President Donald Trump blamed Democrats for escalating violence after federal agents enforcing his immigration agenda killed another protester on Saturday, which has further fueled rising concern about the direction of the country under Trump.
Alex Pretti, 37, was shot dead by a Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis, amid protests against federal immigration operations in the state that had ramped up since the killing of 37-year-old Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent just weeks earlier.
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The Trump Administration has framed Pretti’s shooting as an act of self-defense. The Department of Homeland Security claimed that Pretti “approached” federal officers with a handgun and “violently resisted” their attempts to restrain and disarm him, while White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller on X called Pretti a “would-be assassin” who “tried to murder federal law enforcement.” But videos circulating online, which were also analyzed by news outlets, contradicted the Administration’s claims and showed Pretti was holding a phone in his hand before the fatal confrontation.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal on Sunday amid public backlash about the killing and the federal government’s response, Trump said that his Administration is “reviewing everything” regarding the incident.
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Then he took to his social media site, Truth Social, to assail Democrats for the violence.
“Tragically, two American Citizens have lost their lives as a result of this Democrat ensued chaos,” he posted Sunday. The President zoomed in on “Democrat run” sanctuary jurisdictions—which limit their cooperation with federal immigration enforcement—for “REFUSING to cooperate with ICE” and for “encouraging Leftwing Agitators to unlawfully obstruct their operations to arrest the Worst of the Worst People.”
In a separate Truth Social post, Trump also called on the GOP-led Congress to “immediately” pass legislation that would end sanctuary jurisdiction policies, which he claimed “is the root cause of all of these problems.” He also called on Minnesota’s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, Minneapolis’ Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey, and all Democratic mayors and governors across the country “to formally cooperate with the Trump Administration to enforce our Nation’s Laws, rather than resist and stoke the flames of Division, Chaos, and Violence.”
Trump specifically asked Walz and Frey in his post to turn over to federal authorities the unauthorized immigrants in their state prisons and jails, and those with active warrants or known criminal histories, for immediate deportation.
Ex-Presidents speak out
In the wake of Pretti’s shooting, several high-profile Democrats have doubled down on their criticism of the Trump Administration.
Former President Barack Obama, whom Trump succeeded in 2017, called Pretti’s killing a “heartbreaking tragedy.” In a statement with his wife Michelle posted on X on Sunday, Obama claimed that Trump and officials in his Administration “seem eager to escalate the situation” instead of “trying to impose some semblance of discipline and accountability over the agents they’ve deployed.”
“This has to stop,” Obama said. “I would hope that after this most recent tragedy, Administration officials will reconsider their approach.”
Former President Bill Clinton, another Democrat, also said in a Sunday statement on social media that the events in Minnesota were “unacceptable and should have been avoided,” adding that “the people in charge have lied to us, told us not to believe what we’ve seen with our own eyes, and pushed increasingly aggressive and antagonistic tactics.”
“Over the course of a lifetime, we face only a few moments where the decisions we make and the actions we take will shape our history for years to come,” Clinton posted. “This is one of them.”
As people trickled into polling stations scattered across Myanmar to vote in the country’s first elections since the 2021 military coup, much of the nation remained consumed by war.
The military junta has billed the vote, which was held in three stages concluding this Sunday, as a return to democracy. International observers, however, have widely dismissed the election as illegitimate, held amid ongoing conflict and mass displacement. The junta-backed party has already claimed a lead in the first two rounds held in late December and early January.
Hundreds of people were killed in military crackdowns on protests and tens of thousands more arrested in the months after the coup five years ago that overthrew the democratically elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi. Thousands of people fled to the countryside, where they coalesced into anti-junta resistance groups or joined ethnic armed groups.
By May 2021, Myanmar was plunged into a civil war that has since killed 90,000 people, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. According to the U.N., more than three million people have been displaced from their homes, with some fleeing mandatory conscription imposed by the junta in February 2024. The junta has bombed towns, weaponized internet shutdowns, and restricted much-needed humanitarian aid to civilians in areas controlled by resistance forces, even as it has lost control over large areas of the country to resistance groups.
Observers have warned that the elections could legitimize the junta’s rule both at home and abroad, especially at a time when it is seeking to secure backing from China. But for many Burmese people, already living in the throes of war, the outcome of the election is unlikely to change much.
“We are not interested in this election,” says a man in his 50s from the Mandalay area, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons. He tells TIME he and many of the people around him still ended up voting out of fear, in his case that his sons will be conscripted, but few were excited to head to the polling station or learn about the candidates. “We only know who we should not vote for,” he says, even if the results seem pre-determined.
“This so-called ‘election’ is an attempt to prolong the junta’s relentless violence and entrench impunity,” Yadanar Maung, a spokesperson for Justice for Myanmar, a group of activists, tells TIME.
Low turnout
Voter turnout during the first phase of the election was 52% and during the second phase 56%, according to the junta. That’s a stark contrast from the roughly 70% of people who came out to vote in the country’s 2015 and 2020 elections—the first democratic national elections in more than half a century of military rule. The excitement was palpable in those elections, with many wearing red in support of Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, which swept the 2020 election.
Suu Kyi, now 80, has been in prison since February 2021, serving a 33-year sentence over allegations of election fraud, which she denies and which independent election observers have said lack evidence. The NLD and other major opposition parties have been disqualified from running in the election. Even if a party besides the junta’s proxy party, the Union Solidarity & Development Party, gains a foothold in the election, the military is already guaranteed a quarter of the seats in both houses of parliament under the 2008 constitution. (Still, the junta has maintained that the election is free and fair. “Even in developed democratic nations, there are situations where voter turnout does not exceed 50%,” a junta spokesperson, Zaw Min Tun, told ABC.)
“If the parties are not credible or not broadly representative, it undermines the claim that the elections are the reflection of the popular will,” says Maung Zarni, a Burmese academic and human rights activist exiled in the U.K.
The junta also enacted a law against undermining elections last year, which penalizes criticisms of the election—including online discourse or calling for an election boycott—from three years in prison to the death penalty.
Large swathes of the country are not holding elections at all. The junta controlled only around 21% of the country, as of December 2024, with ethnic armed groups and resistance forces controlling more than 40% of the country.
Much of the remaining contested areas are engulfed in intense fighting, making going out to vote an unrealistic task. Earlier this week, the junta canceled voting in two Kachin State townships and 11 villages due to clashes with forces aligned with the Kachin Independence Army.
“The reality of staggering the elections in phases and cancelling polls in several townships (a larger number than in past elections) points to ongoing security concerns,” says Moe Thuzar, a senior fellow at the Singapore-based think tank ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute with a focus on Myanmar.
Even in areas where people can vote, many, especially the youth, are choosing not to. The man from Mandalay says while there was a queue of people at his polling station, young people were conspicuously absent.
“I think this is for them to change their soldier uniforms into civilian ones and to hold onto their power,” a 35-year-old from Rakhine state, which is largely controlled by the Arakan Army, told AFP.
“The junta has been decisively rejected by the people of Myanmar, with this sham election met by widespread boycotts and protests at great personal risk,” Yadanar tells TIME.
War rages on
The election has been widely dismissed by international observers and governments as illegitimate. U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, called the election a “sham.”
“Elections cannot be free, fair or credible when held amid military violence and repression, with political leaders detained and fundamental freedoms crushed,” Andrews said. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which Myanmar is a member of, has also refused to certify the vote.
Some have described voting out of fear, with security personnel in traditional clothing and sunglasses and armed policemen skulking around polling areas, according to ABC. People who turned up at voting stations said they were afraid that if they didn’t vote, they or their loved ones would be conscripted or that something bad might happen.
“Whether it’s legitimate or illegitimate, sham or real,” says Zarni, “it’s not going to change anything.”
The years of transition to democratic rule from 2011 to 2020 saw foreign investment pour into the country and the government implement political reforms, shoring up job opportunities and roughly halving the poverty rate from 2005 to 2017. After the 2021 coup, much of that investment was withdrawn, inflation ballooned, and the country’s currency, the kyat, collapsed.
The man from Mandalay tells TIME that life after the 2021 coup was marked by curfews under martial law, security checkpoints, and the sounds of explosions. Those aspects have become less frequent over the years in the city area, but people are still afraid.
And, he says, people know nothing will change after the election.
The elections aren’t designed to address the country’s economic conditions, the civil war that is continuing to displace and kill Burmese people across the country, or the fracturing of the country into territories controlled by groups, says Zarni.
International diplomatic pressure on the junta towards a cease-fire is possible, but analysts suggest that that is a less likely outcome of the election than a continuation of conflict and fragmented rule. Western governments have largely isolated the junta through sanctions already, and they are less likely to intervene given their own problems, Zarni says. Europe is focused on Russia’s war in Ukraine and a renewed push by U.S. President Donald Trump to take control of Greenland, while the U.S. is both retreating from the world stage and focused elsewhere.
“People in Myanmar may be weary of the daily challenges to personal, socio-economic, and community security that they have had to confront as a consequence of the 2021 coup,” says Thuzar.
Zarni tells TIME that the point of the election is to “improve the optics” of the regime in the eyes of the world. Last year, the country was rocked by a powerful earthquake, which forced the junta to make a rare appeal to the international community for help, even as ethnic armed groups claimed the junta carried out strikes in areas damaged by the earthquake and attacked aid convoys. Myanmar is also on trial at the International Court of Justice for genocide over its ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims; the International Criminal Court opened its own investigation into alleged crimes of humanity committed by the junta, including the persecution of the Rohingya.
Reducing Myanmar’s isolation and increasing its economic engagement would be in the junta’s interests. In that regard, it matters less what western governments or international agencies think, says Zarni. The junta is likely more interested in regional actors with which it already has a relationship, like China and Russia, which have provided diplomatic cover, arms, and economic engagement since the coup, and India and Vietnam, which have maintained pragmatic or economic relations with the junta.
“The junta’s tyranny is sustained by allied authoritarian governments, multinational corporations, international banks and Myanmar cronies that fund, arm, equip and train the military, aiding and abetting its international crimes, enabled by global inaction,” Yadanar, the Justice for Myanmar spokesperson, tells TIME.
The junta may also have in mind its involvement in ASEAN, which downgraded the country’s participation, barring senior generals from high-level meetings. ASEAN membership offers the military a regional diplomatic foothold and a channel—however limited—for engagement that the junta appears keen to preserve.
“The junta doesn’t need the whole world to survive,” Zarni says. “It only needs a handful of technologically advanced and economically wealthy external actors to be its partner.”
But mostly, Zarni says, the junta are holding the election for themselves. After seizing power in 2021, the military repeatedly justified the coup by alleging fraud in the 2020 election and promising a temporary return to military rule. Senior generals, including Min Aung Hlaing, said at the time that new elections would be held and power handed to the winning party.
Even if its opponents see through the junta’s election, with some ethnic armed organizations denouncing the election, the vote could provide reassurance to its own ranks, civil servants, and supporters and shore up morale and discipline within the armed forces.
“The elections give them a chance to stand up in front of a television camera and tell a lie with a straight face,” says Zarni. “They need to tell their own rank-and-file that the military is not just there with their guns, they’re in accord with the constitution of the country, therefore they are a lawful government.”
“Even the bad guys,” Zarni says, “have to tell themselves they’re good guys.”
Donald Trump suggested putting the world’s strongest military alliance “to the test” in his latest social media posting that could have grave consequences.
The U.S. President has long criticized the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which also includes 30 European allies and Canada, over his belief that other members don’t pay their fair share.
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“Maybe we should have put NATO to the test: Invoked Article 5, and forced NATO to come here and protect our Southern Border from further Invasions of Illegal Immigrants, thus freeing up large numbers of Border Patrol Agents for other tasks,” Trump posted on Truth Social Thursday night.
Article 5 refers to NATO’s mutual defense clause, which states that an “armed attack” on one member is considered an attack on all 32 member-states.
NATO says it assesses on a case-by-case basis what triggers Article 5—such as the “invasion by one state of the territory of another state”—but clarifies that “events that lack an international element, such as purely domestic acts of terrorism, do not trigger” the mutual defense clause, even though member states may choose to assist.
In the alliance’s nearly-80-year history, the mutual defense clause has only been invoked once: on the day after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and the U.S.’s NATO allies then backed the American response in Afghanistan, where more than 1,000 non-American NATO soldiers were ultimately killed.
Trump’s latest Truth Social post comes amid his ongoing threat to pull the U.S. out of the alliance.
“We’ve never needed them—we have never really asked anything of them,” the President told Fox Business on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland on Thursday. “You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan or this or that, and they did: they stayed a little back, little off the front lines.”
The day before, Trump, in his meandering speech in Davos, blasted NATO’s seeming unreliability: “I know them all very well. I’m not sure that they’d be there. I know we’d be there for them. I don’t know that they’d be there for us.”
[video id=oL9X8h53 autostart="viewable" vertical video_text=Trump speaks as tensions over Greenland dominate Davos]
Trump particularly criticized NATO ally Denmark, as he campaigns to bring Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, under U.S. control. He called the Nordic country “ungrateful” after falsely claiming that the U.S. “gave” Greenland back to Denmark after American forces defended it during World War II.
But Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general, pushed back Wednesday to assert that NATO did help the U.S. in Afghanistan.
“For every two Americans who paid the ultimate price,” Rutte said, “there was one soldier from another NATO country who did not come back to his family—from the Netherlands, from Denmark, particularly from other countries.”
Denmark actually suffered the highest per capita deaths among the military coalition members in the Afghanistan conflict: military casualty tracker iCasualties.org lists 43 Danish soldiers killed.
“You are not absolutely sure that the Europeans would come to the rescue of the U.S. if you will be attacked,” Rutte told Trump. “Let me tell you, they will.”
The offer “may not last long,” the Department of Homeland Security said Wednesday as it announced that a more than doubling of the stipend for those who choose to “self-deport” from $1,000 to $2,600 in honor of President Donald Trump hitting the one-year mark of his second term. But the offer also may not be legitimate at all, advocates say.
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“Illegal aliens should take advantage of this gift and self-deport,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in the announcement. “Because if they don’t, we will find them, we will arrest them, and they will never return.”
It’s part of Trump’s “Project Homecoming,” which was launched in May to encourage unauthorized immigrants to leave the U.S. voluntarily. DHS first offered a $1,000 stipend and travel assistance to those who returned to their home country through the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Home mobile application. During the holidays, the offer was raised to $3,000, with DHS saying it was “generously TRIPLING” the stipend for the Christmas season for those who register on the app by the end of 2025.
The program, which is funded by $250 million that was originally meant for helping to resettle refugees, is meant to reduce deportation costs. According to the latest DHS announcement, a single enforced deportation costs over $18,000, while the $2,600 stipend as well as other costs including comped airfare for those who “self-deport” through the CBP Home app comes out to just over $5,000.
But while Noem says that 2.2 million people have voluntarily “self-deported” since last January, including “tens of thousands” who used the CBP Home app, the Atlantic reported in December that the overall figure, which is not backed by verifiable data, is implausible and would have had noticeable effects on the labor market. Moreover, the Atlantic calculated that the true cost of each of some 35,000 “self-deportations,” when factoring in a $200-million advertising campaign for the program, was about $7,500.
ProPublica also reported in October that of some 25,000 immigrants who had departed through the CBP Home app by then, many did not receive assistance from DHS.
And the Guardian reported in December that while some who “self-deported” received a $1,000 stipend, others either never did or encountered significant delays and difficulties. Others claimed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials dangled the stipend to deceive them, even though they were not eligible for the program, into leaving the U.S. without any benefits or into giving up their location, which could be used to detain and deport them. And while the program makes out that those who participate may be eligible to return to the U.S. under legal pathways, that also hasn’t been true for some, who have found themselves facing yearslong or even lifetime bans from reentry.
These mirror critics’ earlier warnings about the program. When the program incentivizing “self-deportation” came out last year, the American Immigration Lawyers Association called it a “deeply misleading and unethical trick,” adding that the government’s offer “is not as simple—or as safe—as it sounds.”
“Offering undocumented migrants a cash stipend to leave the country is neither sound policy nor smart politics,” attorney Raul Reyes wrote for the Hill last year. “And with this Administration’s antipathy toward migrants, it could well be a trap with life-altering consequences.”
Tired from work and craving a sweet treat or a spa day? Young people in China have a new mantra for that: “Ai ni laoji!”
The phrase, meaning “love you, dear friend,” took off on Chinese social media at the end of last year as users tacked the phrase onto videos, posts, and comments to justify spending on the dearest friend of all: themselves.
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It’s a familiar concept to many outside of China: through the 2010s, Western social media was inundated with the phrase “YOLO” (You Only Live Once) and “Treat Yo’Self”—popularized by the sitcom Parks and Recreation—and in recent years, the concept of self-care has powered a booming wellness industry.
But the Chinese phrase reflects a starker generational shift in the East Asian nation of 1.4 billion, where older generations have long emphasized hard work and personal sacrifice and where younger generations are now struggling to build their lives according to traditional expectations amid a sluggish job economy and rapid urbanization.
The self-love memes resonate because of their irony, says Sylvia Zhu, a 25-year-old from Beijing who now lives in Seattle. Many of the stories people share online are “about struggling in life and slowly getting through it by relying on yourself,” which many young people in China can relate to, she says, adding that some of her friends have also started saying “life is too short” or “you never know what will happen tomorrow.”
Zhu tells TIME that she and her friends in China enjoy spending on things for themselves like Pop Mart’s viral Labubu dolls, personal luxuries like handbags, or hobby-related gear like camera lenses.
“After I started working, I realized that to keep life feeling exciting, material things sometimes play a role,” Zhu says. “If it’s something you can afford, it’s often seen as a self-reward.”
The mentality is just one example of how young people in China are reacting and adapting to a fast-changing and often atomizing urban society. Ashley Dudarenok, who runs a China- and Hong Kong-based consumer research consultancy, tells TIME that these trends among China’s Gen Z are a “rational response” to a hyper-competitive job market, stagnant wages, and rising costs of living.
“When traditional markers of success like marriage and homeownership become structurally inaccessible for many, young people are forced to redefine what a ‘good life’ means,” Dudarenok says. “If they cannot afford a house, they can at least afford to treat themselves to a nice meal or a Pop Mart toy that brings them joy.”
Chinese families have traditionally lived close to each other, at times with several generations living under one roof. But in recent decades, many Chinese, especially younger generations, have left their homes in rural areas to live and work in big cities like Beijing and Chongqing.
The country has seen a dramatic rise in people living alone, with more than 100 million single-person households, according to an annual report from the National Bureau of Statistics of China in 2024, a number that is estimated to reach 150 to 200 million by 2030.
“People enjoy having their own space and being able to live at their own pace without family pressure,” Zhu says, but living alone “can also be isolating, especially in big cities where social connections can feel shallow.”
“Rapid urbanization and the rise of the digital economy have created a new social landscape,” says Dudarenok. The Chinese government has taken steps to regulate AI companions amid global concern over AI-fueled psychotic delusions and self-harm. The move, Dudarenok adds, is “recognition that these new forms of companionship and social interaction are becoming a permanent feature of Chinese society.”
The app “Si le ma”—Are you dead yet?—has attracted worldwide attention as it’s become one of the most downloaded apps in China in recent weeks. It has just one function: users tap a button on their phones everyday as virtual proof of life to their social network. If a user fails to do so for two consecutive days, the app automatically sends an email to a chosen emergency contact.
Ian Lü, one of the app developers, told the Associated Press that the app serves as an effortless way to let your loved ones know that you’re safe.
But to Zhu, who lives across the globe from her family, the app’s popularity is proof that social isolation has become an accepted reality. The idea of living, and dying, alone may be most closely associated with the elderly, but the app is largely marketed to the young.
“It reflects a sense that young people also feel they could die at any time while living alone, and that because of isolation, friends or family might not notice or do regular wellness checks,” Zhu says. “Rather than making me feel more secure, it shows how lonely and disconnected modern life can be, even for people who are young.”
The app may take a unique approach but it addresses a phenomenon that is not unique to China, underscored by its popularity in places like Singapore, the U.K., India, the Netherlands, and the U.S., and by the wave of copycat apps that has followed. Last week, the app’s developers said they planned to change its name to “Demumu”—a portmanteau of the word “death” and the babble-like naming pattern of Labubu—to cater more to a global market. The announcement disappointed many users, who have commented on social media that they could connect with the matter-of-fact name. Developers said they would crowdsource name suggestions in exchange for a 666 yuan ($96) reward.
“Some netizens say that the ‘Are you dead?’ greeting feels like a carefree joke between close friends—it’s both heartfelt and gives a sense of unguarded ease,” writer He Tao wrote in a commentary for Yicai, the Chinese Business Network. “It likely explains why so many young people unanimously like this app.”
Whether or not young people in China are actually concerned about a premature death, He wrote, the app’s success “serves as a darkly humorous social metaphor, reminding us to pay attention to the living conditions and inner world of contemporary young people. Those who downloaded it clearly need more than just a functional security measure; they crave a signal of being seen and understood.”
‘Reshaping’ traditional values
The individualism taking form among Chinese youth is different from the “rugged, self-reliant individualism often associated with the West,” Dudarenok says. “Chinese youth are not necessarily breaking from their families or culture,” but “they are carving out more space for personal expression and emotional needs within those structures.”
The Spring Festival or Lunar New Year, which begins this year on Feb. 17, is the most significant holiday in China, and it has historically centered on family and relatives. That view hasn’t changed among young people, according to a 2025 survey of Gen Z’s attitudes towards the Spring Festival or Lunar New Year, but some of their ways of celebrating it have. More than a third of the nearly 6,000 respondents said they spend more time socializing online than in person during the holiday, while digital traditions like sending virtual hongbaos or red packets and celebrating with “cyber relatives”—group chats, online communities, and even influencers that young people digitally “visit” during the festive period—have become more popular.
“The tradition is still there, but the social unit has shifted from family to chosen communities,” says Zhu. “It’s less about rejecting tradition and more about reshaping it.”
Many young people in China also value the holiday for more personal reasons, with the extended eight-day break from work or school ranking as their top reason to celebrate, according to the survey. Around half of the respondents also said they spend more during the holiday, particularly on livestream shopping or gaming.
The self-love memes are just another example of how young people are rewriting traditional values.
For older generations, “self-love had to be earned,” Zeng Yuli wrote about the trend in an op-ed for Chinese magazine Sixth Tone.
“If you wanted to treat yourself, you had better first finish the project, get a promotion, or reach your weight loss goals,” Zeng wrote. But among China’s younger generations, “regardless of your success, laoji still deserves compassion, is still worth that milk tea or hotpot, and is still allowed an afternoon of doing nothing.”
Familial expectations are still there, Zhu says. The survey notes that young people, especially young women, find themselves overwhelmed by questions about their careers or marriage at family gatherings during the Lunar New Year. The country’s birthrate fell 17% last year to the lowest level since 1949 when the People’s Republic of China was established, in spite of government efforts to encourage couples to have children.
But increasingly, those pressures are butting heads with an economic reality that is pushing many young people to reconsider what success means for them. A growing “lie flat” movement of young people in China are choosing a “low-desire life,” moving out of big cities to more rural areas or even out of the country, and rejecting the common grueling work hours of “9 9 6,” or 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.
For Zhu’s parents, success “means stability: owning a home, having a stable career, getting married, and raising children.”
“For me,” she says, “success is more about personal fulfillment and mental well-being. Having financial independence, time for hobbies, meaningful relationships, and a sense of freedom.”
Usha Vance, the wife of Vice President J.D. Vance, has already made history in a few ways: she’s the first person of color to become Second Lady and the youngest Second Lady since the Truman Administration. She may also soon be the first sitting Second Lady in modern history to bear a child in over 150 years.
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“We’re very excited to share the news that Usha is pregnant with our fourth child, a boy,” the Vice President shared on social media Tuesday. “Usha and the baby are doing well, and we are all looking forward to welcoming him in late July.”
In the message, the Vice President thanked military doctors for “[taking] excellent care of our family” and staff members “who do so much to ensure that we can serve the country while enjoying a wonderful life with our children.”
J.D., 41, and Usha, 40, met at Yale University and married in 2014. They have three kids: Ewan, 8; Vivek, 5; and Mirabel Rose, 4.
Before Usha Vance, the only sitting Second Lady in modern history to give birth was President Ulysses S. Grant’s Vice President Schuyler Colfax’s wife Ellen, who had a son in 1870; birth records before then are unclear.
The Trump White House extended its congratulatory message to the Vances, and in a post on X, called itself “The most pro-family administration in history!”
“I want more babies in the United States of America,” Vance said at a March for Life rally last year. “I want more happy children in our country, and I want beautiful young men and women who are eager to welcome them into the world and eager to raise them.”
Correction: The original version of this story mischaracterized the historic nature of Usha Vance’s pregnancy. She would be the first sitting Second Lady to bear a child in over 150 years, not ever.
Four decades since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was first observed, members from across industries acknowledged that work remains to be done in civil rights, racial equity, and shared humanity at a TIME Impact Dinner on Monday night in Los Angeles.
TIME brought together industry leaders, advocates, and artists, as well as the architects of the national holiday, for the dinner, themed “Advancing the Dream — From Healing to Action.”
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“Our hope is that tonight sparks ideas, deepens understanding, and strengthens connection,” said Loren Hammonds, the head of documentary at TIME Studios, in his opening remarks. “But most importantly, that it fuels the kind of collective action that Dr. King called us toward: action rooted in courage, compassion, and a belief in our shared humanity; and the power that comes from civic responsibility, community healing, and the vital role the arts play in moving these efforts forward.”
Throughout the dinner, six special guests gave toasts about continuing commitments to champion justice and community and how storytelling can help support these efforts and honor the late Dr. King’s legacy.
La June Montgomery Tabron
La June Montgomery Tabron, president & CEO of the philanthropic organization W.K. Kellogg Foundation, which sponsored the TIME Impact Dinner, raised her glass “not just to the dreamers, but to the artists and storytellers who show us what’s possible and the leaders who make it real.”
“In so many ways, my life has been a realization of Dr. King’s dream—and only over time have I come to understand how deeply his words have shaped my career and the responsibility I have felt to help extend that dream to others,” she said.
[video id=8EmVU0ah vertical video_text=La June Montgomery Tabron: "In this moment of struggle and uncertainty, everything is possible.”]
In Tabron’s toast, she recognized that 40 years since the first celebration of MLK Day, “everything we’ve fought for, all the progress we’ve made, hangs in the balance. But the inverse is also true. In this moment of struggle and uncertainty, everything is possible.”
Colman Domingo
Award-winning American actor, playwright, producer, and director Colman Domingo says that as a storyteller, he feels deeply connected to the dream Dr. King spoke of, “a dream shaped by language, by clarity, by conviction, and by the courage to name injustice plainly.” He added the holiday and the TIME Impact Dinner “is not only about challenging systems that fail us, but about telling fuller truths and strengthening the human connections that those systems too often erode.”
In his toast, Domingo acknowledged Aml Ameen, whom he acted alongside in the 2023 biopic Rustin about civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. In the film, Ameen portrayed King, while Domingo portrayed King’s close advisor Rustin. “As a storyteller, I stand shoulder to shoulder with this man,” Domingo said of Ameen, “and I want to stand shoulder to shoulder in this room with all of you tonight as we continue to march forth and do the work, the good work.”
Appearing to allude to the political climate in the U.S., Domingo encouraged everyone not to be downhearted. “These are dark times; well, we’ve always lived in dark times,” he said. “And what do we do? We get up again and again and again, and we do the work, and we love, and we dance, and we write, and we play, and we make this world bend a little further towards justice.”
aja monet
Los Angeles-based surrealist blues poet aja monet also paid tribute to King and his legacy through poetic remarks. She began with a reference to King’s famous sermon, “The Drum Major Instinct,” which King delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Feb. 4, 1968, just two months before his assassination, and she emphasized how that sermon speaks to the human desire to stand out.
monet, in her speech, lauded King at times—“Like many prophetic messages, Dr. King offers a view into now, the very age of the attention economy, a generation raised on the proclamation of me or I, without context of we or us”—as well as decried his demise. “There is no telling what Dr. King would say of this current moment, because this moment was stolen from him, an assassination turned into a holiday.”
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In her performance, monet imagined an interaction between King and renowned American jazz drummer Max Roach, offering musicmaking as an analogy for changemaking. “The question we all must confront is, who are we on the bandstand, and what kind of musician do we choose to be?” she said, before adding: “Pick up your instrument. It’s not time for you to sit down. Play like you know how to listen.”
Dolores Huerta
Labor leader and civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, an inaugural TIME Latino Leader in 2023 whose work with migrant farmworkers birthed the United Farm Workers of America, said in her toast that crucial to King’s legacy was his work with working people and the poor.
Huerta also honored Rustin and actor-singer Harry Belafonte, who were pivotal figures in the American civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s, as well as King’s widow Coretta Scott King, who worked with Stevie Wonder to establish Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a national holiday.
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“We’ve got to remember not only Dr. King, but we’ve got to remember everybody else that worked with him and that made the holiday possible, that made his legacy possible, the legacy that all of us have got to continue to commit, that we are not going to stop and we’re going to keep on working and we can realize his dream,” Huerta said, before ending her toast with chants to King and repeating the UFW slogan she famously coined: “¡Sí se puede!”
Ryan Alexander Holmes
In his toast, content creator and actor Ryan Alexander Holmes—born to a Chinese immigrant mother and an African American father—talked about the racial tensions he experienced growing up. Holmes pointed to how he saw, in 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement and the Stop Asian Hate movement being pitted against each other. “Because I am both Black and Asian, I am not armed with the illusion of choosing a side, because both are in my DNA,” he said. “In my blood is the unification of both—the very dream Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke into existence.”
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He ended his toast with how his grandfather’s life ended in gun-related violence, similar to King’s, and how his late grandfather had passed down a dream of continuous improvement. “It is now my dream, and it is the dream of everyone in this room—to make the next generation better than the next—and it was also Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream.”
Stevie Wonder
R&B legend Stevie Wonder opened his toast with a question: “What will it take for us to say enough is enough? Armed, masked men marching down the streets, snatching American citizens off the streets?” The question appeared to be in reference to ongoing immigration enforcement across multiple states, which has led to deaths and widespread protests against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Wonder called on the dinner attendees to “remember your responsibility” in upholding justice, and he challenged them “to find our own personal resistance to the evil forces at work.”
Stevie Wonder, the R&B hitmaker behind “Superstition” and “I Just Called to Say I Love You,” among others, said that he was five years old when he first heard the voice of a then-emerging young civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“I felt the need for us to celebrate a man who spent his life fighting, fighting for those rights, the rights for equality, the rights for civil rights, the rights for justice, the rights for the things that we say that this nation stands for,” Wonder said Monday at a TIME Impact Dinner commemorating the holiday. Wonder added that people must understand the level of “commitment and responsibility” needed to continue to champion those rights.
The film, which attendees on Monday got an exclusive sneak peek of the trailer for and which is set for release later this year, centers on Wonder’s iconic “Happy Birthday” song that was released on his 1980 album Hotter Than July.
The documentary feature is directed by Academy Award-nominated director Traci Curry, who co-directed Attica (2021) and the National Geographic documentary series Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time (2025). Curry said Monday that the film is an “invitation for the audience to reconsider some very familiar aspects of our culture” as it dives deep into the creation and the history of the birthday song.
Wonder’s song galvanized a movement honoring King’s legacy and—with the help of King Jr.’s widow, Coretta Scott King, and the Congressional Black Caucus—a bill to create the holiday landed on the U.S. House floor in 1983, which former President Ronald Reagan signed into law that November.
Curry said that the documentary could also offer a blueprint for mass movements, recognizing the current political climate in the U.S. “We find ourselves in a political moment in this country where the rights that Dr. King and the members of the civil rights movement fought so hard for are in peril, as is our very democracy,” Curry says. “And I think we are in a moment where people are looking for a blueprint of what to do.”
When asked about what artists can do to lead change, Wonder referenced the lyrics to another of his songs, “Superstition,” in which he sings: “When you believe in things you don’t understand, then you suffer / Superstition ain’t the way.”
“Do your research,” he explained. “Discover the truth. Truth is the light, and we, as people of this nation and all over the world, must remember that we hold the power, and we must use that power, the gift that we have, the opportunity that we have. Use that power to educate, motivate, and inspire the young people of today.”
“I would hope that artists that get it will get it and do something about it,” he concluded. “I can’t tell you what to do, but you better do the right thing.”
TIME Impact Dinner: Advancing the Dream — From Healing to Action was presented by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
President Donald Trump shared what appeared to be a message from French President Emmanuel Macron questioning his moves on Greenland amid the Trump Administration’s renewed push to take control of the territory.
“My friend, We are totally in line on Syria. We can do great things on Iran,” read the message, which was attached as a screenshot to Trump’s Truth Social post late Monday night, early Tuesday. “I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland.”
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Macron also offered to host a G7 meeting in Paris after the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week.
“Let us try to build great things : 1) i can set up a g7 meeting after Davos in Paris on thursday afternoon. I can invite the ukrainians, the danish, the syrians and the russians in the margins 2) let us have a dinner together in Paris together on thursday before you go back to the us,” the message read.
Trump did not include a reason for sharing the message, captioning the post only with “Note from President Emmanuel Macron, of France.” TIME has reached out to the White House and Macron’s official residence, the Élysée Palace, for comment. AFP reported that the French President’s entourage confirmed the authenticity of the message.
Trump also shared a message from NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte after a phone call concerning Greenland assuring Trump that he is “committed to finding a way forward on Greenland.”
“As I expressed to everyone, very plainly, Greenland is imperative for National and World Security,” Trump said in a post early Tuesday, adding that he would be meeting with “various parties” about Greenland in Davos. “There can be no going back — On that, everyone agrees!”
Over the weekend, Trump threatened to impose a 10% tariff on European allies from Feb. 1, which would increase to 25% in June, unless Denmark agrees to sell Greenland to the U.S. He also suggested that the use of force was not off the table in a letter sent to Norway’s leader Jonas Gahr Støre.
“Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace,” Trump said in the letter.
Trump has also sparred with Macron in recent days. While the E.U. weighs potential retaliatory tariffs of €93 billion ($108 billion) on U.S. goods among other countermeasures, Macron has called Trump’s tariff threat over Greenland “unacceptable” and pushed for the E.U. to use its anti-coercion instrument for the first time, which could restrict U.S. participation in the E.U. market. Trump also floated the possibility of imposing 200% tariffs on French wine and champagne after Macron declined to join Trump’s “Board of Peace” over concerns that the board’s charter goes beyond the U.N. mandate allowing it to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza through 2027.
“Nobody wants him because he’s going to be out of office very soon,” Trump told reporters on Monday after his invitation was rebuffed.
Among a number of overnight posts on his social media platform, Trump also shared two apparently AI-generated or edited images depicting a U.S. takeover of Greenland. One showed a photo of him in the Oval Office talking to European leaders back in August with a fake map of Greenland overlaid with the U.S. flag in the background. (Canada and Venezuela were also overlaid with the U.S. flag.) The other showed him, flanked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President J.D. Vance, planting the U.S. flag in Greenland soil.
Donald Trump sent an ominous warning to the Prime Minister of Norway, suggesting that war could be on the table in his pursuit of Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.
In a letter shared late Sunday by PBS journalist Nick Schifrin from the U.S. President to Norway’s leader Jonas Gahr Støre, Trump warned that after not winning last year’s Nobel Peace Prize “for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS,” he “no longer feel[s] an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”
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Trump has in the past conflated the honor, which is given by the Norway-based Nobel Committee, with the nation and its government. Of his denial of the Peace Prize, Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity earlier this month: “It’s been a very big embarrassment to the country of Norway. Whether they have anything to do with it or not. I think they do. They say they don’t.”
Trump’s letter to Støre went on to tie his warning of no longer thinking “purely of peace” to his campaign to take over Greenland.
“Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway?” he continued. “There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.”
The National Security Council also reportedly forwarded the letter to European ambassadors in Washington, according to Schifrin’s X post.
Støre confirmed to Norwegian news outlet VG that he received the letter, saying that Trump’s note was a response to an earlier message where he and Finland’s President Alexander Stubb sought a conversation with their U.S. counterpart.
“The President is committed to establishing long-term peace at home and abroad,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement to TIME, when asked about the letter. “President Trump believes Greenland is a strategically important location that is critical from the standpoint of national security, and he is confident Greenlanders would be better served if protected by the United States from modern threats in the Arctic region.”
Trump’s message to Støre comes as he escalated pressure on fellow member-states in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) defense alliance to deliver Greenland to him. On Saturday, Trump announced on Truth Social that starting Feb. 1, he’s imposing a 10% tariff on a handful of NATO members, including Norway and Denmark, for sending troops to Greenland. That tariff will remain—and even increase to 25% come June—“until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland,” he said.
NATO countries have fiercely opposed Trump’s plan to occupy Greenland, and have criticized the U.S. President’s attempts to pressure its allies with tariffs, which leaders from Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden have described as “blackmail,” to hand over the Danish territory.
Following the threat, European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, have reportedly considered using the European Union’s anti-coercion instrument—the bloc’s retaliatory trade tool nicknamed the trade “bazooka” for how it could upend trans-Atlantic trade. The “bazooka” has never been used before on any country, but should the E.U. choose to, it could severely limit U.S. access to E.U. trade markets, through either tariffs or other import control measures.
Donald Trump has described his proposed “Board of Peace”—the body that will oversee the transition and reconstruction of the war-wrought Gaza Strip—as “the Greatest and Most Prestigious Board ever assembled at any time, any place.” But that prestige apparently comes with a hefty price tag.
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Countries will have to cough up at least $1 billion in order to secure a permanent seat on the board, according to a draft charter, while other members will have three-year terms. Bloomberg first reported on the high fee, and TheTimes of Israel posted a copy of the draft charter text.
“Each Member State shall serve a term of no more than three years from this Charter’s entry into force, subject to renewal by the Chairman. The three-year membership term shall not apply to Member States that contribute more than USD $1,000,000,000 in cash funds to the Board of Peace within the first year of the Charter’s entry into force,” the draft reportedly says.
It’s unclear how exactly the contribution will be used. The Washington Post reported, citing an unnamed senior European official, that European leaders are in talks over Trump’s ambitions for the board, which appear to be more expansive than just settling the Gaza conflict. The official also reportedly said that despite Europe’s commitments to the Strip, there’s little appetite to significantly fund an organization that advances a Trump-led world order, amid speculation that the Board of Peace is being devised as an alternative to the United Nations, which the U.S. under Trump has increasingly been hostile to.
Bloomberg added, citing unnamed sources, that most countries that could have joined the board have found it unacceptable that the draft appears to suggest Trump—who would be the board’s inaugural chair—would manage its funds.
In dispelling claims about the fee, the White House’s rapid response account on X said the fee “simply offers permanent membership to partner countries who demonstrate deep commitment to peace, security, and prosperity.” An unnamed U.S. official also told Bloomberg that all money the board raises will be used to accomplish its mandate to rebuild Gaza.
Invitations to join Trump’s board were sent out to several countries over the weekend, including India, Jordan, Türkiye, and Egypt. Some of them, particularly those allied with Trump, swiftly accepted the invite: Argentina President Javier Milei said it was an “honor” to be invited as he posted Trump’s invitation letter on social media, as did Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.
Others, however, were more circumspect with the invitation. British paper The Times of London reported that U.K. ministers are concerned about where funds would go and what legal framework the board is using to operate. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters Sunday that Trump had approached him about the board weeks back but said that “with respect to the specifics of the ‘Board of Peace’, we haven’t gone through all the details of the structure, how it’s going to work, what financing is for, etc. … And so we will work through those in the coming days.”
On Friday, the White House announced the board’s founding members, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. special envoy for peace missions Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, and World Bank Group president Ajay Banga. A spokesperson for Blair told Bloomberg that he wasn’t involved in determining board membership and that questions about the high fee should be directed to the Trump Administration.
The Trump Administration has also said that the board “will set the framework and handle the funding for the redevelopment of Gaza,” but a review of the draft charter text makes no explicit mention of Gaza. The draft charter describes the board as “an international organization that seeks to promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict.”
The U.N. Security Council in November adopted a resolution backing Trump’s proposed board to set the framework and coordinate funding for Gaza’s redevelopment, though it only authorized the board’s mandate until 2027.
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