By LORNE COOK, Associated Press

BRUSSELS (AP) — Germany on Wednesday pledged more than $2 billion in military aid for Ukraine, as the government in Kyiv signaled that it would need $120 billion in 2026 to stave off Russia’s nearly four-year all-out war.

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Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said that Germany would buy $500 million worth of U.S. weapons for Ukraine under a new program to fast-track military equipment. Estonia, Finland, Lithuania and Sweden said that they would also participate in the funding initiative.

Pistorius said that Germany’s “package addresses a number of urgent requirements of Ukraine. It provides air defense systems, Patriot (missile) interceptors, radar systems and precision guided artillery, rockets and ammunition.”

He said that Germany would separately provide “another two Iris-T air defense systems, including a large number of guided missiles, as well as shoulder-fired air defense missiles.” Anti-tank weapons, communication devices and hand-held weapons would also be delivered.

NATO’s fast-track funding program

Over the summer, the trans-Atlantic alliance started to coordinate regular deliveries of large weapons packages to Ukraine to help fend off Russia’s war. The aim was to send at least one load a month of targeted and predictable military support, each worth around $500 million.

Spare weapons stocks in European arsenals have all but dried up, and only the United States has a sufficient store of ready weapons that Ukraine most needs.

Under the financial arrangement — known as the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, or PURL — European allies and Canada are buying American weapons to help Kyiv keep Russian forces at bay. About $2 billion worth had previously been allocated since August.

Finland’s defense minister, Antti Häkkänen, said that his country has “decided to join the PURL, because we see that it’s crucial that Ukraine gets the critical U.S. weapons.” Finland will also provide a separate package of its own military equipment.

Swedish Defense Minister Pål Jonson said that “Sweden stands ready to do more.” He welcomed discussions among other Nordic countries and the Baltic nations — Estonia and Lithuania — on helping to make up another load too.

Ukraine’s striking needs for 2026

Germany’s pledge came after a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels, as Ukraine’s Western backers gathered to drum up more military support for their beleaguered partner.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Denys Shmyhal put his country’s defense needs next year at $120 billion.

“Ukraine will cover half, 60 billion, from our national resources. We are asking partners to join us in covering the other half,” he said. He said that “the most efficient, effective, fast” way for Kyiv’s backers to do that would be “to dedicate no less than 0.25% of their GDP (gross domestic product) to military support.”

Air defense systems are most in need. Shmyhal said that last month alone, Russia “launched over 5,600 strike drones and more than 180 missiles targeting our civilian infrastructure and people. Therefore, on the eve of winter, it is very critical to provide us with necessary equipment to repel such attacks.”

Dwindling support

The new pledges of support came a day after new data showed that foreign military aid to Ukraine had declined sharply recently. Despite the PURL program, support plunged by 43% in July and August compared to the first half of the year, according to Germany’s Kiel Institute, which tracks such deliveries and funding.

Jonson said that Sweden believes its aid “is critical now, because we’ve been seeing the wrong trajectory when it comes to support to Ukraine, that it’s been going down and we want to see more stepping up.”

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur also expressed concern about a drop in Western backing, noting that “the reality is that the share of the U.S. contributions to Ukraine has decreased significantly this year.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that “all countries need to translate goals into guns, commitments into capabilities and pledges into power. That’s all that matters. Hard power. It’s the only thing belligerents actually respect.”

The Trump administration hasn’t donated military equipment to Ukraine. It has been weighing whether to send Tomahawk long-range missiles if Russia doesn’t wind down its war soon, but it remains unclear who will pay for those weapons, should they ever be approved.

Sharing the burden

Criticism has mounted that France, Italy and Spain aren’t doing enough to help Ukraine, and Häkkänen called on all 32 NATO allies to take on their “fair share of the burden,” saying that “everyone has to find the money because this is a crucial moment.”

France and Italy are mired in debt and struggling to raise money just to meet NATO’s defense spending targets. Spain says it has other economic concerns and insists that it makes up for its spending gap at NATO by deploying troops on the alliance’s missions.

France also believes that European money should be spent on Europe’s defense industry, not in the United States, and it doesn’t intend to take part in PURL.

By JACK DURA

MEDORA, N.D. (AP) — The day his young wife and mother died, Theodore Roosevelt wrote in his diary that “the light has gone out of my life,” and it was only through extended trips to the isolated Dakota Territory in the 1880s that he regained “the romance” of living.

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A library examining the country’s 26th president will open next summer in the North Dakota landscape remarkably similar to what Roosevelt would have experienced: far from any city and surrounded by rugged hills beneath a vast sky.

The isolation that was so appealing to Roosevelt remains today, and it raises a question.

How many people will visit a museum so distant from the rest of America?

“I think that’s a calculated risk that is being taken, and I actually think it’s a good one,” said Clay Jenkinson, a public humanities scholar and Roosevelt author who believes the area’s beauty will help draw visitors.

‘Library is the landscape’

The nearly 100,000-square-foot facility near Medora, North Dakota, is planned to open July 4, 2026, America’s 250th anniversary. All living presidents have been invited.

Library Foundation CEO Ed O’Keefe said he wants the library to be where “kids drag their parents,” a setting for picnics, weddings and even presidential debates.

The view atop the roof of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library shows the rugged Badlands landscape Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025, near Medora, N.D. (AP Photo/Jack Dura)

Library boosters have a $450 million fundraising goal, with $344 million in cash and pledges so far, including from oil executive Harold Hamm and Walmart heir Rob Walton and his wife, Melani. Construction, design and related costs alone are pegged at $276 million. Other costs include millions for developing exhibits and digitizing archives.

The library rises from the flat, grassy top of a butte across a highway from Theodore Roosevelt National Park, which had more than 732,000 visits last year. A path leads onto the library’s sloping roof planted with grasses and flowers. Inside, enormous rammed-earth walls of layered colors represent the dramatic Badlands.

“This is a purposeful place. We like to say that the library is the landscape,” O’Keefe said.

Dakota days

Roosevelt came to the Badlands to hunt bison in 1883. He invested in a ranching operation and returned multiple times over several years following the deaths of his wife and mother.

Stories of his adventures live on, from riding with cowboys to knocking out a bully in a bar and apprehending three boat thieves.

In an Independence Day speech in Dickinson, Roosevelt gave his famous “I like big things” oration, which more or less was the beginning of his speaking career, said William Hansard, public historian at Dickinson State University’s Theodore Roosevelt Center.

Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation CEO Ed O’Keefe gestures to a model of the library and surrounding landscape at the library’s office in Medora, N.D., Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Jack Dura)

“He goes on to talk about how all of the material prosperity that America has means nothing if it’s not backed up by morals and virtues. … All these big things in the world don’t matter if Americans don’t have good character to use them and to use them well and correctly,” Hansard said.

Roosevelt’s time in Dakota largely ended after cattle losses in the terrible winter of 1886-87. He later said he never would have been president were it not for his time in North Dakota.

Roosevelt is a favorite president of people across the political spectrum, and his use of executive power — such as conserving public lands and building the Panama Canal — has shaped the modern presidency.

“Roosevelt will frequently do things that he believes are morally and legally right, and let Congress debate it later,” Hansard said. “He rules very, very much by executive order, and again, this is something that’s been a huge debate over the past several presidencies on both sides of the aisle.”

‘Calculated risk’

The Roosevelt library might be the loneliest presidential center in the country. Medora has about 160 residents, and is hours away by car from North Dakota’s largest cities of Bismarck and Fargo.

The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library is shown under construction Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025, near Medora, N.D. (AP Photo/Jack Dura)

The Obama Presidential Center is going up on Chicago’s South Side. Florida Republican officials recently gifted nearly 3 acres of prime real estate in downtown Miami for President Donald Trump’s presidential library. Other presidential libraries include locations in Atlanta, Boston and Dallas.

Library boosters are hoping tourists visiting Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone and Theodore Roosevelt National Park will add the library to their itinerary.

But there’s no question North Dakota’s winters can be brutal with subzero temperatures and blizzards that close highways and make travel nearly impossible.

Still, Roosevelt admirers note that earlier attempts to create Roosevelt libraries in other places fell short, and it was in North Dakota where the idea really took root.

“We North Dakotans who justly feel that we created Theodore Roosevelt, that he became the Theodore Roosevelt of American greatness and memory during his time here in North Dakota, we feel that it would be very appropriate to have a presidential library in the heart of the Badlands,” Jenkinson said.

And beyond hardy winter travelers, O’Keefe said, library planners want to bring thousands of eighth graders from a five-state area to the library outside of summer, envisioning a “night at the museum” program.

“It’s not going to be as busy as the summer, but that’s the magic of it. You get a little more of the Badlands to yourself,” O’Keefe said.

‘Humanize’ Roosevelt

O’Keefe said the facility will “humanize, not lionize” Theodore Roosevelt.

“We’re not going to shy away from the controversies and things that, perhaps if this library had been built 125 years ago, wouldn’t have been mentioned,” O’Keefe said.

It would be a travesty to portray Roosevelt only as a wholly good figure, said Jenkinson, who called him a man of his times, a bully, an imperialist and perhaps a warmonger.

He invited Black leader Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House. But he discharged “without honor” an entire regiment of 167 Black soldiers without due process, in connection with a shooting in a Texas town. Roosevelt encouraged photographer Edward S. Curtis in his photography of Native peoples, and some Native Americans were among Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.

“But he also believed that Anglo-Saxon white America had a right and even a duty to dispossess Native peoples and install what he took to be a superior civilization. There was no ambiguity about that,” Jenkinson said.

Kermit Roosevelt said he hopes the library helps people understand the legacy of his great-great-grandfather.

“I really do think Theodore Roosevelt is important for us now because of his ability to appeal to people across the political spectrum and, in our polarized times, maybe bring people together and give them a sense of what it means to be American,” he said.

On another night, Alienated Majesty Books near the University of Texas at Austin campus might host a conversation with a novelist or a poetry open mic. But on this Saturday, the shelves and tables holding new releases have been pushed to the side, opening up the large polished cement floor. A drum kit sits in the corner, and an electric guitar leans against a microphone stand. When a three-man band takes the makeshift stage, the crowd that had been browsing the shelves turns its attention forward. The singers take turns screaming, “Check,” into the microphones, filling the previously sedate bookshop with the first vibrations of a concert.

The store—which sells books from small and indie publishers, plus works in translation, comics, and poetry—has developed a reputation over the past year for hosting bands from more-obscure musical subgenres: shoegaze, noise, hardcore punk. It’s hosted so many shows of a certain sort that the shop is now known among Austin’s underground music scene as “the screamo bookstore.” 

Screamo materialized as a subgenre of emo music in the 1990s, distinct for its experimental nature and—as the name suggests—screamed vocals. The genre is defined by dissonance, and the atypical concert setting continues that tradition. The bookstore’s shelves hold the collected works of Karl Marx, a history of the Black Panther Party, a novel exploring fatherhood and masculinity. The lyrics screamed in the store sometimes echo the same ideas—the genre has been a medium not just for emotional introspection but for political expression.

Bands sell merchandise and music at tables in the back of the store. (Michelle Pitcher)

When the first band, Rose Ceremony, starts to play, the sound resonates through the concrete floor. The energy from the feverish drumming, wailing guitars, and piercing vocals is enough to make my teeth rattle.

Everyone here is young. Teen boys wearing ski caps despite the July heat lounge on a couch; young girls with intricate makeup group together near the front of the crowd. 

I’m told the age-inclusivity is by design. In the past, there weren’t many places “baby punks” could go to hear their favorite bands play live. The bookstore’s shows are all-ages, and while some of the older members of the crowd sip Lone Star tall boys bought from the Rio Market across the street, most drink water or energy drinks. The music is rowdy, the crowd energetic, but above all, the space feels safe. 

As Rose Ceremony wraps up, one of the singers takes a moment to address the crowd: “We love it here. Respect this space.”

When the second band takes the stage, it becomes clear why the shelves and tables had been pushed to the perimeter ahead of time. As the band creates a wall of sound, members of the crowd spill into the empty space in front of the band, turning it into a mosh pit. They’re balls of limbs and energy, thrashing and bucking, nearly colliding with one another, then rushing back to the perimeter, flushed. Catharsis.

A performance at the Rio Market (Michelle Pitcher)

A tattoo artist named Lola has set up a station in front of the nonfiction section, offering a menu of designs people can select. It’s the first time she’s offered her services at the bookstore, and she, like most other people involved in the night’s logistics, is part of the close-knit emo music community in Austin. Everyone I spoke to was at most a few degrees removed from someone in a band or someone involved in Tiny Sounds Collective, one of the groups in the “DIY music scene” that make shows in atypical venues—like bookstores, highway underpasses, and houses—possible. These shows are unique for the audience and the performers, who take on responsibilities a concert venue might usually handle, like equipment setup, crowd management, and distributing everyone’s cut of the cover fees at the end of the night. 

Alienated Majesty is a relatively new DIY music space, but it’s already cemented its place. It fits easily into the existing map of unconventional venues. Between sets at the bookstore, people amble across the street to the convenience store, where another DIY concert is taking place in the store’s aisles.

People spill out into the parking lots to talk, smoke cigarettes, and meet their favorite bands, who tend to stick around after their performances. It feels as though this community—known for its love of extreme music but underappreciated for its camaraderie—has planted its flag on this small strip of Austin.

The post A Night at the Screamo Bookstore appeared first on The Texas Observer.

By ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A senior adviser at the State Department and expert on Indian and South Asian affairs is accused by the Justice Department of printing out classified documents and storing more than 1,000 pages of highly sensitive government records in filing cabinets and trash bags at home.

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Ashley Tellis, who has also worked as a contractor in the Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment, was charged in federal court in Virginia with the unlawful retention of national defense information after FBI agents who searched his home over the weekend found what they said was a trove of records marked as classified at the secret and top secret levels.

He was ordered detained Tuesday pending a detention hearing next week. One of his lawyers, Deborah Curtis, told The Associated Press that “we look forward to the hearing, where we’ll be able to present evidence” but declined to comment further.

An FBI affidavit cites several instances over the last month in which Tellis is alleged to have printed on government computers, or asked a colleague to print, classified documents on topics including U.S. military aircraft capabilities. Surveillance video shows him on several occasions exiting the State Department and a Defense Department facility with a briefcase in which he was believed to have stashed the printed-out papers, according to court documents.

Tellis also met multiple times with Chinese government officials in recent years, according to the affidavit. Tellis arrived to one 2022 dinner with a manila folder while the Chinese officials he was meeting with entered with a gift bag, the FBI says. The affidavit says Tellis did not appear to have the manila folder in his possession when he left the restaurant, but does not accuse him of providing any classified information during his meetings with the Chinese.

Tellis is a prominent foreign policy expert with a specialty in Indian and South Asian affairs. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace lists him as a senior fellow and the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs. He also served on the White House National Security Council staff under Republican President George W. Bush.