Heads Up, America: North Carolina Special Election Matters

The last time Belarus staged a presidential election in 2020, authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko was declared the winner with 80% of the vote. That triggered cries of fraud, months of protests and a harsh crackdown with thousands of arrests. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Not wanting to risk such unrest again by those opposing his three decades of iron-fisted rule, Lukashenko advanced the timing of the 2025 election—from the warmth of August to frigid January, when demonstrators are less likely to fill the streets. With many of his political opponents either jailed or exiled abroad, the 70-year-old Lukashenko is back on the ballot, and when the election concludes on Sunday, he is all but certain to add a seventh term as the only leader most people in post-Soviet Belarus have ever known. Here’s what to know about Belarus, its election and its relationship with Russia: ‘Europe’s last dictator’ and his reliance on Russia Belarus was part of the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991.

WASHINGTON — Those binders full of executive orders that President Donald Trump has been signing with a flourish and a wide-tipped Sharpie during his first week in office don’t just magically appear before him. White House staff secretary Will Scharf has been a prominent part of the tableau, standing at Trump’s side and teeing up the leather-bound folders, one by one, for the president.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is heading to hurricane-battered western North Carolina and wildfire-ravaged Los Angeles on Friday, using the first trip of his second administration to tour areas where politics has clouded the response to deadly disasters. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The Republican president has criticized former President Joe Biden for his administration’s response in North Carolina, and he’s showered disdain on California leaders for water policies that he falsely claimed worsened the recent blazes. Trump is also considering overhauling the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on artificial intelligence Thursday that will revoke past government policies his order says “act as barriers to American AI innovation.” To maintain global leadership in AI technology, “we must develop AI systems that are free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas,” Trump’s order says. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The new order doesn’t name which existing policies are hindering AI development but sets out to track down and review “all policies, directives, regulations, orders, and other actions taken” as a result of former President Joe Biden’s sweeping AI executive order of 2023, which Trump rescinded Monday.

“In the Trump administration’s arguments defending his order to suspend birthright citizenship, the Justice Department called into question the citizenship of Native Americans born in the United States, citing a 19th-century law that excluded Native Americans from birthright citizenship,” Salon reports.

President Donald Trump has ordered the release of thousands of classified governmental documents about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which has fueled conspiracy theories for decades. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The executive order Trump signed Thursday also aims to declassify the remaining federal records relating to the assassinations of Sen. Robert F.