February 21 2025

1. Federal Judge Rejects Unions’ Bid to Halt Trump’s Mass Firings of Federal Workers
2. Trump Moves to Seize Control of U.S. Postal Service
3. MLB and ESPN End 30-Year TV Deal as Streaming Reshapes Sports Media
4. Shocking Deaths of Bibas Family Reignite Fears Over Gaza Cease-Fire Collapse
5. Battle for Eurasia Update: Trump’s Foreign Policy Pivot Reshapes World Order
February 21, 1848: Karl Marx publishes Communist Manifesto

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1. Federal Judge Rejects Unions’ Bid to Halt Trump’s Mass Firings of Federal Workers

A federal judge on Thursday declined to issue a temporary restraining order pausing President Donald Trump’s moves to fire thousands of employees who are on probationary status or deemed nonessential, clearing a roadblock for the new administration as it attempts sweeping changes to downsize the federal government.  U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, ruled against the National Treasury Employees Union and four other labor organizations that requested a temporary halt to the mass firings. More than half a million federal workers could lose their jobs through the Trump administration’s firings and a separate program of deferred resignations, or buyouts, the unions said in legal filings.

Article Source: WaPo

2. Trump Moves to Seize Control of U.S. Postal Service

President Donald Trump is preparing to dissolve the leadership of the U.S. Postal Service and absorb the independent mail agency into his administration, potentially throwing the 250-year-old mail provider and trillions of dollars of e-commerce transactions into turmoil.  Trump is expected to issue an executive order as soon as this week to fire the members of the Postal Service’s governing board and place the agency under the control of the Commerce Department and Secretary Howard Lutnick, according to six people familiar with the plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals.  The board is planning to fight Trump’s order, three of those people told The Washington Post. In an emergency meeting Thursday, the board retained outside counsel and gave instructions to sue the White House if the president were to remove members of the board or attempt to alter the agency’s independent status.

Article Source: WaPo

3. MLB and ESPN End 30-Year TV Deal as Streaming Reshapes Sports Media

Major League Baseball and ESPN are ending their media rights partnership after more than three decades, a sign of how legacy TV’s decline and streaming’s ascendance are changing the way Americans watch sports. The league and Disney’s ESPN said Thursday that they plan to end their current deal after the 2025 season. ESPN was due to pay the league $550 million a year from 2026 to 2028 for the right to air 30 regular season games per season, as well as the annual Home Run Derby and Wild Card playoff round.  Years of cord-cutting have upended the economics of entertainment, prompting media companies to re-evaluate some of their spending. Disney is working to improve the profitability of its direct-to-consumer business and transition ESPN to a streaming future while being prudent with its sports deals, prioritizing high profile packages such as National Basketball Association rights.

Article Source: WSJ

4. Shocking Deaths of Bibas Family Reignite Fears Over Gaza Cease-Fire Collapse

For 16 months, the smiling faces of Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, Ariel and Kfir, had been slowly receding into the background of Israeli life as their photographs — posted on walls and bus stops soon after the family’s abduction to Gaza in October 2023 — began to fade, tear and peel. On Friday, the Bibas’s lives and disturbing deaths were swept back to the forefront of Israel’s collective consciousness in such a startling and unsettling way that it set off fresh alarm about the fate of the fragile cease-fire in Gaza and the high-level diplomatic efforts, which had gathered momentum in recent days, to extend the truce and end the war. Early on Friday morning, the Israeli military announced that the body of Ms. Bibas — nominally returned, along with those of her sons, by Hamas to Israel on Thursday — appeared to be that of someone else. And an autopsy of the two boys, aged 4 and 8 months at the time of their abduction, revealed that they were killed by terrorists in Gaza, the military said. Hamas, which had previously said they were killed in an Israeli missile strike, said in a statement that it was investigating the claims and suggested that Ms. Bibas’s body might have been mistakenly confused for that of a dead Palestinian in the chaotic aftermath of an Israeli attack. Neither side’s account could be independently verified.

Article Source: NYT

5. Battle for Eurasia Update: Trump’s Foreign Policy Pivot Reshapes World Order

Editors note: This ongoing conflict pits the West, led by the United States, against an axis of adversaries, including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. At stake is dominance over the vast and strategically critical landmass of Eurasia. The conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, and rising tensions with China in East Asia are all interconnected, forming part of a larger struggle: the Battle for Eurasia. To dive deeper into my framework for understanding the Battle for Eurasia, see my article.

A. President Trump has dramatically shifted the direction of U.S. foreign policy in four short weeks, making the U.S. a less reliable ally and retreating from global commitments in ways that stand to fundamentally reshape America’s relationship with the world. His top envoys have floated concessions to Russia in peace talks that stunned European allies, followed by Trump calling Ukraine’s leader a dictator, and he kept Europeans at arms length as the negotiations began. He has dismantled the leading U.S. aid agency providing assistance to the developing world where China aims to establish a foothold. Trump’s plan to own Gaza and remove Palestinians from the enclave erased decades of Washington’s efforts to broker a two-state solution. And his plans to increase tariffs heralded an end to American-fueled globalization. No one expected Trump to handle global affairs like his predecessors. But few expected him to move so rapidly to reorient U.S. foreign policy away from the course it has charted since 1945. Since the end of World War II, the American-led system of alliances has bolstered U.S. power, most foreign policy experts say. By vowing to defend allies in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, the U.S. more than any other country took on the role of global guarantor of free trade and stability, a mission that included countering first the Soviet Union and, more recently, China. Trump has a different take: Allies take more than they give. Instead of relying on the U.S. military and its nuclear umbrella for their security, other countries should spend more on their militaries while providing economic incentives to stay in America’s good graces. Trump’s is a far more transactional, win-lose vision of foreign policy.  

B. As the United States and Russia begin talks to end the war, Moscow is pressing its advantage on the battlefield by closing in on Dnipropetrovsk, one of Ukraine’s largest regions and one with a major industrial base. Russian troops are now less than three miles from the region’s border, and they have been pushing forward in recent days. Should the Russian Army cross from the eastern Donetsk region into Dnipropetrovsk, it would deal a big blow to morale in Ukraine — marking the fifth region to face partial Russian occupation and expanding Moscow’s control over the war-torn country. It could also complicate Kyiv’s position in territorial negotiations that might arise during peace talks.  

C. Australia has warned commercial airlines that Chinese warships are conducting live-fire military exercises off the country’s east coast, prompting them to reroute flights. The Financial Times revealed this week that a Chinese naval task group of two warships and a supply vessel had travelled within 150 nautical miles of Sydney, in what one person familiar with the matter called an “unprecedented” move down Australia’s coast. The ships were being shadowed by Australian and New Zealand forces. Australian authorities warned pilots operating flights in the Tasman Sea on Friday of the Chinese exercises.

Article Source: WSJ, NYT, FT

February 21, 1848: Karl Marx publishes Communist Manifesto

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Sources

2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/02/20/judge-declines-pause-federal-worker-firings/

3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/20/trump-usps-takeover-dejoy/

4. https://www.wsj.com/business/media/espn-mlb-agree-to-end-long-term-tv-deal-1e0dde11?mod=hp_lead_pos10

5. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/21/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-hamas-bibas-hostages.html

6. A https://www.wsj.com/world/trump-zelensky-foreign-policy-world-alliances-a3592bc4?mod=hp_lead_pos1
B https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/21/world/europe/russia-closes-in-on-another-ukrainian-region-even-as-peace-talks-pick-up.html
C https://www.ft.com/content/07b8f79a-6b93-4f3f-a528-59e9d45b91ff