What happened
The Trump administration yesterday defended a campaign-style ad airing on Fox News and Newsmax that features President Donald Trump and says it was “paid for by the U.S. Government.” The White House “did not say what agency paid for the spot, which includes background music with singers crooning ‘love me’ over and over,” The Associated Press said. But in a statement, it called the ad a “public service announcement” aimed at “reminding Americans to love their country.”

Who said what
“Together we will defeat communism,” and “America will never be a communist country,” Trump says in the 30-second ad as his campaign slogans flash in the background. There are “several restrictions on how public funds can be used for PSAs,” including an annually renewed “ban on using funds for ‘publicity or propaganda purposes,’” ABC News said. The ad first ran Wednesday night, as “Trump welcomed Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, with a red carpet,” The Wall Street Journal said.

What next?
Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) yesterday sent White House chief of staff Susie Wiles a letter demanding “several details about the commercial,” including how much it cost and who was involved, The New York Times said. JMSN, who wrote and recorded “Love Me,” said he “did not authorize” its use and was “looking for a lawyer.” 

What happened
Macklemore yesterday announced a Free Palestine concert tour, less than two weeks after the rapper was dropped from Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour for making pro-Palestinian comments onstage and accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. All proceeds from the new tour will benefit Palestinian aid organizations, Macklemore and Live Nation said. 

Who said what
After Macklemore was kicked off Sheeran’s tour, all the other supporting artists quit. The controversy “thrust the Israel-Hamas war into the pop music world,” The New York Times said. There’s been a “collective awakening around Palestinian liberation,” Macklemore said in a social media post announcing his tour. “When the billionaire class can decide which voices are allowed on stage and which ones are too dangerous to hear, everyone should be paying attention.” 

At the United Nations General Assembly yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the allegation of Israeli genocide the “biggest lie of the century.” When “scores of delegates trooped out of the hall in protest” of his speech, The Associated Press said, Netanyahu called them “moral cowards.”

What next?
The Free Palestine Tour is scheduled to begin with three dates next month in Dublin, Paris and London. Announcements about the other artists on the tour, “as well as U.S. dates, are forthcoming,” said the AP.

“If a left-wing candidate can win in New York, then there’s no reason it can’t happen in Berlin,” Elif Eralp said last year, after Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory. Now, Eralp looks likely to be elected mayor of the German capital. Eralp would be Berlin’s first Turkish-German mayor and the first candidate from the left-wing party Die Linke to hold the post since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Die Linke won a 25.7% plurality of votes in recent regional elections, but that doesn’t guarantee Eralp will become mayor, according to The Berliner. The new state parliament has to elect the governing mayor, and with only 47 seats out of the 158, Die Linke will need to form a coalition. The center-right CDU refuses to engage with it, but a joint government with the Greens and the Social Democratic Party could be a “realistic” outcome.

Eralp has become the “new face of radical left-wing parties asserting themselves in major cities around the world,” said Le Monde. Her “historic win” is all the more impressive considering she inherited a party “marred by internal divisions.” Now, it’s “one of the most dynamic forces” in German politics.

Die Linke, which emerged from the communist Socialist Unity Party that ruled East Germany until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, has undergone a “striking generational shift” in the past three years, said the Financial Times. And its popularity is only growing. In recent months, the party has drawn a “tidal wave of new supporters, doubling its membership in the space of a year, reaching 123,000 at the end of 2025.”