The European Union could soon add a 28th member to its ranks, as Iceland is set to vote on potentially joining the bloc this summer. But not all Icelanders support EU membership, with polls split down the middle, and what happens in the referendum could have ripple effects on the international order.

‘Important for international security’

Icelanders will not be voting on whether to join the EU but on whether Iceland should resume negotiations about joining. If the referendum passes, a second vote would be held to officially make Iceland an EU member.

Icelanders are mostly at a stalemate on the issue. According to a recent survey “on behalf of the foreign ministry, 42% of Icelanders are in favor of reopening accession talks and 39% are opposed,” said The Guardian.

Icelanders who are in favor of restarting talks view joining the EU as “important for international security and an opportunity for better integration in Europe,” said The Guardian. There have been considerations for a while about Iceland joining the bloc, but the turbocharged referendum is “in part motivated by threats from the U.S., a longtime close ally of Iceland, to forcibly acquire its closest neighbor, Greenland.” The “international order that underpinned our security and prosperity for decades is under serious pressure,” said Icelandic Foreign Minister Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir to the outlet.

The EU has “intensified a rethink of its Arctic strategy since Trump’s rhetoric over Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory, reached a peak earlier this year,” said Mari Novik at the Financial Times. Iceland was previously at an impasse with the EU over regulations regarding fishing, a major industry in the country, but the organization could “offer Iceland a carve-out on fishing policy to accelerate the country’s potential bid to join the bloc.”

‘Half the country will be upset’

Not all Icelanders are eager to join the EU. Some feel the country is “locked in an existential fight for Iceland’s soul, where extreme measures might be justifiable,” said Elías Þórsson at Icelandic news magazine The Reykjavík Grapevine. Politics in Iceland “tend to be rather benign,” but there’s “something about the EU debate that stirs the pot" of public opinion. “About half the country will be upset with the result” of the referendum, no matter what side wins, according to polls.

Those who oppose becoming part of the EU hark back to a “well-known refrain in Icelandic political discourse” that the nation is “being betrayed, that some kind of treason is underway, that foreigners are being allowed to come and run everything in Iceland,” said political scientist Ólafur Harðarson to the Grapevine. Some feel that EU membership means “giving up Iceland’s sovereignty,” said Þórsson.

The aforementioned fishing industry may be what the referendum ultimately comes down to. Icelanders have “watched with alarm as Ireland, an EU member, has endured cuts to fishing quotas that have devastated its coastal communities,” said Amelia Nierenberg at The New York Times. And the citizens are fearful the EU could do the same thing to Iceland without a carve-out.

“People feel that they might be forced to pick a side,” said Eirikur Bergmann, a politics professor at Iceland’s Bifrost University, to the Times. And then there’s “really only one side to pick.”

“I came here to play tennis, not to put on a fashion show,” said Laura Siegemund, following her loss to Naomi Osaka in the first round of the French Open. “If other people want to do a fashion show, they can do that.”

Osaka came on court in a black corset and matching pleated skirt to face Siegemund. Though she eventually lost to Aryna Sabalenka in the fourth round in a landmark night session, Osaka’s “shimmering gold dress” became even “more eye-catching under the lights”, said The Guardian.

Known for her “elaborate” playing outfits, including a jellyfish-inspired outfit at the Australian Open, Osaka sparked concern that she may “serve as a distraction”. With Wimbledon around the corner, the tennis-fashion debate is likely to intensify.

‘Another language’

Osaka “really knows how to turn a tennis court into a catwalk” and has done so for years, said the Daily Maverick. Though her “court-ure”, which also included an Eiffel Tower-inspired outfit, has been labelled “problematic” by critics, her choice of fashion is “part of how she chooses to be seen”. For someone who has spoken openly about her struggles with anxiety, depression and public communication, her outfits have become “another language”.

The four-time grand slam champion has “never had average tastes when it comes to fashion”, said The Athletic. Her look at the Australian Open – a “dreamy, dramatic ensemble” that was meant to “evoke jellyfish” – “took over cultural discourse far beyond her match”.

Female athletes “don’t want to be known or judged for their outfits alone”, said The Independent, but with less prime-time coverage of their games than male players, it “can’t hurt to turn a few heads and garner extra attention using a bit of tulle and some sequins, right?”

I understand “how annoying it must be for Osaka’s opponents”, said The Times’ fashion director Anna Murphy. Her “ballroom skirt” and “spangled waistcoat” are “more usually seen in ‘Bridgerton’” and “Dancing on Ice”. I appreciate her angle: professional tennis “isn’t for the shy and retiring”, and if you’re on a rumoured $10 million sponsorship deal, “why not milk it”?

Wimbledon has indicated it will go along with Osaka’s “fancy-dress-adjacent thing”, provided what she wears is white. The restrictions are only on colour, not style, “so what’s it going to be for SW19? A snowman? A snowball? A snowballgirl?” But this sets a precedent that could turn the circuit into a “fancy dress party”, inviting others to follow suit. I am “not sure how even I, a fashion journalist, feel about that”.

Fashion ‘embedded’ in tennis

Tennis has “always been a runway” and fashion has “long been entrenched” in the sport, said the Daily Maverick. Osaka’s idols, the Williams sisters, used fashion as a “platform of empowerment”. Serena Williams’ “iconic” 2018 catsuit “became one of the most discussed outfits in tennis history”, while Venus’ “‘scandalous’ cabaret-inspired 2010 look” also “challenged conventions”.

Such pageantry has become commonplace in other sports too, with “paddock fashion” in Formula 1 and “tunnel walks” in US basketball. People are only noticing, and commenting, because Osaka is “using fashion as a form of self-expression on her own terms”.

Outfits worn by Osaka and Sabalenka have “crystallised how deeply luxury fashion has embedded itself in tennis”, said the Financial Times. “Indeed, the relationship between luxury and tennis isn’t new.” Many of the major stars will have a partnership with a high-end brand: Jannik Sinner and Gucci, Carlos Alcaraz and Louis Vuitton, Zheng Qinwen and Dior, British star Jack Draper and Burberry; the list goes on.

Professional tennis is a “visual theatre”, with increasingly viable commercial opportunities. Lacoste, Ralph Lauren and Rolex have all been “intertwined” with the sport, but there has been a dramatic shift in tennis’ “scale and visibility, both as a participatory sport and a spectacle”. Broader participation in the US (up by 54% since 2019, according to the US Tennis Association), and rising broadcast audiences mean tennis has become a “compelling stage” for marketing. Tennis offers a “rare opportunity to speak simultaneously to affluent buyers and aspirational young fans”.

Spencer Pratt is the latest entrant in the reality-TV-to-politics pipeline. Pratt made his name as the villain on “The Hills” during the late aughts. Now he is a contender to be the next mayor of Los Angeles.

Polls show Pratt “within striking distance” of incumbent mayor Karen Bass in Tuesday’s primary election, said CNN. AI-produced viral videos have powered his campaign, which is focused on “frustration with the city’s leadership” amid “overlapping crises” — wildfires, Hollywood’s decline, homelessness — that have left L.A. with “deep uncertainty about its future.” Pratt, who waded into politics after losing his home in last year’s Palisades fire, betrays little such uncertainty about his chances. “I’m for sure going to be mayor,” he said to Vanity Fair. The message and the messenger both remind observers of President Donald Trump, who last week endorsed Pratt’s campaign.

‘Shining a light’ on city failures

The novice candidate has “captivated a frustrated Los Angeles,” Susan Shelley said at The Orange County Register. Rather than running a vacuous vanity campaign, Pratt has been “shining a light on the visible failures of Los Angeles government.” Those failures have left the city residents mired in “crushing utility bills, unaffordable insurance, dangerous parks, unsafe sidewalks, homeless encampments” and other challenges. Pratt could be a mayor “who solves problems instead of preserving them to justify more funding.”

The reality star is “betting that infamy can be political currency,” Louis Staples said at The Atlantic. On “The Hills,” Pratt established himself as an “agitator” who found celebrity by “fighting with the other cast members and even with his own family.” That turned the show into “addictive viewing” plus taught Pratt a lesson about “narrative control.” TV stars and politicians both use tabloid leaks, social media and podcast appearances as part of a wide-ranging strategy to “influence how they’re perceived.” Pratt is a political newcomer, “but he’s been playing this game for years.”

Pratt is part of a line of mostly Republican stars who have “leveraged their reality TV fame into political careers,” Lorraine Ali said at The Los Angeles Times. Pratt and Trump can “push conflict, drama and personality” so far in the social media era that “no one will ask what exactly it is that you do beyond posting.” Pratt has accomplished that much. “But what about his ability to govern?”

‘Almost certainly toast’

Pratt’s strong polling probably “represents a consolidation of the small but very real conservative minority” of Los Angeles voters who see him as a MAGA candidate, Ed Kilgore said at New York. The city’s broader left-leaning electorate puts a “pretty firm ceiling on Pratt’s vote” that will make it difficult for him to win the mayor’s office in November. Instead, his candidacy “may be the best thing that could have happened to Karen Bass.” Pratt may well survive Tuesday’s nonpartisan primary election, but “he’s almost certainly toast against a Democrat in a general election.”

He’s a “thin, limpish, bespectacled 94-year-old grandfather” whose revolutionary days are long gone, said Daniel DePetris in The Telegraph, yet he’s a wanted man in the US for all that. Raúl Castro has been a dominant figure in Cuba’s communist regime since his brother Fidel seized power in 1959.

Cuba’s defence chief from 1959 to 2008 and its president from 2006 to 2018, he still wields great influence behind the scenes. So it’s quite something that the US attorney general has now charged him with a murder he’s said to have been involved in back in 1996 – the fatal downing of two civilian planes over the Straits of Florida.

The four victims of that attack, three of them US citizens, had been working for Brothers to the Rescue, an NGO dedicated to helping Cuban refugees and dropping anti-communist leaflets over the island. Castro is accused of having instructed his fighter pilots to “knock them down into the sea when they show up”.

‘Warning for a deaf regime’

You could see this coming, said Diario de Cuba (Madrid). The Trump administration has been demanding that Havana open up its economy and end political repression; yet despite heavy US sanctions and an oil blockade imposed in January, the regime has made no more than limited concessions – allowing Cubans in exile to found companies back home, for example. So the indictment of Raúl Castro is a “warning for a deaf regime”. And quite possibly an effective one.

The regime was badly shaken when, in January, Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro was captured by US forces in a surprise raid on Caracas. And US Attorney General Todd Blanche has hinted something similar might occur in Cuba. Asked how he intended to bring Castro to trial in America, he cryptically replied there are “all kinds of different ways”.

Bringing in Castro would be a major blow to the regime, said CNN (Atlanta). Regarded as his late brother’s “more disciplined and discreet” enforcer, Raúl Castro remains “the power in the shadows”. And his family holds immense economic as well as political clout: GAESA, the military-run conglomerate Castro founded in 1995, controls 70% of the economy on some estimates: Cuba’s tourist industry is just one of the sectors it dominates.

Markets empty, prices soaring

That economy is now suffering its “greatest crisis” since the collapse of its close ally the Soviet Union, said The Washington Post. The oil embargo has driven it to the brink. “Havana looks like a bombed-out city,” said Yunior García Aguilera on 14YMedio (Havana). Its buildings, crumbling from decades of neglect, are “split open like broken ribs”. With no petrol to run dustbin trucks, rubbish is being burnt in the streets. People wade through “toxic clouds”, side-stepping sewage and hopping over pot-holes. “Plastic, rotten food and patience are all ablaze.”

And with no imports reaching the island, Cubans have to eat what’s grown locally, said CiberCuba (Valencia). Which isn’t much. Rice production had plummeted even before the fuel crisis. Without fuel for crop dusters, tractors or irrigation, farmers have “reverted to using oxen, buffalo, horses, windmills, and solar pumps”. Markets are empty, prices are soaring. Most Cubans have begun skipping meals.

The US hopes such suffering will spark a “mass uprising” and cause the regime to implode, said Fabio E. Fernández Batista in El Salto (Madrid). But such is the repressive nature of the regime, that seems unlikely, which is why not a few Cubans now hope that “Saint Donald” will come to the rescue, even “if it means bombs falling” on their homeland.

And the US appears “increasingly willing” to seek regime change in Cuba through military means, said Nahal Toosi on Politico (Washington) – by an air strike or possibly even a ground invasion. The signs are all there: there’s been a reported spike in US surveillance flights off Cuba, and last week the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz was sent to the Caribbean. Some assume the ongoing failure of his war in Iran will hold the US president back. Don’t bet on it. It’s never a good idea “to predict what the capricious Trump will do”.

“Suddenly, say those who live there, the mood in Moscow feels very different,” said Adrian Blomfield in The Telegraph. Ever since Ukraine’s counteroffensive stalled in 2023, Russia’s capital had “exuded confidence. Its residents could either bathe in the patriotic glory of war or ignore it altogether”. But lately, “bombast” has given way to fear, and to a longing for the conflict to end; and this feeling became more acute this month, when Moscow and its wider region came under fire from a barrage of Ukrainian drones.

It was “one of the most sustained aerial attacks of the conflict” so far. Three people were killed; all four of Moscow’s airports had to close; an oil refinery and residential buildings were hit. “Muscovites listening to drones buzz overhead and air defences firing into the night” were given a “glimpse of life in Kyiv – and they did not like it”.

‘Completely unravelling’

Events have not been in the Kremlin’s favour lately, said the Financial Times. Ukraine has upped its use of long-range drones to target energy and military facilities deep in Russia. On the front line, Russia is “scratching out meagre territorial gains at a devastating human cost”: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently asserted that it is “losing 15,000-20,000 soldiers a month. Not injured. Dead.”

The Russian economy, meanwhile, is ailing: some analysts reckon that inflation is running well above the official 5.6%; and interest rates are at a punishing 14.5%. Vladimir Putin has tried to bury bad news by tightening state control over the internet, said Phillips Payson O’Brien in The Atlantic. Even so, videos have increasingly been circulating in which Russians express “shock at their capital’s vulnerability”. His long-standing narrative, that the conflict in Ukraine is a “special military operation” that needn’t trouble Russia’s elites or middle classes, is “completely unravelling”.

‘Most challenging period’

Putin’s calculus on the war in Ukraine has not changed, said Pjotr Sauer and Shaun Walker in The Guardian. He remains determined to “press on” in the (surely misguided) belief that Moscow can capture the whole of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region by the end of the year. Such “bravado”, however, is doing little to ease the disquiet inside Russia; and speculation is growing that Putin’s regime could be toppled from within.

There have been reports that Sergei Shoigu, the former defence minister, could emerge as a threat to his former boss’s grip on power. The likelihood of an imminent Kremlin coup may be remote; but there’s no doubt that, at 73, Putin is entering “the most challenging period of his long rule”.

Any path President Donald Trump takes to end the war with Iran is bound to generate a lot of dissatisfaction among his GOP supporters and advisers. Hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) continue to “press for more aggressive U.S. military action,” Daniel R. DePetris said at the Los Angeles Times, and Republicans “consider anything short of Iran’s total surrender a failure.” But Trump’s in-house political strategists want a quick end to the unpopular war to “minimize political repercussions against the Republican Party” in November’s midterm elections. Trump clearly wants the deal that he keeps promising to the U.S. public, yet accomplishing that may put him at odds with Republicans who “would consider anything short of Iran’s total surrender a failure.”

‘A bad option and a worse one’

The president “seems conflicted,” said DePetris. He’s “fed up with the current situation” but also “afraid of escalation,” said Danny Citrinowicz, of The Atlantic Council, to The New Yorker. The president is “fed up with the current situation,” but he is also “afraid of escalation,” the Atlantic Council’s Danny Citrinowicz said in an interview with The New Yorker. Escalation probably will not work “because the Iranians are not going to capitulate.” The other option to end the war, then, is a deal that provides both money and sanctions relief to the Islamic regime in exchange for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s choices are “between a bad option and a worse one.”

“Will Trump bail out Iran’s regime?” The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial. Inflation pressures at home are likely behind the president’s desire to “reopen the Strait even on Iran’s terms.” But a “bad deal would leave him worse off politically” even if domestic prices recede. Iran’s regime was beset by domestic crises that the war has exacerbated. A “half victory” by Iran now “would hurt America’s standing — and Mr. Trump’s.”

The issue is not Trump “terminating the conflict too soon,” Jacob Heilbrunn said at The Spectator. It is “that he began it in the first place.” The war is undermining both his presidency and U.S. military power, and the idea that escalation would result in Iran’s surrender “defies credulity.” The ugly truth illustrated by the Hormuz closure is that Trump “does not hold the cards.”

‘Leaving core issues unsolved’

Trump is looking to get a ceasefire deal now and “deal with the toughest problems later,” said The New York Times. He took the same approach in Gaza, where he brokered a truce last year. That effort ended the fighting but left issues of Hamas’ future and the rebuilding of Gaza to be figured out at a later date. So far that has not happened. Such an approach can be a way for Trump to “claim victory while leaving the core issues unsolved.”

“Doubling down” on the war remains a possibility, Ravi Agrawal said at Foreign Policy. But that would come with “uncertain benefits” and “much more potential pain.” We may soon find out one way or another, as the U.S. on Monday conducted strikes on Iranian positions, a sign the temporary truce is faltering.

Ferrari’s first foray into electric vehicles has sparked an intense backlash from fans and investors, with shares falling sharply after the unveiling of its new battery-powered Luce.

Created in collaboration with former Apple chief designer Jony Ive, the car’s futuristic shell-like form, silent engine and £475,000 price tag were always going to be “controversial”, said Politico. But Luca di Montezemolo, Ferrari’s former chairman, spoke for many “purists in Italy” when he said it “risks destroying the myth” of the legendary cars and should be stripped of the company’s prancing horse logo.

‘Polarising’

Montezemolo was far from alone in his assessment.

“The Luce does not look like a Ferrari. It looks like the concept for a Honda Hydrogen vehicle from 2002,” said Luke Plunkett on Aftermath. “It looks like one of the ‘this is what the future will look like from the 90s’ cars from ‘Demolition Man’, only worse.” It looks like “anything but a Ferrari”.

It has even managed to unite Italy’s fractious politics. Far-right transport minister Matteo Salvini slammed it on X, while centrist opposition politician Carlo Calenda called it an “aesthetic and technological insult to anyone who loves Ferrari”.

Even Ferrari’s chief design officer, Flavio Manzoni, admitted that the design was “polarising”, but he’s confident fans will embrace the new car with time.

Investors, however, were not so sure. Ferrari shares fell nearly 8% in Milan on Tuesday, amid fears the Luce launch “could become a repeat of Jaguar Land Rover’s controversial failed rebrand” in 2024. That was when the luxury British carmaker “tried to shift the marque away from its traditional ‘Jag man’ image towards ultra-wealthy customers”, said The Telegraph.

‘Energy transition challenge’

The Luce has had a “rather long gestation period”, with a Ferrari EV in the works for “a few years” before development officially started in 2021, said Car magazine. At the time, “EVs were riding high and increasing in popularity in the premium, sport and luxury space” but “the world slightly reassessed that overly positive attitude to EVs not long after and so did Ferrari”.

Since then, mass-production brands like Ford, GM, Honda and Volvo have “all retreated from their EV initiatives in one way or another as consumer demand plummets, profit falls and policy makers deprioritise moving away from traditional gas power”, said Forbes.

“Luxury and performance brands have done the same”, with Lamborghini scrapping its first planned EV, Porsche opting for hybrid and McLaren steering clear entirely.

“Underscoring the energy transition challenge for luxury carmakers”, the “initial negative reaction to Ferrari’s new model was not surprising”, said the Financial Times. But according to analysts, “the key challenge for the company was to fill the order book with the highly specific clients it had targeted for the Luce”.

As far as the Italian brand’s executives are concerned, “whether most current Ferrari customers think the Luce is cool is irrelevant,” said Scott Sherwood, an independent analyst of luxury carmakers. “If it tested well enough with the tech crowd to fill the order book, that’s all they are concerned with.”

A rare event occurred last week, said Fred Kaplan on Slate: President Trump posted a completely accurate observation on social media. Commenting on Iran’s response to a US ceasefire proposal, he declared it “totally unacceptable”.

He’s right about that. Iran’s statement – which included no concessions and a long list of demands, including war reparations, the lifting of all sanctions and Iran’s continued control over the Strait of Hormuz – read like something “the winner of a war would issue”. The question is, what can Trump do about it?

He has repeatedly threatened to resume bombing Iran if the regime rejects his peace proposals, but it’s hard to see what that would achieve. If the 38 days of devastating air strikes that began on 28 February failed to bring Tehran to heel, what difference would obliterating a few more targets make?

‘Wiggle out of this conflict’

“If this isn’t checkmate, it’s close,” said Robert Kagan in The Atlantic. Trump halted the bombing campaign on Iran “not because he was bored, but because Iran was striking the region’s vital oil and gas facilities”. If he’s not willing to accept the risk of more such retaliation, or to mount a full-scale ground and naval war to remove the Iranian regime, “walking away now could seem like the least bad option”.

Trump, to his credit, shows no sign of wanting to “wiggle out of this conflict” or sign some meaningless deal, said Noah Rothman in National Review. He’s rightly determined to stop Tehran getting a nuclear weapon. But to succeed, he’ll need to solicit the public’s support for this project, which requires showing a bit more patience and “humility”. He’s not going to win people over by branding all critics “stupid”, or dismissing the inflationary effects of the war. He recently claimed that he was motivated only by the nuclear issue, saying “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation at all”. That quote is going to be used against him in countless Democratic campaign adverts.

‘We will all reap the whirlwind if Iran comes out of this stronger’

Trump’s rudeness and arrogance has also made Nato allies very disinclined to come to America’s aid, said Thomas L. Friedman in The New York Times. Which is too bad, as the administration could really do with their help. The reality is that it’s in all of our interests to fix the Iran situation. It will be terrible for Europe if Tehran is allowed to decide who can and who can’t pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

And it will be worse still for the Arab Gulf states that rely on the channel, endangering their modernising, pluralistic reforms. “The Dubai model is precisely the one Tehran wants to destroy.” It’s understandable that Nato allies are loath to help Trump, but make no mistake: “we will all reap the whirlwind if Iran comes out of this stronger”.

Among the many crusades in his quest to “Make America Healthy Again,” one target of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is antidepressants. Kennedy has long said that psychiatric drugs like SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) are harmful, including claiming they cause mass shootings.

Kennedy recently announced at a MAHA Institute mental health summit an initiative to help wean Americans off antidepressants. The announcement sparked a debate among experts over the campaign’s pros and cons.

Stigmatization and lack of access

Kennedy’s perspective on deprescribing SSRIs “really is an oversimplification,” Theresa Miskimen Rivera, the president of the American Psychiatric Association, said to NPR. The health secretary’s view “ignores the larger reality,” which is that “too many patients really cannot access timely, comprehensive care.” Rivera and the American Psychiatric Association support “any plans to better train healthcare providers to safely prescribe and wean patients off antidepressants.”

The health secretary has “no real interest in fixing structural problems that leave people with no choice but to use SSRIs,” Amanda Marcotte said at Salon. On the contrary, Kennedy has a “long history of talking about people on SSRIs in dehumanizing, often racist language” that implies “their actual problem is they’re lazy and need to just work harder — or even work for free.” The problem isn’t “lack of will but lack of access.” The only purpose of Kennedy’s rhetoric is to make it “easier to justify taking away their healthcare.” It is the “same old Republican playbook, just dressed up in a phony mask of compassion.”

There is a “legitimate clinical problem” at the center of Kennedy’s initiative to help Americans stop taking antidepressants, Jonathan Slater, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, said at Stat News. Deprescribing is indeed “understudied, undertaught and under-reimbursed.”

But the health secretary’s campaign “conflates that genuine clinical need with claims unsupported by evidence, and some that are actively dangerous,” said Slater. Redirecting patients away from medications is “only clinically responsible if the alternatives are accessible. They are not.” Patients on antidepressants deserve two things: an “honest conversation about whether they still need their medication” and a “system equipped to help them stop safely if they do not.” Right now, “we have neither the data nor the infrastructure to deliver that.”

Turning a blind eye to weaning difficulties

For decades, mainstream psychiatry “willfully blinded itself” to the “burden and severity of withdrawal and discontinuation-related difficulties” from antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, Awais Aftab, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry, said to The New York Times. American Society for Clinical Pathology guidelines only “tinker” toward solutions and “generally recommend maintenance treatment for recurrent depression, bipolar I disorder and schizophrenia, ignoring controversies in these areas.” The guidelines assume that most people are “correctly diagnosed,” when in reality there is “widespread diagnostic chaos and decisions about maintenance are made under considerable uncertainty.”

Kennedy is correct that more “evidence-based care and therapies” should be available, Vera Feuer, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, said to NPR. Some of the health secretary’s recommendations are “completely reasonable.” Everybody should have access to a “detailed, careful assessment.” Prescribers should also not “feel pressured by parents and schools to instantly medicate behaviors that are due to other issues.”

In diagnosing “overmedicalization as a major problem,” the MAHA movement “gets something right,” Khameer Kidia, a physician and anthropologist at Harvard Medical School, said at The Boston Globe. However, the issue “doesn’t begin with physicians and our prescription pads.” As the opioid epidemic has shown, the “problem starts higher up.”

Drug companies have led the public to believe the “drugs corrected a chemical imbalance in the brain,” said Kidia. No such imbalance has been proven, and “many research studies show the drugs are only modestly better than placebos.” Now that so many patients are on SSRIs, “pharmaceutical companies have little incentive to get them to stop.” The problem with “MAHA’s approach to mental health” is the “overarching placement of responsibility with individuals” rather than the “exploitative systems that create poor mental health.” MAHA is “half right with the diagnosis,” but its “prescription conveniently ignores the root causes of the problems it has identified.”

“The Venice Biennale is the world’s most prestigious international art exhibition,” said Katrin Bennhold in The New York Times. Every other year, a colossal central show aspires to distil the current state of contemporary art, while the nations of the world stage individual exhibitions in designated pavilions, each competing for the coveted top prize. Elsewhere, a host of satellite exhibitions take over the city’s museums and public spaces.

In 2026, however, the art has been overshadowed by “everything else”. For one thing, the main event’s curator, Cameroon-born Koyo Kouoh, died unexpectedly last May. Then Russia – absent since 2022 – returned to the fold. In response, the biennale jury said it wouldn’t award prizes to countries accused of war crimes – there were protests against Israel too – and resigned in protest.

Yet some of the exhibits at this “massive mess” of a biennale still deserve a visit, said Eddy Frankel in The Guardian. The national pavilions are often interesting, and “some of them are even quite fun”. Denmark’s offering incorporates “a hi-tech sperm bank”; “a singing turd” is featured at Luxembourg’s; the Japanese show encourages visitors to carry around “fake babies”; and Malta’s features “a life-size chocolate Russell Crowe”.

Weirdest of all is Florentina Holzinger’s Austria pavilion, “a confrontational, stomach-turning” performance piece, in which naked female performers swim in urine and circle an artificial lake on jet skis. Ridiculous as it sounds, it’s “brilliantly obscene and vile” – and, beneath the wackiness, a scary portent of ecological catastrophe.

Russia’s display, on the other hand, is “wretched”, said Jackie Wullschläger in the Financial Times. I went in expecting a “whitewash” and was greeted with a “limp” display of flowers, some “embarrassed folk music performers” and insistent “offers of alcohol”. Nor is Lubaina Himid’s British pavilion up to much. Her paintings of “generic black figures characterised by profession (chef, tailor, gardener)” feel “lacklustre” and “predictable”.

The central exhibition, In Minor Keys, which foregrounds artists from the “global south”, aims to celebrate quiet pleasures and beauty in the face of tragedy, said Wullschläger. The idea is nice, but the overall quality is “poor”. Some exceptions aside – not least Theo Eshetu’s uprooted olive tree mounted on a revolving plinth, “superimposed with a film showing its earlier fullness” – it’s the same old melange of “identikit hanging textiles” and anti-colonial railing. I left feeling “alienated, hectored, patronised and bored”.

It’s not all bad, said Hettie Judah in Apollo. The Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar has his own room, “a vast lozenge of space flooded with disorienting red light”; at its end is a tiny metal cube forged from rare minerals necessary for modern technological gadgets. It’s “a temple to callous, extractive greed” and its “catastrophic human cost”. There are other highlights – but, true to its title, this is a show of “minor encounters” not “revelations”. And its very scale, alas, drowns out the “subtleties”. The show could have done with more “editorial rigour”.

Years of drought and growing demand have taken their toll on the Colorado River, which supplies water and hydropower to 40 million people in seven Western states. Now the moment of crisis has arrived.

The river is “on the brink of disaster,” said The Wall Street Journal. An “unusually warm winter” deprived Colorado and Utah of the snowpack that feeds the river in the spring. That will have literal downstream effects: Lake Powell reservoir in Utah and Arizona “will receive the least amount of water this year” since its creation in 1963.

Western states have struggled for years to divvy up the dwindling supply, and old agreements are expiring. Now the Trump administration is preparing a “drastic” plan to “cut water deliveries to farms, cities and tribes” by a third, said E&E News. “There wasn’t enough water to start with, and there’s still less water,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said last month, per The Arizona Daily Star.

Solutions ‘will not be popular’

“The clock is running out on a deal” between Western states to “keep the Colorado River alive,” Mike Gardner said at The Raincross Gazette in Riverside, California. The Interior Department’s proposal would likely face years of legal challenges, but the system of dams and reservoirs along the river “could cease to function due to lack of water” before the lawsuits play out. So the states must find agreement before the federal government imposes one. The “political reality,” though, is that elected officials who agree to water cuts “will not be popular” with their constituents.

States along the river have seen “enormous increases” in water consumption over the last half-century “with no thought for tomorrow,” Steve Hanley said at CleanTechnica. They have been “kicking this can down the road this entire century.” We are getting a “preview of the kind of wrangling” that will become common as “Earth becomes too hot in some places to sustain human life.”

Downsizing agriculture?

It is time to build more water desalination plants on the Pacific Ocean, Greg Walcher said at The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, Colorado. If the Colorado River “cannot continue to supply all the people who once relied on it” then desalination plants seem a logical solution to the West’s “seemingly unsolvable water dilemma.” Indeed, Arizona, Nevada and Utah are trying to “buy excess water” from San Diego, said The New York Times. The city built a desalination plant to process Pacific Ocean water in the 1990s and is now poised to sell its “surplus water” across the West.

Such solutions will take time and cutbacks loom in the short term. Farms use about three-fourths of Colorado River water to “grow alfalfa and other kinds of hay to feed cattle,” said the Los Angeles Times. It will be “critical” to “downsize” the sector’s water usage. Some agricultural lands “are going to go out of production,” The University of Colorado Law School’s Anne Castle said to the outlet.

Many questioned whether Pep Guardiola could hack it in the rough and tumble of the Premier League when he became Manchester City’s manager a decade ago.

Could his brand of beautiful “tiki-taka” football, refined in Barcelona and developed at Bayern Munich, cut it on a cold Tuesday night in Stoke?

Ten years on and his record speaks for itself: six Premier League titles, including one secured with over 100 points and another as part of a historic treble; the Champions League; three FA Cups; five League Cups; the Uefa Super Cup and Fifa Club World Cup. It makes him the second most decorated manager in Premier League history behind Sir Alex Ferguson. Now, with rumours of his departure at the end of the season, the question of his legacy has arisen.

‘Level of tactical complexity has soared’

As his mentor Johan Cruyff did as manager of Barcelona, Guardiola has “created a legacy that has changed the face of football at every level in England”, said BBC chief football writer Phil McNulty.

During his time at City, Guardiola “has not just shaped elite football and the game in the league’s pyramids” but “has had an impact at every level down to grassroots, where even junior coaches adopt his strategies”.

“His success goes beyond just the many wins,” said The Sun. “It is embedded into the very foundation of the game in England now.”

Even semi-professional teams now play out from the back. Goalkeepers will pass into danger rather than go long. The rigid formations of old are gone. Defenders sometimes play as strikers. “Kids are growing up with these roles more defined than ever” and “the level of tactical complexity has soared”.

To understand the extent of Guardiola’s impact you need only glance around at the other elite managers working in the game today. Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta, who this season delivered the club’s first Premier League title in 22 years, cut his teeth as Guardiola’s assistant at City, as did former Chelsea boss and likely successor at the Etihad, Enzo Maresca. PSG boss Luis Enrique worked under him at Barcelona, as did new Chelsea manager Xavi Alonso in Munich. Current Bayern boss Vincent Kompany was City’s talismanic captain for years under Guardiola.

‘Lingering question’

There is no doubt City’s Abu Dhabi ownership “more than got its money’s worth”, said The Independent’s Miguel Delaney, but there is “another way to think about Guardiola”.

Whether it was having Lionel Messi in his prime, taking charge of already Treble-winning Bayern, or the immense resources he was handed at City, “the one purely football caveat in Guardiola’s sensational record” is “he’s never really had to work anywhere where he’s had to compromise”.

The other “lingering question” concerns City’s “bludgeoning power” and how, “Guardiola’s prodigious gifts aside, they were able to acquire it in the first place”, said Oliver Brown in The Telegraph. The seemingly never-ending Premier League investigation into 115 charges of financial irregularity has hung over the club, and “for years Guardiola has had to deny suggestions of an asterisk being placed alongside their achievements”.

As for the future, replacing Guardiola “will be no easy feat”, said The Athletic. He has “set the standard so high, both for fans of Manchester City and for those of us judging from the outside, that anything short of sustained brilliance could easily seem underwhelming. Mediocrity would feel like disaster.”

The redistricting battles are over for now, and Republicans won. But Democrats might still have a path to recapturing the House in November’s midterm elections.

President Donald Trump “succeeded in tilting the playing field to the GOP’s advantage” by pushing for mid-decade gerrymandered maps to defend Republicans’ House majority, said The Washington Post. As many as 12 seats shifted to the right. Democrats would now have to “dig deep into Trump territory” to win the chamber. But redistricting may have also “diluted” GOP votes in existing red-leading districts, said Axios, a possible “dummymander” in which sitting Republican members of Congress could be “swept out of office” in a “Democratic wave” thanks to Trump’s growing unpopularity.

‘The GOP’s voter problem’

The redistricting wins “won’t matter if Republicans can’t get people to vote for them,” Russell Payne said at Salon. All the shuffling leaves Democrats needing to win the national popular vote by at least 3.5% in order to have a chance at winning the House, but polling currently puts them closer to six points ahead. A Democratic victory in the midterms “would buy them time” to respond with gerrymandering of their own in blue states like Virginia, Illinois and New York. Trump’s negative approval rating will not help Republicans. Redistricting “can’t fix the GOP’s voter problem.”

The new House map is “so tilted” that a national four-point Democratic voting advantage “might not be enough for a majority,” Henry Olsen said at The Washington Post. That outcome “would be highly unusual historically.” The GOP’s gerrymandering “might be enough to let the party keep the House,” but it could “hold back public opinion forever.” If Democrats keep that but lose the House, they will “rightly feel robbed.”

Trump and the GOP may have given Democrats a “lifeline” with Black voters, S.E. Cupp said at the Chicago Sun-Times. Republican redistricting is “carving up predominantly Black majority districts” and “potentially marginalizing minority voters” who were starting to move right: Trump received 15% of the Black vote in 2024, up from just 1% in 2016. Gerrymandering “might be the catalyst” Democrats need to win them back. The GOP “war on Black districts” could do just that “at least in the short term.”

Democrats: ‘May still have upper hand’

Democrats should not despair. Republicans “likely won’t realize all the gains” they hoped for, Jim Saksa said at Democracy Docket. And if Democrats play “hardball” after this year’s midterms by doing more “partisan redraws” in blue states, they could end up with an advantage of as many as 13 seats by 2028. But “it won’t be easy.”

The president’s party “typically loses seats in midterms,” said Reuters. GOP chances in the House “have increased,” said Inside Elections’ Jacob Rubashkin to the outlet, and “none of the underlying politics has changed.” Inflation, gasoline prices and the Iran war will all be factors. Democrats may “still have the upper hand” going into November, said Reuters.

Bruising brushes with financial markets have been the fate of Labour “down the ages”, said William Keegan in The Observer. Back in the 1960s, Harold Wilson complained about “the gnomes of Zürich” – a derogatory reference to international bankers then going “short on the pound”. This time, the threat is closer to home – in London’s febrile government bond markets.

‘The risk of some kind of accident is real’

Before this week’s escalation of the leadership fight, economists were playing down the political angle. “For all the noise, politics isn’t what’s driving yields higher right now,” James Smith of ING told The Times. “The overwhelming driver is still the energy crisis, oil prices and the impact on BoE interest rates.” But as a dramatic sell-off got under way, it became harder to discount the sense that debt markets are indeed badly rattled by Labour’s leadership woes. The 30-year gilt yield, which hit 5.81% on Tuesday, is at the highest this century. Yields on 10-year gilts (the benchmark for mortgage rates), at 5.13%, are at their highest since 2008.

It’s “a rubbish time” to be having a political crisis, said Daire MacFadden in the Financial Times. “Sadly, that’s precisely what we have.” Any leadership challenge is “all but certain to herald a move to the left and potentially an increase in government borrowing”. To some extent, the gilt market had already priced this in, but “the risk of some kind of accident here is real”.

It doesn’t help that Andy Burnham – who last year observed that government shouldn’t be “in hock” to the bond market – “keeps talking about bond markets as if they are some sort of entity he can bamboozle with jargon”, said John Stepek on Bloomberg. The view from his camp seems to be that renationalising various sectors of the economy will inherently make them more productive – so gilt markets “will be happy to fund the borrowing”. That’s a somewhat “courageous” assumption.

‘Bond vigilantes’ on the rise

“It seems like the only supporters that Keir Starmer has left are the so-called bond vigilantes,” said Robin Wigglesworth in the FT. As they point out, higher borrowing costs are already chipping away at the chancellor’s £24 billion of fiscal headroom, which forecasts suggest could halve. But for how long “can the gilt market act as the UK’s political police”?

Among Starmer’s rivals, Burnham is perceived by traders as the biggest threat and Wes Streeting as the least risky. We must hope he prevails and persuades investors to lend at “a lower premium” to Britain, said Adam Smith in The Telegraph.

The “intriguing paradox” of Labour politics is that the leader most distrusted by the Left may ultimately be the “most capable of financing the expansive social-democratic state that they all crave”.

Chinese-made EVs are cheap and increasingly popular around the world but not in the U.S. market where imports are mostly banned. American automakers and their allies in Congress want to keep it that way.

Congress is pushing to “lock Chinese cars out of the U.S. market,” said Autoweek. Michigan Reps. John Moolenaar and Debbie Dingell this week introduced a bill to entrench and expand a Biden-era block on “smart” cars with Chinese-made software systems the lawmakers say is a national security threat.

American automakers are also alarmed by what they see as unfair competition from Beijing-backed companies like BYD, Nio and Geely that have made “steady market share gains in ​Europe and Mexico,” said Reuters. Geely sells its EX2 EV for $22,500 in Mexico, while the average sale price of a new car in the U.S. is $51,000. Chinese carmakers have “some level of government support, or else they couldn't transact at that price,” Toyota’s David Christ said to the outlet.

‘Common sight in border towns’

Lifting the block on Chinese EVs “could devastate the U.S. auto industry,” Sandy K. Baruah and Glenn Stevens Jr. said at The Detroit News. China has “cunningly” built its carmakers using “vast state subsidies, uncompetitive labor practices and the monopolization of raw materials” to “dominate the global market.” Those practices have created an “unfair playing field” in which Chinese companies now make 62% of all new EV sales globally. “We must not allow that here.”

It is a question of “when, not if” Chinese cars will hit U.S. roads, Katrina Hamlin said at Reuters. The vehicles are “cheaper” and “often snazzier” than what American brands offer, and U.S. drivers “seem ​keen to buy Chinese cars” as “budget models become increasingly scarce” at home. BYDs purchased in Mexico are already a “common sight in American border towns like El Paso and San Diego” though they cannot be registered in the U.S. The change “looks increasingly like it’s just a matter of time.”

Congress is not buying

“Are cars the next TikTok?” Matthew Choi and Dan Merica said at The Washington Post. Lawmakers are concerned camera, sensor and trip data collected by Chinese smart cars could be shared with Beijing, similar to the fears that forced the sale of TikTok’s American operations to U.S.-based Oracle. President Donald Trump has suggested he would welcome Chinese automakers as long as their cars are “built by Americans in the U.S.” So far, though, “that is not a caveat Congress is buying.”

Chinese carmakers should be allowed “if they agree to conditions,” Bruce Stokes said at Roll Call. They should “hire American union labor” and “buy American-made parts.” They should also share “most advanced Chinese battery and other technologies” with U.S. partner companies and store the “vast amounts data” generated by their cars on U.S.-based servers. The U.S. must strike that deal or risk “being hopelessly shut out of the world market.”

A series of European leaders have been singled out for criticism by a frustrated Donald Trump over recent months, said The Guardian. Currently, it's Germany's chancellor who “finds himself in Washington's crosshairs”.

Friedrich Merz provoked the president's wrath last week by telling a class of schoolchildren in his home region of Sauerland that America lacked a clear strategy in Iran and was being “humiliated”. Trump swiftly hit back, calling Merz “totally ineffective” and threatening to shrink America's military presence in Germany. Two days later, the Pentagon announced the withdrawal of 5,000 of the more than 36,000 US troops stationed in Germany. Trump subsequently suggested that many more could be pulled out. He has also threatened to raise tariffs on European car imports from 15% to 25%, a step that would hit Germany hardest.

Awkward timing

This row arrives at a terrible time for Merz, who is struggling in the polls, said The Economist. However, it remains to be seen whether the troop withdrawals actually happen. Trump threatened to pull out 12,000 troops in his first term, but that plan was later cancelled. German bases such as Ramstein are “crucial hubs for American power projection, not least in the Middle East”. German officials are more concerned by the decision to cancel the deployment of a US intermediate-range missile unit to Germany.

This deployment, agreed in 2024 by President Biden, was “explicitly intended to send a message of strength to the Kremlin, a tangible signal of deterrence”, said Hubert Wetzel in Süddeutsche Zeitung. Trump's cancellation of the plan last week, after yet another long phone call with Vladimir Putin, could “almost be interpreted as an invitation to the Kremlin”. Nato's credibility ultimately depends on the belief that the US would come to Europe's aid in a crisis, but how sure can anyone be of that now?

Political misstep

Given how much Europe depends on America, its leaders really need to stop provoking Trump, said Wolfgang Munchau on UnHerd. Merz was of course right that the president entered the Iran war without a strategy, but it was foolish of him to talk of America being “humiliated”. More careful language is required. For all the talk of creating strategic autonomy, the reality is that Europe is miles away from being able safely to decouple from the US. It hasn't even agreed a joint defence strategy. The Europeans are in “dangerous denial”, always quick to criticise the US while persistently failing to address their own powerlessness. “Now Trump has called their bluff. No wonder they hate him.”

The Trump administration has lofty expectations about the state of the pharmaceutical industry, but not everyone appears to be a believer. Recent data from the White House predicted that the administration’s deals with drug companies could save the economy more than half a trillion dollars over the next decade. While Republicans are lauding this estimate, many Democrats are taking it with a grain of salt.

‘Touted his drug pricing deals as transformative’

The White House predicts that Trump’s deals could save $529 billion over the next 10 years, according to an analysis of data obtained by The Associated Press. The administration also estimated that federal and state governments could “save a combined $64.3 billion on Medicaid during the next decade” because of Trump’s agreements, Josh Doak said at the AP.

Trump administration officials have touted the president’s “drug pricing deals as transformative and urged Congress to codify their principles into law” as part of “most favored nation” (MFN) pricing, said Doak. The White House has “reached voluntary agreements with 17 pharmaceutical companies,” and it appears the administration’s “goal is to bring manufacturers of sole-source brand-name drugs and biologics into comparable arrangements,” Colleen Cabili said at Quartz. Details on the deal specifics remain unclear.

The president has “sought to position his pharmaceutical pricing push as a winning issue with voters,” said Cabili. Given his plummeting poll numbers over affordability, Trump has been “focusing on his efforts to cut deals with companies so that the cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. would no longer be dramatically higher than in other affluent nations,” said Doak.

The mechanism ‘remains a black box’

Despite the White House’s optimism, many across the aisle are skeptical of the Trump administration’s potential cost savings. Just prior to the White House’s analysis, 17 Democratic senators introduced legislation that would force Trump to provide details of the drug deals. If “these deals are actually lowering costs for patients, show us,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), one of the co-sponsors of the legislation, said in a statement. “Americans deserve transparency.”

If “these deals are so great, why is the Trump administration afraid of showing them to the public? Because Trump is a giant fraud when it comes to lower drug prices,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a parallel statement. The “scope of the savings claimed by the Trump administration are likely to intensify the scrutiny by Democrats,” said Doak at the AP. One of their primary concerns is that “pharmaceutical companies have increased their profit margins while working with the administration.”

The “exact mechanism” for these savings “remains a black box,” said Angus Liu at the biopharma news website Fierce Pharma. Beyond the price of the drugs themselves, the White House “has yet to define how commercial markets, such as employer-sponsored insurance, will access those discounted rates.” The “math for these massive savings only adds up if the administration can expand its circle of agreements beyond the 17 Big Pharma firms initially targeted” by Trump. Many biotech companies are also wary of “MFN’s impact on their business models” and “argue that they lack the diverse portfolios of pharma companies that can absorb revenue hits from pricing pressure.”

Plans for a summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping were underway before America went to war with Iran. That war delayed the meeting, now set for next week, and will overshadow other issues the two leaders planned to discuss.

The war has “significantly altered” the agenda for the Trump-Xi summit and could be a “major obstacle” to resolving trade issues between the two countries, Lyle J. Goldstein said at Responsible Statecraft. The “tensions are palpable” in part because China has reportedly shared weapons and intelligence with Tehran, but both countries want to keep the world economy “from careening off the looming cliff.” Trump and Xi may be forced to work on “pragmatic compromise in order to keep their rivalry under control.”

Trump “may want to temper his expectations” for the summit, Jacob Dreyer said at The New York Times. China once saw presidential visits as “global validation” for its rise but now has “begun to chart its own course” as its leaders realize their country has “learned all it can from America.” Trump wants to improve the U.S.-China relationship but “maintaining a tense stability is about all he can hope for.”

‘A creditor-debtor dynamic’

The president has “fewer cards to play” at the summit, Brahma Chellaney said at The Hill. His choice to go to war against Iran has “boomeranged” into a “global energy shock,” with the result that a meeting intended as a “show of strength” for the U.S. president may end up being more about “damage control.”

The war has depleted American munitions and weakened the economy, accelerating a shift in the U.S.-China relationship from a “rivalry of near-peers” to “something closer to a creditor-debtor dynamic.” Trump’s question in Beijing is “not whether he can strike a deal,” but rather “what he will give up to get one.”

Trade issues “will take center stage at the summit,” Patricia M. Kim said at Brookings. Trump and Xi likely will continue the “trade truce” between their countries, with the U.S. getting Chinese exports of rare earth minerals and sales of American farm products, while China gets tariff and regulatory relief from Washington. A summit “focused on stability” could lead to more cooperation on security and trade or could turn the Washington-Beijing relationship more frosty if “Trump walks away dissatisfied with the results of the trip.”

Breakthroughs unlikely

The number of Americans with favorable views about China has “ticked up,” said Pew Research Center, nearly doubling since 2023 to 27%. Fewer Americans say China is an enemy, but most “still see it as a competitor.”

The summit is “unlikely to deliver decisive breakthroughs” between the U.S. and China, Yingfan Chen and Dingding Chen said at The Diplomat. Its significance will not be a “transforming” of the dynamic between the two countries but instead “maintaining a minimum level of predictability” in the relationship so the competition between China and America can continue “within constraints the system can absorb.”

“No company is more unapologetic about its controversial goals than Palantir Technologies,” said Brett Shafer on The Motley Fool.

The AI powerhouse has “rocketed to become one of the largest companies in the world by market capitalisation”, by selling its analytics software to governments and big business; yet it is rapidly becoming “a political football”.

‘Ramblings of a supervillain’

Opponents cite the rumoured use of its tech in the Iran conflict, and the confirmed use of its tracking software in President Trump’s ICE immigration crackdown – as well as the “aggressive” political stance of two of its co-founders: CEO Alex Karp and chairman Peter Thiel.

Karp’s recent release of a 22-point “manifesto”, based on a book he co-authored last year, has unsettled minds further. The book’s central claim is that the survival of US civilisation depends on the technological revitalisation of the military-industrial complex. Even Palantir insiders are becoming disturbed by the rhetoric, reported Wired, and belatedly “starting to wonder if they’re the bad guys”.

Palantir’s reputation in Britain is on an even sharper descent, said Robert Booth in The Guardian. One MP compared the manifesto, which “implied some cultures were inferior”, to the “ramblings of a supervillain”.

Indeed, more than 300,000 Britons have signed petitions calling for Palantir to be dropped from UK contracts, which include a £330 million deal to process medical data for the NHS and a £240 million Ministry of Defence deal. A contract to process criminal intelligence for the Metropolitan Police is also under discussion.

‘Blackening’ NHS values

Palantir’s pitch is that it performs essential “plumbing” – joining together scattered, often incompatible, sets of data to be analysed and searched easily. But is this really a company we should trust with “our most sensitive data”, asked Faiza Shaheen in The New Statesman. By funding Palantir, “we are blackening the very values” of the NHS. Even the way it obtained its contracts seems shady. It got its toehold in the NHS during Covid by offering assistance for a token £1. Later deals were helped along by Peter Mandelson, and his lobbying firm Global Counsel.

Palantir, which is run in the UK by Louis Mosley, has become “the Left’s favourite conspiracy target”, said Matthew Field in The Daily Telegraph. Green party leader Zack Polanski has made rooting out the company a rallying call. “The tech giant, meanwhile, has embarked on its own PR blitz, seeking to portray the fears of its critics as concocted and political.” There’s everything to play for: next year, Palantir’s NHS deal “runs into a break clause”. The US firm had “better be ready” for a fight.

Not many legal experts expect this week’s federal indictment of former FBI director James Comey to result in a conviction. Instead, observers say President Donald Trump’s Justice Department finds its credibility wavering amid ongoing efforts to prosecute the president’s political rivals.

The case will be a “challenge for the Justice Department to win,” said The Associated Press. Comey was charged with threatening Trump with an Instagram post showing seashells arranged in the numbers “86 47.” (He later deleted the post.) The message was “ambiguous” at best and given Comey’s background he likely “didn’t intend to convey a threat of violence,” John Keller, a former Justice Department official who prosecuted violent threats, said to the AP. “Broad First Amendment protections” for political speech will make proving the case a “tall burden for the government,” said the outlet.

The indictment is a “grave embarrassment” to the Justice Department, Ken White said at The Popehat Report. Bringing charges over a “mildly sassy arrangement of seashells” demonstrates the “complete collapse” of the department’s integrity. Government attorneys have traditionally been granted a “presumption of regularity,” assuming that they are properly discharging their duties. That tradition is dissolving, and the “road back to credibility for the department will be long and arduous.”

DOJ ‘got the message’

Trump-friendly outlets and pundits are finding it difficult to defend the charges. The Comey indictment is “bogus,” Andrew McCarthy said at National Review. The Justice Department “shreds its credibility with the courts” when it “abuses power this way” and could invite retaliatory investigations when Democrats next take power. The Instagram post may have been “crass,” but the First Amendment “protects bad and hateful speech,” Jonathan Turley said at Fox News. The indictment probably will not survive a challenge, but it is “likely to fulfill Comey’s narrative” about the dangers posed by the Trump administration.

The indictment shows the Justice Department “got the message” from the recent firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi, Glenn Thrush said at The New York Times. The agency’s “roiled leadership,” including acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, is now sharply focused on the “president’s restless efforts to exact vengeance on his enemies.” That may keep Trump “happy, or at least at bay.” But with Democrats poised to take control of Congress, the department’s leaders may find that the “opinion of a lame-duck president is increasingly not the only one worth heeding.”

‘Whims and petty desires’

The prosecution “will almost certainly fail,” Steve Benen said at MS NOW. But a conviction may not be Trump’s “intended end point.” Instead, the president is making clear he can “orchestrate federal prosecutions based entirely on his whims and petty desires.” Federal prosecutors are getting a message they should “play along with the revenge campaign or face unemployment.”

Republicans may find the case a challenge to their midterm campaigns, said The Washington Post. No candidate “wants to run on ‘I stand with Donald Trump’s retribution tour’” while gas prices are rising, said GOP strategist Barrett Marson to the outlet.

No-frills carrier Spirit Airlines is bankrupt. Now President Donald Trump is mulling a federal takeover of the company. Can the U.S. government make the planes run on time?

Spirit Airlines employs 14,000 people and “maybe the federal government should help that one out,” Trump said to reporters last week, per Reuters. But there is hesitation in Trump’s cabinet and among the president’s free-market fellow Republicans. There has been “a lot of money thrown at Spirit, and they haven’t found their way into profitability,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said to the outlet. The federal government “can’t make dumb investments.”

A federal takeover would make Spirit the “Amtrak of the skies,” Cato Institute’s Tad DeHaven said to Axios. The possible deal would give the airline $500 million in cash in exchange for a 90% government stake in the business. That would “mark a renewal of a bailout strategy” the government pursued following the 2008 financial crisis, in which the feds owned pieces of “too big to fail” companies such as General Motors, Chrysler and several banks, said the outlet.

‘Market discipline’ versus ‘Moral hazard’

The federal government “has to save Spirit Airlines,” Kyle Stewart said at Live and Let’s Fly. The Justice Department sued to block a merger between Spirit and JetBlue in 2022, arguing that the “Spirit effect” forced other airlines to lower fares to be competitive. And it is true that Spirit “made air travel possible for people who otherwise could not afford it.” But that created a moral obligation for the government. The government kept Spirit from selling itself, which means it “cannot shrug when the same airline later circles the drain.”

The Justice Department made the “wrong decision” blocking the 2022 merger, Ben Schlappig said at One Mile at a Time. The government’s intervention “failed to take into account that Spirit no longer had a viable business model.” But the “bad merger idea” probably would have failed, given that JetBlue is also currently stumbling. Beyond that, Spirit’s current rate of spending means it would likely burn through $500 million “in a matter of months.” That would leave the government “owning an airline that loses a lot of money. Then what?”

“There’s no economic justification for the government to save Spirit Airlines,” The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial. Letting the company fail “would be a useful lesson in market discipline,” but a bailout “would fuel moral hazard” that would invite rivals like JetBlue to seek government assistance as well.

‘Fundamentally flawed’

An infusion of government cash might not save an airline that has “been on life support for years,” said CNN. Spirit and other discount carriers “continued to lose money” after emerging from the pandemic. The company’s business “was fundamentally flawed,” United CEO Scott Kirby said to the outlet.

Spirit could become the “new face of state capitalism,” Jessica Karl said at Bloomberg. But the company’s problems have been apparent for years. “A check for $500 million from the Trump administration won’t magically change that.”

Thanks to “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “the visually and spiritually ugly Queen film that won four Oscars and earned $910 million worldwide”, we’ve had a spate of “soulless, estate-approved” biopics of famous musicians lately, said Clarisse Loughrey in The Independent. “Michael” is the latest of these.

‘Ghoulishness’

It seeks not to understand Michael Jackson, nor to explore his legacy, but simply to deliver content for fans – the scenes from the star’s life that they hope and expect to see. In that respect, it is not unique; but there is a “particular ghoulishness” in giving this treatment to a figure as complicated as the late King of Pop. “Michael” ends in 1988 – long before child abuse allegations surfaced against Jackson. It makes no mention of his accusers, or his tendency to share his bed with young boys. Instead, it depicts him as a man with no real agency: he is just a kindly dreamer, destined to “spread love and heal”.

Sanctifying bullshit

In this film, Jackson positively glows with Christ-like goodness, agreed Brian Viner in the Daily Mail, which makes sense when you look at the credits. Six of its executive producers have the surname Jackson, as does the film’s star: Jaafar Jackson is Michael’s nephew. The film opens in Gary, Indiana, in 1968, where the Jackson children are being screamed at by their strict father Joe, and little Michael (the poor “Lost Boy” who will one day buy his own Neverland) consoles himself by reading “Peter Pan” in bed. From then on, it plods through the familiar beats of his life, from the Jackson 5 to solo stardom. The music scenes are brilliant, said Kevin Maher in The Times. The rest is pretty disgraceful, two hours of weird, sanctifying bullshit. Surely, the genre has reached its nadir.

Two summers ago, the Scottish National Party was in a sorry state, said Annabel Denham in The Daily Telegraph. It had lost 38 Westminster seats in a punishing general election, and the party was “mired in scandal”, with its chief executive being investigated for embezzlement. It was haunted by policy failures – including a “stagnant education attainment gap”, poor health outcomes and “deteriorating public services” – that remain a problem today.

A recent poll found that 58% of Scots disapprove of the party's record in government. Yet bizarrely, the SNP is set to come top in next month's Holyrood elections, a result that would secure it its fifth win in a row.

Lure of independence

There are two main explanations for this, said Ian Swanson in the Edinburgh Evening News. One is that the party can always count on a solid base of support among pro-independence Scots. The other is that the rise of Reform UK as a political force in Scotland has fragmented the opposition vote. The result is that the SNP, like Labour in 2024, is on track to win a “loveless landslide”.

Under John Swinney, the SNP is doing its best to woo voters by sticking with its strategy of making Scotland the home of “free stuff”, said Chris Deerin in The New Statesman. Having already delivered free university tuition, eye tests and prescriptions, and baby boxes for every new parent, it's now promising a free school bag of stationery and books for every new primary school pupil. The SNP also plans to cap prices for essential food items in supermarkets. Then, of course, there's the lure of the independence issue: Swinney insists that a vote on breaking up the UK could be held as early as 2028.

‘Political panto’

On this issue, Swinney has got himself in a bit of a pickle, however. When he declared last year that the SNP would push for “Indyref2” if it won a majority in the Holyrood election, he no doubt assumed that he had set the bar safely high, said Andy Maciver in The Herald. The party is weakened, and it doesn't feel confident of winning a referendum now. It would rather leave the fight until the end of the decade, by which time it can hope to have a stronger record in government to point to – and the divisive Nigel Farage might be in No. 10.

The timing is not right for the SNP, agreed Robert Shrimsley in the FT. But it can still safely demand a new referendum because it knows Labour will veto any such effort. Swinney can then act all aggrieved. Everyone will play their part in this “political panto”, knowing full well that nothing will come of it. “The starting gun for the break-up of the union? Oh no it isn't.”

The United States has backed Israel since its founding as a modern state in 1948. That alliance is looking fragile these days, with recent polls suggesting American public support for its longtime ally has cratered amid deadly wars in Gaza, Iran and across the Middle East.

The number of Americans who now hold a “very or somewhat unfavorable view of Israel” is 60%, said Pew Research Center. That’s up seven points since last year, and “nearly 20 points since 2022.” There was once bipartisan support for Israel among U.S. voters, but 80% of Democrats now disapprove while 58% of Republicans approve. There has also been a departure from 25 years of polling, which long reported that “Israelis consistently held double-digit leads in Americans’ Middle East sympathies,” said Gallup. Americans now view Palestinians more sympathetically than Israel, by a margin of 41 to 36%.

‘Heavy-handed militarism’

The United States is “falling out of love” with Israel, Edward Luce said at Financial Times. Fewer Americans remember Yitzhak Rabin, the “courageous prime minister of Israel who sought peace with the Palestinians” but was assassinated in 1995 by an Israeli extremist. Benjamin Netanyahu has largely dominated Israeli politics since then, wielding a “heavy-handed militarism” in Gaza, and Americans have noted his role in persuading President Donald Trump “that it was a good idea to attack Iran.” Rabin lost his life for peace. “What will posterity say of Netanyahu?”

Netanyahu may be remembered as the “prime minister who lost Israel’s most important ally,” Michelle Goldberg said at The New York Times. The country’s faltering reputation is mostly a “consequence of its oppression of the Palestinians” and particularly the “mass killings” in Gaza during its war with Hamas. But the growing split is also the result of Netanyahu’s “aligning Zionism” with Trump’s “American authoritarianism.” U.S. views of Israel “could still have much further to fall.”

The United States “must stand with Israel,” Alex Tokarev said at The Detroit News. Like the U.S., Israel “values liberty” but is “surrounded by tyrants and terrorists determined to annihilate it.” A West that will not support its ally against such enemies “will not defend its own liberty.”

An ‘ominous turn’

Netanyahu has “torched U.S. support for Israel for a generation,” said Axios. The collapse can be seen among Democrats in Congress, where “lawmakers who started out staunchly pro-Israel are becoming increasingly vocal critics” of the U.S. ally. American leaders must “have a discussion about how to normalize” the relationship with Israel, Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said to Axios.

An “unprecedentedly overwhelming majority of Democrats” last week voted against failed Senate resolutions to block weapons and bulldozer sales to Israel, said The Times of Israel. Americans are “sick and tired of spending billions of dollars to support Netanyahu’s horrific wars,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said to reporters, per the outlet. The votes to deny arms to Israel are an “ominous turn that will encourage Iran, Hezbollah and their terrorist allies around the Middle East,” The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial.

It was not a joke. The shoe company Allbirds announced last week that it is pivoting to artificial intelligence, a sign that the AI bubble is about to pop. Or maybe the tech optimists are right and everything is AI now.

The company was “once the maker of Silicon Valley’s favorite shoe,” said The New York Times. Allbirds was previously valued at $4 billion, but the company earlier this year closed all its stores and sold its assets for a mere $39 million. Now the brand seeks a fresh start: The business is rebranding itself “NewBird AI” and announced it had received a $50 million influx to buy up advanced computer chips that will let it enter the AI infrastructure business. That investment is a “drop in the bucket” for an industry spending billions to build data centers, but Wall Street loved the news. NewBird’s stock immediately rose nearly 600%.

The market’s reaction proves “AI excitement is alive and well — but as silly as ever,” Noah Weidner said at The Street. The move might make sense, though. Artificial intelligence requires a “massive volume” of computing power, and companies able to furnish it “will drum up excitement” — even if that company once sold shoes.

AI is creating wealth

Will AI spending hold up?

The shoe company’s “flailing AI embrace” is “not a horrible idea on the surface” given that it fills a “real business need,” Nitish Pahwa said at Slate. But the AI spending that has “propped up the economy” might not persevere, and communities are “successfully obstructing the data centers” needed for further expansion. Indeed, Allbirds’ stock started to drop after the initial surge, said Bloomberg. The market roller coaster ride gives Allbirds the feel of a “meme stock,” said 50 Park Investments’ Adam Sarhan, in which “emotions take over and logic and reason get thrown out the window.”

In May 2025, Ye – formerly Kanye West – released a single called “Heil Hitler”, which contained a lengthy sample from one of Hitler’s speeches, said Dan Hancox in The Guardian.

Around the same time, he started selling swastika T-shirts on his website. As a result, the musician, who has frequently been accused of racism, homophobia and sexism, was sued by his own talent agency, and denied entry to Australia. So news that he had been booked to headline the three-day Wireless Festival in north London was, shall we say, “a little surprising”. It brought condemnation from Jewish groups; sponsors withdrew; and a week later the Home Office barred Ye from entry into the UK, prompting the cancellation of the entire festival.

Notoriety sells

Industry insiders were shocked by this sudden unravelling of a major event, said Eamonn Forde and Sarah Walker in the same paper – but were also puzzled as to why its organiser, Festival Republic, had risked booking Ye in the first place. Well, festivals are big business these days, said Zing Tsjeng in The i Paper – and notoriety sells. Festival Republic must have looked at Ye’s still-healthy streaming figures, and his ability to court outrage, and seen dollar signs.

Their own defence, however, was that Ye’s antisemitic actions could be overlooked because they were attributable to his bipolar disorder, said Will Hodgkinson in The Times. In January, the rapper had taken out an ad in The Wall Street Journal, in which he explained that he had been in the grip of a long manic episode, and insisted that he loved Jewish people. He sounded sincere, but he placed the ad shortly before announcing a world tour; and it made no mention of his long history of spewing antisemitic hatred.

In 2022, he publicly praised Hitler, and tweeted that he’d be going “death con 3” on Jews. He apologised then too – yet neither he nor his staff seem to have taken steps to prevent a public recurrence. He didn’t record and release “Heil Hitler” alone. He wasn’t printing his swastika merchandise in his shed. A manager with power of attorney could have stopped it.

‘Glamour of the censored’

I don’t really buy the mental health defence, said Ella Whelan in The Telegraph. If Ye doesn’t hate Jews, he uses Jew hatred to get attention. But I still think the government was wrong to ban him. That only lends him the glamour of the censored.

Many Britons will have applauded the decision that Ye’s presence would not be “conducive to the public good”, said Sarah McLaughlin on UnHerd; but do we really want ministers to filter visitors to the UK on the basis of their opinions? Banning them won’t make their offensive ideas go away; and it’s a power to limit free speech that could easily be misused.

It has been a busy spring for JD Vance. The diplomatically untested vice president was tapped for wartime negotiations with Iran, became the administration’s mouthpiece in a doctrinal feud with Pope Leo and led the White House in a last-ditch effort to salvage now-ousted Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán. It has hardly been an auspicious season for someone positioning themselves to carry the MAGA torch post-Trump.

Can he come back from a string of public flops?

Despite entering office as a “man full of ideas” just over a year ago, Vance and his opinions “matter less and less” within the Trump administration, said Idrees Kahloon at The Atlantic. While his diminished clout may be the “typical fate” of the vice president who is “forever on display but seldom listened to,” Vance’s shrinking footprint is a “major comedown from the role he once seemed likely to fill,” that of “Trumpism after Trump.”

Admittedly, the job of being veep was not “designed to be fun,” Edward Luce at the Financial Times said. But being Trump’s number two “brings unique discomfort.” Vance is “flailing” at backing policies that “often turn 180 degrees overnight,” rendering him “no longer Trump’s obvious successor.” Even if he should “regain his place in the Trumpian firmament,” there is “no such thing as a Vance base” within the modern GOP.

The past few weeks saw Vance bring his “noncharisma to bear” on Orbán’s behalf, prompting voters to “commit themselves to a serious program of Orbán Renewal” before he jetted off to “screw up the Iran peace talks,” Charles Pierce said at Esquire. Vance is playing “both sides against the middle” on Trump’s war in Tehran so as to maintain his “alleged viability in 2028,” while wings of the “elite political media” ready themselves to position him as the “next tinhorn Reasonable Republican.”

The future remains unwritten, but it’s “hard to imagine things going worse” for the veep, largely because Trump “forced Vance into this position,” Asawin Suebsaeng said at Zeteo. Vance may believe in Orbán’s ultra-nationalism as an “ideological pursuit, not a practical one” but it’s hard to “identify any political advantages” to his recent “crusade” on Orbán’s behalf, said Noah Rothman at the National Review. “Conversely, the downsides are becoming increasingly hard to ignore.”

Every time Vance debases himself on Trump’s behalf, “he gets less and less in return,” said Dana Milbank at The New York Times. Not only have his “political fortunes” begun to “dim,” his “soul has become a depreciating asset.” In many ways, Vance has “cast himself as the chief ideologist” of a MAGA movement with “no ideology” beyond the “instincts, impulses and glory of one man,” The Economist said.

Vance’s attempts to “take on” Pope Leo by attacking his “area of expertise” highlight the “deadly sin of pride,” Tom Nichols said at The Atlantic. Describing the “willingness” of someone like Vance to challenge the Vatican “requires a word from Yiddish rather than Latin: chutzpah.” That he would encourage Leo to “stay in his lane” while at the same time spreading “his version of the gospel from his powerful political perch” could prove “one contradiction too many, even for this skilled political chameleon,” Nia-Malika Henderson said at Bloomberg.

The well-positioned ‘heir apparent’

Still, Vance may remain well-positioned ahead of 2028. His “unusual second job” serving as the Republican National Committee’s finance chair is “exactly” what an “ambitious presidential aspirant might dream up,” said Theodore Schleifer and Shane Goldmacher at The New York Times said. While he’s done “some good for the party,” Vance has also done “some good for himself” by “wooing” the GOP’s “richest and most influential patrons,” even as his camp is “leery of being seen as plotting about anything beyond the 2026 midterms.”

In March, Vance was the main attraction at the closed-door spring summit of the Rockbridge Network, a “secretive donor group” that he cofounded in 2019 during his “stint as a private investor,” said Gabe Kaminsky at CBS News. Although his remarks were focused on 2026, the larger question “looming” over the confab was whether he had 2028 plans in place. Given Rockbridge’s reach within the MAGA coalition, Vance seems “poised to stand at the crossroads” of varying GOP interests that, one attendee told the outlet, “want JD to be the heir apparent.”

People across the United States are making their opinions known as the war in Iran enters its seventh week, and perhaps none more so than military members. Active-duty soldiers and veterans are experiencing an array of emotions connected to the conflict, with some in support and others vehemently against it. The differing feelings come as tensions in the Defense Department grow.

‘Powerful motivator’

Some soldiers are angry that the Iran conflict has been run with “strategic incoherence” because the “president hasn’t really been able to say with clarity to the American people what exactly this war is about,” Marine veteran Elliot Ackerman said to WBUR News. The war “leaves this question, okay, ‘So is this tool we have, the U.S. military, is that a tool that we can use to create that better future for our country and for Iran?’” It is important to “articulate a very clear plan if we’re going to put American service members’ lives in jeopardy.”

The number of people looking to leave the military had already been increasing, and the “war against Iran has been a powerful motivator,” Kat Lonsdorf and Tom Bowman said at NPR. Many soldiers are “airing their concerns and frustrations,” Bill Galvin, who helps run the GI Rights Hotline for military discharge, said to NPR. Most of the callers are “asking how to apply to become a conscientious objector,” and nearly all of them “mention the bombing of a girls’ school in Iran on the first day of the war.”

Many veterans also remember the effects of years-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When it comes to the war in Iran, the “U.S. is creating a new generation of anti-American sentiment in Iran and across the region,” Chris Sarson, who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, said to WBUR News. Soldiers who served during these conflicts became “acutely aware of the heavy costs that civilians pay for war.”

‘Many acknowledge the role Iran played’

Though many in the Armed Forces feel the conflict might become another “forever war,” others have more complex feelings. Some soldiers are largely against war but “also acknowledge the role Iran played behind the scenes” assisting other regional nations in Middle East wars, Jeff Schogol and Patty Nieberg said at Task & Purpose. Wars in the Middle East have “caused a lot of moral injury and PTSD amongst the veterans’ community,” but “at the same time, Iran again has been a party to this conflict over the last 25 years,” Alex Plitsas, a former Army staff sergeant and Iraq veteran, said to Task & Purpose.

Some veterans feel that the war means Iran is “finally being held accountable,” said Schogol and Nieberg at Task & Purpose. “I’ve flown combat missions against the very terrorists funded and directed by the Iranian regime, and I’ve seen firsthand the threat Iran poses,” Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), an Air Force veteran, said in a press release when the war began. The conflict has been “coming for the ayatollahs, who have no regard for human life or peace.”

Many younger soldiers are also “excited to deploy” to Iran because the war is “what needs to be done,” Army veteran Juan Munoz said to The Associated Press. Other soldiers support the war thanks to their positive feelings about President Donald Trump. There “had to have been some reason” for Trump “to bomb them,” Army veteran Edward Bauman told the AP. “I don’t think he would have just went out of his way to just, ‘I’m going to bomb these people.’”

Might the war in Iran “do what even Vladimir Putin couldn’t and blow up the North Atlantic Treaty alliance”, asked The Wall Street Journal. It’s “no longer an idle question”. Last week, President Trump vented his deep frustration with Nato, dismissing it as a “paper tiger” and declaring he is now “strongly considering” pulling the US out. If he does, it would be the “dumbest alliance breakup in modern history” – and it would be Europe’s fault.

‘Two-way street’

Spain and Italy blocked US military flights from their bases and Emmanuel Macron prevented use of France’s airspace. “Add its reluctance to help clear the Strait of Hormuz, and Europe is playing into every Maga stereotype about a one-sided Western alliance.” Europe’s reluctance to get involved is understandable, given Trump’s erratic policies and his failure to consult allies about the war. But it could have been more helpful. After all, it has its own interests to protect in the Middle East, and it would have shown that the alliance is “a two-way street”.

Our so-called “allies” have spent decades “free-riding on the US security umbrella”, said Josh Hammer in Newsweek: Trump is just saying so plainly. The “imbalance is staggering”: US defence spending accounts for 60% of Nato’s total. It’s clear that the “status quo is no longer defensible – and deep down, everyone knows it”.

Despite America’s frustrations, maintaining the alliance is still in its interests, said Con Coughlin in The Daily Telegraph. Nato gives the US access to a large network of naval, air and ground force bases – Nato’s top commander in Europe, an American, has gone so far as to say that US power projection depends on its European allies. Nevertheless, European leaders must convince the Trump administration that it is in Washington’s interests to stay in.

Damage is done

The severity of the threat should not be underestimated, said Roland Oliphant in the same paper. The US is not just the biggest member, it is “the lynchpin”, around which the whole edifice is constructed. It has capabilities, in satellite and signals intelligence, in missile defence, that the rest rely heavily on. If it abandons the alliance, the chances of Putin taking a gamble on attacking Europe “would increase substantially”.

“In literal terms, it would be near-impossible” for Trump to leave Nato, said The Independent. In 2023, Congress passed a law that means the US can only leave with the approval of the Senate, and there is little appetite among Republicans for this. But that wouldn’t prevent the US from “quiet quitting”. It could withdraw troops from Germany or simply “ignore its Article 5 duties to defend, for example, Estonia”.

The damage is already done, said Rafael Behr in The Guardian. Trump hasn’t just undermined Nato’s collective security guarantee; he has betrayed Ukraine and threatened to invade Greenland. “Trust is gone.” Europe must build up its own security arrangements immediately. There is no guarantee that Europe “will have an ally across the Atlantic” again any day soon.

Space programmes cost billions. By 2028, when the fourth mission in its current Artemis programme lands astronauts back on the Moon, Nasa will have spent $105 billion (£78 billion) – which is “a chunk of change”, said USA Today.

Spending so much seems puzzling “when we already did” the Moon thing: are “science, exploration and the possible value of moon materials” really worth it? Or would that all public money be better spent on ”healthcare or tax cuts”?

‘Futile pursuits of prestige’

“It’s absolutely self-evident to me that space exploration is pointless,” said Zoe Williams in The Guardian. And the more crises there are “besetting this planet we live on, the more pointless it becomes”. The US, “of all nations”, has got bigger issues right now, so “seriously, Nasa, can you not just knock it off”?

Ordinary Americans are tired of “these absurd expressions of vanity, these futile pursuits of prestige”, said space historian Gerard DeGroot on UnHerd. Even the Apollo missions in the late 1960s “were not as popular as Nasa pretended”: opinion polls showed “support was consistently below 50%”, with women, people of colour and the poor, in particular, questioning the “obscene cost”.

The current Artemis enterprise “reeks” of Elon Musk: his SpaceX Starship will have increasing involvement as the missions progress and, although the details of the deal are “shrouded in mystery”, it’s “safe to suspect that some quid pro quo is involved”. We know that SpaceX has received $17 billion (£12.6 billion) in government funding already.

Images to ‘catch the breath’

I've always thought the so-called “choice” between “advancing to the stars and solving problems back on earth” to be “a false one”, said Séamas O'Reilly in The New Statesman. Yes, the Artemis budget “may seem hard to justify” for what appears to be “a few rocket launches” and some “charming zero gravity footage of bulky astronauts surrounded by floating pens” but “this elides the truth” of the “titanic boost to science, technology and economies back home”.

Nasa’s Apollo programme “returned around $7 to the US economy for every $1 spent”. In all our homes, we can see “developments made at the bleeding edge of space”: if you have a laptop, a camera phone or a memory foam mattress, “you have Nasa to thank”. The same goes for advancements in water purification, landmine removal and artificial limbs – “not to mention the invention of ear thermometers and CAT scans”.

If those images beamed back from the Artemis II this week didn’t “catch the breath” in your throat, you can’t “be fully alive”, said Sam Leith in The Spectator. “The experience of seeing the Earth photographed from space” has “an effect on our collective imaginations”. The Apollo 8 “Earthrise” image, for example, is widely thought to have “kickstarted the modern environmental movement”.

Artemis II is “one small step towards living in deep space”, said evolutionary biologist Scott Solomon in The Washington Post. I see parallels between “establishing an enduring human presence” on the Moon (and, ultimately, Mars) and “the processes by which animals and plants” arrive on Earth’s islands and “evolve into new species”. Future generations living on other planets will “gradually become different from people on Earth”. And that will be “a giant leap for all humanity”.

An estimated $500 billion worth of lithium lies below the Salton Sea, a large lake in Imperial County, California, east of San Diego, and many people are eager to tap into this “white gold mine.” But the sea is located in a region of the Golden State where there are already numerous environmental concerns, and some residents worry that plundering for lithium could exacerbate the problem.

‘Saudi Arabia of lithium’

There has been a renewed push to extract the Salton Sea’s lithium, as the mineral is crucially important for rechargeable electric batteries. The lithium in question could likely “power our smartphones, electric cars and electricity grids,” said Soumya Karlamangla at The New York Times, and a modern gold rush “could bring jobs, tax dollars and economic revitalization to one of the most impoverished places in the nation.” In 2022, the area was called the “Saudi Arabia of lithium” by California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), a reference to that country’s abundant natural resources.

Pressure to extract this lithium is also coming from the artificial intelligence industry, as AI is “driving a surge in energy demand as tech companies scramble to build more data centers,” said Kori Suzuki at KPBS San Diego. There is “just a massive demand for power,” Rod Colwell, the CEO of Controlled Thermal Resources, said to KPBS. The company is planning to build a lithium extraction project in the region, and there has never “been a change of focus.”

‘Not everyone is eagerly welcoming’

Residents of Imperial County, on the other hand, are concerned that the ongoing lithium push could create even more environmental hazards, and “not everyone is eagerly welcoming” the industry, Karlamangla said at the Times. The Salton Sea has been rapidly shrinking, and “as it does, it spews plumes of pesticide-laden dust throughout Imperial County.” Lithium extraction requires a lot of fresh water, and locals “worry the process will deplete the region’s scarce water resources.”

Ecological groups have launched lawsuits, arguing that environmental hazards outweigh the benefits of extracting the lithium. The proposed project from Controlled Thermal Resources “would create a high-water demand in an arid desert environment where the drying out of the Salton Sea worsens severe air pollution impacts,” said a legal brief from the nonprofits Comite Civico del Valle and Earthworks. The lawsuits “only serve to delay progress on clean energy projects that are essential to the community, California and the nation,” Lauren Rose, a spokesperson for Controlled Thermal Resources, told CalMatters.

Others are not buying this argument. The project “must be corrected to meet the standards that protect our community and our environment,” Luis Olmedo, the executive director of Comite Civico del Valle, said to CalMatters. Imperial County is “no stranger to 21st century plans that arrive with great promise but do little to benefit locals,” Aaron Cantú said at Capital & Main. The lithium mining is “just another way the community will be sacrificed for private gain,” Anahi Araiza, a policy researcher at Imperial Valley Equity & Justice, told Capital & Main. Residents “want a slow and methodical process to ensure that things are done well.”

From his podium at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Donald Trump reminded his base how he differed from past presidents. “It turned out that I was able to stop wars from happening,” he said.

That was in 2024, said Natalie Allison at The Washington Post. A year later, the newly installed president was back at CPAC, boasting about being “a peacemaker, not a conqueror”.

Notable absences

This year, Trump skipped the jamboree for the first time in a decade: he was too busy managing the war with Iran he’d launched a month earlier. And he wasn’t the only high-profile no show, said Katy Balls in The Sunday Times. At the last event, J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio spoke, and Elon Musk ramped up the carnival atmosphere by brandishing a chainsaw on stage; this time, one attendee noted that there were more journalists present than politicians. That the event was rather more subdued than usual was due to several factors – including its relocation from DC to Texas; but the lack of buzz was indicative of the troubled state of the GOP as it gears up for the midterms.

A little over a year into his second term, Trump is discovering that for all his efforts to extend his authority, there are still constraints on what he can do, said Gerard Baker in The Times. Public revulsion has forced him to temper his migrant deportation policy; the Supreme Court has struck out his signature tariffs policy; the markets are squealing about the war in Iran. And even in his own backyard, the voters are restive: in late March, a Florida Democrat seized a red seat that takes in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

Base betrayal

The die-hards remain intensely loyal, said Elaine Godfrey in The Atlantic, but polls show that Trump is losing support among the coalition of younger Americans and Latinos that gave him his victory in 2024. Many already felt betrayed by his attempt to block the Epstein files and by the impact of his Big Beautiful Bill on the deficit. Now, they’re furious that he has taken the US into a war that is costing billions and further driving up the cost of living.

In the manosphere, prominent voices who rallied behind his “anti-woke” rhetoric in 2024 are complaining that Americans were duped. The podcaster Joe Rogan has called the war “insane, based on what [Trump] ran on”. There is dissent within Maga too, some of which has veered into antisemitism: Tucker Carlson and others have been peddling the line that Israel manipulated Trump into the war. Disenchanted Trump fans are unlikely to vote Democrat in November; but they might easily just tune out of the election – and so inadvertently deliver a “blue wave”.

As Donald Trump’s war wears on, it becomes increasingly clear that he has no “overarching strategy” and is now fighting a war of attrition, said The Guardian.

America is still striking at Iranian targets while building up troops in the region. Iran, in turn, keeps attacking Israel and the Gulf states. Last week, it hit a US airbase in Saudi Arabia, injuring 12 US personnel and causing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of damage. Tehran’s allies in Yemen have now entered the fray. The Strait of Hormuz remains shut. And while his officials talk about peace being “weeks, not months” away, Trump is still warning of far worse to come as he “searches for leverage”.

This week, the president said that the US could capture or “obliterate” Iran’s oil export hub, Kharg Island, and possibly even target Iran's energy and water systems – “war crimes by another name”.

Miles apart

Trump threatened to destroy Iran’s energy infrastructure last month, said Andrew Neil in the Daily Mail, only to row back, saying there would be no strikes for ten days to allow time for talks. That deadline elapses on Monday, but all the evidence suggests that he had no plan and was simply “playing for time”. And while he claims that Tehran is “begging for a deal”, the Iranians seem to think they have him “on the run”, and deny talks are even taking place.

Even if meaningful negotiations were on the horizon, the two sides are miles apart, said Richard Spencer in The Times. Iran is demanding not only an end to sanctions, but “an end to all attacks, including Israel’s, on Hamas, Hezbollah and other arms of the ‘resistance’”. It also wants reparations, and “sovereignty” over the Strait of Hormuz – a hint that it plans to charge for access, as Egypt does with the Suez Canal. The US, in turn, insists that Iran end its nuclear programme; give up its enriched uranium; and cut off support to its proxies.

When it comes to Trump’s rhetoric, a pattern is emerging, said Emily Maitlis in The i Paper. He reserves his most bellicose threats for the weekend, when the financial markets are closed, then starts talking up the possibility of peace so that the outlook seems more positive by the time traders are back at their desks. The markets, though, are getting wise to this tactic.

‘Escalate or talk’

As for Tehran, it seems unmoved by Trump’s threats. The fact is, Iran is far more capable than the US of both withstanding and inflicting pain, said The Economist. While the world counts the economic costs of this war, the regime is “making a mint” from sanctions-busting oil sales. Domestically, its hardline Revolutionary Guards remain in control. And overseas, its proxies continue to do its bidding: last Saturday, the Houthis provided a stark reminder of their capacity to ramp up the chaos when they fired missiles at Israel.

Trump, by contrast, is flailing. “Despite operational successes and his nonsensical claim of having already changed the regime in Tehran, he has yet to win any substantive gains from the fighting.” His choice now is to “escalate or talk”.

Given the risks of escalation, Trump will probably seek a deal to reopen Hormuz, said Gideon Rachman in the FT. But any outcome that leaves Iran with practical control over Gulf energy exports would be deeply unpopular with those states. It has even been suggested that the UAE and Saudi Arabia could “join the conflict rather than accept that outcome”.

‘The regime is hurting’

Trump will find the Iranians to be very tough negotiators, said Matthew Gould in The Times. The regime has shown its capacity before to withstand “repeated blows”, and is determined to stay in power no matter how much pain it causes its people. By contrast, Trump will be worrying about popular opinion ahead of the midterms. He is reportedly already “bored” with the conflict. And if it chooses, Tehran can use its trigger-happy proxies to derail the talks at any moment. That said, Iran has a habit of overplaying its hand and, “for all its bravado, the regime is hurting”.

Pakistan, in its role as mediator, has intensified its diplomatic efforts over the past week, said Saeed Shah in The Guardian; but Tehran is so far refusing to engage in face-to-face talks with US officials. Trump began the war confident that it wouldn’t take long to topple the Iranian regime, said Steve Bloomfield in The Observer. Its nuclear programme had been weakened, its allies had been hobbled, so the US and Israel seized the moment. Yet in the past five weeks, the mullahs have actually tightened their grip on power; and it’s the ordinary Iranians, who Trump promised to save, who will pay the price for this war. If it ends soon, other economies will bounce back. Iran could feel the impact for generations to come.

The Iran war follows on the heels of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on allies and threats to take Greenland from NATO partner Denmark. Now, the president is demanding that other countries reopen the Strait of Hormuz closed by the war he launched. And critics say he has transformed the U.S. from the so-called leader of the free world into a rogue superpower that threatens global stability.

Trump has driven “deep and perhaps permanent wedges” between the U.S. and its allies in Europe and Asia, said Robert Kagan at The Atlantic. The Iran war was launched with “no public debate, no vote in Congress” and no consultation with “allies other than Israel.” Europeans must now wonder if the war signals that the president is “more or less likely” to “take similarly bold action on Greenland.” American global leadership survived unpopular wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan. But it may not survive this.

Weaker, lonelier and less effective

The fallout from Iran demonstrates the administration “either didn’t understand how its actions would affect other states or simply didn’t care,” said Stephen M. Walt at Foreign Policy. That leaves “every country in the world” trying to determine how to work with an “increasingly rogue” U.S. For now, its ostensible friends have to weigh whether U.S. power “could be used to harm them either intentionally or inadvertently.”

Every post-Cold War administration has taken on actual “rogue” states, said Matthew Kroenig at The Wall Street Journal. U.S. presidents have waged a “de facto campaign of toppling anti-American dictators” such as Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. And Iran is the “biggest prize” on the list. Even if the Islamic regime does not fall under the weight of U.S. attacks, it will be “too weak to pose a serious threat for years to come.” That puts Trump “on the verge of eliminating the world’s rogue states.”

A swaggering superpower “could be a collective asset for the democratic world,” said Hal Brands at Bloomberg. But Trump’s approach could transform the U.S. into an “out-of-control hegemon” at risk of being “weaker, lonelier and less effective than before.” Success in Iran might “create a new Middle East with a U.S.-led coalition at its core,” but failure will serve as a “damaging rebuff of U.S. power.”

Allies look to Beijing

The U.S. “had to do it ourselves” because other countries would not join the “decapitation of Iran,” said Trump in a Wednesday night prime-time address to the nation. The president has threatened to leave NATO over the issue, but there are “few signs that’s happening,” said Politico.

Polling shows residents of Canada, France, Germany and the U.K. now “believe it’s better to depend on China” than the U.S., said Politico. The U.S. “no longer works in partnership” with its old allies, said former Deputy Assistant Secretary Mark Lambert to the outlet, and is “only focused on itself.”

“This is gutter politics,” was Armed Forces Minister Al Carns’ reply when quizzed about the theft. “We’ve got two wars on, one in the Middle East, one in Ukraine, and we’re talking about someone’s phone.”

But like it or not, the theft of Morgan McSweeney’s work phone is a big political issue, said Alex Glover in The Spectator. In October, when he was still Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, McSweeney was walking down a street in Pimlico, phone to his ear, when a man on a bicycle snatched it from his hand and pedalled off with it. Or so McSweeney told the police.

But that phone held text messages to his friend Lord Mandelson, messages that could have cast light on how the latter got to be appointed our US ambassador, and which would now have to be disclosed as part of the inquiry into the Mandelson/Epstein scandal.

Holes in the tale

To many, the theft sounds too convenient to be true. Not to Starmer, though. As he puts it: “The idea that somehow everybody could have seen that some time in the future there would be a request for the phone is, to my mind, a little bit far-fetched.”

I don’t know the exact fate of the “stolen” phone, said Dan Hodges in the Daily Mail, but I know this: “Starmer is lying his posterior off about what happened.” The phone was reported stolen over a month after Mandelson was sacked as ambassador, by which time everyone, Starmer included, knew the huge significance of his chief of staff’s phone messages. Indeed, meetings were held in Downing Street to “game-out” how to proceed should the government be forced, as it now has been, to release documents relating to Mandelson.

Understandable reaction

And there are huge holes in the tale McSweeney told police, said Amy Gibbons in The Daily Telegraph. He did say that it was a “government phone”, but he never mentioned that he worked for Starmer and that it contained sensitive information. He even gave them confusing details about where the theft took place. Amazingly, the stolen phone wasn’t reported to the intelligence services, nor did No. 10 make any attempt to recover it.

I’m confused, said John Crace in The Guardian. For years, right-wing hacks have been going on about London being “a hellscape ... where simply using your phone is an invitation to be mugged”. Yet instead of cutting McSweeney some slack, they’ve convinced themselves that his is “the only phone in London not to have been nicked”.

Not getting details right just after you’ve been mugged is understandable behaviour for anyone in shock, but not in McSweeney’s case it seems. “After all, it’s a well-known fact that men with ginger hair and a beard can’t be trusted.”

Israel and the US went into this war together, said Katy Balls in The Sunday Times. But as the conflict drags on, some members of Maga’s “isolationist wing” are starting to complain that Israel “led” the US into it, in pursuit of its own agenda.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio lent credence to that theory some weeks ago, when he said that the US had struck Iran because Washington “knew that there was going to be an Israeli action” that would prompt a retaliation. And only last week Tulsi Gabbard, the US intelligence chief, told Congress that Iran had abandoned its pursuit of nuclear weapons, undermining any claim that Iran posed an “imminent threat”.

Convenient claims

It is pretty clear that it posed no such threat, said Donald Macintyre in The Independent – and it is well known that Benjamin Netanyahu had been trying to persuade the US to join in such a war for 25 years: successive US presidents blocked it. But that doesn’t mean that Donald Trump was lured into a war by Israel, even if he sometimes finds it convenient to claim that the Israelis are acting without his knowledge.

For Netanyahu, this war is not just about destroying a hostile regime, said Emma Graham-Harrison in The Guardian. This autumn, he will face his first electoral test since the 7 October attacks. For the past two years, his poll ratings have been “stubbornly below levels that would return him to power”. Victory for Israel in this conflict – which has the support of 90% of Israelis – would do much to turn that around.

‘Draining support’

But in going to war with Iran, the PM is gambling with his country’s long-term security, said Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times. For decades, the single biggest guarantee of that security has been the “strong bipartisan support” Israel commands in the US. “But the Netanyahu government’s actions – first in Gaza and now in Iran – are draining that support away.”

If this war turns into a costly “quagmire”, it’s “entirely conceivable” that both the Democratic and Republican candidates in the 2028 presidential race will propose curtailing support for Israel – an outcome that would be a “strategic disaster for the Israelis”.

“Amid the fog of war and the propaganda being pushed by all sides”, it’s hard to tell what’s going on with the Iran conflict right now, said Abubakr Al-Shamahi on Al Jazeera. On Tuesday, Donald Trump claimed that Washington was speaking to the “right people” in the Iranian regime, which wanted a deal “so badly” and had given the US a “very big present worth a tremendous amount of money”. Tehran, however, insisted that the talks were “fake news” and accused the Trump administration of negotiating with itself. This confused picture followed days of conflicting messages from the US.

Last Saturday, Trump talked of “winding down” the war, but also threatened to attack every power plant in Iran in 48 hours unless Tehran fully reopened the Strait of Hormuz. The regime responded by vowing to strike power plants in Israel and across the Gulf region. On Monday morning, shortly before US markets opened, Trump declared that he would postpone the power plant strikes for five days, citing his claimed diplomatic progress.

‘Trump’s evaporating credibility’

It’s “a measure of Trump’s evaporating credibility” that even Washington insiders were sceptical about whether talks with Iran had taken place, said Simon Marks in The i Paper. The postponement of the ultimatum looks like another case of what Wall Street investors call “Taco”, or “Trump always chickens out”. It could be that, said Jonathan Sacerdoti in The Spectator. But it may indeed be a response to backchannel negotiations, or a piece of “dislocation” designed to sow doubt and confusion within Iran’s leadership. Trump likes to keep people guessing.

Some sort of diplomatic effort does now appear to be in motion, led by Pakistan, said Andrew Roth in The Guardian. The reported interlocutor of the US is Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament. But this process may just be another way for Trump to buy time before launching commando raids in Iran: the US is “still moving marines and airborne soldiers into position”.

There’s no mystery here, said Edward Luce in the Financial Times. “The truth inside Trump’s tornado of piffle is that he wants to get out of the mess he created.” He never expected the attack on Iran to lead to this desperate standoff, despite everybody warning him that it would. He thought the regime would swiftly collapse in the face of US might. He now wants Tehran to surrender its ability to disrupt energy markets, but it will never do so, no matter how much Trump blusters and rages. “It does not take a seer to guess that at some point he will hint at using nuclear weapons.”

Winding down the war certainly won’t be easy, said William Hague in The Times. The Iranian leadership is now “more hardline” and will “drive a hard bargain”: its officials have reportedly outlined five conditions, including a halt to assassinations, assurances against further attack, and hefty reparations.

To win, Iran needs merely to survive

Tehran appears in no mood to capitulate, said Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail. It’s still launching drones at nearby Gulf states, and last week demonstrated its wider threat by firing two missiles at the British-American military base on the Chagos Islands, some 2,400 miles away.

To win this war, the regime needs merely to survive, said Ilan Goldenberg in Foreign Affairs. Trump should cut his losses, declaring that the US has achieved its main aim of degrading Iran’s military capabilities. The regime may reject such a ceasefire initially, but if the US keeps pushing for de-escalation, Tehran will come under international pressure to follow suit. Admittedly, this will leave the US “entangled in the region, managing a weakened but more aggressive Iran”, but to double down in search of a decisive outcome would risk “a far worse result”.

I’m encouraged by reports that J.D. Vance is involved in Iran negotiations, said James Ball in The i Paper. The US vice-president is a “committed American isolationist” who stands zero chance of succeeding Trump if the Iran war doesn’t end soon. If he’s surfacing now, he must think there’s a chance of a deal.

The warring parties will have to reach a settlement at some point, said Sean O’Grady in The Independent. Iran’s regime can’t sustain an indefinite conflict. There must be some within it who are “rational enough” to realise this and understand the potential rewards of striking a deal with America. As things stand, Trump is demanding the freezing of Iran’s missile programme, zero uranium enrichment, and the decommissioning of Iran’s main nuclear facilities. The irony is that the US had all but secured agreement on these demands before Trump launched his “stupid, chaotic” war a month ago.

There are three “all-time difficult gigs”, said Jonathan Maitland in The Spectator: prime minister, England football manager, and director-general of the BBC – a job that may just be “The Most Impossible In The World”. And unlike the other two, there are no “potential big wins”, only “potential catastrophes”.

Now we know the next person to be handed the poisoned chalice: Matt Brittin. The former president of Google in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as a former Great Britain rowing bronze medallist, is set to take the battered reins following Tim Davie’s resignation. Will Brittin’s reign “end with a similar catastrophe?”

‘Baffling to the point of idiocy’

Just what the BBC doesn’t need, another leftie, said Robin Aitken in The Telegraph. Brittin, 57, was appointed non-executive director of The Guardian Media Group last year. Twenty years ago, he was director of strategy and digital at The Mirror. You don’t end up in senior positions at Britain’s leftist publications without sharing “left-wing sympathies yourself”. Given that government-commissioned research by Ipsos found last year that 52% of people don’t trust the BBC to be impartial, and most of those will be “right-of-centre voters”, that should’ve “counted heavily against him”.

The appointment is “baffling to the point of idiocy”, said Jawad Iqbal in The Times. The BBC is “besieged” by “seemingly endless rows” about impartiality and bias, not to mention Donald Trump’s multibillion-dollar lawsuit and its “recent howler”, broadcasting the N-word during coverage of the Baftas. The “root cause” of every crisis is its journalism and programming – things Brittin “knows diddly squat about”.

Yet the board seems to think the answer to this “calamitous” run is to give control to a “tech bro” who, just like Davie, has “no relevant broadcasting experience”. The BBC needs someone who can “reconnect it to its core values”, and argue its case for continued public funding, yet Brittin is a “product of the morality-free, algorithm-obsessed world of the tech giants”. “What could possibly go wrong, apart from everything?”

Inspirational team leader who can 'manage complexity'

But people within Google have “only good things to say about Brittin”, said the BBC’s culture and media editor Katie Razzall. They say he’s an “inspirational leader and a great team player”, who commands loyalty. They had “no concerns” about his lack of editorial or broadcasting experience.

And in fairness, Brittin always seems “positive and cheerful” – certainly “less arrogant” than the stereotypical tech bro, said Politico’s executive editor Anne McElvoy in The Independent. That might be one reason he impressed the BBC’s board, “browbeaten after an annus horribilis”. He is an “experienced team leader who can manage complexity”, and as a former champion rower, “naturally competitive and steely”. But the challenges – tying down the terms of the Royal Charter, working with streaming platforms like YouTube without “ending up trapped under the wheels of big tech interests” – aren’t abating. Brittin won the job from a “depleted field” from which “many industry players absented themselves”. As one leading broadcast figure put it: “the pay is not that good for the blood pressure damage.”

But these are also “seismic times for global media”, said Lionel Barber in the Financial Times. With Larry and David Ellison seizing control of CBS News, CNN and a slice of TikTok in the US, while tech firms spend billions on data centres, a “new age of disruption is upon us”. Brittin’s appointment “suggests the penny has dropped” in the UK. He understands how technology has “transformed media consumption”. Squabbles over the TV licence fee or the BBC’s perceived elitism “miss the bigger picture”. Russia, China and Maga ideologues are “spreading disinformation to undermine confidence in British institutions and democracy”. Yet the BBC, the world’s biggest and most recognised public service broadcaster, has suffered a 40% cut in real terms in its budget since 2010. Its governance needs a “radical overhaul”. Muddling through is “no longer an option”.

The White House dispatched squads of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) troops to at least 13 airports around the country, and thousands of commuters this week are coming face-to-face with the Trump administration’s anti-immigration push. ICE’s deployment was telegraphed by both President Donald Trump and White House Border Czar Tom Homan last weekend, with the ostensible goal of optimizing TSA operations during the ongoing partial government shutdown.

The move has thrust the White House’s authoritarian operations into the frenetic realm of commercial air travel, where delays and disruptions can grow to levels of national import. With the agency’s undefined remit and documented penchant for aggression, its presence in U.S. airports is a Rorschach test for attitudes on the regime’s militarized approach to law enforcement.

‘Political, publicity action, not a practical solution’

“Between 100 and 150 ICE officers” have been sent to more than a dozen airports across the country, The New York Times said. It is “unclear” if their presence is “helping or exacerbating long security lines” that have grown during the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown. Homan will likely deploy agents to be as “minimally intrusive as possible,” but their actual contributions to TSA’s airport security mandate won’t be “operationally significant,” said former Obama administration acting ICE director John Sandweg to Time.

Unlike TSA agents who are trained for specific airport duties, ICE personnel will not receive “requisite training to check identification, examine luggage x-rays” and “provide other key security services,” said Government Executive. Putting ICE agents at airports is a “political, publicity action,” one former TSA official said to the outlet. It’s “not a practical solution.”

“I have no idea how they can contribute at an airport unless it was for intimidation purposes,” said Aaron Vazquez, a TSA lead transportation security officer at San Diego International Airport and airport steward for the local branch of the American Federation of Government Employees union, to KPBS. “What are they going to do, find somebody and shoot them?”

As of Monday, “both masked and unmasked ICE agents in marked vests” had been observed at some of the country’s busiest airports, said USA Today. Travelers nevertheless were “still reporting long airport security waits.” One reason for the continued airport disruptions is Trump’s weekend ICE deployment having caught the agency’s officials “off guard,” leaving them “scrambling to come up with a plan to enforce it,” CBS News said. White House officials, however, insisted that dispatching ICE units to airports will be a smooth process. “When we deploy tomorrow,” said Homan on CNN’s “State of the Union” over the weekend, “we’ll have a well-thought-out plan to execute.”

ICE’s stationing in American airports, beyond any potential advantage to security enforcement, is “likely a tactical move” designed to “up the pressure on Democrats in Congress” who are blocking Homeland Security funds, in part over ICE’s conduct in Minnesota and Chicago, said New York magazine. Democrats have “condemned” ICE at airports, so it’s not certain whether the deployment will “move the needle as funding negotiations continue.”

If not ICE, ‘it would have been the National Guard’

President Trump’s pushing of ICE agents into air-travel security spaces is a “stunt, not a policy solution,” said The Washington Post. But “so is the ongoing shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.”

Congressional Democrats want to use long lines and travel delays to aid in their DHS negotiations, said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on ABC’s “This Week.” The White House’s deployment of immigration forces to airports will “take that leverage away and not make the American people suffer.”

Deploying ICE agents to airports is the “right course of action,” said Puerto Rico’s Republican Governor Jenniffer González Colón at a press conference. If the administration hadn’t sent ICE, “it would have been the National Guard. Why?” Because there is a “problem” with TSA absences leading to extreme travel delays.

Still, some White House’s supporters have expressed anxieties at the plan. The viability of ICE in airports depends on “whether or not logistically you can get these guys into those places and get them up to speed on it,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said at The Hill. If the DHS shutdown continues for an “extended period of time, yeah, it could be a necessity.”

It clearly tickled Donald Trump’s fancy. The debut episode of live sketch comedy “Saturday Night Live UK” went down so well with the US president, he treated his Truth Social followers to a clip mocking Keir Starmer for being scared to talk to him about the war in Iran.

But British reviewers were not so amused – and several were not afraid to find fault with the UK version of the long-running US show.

‘Tepid cosplay’

That “laughter-free yawn” was “not a patch” on the US original, said Deadline’s Baz Bamigboye. “What is it?! Painful, that’s what.”

“I do not want to condemn this whole endeavour outright,” said Charlotte Ivers in The Times. “But the spark is not there yet.” We and “our US cousins” have “wildly differing senses of humour”, and, watching this, you feel it “like a physical ache”.

No one “cried” or “fluffed their lines”, said Alison Rowat in The Herald, but “you could almost smell the tension in the studio”. There was “good” but also “bad” and “so-so”. Nothing was “hilarious”, but “some sketches raised a smile”, like the “movie junket interviewer who dares to tell stars their movie sucks”.

Saturday Night Live “represents the quintessence of the American comedic establishment” but its name doesn’t have “much Clapham omnibus cut-through here in Britain”, said Nick Hilton in The Independent. So “it’s a bit of a shame” that the team “plays it so safe” with the imported formula. It seemed like “tepid cosplay”.

British comedy shows used to be hammy and contrived like this, said Nicholas Harris in The New Statesman but they’ve become “more stylised, ironic”. I suspect the “failure” of “Saturday Night Live UK” has “more to do with the UK than ‘Saturday Night Live’”.

‘Stinging gags’

“It could have been a lot, lot worse”, said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. And it’s likely to become “a lot, lot better” as it settles in over the coming weeks. It was “refreshing” that “an ambition/piece of madness like retooling a legacy US brand for this septic isle” was “even being attempted”, so “let’s hope it can build towards real success”.

The first episode was “competent, untroubled by either annoying American-isms or annoying Americans – and occasionally hilarious”, said Ed Power in The Telegraph. Guest host Tina Fey was “effortlessly commanding”, thanks to her “visible ease with the format” but the “real highlight was the Weekend Update section”, with its “stinging and completely non-woke gags” about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Trump and the Strait of Hormuz.

The schadenfreude with which social-media users were predicting it would “crash and burn” was “wide of the mark”. I’d say it “was off to a flying start”.

“Just a few weeks ago, Nato marked the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine with fresh pledges of solidarity and assistance,” said The Daily Telegraph. Today, that war “risks becoming the forgotten conflict”.

Advanced US-made weapons that Kyiv's allies could have bought to help it deflect Russian attacks are being fired at cheap Iranian drones instead – depleting supplies that could take years to restock. European leaders are distracted by threats to their allies in the Gulf region, and the potential shocks to their economies.

Feeding the war machine

To cap Kyiv's dismay, Donald Trump has suspended sanctions on Russian oil, said the Daily Mail. The deal – apparently struck during an hour-long call with Vladimir Putin – should “curb rising prices” on US forecourts, but at what cost to Europe's security? It was recently reported that Moscow might be forced to slash its non-military spending by 10%, owing to the spiralling cost of its war in Ukraine and the impact of sanctions. Now it can feed its “bloody war machine” with billions in extra oil revenues instead.

The war presents “political opportunities” for Russia too, said Mark Galeotti in The Sunday Times. Trump's broadsides against Keir Starmer, and Madrid's fury at Berlin for not backing it in the face of his attacks, have great propaganda value. The Kremlin is also looking at this as a case study for just how united Europe is likely to be against future challenges, “especially as America pivots away”. Still, any glee in Moscow will have been tempered by Washington's decision to strike Iran while nuclear talks were ongoing. This caught Moscow off-guard, and dented its confidence in its ability to read the US president.

‘Extremely triggered’

Tehran is not just an ally of Moscow, said Cathy Young on The Bulwark. It has also been a role model for it – showing the possibility of surviving both Western sanctions and popular discontent. Now the Americans have killed Ayatollah Khamenei, and Putin has again been exposed as unable, or unwilling, to help an ally in trouble – a humiliating outcome for a man who liked to pose as the “leader of global resistance to Western hegemony”.

Events in Iran may shake Putin in other ways, too: he is said to be “extremely triggered” by the assassinations of dictators elsewhere. And while Ukraine being pushed down the agenda would be a win for him, this war could also leave Trump too busy to force Kyiv into a bad peace deal with Russia. Similarly, if the war drags on, it might boost Putin, or cost the Republicans the midterms, and so empower Kyiv's allies in Washington. In the fog of war, future-gazing is a mug's game.

Three weeks into this war, “it is clearer than ever that Donald Trump miscalculated”, said The Independent. “If he was warned that Iran might close the Strait of Hormuz, he ignored it.” The president seems surprised that the odious Islamic regime has still not fallen; and America's allies in the region are bearing the brunt of its furious response. Trump seems to have no realistic policy for dealing with the resulting global oil shock.

‘Another forever war’

He is “a man without a plan”, said Simon Tisdall in The Guardian, and “hasn't the foggiest what to do next”. The costs for the US – 13 dead, 200 wounded, $11 billion spent in the first week alone – are mounting. Trump sought a “swift, painless victory from the air”; instead, “another forever war” looms.

Even with its leadership decapitated, “the Iranians fight on”, said David Patrikarakos in the Daily Mail. But then they have spent 20 years preparing for this moment. Their strategy, the Decentralised Mosaic Defence, is built around a “single brutal principle” – the “body” keeps fighting even if the “head” is cut off. Local commanders can “launch missile strikes, drone swarms, and even harass ships without seeking approval from above”.

The idea was to never “give the enemy a single target whose destruction can end the fight”. To some degree, it is working. Iran continues to deploy relatively cheap drones, which are expensive to intercept. Meanwhile, the US and Israel have burned through years' worth of munitions.

‘Remarkable progress’

If, as seems likely, the regime survives, it will only become more militant and hostile, said Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian – with “every reason to double down on its nuclear ambitions”. Iran's increasingly paranoid leaders are cracking down even harder on internal dissent, said Tom Ball in The Times. The Basij paramilitary unit has been deployed into residential areas of Tehran. Thousands of people are thought to have been arrested or “disappeared” since the campaign began.

The broad consensus seems to be that the US intervention is “unwise, unjust, is going very badly and certain to fail”, said Gerard Baker in The Times. But consider the facts. In just a few weeks, the US has achieved “remarkable progress” in wreaking “destruction on the capacity of a mortal enemy to wage war”. The strikes have wiped out an estimated 60% of Iran's missile launch facilities. Tehran's rate of missile and drone fire has been drastically reduced. Its navy and air force have been effectively destroyed. Iran's desperate decision to lash out at its neighbours and close the Strait of Hormuz has left it isolated. Key leaders – including security chief Ali Larijani, seen as Iran's day-to-day ruler – have been killed.

Trump's critics behave as if “the costs of inaction were zero”, said Muhanad Seloom on Al Jazeera. “They were not.” The regime is drenched in blood. Left unchecked, it would certainly have developed nuclear weapons, making it capable of holding the region hostage “indefinitely”. War is never clean, and the execution of this one has been far from perfect. “But the strategy is working.”

For his latest Netfix documentary, Louis Theroux travels to Marbella, Miami and New York to meet content creators operating at the extreme end of the “manosphere” – a loosely connected network of misogynistic male influencers. What he finds, “as you can imagine”, is “extremely unpleasant”, said Benji Wilson in The Telegraph.

A terrifying watch

“I like horror films,” but, as the father of two teenage boys, I was left “quivering behind the sofa” by this, said Wilson. I was “gobsmacked” by how this “regressive spiral” of masculinity is being sold through “international tech platforms that should know better”.

Among the figures Theroux meets, said John Nugent in Empire, are Myron Gaines (author of the charmingly titled tome, “Why Women Deserve Less”) and Harrison Sullivan, a 24-year-old Brit known as HSTikkyTokky, who refers to his girlfriend as his “dishwasher” and who openly professes to being “racist and homophobic”.

Neutral tone ‘falls short’

Theroux takes a “serious approach” to these encounters but sometimes his trademark neutral tone “falls short”. There is “disgusting rhetoric” that he fails to call out and, although he is supposed to be skewering the influencers’ views, they quickly start farming him for content, asking their followers to pitch in with questions for him, and then livestreaming his responses.

In some ways, the film is “classic Theroux”, said Rebecca Nicholson in the Financial Times: “he holds unpleasant truths up to the light” by adopting a “faux-naive curiosity”. But, towards the end, Sullivan’s mother asks him why, if he so disapproves of what her son is doing, he is making money by publicising it. “It’s the documentarian’s age-old dilemma but it feels particularly pertinent here, and is never quite resolved.”

Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel, “A Pale View of Hills” (1982), is often described as his most personal book, and it has now been adapted to the big screen, said Kevin Maher in The Times.

Worth persevering

A “fascinating, often moving exploration of Japanese family life”, it is set partly in Nagasaki in 1952, and partly in 1980s Surrey. In the Nagasaki strand, Suzu Hirose stars as Etsuko, the unhappy wife of a boorish businessman, whose life of “meek, wifely servitude” is brightened only by her sparky friend Sachiko (Fumi Nikaido), who plans to leave the city for America. Framing all this are the sequences set in Surrey, where Etsuko’s grown-up daughter Niki (Camilla Aiko) grapples with her family’s troubled past while saying vapid things such as, “This house is full of memories.” It’s a pity these scenes are quite weak; my advice is simply to overlook them, as it is a “great film otherwise”.

‘Bland’ and ‘frustrating’

The Nobel laureate’s work has inspired “acclaimed adaptations” such as “The Remains of the Day” (1993) and “Never Let Me Go” (2010), said Tara Brady in The Irish Times, but this film demonstrates that there are “pitfalls” in tackling his work. It is visually elegant, but it lacks “narrative cohesion”; and key plot developments, including a late-stage twist, “land with jolting abruptness”. I found it “frustrating”, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. Ishiguro is so good at delivering a kind of “distinctively Anglo-Japanese melancholy”, but this is just “bland”. It fails to carry over the “haunting, haunted spirit” of the book, agreed Guy Lodge in Variety: director Kei Ishikawa “never finds a narratively satisfying way to present ambiguities that can shimmer more nebulously on the page”. Still, the film “resists nostalgia”, and the story is “attractively and accessibly presented”.

The world-famous graffiti artist Banksy has finally been unmasked as Robin Gunningham from Bristol, following a months-long exposé by Reuters, which took investigators from Ukraine to London to New York.

His identity has been “debated, and closely guarded, for decades”, but the news agency said its story was in the public interest because it was vital to understand “the identity and career of a figure with his profound and enduring influence on culture, the art industry and international political discourse”.

‘The police could find him and arrest him easily’

The only problem is that Banksy’s real identity has been an open secret for nearly two decades, with Gunningham’s name first linked to the artist in the Mail on Sunday in 2008.

“If you google Banksy and Gunningham you get something like 43,500 hits”, said Steve Le Comber, co-author of a 2016 study at Queen Mary University of London that used geographic profiling to cross-reference 140 Banksy artworks in London and Bristol with the 10 names most commonly associated with the artist.

Because Gunningham’s name has been linked with Banksy for so long, there may be a temptation to respond to the Reuters report “with a shrug”, said The Telegraph. But his outing, and revelations he legally changed his name to the more common David Jones, “may have more serious consequences than providing titillation for the arts crowd”.

This is in part because his “uniqueness stems from the fact that his work is often done using subterfuge, under cover of night or with a team of operatives equipped with fake filming permits or disguised as builders”.

Much of his work could be considered as acts of criminal damage, said Will Ellsworth-Jones, the author of two books on Banksy and his work. This revelation “makes it much more difficult for him… He’d be easy to find now and easy to be charged,” he told The Telegraph. “The police could, if they wanted to, find him and arrest him easily.”

‘People want him to be anonymous’

It may not be new news but it’s still “big news, because Banksy is big news”, said Eddy Frankel in The Times. His work may not appear in any major art institutions but “his influence is pervasive”. The “fascinating thing” is that despite his true identity being public knowledge for close to two decades, “the public want him to be anonymous, covert, secretive”.

“They would rather believe his identity is a mystery than admit that their favourite anti-establishment art rebel is a shortsighted bloke from Bristol called Robin.”

Banksy’s lawyer Mark Stephens has said the Reuters investigation “would violate the artist’s privacy, interfere with his art and put him in danger”, as “working anonymously or under a pseudonym serves vital societal interests.”

The artist has chosen to keep his identity unknown as “a way of continuing to work without the constraints of fame” and “an anonymity which also served as a means of protection from police prosecution”, said David Mouriquand on Euronews. Additionally, “part of the appeal resides in the riddle” so once it is solved “you inadvertently dent the artist’s tantalising elusiveness and his/her/their sense of unpredictability, as well as endanger his freedom of movement and expression”.

“Giving a name to the most famous street artist of our time also means taking something away from the myth – reducing the distance between the work and its creator, transforming a nearly symbolic figure into a person that can be debated, mocked, or judged,” said Anna Frattini on culture website Collater.al.

“Every now and then, world events take a turn that exposes Britain’s decades of self-deception” on the subject of defence, said Fraser Nelson in The Times. On 1 March, the RAF’s main base in Cyprus was hit by a drone apparently launched by Hezbollah from Lebanon. It caused only minor damage; what was shocking was that the UK seemed unprepared for such an event, although Lebanon is just “a short drone-hop away”, and an attack like this had been anticipated for years.

Our response was to dust down HMS Dragon, a Type 45 destroyer then undergoing maintenance at Portsmouth. (With a fair wind, she’ll arrive next week.) In a panic, Cyprus turned to Greece and France, “asking to be protected from the risk Britain’s bases had exposed them to”. Greek frigates and F-16s were on the scene within hours. A French warship and air defences followed. “Quite the humiliation” for Britain. And proof that “our commitments far outpace our resources. Holes are showing, in shocking places.”

‘Point of maximum weakness’

The blocking of the Strait of Hormuz, the attacks on the Gulf states, where around 300,000 British citizens live: this is exactly the kind of emergency that “would once have found the Royal Navy in its element”, said David Blair in The Telegraph. But for the first time in centuries, Britain does not have a single warship in the Persian Gulf or the eastern Mediterranean. Three of its six destroyers and both its aircraft carriers were out of action, undergoing repairs or refits.

After years of slow decline, the Navy has “reached its point of maximum weakness” at a moment when a crisis is exploding in the Middle East “and Russia threatens the whole of Europe”. Both Bahrain and the UAE have reportedly expressed concern about the UK response; Cyprus voiced its disappointment publicly. Britain could also only send a few extra fighter jets to the region because the RAF, too, has been “cut to the bone”, said Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail. It has 130 active jets, down from 850 in 1989. The Army is “in no better shape”, with just 70,000 active personnel, a third of the number it had in 1990.

Our current malaise “is the result of politicians from all parties trying to outrun” the same question for decades, said Matt Oliver in The Telegraph. How can Britain be “a great military power” if it won’t pay for it?

At the start of the 1990s, Britain’s health and defence budgets both hovered at 4% of GDP. Today, health accounts for 8% and defence just over 2%. New Labour was often accused of failing to invest in the forces. But the “squeeze” was harder during the Coalition years: the budget fell by 22% in real terms from 2010 to 2016. Yet even today, the Ministry of Defence has one of the largest military budgets in the world, at £66 billion per year.

So taxpayers may wonder what has gone wrong. The answer lies in part in “a string of procurement disasters”, for which civil servants and top brass must share the blame. We have expensive platforms – aircraft carriers, F-35 jets, nuclear subs – but insufficient manpower, weapons stockpiles and all-round resilience. As ex-defence secretary Ben Wallace recently put it, our forces have been “hollowed out”.

End of ‘peace dividend’

The challenge is formidable, said Larisa Brown in The Times. Al Carns, the Armed Forces Minister, has said that, by 2029, “Europe could be at war with Russia”. Former senior military chiefs warned in a letter to the prime minister this month that Britain “is facing its 1936 moment”. Assuming that funding can be found, the UK and Europe’s defence industries will have not only to ramp up production, but also to cope with the transformation of the modern battlefield already seen in Ukraine – by drone technology, robotics, cyberwarfare and, increasingly, autonomous weapons.

Add to that the likelihood that Donald Trump’s America would not “fight for us”, said Edward Lucas in The Times – or certainly cannot be relied upon to do so. “Europeans may loathe Trump, but they’re not ready to fill the gaps... They lack the hi-tech weapons, high-end intelligence, logistics expertise and ‘mass’ (quantity) that the Americans have provided since D Day.” Filling these will be costly and difficult, “if we manage at all”.

Yet politically, defence remains a hard sell, said The Independent’s editorial board. Among voters, there is no clamour to build “new cyber-defence units in the way there is demand for, say, cutting NHS waiting lists”. Keir Starmer and his cabinet know that the era of the “peace dividend” is over, said George Eaton in The New Statesman – that Britain and Europe “need to go faster on defence”, as the PM put it last month. But nothing much is happening. Labour may or may not increase defence spending from 2.4% of GDP to 3%, as the Ministry of Defence wants, by 2029 – the year that Carns thinks we could be at war with Russia. The government shows no willingness to confront voters with the fiscal trade-offs that come with higher spending. Britain remains “in denial on defence”.

“I love a sunshine break as much as the next Sexy Beast,” said Colin Robertson in The Sun, but I have never holidayed in Dubai. Partly, this is because I have no desire to visit a “soulless sandpit” that’s hotter than hell, but mainly it’s due to the people who inhabit its “air-conditioned skyscrapers”.

I am not talking about the locals (precious few of them); or the immigrant labourers who keep the city running. No, I mean the “expats, celebs and ‘influencers’” who have spent years telling us – “via a thousand TikTok reels a day” – that their lives in Dubai are so much better than ours in rainy, crime-ridden Britain, and gloating that while we’ve been paying taxes, they’ve been lying on the beach, or cruising in their Lamborghinis.

Now, though, with debris from Iranian drones raining down, their lifestyles are looking rather less aspirational. Distressed that their dream has turned sour, these expats are desperate to get out. And guess what? We saps who paid our taxes are having to fund their evacuation.

Security shattered

The UAE worked hard to build Dubai’s reputation as a glitzy haven for a global elite, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian, and the rich came in droves, to escape regulation, income tax or conflict. Workers in service industries followed, along with assorted tech bros and hustlers, and Reform-voting types too, who have railed against “broken” high-tax Britain from this sterile place – “a real-life Truman Show... sustained by stiff penalties” for those who dent its illusions.

Now, the UAE’s reputation for safety and stability risks being shattered instead by war. Tehran hopes its attacks – targeting US bases and energy infrastructure in Gulf nations – will persuade its neighbours to press the US to end its war. But they’re also a warning that if the regime falls, it will take Western-leaning Gulf states with it, by destroying their appeal to investors and tourists.

Fighting on

One real fear is that, in that effort, Tehran will seek to exploit a major vulnerability, said The Economist: the Gulf economies’ dependence on air conditioning for much of the year, and on desalinated water. Successful strikes on the region’s power stations and desalination plants could be “catastrophic”. But so far, most strikes have been intercepted, and the Gulf rulers are urging the US to fight on. They don’t want to be left with a “wounded, hostile regime on their borders”, especially not one that knows that it can alter Washington’s behaviour by pounding them.

As for Dubai, it is down, but not out, said Simeon Kerr in the FT. Many of its rich residents have opted to stay in this sunny, dynamic place where East meets West. And some of those that fled are already trying to get back, to secure their tax status.

It has become a rarity to watch any stretch of television or online video content without being exposed to at least one ad touting the ease and convenience of online gambling. But as prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket vie for dominance in the growing field of online betting, one place has emerged as a thorny challenge to their spread: Utah.

With its long history of deep Mormon conservatism, this traditionally red state is now a local leader in bucking a MAGA-led movement to facilitate e-gambling’s growth. But with Utah’s Republican governor leading an effort to regulate digital prop-betting on sports, some of the biggest names in app-based betting are fighting back, setting up a legal battle with hundreds of years of cultural history behind it.

Federal regulators face an ‘onslaught’ of state challenges

The proliferation of online prediction marketplaces with “no state oversight” operating “even in states that ban gambling” has raised “bipartisan alarms, especially related to sports gambling,” said Stateline. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), led by Trump appointee Mike Selig, filed an amicus brief claiming his group has total authority to regulate prediction markets against the “onslaught” of state challenges. “To those who seek to challenge our authority in this space, let me be clear. We will see you in court,” said Selig, currently the sole member of the five-seat body, in a brief video statement.

Prediction market operators like Polymarket and Kalshi argue that their platform for making proposition bets on “specific in-game events rather than final outcomes” places their work in the realm of “federally regulated derivatives rather than gambling products,” said Financial Feeds. In late February, Kalshi fired a “pre-emptive strike over predictive markets” by suing Utah’s Republican Gov. Spencer Cox. The lawsuit claimed Kalshi feared the state would “imminently bring an enforcement action” barring the company from “offering event contracts for trading on its federally regulated exchange,” said Fox13. Despite Utah’s constitutional ban on gambling, Kalshi, in its suit, said its prob-bet contracts are “subject to exclusive federal oversight, and — critically — they are lawful under federal law.”

‘Destroying the lives of families and countless Americans’

Cox’s conflict with prediction markets comes amid a larger debate among regulators and lawmakers about “whether those markets constitute finance or gambling,” said The Associated Press. Utah, for its part, has “already made up its mind.” For more than a century, Utah has featured “no casinos, no lotteries and no racetracks that allow bets,” a prohibition “rooted in the conservative ideals of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” With Utah poised to enact legislation “intended to undercut prediction markets,” the move positions a conspicuously conservative state “not known for picking fights” on the “frontlines of a cultural, political and economic battle sweeping the country.”

The prediction markets Selig is “breathlessly defending are gambling — pure and simple,” said Cox in a video rebuttal to the CFTC. Prediction markets are “destroying the lives of families and countless Americans” and have “no place in Utah.”

Prediction market regulation is the “first major issue in which Cox has clashed with Trump” during his second term, the AP said. That’s not wholly unexpected, given the degree to which gambling “goes against a sense of work ethic, a kind of fair exchange” central to how many residents think about about themselves “in terms of Utah identity, and certainly Latter-day Saint identity and ethics,” said Patrick Mason, a Utah State University professor of Mormon history and culture, to the AP.

Although “real-money online casinos” remain illegal across Utah, various alternatives are being used “at a rate that surprises even industry analysts,” said the Standard Examiner. Sports betting may, for the time, remain banned, but analytics-minded residents turn to prediction markets to experience the “depth and excitement these analysis tools offer,” thereby “scratching that itch without crossing the line legally.” The pivot from cultural interest in brick-and-mortar casinos to digital betting alternatives “that feel more like Candy Crush than Caesars Palace” has helped “soften” resistance to online casino-style gaming, “even in a conservative state.”

To date, “different courts have ruled in different directions” on whether or not prediction markets constitute overt online gambling, said The Salt Lake City Tribune. With cases in the Third, Fourth, and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeal, it’s likely that “we’re headed for the Supreme Court to decide this ultimately, but it’ll probably take years.”

The U.S. war on Iran has driven up gasoline prices, alarming drivers around the world and spurring renewed interest in electric vehicles. Gasoline prices are rising “and so are searches for EVs,” said InsideEVs.

The Iran crisis has thrown global oil markets “for a loop,” which has increased gasoline costs by 50 cents a gallon over the last month. Online searches for electric vehicles, both hybrids and full EVs, have “jumped over the last week.” Most of that gain came from “full EV searches.” A similar spike in oil prices and EV searches occurred when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Will the crisis in the Middle East “finally mean that people will want EVs?,” Matt Hardigree said at The Autopian. The end of tax credits for electric cars has produced a drop in EV sales, dropping by half from 12% of all vehicle sales in 2025. Automakers have “largely cut production” of EVs, and the EVs that remain on the market are “super cheap,” as dealers try to unload inventory. But a “prolonged period of higher energy prices” could change that dynamic. Come summer, “there might be fewer affordable EVs and higher energy prices.”

The road to energy independence?

Electric vehicles “are not the answer to oil shocks,” Kevin D. Williamson said at The Dispatch. Look to China, where oil consumption is increasing despite the proliferation of cheap and abundant EVs, because “there are many things you can do with oil other than refine it into gasoline and diesel.” Imported oil fuels the country’s growing petrochemical industry, which makes plastics and other products. Back in the U.S., commuters with “relatively short daily drives” might benefit from EVs, but that “would not have the effect of lowering U.S. oil consumption.”

Reduced oil demand “can lead to less conflict and more energy independence,” Jameson Dow said at Electrek. Most oil is used for transportation, and “more than half of that goes into the engines of the approximately 1.5 billion personal vehicles on the road today.” That is a “global overreliance” on a single resource, giving “massive amounts of control and wealth” to the countries that use it.

Fuel price security

American carmakers are bracing for “ripple effects” from the war, said The Detroit Free Press. They will face new challenges “if this stretches out and causes extended disruption to oil supplies,” said Sam Abuelsamid, the vice president of market research for Telemetry. General Motors, however, “might be in a good place with its electric vehicle lineup."

“I’m sure glad I bought an EV and solar panels,” Ryan Cooper said at The American Prospect. The stereotype is that electric vehicles are for “environmentally conscious liberals.” But they are also “much cheaper to operate than gas cars.” In a world with roller coaster gas prices, EVs offer “fuel price security,” which is easier on the wallet.

The Hollywood star Timothée Chalamet is facing the surprisingly hostile wrath of the ballet and opera communities after suggesting that “no one cares” about the genres.

“I don’t want to be working in ballet, or opera, or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though like no one cares about this anymore,’” he said in a live conversation with his “Interstellar” co-star Matthew McConaughey on Variety and CNN. “All respect to all the ballet and opera people out there.”

‘Disappointing take’

Ballet and opera fans “seem pretty pissed off about Chalamet’s tongue-in-cheek comments”, said William Hughes on AV Club. He’s “facing some fairly stiff punishments”, including “the possibility of actually having to go see an opera himself”, because the English National Opera gave him “an open offer of tickets” to “help change his mind on the artform”.

Some ballet and opera folk were not very “live-and-let-live”, with “many reminding” Chalamet that “their craft is insanely hard work” and it “doesn’t get any easier when film actors start punching down”.

The US opera singer Isabel Leonard said she was “shocked that someone so seemingly successful can be so ineloquent and narrow-minded in his views about art while considering himself as [an] artist”, said The Hollywood Reporter. Only a “weak person/artist feels the need to diminish” the “very arts that would inspire those who are interested in slowing down, to do exactly that”.

Deepa Johnny, the Canadian opera star, called Chalamet’s remark a “disappointing take” and said “we should be trying to uplift these art forms, these artists and come together across disciplines to do that”.

‘Clear-sighted’ and ‘practical’

“Of course, everyone threw a fit because everyone gets offended over every little thing”, said Sasha Stone on Awards Daily, but Chalamet is “100% right”. The actor “doesn’t want to see movies become a niche cultural event”.

I “hope” he just “lets it roll off his back” because “when they decide to come for you”, there’s “no fixing that. Don’t apologise. Be yourself. Be unique.”

Chalamet “isn’t the person you would expect to put down ballet and opera – especially ballet”, said Gia Kourlas in The New York Times. His mother and his sister “studied at the School of American Ballet” and “he wore a New York City Ballet baseball cap in Paris”.

His point “wasn’t that ballet and opera don’t matter”, rather that they aren’t “really part of mainstream culture”. The “value” of ballet and opera, and “people’s perception around their value”, are “two different things”. What Chalamet said “wasn’t untrue” – it was “clear-sighted” and “practical”.

“Still,” said Hughes, “at least people are talking about ballet and opera now, right?”