In this Quick Take, Ian Bremmer says President Donald Trump‘s approach to the war in Ukraine is putting more pressure on President Volodymyr Zelensky and raising concerns among European allies about the future of NATO.
Ian argues that Trump increasingly wants to end the war “under any circumstances,” placing more pressure on Ukraine than Russia while pursuing closer economic ties with President Vladimir Putin. Unlike former President Joe Biden, who prioritized coordination with European allies, Trump is pursuing engagement with Moscow largely unilaterally, including the prospect of renewed energy and investment ties.
The shift has left European leaders concerned that the US may not support them if Russia expands its hybrid attacks across the continent. Meanwhile, growing support for far-right, pro-Russian political forces in Europe could further weaken the region’s backing for Ukraine.
As Ukraine faces another difficult winter, Ian warns that uncertainty over continued US military and intelligence support could have serious consequences for Kyiv and the transatlantic alliance. He calls Trump’s suggestion that Ukraine bears greater responsibility for the war “downright Orwellian.”
By 2030, nearly half the world’s young people will be African. Yet for decades, the continent’s learning crisis was treated with systems unfit for reality on the ground. Social entrepreneur Rapelang Rabana shows how homegrown leadership and technology designed for African classrooms can deliver foundational skills to millions of children — and shape a new future of education across the continent. (This ambitious idea is part of The Audacious Project, TED’s initiative to inspire and fund global change.)
Homelessness can feel like an issue that’s too big and complicated to fix, something we’ve learned to walk past. Jen Loving, who leads the nonprofit Destination: Home, has spent her entire life proving that mindset is wrong. She shows why we must stop waiting until someone is pushed outside before intervening — and introduces Right at Home, a proven model helping communities across the US keep people from becoming homeless in the first place. (This ambitious idea is part of The Audacious Project, TED’s initiative to inspire and fund global change.)
BREAKING: US ambassador Andrew Puzder has warned of “devastating” retaliation against European companies if the EU proceeds with proposed restrictions affecting Starlink.
The European Commission wants to reserve part of the radio spectrum used to connect smartphones directly to satellites for European operators, limiting access for SpaceX.
The proposal is part of Europe’s push for “technological sovereignty” and reduced dependence on American technology.
Europe is on fire, the byproduct of revolutionary change taking place because of the failure of European political and economic elites to put the welfare of their people over the politics of supporting Ukraine.
TRUMP: Announces endorsement of Bibi Netanyahu for re-election as Israel's prime minister, says America would have to confront Iran alone under any other Israeli leader pic.twitter.com/7sgZ3FFuLp
Susan and Michael Dell have donated more than $10 billion.Getty Images—Anna Moneymaker
Michael Dell is the sixth-richest man in the world with a net worth of about $232 billion. He and his wife, Susan, have given away about $10 billion of that fortune—and she is calling a lot of the shots on where the money goes.
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She is the co-founder and chair of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, established in 1999. The organization currently manages more than 800 projects worldwide each year, particularly in the U.S., Africa, India, Israel, and their home state of Texas, where they live on a sprawling 33,000-square-foot estate.
The organization’s focus areas are education, jobs and livelihood, and health—causes she’s cared about deeply since childhood.Her father was a surgical oncologist and “sparked her lifelong passion for health,” the foundation says. As a girl, she would even stop strangers at the grocery store to tell them not to smoke.
“People matter to her,” Janet Mountain, head of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, said in a statement. “And because people matter to her, solutions matter to her.” Mountain also previously served as an executive at Dell before joining the foundation in 2003.
Recently, Susan has focused largely on the foundation’s livelihood pillar through the Dells’ commitment to Trump Accounts. In December 2025, the couple committed $6.25 billion to provide $250 contributions to 25 million U.S. children.
The donation is intended to benefit children age 10 and under who aren’t eligible for the federal government’s separate $1,000 contribution for children born between 2025 and 2028. The Dells’ money will go to children in ZIP codes with median incomes of $150,000 or less, giving millions of families a chance to start building wealth early.
“We believe that when children have a future that they can see is worth saving for, then that will help build hope and opportunity and prosperity for generations to come,” Susan said during the White House announcement in December.
From Texas to beyond
The couple initially considered limiting their contribution to Texas, Michael explained at the event, before deciding to expand the initiative nationwide. But their home state has long been central to the Dells’ philanthropy, particularly when it comes to health care.
In April, the Dells became the first donors to surpass $1 billion in lifetime giving to the University of Texas at Austin. Their latest commitments will support a new advanced research campus, an AI-focused medical center, scholarships, student housing, and expanded supercomputing capabilities.
That milestone builds on decades of Dell investments in health care across Central Texas. In 2013, the foundation committed $50 million to establish Dell Medical School at UT Austin, along with another $10 million for local health care initiatives.
Beyond her philanthropic work, Susan had a career of her own. A fashion entrepreneur, she founded three labels, including luxury brand Phi (which closed during the recession). She’s also an endurance athlete who has competed in marathons, triathlons, and the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii.
In 2018, she was inducted into the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame for helping families recover from Hurricane Harvey. She and Michael committed more than $43 million to rebuilding and recovery across 41 counties. In 2025, she and Michael also received the History-Making Texan Award, recognizing their contributions to the state and beyond.
And despite decades of philanthropy, Susan has long viewed the foundation’s work as far from finished.
“The reality is, you know, we’re just getting started,” she said during a 2017 discussion about the future of philanthropy.
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Human rights NGOs in Europe are not doing well. Funding cuts, legal restrictions, administrative burdens and smear campaigns are taking their toll.
I see organisations drastically downsizing or closing altogether and staff burning out. If we are to reverse our fortunes, the traditionally legally-focused movement needs to rebalance its skill-set to include more communicators and organisers.
Traditionally, human rights NGOs have been staffed mainly by lawyers. This is understandable. Human rights are legal standards contained in national, European and international law. If your main tools for getting human rights implemented are advocacy and litigation, then you need legal experts. But advocacy is becoming less effective because decision makers increasingly see supporting human rights as politically risky.
And litigation as a tool is partly limited by increasing political interference with the courts in some countries, or because – again – politicians see potential political brownie points in not complying with (or see potential political costs in complying with) judgments that enforce human rights standards.
It’s not just that NGOs’ traditional tools are losing their power. It’s that legal training does not equip us with the tools do we need to reverse our fortunes.
Our main lever for restoring human rights and the organisations that promote them is public opinion. For as long as we live continue to live in democracies, pressure from voters can have an impact on decision makers. Which means we need communicators who can help the public realise how important human rights are to them.
David Attenborough pointed out a few years ago that “saving our planet is now a communications challenge. We know what to do, we just need the will”.
The same goes for human rights.
But legal training does not make you good at communicating with folks outside your bubble.
I know from personal experience. I trod a path to human rights through a law degree, masters, doctorate and then academia. Human rights folks talk about them in a way that conveys a fraction of their value and power. If you’d asked me 15 years ago why human rights are important, I’d have said things like this: ‘they protect us from abuse by the government’, or ‘they’re minimum standards of protection the state can’t breach’, or ‘they exist to protect the vulnerable’.
These things are true. They’re also not very persuasive to people outside our base of support. Because the kinds of human rights breaches the movement foregrounds tend to affect ‘other people’. And lawyers are used to thinking about rights in the context of legal disputes.
So human rights get reduced to a shield that protects groups or institutions that most people don’t care about, don’t understand, or who live in other countries.
Human rights are not just a passive defence. They are transformational. Human rights are tools. Tools we use to demand that our leaders use the powers and resources with which we’ve entrusted them to do what’s best for all of us. Tools that we use to create the lives we want to live and the communities we want to live in. This is how we need to talk about them, especially when it comes to civil and political rights.
People outside our base cannot be made to care about media freedom, the right to protest or democracy itself just on principle or because they’re enshrined in legal standards. To care about human rights, most people need to know what these things deliver.
Folks will see that protest is important when we explain how it allows people like them to come together and make their leaders listen to their concerns, whether it’s about climate change or better pay for teachers. I’ve seen it first-hand when testing messages in focus groups.
Empathy, not stereotypes
The same goes for stimulating support for the rights of people from marginalised groups. Right now, most people have trouble caring because they been fed negative stereotypes that cause them to regard some people as ‘others’ and ‘outgroups’, meaning that they will tolerate lower standards of treatment for them.
Using legal arguments and evidencing rights violations by focusing on the harm being suffered doesn’t work because it does nothing to address the reason people don’t care. For that, we need to stimulate empathy and dissolve negative stereotypes through techniques like storytelling. Once people empathise and recognise our common humanity, they’re much more likely to support equal treatment.
When we communicate in a way that allows our audience to see how human rights deliver things they find important to them, they don’t just start to support human rights as standards. They also start to support the organisations that promote them. That means they’re more likely to listen to them, stand up for them, get involved in their work and even donate.
It’s not just about communicating better. We also need organisers who can help people come together to carry effective messages and make the strength of public support felt by our leaders.
Folks with legal training are still essential.
If you’re going to make phones, you need engineers. But we don’t see the engineers being given the job of persuading folks to buy the phones, do we?
Unless they’ve had proper communications training. The human rights movement’s legalistic centre of gravity needs to shift to make room for knowledge and skills that can meet the moment.
In the short-term we could achieve this by retraining staff and joining forces with other progressive movements that know how to organise and mobilise, like environmental NGOs.
We could also tackle the issue upstream by working with universities that produce human rights graduates to develop more holistic curricula that cover communications and organising and not only law.
