President Donald Trump vowed not to invite South Africa to the 2026 meeting of the G20 over a debunked conspiracy theory he continues to push.

Writing to his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday afternoon, Trump announced that the U.S. did not attend this year’s G20 meeting in Johannesburg, and, in turn, wouldn’t let South Africa attend next year’s meeting in Miami.

“The United States did not attend the G20 in South Africa, because the South African Government refuses to acknowledge or address the horrific Human Right Abuses endured by Afrikaners, and other descendants of Dutch, French, and German settlers. To put it more bluntly, they are killing white people, and randomly allowing their farms to be taken from them. Perhaps, worst of all, the soon to be out of business New York Times and the Fake News Media won’t issue a word against this genocide. That’s why all the Liars and Pretenders of the Radical Left Media are going out of business! At the conclusion of the G20, South Africa refused to hand off the G20 Presidency to a Senior Representative from our U.S. Embassy, who attended the Closing Ceremony. Therefore, at my direction, South Africa will NOT be receiving an invitation to the 2026 G20, which will be hosted in the Great City of Miami, Florida next year. 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. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump wrote.

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Trump’s claims of human rights abuses against Afrikaners has been widely debunked. Trump says that the South African government, in retribution for apartheid-era institutional racism, is punishing the white population of the country. The conspiracy theory alleges that South Africa is engaging in “white genocide” against the Afrikaners, according to NPR.

While Trump is correct that the “fake news media won’t issue a word against this genocide,” it’s because it’s not happening. Even Afrikaners have denied that there is an “existential threat” against them, according to France24.

“We reject the narrative that casts Afrikaners as victims of racial persecution in post-apartheid South Africa. This framing, now being used to support the far-right ‘Great Replacement’ theory in the United States, is not only misleading, but also dangerous. It distorts the realities of South Africa, weaponizes our history, and reduces a complex social context and necessary levelling of playing fields into a simplistic symbol of white decline,” a letter from several prominent Afrikaners reads.

“Let us be clear: South Africa faces serious challenges – crime, inequality, and the enduring legacy of apartheid. But these issues affect South Africans of all races. To cherry-pick white suffering and elevate it above others is dishonest and harmful. It feeds extremist ideologies that perpetuate division and have inspired real-world violence, including mass shootings.”

The letter was signed by 46 Afrikaners in South Africa, including professors, journalists and more. It was sent in response to Trump’s first overture to the conspiracy theory, which was to allow Afrikaners to come to the United States as refugees—all while the number of real refugees the U.S. will accept has been lowered from 125,000 to just 7,500.

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President Donald Trump and his then-lawyer Alina Habba are on the hook for almost $1 million in sanctions.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a court order penalizing Trump and Habba in lawsuits against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey, former head of the Democratic National Committee Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC itself and others.

Trump and Habba filed suit under anti-racketeering laws against 28 total people and organizations in 2022, alleging a conspiracy to collude with Russia in order to tank his 2016 presidential campaign. Though the Steele dossier at the center of the claims has been described as “discredited” by a number of news outlets, Trump and Habba filed the original suit 5 months after the statute of limitations had passed.

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“We do not doubt that, in the light of the Durham Report, President Trump has concerns about some defendants’ conduct during the 2016 election. The investigation by Special Counsel Durham found that some defendants played a role in orchestrating unverified allegations of him colluding with Russia. And it found that key allegations in the Steele Dossier, relied on by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the press, were never corroborated. Some appeared to be fabricated. The Special Counsel’s investigation found that Bureau officials appeared to favor Clinton and that their investigation decisions reflected that preference. And it found that the Crossfire Hurricane investigation began without ‘any actual evidence of collusion,'” Chief Judge William Pryor Jr. wrote. “Yet, those findings do not cure the deficiencies in Trump’s racketeering claims.”

In addition Pryor wrote that even if Trump had filed suit before the statute of limitations expired, “none of these proceedings are, or even resemble, a racketeering action.”

“At best, they are actions involving some of the conduct that Trump incorporates into his racketeering claim,” Pryor wrote.

There was a minor bit of good news for Trump, however. In one of the four appeals Pryor ruled on, he rejected a request by two appellants, Orbis Limited and Charles Halliday Dolan Jr., for fees and double costs to be levied against the president. Orbis is Christopher Steele’s “private intelligence firm” that produced the Steele dossier, while Dolan was a Clinton campaign operative who provided information used in the dossier.

Pryor found that in this one case, Trump’s appeal to the dismissal of the case made “meritorious arguments.” He remanded that particular case back to the lower court to change its dismissal from “with prejudice”—meaning that the case cannot be filed again—to “without prejudice,” meaning that Trump’s team could fix errors in the original lawsuit and refile.

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Peter Skandalakis, the Georgia prosecutor who took over the state’s case against President Donald Trump and 14 other co-defendants alleging interference in the 2020 presidential election, dropped the case on Wednesday. Before taking the case, he spent nearly 25 years as the elected Republican district attorney for the Coweta Judicial Circuit in the state.

Skandalakis took over the case earlier this year when the original prosecutor, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, an elected Democrat, was taken off the case. When she was removed, the case was sent to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia to decide who would take it over. After no other attorneys wanted the job, Skandalakis, the executive director of the council, assigned it to himself, according to Fortune. The Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia is a nonpartisan office.

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“Given the complexity of the legal issues at hand — ranging from constitutional questions and the Supremacy Clause to immunity, jurisdiction, venue, speedy-trial concerns, and access to federal records — and even assuming each of these issues were resolved in the State’s favor, bringing this case before a jury in 2029, 2030, or even 2031 would be nothing short of a remarkable feat,” Skandalakis wrote, alleging pursuing the case “would be both illogical and unduly burdensome and costly for the State and for Fulton County,” according to CNN.

The case hinged on a phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, where Trump asked him to “find” enough votes to win the state. If the case had gone forward, being at the state level, Trump could not grant himself or his co-defendants a pardon if convicted.

Skandalakis cited the similar federal case brought against the president by Jack Smith as evidence the Georgia case would not get far.

“[I]f Special Counsel Jack Smith, with all the resources of the federal government at his disposal, after reviewing the evidence in this case and considering the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States, along with the years of litigation such a case would inevitably entail, concluded that prosecution would be fruitless,” Skandalakis wrote, according to the New York Post, “then I too find that, despite the available evidence, pursuing the prosecution of all those involved in State of Georgia v. Donald Trump, et al. on essentially federal grounds would be equally unproductive.”

Smith’s case, and its ultimate dismissal, was controversial. The case was originally to be heard by District Judge Tanya Chutkan, but after Trump’s re-election in 2024, Smith asked her to dismiss the case due to a Department of Justice policy against prosecuting a sitting president, according to ABC News. The case had hit a prior speedbump after the Supreme Court ruled along ideological lines that, as president, Trump would be immune to prosecution for any “official acts” executed as president, but not “unofficial ones.”

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