When I first reported on President Donald Trump’s promise to “BUILD A GREAT IRON DOME MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD,” an expert summed up the idea as “the insane ramblings of a senile old person.” But, with Trump in office, the “Iron Dome for America” plan is seemingly happening—and the project’s benefits for some of the most powerful people in the world are coming into focus.

In late January, Trump announced details for the Dome. A land-based missile-interceptor system—like the one Israel has—would not be possible to build for a country the size of the United States. Instead, military commentators coalesced around another plan: build a cloud of “satellite missile interceptors” similar to former President Ronald Reagan’s ill-fated 1980s “Star Wars” proposal.

In turn, the US Missile Defense Agency asked defense companies on January 31 to pitch space-based sensors and interceptors that could detect and defeat “advanced aerial threats” from low-space orbit. That means the proposed Iron Dome would almost certainly require thousands of satellites for putting interceptor weapons in space.

The company that currently dominates the market for such equipment? Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

“SpaceX is the only company that currently has the capacity to launch that many things,” Dr. Laura Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists told Mother Jones. “They’re such a critical resource at this point that…if you’re going to launch a lot of things, SpaceX is going to be in the mix.” 

There are—according to astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, who maintains a count of pretty much everything orbiting this planet—just over 11,000 working satellites in orbit. 6998 of them are Starlink satellites. That means 62 percent of all working satellites orbiting this planet belong to a company started byElon Musk, a drastic increase from only 5 years ago. More critically: SpaceX has the necessary launch capacity to send thousands of load-bearing satellites into orbit. They already handle the majority of NASA’s launches, for billions of dollars each year. 

“So, yeah, they’d make a ton of money,” Grego said. “And companies building these interceptors would make a ton of money.”

A paper published in February by the National Security Space Association—a military-industrial think tank—highlights this further: though it might not be capable of efficiently stopping intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), a satellite missile-interceptor system like the proposed American Iron Dome cloud would be uniquely capable of getting Elon Musk paid. 

NSSA’s Chris Williams estimated that an Iron Dome for America would require about 1,500 “space-based interceptor” satellites in low-earth orbit. This, he said, would only be possible because “the advent of low-cost launch, enabled by SpaceX, significantly reduces the anticipated cost.” 

Todd Harrison of the American Enterprise Institute put the likely cost at somewhere between $11 and $27 billion for such a system—and pointed out that despite all that money, the system would only be able to intercept up to two rockets at a time. (For context, two is a small number. The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation estimates that China has over 100 ICBMS, Russia has over 300, and the US has over 400.) 

“You need something like three interceptors to have a pretty good chance of taking down one incoming ICBM,” said John Erath, CACNP’s Policy Director. “So the numbers add up quickly, and the math isn’t good.” 

While technology has improved since Reagan dreamed of space lasers, Erath said, “that does not necessarily make it easy.” 

“You might say that protecting an American city from a nuclear attack is worth billions. That may be correct, but this is the kind of thing that needs to be discussed in Congress before it’s approved,” he added. “If you could even get to where a system like this could be made to work, the costs would be literally astronomical. That needs to be made clear to the taxpayers, who would be ultimately paying the bills.”

Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, said many missile-shield plans have come and gone since the first anti-ballistic missile system was proposed by Soviet scientists in the early 1960s. But outside of spatially limited cases like Israel’s, he’s never seen missile shield technology make anyone safer.  

“Things are very different in the nuclear context,” he said. In practice, building elaborate missile shield systems might just encourage other countries to build more missiles. During the Cold War, he explained, the Soviet Union deployed a ground-based missile defense system around Moscow. And rather than deterring tensions, it inflamed them. “[The United States] knew there was a missile defense,” he said, so “they ended up allocating, I think, 60 warheads against Moscow.” (Now, Russian spokespeople are calling the American Iron Dome plan an attempt to turn space into “an arena of armed confrontation.”) 

Grego, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, called the re-emergent idea a “fantasy,” more a branding attempt than a useful proposition.

“Invoking Iron Dome is just marketing, trying to manufacture credibility for something that has never worked,” she said. Instead of wasting money on the unachievable, she said, US efforts would be better spent on nuclear disarmament—something Trump threw his support behind this week. But paying companies like SpaceX to create an “American Iron Dome,” Grego argued, would have the opposite of that effect.

“Missile defenses are not a useful or long-term strategy for keeping the US safe from nuclear weapons,” she said. 

President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from global tax agreements and negotiations has upended international tax cooperation efforts, but not in the way he may have wanted, with some tax justice advocates saying talks may go more smoothly now. 

Trump signed an executive order just hours after returning to the White House on Jan. 20, pulling the country out of an agreement reached with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2021 that sets a 15% minimum global tax. Nearly 140 countries have signed the agreement, which seeks to prevent multinational corporations from stashing profit in jurisdictions that allow them to pay low or no taxes. But efforts to implement the new tax have stalled in the past few years. 

“This memorandum recaptures our Nation’s sovereignty and economic competitiveness by clarifying that the Global Tax Deal has no force or effect in the United States,” reads the Trump order. 

Despite the executive order, on Feb. 3, a U.S. delegation attended the first day of talks to create a separate legally binding tax framework at the United Nations, but left in the afternoon. “It seemed a bit strange when the US showed up at the UN Tax Convention negotiations yesterday. But they had apparently just come to say goodbye,” Tove Maria Ryding, tax Coordinator at the European Network on Debt and Development said in a press release. 

Before departing, the U.S. delegation had tried and failed to convince other countries to join the walkout and was the only one to abandon the negotiations, in what tax justice advocates have called “a miscalculated opening gambit.” 

A U.S. delegate said the goals of the future convention are “inconsistent with the U.S. priorities and represent [an] unwelcome overreach” and said the U.S. will reject and oppose the outcomes of the UN convention. 

“We reject the very nature of these discussions. The process that has been adopted will lead to a Convention that would unacceptably hamper nations’ ability to enact tax policies that serve the interests of their citizens, businesses, and workers,” the delegate said. 

The U.S. moves threaten to undermine the global tax efforts. Government officials in India, for example, are questioning if it is worth signing into global tax agreements unsupported by one of the world’s most powerful economies. 

It has often been the case that the United States is playing catch up in global efforts.

— Tove Maria Ryding, tax Coordinator at the European Network on Debt and Development

But Alex Cobham, chief executive at the Tax Justice Network said the U.S. walkout could give the rest of the world “an even greater chance of ending global tax abuse.” 

“While previous US presidents finessed a double game, promising to cooperate on tax but never doing so, Trump has clumsily given the game away, first pulling the US out of its own sham global tax reforms last month, and now pulling the US out of the most important tax negotiations of our lifetime,” Cobham said in a statement.

Meanwhile, OECD’s secretary general Matthias Cormann told Reuters that, while U.S. representatives raised concerns about various aspects of the minimum global tax agreement, the organization “will keep working with the U.S. and all countries at the table to support international cooperation that promotes certainty, avoids double taxation, and protects tax bases.”

For decades, the OECD has dominated international tax policy. In recent years, many developing countries, including some in the OECD, had begun to question the outsized influence of the organization’s wealthy members and whether a more representative body should be in charge. In August 2023, U.N. secretary general António Guterres issued a report calling for a shake-up of global tax rules — and more power for the U.N. to set them. The report, which was critical of the OECD’s approach, analyzed current international tax cooperation arrangements and laid out Guterres’ vision to ensure they better serve the needs of developing countries.

A year later, following efforts kickstarted by African member states and facing strong pushback from mostly wealthy member states, a majority of countries at the UN voted to approve ambitious parameters for a new global tax convention that could herald a fresh approach to taxing multinational corporations and the super-rich.

The member states met again during the first week of February to start negotiations and are set to deliver a Convention and two early protocols by the end of 2027. 

“The response that we have seen already is that most countries stayed. European countries, along with most of the world, seem to be interested in being part of the negotiations,” Ryding told ICIJ. “It has often been the case that the United States is playing catch up in global efforts. We have seen this before with climate, biodiversity, the [World Health Organization]. The [UN global tax] convention is going to include tax to multinationals so sooner or later the U.S. will have to cooperate.”

Investigative news organizations across the globe are scrambling to survive and fearing a backlash from authoritarian regimes following the Trump administration’s foreign assistance freeze and other moves to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The United States allocated $268 million in 2025 to support independent media and the free flow of information. A USAID fact sheet from 2023 that was on its website before the site went dark on Feb. 1, showed the agency provided funding to more than 700 non-state news outlets and 6,000 journalists, the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders reported.

Autocrats who have long attempted to control the media have cheered the foreign assistance freeze. A spokesman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry described USAID as “a machine for interfering in internal affairs” and “a mechanism for changing regimes.” El Salvador’s president accused USAID of using its funds to “fuel dissent [and] finance protests.” And Iran’s state-run media praised aid cuts that it described as “cutting the budget of foreign-based opposition.”

The Trump administration’s decision “is showing authoritarian regimes: ‘Oh, they closed USAID with such ease, closed their website, made them vanish from history,’” said Rawan Damen, the director of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, which received U.S. foreign assistance. “Maybe they will next say, ‘We are not happy with ARIJ. OK, we can erase them, too.’”

For ARIJ, one of the leading investigative outlets in the Middle East, the aid freeze erased roughly 20% of its budget. Like many other outlets, the abruptness of the funding cuts and accompanying stop-work orders compounded the financial damage. News organizations also incurred expenses in 2024 that have not been reimbursed due to the aid freeze, and had already hired journalists and launched projects on the assumption that they would receive promised U.S. funds in the current year.

“There is total chaos about what this means,” Damen said. “Nobody knows what’s happening, nobody is allowed to speak to anybody.”

We are operating at a time when investigative journalism has never been more important, or more challenged,

— Gerard Ryle, ICIJ’s executive director

ICIJ received a grant from the State Department to build newsroom capacity, which was slated to cover $466,000 in expenses in 2024, and $648,000 in expenses this year. The State Department’s assistance accounted for 6.2% of ICIJ’s expenses in 2024 and 8.6% of its budget in 2025.

“ICIJ will continue to hold the powerful to account no matter what setbacks we might face. We hope that new and existing funders will understand and help us continue in our mission to expose wrongdoing so that the world can make it right,” said Gerard Ryle, ICIJ’s executive director.

“We are operating at a time when investigative journalism has never been more important, or more challenged. Bringing hundreds of the world’s top investigative reporters together to work on cross-border projects is something we have pioneered, and … it will play an even bigger role in protecting the public interest going forward because no one country can stop it.”

The ripple effects of the aid freeze are extensive and also threaten to cripple news organizations that indirectly rely on USAID and State Department support via groups such as the National Endowment for Democracy. The non-governmental organization is funded by the U.S. government and provided $51 million in support to media outlets in 2022, according to a press release.

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an investigative media outlet that also distributes funds to media organizations around the globe, has been forced to make major cutbacks. A spokesperson told ICIJ that 29% of OCCRP’s 2025 operational budget has been frozen, or more than $5 million, and that as a result it has laid off 20% of staff and instituted pay cuts, and that “almost all grants have ended” to local and regional media organizations.

There are multiple court cases underway that challenge the legality of the aid freeze and the dismantling of USAID. On Feb. 7, a judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s plans to place 2,200 USAID employees on leave. On Feb. 13, another judge ordered the administration to restore foreign aid funding that was awarded prior to Trump’s inauguration. In that case, the judge wrote that the aid freeze “set off a shock wave” in the development sector, and that the Trump administration’s lawyers had failed to explain why the freeze “was a rational precursor to reviewing [aid] programs.”

Now we have even less money and manpower to do the reporting that was extraordinary to do,

— Attila Biro, co-founder of Romanian outlet Context

On Tuesday, the Trump administration’s lawyers argued that “substantially all” of the terminations and stop work orders it had instituted on USAID contracts were allowed by the terms of those agreements. They claimed that since the temporary restraining order allowed the administration to enforce the terms of existing contracts and grants, it was in compliance with the court’s order.

Meanwhile, media groups are organizing in response to the funding freeze. The Global Forum for Media Development has drafted a “call to action” aimed at philanthropies, governments and international institutions, urging them to secure emergency funding to address the media’s financial crisis. The draft letter said that recent events “have severely destabilized the already precarious financial, distribution, and safety conditions of many independent journalism organizations.”

The draft letter also warned that the publication of information about the beneficiaries of media support programs has placed at risk thousands of journalists and human rights defenders who have been involved in U.S.-supported projects. While the letter had been signed by more than 70 media organizations, it said that it would not disclose the signatories “due to security concerns.”

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment for this article. President Donald Trump has said USAID was run by “radical left lunatics,” and on social media accused the organization of funneling money to media organizations “as a ‘payoff’ for creating good stories about the Democrats.” The White House last week specifically cited USAID grants to OCCRP and to train Sri Lankan journalists as examples of wasteful spending by the aid agency.

Some news outlets have already begun to lay off staff and drastically scale back their reporting ambitions. This will mean less coverage of topics that past American administrations prioritized as part of their efforts to promote human rights and democracy abroad.

The Romanian outlet Context has investigated how disinformation shapes the country’s politics. It developed artificial intelligence-based tools to analyze TikTok, and found a massive initiative by the country’s far-right to spread conspiracy theories and Russian propaganda on the platform. Romania’s constitutional court ultimately nullified the nation’s last presidential election and ordered a new vote due to the scale of the electoral manipulation, including on TikTok.

The co-founder of Context, Attila Biro, said that roughly 30% of the outlet’s funding came from U.S. foreign assistance. Without those funds, he said that Context does not have the resources to cover the upcoming election, which has been scheduled for May.

“There’s threats of election interference from Russia and other actors,” said Biro. “And now we have even less money and manpower to do the reporting that was extraordinary to do in any case.”

Ukrainian media, which has received substantial support from the United States, is likely to be decimated by the aid freeze. The Global Forum for Media Development estimates that the United States accounted for 70% to 80% of all foreign media assistance to the country. Mira Milosevic, the forum’s executive director, said most local Ukrainian media outlets “have no budget reserves, and often survive month to month, making them particularly vulnerable.”

The Mykolaiv Center for Investigative Reporting, which receives over half of its funding from U.S. foreign assistance, is based in the city of Mykolaiv on the Black Sea and covers news in southern Ukraine. When the Russian army tried to seize the city in 2022, the center’s reporters exhaustively catalogued the munitions used in the shelling of their city and the buildings that had been destroyed. Later, they investigated the specific Russian military units that had participated in the assault on Mykolaiv and the names of their commanders.

In addition to alleged Russian war crimes, the center has focused on Ukrainian corruption: A recent investigation uncovered how Ukrainian officials had purchased tens of millions of dollars in property outside the country since the Russian invasion.

The more we create failed states across the world, the more unstable the world becomes,

— Golden Matonga, ICIJ member and director of investigations for a Malawi outlet

The aid freeze casts doubt on the center’s ability to continue this work, said its founder Oleg Oganov. One employee has already quit, he said, and he is pondering whether he can replace some of the staff’s functions with artificial intelligence in the event of further resignations.

“People were shocked at first, and then realized that this turmoil — it is out of their power,” he said. “They can do nothing, we can do nothing.”

Beyond the Ukrainian front lines, U.S.-funded media are sometimes the only investigative outlets in poor countries or fragile democracies. In Malawi, a nation of roughly 20 million people that ranks as one of the poorest nations in the world, private newspapers and radio stations are dependent on a small pool of advertisers, said Golden Matonga, the director of investigations for the Platform for Investigative Journalism and an ICIJ member.

These advertisers include the government and a few large companies, he said, which limits the media’s appetite for investigating them. An investigative media outlet free from the need to raise advertising revenue, he said, “can provide that oxygen of information that cannot be controlled by any other places.”

Malawi is scheduled to hold elections in September, and Matonga is worried that his organization will not have the resources to report on issues like election integrity or governmental corruption. He has already had to cancel team meetings twice due to the lack of clarity around their funding situation, and he fears that the outlet may eventually have to make drastic cutbacks or shut down due to the freeze.

Without the check that independent media can provide on his country’s centers of power, he warns, corruption will spread — both to the detriment of Malawi and the United States. “The more we create failed states across the world, the more unstable the world becomes,” he said. “You have to realize that it’s in the U.S.’s own interest to have a safer, more secure and stable world.”

As of now, Matonga isn’t sure what to tell his staff. “You’re looking at the hunger they have, the energy they have to do this job,” he said. “But you know all that can go away with one email, with one pronouncement in [Washington] D.C. And that is scary, that is overwhelming for people like us.”

Update Feb. 19, 2025: This story was updated to reflect the latest filing from the Trump administration.

Update Feb. 18, 2025: This story was updated to reflect developments in court challenges.

Update Feb. 14, 2025: This story was updated to reflect the name of the Mykolaiv Center for Investigative Reporting in its Ukrainian spelling.

A Montreal entrepreneur is set to spend an additional three and a half years in a U.S. prison for hiding tens of millions of dollars worth of bitcoin in an undeclared account following an earlier cryptocurrency-related criminal conviction.

The businessman, Firoz Patel, was sentenced Thursday in a Washington, D.C., federal court on one count of obstructing an official proceeding, ending the latest chapter of a circuitous criminal case.

In 2012, Patel launched the firm that would become known as Payza, which prosecutors said had scant due-diligence protocols and became a magnet for criminal proceeds from Ponzi schemes, illicit steroid sales and multilevel marketing scams across the globe.

“Payza, through its robust network of shell companies and criminal associates, became the preferred method for criminals to launder illicit proceeds and transfer funds to other criminal associates,” according to prosecutors. 

Patel was initially sentenced in 2020 on a conspiracy charge relating to money laundering through Payza. Patel declared that his only assets amounted to $30,000 in a retirement savings account. Authorities say they remained in the dark about Patel’s stash of 450 bitcoin, now worth more than $40 million. 

In the months before he reported to prison in 2021, Patel covertly amassed bitcoin in a Binance virtual currency wallet, but the company moved to close the account after it raised red flags. Patel then moved the funds to a U.K.-domiciled account at Blockchain.com, according to court records. Prosecutors said he opened the account in his father’s name. 

After being blocked from accessing those funds, in June 2021, Patel filed a legal claim against Blockchain.com in U.K. court using his real name, thus “abandoning the pretense that the funds belonged to anyone else,” according to prosecutors. 

That October, as a part of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ Pandora Papers investigation, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Toronto Star revealed that Patel, who was then in prison, had set up an offshore company while under criminal investigation years prior. 

Three months later, U.S. federal investigators worked with British authorities to seize Patel’s bitcoin.

Responding to questions from reporters at the Toronto Star in 2021, Patel suggested that the U.S. charges to which he pleaded guilty would not be considered a crime in Canada. 

“There needs to be intent to launder funds, and there was no intent to run a [money transfer] company without the requisite licences, therefore the foundation of the money laundering allegation is false,” Patel said at the time in an emailed statement.

He also told the reporters that his firm that was revealed in the Pandora Papers was intended for legitimate purposes and never conducted any business.

Last Friday, Patel filed a motion to appeal his latest sentence. A lawyer representing Patel declined a request for comment.

The billionaire son-in-law of former Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev is reportedly in talks to pay about $1 billion to the state in connection with a government probe. 

Bloomberg has reported that Timur Kulibayev, a former top energy sector official married to Nazarbayev’s second daughter Dinara, is negotiating a deal that is part of an investigation into wealth accumulated during his father-in-law’s rule. 

Under such an agreement, Kulibayev would make a combination of payments and investments, Bloomberg said, quoting two unnamed sources. The deal would not include any admission of wrongdoing, Bloomberg said.

Separately, the online media publication Orda.kz quoted a source saying the $1 billion payout could include investments in two oil services firms.  

Kulibayev, whose fortune along with his wife’s is estimated at more than $10 billion, according to Forbes, declined to comment through his lawyers. He held several high-level government posts during his father-in-law’s rule of oil-rich Kazakhstan, which ended in 2019 after nearly 30 years. Kulibayev and his wife are majority owners of Halyk Bank, Kazakhstan’s largest lender.

 

 

A representative for Kulibayev at the London-based law firm Schillings declined to comment directly about any proposed agreement, saying it was inappropriate to discuss Kazakh government affairs.

“Mr. Kulibayev is a patriot, dedicated to the sustainable development and future success of Kazakhstan through extensive in-country investment, job-creation, and philanthropy,” the representative wrote in a statement to ICIJ on Feb. 7. “Across diversified holdings and his work with the Halyk Charitable Foundation, he has significantly contributed to the country’s economic and social development over the last 35 years.

He continues to engage with the government to establish how best to accelerate this progress in the coming years. It is categorically incorrect to refer to any contributions as asset recovery.”

Asset recovery generally alludes to a government program to reclaim funds that wealthy, politically influential people allegedly obtained improperly during Nazarbayev’s rule.  Previously Kulibayev’s lawyers have denied that he did anything improper to accumulate his wealth, which he says he built on merit and business savvy, not on family or state connections. 

“Mr Kulibayev has never been charged with criminal conduct by the Government of Kazakhstan, the Asset Recovery Committee of the General Prosecutor’s Office in Kazakhstan or any other Kazakh authority,” his attorneys wrote on Jan. 8 in response to ICIJ questions about any agreement.  

Kazakhstan authorities declined to comment on the Bloomberg story or to confirm or deny earlier reports that Kulibayev had reached an out-of-court settlement to turn over about $1 billion to the state. The asset recovery committee in the prosecutor’s office told ICIJ that information about such agreements is confidential and classified by law.

Last November, the BBC and other media republished information from a Telegram post suggesting Kulibayev had struck a $1 billion deal to return assets to the state. 

The reports came two weeks after the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists sent detailed questions to Kulibayev and his attorneys asking about his business interests and the role Western oil companies may have played in helping him acquire wealth during his father-in-law’s tenure.

Mr Kulibayev strongly denies any suggestion that he improperly benefitted from Caspian pipeline contracts,

— London-based law firm Schillings to ICIJ

As part of their Caspian Cabals investigation published on Nov. 22, ICIJ and 26 media partners reviewed tens of thousands of leaked and public documents and interviewed hundreds of sources, including company insiders and former executives, about the rise of a critical pipeline in the Caspian Sea region and the Kazakh oil fields that feed it. The ICIJ-led investigation revealed how Western oil companies — including Chevron Corp., ExxonMobil Corp., Shell PLC and Italy’s Eni S.p.A. — ignored bribery risks and massive cost overruns to secure their stake in the Kazakhstan-Russia pipeline, then delivered substantial control of it to the Kremlin. 

The investigation showed that the Western oil firms approved financial dealings with companies partly or previously owned by Kulibayev, who helped oversee the rise of Kazakhstan’s energy sector during his father-in-law’s administration.

Kulibayev’s representatives denied he had used his influence to gain access to pipeline contracts and disputed that he had been a gatekeeper for the oil industry. They called ICIJ’s story inaccurate and defamatory, and said it was causing their client financial losses.

“Mr Kulibayev strongly denies any suggestion that he improperly benefitted from Caspian pipeline contracts,” Schillings wrote in a Dec. 19 letter to ICIJ. “Mr Kulibayev also strongly denies any allegations of wrongdoing made by third parties quoted in this article.” 

The lawyers also said Kulibayev had nothing to do with two contracts explored in ICIJ’s article.“Mr Kulibayev is a transparent businessman,” the lawyers wrote on Dec. 4.

In 2022, the government under Nazarbayev’s  handpicked successor, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, vowed to clamp down on the theft of state assets, face down oligarchs and redistribute the nation’s wealth more evenly.

ICIJ found that Kulibayev’s empire has included more than 220 companies and trusts in 22 countries, including 10 secrecy havens. He and his wife jointly own a majority of Kazakhstan’s biggest bank, and as his wealth expanded, so did his real estate empire, which includes a U.K. mansion once owned by Prince Andrew.

In 2022, Kulibayev’s charitable foundation donated $4.2 million to government-commissioned health, education and other programs, according to his lawyers. That was part of $103 million they said his Halyk Charitable Foundation received from him and his companies since 2016. Humanitarian causes supported by the foundation include approximately $65 million to help flood victims in Kazakhstan’s Atyrau region starting in early 2024.

Days after the publication of Caspian Cabals, Kazakh media reported that the Asset Recovery Committee under the Prosecutor General’s Office had recently filed a lawsuit against Kulibayev, whose assets have been classified as state secrets, according to media outlet Orda. The government offered no details and declined to say which assets may be in question.

Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer (D) encouraged Republicans in Washington to “govern with compassion” amid threats to slash funding from the Department of Education.

In an interview on NewsNation’s “The Hill Sunday” with Chris Stirewalt, Meyer said he is in favor of looking at ways to balance the budget and reduce wasteful government spending. But he said there’s a lot of “uncertainty” about whether programs that support poor children in his state will last.

“I believe in efficient spending of federal money,” Meyer said, noting that he cut property taxes as a county executive.

“The challenge that we’re seeing now, I’m trying to balance the budget. I’m trying to invest in Delaware. I’m trying to make historic investments in our schools, so those NAEP scores, those assessments of the progress of our children, can both go up and that equity can increase,” he said. “So everyone’s getting an equal shot.”

Meyer said it’s “a lot harder” for families who can’t rely on the status of certain federal programs, like Title I, which supplements state and local funding for “low-achieving children, especially in high-poverty schools,” according to the Department of Education.

Meyer said Title I is “really giving kids and families, working families, a shot at making it, of ending cycles of poverty.” Similarly, Meyer stressed the importance of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which he said provides more than $30 billion to ensure children with disabilities get appropriate public education suited to their needs.

“Right now, there’s uncertainty, based on the president’s statement about that, those resources may be going away,” Meyer said. “We’re hoping it’s replaced with other money.”

“Quite frankly, if the rules change, I’m fine with that. If it increases the efficiency of our federal, of my federal tax dollars, as a taxpayer, I like that,” he continued. “But let’s not leave anybody behind.”

“Let’s govern with compassion while we’re making these changes,” he added.

The Wall Street Journal on Monday was the first to report Trump is looking at executive actions to move programs from the Department of Education to other federal agencies, cutting the number of employees and calling on Congress to pass legislation eliminating the department completely.  

Bills have been introduced multiple times to do just that, but the measures have so far failed to gain significant momentum.

Reports indicate Trump is facing pressure not to make any big moves against the agency until after his Education secretary pick, Linda McMahon, goes through her confirmation hearing.  

The Hill is owned by Nexstar Media Group, which also owns NewsNation.

The presidents of Ukraine and the United States are looking to make a deal. This comes as world leaders meet later this week in Munich to discuss, among other issues, the future of Ukraine’s security. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.

National security adviser contends spending is wasteful, not aligned with US interests

The animated Universal Pictures release, adapted from Dav Pilkey’s popular graphic novel series, collected $13.7 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday

A look at the best news photos from around the world.