President Donald Trump says Ukraine and Russia are ‘making progress’ toward a peace agreement, but he conceded that the conflict remains ‘difficult’ to solve.

Trump made the comments while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday night, giving insight into the ongoing Ukraine-Russia talks. He went on to say that U.S. Envoy Steve Witkoff would soon be engaging in talks in Moscow, potentially alongside Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

‘We’re having good talks,’ Trump said. ‘Ukraine is doing well. I think they’re pretty happy about it. I’d like to see it end, and we won’t know for a little while. Well, we’re making progress.’

‘We settled eight wars, and I thought this would be one of the easier ones because of my relationship with President Putin, but this is probably one of the more difficult ones. There’s a lot of hatred,’ he added.

Trump said that Europe is playing a large part in ensuring there are security guarantees for Ukraine to prevent any further aggression from Russia.

The Trump administration had come under scrutiny last week after presenting a 28-point peace plan to U.S. lawmakers. Some lawmakers, including Republicans, initially described it as a ‘wish list’ for Russia.

Trump downplayed that plan while speaking Tuesday night, telling reporters that it was ‘just a map.’

‘All that was was a map. That was not a plan. It was, a concept. And from there they’re taking each one of the 28 points, and then you get down to 22 points. A lot of them were solved and actually very favorably solved. So, so we’ll see how we’ll see what happens,’ he said.

While the talks are moving quickly, Trump said he does not have a deadline for securing a deal.

‘The deadline for me is when it’s over,’ he said. ‘I think everybody’s tired of fighting at this moment. They are losing, losing too many people.’

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee issued an order dismissing the 2020 election interference case against President Donald Trump and his co-defendants after the state of Georgia had moved to drop the matter.

‘The State having moved for an entry of nolle prosequi for all remaining defendants, the Court grants the motion,’ the order declares. ‘This case is hereby dismissed in its entirety.’

Trump’s lead Georgia defense counsel Steve Sadow described the case as ‘lawfare.’

‘The political persecution of President Trump by disqualified DA Fani Willis is finally over. This case should never have been brought. A fair and impartial prosecutor has put an end to this lawfare,’ Sadow said in the statement.

Peter J. Skandalakis, who took over prosecution after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was disqualified from handling it, filed a motion to dismiss the case earlier Wednesday in order to ‘serve the interests of justice and promote judicial finality.’

‘This entire case, from the initiation of the District Attorney’s investigation in 2021 to the present, is without precedent,’ noted Skandalakis. ‘In my professional judgment, the citizens of Georgia are not served by pursuing this case in full for another five to ten years.’

The Georgia case yielded the iconic 2023 mugshot of then-candidate Trump.

‘Never before, and hopefully never again, will our country face circumstances such as these. The case is now nearly five years removed from President Trump’s phone call with the Secretary of State, and two years have passed since the Grand Jury returned charges against President Trump and the eighteen other defendants,’ Skandalakis noted. ‘There is no realistic prospect that a sitting President will be compelled to appear in Georgia to stand trial on the allegations in this indictment. Donald J. Trump’s current term as President of the United States of America does not expire until January 20, 2029; by that point, eight years will have elapsed since the phone call at issue.’

The prosecutor explained why the other defendants in the criminal case would not be tried separately. 

‘Severing President Trump from the remaining defendants and conducting separate trials, while simultaneously waiting for the conclusion of his term and addressing all of the aforementioned legal issues, would be both illogical and unduly burdensome and costly for the State and for Fulton County,’ Skandalakis wrote. ‘The Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia lacks the resources to conduct multiple trials in this matter.’

Fox News’ Samantha Daigle and David Lewkowict contributed to this report

A federal court ruled Wednesday that President Donald Trump and his former lawyer, Alina Habba, are still on the hook for a $1 million penalty for filing a ‘frivolous’ lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, former FBI director James Comey and others.

The ruling from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals relates to a now-dismissed lawsuit filed by Trump relating to Russian collusion claims. Trump was first ordered to pay the $1 million in the case in 2023, but he and Habba appealed the ruling.

In addition to Clinton and Comey, their lawsuit also named Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and many more.

Trump and Habba, who now serves as U.S. attorney for New Jersey, will be forced to pay approximately $938,000 — split between the dozens of individuals named in the lawsuit.

In the original lawsuit, Trump accused the high-profile figures of conspiring to tank his successful 2016 presidential campaign.

‘Here we are confronted with a lawsuit that should never have been filed, which was completely frivolous, both factually and legally, and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose,’ wrote Judge Donald Middlebrooks in his 2023 ruling, which was upheld Wednesday.

‘Mr. Trump is a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries. He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer,’ he added.

Two defendants in the case also claimed that Trump’s appeal itself was frivolous and sought additional sanctions for it, but the court disagreed.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment, but they did not immediately respond.

Wednesday’s ruling comes just days after a separate federal court dismissed false statements charges leveled against Comey. Judge Cameron Currie ruled that the charges were brought by an unqualified U.S. attorney. That U.S. attorney is Lindsay Halligan, who Trump appointed to the position just weeks prior.

Currie, a Clinton appointee based in South Carolina, was brought in from out of state to preside over proceedings about the question of Halligan’s authority because it presented a conflict for the Virginia judges. Comey’s and James’ challenges to Halligan’s appointment were consolidated because of their similarity.

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A local Namibian politician named Adolf Hitler Uunona is widely expected to retain his council seat in the country’s latest round of regional elections, drawing international attention for a name he says carries no ideological meaning.

A longtime member of Namibia’s ruling SWAPO party, he is running again in the Ompundja constituency in the northern Oshana region. 

While final tallies have not yet been released, several international outlets report he is projected to win by a wide margin, consistent with previous elections. SWAPO, which has governed Namibia since independence in 1990, has shifted from its socialist liberation roots toward a more centrist, market-oriented governing approach.

His German dictator-linked name — ‘Adolf Hitler’ — was given to him by his father, he told the German outlet Bild, who he claimed did not understand the historical weight the name carried.

‘It was a perfectly normal name for me when I was a kid,’ Uunona told Bild. ‘It wasn’t until I grew older that I realized this man wanted to subjugate the whole world and killed millions of Jews.’

He said his childhood name reflected no political intent and stressed that he has never held extremist beliefs. 

‘The fact I have this name does not mean I want to conquer Oshana,’ he said, adding in earlier interviews he generally goes by Adolf Uunona in daily life.

Namibia was a German colony from 1884 to 1915, and Germanic names and place names remain common in some communities. Historians note that this legacy sometimes results in unusual or jarring combinations by modern standards, though they carry no inherent ideological meaning.

According to official information from the Oshana regional government, the Ompundja constituency has 4,659 inhabitants, 19 administrative centers and covers 466 square kilometers.

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would not invite South Africa to the 2026 G-20 summit in Florida, citing alleged ‘horrific human rights abuses.’

‘To put it more bluntly, they are killing white people and randomly allowing their farms to be taken from them,’ Trump alleged in a Truth Social post. ‘At my direction, South Africa will NOT be receiving an invitation to the 2026 G-20, which will be hosted in the Great City of Miami, Florida next year,’ he added.

The Embassy of South Africa did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Clayson Monyela, head of diplomacy for the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, dismissed the notion that South Africa could be shut out.

‘South Africa is a founding member of the G-20. We don’t get invited to G-20 meetings and leaders summit. Those are gatherings of members. If other members allow this then the G-20 will die,’ Monyela told Fox News Digital.

‘Other countries have already told us that they too will boycott the U.S. G-20 if South Africa is excluded,’ Monyela added.

If carried out, the move would break with more than two decades of precedent and mark the first time a member has been formally excluded from the gathering of the world’s major economies.

The G-20, which brings together major advanced and emerging economies and accounts for roughly 80% of global GDP and two-thirds of the world’s population, has historically operated on the principle of inclusion.

That tradition already was strained after the U.S. boycott of the 2025 meeting held in Johannesburg earlier in November.

The Trump administration argued that the country’s government had failed to address violence and discrimination it claimed was occurring in rural farming communities. Additionally, the U.S. objected to the meeting’s focus on climate and development issues rather than core economic priorities.

The boycott marked a notable break from past U.S. engagement, leaving the world’s largest economy missing from a key forum for global economic policymaking.

Trump also said in the same Truth Social post that he would halt U.S. payments to South Africa.

‘South Africa has demonstrated to the world they are not a country worthy of membership anywhere and we are going to stop all payments and subsidies to them, effective immediately,’ Trump wrote.

The White House and State Department did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for further details.

It remains unclear how the move will affect the country’s standing within the G-20 or broader U.S.–South Africa relations ahead of the 2026 summit in Florida.

Relations between Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa have steadily deteriorated in recent months.

In February, Trump suspended U.S. aid to South Africa, alleging discrimination against White farmers. Tensions escalated again in March when the State Department expelled the South African ambassador, labeling him ‘persona non grata.’

In May, the two leaders clashed in the Oval Office when Trump pressed Ramaphosa over allegations that White Afrikaners were being targeted and killed in South Africa. 

Ramaphosa pushed back, telling Trump he had seen no evidence to support those claims.

Paul Tilsley contributed to this report from Johannesburg, South Africa.

Senate Democrats are ready to break a fragile truce that would avert a partial government shutdown after a Minneapolis man was fatally shot by a border patrol agent on Saturday. 

Congressional Democrats were already leery of backing funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the wake of the agency’s presence in Minnesota and beyond, but the shooting of 37-year-old Alex Pretti during an immigration enforcement operation has shattered what little unity they had on the bill. 

Now, Senate Democrats, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., plan to vote against the legislation, which is currently included in a broader funding package along with five other spending bills. 

Schumer, in a statement on Saturday, said that Democrats tried to get ‘common sense reforms’ in the DHS funding bill, but charged that ‘because of Republicans’ refusal to stand up to President Trump, the DHS bill is woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses’ of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

 ‘I will vote no,’ Schumer said. ‘Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.’

Schumer’s play call serves as a blow to Senate Republicans, who worked with their colleagues across the aisle to find compromises in the DHS bill, in particular. It also comes as the deadline to fund the government is rapidly approaching on Friday, Jan. 30. Further complicating matters is the arctic storm ripping across the country, which has already forced the upper chamber to cancel votes on Monday. 

A senior Senate aide told Fox News Digital that Senate Democrats had been for weeks saying that they weren’t interested in shutting the government down again, and had praised the bipartisan nature of the government funding process up until Saturday.

 ‘These bills were negotiated with Dems — they agreed to what’s in them,’ they said.

The agency would be fully funded in the current proposal with several restrictions and reporting requirements that if not met, would act as triggers to turn off certain cash flows. 

Ripping the bill from the current six-bill funding package would cause a domino effect of headaches in Congress, given that any changes to the package would have to go through the House.

The lower chamber is gone until Feb. 2, making the likelihood of a partial shutdown much higher. 

Before the shooting, a handful of Senate Democrats had already made their opposition to the legislation known, including senators Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Tim Kaine, D-Va.

Kaine, notably, crossed the aisle last year to join a cohort of Senate Democratic caucus members to reopen the government after the longest shutdown in U.S. history.

He was not the only member of that group of eight to voice opposition — senators Catherine Cortez Masto, D-N.V., and Jacky Rosen, D-N.M., both came out against the DHS bill’s inclusion in the broader package on Saturday. 

‘My personal guiding principle has always been ‘agree where you can and fight where you must,’ Rosen said in a statement. ‘And I believe this is a time when we must fight back.’

Meanwhile, House lawmakers are on a week-long recess after passing their latest spending package in two chunks — one standalone vote on DHS funding and another wrapping together funding legislation for the departments of War, Health and Human Services, Labor, Education, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development — this past Thursday.

A provision was added to the legislation before it passed the House that would combine the bills into one large package for the Senate to consider at once. It was then expected to be paired with other bills the Senate has not yet considered but which passed the House this month.

Changing that ahead of the Jan. 30 shutdown deadline would mean House lawmakers must return to Washington early to go through multiple procedural hurdles and another vote on the legislation — something House GOP leaders are ruling out, at least for now.

‘We passed all 12 bills over to the Senate, and they still have six in their possession that they need to pass to the president,’ a House GOP leadership source told Fox News Digital on Saturday evening, referring to the lower chamber completing its portion of Congress’ annual appropriations process. ‘We have no plan to come back next week.’

Even if House leaders changed their plans, the impending snow storm would mean lawmakers may not return until Tuesday at the earliest. That would put final passage sometime Wednesday or Thursday, virtually guaranteeing Congress does not complete consideration of the bills until after the Friday deadline.

House GOP leaders would also likely be grappling with attendance issues if they did order a return, with various lawmakers on planned trips and over a dozen busy campaigning for higher office.

A partial government shutdown would mean only agencies that Congress has not yet funded would have to reduce or cease functions — in this case, payment to active duty troops, air traffic controllers, and border patrol agents could all be affected.

Christians in Sudan are daily facing hunger, misery and terror. The new Open Doors World Watch List for 2026, which ranks the worst countries in the world for the persecution of Christians, placed the country at No. 4, up one place from last year’s report. 

There are an estimated 2 million Christians in the conflict-ridden northeastern African country. Sudan’s civil war has raged past the 1,000- day milestone with 150,000 people reported to have been killed and more than 13 million displaced. Christians have lived in Sudan since the late first century.

Many of Sudan’s Christians live in the Nuba Mountains, part of the Kordofan region. Rafat Samir, general secretary of the Sudan Evangelical Alliance, told Fox News Digital that the ‘Nuba Mountains now, where the majority of our church members are  coming from, is under siege and  bombing every day for the last six months or seven months. Last week, after Christmas, they bombed our church, hospital and school.’

Adding to the misery, a report by MEMRI, citing Christian Daily international, said 11 Sudanese Christians were killed, as they took part in a procession to their church for a religious celebration on Christmas Day by a drone operated by the government’s Sudanese Armed Forces. 18 others were injured in the attack. MEMRI reported the SAF are backed by the Muslim Brotherhood.

A State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital, ‘Since the April 2023 outbreak of conflict in Sudan, we have witnessed significant backsliding in Sudan’s overall respect for fundamental freedoms, including religious freedom. This backsliding especially impacts Sudan’s oppressed ethnic and religious populations, including Christians.’ 

In a Fox News Digital report last year, Christians were said to be eating grass to survive. Samir says the position is even more bleak in 2026: ‘even the grass is gone now.’

‘The conflict is accelerating the erasure of ancient Christian communities and sacred heritage,’ Mariam Wahba, research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told Fox News Digital. ‘These losses will be far harder to reverse than the rebuilding of roads or ministries once the guns fall silent,’ she said.

Ideologically, Sudan’s Christians face a hostile future, Samir of the Evangelical Alliance said. ‘Both sides in the civil conflict are daughters of the Islamist movement in Sudan, and the Islamic ideology of both of them is to not have tolerance for others. They consider everyone different from them is against them. The Christian is considered their enemy as part of their religious ideology, and opposing them their religious duty.’

He continued, ‘So whoever does something to harm Christians is considered favorable to the law or to Allah.’ Samir went on to say, ‘the country is getting back to the dark ages.’

Repeated and continuing attempts at getting the government’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the opposing militia, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), to reach a ceasefire have failed. Both sides admit they are still fighting and, it’s clear, killing civilians with sustained energy, particularly in the central Sudanese region of Kordofan, home to many Christians.

‘The United States is committed to ending the horrific conflict in Sudan,’ a State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital, adding, ‘Under President Trump’s leadership, we are working with our allies and others to facilitate a humanitarian truce and bring an end to external military support to the parties which is fueling the violence. President Trump wants peace in Sudan.’     

The spokesperson continued, ‘The suffering of civilians has reached catastrophic levels, with millions lacking food, water and medical care. Every day of continued fighting costs more innocent lives. The war in Sudan is an enduring threat to regional stability.’

The U.N. says fighting is increasing in Kordofan, with U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk telling reporters in Port Sudan on Jan. 18, ‘I am very worried that the atrocity crimes committed during and after the takeover of El Fasher are at grave risk of repeating themselves in the Kordofan region, where the conflict has been rapidly escalating since late October.’

‘The Kordofan states are extremely volatile,’ he continued, ‘with relentless military engagements, heavy shelling, drone bombardments and airstrikes causing widespread destruction and collapse of essential services.’

Wahba said that ‘while the United States remains kinetically active across neighboring theaters, it is unlikely to wade directly into Sudan’s civil war.’

‘President Trump’, Wahba added, ‘has signaled a clear desire to see the conflict resolved —  an objective echoed by both Egypt and Saudi Arabia — but translating that consensus into outcomes on the ground has proven far more difficult than the rhetoric suggests.’

‘For now,’ Wahba continued, ‘U.S. policy is centered on convening regional stakeholders and pressing for alignment among them, while prioritizing humanitarian corridors, aid delivery and coordination with partners willing to host talks. Washington is acting as a facilitator, not an enforcer.’

‘This posture reflects both constraint and caution. Sudan presents few reliable leverage points, no unified opposition partner, and (there’s) little appetite in Congress or the White House for another open-ended entanglement in a fragmented civil war. The result is a policy that remains fluid and reactive, and is shaped less by strategy than by crisis management,’ she said.

Despite everything, the Sudan Evangelical Alliance’s Samir has hope, ‘The Holy Spirit is moving and God’s hand is working in our country. I can tell you through this evil, this darkness, the light of love of our God is lighting in many hearts. The devil is stealing people to death every day. We pray that let us Christians live for one day more, for one day more to proclaim Jesus’s message.’