Tuesday Briefing: Canada’s Prime Minister Is Stepping Down

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada said yesterday that he would step down as Liberal Party leader and prime minister. The decision by Trudeau, who has led the country for nearly a decade, means that new leadership will take over in Canada by late March after his party picks a new head. Here’s the latest.

Trudeau has faced weeks of mounting pressure from inside his party’s ranks. In December, his deputy prime minister and finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, abruptly stepped down in a stinging rebuke of his leadership.

Her resignation led to Liberal parliamentarians asking Trudeau to step aside so someone else can lead the Liberal Party against the Conservatives in the October general election.

What’s next: Trudeau’s resignation sets off a succession battle to replace him. The upheaval comes as the country is grappling with how best to deal with President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to impose crippling tariffs on all imports from Canada on his first day in office. Canada and the U.S. are each other’s biggest trading partners.

End of an era: Trudeau has been prime minister since 2015, having resuscitated the Liberals, who had crashed electorally before he took over the party in 2013. Recently, however, he has become deeply unpopular: According to a poll released last month by Ipsos, 73 percent of Canadians — including 43 percent of Liberal voters — believed he should step down as party leader.

Russia said yesterday that it had seized control of Kurakhove, a town in Ukraine, as it closes in on Ukrainian forces in the southern Donbas region.

Ukrainian forces made their own advance with a renewed push into the Kursk region of southern Russia. Combat footage, located by military analysts, indicated that Ukraine was trying to break through Russian defenses in at least three directions. It was the first significant attempt by Kyiv’s forces to advance in the region since their original incursion in August.

The stakes: Taking Kurakhove and the surrounding towns could allow Russia to broaden its assault on the city of Pokrovsk, a focal point of the war in recent months, military analysts said. Russia is trying to encircle the city, hoping to avoid brutal and prolonged urban combat.

Analysis: The dueling offensives underscored how both the Kremlin and Kyiv are seeking to demonstrate strength as Trump prepares to take office, experts said. Trump has vowed to bring the war to a quick end without saying how.

The U.S. military sent 11 Yemeni prisoners at Guantánamo Bay to Oman yesterday to restart their lives, leaving just 15 men in the prison. This final push by the Biden administration has left the detention center’s population smaller than at any other time in its more than 20-year history.

None of the released men had been charged with crimes during their two decades of detention. All but six of the remaining prisoners have been charged with or convicted of war crimes.

The Taliban, desperate for a cash injection after losing billions in international aid, are looking underground. Beneath Afghanistan’s rugged landscape is an estimated $1 trillion of mineral deposits that could be a lifeline.

But it remains to be seen whether the Taliban can do what the U.S. couldn’t in the country: control a deeply chaotic industry enough to profit from it.

The Golden Globes are usually an indicator of what to expect at the Oscars, but this year had some twist endings. Demi Moore, Fernanda Torres and Sebastian Stan all received unexpected wins, while the film “Anora,” an expected favorite, was snubbed.

But what really had people talking was the host. The comedian Nikki Glaser had a low bar to vault after Jo Koy’s lackluster performance in 2024, but she clearly aimed to do more than a little better and honed her opening monologue in dozens of club appearances.


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