation of annual weather data for Greece.
A 56-year-old woman died on Wednesday evening after being carried away by floodwater and trapped under a car in the Athens hillside suburb of Ano Glyfada.
Hours earlier, a 53-year-old coastguard was hit by a wave and fatally hurt whilst trying to help locals secure their boats in the Peloponnese port town of Astros.
The storm front moving eastwards across Greece saw winds exceed 100 kilometres (62 miles) an hour, prompting authorities in Athens and in the west and the south to shut schools.
The fire department said it had responded to over 900 flood-related emergency calls across the capital.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis cancelled a planned trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Deadly flooding in Greece during intense rainfall in recent years has forced the authorities to improve floodworks to limit damage.
In September 2023, the agricultural region of Thessaly in central Greece was devastated by a storm and catastrophic flooding that left 17 dead and drowned hundreds of thousands of farm animals.
In November 2017, heavy rain in Mandra, a semi-rural region near Athens, left 25 dead and dozens injured.
Experts have repeatedly called for infrastructure upgrades, especially in the greater Athens area, which is surrounded by mountains and crisscrossed by hundreds of waterways, most of them covered to accommodate rampant urbanisation in recent decades.
Historians Have a Duty to Condemn Scholasticide in Gaza
An overwhelming majority of American Historical Association members voted earlier this month to condemn scholasticide in Gaza. AHA leaders overruled members to block the measure, opting for cowardice over ethical clarity.
Palestinians inspect the rubble of destroyed buildings in Gaza City, on February 3, 2025. (Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images)
Earlier this month, the American Historical Association’s (AHA) leadership once again overruled its own members, blocking a resolution on scholasticide in Gaza and vetoing a second resolution concerning the escalating repression of scholars in the United States — particularly those who have spoken out about this destruction.
The votes were not close. Nearly 80 percent of attendees to the AHA’s annual conference on January 8–11 supported these measures after debate and direct appeals from Palestinian colleagues whose universities, archives, and libraries have been reduced to rubble.
This decision is not merely disappointing. It is antidemocratic and morally evasive, and it reflects a racist viewpoint: the AHA’s defense of historical inquiry weakens when the subjects are Palestinian and the politics are therefore deemed too dangerous.
Professional associations derive their legitimacy and authority from their members. When an elected council repeatedly nullifies decisive votes, it converts shared governance into procedural theater. The council’s justification — that these resolutions fall outside the association’s proper scope — is unconvincing on its face. Israel has systematically destroyed Gaza’s universities, libraries, archives, and cultural institutions. Hundreds of our colleagues and tens of thousands of their students have been deprived of any meaningful access to education.
As the AHA’s own constitution states, the purpose of the association
shall be the promotion of historical studies through the encouragement of research, teaching, and publication; the collection and preservation of historical documents and artifacts; the dissemination of historical records and information; the broadening of historical knowledge among the general public; and the pursuit of kindred activities in the interest of history.
If the defense of our Palestinian colleagues and students does not fall within this remit, it is hard to imagine what does.
The council’s veto sends a chilling message to historians already navigating an increasingly punitive academic environment. Faculty and students who speak about Palestine face harassment, job loss, blacklisting, and institutional discipline. By refusing even a symbolic defense of academic freedom in Gaza, the AHA aligns itself not with its most vulnerable colleagues but with the structures that seek to silence us.
This is not neutrality. It is abdication.
The council’s veto sends a chilling message to historians already navigating an increasingly punitive academic environment.
The AHA’s timidity is especially striking when placed alongside its past actions. The association has condemned Russia’s misuse of history to justify its war on Ukraine, rightly identifying the destruction of archives and the repression of scholars as threats to the discipline itself. In that context, the council recognized that historians have obligations that extend beyond national borders.
Palestine, it seems, is the exception.
This double standard reflects a long-standing Orientalist bias within the historical profession that treats Palestinian suffering as regrettable but politically radioactive, and therefore unsuitable for scholarly concern. Palestinian institutions are rendered perpetually exceptional, their destruction somehow too complex, too controversial, or too dangerous to name.
This selectivity undermines the AHA’s credibility and reinforces a hierarchy of whose histories — and whose lives — are worth defending. When historians refuse to apply their principles consistently, we reproduce the asymmetries of power and knowledge we otherwise critique.
There is a further, less acknowledged dimension to this failure. Alongside the overt anti-Palestinian racism, the council’s actions also reveal a latent antisemitism embedded in its institutional caution. By preemptively retreating in the face of anticipated accusations of antisemitism, by shrinking in fear at attacks made on academic associations by groups such as the Anti-Defamation League, the AHA treats Jews as a monolithic bloc whose presumed outrage must be appeased rather than engaged.
This is not protection. It is stereotyping.
Many of the historians supporting these resolutions are Jewish. Many are scholars of Jewish history, antisemitism, and the Holocaust. The resolutions themselves explicitly rejected antisemitism and opposed its instrumentalization. Yet the council’s veto suggests a belief that Jewish anger is both inevitable and uniquely threatening, and that the safest course is silence.
This logic echoes older antisemitic tropes about Jewish power and volatility, even as it claims to act in Jews’ defense. It also legitimizes the cynical weaponization of antisemitism accusations to shut down debate, a practice that ultimately weakens the fight against real anti-Jewish hatred.
To refuse to speak about Palestinian scholasticide out of fear of a “Jewish backlash” is not solidarity with Jews. It is an institutional failure to recognize the diversity of Jewish voices and commitments, including those rooted in anti-racism, internationalism, and historical responsibility.
The AHA council has chosen procedural insulation over democratic accountability, selective outrage over universal principle, and cowardice over ethical clarity. Historians know where such choices lead. Authoritarian regimes depend on self-censorship and the silencing of moral objection. As we teach our students, silence rationalized as prudence is never neutral in moments of genocide.
The membership has now spoken twice, and Palestinian scholars have asked for solidarity. The record is clear. What remains is whether historians will accept an organization that refuses to live up to its own discipline — or engage in the work to transform the AHA into an organization that defends democratic decision-making and academic freedom against fear, bias, and coercionEmail
Barry Trachtenberg is the Rubin presidential chair of Jewish history at Wake Forest University in North Carolina and a member of Historians for Palestine.
US touts ‘New Gaza’ filled with luxury real estate
US businessman Jared Kushner presents his "master plan" for Gaza at the the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday - Copyright AFP Mandel NGAN Joseph Schmid
US officials on Thursday presented their vision for a “New Gaza” that would turn the shattered Palestinian territory into a glitzy resort of skyscrapers by the sea, a project that could start emerging in three years.
“We’re going to be very successful in Gaza. It’s going to be a great thing to watch,” President Donald Trump said while presenting his controversial “Board of Peace” conflict-resolution body in Davos.
“I’m a real estate person at heart… and I said, look at this location on the sea. Look at this beautiful piece of property. What it could be for so many people,” he said at the World Economic Forum.
His son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has no official title but is one of Trump’s envoys for the Gaza ceasefire, said his “master plan” aimed for “catastrophic success”.
With a slide showing dozens of shiny terraced apartment towers overlooking a tree-lined promenade, he promised a Mediterranean utopia rising from the scarred Gaza landscape.
“In the Middle East they build cities like this, you know for two or three million people, they build this in three years,” Kushner said.
“And so stuff like this is very doable if we make it happen.”
He touted investments of at least $25 billion to rebuild infrastructure and public services destroyed since the war sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel.
Within 10 years the territory’s GDP would be $10 billion, and households would enjoy average income of $13,000 a year thanks to “100 percent full employment and opportunity for everybody there”.
“It could be a hope. It could be a destination, have a lot of industry and really be a place that the people there can thrive,” he said.
– ‘Amazing’ opportunities –
He said the so-called National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) had enlisted help from Israeli real estate developer Yakir Gabay.
“He’s volunteered to do this not for profit, really because of his heart he wants to do this,” Kushner said.
“So the next 100 days, we’re going to continue to just be heads down and focused on making sure this is implemented.”
A top UN official warned this month that Gazans were living in “inhumane” conditions even as the US-backed truce entered its second phase.
Entire neighbourhoods, hospitals and schools have been heavily damaged or destroyed, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to live in makeshift shelters.
Kushner said 85 percent of Gaza’s economic output had been aid for a long time.
“That’s not sustainable. It doesn’t give these people dignity. It doesn’t give them hope,” he said.
He insisted that the full disarming of Hamas, as called for in the October ceasefire, would convince firms and donors to commit to the territory.
“We’ll announce a lot of the contributions that will be made in a couple of weeks in Washington,” he said.
WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala talking with Swiss President Guy Parmelin at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos - Copyright POOL/AFP LAURENT GILLIERON
World Trade Organization chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala slammed the global rise of protectionism on Thursday in Davos, while stressing that most international trade continues according to WTO rules.
Since returning to the White House a year ago, US President Donald Trump has slapped new tariffs on multiple countries, with the aim of rebalancing the US trade deficit and reindustrialising the country.
“Increasingly, in recent times, we’ve seen rising protectionism, even prior to the US actions,” she said during a debate at the World Economic Forum meeting in eastern Switzerland.
“It’s something that, of course, we think is not really good for the system, and it’s part of the conversation we need to have.”
“In this environment we have now, where certain countries feel ‘we need to fight for our national interests’, how do we proceed?” the former Nigerian finance minister said.
“What are the measures that are legitimate to say you can implement because you’re fighting for your national interests, and which are not?
“And if it’s national security, who is to determine your national security? What are the guardrails?”
Besides protectionism, Trump has made trade tariffs a weapon of diplomacy, as seen during the row over Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory.
Despite the rise of protectionism, Okonjo-Iweala said 72 percent of global trade was still conducted under WTO rules — specifically the “most favoured nation” principle, which requires members of the organisation to extend any trade advantages granted to one trading partner to all their other partners to avoid discrimination.
These issues will be centre-stage at the next WTO Ministerial Conference, taking place in Cameroon from March 26 to 29, as will be the way the WTO makes its decisions.
The Geneva-based organisation currently takes decisions by consensus among its 166 members, with Okonjo-Iweala calling in Davos for greater flexibility.
India and the United States are blocking particular discussions and negotiations — and a growing number of countries are calling for reform at the global trade body.
“The way we make decisions — it’s not working,” Okonjo-Iweala said.
“We need the nimbleness… that’s what I’m dreaming about,” the director-general said.
Musk makes Davos debut with promise of robots for all
'Who wouldn't want a robot to watch over your kids, take care of your pet?' Musk asked the Davos crowd - Copyright AFP Fabrice COFFRINI
Elon Musk sees his humanoid robots hitting the market next year, one of several “optimistic” forecasts by the US tech mogul at his first-ever Davos appearance on Thursday.
In front of a packed conference hall, Musk had a chance to tear into a World Economic Forum he has long derided as a “boring” confab of out-of-touch elites.
But in a remarkably subdued “conversation” with WEF interim chair Larry Fink — also the CEO of investment behemoth BlackRock — Musk stuck to his script of optimistic enthusiasm for AI, robotics and space travel.
He was not pressed for example on the scandal caused by sexualised deepfakes of his Grok AI tool, or claims of persistent fake news spread by his X social network.
“Who wouldn’t want a robot to watch over your kids, take care of your pet… If you had a robot that could take care and protect an elderly parent, that’d be great,” he told the audience.
His Optimus robots will be doing more complex tasks later this year, he said, and “by the end of next year I think we’ll be selling humanoid robots to the public”.
Musk also predicted the artificial intelligence boom will have models that are “smarter than any human by the end of this year, and I would say no later than next year”.
“And then probably by 2030 or 2031, so five years from now, AI will be smarter than all of humanity collectively.”
But he ended his talk with a caveat: “Generally, I think that for quality of life, it is actually better to err on the side of being an optimist and wrong, rather than being a pessimist and right.”
Trump sues JPMorgan Chase, CEO Dimon, claims ‘debanked’ for politics
JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon, shown here at the World Economic Forum in Davos, faces a suit from President Donald Trump who claims he was 'debanked' for political reasons - Copyright AFP/File Fabrice COFFRINI
John BIERS
US President Donald Trump sued JPMorgan Chase and CEO Jamie Dimon on Thursday, alleging he was wrongly “debanked” for political reasons, according to a civil complaint.
Trump is seeking at least $5 billion in damages in a civil suit filed in a Florida state court.
The complaint focuses on the nation’s biggest bank’s moves to cut ties following the January 6 siege on the US Capitol after Trump refused to concede following his loss in the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden.
JPMorgan said the case has “no merit,” but called for regulatory reform to “prevent the weaponization of the banking sector.”
Trump was notified on February 19 that JPMorgan was closing several accounts, resulting in “considerable financial harm,” according to the complaint.
Trump and his businesses were hurt “not only by the interruption to their access to JPMC’s banking services, but also by the devastating impact of plaintiff’s ability to transact and access their monies, and by having to enter into less favorable business arrangements with other financial institutions,” the complaint said.
“Plaintiffs are confident that JPMC’s unilateral decision came about as a result of political and social motivations, and JPMC’s unsubstantiated ‘woke’ beliefs that it needed to distance itself from President Donald Trump and his conservative political views.”
Trump’s suit said the president raised the issue with Dimon, who “assured” the president he would offer a detailed response. But Dimon “ultimately never did” get back to Trump, according to the complaint.
JPMorgan said it would fight the litigation, adding it does “not close accounts for political or religious reasons,” according to a statement.
“We do close accounts because they create legal or regulatory risk for the company. We regret having to do so but often rules and regulatory expectations lead us to do so,” said the bank, adding that it favors reform to “prevent the weaponization of the banking sector.”
“While we regret President Trump has sued us, we believe the suit has no merit,” the bank added. “We respect the President’s right to sue us and our right to defend ourselves — that’s what courts are for.”
Trump’s suit describes his experience with JPMorgan as part of a “systemic and widespread” practice of debanking in the United States over political viewpoints, an allegation that has also been heavily promoted by Republican-led congressional committees.
Banking industry officials reject charges that they debank people over political viewpoints but have echoed JPMorgan’s statement in calling for reform.
– Rewriting January 6 –
While the suit targets a specific commercial actor in JPMorgan, the complaint is part of a broader move directed by Trump and his allies to reframe the events of January 6, 2021.
Trump called supporters to Washington to protest Congress’s certification of his election defeat.
Following a rousing speech from Trump, several thousand breached the Capitol grounds, overwhelming police lines and wounding more than 140 officers, smashing windows and doors, ransacking offices and forcing lawmakers into hiding as the electoral count was halted for hours before Biden’s victory was certified.
Upon retaking the White House in January 2025, Trump granted pardons to more than 1,500 people who stormed the Capitol. Earlier this month, the White House unveiled a website labeling the rioters as “peaceful patriotic protesters” and accusing police of provoking the violent clashes.
At a congressional hearing Thursday, former special counsel Jack Smith defended his handling of criminal investigations into Trump, rebuffing Republican lawmakers who cast his prosecutions as politically motivated.
“No one should be above the law in this country and the law required that he be held to account,” Smith told the panel. “President Trump was charged because the evidence established that he willfully broke the very laws that he took an oath to uphold.”
US President Donald Trump dominated the Davos forum - Copyright AFP Fabrice COFFRINI
Danny KEMP
It was a moment that said it all about Donald Trump’s wild 24 hours in Davos.
The US president had just given a speech in which he suddenly ruled out the use of force to take over Greenland, a crisis that had the global elite fearing he would upend the world order.
Trump was then taken to a room to meet his host, Swiss President Guy Parmelin, who had the anxious look of many other world leaders trying to butter up the mercurial American.
“Davos without you is not truly Davos,” the Swiss head of state told his US counterpart.
“I agree,” replied Trump.
Trump, it was clear, had come to the Swiss ski resort to assert not only American power over the rest of the world, but also his own.
Returning after six years and a stunning political comeback, the US president appeared determined to turn the showcase event — official theme “The Spirit of Dialogue” — into the Trump show.
From his speech asserting the greatness of his own presidency to his launch of his new “Board of Peace” surrounded by world leaders, there was no question who was meant to be the star.
Yet the 79-year-old Trump’s performance also left many delegates guessing about what he was really up to.
– TACO Trump? –
Trump had headed into Davos late, after Air Force One broke down — an inauspicious start to his trip. He flew in amid deep disquiet among US allies over his threats to take Greenland from NATO ally Denmark.
During his speech he launched into an apparently uncompromising restatement of his claims over the “big piece of ice.”
But then Trump suddenly announced that “I won’t use force”. The former reality TV star knew it would make headlines, adding “that’s probably the biggest statement I made, because people thought I would use force.”
Hours later there came another shock
Trump announced on his Truth Social network that he had agreed a “future deal” on the Danish territory and was lifting the threat of sanctions on eight European countries.
“He’s taken the off ramp,” one stunned Davos delegate said.
From Trump’s critics on both sides the critique was even stronger.
“TACO,” said California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, accusing him of another TACO (“Trump Always Chickens Out”) moment akin to his earlier relaxation of some “Liberation Day” tariffs last April.
– ‘This is exciting’ –
Or was it simply the “art of the deal,” as espoused in Trump’s co-written 1987 book describing his technique of making outrageous demands to extract unexpected concessions in business.
None of his fellow leaders at Davos could be sure, and that may have been the point.
But US allies will still have concerns about what to expect next from an unprecedented disruptor of the post-World War II order — and one who rarely forgets a grudge.
“You can say yes, and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no and we will remember,” Trump said about Greenland, in comments the New York Times’s conservative commentator Bret Stephens said “could have been written by Mario Puzo,” the writer of mafia classic “The Godfather”.
Trump’s signing ceremony on Thursday for the “Board of Peace” conflict resolution body — of which he is the chairman, reportedly in perpetuity — similarly underscored the issues.
“Well, this is exciting,” he said, although key allies including France and Britain had snubbed the launch of what they view as a challenge to the United Nations.
Its membership so far comprises of the Trump-friendly leaders of Argentina and Hungary, several Gulf monarchies — and a number of countries under US visa restrictions.
But while the world ponders what Trump’s Davos appearance portends, he was turning his attention back to home — and himself — just minutes after his plane took off from Zurich.
“Fake and Fraudulent Polling should be, virtually, a criminal offense,” Trump said in a series of social media posts announcing he would sue the The New York Times for publishing an opinion poll that found steadily sliding support.
