President Trump’s chaotic first two weeks have seen senior aides reverse his most promising plans for restoring realism to U.S. foreign policy, especially regarding Russia and the Mideast, reports Daniel Lazare. Well, that didn’t take long, did it? The Trump administration hadn’t even reached its two-week mark when it surrendered a major portion of its independence and fell in behind the [...]

On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration was looking to 'drive a wedge' between Russia and Iran in its effort to improve relations with Moscow while confronting Tehran. Multiple observers, from Russian foreign policy analysts to American paleo-conservatives, warn that a US-Iran clash would be a catastrophic mistake. [...]

Russia disagrees with a remark recently made by US President Donald Trump’s that branded Iran as “the number one terrorist state,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, citing partnership between Moscow and Tehran. “We do not agree with the definition,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday. [...]

Donald Trump has stated that although the US strongly supports NATO, it wants all members to make their full contributions to the alliance. His comments were made during a speech at the US Central Command in Florida. [...]

American “mainstream” journalists who want to keep their paychecks flowing and their status afloat know they must report current events in a way that respects the taboo status of the nation’s underlying inequality and oppression structures and its savage and relentless imperial criminality. Those topics are understood as off limits, as beyond the narrow parameters of acceptable and polite di [...]

The Trump administration condemns Iran as somehow responsible for a Yemeni rebel group’s attack on a Saudi warship, but ignores the Saudi-inflicted bloodbath on the Yemeni people, as Gareth Porter explained to The long-running U.S.-backed Saudi war against a Yemeni rebel group has led to mass hunger and civilian slaughter — suffering comparable to the humanitarian crisis of Aleppo in Syria [...]

President Trump’s calls for reorienting American foreign policy look to be disintegrating in his first two weeks in office as he embraces the neoconservative hostilities toward Iran and Russia, as Andrew The Trump Administration’s goal of de-escalating tensions with Russia is meeting stiff resistance in Eastern Europe where many reject the notion that a diplomatic solution can be reached ov [...]

President Trump is getting a crash course on the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers as federal courts knock down his temporary immigration ban aimed at seven mostly Muslim countries, reports Marjorie Cohn. On Jan. 27, President Trump made good on his campaign promise to institute a ban on Muslims entering the U.S. Trump’s executive order (“EO”) is titled “Protecting the Nation F [...]

The only way for US President Donald Trump to liberate Raqqa, the de facto capital of Daesh (ISIS/ISIL), from terrorists, is to join forces with Russia and Damascus on the ground, Russian military expert Ivan Konovalov told Radio Sputnik. [...]

Speaking to Sputnik, Neve Gordon, visiting Professor of Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees Donald Trump's presidency as carte blanche for Tel Aviv to act in the occupied territories. [...]

Both Beijing and Washington are by no means interested in unleashing an all-out trade war, experts believe. Beijing and Washington are exchanging signals and testing waters before starting a serious dialogue about the future of bilateral relations, Russian expert Nikita Maslennikov told Sputnik. [...]

The Department of Homeland Security has said it will stop flagging travelers from the countries under the Trump administration’s travel ban, following a federal judge’s ruling to suspend the executive order. A spokesperson for Homeland Security said in a statement on Saturday that the decision was made in order to comply with a Friday ruling by a federal judge, adding that the department wi [...]

The deputy speaker of the Russian State Duma says the US Congress is “transfixed on war and destruction,” after it issued an order to evaluate the ‘survivability’ of Russian and Chinese leaders in the event of a nuclear exchange. [...]

This is also the first time US troops will have been stationed right on Russia’s borders. It is a great concern and is part of the US buildup of empire, says Elsa Rassbach, German affiliate of War Resisters International, Code Pink. NATO's anti-Russia exercises are being ratcheted up with Germany announcing it would deploy tanks to Lithuania. [...]

If President Trump is talking about safe zones in Syria and the surrounding region, does he not know that there are already safe areas and camps run by the UNHCR in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, says foreign affairs commentator, Jonathan Steele. [...]

US mainstream media outlets, pundits and officials have pulled out all the stops in attempting to smear Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who traveled to Syria earlier this month and then had the courage to criticize the US's policy of funding and arming terrorists affiliated with al-Qaeda on national television. [...]

Thom talks Trump, trade, and trickle-down economics with economist Richard Wolff. Later on in the program, Thom talks with Alex Lawson of Social Security Works and Jessica Jackson Sloan of #cut50 about Trump’s pick of Steve Bannon to serve as chief White House strategist, how Democrats can win over working-class voters, and whether Trump could actually stage a fascist takeover of our democracy. [...]

An online petition to prevent US President Donald Trump making an official state visit to the UK has generated enough signatures to warrant it being considered for debate in parliament. [...]

US border security won't get a significant boost if a wall is built along the country's southern land border, Mark Jones, chair in Latin American Studies and the Director of the Master of Global Affairs Program at Rice University in Texas, told Sputnik. [...]