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Hard Numbers: Slovenia votes, global defense spending soars, gridiron culture war at SCOTUS, guess who flouted the Russian arms embargo?

Slovenia votes, global defense spending soars, gridiron culture war at SCOTUS, guess who flouted the Russian arms embargo?
A man casts his ballot at a polling station during the Slovenian parliamentary elections in Lobnica.
Milos Vujinovic / SOPA Images

11: Marine Le Pen wasn’t the only rightwing Euroskeptic who took an L on Sunday — Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša’s SDS Party lost by 11 points to the Freedom Movement, an upstart green party, which won 34% of the vote. Janša, like Le Pen, noted that his party still got more votes than ever before.

2 trillion: Global military spending topped $2 trillion for the first time last year. Nearly two-thirds of that came from the US, China, India, UK, and Russia. Washington’s world-leading $800 billion tab dipped slightly from 2020 but still outstripped the next nine countries combined.

273 million: Speaking of the arms trade, Germany and France reportedly made a combined 273 million Euros selling arms to Russia, flouting an embargo that the EU slapped on the Kremlin after Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Critics say some of those weapons are now being used in Ukraine.

50: Another US culture war battle begins this week as the US Supreme Court takes up the a case of a public high school football coach praying with his players at the 50-yard line after games. Coach Kennedy says it’s a matter of his private religious freedom, but the school board feared it would be seen as an inappropriate endorsement of one religion over others. The justices will decide.

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The French President Emmanuel Macron (R) welcomes the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (L) at the Elysee Presidential Palace.

SOPA images

European Union leaders agreed to move ahead with “Buy European” policies as part of a broader push to de-risk from the US and boost competitiveness amid China’s industrial prowess.

PA via Reuters Ukraine's Vladyslav Heraskevych, with his helmet, which features pictures of people killed in the war with Russia. Heraskevych was ruled out of the Men's Skeleton event by the International Olympic Committee just over an hour before competition began, pictured at the Cortina Sliding Centre, on day six of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, Italy. Picture date: Thursday February 12, 2026.

20: The number of fallen Ukrainian athletes and coaches depicted on a Ukrainian skeleton racer’s helmet at the Winter Olympics, which prompted the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to disqualify him on Thursday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends his annual end-of-year press conference and phone-in in Moscow, Russia December 19, 2025.
Sputnik/Alexander Kazakov/Pool via REUTERS

The Russian government has begun blocking the popular messaging apps WhatsApp and Telegram in a sweeping crackdown aimed at forcing Russians to use a state-backed alternative called MAX, which critics say would enable censorship and surveillance.