Acrusading prosecutor in the Balkans comes under pressure to drop a big case. Vietnamese villagers learn they are to be evicted. A convicted crypto kingpin in the Gulf receives a pardon.

All have one thing in common: they appear to be connected to the Trump family’s campaign to amass riches around the world. Since Donald Trump’s re-election a year ago, warnings that his use of presidential power to advance personal interests is corroding American democracy have grown ever louder. What is less understood – and perhaps even more dangerous – is the damage this is doing everywhere else.

Cuts to humanitarian aid funding caused shockwaves in 2025, and the fallout will last for years to come.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams have decades of experience responding to all kinds of emergencies, from wars to disease outbreaks to natural disasters. But 2025 brought an unprecedented catastrophe caused by policy changes and massive cuts to international humanitarian aid by the United States government and other donors.

Awave of bills introduced this year in state legislatures across the country sought to censor Palestine-related education in public schools. Several passed with the support of pro-Israel Democratic lawmakers, a trend that educators and First Amendment advocates told Truthout reflects the alignment of pro-Israel groups with MAGA forces. As these efforts continue, many said they fear public education could be reshaped far beyond social studies classrooms and the topics of Israel and Palestine.

The late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is best known for having been accused of operating a sex-trafficking ring that supplied elite men with girls as young as 14. Epstein and his associates are believed to have abused hundreds of women and girls on Little Saint James, a private island Epstein owned from 1998 until his death in 2019. But in the New York Times’ telling, it’s not the girls on Epstein’s island but rather President Donald Trump—an Epstein associate many suspect of having participated in the alleged abuse—who is being “held captive” by a “news cycle he can’t avoid or defeat” (New York Times, 11/18/25).