Princes and Thieves, a new book by investigative journalist Matthew Cole, may open a rabbit hole into financial connections between Middle Eastern dictators and President Donald Trump's family. Cole accuses Emirati monarch Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ) of sending billions of dollars to various mercenaries and political operators, including Jared Kushner, son-in-law to President Donald Trump. Cole's reporting combines well-documented connections with secondhand accounts from anonymous sources.
On Thursday, Vanity Fair published an excerpt from the book, reporting that Dutch military intelligence hacked into Kushner's phone in 2018 and discovered hundreds of millions of dollars in bank transfers connected to MBZ. Also on Thursday, Kushner published a letter from his lawyers to Cole categorically denying the "incredible and false" allegations in the book. "Mr. Kushner never accessed foreign accounts and always followed all rules and regulations and only pursued goals that were in the best interest of the United States as directed by the President of the United States," they wrote.
Cole had originally written on his blog that the book was scheduled for release on October 27, but the publication date was pushed forward over the weekend.
The book purports to tie Kushner to a vast web of Emirati influence operations around the world. In Cole's telling, which matches other journalists' accounts, MBZ wants to reshape the Middle East and eastern Africa into an alliance of U.S.-backed dictatorships, where "tolerance" is enforced through high-tech surveillance and "democracy" is a synonym for terrorism. MBZ's use of mercenaries in pursuit of these goals is well-documented. So is Kushner's personal affinity with the Emirati monarch and his business ties with the Arab monarchies.
Soon after Trump won the 2016 election, MBZ held a widely reported meeting with Kushner. According to the book—and according to much of that earlier reporting—the monarch complained about the Obama administration's failure to back Arab regimes against popular revolutions, its decision to end the Iraq War, and its diplomacy with Iran.
Going much further than past reporting, Cole now claims Kushner was personally involved in MBZ's mercenary operations. MBZ and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman put a collective $2 billion into Emirati and Israeli bank accounts which were managed (but not technically owned) by Kushner, according to Cole's sources. Those same sources claim that parts of this secret "slush fund" went to Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar, American military contractor Erik Prince, and Cuban hitman Felipe Vidal.
Haftar, a former CIA asset, became a general in Libya's 2011 revolution and then attempted to overthrow the new government with Emirati backing in 2014. Despite a 2020 ceasefire, his forces continue to control much of Libya. Prince, founder of the military contractor formerly known as Blackwater, moved to the UAE and helped build a secret army of Colombian mercenaries. He sued Cole for defamation after Cole reported on Prince's role in helping Haftar, but a judge threw out the case. Cole's sources claimed that Vidal, a self-described "hit man," helped the United Arab Emirates (UAE) fake an Iranian attack on oil tankers in May 2019, meant to provoke Trump into war.
Kushner's lawyers have denied any relationship with any of those three men, apart from a single meeting with Prince after the 2016 election. (According to Cole, both Vidal and Prince refused to comment for the book.) The position of the U.S. government is that the May 2019 incident was a genuine Iranian attack, not an Emirati false flag.
After the Vanity Fair article was published last week, Israeli negotiator Gershon Baskin pointed out in The Jerusalem Post that the Central Bank of Israel "does not offer private banking services to individuals," which would make it impossible for Kushner's money to be deposited in the Central Bank of Israel, as Cole claimed. The book addresses that argument, claiming that the money was deposited "in what would appear to be a government account," with Kushner and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu jointly authorizing transactions.
The Abraham Accords, which include an alliance between Israel and the UAE, have often been touted as a way for the U.S. to "spend less time and less resources in the Middle East," in the words of Vice President J.D. Vance. But Cole argues that the UAE actually used its alliance to entangle American interests in a future conflict. The book states that Kushner set up "a rainy-day defense fund" for war with Iran, using Emirati money deposited in a separate Central Bank of Israel account.
Cole also claims to have evidence that Kushner was on the take from the UAE's regional frenemy Qatar. In 2017, the UAE and Saudi Arabia issued an ultimatum for Qatar to rein in its foreign policy and blockaded the small nation. The Intercept later reported that Kushner's father had sought a Qatari bailout for the family real estate business just before the crisis, and the Qatari-linked company Brookfield ended up providing the needed investment in August 2018, leading to a congressional investigation into the deal.
Democrats are still digging for information on Kushner's business ties to Qatar, but three sources told Cole that the Qatari royal family authorized and paid for the Brookfield deal. The Qatari government "asked the White House how to resolve the blockade. And the Kushners kept saying, 'We have this great property that needs investment.' Eventually, the Qataris realized the only way to settle the blockade was to buy the building," a former U.S. intelligence officer said.
Kushner's lawyers write that they have "no evidence that Qatar impacted the investment decision. Any suggestion of his involvement in the transaction or any allegation of quid pro quo with the Qatari government is false and defamatory."
Other parts of the book are better-documented. Cole obtained a draft of Prince's autobiography, text messages from one of Prince's colleagues, and emails from Emirati government adviser George Nader, who was convicted of fraudulently funneling money into Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. If nothing else, the book is a comprehensive account of the UAE's unofficial empire and its American ties. But the most explosive claims about Kushner's involvement in those activities rest on anonymous sources, making it a matter of Cole's word against Kushner's.
"I considered the responses from Kushner's attorneys carefully and consulted multiple sources about them. During the five years I have spent working on this book, I have tried to keep an open mind, and I am confident that my reporting is accurate. Kushner's lawyers' responses did not change that conclusion," Cole writes in the book's epilogue.
The post New Book Says Jared Kushner Funneled Money to Middle East Mercenaries. Kushner Denies It. appeared first on Reason Magazine.
When the White House rolled back tariffs on coffee, fruit, beef, and farm equipment, it was effectively an admission that the tariffs were raising prices—and that Americans, not foreigners, had been paying for them.
Now, in the closing stages of the midterm campaign, the White House is once again rolling back some of those import taxes—and once again making an awkward implicit admission.
President Donald Trump's tariffs have become politically toxic.
The administration announced late last week that it would lift the 50 percent tariffs on some Canadian imports, apparently in an attempt to help Sen. Susan Collins (R–Maine) survive a tough reelection campaign in which the tariffs have played a significant role.
If this is indeed an attempt to sway voters in Maine, it is not a very convincing one. The Trump administration is removing tariffs on some agricultural and mechanical goods, as well as packaging and plywood, The Wall Street Journal reports. But Trump is also imposing new 50 percent tariffs on "other Canadian goods, including carpet, certain valves, and waste products."
Collins issued a statement thanking the White House for the changes. This is what members of the U.S. Senate have been reduced to—begging the president to cast his capricious, tariff-happy eyes toward products that will hurt people in other states more than in your own. (In fairness to Collons, she has voted repeatedly to roll back Trump's tariffs, but not enough of her fellow Republicans went along with it.)
Still, it's worth asking: What exactly is the pitch to voters here? Here's a tariff cut, now vote for Republicans so the president can continue to arbitrarily tax imports whenever the mood strikes?
It's easy to see why Trump's tariffs have become so unpopular. They are a huge and broad tax increase—the Tax Foundation estimates that 54 percent of imports are subject to Trump's tariffs, which are costing the average household about $1,000 annually—that was imposed without congressional authorization or popular support. They create more losers than winners, as downstream businesses and consumers pay the price for the protectionism offered to American manufacturers. Even the supposed "winners" of the tariff policy tend also to be "losers," since so much manufacturing depends on importing raw materials and intermediate goods.
Perhaps more surprising is how unwilling Republicans are to defend the president's signature economic policy. Or to even talk about it.
The Wall Street Journal's Greg Ip crunched the numbers and found that House GOP candidates have not run a single ad talking about the tariffs during this election cycle.
Just such a fun chart here from @greg_ip. If only we could tease out some meaning. Ah, well, nevertheless.
— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) October 23, 2026
That silence speaks volumes. Trump says "tariff" is "the most beautiful word in the dictionary." But it is now "one of the most hated words in politics," writes Ip.
The only Republicans to mention trade or tariffs in a campaign ad, as far as I've seen, is former Rep. Mike Rogers, who is now running for the Senate seat in Michigan (and thus was not included in Ip's analysis). And he's calling for an end to the "tariff war."
There is a lesson here that hopefully will linger beyond the next week: If you support a policy that deliberately and unlawfully raises taxes and prices, voters will not reward you for it.
It's a lesson that the Republican Party learned long ago, but apparently forgot.
Against economists' advice, a Republican-led government in 1930 implemented a huge tariff hike intended to protect American farms and factories at the start of the Great Depression. Instead, those tariffs worsened economic conditions and triggered foreign retaliation.
When voters went to the polls in 1930, the first midterm after the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were passed, they registered their displeasure. The GOP lost 52 seats in the House that year. Two years later, an even larger landslide would sweep Democrats into power in Congress and the White House, ushering in the New Deal era that reshaped the federal government forever. The two lawmakers who lent their names to the legislation were among those who lost their seats, fittingly.
The most notable difference this time around is that Congress didn't actually pass a tariff bill. The trade barriers were instead imposed directly by the executive. Voters don't seem to care. Republicans were too cowardly to stand up to Trump's unilateral power grab, and now they seem too ashamed to try to defend that policy (and their largely complicit response) on the campaign trail.
As they say, those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And "doomed" may be a fitting way to describe the Republican majority in Congress right now, thanks in no small part to Trump's tariffs.
The post Trump's Tariffs Are Politically Toxic appeared first on Reason Magazine.
The first state to be ruled by Al Qaeda might not be in Afghanistan or the Arab world—and its ruler might be a former whiskey-drinking rock star. In April, the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims ("JNIM" in Arabic) led an uprising in the African nation of Mali, killing Defense Minister Sadio Camara, breaking open a prison holding thousands of inmates, and besieging Bamako, the capital. The fighting was still underway as of August.
Mali is not the only place threatened by a JNIM takeover. The West African branch of Al Qaeda is active in a belt of countries known as the Sahel. Its leader, Iyad Ag Ghali, was the former percussionist for the rock band Tinariwen. He now leads a campaign to stamp out the "music of Satan." Perhaps the one saving grace for Sahelian metalheads is that puritans can't get along with each other: The JNIM is locked in a war with the rival Islamic State Sahel Province.
The Sahelian civil wars are a testament to the failure of the global war on terror. Despite spending $355 billion on African counterterrorism from 2001 to 2021, the U.S. government has been unable to stop Al Qaeda or related Islamist groups from taking root across the continent. A study by the Pentagon's Africa Center for Strategic Studies found a 101,300 percent increase in terrorism fatalities from 2002 to 2022, mostly concentrated in the Sahel and Somalia.
These wars demonstrate that the solution to terrorism isn't maximum violence. President Donald Trump launched four times as many airstrikes against Somalia in his first 18 months of his second term as the U.S. did over the past four years combined. U.S. military aid has flowed to repressive governments across Africa with little respect for their citizens' rights. Since 2020, there have been coups d'etat across the Sahel by military men promising that they can do the dirty work that civilian leaders are afraid of. Many of them were trained by the U.S. government. The new regimes have imported Russian mercenaries with a reputation for brutality and no real restraints on their activities.
"People need to forget about the question of democracy," Ibrahim Traoré, leader of Burkina Faso, declared in April.
Instead of restoring order, these heavy-handed tactics have caused more chaos. The military juntas in the Sahel are plainly losing to the JNIM. While the Russian fighters have no difficulties massacring civilians or mutilating prisoners, they have found it much harder to face people who can actually shoot back, facing repeated battlefield humiliations. Meanwhile, the U.S.-led campaign against al-Shabab, the Somali branch of Al Qaeda, has stalled out despite the heavier use of airpower.
The African war on terror began shortly after the U.S. campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. To some extent, the U.S. created the very threats that it is trying to fight in Africa. Somalia had been at civil war since the fall of socialism, and in the early 2000s, the CIA began funding Somali warlords to stop the rise of Islamist revolutionaries. The (relatively moderate) Islamic Courts Union took over anyway in 2006—uniting Somalia for the first time in more than a decade—and the U.S. encouraged neighboring Ethiopia to invade. When al-Shabab emerged to fight the Ethiopian invaders, the U.S. tapped a former leader of the Islamic Courts Union to lead a new Somali government.
Soon after the Ethiopian-Somali war, President George W. Bush created the Pentagon's Africa Command, and Congress budgeted $500 million in aid to militaries in the Sahara Desert and the Sahel. At the time, the main Islamist threat to that region was a mostly defeated insurgency in Algeria.
But the Libyan civil war in 2011 created terrible new monsters. Soon after President Barack Obama intervened in support of the Libyan revolution, weapons and hardened fighters from Libya flooded the ethnic Tuareg region of Mali, which declared independence a few months later. Soon after, Al Qaeda and its affiliates took over the Tuareg rebellion. With the Malian government coming close to collapse, France intervened in January 2013 and made many of the same mistakes that the U.S. did in its own war on terror.
Ag Ghali, the current leader of the JNIM, got his start as a Tuareg nationalist. A leaked U.S. embassy cable from 2008 called him a "proverbial bad penny" who enjoyed "playing both sides" and had ties to Islamist and secular nationalist rebels. By the time of the French intervention, he was fully committed to Islamic theocracy. In 2017, he united Islamist rebels across the Sahel under the banner of Al Qaeda. That same year, four U.S. Special Forces troops were killed in Niger by the Islamic State group, which was busy uniting Ag Ghali's rivals.
Despite the failures of the Sahelian governments to stop Ag Ghali—and their willingness to ally with Russia—the Trump administration is eager to double down on supporting them. The U.S. government increased intelligence sharing with Mali in 2025, and as of July it was considering a direct military intervention against the JNIM, according to The Washington Post. But every American escalation on the continent has produced the enemy that the next one had to fight.
The post America Is Spending Billions To Fight the War on Terror in Africa. The Terrorists Are Winning. appeared first on Reason Magazine.
Ukraine will not discuss limits to its armed forces or enforced neutrality at November meeting, president says. What we know on day 1,706
A trilateral meeting between Kyiv, Washington and Moscow will take place in November aiming to restart stalled Russia-Ukraine peace talks, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said. “We are ready to talk. If it’s a territorial issue, it must be addressed at a leadership level. Other issues fall within the remit of the technical groups. All this can therefore be discussed in November,” the Ukrainian president said on Sunday in an interview. Zelenskyy also renewed his push for a meeting between him and Vladimir Putin, believing that Putin is the only person in Russia who can make major decisions to end the war.
Zelenskyy says that at the trilateral talks, Ukraine will not discuss limits to its armed forces, or enforced postwar neutrality. Kyiv has long sought entry into Nato despite the reticence of some members.
Meanwhile, US warnings about imminent Russian ballistic missile strikes, critical to Ukraine’s air defences, have been fully restored, according to Zelenskyy. He told Ukraine’s TSN television channel that SpaceX’s Starshield satellite internet had been working at speeds of up to 420km/h since early on Saturday, after a meeting with the US special envoy Steve Witkoff in Oslo. Starshield was throttled earlier in October amid diplomatic pressure on Kyiv from Washington.
The US has been trying to pressure Ukraine to suspend strikes on Russian oil refineries, which it says push energy prices higher. However, Zelenskyy has repeatedly said Kyiv will only stop the strikes if Moscow stops hitting Ukraine’s power infrastructure, or if the US allows Ukraine to use of Starshield over Russia to detect launch places of its ballistic missiles, or if it supplies Ukraine with Patriot missiles.
Zelenskyy on Sunday said Russia had launched nearly 2,300 drones targeting Ukrainian cities over the past week, renewing his call on western allies to speed up deliveries of interceptors. “This week alone, Russia has launched about 1,600 guided bombs, 48 missiles of various types, including ballistic missiles, and almost 2,300 strike drones at Ukraine,” he wrote in an online post.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday its drones had struck a cargo vessel bound for the Black Sea port of Chornomorsk in an overnight attack and another cargo vessel en route to the port of Odesa during the day. The ministry said the vessels were being used to supply the Ukrainian army. Russian forces also hit a logistics centre, a distribution centre and a logistics terminal in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv overnight. Reuters could not confirm the reports.
A Ukrainian drone attack overnight on the Russian border city of Belgorod killed three people and injured 13, local authorities said on Sunday, while a separate drone strike later in the day killed another person. The overnight attack on Belgorod damaged 30 apartment buildings, regional governor Alexander Shuvayev said.
The presidential election in Bulgaria on Sunday ended inconclusively, with the next head of state to be picked in a runoff. In a surprisingly strong performance, the candidate of the pro-western reformist opposition, Andrey Gyurov, will face the incumbent leftist president, Iliana Yotova. Iotova opposes military aid to Ukraine and favours dialogue with Russia, while Gyurov has often expressed firm support for Kyiv. The vote was held amid security concerns after a series of drone attacks on ships in the Black Sea.
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© Photograph: Ukrinform/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Ukrinform/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Ukrinform/Shutterstock
VW investment, creating 4,500 jobs in Georgia, comes amid Trump’s damaging tariffs, intense Chinese competition and costly shift towards EVs
Audi has said it will spend $4bn (£3bn) to build its first factory in the US, as its parent company, Volkswagen, struggles with the impact of steep tariffs imposed by Donald Trump.
The German brand’s chief executive, Gernot Döllner, joined Trump on stage at a campaign rally on Saturday night to announce the factory in Macon, Georgia, in an unusual move by a big European brand just days before the US midterm elections.
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© Photograph: Friso Gentsch/EPA
© Photograph: Friso Gentsch/EPA
© Photograph: Friso Gentsch/EPA
James ‘Fergie’ Chambers, in prison in Spain, has applied for asylum as US seeks extradition over alleged Hamas support
US authorities seized wealthy activist James “Fergie” Chambers’s cellphone at some point after Spanish police arrested him in July without notifying him or his attorneys, the Guardian has learned.
Chambers, a US citizen and wealthy donor to leftwing and humanitarian projects, is imprisoned in Madrid. His case is the first known instance of the US seeking to extradite a citizen over alleged support for Hamas, an accusation tied to money Chambers has donated to support Palestinians, including the Sameer Project, in Gaza.
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© Photograph: Chedly Ben Ibrahim/NurPhoto via Getty Images
© Photograph: Chedly Ben Ibrahim/NurPhoto via Getty Images
© Photograph: Chedly Ben Ibrahim/NurPhoto via Getty Images
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