Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney on Thursday outlined the priorities that the US administration would like its strongest allies to adopt when the US hosts three days of meetings in Florida in June next year.
As the host nation, the US is in charge of the summit’s focus.
Rolling back government regulation is in. So is energy generation. Russian President Vladimir Putin could be as well. Climate change is out.
Mulvaney said that the US’ plan for the summit would involve “taking a lot of what we have been doing here domestically with such success and trying to encourage the rest of the world to get on board.”
“Climate change will not be on the agenda,” he said.
Mulvaney spoke about the administration’s priorities while announcing next year’s location for the G7 — US President Donald Trump’s golf resort near Miami. The choice of a Trump property caused a stir with government watchdog groups and some Democratic lawmakers.
Leaders from France, Italy, Japan, Canada, Great Britain and Germany are already raising concerns that climate change will be left out at the meeting of the alliance, which was formed in 1975 to provide a venue for the world’s noncommunist economic powers.
“I really think that the responsibility of the most powerful states around the world is to address the issues that are a matter of concern for our population,” French Minister of Finance Bruno le Maire said. “First matter of concern for our population, be it the US or Europe, is climate change.”
“What would be the relevance of the G7 that would not address one of the most important topics of the day?” he said.
Trump has announced plans to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement, saying it puts the US at an economic disadvantage to the rest of the world.
He has focused instead on increasing energy generation from all sources to boost the economy and jobs.
Trump skipped a discussion on climate with other world leaders at the G7 summit in France this year.
Differences over Russia did not stay hidden, either. Trump would like to see Russia readmitted to the G7. The former G8 kicked Russia out after Putin annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.
“We go to the G7 and what dominates so much of the discussion? Russia,” Mulvaney said. “Russian energy. Russian military policy. The Russian economy. It dominates a lot of the discussion. Wouldn’t it be better to have them inside as part of those conversations?”
The summit will take place in the run-up to the US presidential election. At the most recent summit, Trump sought to deliver a message about how the G7 leaders get along great and enjoy tremendous unity, despite fundamental differences in policy.
It will not be easy maintaining that message with the strains of a presidential election shaping most every comment that comes from the event.
“At this point, the summit has all the hallmarks of a train wreck,” said Derek Chollet, executive vice president and senior adviser for security and defense policy at the German Marshall Fund think tank in Washington. “From the venue, to the agenda, to the possibility of Putin coming, to the timing — happening right in the middle of what will be one of the most divisive and ugly presidential campaigns in American history.”
The most one can hope “is this G7 won’t do irreparable harm, but perhaps even that may be too optimistic,” Chollet said.
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
RSS