New Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has had talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, sat down with Face the Nation’s Margaret Brennan on Sunday to talk about the two biggest subjects of U.S. foreign policy in recent weeks: Iran and North Korea. As with the president he serves under, his approach and rhetoric…
After months of playing coy, President Donald Trump confirmed on Tuesday that he will pull the United States out of the the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—more commonly known as the “Iran Deal”—which sought to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Just about everyone has made a typo at one point. It’s not the biggest deal. What is a big deal is when the White House releases an official statement on Iranian nuclear weapons that includes a typo which changes their message so much that it winds up making a false statement about one of the most delicate…
The hiring of national security advisor John Bolton and the confirmation of Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State indicate that Donald Trump is moving closer and closer to making one of his signature campaign promises a reality: to kill the Iran deal as it currently exists. And with just weeks to go before a major Iran…
Rand Paul announced back in March that he was opposing the confirmation of CIA director Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State and Gina Haspel, a torturer, to replace him at the CIA. “It goes against most of the things President Trump campaigned on, that the unintended consequences of regime change in Iraq led to…
Earlier this week, Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley got in a bit of a tussle with White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow over American sanctions against Russia.
Tensions over the potential American military response to the suspected chemical attacks that left dozens of Syrians dead have never been higher. While Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Wednesday that the U.S. is “still assessing the intelligence” on the attacks, Donald Trump has been on Twitter threatening to bomb…
The New York Times reports that National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster is resigning, and his replacement is going to be John Bolton, one of the very worst people from the administration of George W. Bush. The Iran deal is, in all likelihood, toast.
The latest travel ban put forward by the Trump administration went into effect on December 8 and includes eight countries, most of which are majority Muslim. It also includes an onerous process to obtain a waiver, which ultimately comes down to whether or not the Departments of State and Homeland Security think you…
Late Thursday evening, the Huffington Post published a draft of the Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, a 64-page document outlining the Department of Defense’s strategy for developing and maintaining its nuclear stockpile. Its contents are a marked difference from the Obama administration’s 2010 NPR,…
On Thursday, New York Times opinion writer and aspiring Broadway star Frank Bruni came out with a column bearing this headline:
For families with roots in countries singled out by President Trump’s travel ban, this holiday season is a particularly complicated time to explore what being American truly means. In the fourth video of our “Banned Recipes” series, a Iranian American chef shows us how to make Iranian morghe torsh, an aromatic chicken…
Welcome to WHAT NOW, a morning round-up of the news/fresh horrors that await you today.
Mamdouh AlRamadan, a 28-year-old data architect living in New York City, learned of President Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban” while reading the news on Saturday morning. He was immediately confused and concerned about his future. He’s a refugee from Aleppo, Syria, and the U.S. was now under an executive order barring…
Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi issued a devastating statement attacking President Donald Trump's immigration ban this week, blasting it as the work of "hardliners" meant to "justify extremist and fanatic behavior."
It’s only been a week and President Donald Trump has picked fights with more countries than you can count on one hand.
The implementation of President Donald Trump’s executive order banning refugees from several Muslim-majority countries is wreaking havoc at airports across the world, and even some travelers legally allowed to reside in the U.S. are being prevented from boarding flights to return home.
Actress Taraneh Alidoosti may not be a household name in the United States, but in her native Iran, she's about as big as it gets: A multi-award winning actress considered one of the nation's best in the past decade. Think of her as Iran's Meryl Streep. And like Meryl, Alidoosti is not taking President Donald Trump's…
Some of the world's top chess players have decided to boycott this year's Women's World Championship in Iran because they refuse to wear headscarves as required by that country's Islamic government.
When people talk about “representation” in film, they’re often talking about the people in the film, not the ones behind it. Not the people making the cuts, writing the content and calling the shots—literally. When people talk about representation, they forget that people who are allowed to make art with the depth and…
