Donald Trump has pursued “the most idiosyncratic and unsuccessful” US foreign policy in living memory, said Max Boot in The Washington Post.

“Even among Republicans, there is little support for annexing Greenland, seizing Venezuela’s oil, waging a cold war with Canada, cutting off Ukraine, insulting and indiscriminately tariffing allies, buying diesel from Russia” and “launching a war on Iran”. But most senior Republicans have been “too cowed” to protest, until now.

After last week’s “shellacking” in the midterms, Vice President J.D. Vance baldly stated on X that “the reason we lost is the war”. Trump himself had to admit that this is “largely true”; and this week, he said the war was “effectively over”, that negotiations to end it were under way, and that more attacks on Iran were “highly unlikely”.

War or peace

Well, maybe, said Arta Moeini and Brett Erickson on UnHerd. But the president has been known to change his mind, and the danger of renewed conflict remains high. Trump is under “immense pressure to prove he is still in control”, and whatever constraints he now faces domestically, he retains considerable freedom to conduct foreign policy. A third aircraft carrier strike group is on course to reach the Middle East by the end of this month, building up the strength of US forces in the region to the level they were at at the start of the war.

Trump could attack Iran again, said Barak Ravid on Axios. But it would be “highly unpopular” – because it would drive oil prices up – and would probably not yield “a better military result”. The alternative is the peace negotiations. The difficulty is that Trump is making big demands: the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and the end of Iran’s nuclear programme. The Iranians are in no mood to make concessions. Tehran, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is asking not just for an end to the naval blockade and sanctions, but for billions in frozen assets, and reparations from the US.

‘Only path’ forward

There is a third option, said William Hague in The Times – for the US to carry on strangling Iran’s economy. With the last of the oil revenues from shipments sent out before the US blockade petering out, and inflation soaring, this is likely to be the most effective way of forcing Tehran to seek terms.

Trump will have to be patient, which does not come easily to him. He’ll also need to show that he can be trusted to honour any agreement; and he’ll probably have to accept some limited, independently verified Iranian nuclear activity. “Yes, that would look remarkably like the 2015 agreement that Trump hated so much.” But it is likely to be “the only path” out of the trap he has created for himself.

The Democrats are “euphoric” in the wake of last week’s midterm elections, said Victoria Guida on Politico, but the truth is that the results “delivered a warning” to them as well as the Republicans. “People are angry about the cost of living, and they want their representatives to actually do something about it.”

Having captured both the House and Senate, Democrats now need to show dissatisfied voters that they can respond. “Excuses will only go so far in 2028 if the electorate is still mad.” The party must decide its “game plan” for two years of divided government. Is it worth drawing up partisan legislation and sending it to the president’s desk, only to see it vetoed? Or would voters respond better if the party worked with Donald Trump to pass more modest, compromise measures? And can Democrats “even agree enough” among themselves “to advance legislation”?

Populist momentum

They must be bold, said Michael Tomasky in The New Republic. Last week’s elections demolished the conventional wisdom that the party can only prosper by running cautious, corporate-friendly centrists. Both James Talarico in Texas and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan ran as “aggressive economic populists”. One of Talarico’s campaign riffs was that “the only minority destroying America is the billionaires”. Democrats who speak like that aren’t supposed to win Senate seats.

Yet both did, despite their opponents spending some $200 million on efforts to vilify them. The party should capitalise on its momentum, agreed Aaron Regunberg in the same publication. It has a wide array of popular economic policies at its disposal: anti-price-gouging laws to bring down the cost of energy and food; excess-profits tax on Big Oil; paid sick leave; a congressional stock-trading ban. “What is the downside to daring Trump to veto bills like these that are supported by 70%-80% of Americans?”

Overreach risk

Voters backed Democrat candidates in order to rebuke Trump, said The Washington Post, but it’s clear from many ballot measures last week that they “aren’t sold on left-wing economic policy prescriptions”. Voters in North Carolina, for instance, elected a Democratic senator, but also approved measures to cap income tax. The same thing happened in Iowa. Wisconsin elected a Democratic governor, but voted to ban affirmative action in state institutions.

The midterms weren’t an endorsement of the Democrats, agreed The Wall Street Journal. The party won just 29% approval in the latest NBC poll, to the Republicans’ 38%. Investigations into the murky finances of the Trump administration would be welcome, as would closer policy scrutiny in general, but Democrats must beware of overreaching. If they lurch to the Left and waste time on, say, another doomed impeachment drive, it “could lead voters to conclude in 2028 that the post-Trump Republican Party doesn’t look so bad after all”.

Pragmatic leadership

The Democrats could learn from Zohran Mamdani, said Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic. Many feared the worst when the avowed socialist became New York mayor last year, but it hasn’t led to a Marxist takeover. Mamdani retained Jessica Tisch, a pro-Israel billionaire hated by the hard-left, as police commissioner, and cut the red tape that slows private home building. He has dropped some progressive ambitions, such as free buses, and put others, like universal daycare, on a more gradual track. While still a fierce critic of Israel, he has unveiled an initiative to combat antisemitism.

Yes, he has stuck with the “goofy notion” of state-run grocery stores, but this supposed socialist firebrand has largely prioritised “humdrum municipal governance”. Democrats have long sought a pragmatic leader who can inspire the Left while “ignoring the incessant demands of progressive activists”. They might want to look to New York.

Russell Brand is “rightfully a pariah” after his conviction for rape and three counts of sexual assault, said Jawad Iqbal in The Spectator. But his “army of enablers” must not be allowed any “hiding place”.

The comedian wouldn’t have secured his celebrity status without a “helping hand from some of the most influential and powerful people in public life” – the same people who are now busy “airbrushing their past history of gushing over Brand” and claiming not to have known the truth about his behaviour. It is a “roll call of shame”.

‘Famous mates’

When a powerful man is found guilty of “crimes against women”, said Marisa Bate in The i Paper, the “frustrating and uncomfortable question” emerges: “who else knew?” For Brand, the answer appears to be “if not everyone, then a hell of a lot of people”.

There has been much focus on the TV executives who put “ratings above women’s safety” and turned a blind eye to Brand’s behaviour. “But what about his famous mates?”

A “chilling” clip from “The Big Fat Quiz of the Year” in 2007 shows Jonathan Ross swapping seats with a then 22-year-old Lily Allen to “protect” her from Brand and Noel Fielding, who are “making jokes about rapists and Jack the Ripper” while the audience “erupts in laughter and applause”. It is a “textbook example of what rape culture looks like”, normalising sexual violence until it becomes “fodder for a comedy show”.

Ross went on to “share the limelight” with Brand. The following year the pair left voicemails for “Fawlty Towers” actor Andrew Sachs during Brand’s Radio 2 show, with Ross saying at one point: “He fucked your granddaughter!” Ross has this week said he was once on “friendly terms” with Brand, but that at the time he was “genuinely unaware” of his conduct and now “horrified”.

“Nobody in Labour circles appeared too bothered” by this behaviour, said Iqbal in The Spectator. Ed Miliband’s “moral compass” seemed to have “failed him” when he “went out of his way to ingratiate himself” with Brand during the 2015 general election campaign, even visiting the star at his penthouse flat for an interview.

That same year, Guardian columnist Owen Jones wrote an article headlined “Stop the sneering – Ed Miliband’s best route to young voters is Russell Brand”. Jones has since released a statement saying he overlooked Brand’s “problematic behaviour” as he saw him as a “crude means to reach disillusioned younger people with left-wing politics”, and calling this an “obvious misjudgement”.

‘Spineless’ self-protection

Brand was “egged on” by some of the most powerful people in the media industry, said Liz Kershaw in The Telegraph. “He was their performing monkey.” I’ve always loathed his behaviour, “but even more, I detested the bosses who stood by him”. Perhaps his “enablers” – the media executives, comedy club promoters and agents who encouraged his vile behaviour – should finally have been brought to the dock.

The “scrambling” statements and “distancing” from these men in the wake of his conviction are “at best, tepid”, said Bate in The i Paper. “It reeks of a spineless attempt at self-protection.” Only now, when there is “nothing to gain by association, but potentially something to lose”, are Brand’s former friends giving his victims any thought.

“Why did no one stop him?” said Lucy Morgan in Esquire. We must ask this question of each of his enablers, “and perhaps even ourselves, sitting in the audience, laughing along the entire time”.

The “stench around ‘sandpapergate’ is as overpowering now as it was” eight years ago, said The i Paper.

Australian batter Cameron Bancroft was caught on camera during a Test match against South Africa in Cape Town in 2018 trying to rough up the ball with sandpaper he did in his trousers. Bancroft, captain Steve Smith and vice-captain David Warner received suspensions for their part in one of the biggest sporting scandals of recent years.

It is once again leading the news Down Under. In his autobiography published this week, Usman Khawaja, the Australian batter who retired in January, says the whole team knew about the tactic and it had been used before they were caught. Warner has since come out in support of Khawaja, saying his recollections were “100% accurate”.

Cricket Australia has said it will not reopen its inquiry, having completed a three-day investigation at the time. Khawaja claims he was not interviewed during that period.

Bowlers’ claims ‘ludicrous’

Cricket Australia’s decision not to reopen the inquiry is not only “sad” and “predictable”, but demonstrates “exactly why a new investigation is needed”, said Robert Craddock in The Australian. There is “enormous public interest” in “the most notorious event in Australian cricket this century”. There are clear, conflicting views: this whole chapter “needs a proper full stop”.

“So far, so much stalemate,” said BBC Sport. The latest revelations have “done little to shift views that were entrenched” already. Australian cricket is in “sandpaper limbo, a halfway house full of historical scandal, innuendo and unanswered questions”.

Had Khawaja spoken up at the time, his career would have disappeared faster than “that bit of sandpaper disappeared down Bancroft’s pants”, said Zachary Gates on Nine. Khawaja’s version of events “smells like the truth”. It seems “incredibly unlikely” that he would do “untold damage” to his relationships with former team-mates by making false claims. And the idea that the bowlers, as they continue to claim, had no knowledge of ball tampering is “ludicrous”.

Eight years on, it’s “hard to see how many lessons have been learned”, said ABC. It’s the public who have been most hurt: they care less about the “whodunnit and more about the irreparable breach of trust” they feel. The “wounds that remain stem from a feeling of betrayal”.

‘Taint an entire generation’

“Apologies for the crude analogy but for Australian cricket this is the unflushable turd,” said Stocks in The i Paper. Current Test captain Pat Cummins has kept quiet so far, but he has also come under pressure for his recent performances. “Could this tip him over the edge?”

Khawaja’s allegations, “whether true or not, promise to taint an entire generation of Australian cricketers”. Looking ahead to the Ashes in England next year, the “soundtrack of the summer” promises to be home fans chanting: “Same old Aussies, always cheating”.

Perhaps there is another “unpalatable” scenario for why the case hasn’t been reopened, said BBC Sport. Australia’s last two captains “lost the job in disgrace” – Smith for sandpapergate, and his successor, Tim Paine, for a “sexting” scandal. Perhaps Cricket Australia has “no desire to open the door for fear of what might lie behind it”. Sandpaper, however, is the “stench Australian cricket cannot shake”.

Wall Street is feeling the fallout from last week’s midterm elections. Stocks initially rose following the Democratic sweep, then briefly plunged as markets realized the new Congress will closely scrutinize the AI investment boom. Investors are watching to see if the new political landscape boosts or busts their bottom lines.

‘Knee-jerk reaction’

The Democratic victories “rattled” Wall Street, said Rebecca Patterson at the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank. The S&P 500 posted its “biggest one-day decline” since 2005 on Thursday amid fears the election results have “thrown into doubt” the AI spending boom. Democrats may put new “guardrails” around “AI-exposed” firms like Amazon, Apple, Meta and Tesla, but that will come with a tradeoff. Those companies represent “more than one-third of the index’s total market capitalization.” An artificial intelligence slowdown could “weigh on economic activity.”

“Don’t trust the market’s knee-jerk reaction to the midterms,” said James Mackintosh at The Wall Street Journal. The altered political landscape “adds another threat” to the buildout of AI data centers, but that threat is “probably not as severe as the consensus trade suggests.”

‘Sign of things to come’

Some traders hope the “stark” election results will “ease political uncertainty” that has hovered over the economy since President Donald Trump returned to office last year, said Harriet Clarfelt, Kate Duguid and Claire Jones at the Financial Times. Voters “chose moderation and markets appreciate that choice,” said economist Daleep Singh to the outlet. Other investors see the “potential benefits of gridlock” between Trump and a Democratic Congress, said FT. But that divide could also trigger the “mother of all debt-ceiling showdowns” next year, said Singh.

Historically, stocks “typically rise in the year following midterm elections,” said Jamie McGeever at Reuters. Investors like that a divided government usually limits the “likelihood of major, radical policy changes” that can upend businesses. Trump, however, has taught investors that the old rules “no longer apply.” The question is whether Wall Street’s initial post-election jitters are a “sign of things to come.”

President Donald Trump was not necessarily chastened by Republicans’ historic midterm election losses last week. On Friday, the president elevated Stephen Miller, author of his administration’s most aggressive anti-immigration policies, to serve as his chief of staff. It’s an unmistakable sign that Trump is digging in for battle against the new Democratic Congress.

‘Double down on Trumpism’

Miller’s appointment is the “clearest signal” that Trump will spend the final years of his presidency reinforcing his “core beliefs” despite last week’s electoral rebuke, said The Wall Street Journal. Miller has been one of the president’s “most loyal advisers” since Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016, known for his “hard-line approach to immigration.” But incoming Democrats have an “aggressive” agenda of their own and Miller “will have his hands full.”

The chief of staff can be expected to “double down on Trumpism,” said Mark Antonio Wright at the National Review, a tendency that is not always helpful to the president. Miller’s “overheated rhetoric” on immigration during last winter’s ICE raids in Minnesota “contributed to the steep decline in the popularity of strict immigration enforcement.” He is unlikely to be found “driving a course correction” to pursue “policies more in line with the public’s preferences.”

Stephen Miller is “not what voters asked for,” said Erika D. Smith at Bloomberg. His rise is “likely to further infuriate” the U.S. public while making it more difficult for Republicans to reclaim power in 2028. If nothing else, it shows Trump has “learned nothing from the worst political shellacking in a half-century.”

‘Bunker mentality’

Miller has “unleashed billions of taxpayer dollars to brutalize and kill American citizens” via the administration’s mass deportation efforts, said House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on ABC’s “This Week.” Democrats will not work with Miller and “what he represents.”

Trump’s “bunker mentality” has been exposed with Miller’s promotion, said Jacob Heilbrunn at The Spectator. There is no White House figure “more loathed among Democrats,” and choosing Miller could “accelerate the meltdown of his presidency,” if only because it reveals the president will do nothing to “placate an angry electorate.”

American politics has never had to deal with someone like Elon Musk before, said Andrew Egger on The Bulwark. There are other wealthy donors, of course, but none comparable to the world’s richest man.

Musk lavished about $450 million on Republican campaigns ahead of this week’s midterm elections – more than any single donor has ever spent on a US election cycle. Around $180 million of that went on unsuccessfully trying to stop the Democrat James Talarico winning the Texas Senate race. And Musk wasn’t just writing cheques. On his platform X, where “he has 241 million followers and owns the algorithms that ensure everyone sees his posts”, he relentlessly tweeted attacks on Talarico, calling him a creep who “will vote to take away your children and transition them”.

Musk’s efforts to swing the outcome may have failed, but they raised questions about his degree of influence, and put him in the Democrats’ sights, said Paul Blumenthal on HuffPost. Kendall Scudder, chair of the Texas Democratic Party, declared: “If you think retribution isn’t on the way, you’re mistaken.”

‘Berserk’ hatred

The Left has “gone nearly berserk” in its hatred of Musk, said Victor Davis Hanson on American Greatness. Back in the days when he supported the Democrats (Musk voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and claimed he voted for Joe Biden in 2020), liberals loved him and proudly drove Teslas. But now that he votes Republican, he’s a Nazi who’s out to buy elections. Never mind that the billionaire George Soros and his foundations “have channelled well over half a billion dollars to left-wing candidates and causes in just the last six years alone”.

Democrats are itching to launch investigations into Musk, said Robby Soave in Reason. And some are now even talking of nationalising his companies, including Starlink, claiming that they’re too important to be left under his control. This is a “dangerous” notion. It would unfairly target Musk and send a message to other innovators that they’d better not be too successful or they’ll be punished.

Critics must keep their vengeful feelings in check, agreed Marian L. Tupy on The Dispatch. While Musk should of course be held accountable for any violations of the law or any harms caused by his decisions, opponents shouldn’t turn political disagreement into a reason to “obstruct legitimate enterprise”. Musk can be arrogant, vindictive and rude, but his “failings should be weighed against his contributions to human progress”.

Oligarchy vs. democracy

If Musk stuck to technology, his “capricious, emotionally stunted man-baby” antics might not matter, said David Futrelle in The National. But he’s a political force: apparently willing to switch off Starlink with shocking effects on Ukraine; increasingly sceptical of democracy and willing to leverage his immense wealth to undermine it.

The sums he’s spending to tilt elections are unprecedented, and he seems to believe his wealth puts him above the law. When the tech journalist Kara Swisher predicted in a recent podcast that the Democrats would soon be investigating Musk over his huge government contracts and his leadership of the job-slashing Doge agency, he reacted furiously. “Live by the sword, die by the sword,” he posted on X. “Sounds like Swisher really wants to go to prison.”

The good news is that Musk’s money couldn’t buy the Texas Senate seat, said Tim Murphy in Mother Jones – in part because Talarico’s campaign “was predicated on the idea that people like Musk would try to buy the seat”. Even so, this is a warning, said Perry Bacon in The New Republic. Democrats must restrict the vast and growing political power of billionaires, including liberal ones. “America can have an oligarchy or a democracy – not both.”

For more than 1,000 years, the Catholic Church has used its just-war theory to create moral guardrails for when nations choose to fight and how their armies conduct themselves in combat. But now, under the guidance of Pope Leo, it’s having second thoughts.

Just cause, just means?

“There is no such thing as a holy war: Only peace is holy,” Leo said last month at a religious conference, per Christopher Hale at Letters from Leo. The pope sparked the ire of President Donald Trump earlier this year by criticizing the U.S. war against Iran. Leo’s continued anti-war messaging shows “he means it,” Hale said. The Church is now reviewing its “outdated” just-war doctrines, a reaction against “every leader who has tried to draft heaven into a bombing campaign.”

The theory says a war is justified only if waged for a “just cause” and with “just means,” said Luis Parrales at The Atlantic. The guidance has influenced instruction at military academies and the development of human-rights laws. But there is a sense the doctrine is “prone to abuse” by national leaders who have twisted and bent its tenets to dubiously assert their chosen conflicts’ morality. The Church’s current task is to create a “successor theory that better addresses the many moral challenges that modern-day wars pose.”

‘Necessary and therefore just’

Just-war theory “fails to adequately train peacemakers,” said Eli McCarthy at the outlet U.S. Catholic. Leaders must “cultivate strategic nonviolent practices” and build institutions that make “sustainable peace” possible. Existing theory only makes wars “more likely to continue.”

Critics suggest that abandoning just-war principles would risk “dangerous passivity in the face of aggression,” said the National Catholic Register. “All wars are bad,” said John Rist, a church historian and philosopher, to the outlet. But sometimes it’s “necessary and therefore just” to fight. This “unhappy truth” must be acknowledged. Because “appeasing the wicked and supposing one needs only to ‘accompany’ them or ‘dialogue’ with them is itself irresponsible.”

The blue tsunami many polls predicted came to pass Tuesday as Democrats took control of both chambers of Congress. Now, Democratic politicians are debating how to handle the upcoming GOP minority. Some want to work together with Republicans, while others say investigating the GOP and stonewalling President Donald Trump should be top of mind.

‘Lawyer up’

Many Democrats seem eager to “fight on nearly every front the president has opened,” said Nik Popli and Julia Terruso at Time. The incoming Democratic leadership is seemingly “preparing a legislative offensive aimed at reversing some of the administration’s most unpopular policies.”

Republicans should “lawyer up,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement. Democrats may “use their new subpoena power and agenda-setting authority” to investigate alleged corruption among Trump’s family, alongside setting up probes into “Elon Musk’s leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency” and the “Department of Homeland Security’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics,” said Chris Marquette at Politico.

The party is most likely to “achieve lasting gains through sustained oversight investigations directed toward two goals,” Claire Finkelstein said at The Guardian: “providing accountability in the executive branch and strengthening the institution of Congress itself.”

Not after ‘political retribution’

Other Democrats, including some who will be taking up new jobs soon, feel that focusing on Trump is the wrong approach. “They didn’t send us to Washington for political retribution,” Sen.-elect James Talarico (D-Texas) told CNN after his victory. “They sent us to Washington to lower costs, to root out corruption, to get this economy back on track.” While there will be investigations, Democrats are “focused on delivering on the affordability agenda,” Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) told NPR.

More moderate Democrats, including the likely next House speaker, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), are also “expected to be scared of a handful of new members aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America,” said The Washington Post editorial board. While the threat of democratic socialists “might discourage” centrists like Jeffries or Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer from “negotiating in good faith,” there is also a “strong case for unexpected levels of cooperation, or at least compromise, over the next two years.” Americans voted for divided government, but that “doesn’t mean they chose paralysis in the face of an impending fiscal emergency.”

“No one seems to want to apologise for the transatlantic slave trade, do they?” said Tom Peck in The Times. The prime minister and King Charles were both in the Caribbean for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Antigua yesterday, a summit dominated every year by growing calls for slavery reparations.

King Charles, the head of the Commonwealth, spoke of the “monstrous injustice” of the trade that forced an estimated 12-15 million enslaved people from Africa, about 4.7 million to the Caribbean, and caused unquantifiable human suffering. It “fills my heart with horror and my soul with the most profound personal sorrow”.

But he “artfully declined” to apologise for Britain’s role. Even Andy Burnham, “one of the great apologisers of his generation”, stopped short. Of course, the problem with apologising is that sorry will “inevitably open the door to what it has always really been about” – reparations.

‘Shouldn’t be liable for historical wrongs’

It’s right and patriotic to have the “difficult conversations” that Commonwealth members have been asking for, said Burnham in The Guardian. That’s why Britain is offering a “structured dialogue” with nations affected by the slave trade.

But I do not believe financial reparations are the “right answer”. British people today shouldn’t be “liable for historical wrongs, however heinous, that happened in a different age under different laws and in which they played no personal part”.

What about those who profited from the trade? Ghana, “one of the biggest slave-trading countries”, is leading the campaign directed at Britain, which was “not the most guilty” of those countries involved, said historian Robert Tombs in The Telegraph. It’s demanding to be “compensated for its own crimes against humanity”.

Muslim countries were “arguably the cruellest” in exploiting enslaved people; Brazil, France and the US were among the biggest buyers. “If reparations are due, all these should pay them.”

‘Meaningless attempt at appeasing’

But meaningful reparations “cannot be reduced” to the improved debt repayment conditions Burnham proposes, said Verene A. Shepherd, vice-chair of the Caricom Reparations Commission, on Al Jazeera. What we, “the descendants now living with the legacies of chattel enslavement and colonial terror”, want is debt cancellation and monetary compensation. We “reject the notion” that a country that profited from slavery should not now be held responsible. “It is time for Britain to apologise and pay its debt.”

Ultimately, sorrow without accountability is a “meaningless attempt at appeasing the ‘natives’”, said Caribbean analyst Kenneth Mohammed in The Guardian.

The Commonwealth “presents itself as an association of equal, independent nations”. If members can’t “secure meaningful engagement from Britain on one of their most consequential historical grievances”, how equal is it? The Caribbean “need not accept neocolonialism and historical amnesia” as the price of partnership.

With Republicans clinging to power against a flurry of polls that predict a blue wave during this week’s elections, an additional foe could spell trouble for the GOP: libertarians. Some believe a roster of Libertarian candidates could ruin Republicans’ best chances during the midterms.

‘Could lead some conservatives to cast protest ballots’

While many analysts say the GOP’s efforts are futile due to nationwide frustration with the Trump administration, there are numerous battleground states in play. But “unhappiness with President Donald Trump could lead some conservatives to cast protest ballots,” said Thomas Beaumont at The Associated Press. Some voters may be swayed to vote Libertarian, a party which runs on a “message of nonintervention and limited centralized authority.” The party “could draw enough votes to affect the outcome in a number of these races,” GOP former Ohio state lawmaker Gene Krebs told the AP.

Three key states include Iowa, Kansas and Texas. Libertarians there are “polling in the low single digits, but their appeal to disaffected Republican voters could prove decisive in races with little separating the major-party contenders,” Sarah Fortinsky said at The Hill. Texas may end up the most prominent example, where Libertarian candidate Ted Brown “offers Republicans wary of Paxton an alternative to both their scandal-ridden Senate nominee and Democrat James Talarico.”

‘Boosting third party spoilers is a bipartisan sport’

Even as Republican strategists are worried, others think the Libertarian Party could hurt Democrats in a similar manner. In U.S. politics, “boosting third party spoilers is a bipartisan sport,” said Isaac Arnsdorf, Mariana Alfaro and Erin Cox at The Washington Post. In “Pennsylvania, Michigan and Virginia battleground races, independents and Green candidates have popped up as left-wing alternatives to Democrats,” even as “social media and voter registration history show them as supporters of President Donald Trump.”

Overall, the “big question is not just how much of the vote Libertarian candidates will win in these contests” but also whether Democratic PACs spent enough money “in support of those Libertarian candidates,” said Lauren Egan at The Bulwark. While it “can be a risky and controversial tactic, promoting third-party spoiler candidates is not without precedent.”

He’s done it again, said Vera Magalhães in O Globo (Rio de Janeiro). If anyone was capable “of pulling off an unprecedented turnaround against all odds”, it was President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who this week won a historic fourth term in office.

Brazil’s working-class hero suffered a shock defeat in the first round of the presidential election in early October, coming second to Flávio Bolsonaro, 45, the eldest son of former president Jair Bolsonaro (aka “the Trump of the Tropics”), who is currently under house arrest for plotting a coup.

Short-lived celebrations

No other candidate has gone on to win the second round after losing the first. But the Workers’ Party (PT) leader, who was accused of arrogance and of failing to understand the needs of young gig-economy workers, shook up his strategy, said Igor Gielow in Folha de São Paulo. He announced a number of populist measures and mobilised ten million followers via a new WhatsApp channel “Exército do Lula” (“Lula’s Army”). In the end, “the fear of a Bolsonaro returning to power” was enough to mobilise the centre-left voters who had sat out the first round: Lula won Sunday’s vote with almost 52% to 48%; his vote surged from 54 million in the first round to 64 million.

Lula’s celebrations will be short-lived, said Míriam Leitão in O Globo. He governs a country “more divided than at any time during his previous three terms”. Bolsonaro, who is under investigation as part of a money-laundering probe, initially rejected Sunday’s result amid a row over voting hours being extended at the last minute by a supreme court judge who was previously Lula’s lawyer. He later fled to the US.

The chaos was a fitting end to one of the ugliest elections in recent years, said Paulo César de Oliveira in Correio da Manhã (Rio de Janeiro). Not since the 1964-1985 military dictatorship “has there been such a heavy, radicalised political environment”. The deep animosity between the two candidates was on full display during the televised debate held two days before the vote, said Stephen Gibbs in The Times. It “descended into a shouting match”, with Lula calling his hard-right rival “a habitual liar, a thug”. Bolsonaro, for his part, had the word “corrupt” written on his palm to serve as a reminder, as he put it, for what Lula’s Workers’ Party stood for. He would be keeping his distance from his opponent during the debate, he declared, “because my wallet could be stolen”.

Spending spree

The grimiest part of the whole race, said Roseann Kennedy in Estadão (São Paulo), was the vast spending spree Lula went on after losing the first round. In the final three weeks of the contest, the PT accelerated spending on measures announced in the last year, totalling R$354 billion (£50 billion) – “institutionalised vote-buying” on a huge scale. That includes forgiving the debt of micro-entrepreneurs, and pushing through a 15% increase to the Bolsa Família programme, which provides cash to low-income households – even changing the payment schedule so people would receive the benefit days before the final vote. It makes a mockery of Brazil’s electoral law, which prohibits incumbents from granting these benefits mid-campaign.

Worse, Lula’s last-minute splurge will only aggravate Brazil’s deteriorating public finances, said O Globo. They are just one of a series of crises the president immediately faces in his fourth term. There are also the accusations of corruption against Lula’s inner circle, including his eldest son. And the fact that he’ll be governing with a hostile parliament which, following the first round of elections, now has a distinctly conservative (and Bolsonaro-friendly) profile.

Brazil’s president already has an “extraordinary biography”. He led historic workers’ strikes during the military dictatorship, and helped draft the 1988 constitution. Imprisoned after governing for two terms, he stormed back to power in 2022, becoming a “symbol of democracy” when he defeated Jair Bolsonaro. Now, having just turned 81 years old, Lula faces his biggest challenge of all.

“Why is everybody so mad?” said The Wall Street Journal, about the Bayeux Tapestry’s return to Britain and the “class war” that has broken out around it.

Britons who want to see the historic embroidered cloth dating from the 11th century “say they’re being treated like Taylor Swift fans on Ticketmaster”, while “American tech billionaires, luxury hotel guests and museum sponsors get to skip the line”.

‘Akin to a birthright’

The Bayeux Tapestry “holds a particular position in British public consciousness” because “it tells, over 230 feet of finely embroidered cloth, the story of the last time England was conquered” – the victory of William of Normandy at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

“For many Brits, seeing it is akin to a birthright.” But when tickets went on sale people found them hard to get, and then “word started to trickle out about who was having no trouble getting in”. For example, the luxury hotel One Aldwych offered tickets to the tapestry as “part of a package stay, with guests in rooms that cost around $1,100 (£825) a night promised a viewing any date and time of their choosing”.

Meanwhile, some visitors are being given a different experience, said Lara Brown in The Spectator. “Most art critics and journalists” have been “permitted by museum marshals to stop and appreciate the thing”, but “the rest of us commoners will have no such luck”.

After queueing outside, we were “informed by our guide that we would be going inside in precisely 32 seconds”. There we were “introduced to a cartoon bird who would guide us through our ‘experience’”. After a further hour’s wait, we reached the display and realised that the focus of the staff is to get us “through the exhibition hall as fast as humanly possible”.

Bayeux biscuits and a Norman soldier teddy

“The reason the queue is going slowly is because people are dawdling inside”, said Giles Coren in The Times. And “they are hustling people along inside because they don’t want the queue to be too long”. So “how, exactly, Einstein, do you think they can solve both” of those problems?

I am “sympathetic” towards the British Museum, said Brown in The Spectator, because “hundreds of thousands of people want to visit” and “they need to find a way to get us all through”. Although I’m “grateful to have seen such an important piece of English history”, I would have been “even more grateful if I had been allowed to properly look at it”.

Nicholas Cullinan, director of the British Museum, acknowledged that “the experience has not been as smooth as we would have liked”, and announced new measures including longer opening hours, an audio guide and extra seating for those stuck in the queue.

But his statement “stopped conspicuously short of an apology”, said The Telegraph. So “the question now is whether the museum’s attempts to right the ship will prove enough, or be seen as too little, too late”.

Meanwhile, visitors can enjoy the gift shop, which manages to “upstage” the exhibit itself, said CNN. “A box of Bayeux biscuits, Bayeux Tapestry horseman keyrings, a maritime tea light holder and a Norman soldier teddy bear”, are among the delights on offer to commoner and tech billionaire alike.

Manchester United are stuck in a “doom spiral”, said The Telegraph, with their current “collapse” under manager Michael Carrick the “latest sorry episode in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era”.

The 13-times Premier League champions have made their worst start to a league season in 40 years. They are 16th in the Premier League, just one point above the relegation places, having gone eight games without a win.

Old Trafford fans booed their players off the field after the 3-0 defeat to Bournemouth on Sunday. The result put “not only the manager’s future into doubt, but every member of the ownership, senior management and playing squad as a whole”, said Al Jazeera.

‘Dysfunction and decay’

Carrick will be in charge for this Saturday’s game at Chelsea, although it may well prove his last. But he is just the latest in a succession of managers since Ferguson retired in 2013 who have delivered “dysfunction, discord and disinterested performances that leave you wondering what on earth this team is meant to look like”, said The Athletic.

That is “a reflection of the club’s ownership, a regime that has taken so much out of United” in the form of over £1 billion in interest payments, refinancing costs and bond buybacks. The arrival of billionaire Jim Ratcliffe as a minority shareholder in early 2024 was meant to mark a new beginning but “his decision-making has been even worse than that of the previous Glazer-led regime, which is really saying something”.

“Sign whichever players you want, hire whichever manager” – it makes no difference, said The Observer. When the rot starts at the top, well-intentioned newcomers are doomed from the start, “entering rotten institutions addicted to chaos and dysfunction and decay, fettered by a toxic relationship to the past”.

‘Think big again’

“It is possible, though, for a big Premier League side to rebuild and return to the top,” said The Telegraph. For inspiration, United “need only look towards north London, where their old rivals Arsenal pulled themselves out of a similar, if not even more perilous, situation a few seasons ago”.

The lessons from Arsenal’s root-and-branch rebuild that culminated in them lifting the Premier League trophy in May is three-fold. First, “be brutal with underperforming, overpaid stars”. Second, “trust the power of youth”. Third, and perhaps most important, “culture is king”. Young talent can only thrive in the right environment, even if that means removing “problematic older players”.

“United’s priority should be to think big again, and invest big” in developing a squad that is up to the challenge ahead, said FourFourTwo. “Where are the fighters, the Crerands and Robsons, Keanes and Rooneys?”

Changes are required but will they be successful? The prospects are not good “because the club is rotting from the top down”, said The Athletic. The Glazers, Ratcliffe, chief executive Omar Berrada, football director Jason Wilcox – “these are the people” who are “planning for what happens next. Doesn’t bode well, does it?”

Corporate chiefs embraced President Donald Trump when he returned to the White House last year. Some wanted to avoid a crackdown, while others wanted to curry favor with the administration. Now, they are increasingly worried about consequences if Democrats take back control of Congress in November.

‘Holding Trump accountable’

Leading executives “fear a reckoning” after the midterms, said The Washington Post. Silicon Valley firms such as Meta, OpenAI and Palantir that “ingratiated themselves with Trump’s Washington” now anticipate a Democratic Congress that will scrutinize their dealings with the president. Companies tied to Donald Trump Jr. and Elon Musk are also expected to get a close look. Trump-aligned businesses have a “very rough couple years ahead,” said Democratic strategist Cooper Teboe to the outlet.

Corporate investigations could be Democrats’ “secret weapon for holding Trump accountable,” said Molly Claflin at MS NOW. For example, Chevron “gained the rights to vast oil reserves in Venezuela” after making “multimillion-dollar contributions” to presidential projects, while R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company made similar donations before the government lifted vaping restrictions. Democrats would be continuing a “long tradition” of delving into big businesses to “investigate government corruption.”

Democrats are “coming for the CEOs,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Private-sector officials “may not have liked writing checks for the inaugural or White House ballroom” but also had little choice “given how much leverage” Trump had over their businesses. Regardless, corporate America should “lawyer up.”

‘Perils of plutopopulism’

Democrats in Congress are split over “how hard to go after companies that courted the White House,” said Politico. “The corruption is everywhere,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to the outlet. Others would prefer to focus on affordability issues instead of “weaponizing the federal government,” said Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto to Politico.

CEOs are now discovering the “perils of plutopopulism,” said Chrystia Freeland at the Financial Times. Businesses embraced Trump believing he would “deliver tax cuts and deregulation.” That bet is “starting to go wrong” now that the president’s “political star is shining less brightly.”

Economists have spent much of 2026 watching to see if the artificial intelligence bubble will burst, much like the boom-and-burn cycle of dot-com pioneer companies in the late 1990s. But another possibility looms. The wild enthusiasm for AI could settle into a sensible soft landing that spares the world a hard economic crash.

‘Reassessment under way’

Wall Street continues to believe that AI will “transform markets and the economy,” said Axios. But investors are also “pulling back funding” and looking for “evidence that their investments will actually pay off.” The markets that had a “blind enthusiasm for all things AI” are now beginning to “differentiate between players, business models and financing approaches," said JPMorgan’s David Lebovitz to the outlet. That does not have to be scary. Call it a “rational exuberance phase,” said Axios.

The recent decision by Australian data center company Firmus to pull back from a planned initial public offering is “triggering the usual angst” about the AI bubble, said Patrick Commins at The Guardian. The growing skittishness by traders “doesn’t mean the whole thing is a disaster,” said NAB economist Sally Auld to the outlet. But there is a “reassessment under way” of AI’s anticipated returns.

The damage from a popped AI bubble would be “severe but not permanent,” said Ruchir Sharma at Foreign Affairs. It will likely follow the cycle of previous technological revolutions, with the rise of artificial intelligence “moving forward even as the speculative frenzy around it fades.”

‘Double whammy’

Fears remain. The “untold billions poured into AI” have driven the economy, but the “boom could quickly invert” if profits are elusive, said Futurism. The fallout could ironically result in job losses and end up “accelerating the replacement of workers with AI,” said Greg Rosalsky at NPR’s Planet Money.

One possible solution to that “double whammy” scenario is a tax on AI and robots that would make it “economical to continue employing humans” while funding the safety net, said Rosalsky. But there is a less-frightening path forward, as well. A downturn could “leave businesses with less money to invest in AI,” making them reliant on human workers.

Fifa’s controversial president Gianni Infantino looks “increasingly likely” to be re-elected unopposed for a fourth and final term, but there could be a “sensational twist”, said Dan Roan on the BBC.

Senior figures within European football want former Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger to run as a “surprise candidate”. But would Wenger, currently head of global development at the governing body, “really challenge his own boss”?

‘Break the chain’

“At first glance”, the Frenchman “looks an unlikely figure to stir a revolution from within”, said Oliver Brown in The Telegraph. He turned 77 this week so “he would not exactly represent fresh blood”, but he “could fundamentally change an ossified bureaucracy that has produced just three presidents in 52 years”.

Infantino is a divisive figure. Critics accuse him of prioritising money and political relationships over human rights, sports integrity and the welfare of players.

The role of president of world football’s governing body has been “debased” and “mired in the machinations of keeping power by whatever means necessary”. But Wenger – “a true football obsessive” – would “break the chain”. He’s “seldom come across as financially motivated” and he could “snatch Infantino’s core vote” in Africa. “So please, Arsène, in the name of sanity, declare your candidacy now.”

Any hopefuls may be planning to “keep their identity under wraps until the last minute to catch Infantino and his acolytes off guard”, said Alyson Rudd in The Times.

The “smart money” is on Wenger. He “commands global respect and was quick to distance himself” from FFE – Infantino’s deeply unpopular plan to sell-off some of the commercial rights to Fifa competitions to a private investment firm – “despite being part of the Fifa family”. He has “universal appeal” after his success in Japan and is popular in Africa having “supported the growth of the game on the continent”.

But he may “value working from within Fifa as it stands, rather than risk being sidelined” and “ending his footballing life as a loser”. There would be “something particularly galling about coming second to a character who was prepared to sell the soul of the beautiful game, is partial to private jets” and “openly fawns over” Donald Trump.

‘Intriguing prospect’

In Zurich, where Fifa is based, there’s “no indication” that Wenger, who joined Infantino and others for dinner last week, is “plotting a bid”, said Roan.

But a “large number of Fifa’s staff” want Wenger to run and they “believe he could change the organisation’s image”, so “it is an intriguing prospect”.

Wenger hasn’t commented on the speculation. Any reluctance to stand on his part “probably comes from the fact you cannot risk losing to Infantino”, said John Cross in the Daily Mirror.

The president “looked damaged beyond repair after the summer but has gone round the world on a charm offensive – and it appears to have worked, outside of Uefa of course”.

The Italian received a further boost after a “major U-turn” from the head of the Asian Football Confederation, who had previously signed a joint letter with other federations criticising Infantino over his FFE plan. Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa told the AFC Congress in Tokyo – which Infantino attended – that “we reaffirm our full commitment, of course, to supporting you as you seek a new mandate as president”.

The deadline for candidates is 18 November so all eyes in the meantime will be on Wenger.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is fighting to keep her citizenship. She is under investigation by the Trump administration, whose officials suggest the immigrant lawmaker may not have lawfully become a citizen. Critics say the White House is weaponizing its powers to intimidate one of its fiercest critics in Congress.

‘Creeping totalitarianism’

The administration aims to “ultimately deport” Omar, said The Wall Street Journal. The probe is focused on whether she or her father were truthful in their immigration and naturalization paperwork after leaving Somalia in the 1990s. There is a “process to denaturalize somebody” who has lied on their citizenship paperwork, said Border Czar Tom Homan on Fox News. “If she violated the law, then she will be held accountable."

Omar denies committing fraud. Trump would “love to eliminate one of the most effective progressive voices in Congress,” her office said in a statement to the Journal.

This is a “case of creeping totalitarianism,” said John Ganz at Unpopular Front. Trumpism originated with attacks on former President Barack Obama’s citizenship, grounded in a fundamental belief that “some Americans are not really Americans, that their political rights are illegitimate.” And the investigation of Omar is the culmination of an effort to “transform citizenship from an inviolable right into a privilege granted or withdrawn at the sovereign’s discretion.”

Omar would “probably not” be under investigation if she were not in Congress, said David Harsanyi at the Washington Examiner. But she “isn’t above the law, either.” If Omar gained her citizenship through dishonest means, then she “at the very minimum should not be serving in Congress.”

‘No reason to believe it will stop’

The investigation demonstrates how the Trump administration sees citizenship “not as a right or a responsibility but as a reward” that can be taken away, said Emily Tamkin at The Forward. Such power can be easily misused for “silencing political opposition.”

Omar is facing investigation because she has “dared to criticize the president,” said Obama on X. There is “no reason to believe it will stop with her.” The Trump administration’s “transparent efforts to intimidate someone should outrage all Americans.”

With the midterms two weeks away, there’s a good chance Republicans will lose control of the House of Representatives, according to polls. And some believe Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) will face a battle among fellow GOP members for the role of House minority leader in the new Congress.

‘Delicate dance’

With many seemingly resigned to a midterm loss, Republicans are “jockeying behind the scenes over who could lead their party in the minority,” said Annie Grayer at CNN. One of the top contenders is Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who is undergoing a “delicate dance” to position himself for the leadership role. Though Jordan has publicly supported Johnson, he may be “laying the groundwork to run for the top leadership spot if they lose the chamber.”

Some GOP members are more likely to “seek a leader who is willing to serve as a check on the Trump administration if Democrats flip the House,” said Sudiksha Kochi at The Hill. “I hear it all the time in the District. We want a check and balance. We don’t want a rubber stamp,” said one GOP lawmaker to the outlet. There will be a “potential push to support someone else as leader besides Johnson if the party suffers major losses in the midterms,” said Kochi.

‘Stay and serve’

Johnson rejects the possibility of a leadership change should the GOP majority fall. In the “unlikely scenario where we lost the majority, I would expect my colleagues would ask me to continue leading this conference, even if we have divided government,” he said to CBS News amid a push for Republican fundraising. “My intention is to stay and serve, and that’s what I have been doing, as best I can.”

Some Republicans have “insisted that Johnson has enough support in the party to continue running the conference even if they lose the majority,” said Mariana Alfaro at The Washington Post. These officials feel it would “not be Johnson but Trump who will be blamed if the party loses the House,” especially given Trump’s “unpopularity and that his policies have led to high prices.”

Go into a British bookshop and you may notice “a glaring stock gap”, said Lydia Spencer-Elliott in The Independent. “Star novelist” Sally Rooney, whose bestsellers include “Normal People” and “Conversations With Friends”, has announced that her books will no longer be sold in the UK due to her support for Palestine Action.

The Irish novelist had pledged to donate royalties from her books to the direct-action protest group, despite the fact that the UK has, controversially, proscribed it as a terrorist organisation. Rooney said last week that her publisher, Faber & Faber, had therefore decided it could no longer sell her work in the UK because doing so could “constitute a serious criminal offence”. For fans and bookshop owners, the news “hit like a gut punch”.

‘Affront to decency’

Rooney has shown courage in choosing “the thorniest path possible for this cause”, said Zoe Williams in The Guardian. Authors can “write essays and sign letters” in support of Palestinian people, musicians can shout about it on stage, but that doesn’t “entail actively breaking the terrorism laws”. It’s Rooney’s support for this specific group that’s “effectively both barred” and “banned” her work from the UK and cost her "innumerable” sales and opportunities.

For her “more excitable” home-grown fans, it’s a case of “perfidious Albion strikes again”, said Eilis O'Hanlon in the Irish Independent. Fellow Irish novelist Colm Tóibín said Britain had gone “insane”, and the whole issue is “an absolute affront to decency” and freedom of speech. But I think that framing is “ridiculous”. Even if “the fiendish Brits” wanted to prosecute one of its “most illustrious” publishers for paying one of its authors what she is owed, Rooney is an Irish citizen living in Ireland, and thus not subject to UK terror laws. Her personal freedom of speech and right to protest are not at any risk. And Faber can keep publishing and promoting her in other countries, including her native Ireland.

‘Attention-seeking self-aggrandisement’

Despite “the uproar”, this isn’t “massively risky” for either Rooney or Faber, said Camilla Long in The Times. How many of her “whopping 6 million” worldwide book sales will she forgo? Her books “remain in libraries” and in any bookshops where they were already stocked. This isn’t a “book ban”; it’s a millionaire’s “self-imposed withdrawing of one’s further sales”.

This is “attention-seeking self-aggrandisement”, said Lionel Shriver in The Telegraph. Thanks to lucrative TV adaptations of her novels, Rooney can “easily live without further British royalties” and continue to “shout her devotion to Palestinians from the rooftops” (or fund their cause via multiple legal outfits). Faber, on the other hand, was caught “between a rock and a hard place”.

I’m “no fan” of Palestine Action; some of its members have “committed a campaign of criminal damage”, said Sam Leith in The Spectator. But Rooney and Faber have pushed the “simultaneous intolerance and vagueness of the UK government’s position” on the group onto “the front tables at Waterstones”. Supporters of Palestine Action are “being bundled into paddy-wagons for wearing T-shirts”. Will a UK citizen now face arrest for saying “I support Sally Rooney” or “carrying a ‘Normal People’ tote bag”? The problem isn’t Rooney’s speech, free or otherwise; it’s Britain’s “inconsistent attempt to police the border between legitimate protest and criminal thuggery”. What a “fine mess” we’re in.

With affordability concerns threatening Republican control of Congress, President Donald Trump last week announced an agreement to increase supply by relaxing sanctions on Russian diesel fuel. But economists say lower prices are unlikely to result, and the announcement produced pushback from both Ukraine and Trump’s GOP allies. The only clear beneficiary may be Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

‘More dangerous world’

The president’s deal “has no winners,” said Keith Johnson at Foreign Policy. Trump’s announcement will not “help consumers, won’t help Kyiv and won’t mean riches for Moscow.” The global market consumes about 120 million tons of diesel monthly. The 500,000 tons offered by Russia is “too small to move prices.” And the move does nothing to address the U.S. war on Iran, which is the “real cause of the global energy crunch.”

It “makes no sense” to think easing pressures on Russia can “lower diesel prices before the midterms,” said Timothy Snyder at Project Syndicate. Moscow is already struggling with its own “domestic shortages” because of Ukraine’s attacks on Russian energy infrastructure. But the announcement has the effect of “visibly aligning” the United States with Russia. The president’s “openly pro-Russian foreign policy” is creating a “more dangerous world” of emboldened aggressors.

Trump’s move has created a rift with both “Republican allies and European leaders,” said Nick Wadhams at Bloomberg. It is a bet that “lowering fuel prices will be the best way to win more votes next month.” The gambit is “unlikely to succeed.”

Helping the Russian economy?

Trump “proffered sanctions relief for Russian diesel” while Putin “offered more war” in return, Paul Sonne said at The New York Times. The deal benefits Trump to the extent it enables his “stubborn denial that his own decision to go to war against Iran caused fuel prices to skyrocket.” And it could “pour billions of dollars into the Russian economy,” further enabling Putin’s war against Ukraine.

Putin is a “dictator reviled by most Americans,” said Axios. Polls show 81% of Trump’s voters dislike the Russian leader. That makes it “unclear” what the agreement will do for “American security, European allies or his own political fortunes.”

Democrats don’t know whether to trust the numbers or their guts. Polls suggest a blue wave is coming in the November midterms. But the party faithful are not so sure, fearful of a GOP October surprise — or maybe just a math error — that could upend their hopes.

Not a ‘sure thing’

“Welcome to the Wile E. Coyote moment,” said Daniel W. Drezner on Substack. President Donald Trump’s “historic unpopularity” is hurting GOP candidates, and “all of the signs point to a big blue wave.” Democrats and their supporters, though, are going to “keep their powder dry out of fear that Trump pulls off another comeback.”

A blue wave “isn’t a sure thing,” said The Daily Beast. The polls are depicting a “disastrous picture for Republicans,” but they could be distorted by “inaccurate sample groups, skewed data sampling and unknowable voter behavior.” Trump certainly thinks so. “My REAL polling numbers” are the “best they have ever been,” he said on Truth Social. It is unlikely, however, that an “unrecorded mass of Trump voters” will save Republican candidates in November, said The Daily Beast.

“You should believe the polls this time,” said Bill Scher at Washington Monthly. While it is true that pollsters in this summer’s Michigan’s Senate primary and Wisconsin’s gubernatorial primary “struggled to reach certain demographics,” there is still “lots of other data,” including Trump’s “abysmal job approval,” pointing to big Democratic gains in the midterms. But Democrats should try “not to be complacent” about those signs.

Polling mirage?

Pollsters “can’t keep up” with the “sharply increased demand for polling” created by a larger-than-usual number of competitive races in the midterms, said The Washington Post. This signifies “more opportunity” for Democrats and “more defense” for Republicans, said Cygnal CEO Brent Buchanan to the outlet. Such demand affects the results. Voters are “tired of being surveyed and increasingly reluctant to pick up the phone,” said the Post.

Some GOP candidates “see a polling mirage” in the results, said Axios. Even with questions about polling accuracy, though, “most pollsters believe Democrats have the edge” in the midterms.

Nearly a century after holding its last public execution, the United States government this month announced plans to broadcast the December execution of Nidal Hasan, a former army officer convicted for the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood. Not only will Hasan be killed by firing squad, said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, but the government intends to “make sure people are able to watch it, that it’s public.” Unsurprisingly, the plans to federally livestream a shooting death have prompted both massive condemnation and pockets of support from many in President Donald Trump’s MAGA coalition

‘Public and brutal, not private and medicalized’

Livestreaming Hasan’s death is “excellent,” said Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) on X. A public execution is “what this terrorist deserves.” Critics simply don’t have to watch the killing “if they don’t choose to,” said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on CBS News’ “Face The Nation with Margaret Brennan” this weekend. Executions should be “public and brutal, not private and medicalized,” said defense tech executive and newly named Pentagon consultant Palmer Luckey on X.

“You live by the sword, you die by the sword,” said retired Staff Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford, who survived Hasan’s attack, to NBC News. “He needs to go out by firing squad.” But while Lunsford “endorses livestreaming the event,” said the outlet, he also expressed concern over children seeing Hasan’s death.

‘Beyond disgusting’

The broad American public is “overwhelmingly against the Pentagon’s decision,” said Fox News. Those who spoke with the network “blasted the broadcast as ‘a shame’ and ‘just weird.’” Although Hasan “should face the death penalty,” livestreaming his killing is “beyond disgusting,” said retiring North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis on X. Any Catholic service members detailed to Hasan’s firing squad should “request to be excused from this action contrary to the teaching of the Church,” said Archbishop for the Military Services Timothy P. Broglio in a statement.

Notably, Trump himself has “privately shared misgivings” about livestreaming the execution, said Axios. He “didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic” about the broadcast, said one confidante to the outlet. “That’s why he’s calling around, doing the Trump thing, asking people what they think.”

“Acts of true heroism are rare,” said The Daily Telegraph. But the actions of those on board flydubai flight 1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv last Wednesday “surely qualify”.

‘Constant threat’

As the plane neared Israel, the co-pilot, an Omani national named Hamam al-Hammami, attacked his Indian colleague, Smit Machchhar, with an axe, kept in the cockpit for emergencies. Badly injured, Captain Machchhar somehow opened the cockpit door, allowing passengers to overpower al-Hammami, and two off-duty pilots to take control of the plane and land it in Saudi Arabia. It is a “fresh reminder” that, three years on from 7 October, “Israeli civilians continue to live under the constant threat of terrorism”.

“Israel almost experienced its own 9/11,” said Jonathan Sacerdoti in The Spectator. We now know that al-Hammami had been preparing for the attack long before he joined flydubai. He intended to fly towards Israel as though making a normal landing, then to divert at the last possible moment and crash into Ben Gurion Airport or nearby tower blocks, before Israeli fighter jets could intervene.

‘Shirking responsibility’

The attack points to a “massive security failure on several fronts”, said The Wall Street Journal. Omani officials knew of al-Hammami’s interest in radical Islamism but failed to flag their concerns; flydubai never checked his record with the Omani authorities. The attack raises the question of whether pilots should be able to lock cockpits from the inside, said Jason Burke in The Guardian – a measure introduced after 9/11 to prevent passenger hijackings. If Machchhar’s “desperate efforts” to open the door had been unsuccessful, “there is little doubt all on board would have died”.

The Israeli authorities have questions to answer, said The Jerusalem Post. They knew of the risks posed by this flight route. Pilots from states without diplomatic relations with Israel, such as Oman, are in theory prohibited from landing in Israel. Yet no official body seems to have been in charge of vetting them. With various authorities “shirking responsibility”, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has “vowed to fix the cracks”. But as the “euphoria” over the mid-air heroism dissipates, there must be “accountability”.

With polls suggesting a potentially historic showing for Democratic candidates in next month’s midterm elections, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has a message for some in his party’s most enthusiastic base: slow down. Should the Democrats take control of one, if not both, chambers of Congress next term, the party should not expend energy impeaching President Donald Trump. Instead, they should focus on a “comprehensive ethics package” that can be used for future accountability. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Emanuel’s message of temperance has not been fully embraced by a party whose base is champing at the bit for change.

Impeachment is ‘going to be a food fight’

If Democrats take the House majority in November as they’re widely expected to do, they should “pass an ethics package” rather than jumping straight into an impeachment effort — “because it’s not going anywhere,” said Emanuel on “Meet the Press” this week. An impeachment push would simply “be a food fight,” signaling a “return to the politics of fighting.”

Polling last month showed government corruption “emerged as the second-highest-rated issue voters were concerned about,” said NBC News. “On the airwaves,” ads about “tackling government corruption and banning congressional stock trading” have “been a top issue” from both parties.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has not thrown his weight behind nascent impeachment efforts, and this “appeared to suggest this summer that it would not be a top priority,” said Fox News. Despite having impeached Trump “twice during his first term,” Democrats this time around “haven’t made much of an effort to impeach the president again,” said The Hill.

‘Wised-up disciplinarian figure’

Moderate Democrats like Emanuel are “laying the groundwork” for ineffective governance by advancing “‘don’t impeach anymore & just get back to work’ messaging,” said Mark Copelovitch, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, on Bluesky. Rather than strictly running for office now, Emanuel is “using the midterms to build his base among future Democratic office-holders” ahead of a likely 2028 presidential campaign, said former Labor Secretary Robert Reich on Substack. By framing himself as a “wised-up disciplinarian figure,” Emanuel offers the “same hoary consultant-brewed panacea” he introduced “as one of the initial class of New Democrats in the early 1990s.”

One purpose of the death penalty is to offer closure — for survivors, victims and the justice system. It has not worked out that way in the case of Christa Pike. Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute Pike for a 1995 murder is raising fresh questions about the morality and viability of the practice.

‘Things can go grotesquely wrong’

Pike’s case shows the death penalty is a “moral stain on America,” said Rex Huppke at USA Today. She is just the latest U.S. prisoner to survive an execution, said the Death Penalty Information Center. Tennessee tried and failed in May to kill Tony Carruthers for his conviction on a 1996 triple murder, and Alabama and Idaho have seen similar missteps since 2022. Executions are “messy,” Huppke said, and “things can go grotesquely wrong.”

It is a “scandal” that Pike’s execution was botched, said Charles C.W. Cooke at National Review. But she “should be dead” for her part in the grisly murder of Colleen Slemmer. The execution’s failure is the fault of those who have tried to “medicalize” state-sanctioned killing through the lethal injection process. Most death penalty advocates would “happily replace lethal injections with a firing squad or a gallows.”

Tennessee has proven itself “embarrassingly bad” at the death penalty, said Betsy Phillips at the Nashville Scene. The failed executions are “not justice” or “even revenge.” They are just “stupid and cruel, and there’s no honor in that.”

‘Watershed moment’?

Botched executions “make headlines,” but the latest will probably not be a “watershed moment” for the death penalty, said Austin Sarat at The Boston Globe. Tennessee leaders are already calling to restart executions, “if not by lethal injection then by other means.”

President Donald Trump this week “approved the execution by firing squad” of Nidal Hasan for a 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, said NPR. Polls, however, show that support for the death penalty has declined in recent decades. Capital punishment was already “dying its own slow death” before the Pike case, Corinna Lain of the University of Richmond School of Law said to the outlet.

The spirit of the late, disgraced President Richard Nixon is tanned, rested and ready for a four-fingered comeback. Nixonmaxxing conservatives are working to rehabilitate the 37th president’s fallen reputation — an effort that also attempts to shape narratives about President Donald Trump.

‘Nixon is back’

Republicans see Nixon as a “historical analog” for Trump, said The Wall Street Journal. If Democrats consider both men to be uniquely villainous, conservatives have another view. “The same groups of people, the same institutions” tried to take down both presidents, said Vice President JD Vance this summer at the Nixon Presidential Library, per the outlet. The Justice Department is now “reviewing” whether the Watergate special prosecutor “committed misconduct” in the case, said the Journal.

“Nixon is back,” said Nathan Pinkoski at the Washington Examiner. Boomers view the former president as the “embodiment of perfidy and villainy.” Current in-power Republicans instead view him as a symbol of a “conservative counterculture” who has been embraced by a “younger, rebellious American Right.” The new surge in Nixonphilia is “perfectly timed to tap into a broader collapse of trust” in institutions like the media and legal system.

The Justice Department’s attempt to rewrite history is “extremely dangerous,” said Nick Akerman, a former Watergate prosecutor, at MS NOW. The truth is that Nixon “tried to use the deep state to cover up his crimes.” Obscuring that story is just “another flagrant effort by the Trump administration to undermine our established rule of law.”

No big deal?

The right’s new embrace of Nixon “serves some obvious purposes,” Jonah Goldberg said at The Dispatch. Watergate ended his presidency, signaling “there’s a limit to what Trump can get away with.” But it is an “open question” if any of Trump’s scandals can be a problem if Watergate is retroactively declared to be “no big deal.”

“Nixonmaxxing” was “inevitable,” Heather Digby Parton said at Salon. One way the increasingly unpopular Trump and his GOP allies can fend off scandal is to argue the “deep state has been out to get Republicans ever since Nixon.” It might be the only way to contain a “massive revolt” against Trumpism.

The Green Party conference vote to treat Zionism “as any other form of racism” has caused turmoil within the party, and been roundly condemned as an attack on the Jewish community in Britain.

Jubilant chants of “Free Palestine” could be heard outside the Brighton conference hall after the vote, which the UK’s Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, has called “poisonous antisemitism” that is “a threat to British Jews and to Britain”. There is now a “genuine fear” among some Jewish members of the party, said The Guardian.

‘Taken over by zealots’

“This radical turn in official Green Party policy underscores the grim transformation that has taken place since Zack Polanski became its leader,” said The Times’ editorial board. It is veering “unnervingly close to open hostility towards the people of Israel and to Jewish interests”.

Zionism is the simple belief “in a Jewish national home in some portion of historic Palestine”, said Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian. A large majority of British Jews identify as Zionist, according to the Institute for Jewish Policy Research. Using the new logic of the Greens, who don’t admit members of self-described racist organisations, “they could not tolerate members” of Zionist organisations, which would include “almost every synagogue, or synagogue movement, in Britain and indeed the world”. This vote betrays a “deep ignorance of what the word Zionism means” and “a wilful misunderstanding of Jews and Judaism”.

“To blame all Israelis – all Zionists, indeed – for atrocities against Palestinians and to seek to punish them as a group is unjust,” said The Economist’s editorial board. The Greens’ new policy goes so far as to endorse “the destruction of Israel”, to be replaced by a Palestinian state “possibly run by the murderers of Hamas”. This is “a damning moment for a political party with pretensions to power”. Polanski “needs to grasp that his movement has been taken over by zealots” and lead an effort to take the party back.

‘Strategic mistake’

A “sizeable group” within the party see the vote – which passed by 1,022 votes to 813 – as a “strategic mistake” that will both “alienate potential voters” and “be the only thing the party is asked about” for months to come, said Meghan Kenyon in The New Statesman.

Deputy leader Mothin Ali is known to have voted for Sunday’s motion but four of the party’s five MPs – Ellie Chowns, Sian Berry, and former leaders Adrian Ramsay and Carla Denyer – publicly rejected it. MP Hannah Spencer did not reveal how she voted but posted on Instagram that she was “proud to be part of a party committed to Jewish rights, and Palestinian rights”. Former MP and party leader Caroline Lucas spoke against the motion, condemning it as “divisive” and reliant on an “over-simplification” of complex issues.

Two attempts to water down the motion, both backed by Polanski, failed. Polanski, who is Jewish, has since been banned from Israel, and the country’s foreign ministry have accused the Greens of legitimising “the elimination” of Israel “through armed struggle”.

Criticism of the Israeli government, demands for an end to war and occupation, and calls for Palestinian freedom “are all legitimate”, said David Davidi-Brown of the New Israel Fund UK, in Prospect. But how can a party that defines Zionism as racism “protect members who attend UK synagogues”? Just as “those who care about Israel must stop treating every anti-Zionist as an enemy”, so “those who oppose Zionism must stop treating every Zionist as a racist”.

What was the key factor that propelled Donald Trump back into the White House for a second term? If you’d asked him that a couple of years ago, said Virginia Heffernan in The New Republic, his answer would almost certainly have been the cost of living.

“The beautiful but simple word ‘groceries’,” he once rhapsodised. “I won on that word.” Well, we now know the word on which he’ll likely lose: diesel.

Supply disruptions caused by the Iran and Ukraine wars have had a particularly severe impact on diesel prices: they hit a record high of $6.52 a gallon in the US last week, up from an average of $3.63 at the start of 2025. The price hikes “aim a missile squarely at the voters Trump can least afford to alienate”, such as pickup truck owners, lorry drivers, and farmers in states such as Iowa. By upsetting the “diesel class, Trump may have bitten the final hand that feeds him”.

‘Cheap appeal’

To fix this problem, Trump is toying with the idea of banning US diesel exports, said National Review. The policy has “cheap appeal” ahead of the midterm elections on 3 November, but it would only bring down prices for a short while, and only in some areas. While America makes more diesel than it consumes, pipeline constraints mean that most of it remains relatively close to refining hubs on the Gulf Coast.

Other areas of the US, such the Northeast and the West Coast, largely rely on diesel imports, so would end up paying even higher prices if the US further reduced global supplies of the fuel. What’s more, if Gulf Coast refineries were unable to export diesel, they’d soon run out of storage space for it and have to slash their output. Result? Not just less diesel, but also a reduced volume of other refined products such as petrol and jet fuel.

‘Fake fix’

A diesel export ban wouldn’t help America, agreed Catherine Rampell on The Bulwark. And it would cause major problems for countries that rely on these exports, such as Mexico, the UK and the Netherlands, which trade with the US in other oil-based products, and could well decide to retaliate in some form.

Still, this is the Trump White House we’re talking about – a team of people with “zero policy expertise” and “zero patience”, who care “only about what talking points will get them through the next news cycle, tomorrow’s consequences be damned”. The worse the opinion polls get ahead of the midterms, the more tempted Trump will be to reach for this “fake fix”.

The age of artificial intelligence has ended. Now dawns the age of “super intelligence.” So says President Donald Trump, who this week signed an executive order mandating that the federal government abandon the term “artificial intelligence” for a more maximal adjective. (Other options floated across Trump’s social media included “supreme” and “superior.”) But not everyone supports the shifting labels. As digital intellect continues to develop at breakneck speed, why does what we call it matter?

Capabilities ‘far exceed’ outdated name

The terminology change is Trump’s “latest rebranding move,” said the BBC. It follows the White House’s effort to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario in Trump’s second term. The “use of the word ‘artificial’ makes intelligence fake,” said Trump in his address to the United Nations last month. “It’s not fake. It’s actually amazing.”

The capacities of what we call AI “far exceed what was envisioned” when the term “first came into use,” said the White House in Trump’s executive order explaining the change. For those “working in the AI industry,” the term super intelligence means “something slightly different” than casual usage implies, said USA Today. In that context, it describes digital intelligences “smarter and more capable than humans across every imaginable skillset.”

Accordingly, this word change might “suit the major U.S. AI players” eager to “play up their advanced models,” said DW. Developers have “every interest in calling it super, hyper, superior and whatnot intelligence,” said Pedro Domingos, a computer science professor at the University of Washington, to the outlet. But this is ultimately “just marketing.”

‘Forced rebrand’

It is doubtful that using super intelligence as a general term publicly “will stick,” said Simon Coghlan, a digital ethics lecturer at the University of Melbourne, to the BBC. The term “exaggerates the current capacities of AI.” Super intelligence as a descriptor “refers to future AI systems,” said Defense One, and “contrasts” with the “weaker forms of AI that exist today.”

Trump is nevertheless “attempting a forced rebrand for an industry he has tightly embraced,” said CNBC. Meanwhile, the public grows “increasingly wary about the rapidly advancing tech.”

As details continue to emerge about the fraternity members who allegedly drugged and gang raped a student at Cornell University in 2024, many hope it could be a reckoning for colleges across the country. The ongoing civil lawsuit may also bring about systemic changes, even as some accuse Cornell of treating the seven defendants too lightly.

‘Safety’ is education’s ‘precondition’

The Cornell chapter of the Chi Phi fraternity house, where the alleged rape took place, has been barred from the school. But a “university’s obligation to the physical safety of its students is not one commitment among several, to be weighed against reputation or litigation exposure,” said the editorial board of The Cornell Daily Sun, Cornell’s student newspaper. Safety on campus is “not adjacent to the educational mission — safety is, in fact, its precondition.” After the allegations emerged, why were “these men allowed to ‘pursue their education in a secure and nourishing environment?’” said the Daily Sun, citing the university’s student conduct code.

The lawsuit also alleges that Cornell offered the accused an “opportunity to mitigate their punishment by writing an essay,” said Rita Omokha at Elle, which prompted widespread backlash. “We need to sit with that for a second because what does an essay actually repair, remedy or restore?” People “have become so accustomed to institutions failing women that we have started to process these failures the way we process bad weather.” But treating “sexual assault as an academic matter — complete with its charts and facts and figures — offers no respite to the victims who have undergone physical and mental abuse,” said The Cornell Daily Sun.

‘Full and thorough criminal investigation’

The case may prompt “universities to reconsider how they measure and communicate campus safety,” said Jeannine Chiang at The Nation. Rape is “not a personal or campus issue,” and “people need to realize this happens at their alma mater even if it’s not Cornell, and that it requires systemic change,” Ray Epstein, an organizer and sexual assault prevention advocate, told the outlet.

Barring the chapter of the frat is “hardly accountability,” said Maggie Young at The Vanderbilt Hustler, Vanderbilt University’s student newspaper. While the ongoing case is currently a civil matter, the “seven men accused in Jane Doe’s case should face a full and thorough criminal investigation, and if the evidence supports criminal charges, they should be charged and prosecuted accordingly.”

It is a bad year for U.S. farmers. President Donald Trump’s trade wars were already taking a toll, but the Iran war compounded problems by raising fuel and fertilizer costs. Rural regions reliably vote Republican, but Democrats hope for a midterm backlash.

‘Farmers voted for this’

The farm crisis that “threatens to wreck the agricultural heart” of Iowa also threatens to “hurt the fortunes” of Hawkeye State GOP candidates, said Axios. Trump’s policies have “caused such severe financial problems” for corn growers that a state Trump won by 13 points in 2024 now has toss-up races for governor and U.S. Senate. Iowa Republicans “should brace for losing everything," said a GOP consultant to the outlet.

“Farmers voted for this,” Kevin D. Williamson said at The Dispatch. U.S. farmers “rely on imports” for “fertilizer, chemicals, machinery” but they also “keep voting roughly two-to-one” for Trump and his trade wars. The pressing issue: “How much pain it is going to take” for them to change course.

Trump has gone to “surprising” lengths to “infuriate his backers,” Matt K. Lewis said at The Washington Sun. Farmers are an “integral part of his coalition.” His tariffs and stalemated war have created the possibility that voters in solidly red “heartland” states such as Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas “will vote blue this year.” It is “difficult to explain” why the president has gone this route.

‘Formula for revolt’

Democrats are trying to “make a play” for the farm vote, said MS NOW. Trump won 69% of rural voters during his last campaign. Now, 57% of those same voters “disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy.”

“The Midwest is a trouble spot” for Republicans in the midterms because of Trump’s tariffs, Rich Lowry said at the National Review. Agricultural exports to China “fell by 66%,” as Beijing “cut its purchases of U.S. farm products in retaliation” for the president’s trade war. Add war-driven increases in fuel and fertilizer prices, and “it’s a formula for a revolt.”

The midterm elections are looming as a milestone in the Iran war. President Donald Trump declined a ceasefire proposal from Tehran last week, reportedly because he expects to restart U.S. attacks after the vote. And Iran’s leaders may be betting that election pressure can force the White House to make concessions.

‘Midterm election problem’

The president expects to start a new round of bombing “after the November midterms,” said The Wall Street Journal. Trump on Friday rejected a proposed ceasefire that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for lifting the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports.

Iranian leaders, however, say they want to make a deal “before Americans head to the polls this November,” said NBC News. “We don’t want it to get to the midterm elections,” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said to reporters at last week’s United Nations assembly, per NBC.

It is “highly unusual” for U.S. elections to “affect a war,” David Shribman said at The Globe and Mail. The “only precedent” for electoral considerations influencing war strategy so directly came in 1968, when President Lyndon B. Johnson halted bombing in North Vietnam “to help his vice-president, Hubert Humphrey,” in the presidential election. Humphrey lost.

Trump has a “midterm election problem” with the war, said Al Jazeera. Voters who were “promised easy victory” appear poised to punish Republicans in November, which affects strategic considerations. Iran “faces no such countdown,” given that it is “ruled by an unelected Supreme Leader.”

‘Potentially endless’ war

If the elections are affecting war strategy, the war is also affecting elections. U.S. voters are “angry” at the president and his party, Stephen Collinson said at CNN. Just 26% of voters “approve of his handling of the war.” Trump’s “odd” strategy is to give them the “opposite of what they want,” as he refuses to “listen to their fears.”

This is “hardly a recipe for success” in elections, said Collinson. A “potentially endless” war against Iran might be a mistake that gets the GOP’s most devoted voters to “finally ditch Trump,” David Wallace-Wells said at The New York Times.

Manchester City face a large fine, a points deduction, a transfer ban, the stripping of titles and trophies and even legal action from other football clubs, after reportedly being found guilty of 114 out of 115 charges of breaching the Premier League’s financial rules.

With the verdict – let alone the punishment – still to be officially confirmed, “the chaos and uncertainty is only going to increase” as “City fans, and the rest of football” speculate about how harsh the penalties might be, said Dale Johnson, the BBC’s football issues correspondent.

‘Rewriting’ football history

Man City have reportedly lodged an appeal but, should that fail, there will be a sanction hearing at which “everything will be on the table” – “even demotion” from the Premier League, said the BBC’s Johnson.

The betting markets are already anticipating “just how heavily the Premier League could come down on the club”, wrote Lawrence Ostlere in The Independent. Despite their current position at top of the league, Man City were, on Saturday, sixth favourites to be relegated to the Championship, “with odds shortening by the minute”.

“There will be questions now” over the future of star players like Erling Haaland and Enzo Fernandez, but also “the people who run the football club”. Majority owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s Abu Dhabi United Group was “directly implicated in the alleged accountancy gymnastics”. Under the new Independent Football Regulator’s “honesty, integrity and financial soundness” rules for owners and directors, Man City’s “entire ownership is at risk” if the Premier League’s charges are upheld.

“If the full weight of football law were to be thrown at them”, a “hefty slice of football history would need rewriting”, said Tim Spiers on The Athletic. Man City won nine domestic trophies between 2009 and 2018 – the years the charges span. If these titles were rescinded, former Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and former Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers would become “Premier League title-winning managers”. That would be “very surreal”.

The idea of Man City having to “hand back silverware” may feel “far-fetched” but there is a “high-profile precedent”: the 2006 Calciopoli scandal in Italy, when one of Juventus’ titles was retrospectively given to Inter. There have also been “numerous cases” of international athletics medals being re-distributed after rule-breaking doping cases came to light.

‘Forever tainted’

“It’s hard not to feel some sympathy for Man City supporters,” said The Guardian’s editorial board. It seems likely that “the greatest period in their club’s history” will now be “forever tainted”. Some of the team’s football “during the Abu Dhabi era” has been “sublime, overseen by an inspired coach”, former manager Pep Guardiola. This sour ending is “a reminder that the volume of money now washing about at the top of the game has been bad for its sporting soul”.

It can’t take anything away “from the remarkable football journey we have been on”, said Man City fan and founder of City Xtra, Freddie Pye, in The Telegraph. My club has set new standards in “footballing brilliance”, led by “some of the most talented players ever seen”. That’s what we City fans “will forever cherish”, whatever sanctions are imposed or “a litany of critics argue”.

If the findings are upheld, this “will be about much more than Man City”, said Karren Brady, former vice-chair of West Ham United, in The Sun. It will become about how capable the Premier League is at “standing up to” a big club with a huge legal team, and applying its rules and punishments “fairly”. This legal battle has taken over two years already. “Man City may be the defendant” but “the credibility of the Premier League is in the dock, too”.

What surprised me, watching the documentary, “wasn’t the massive scale of the killing, or even the coldness of it, but the proficiency”, said Mahmoud Mushtaha in +972 Magazine (Tel Aviv). The 24 Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers interviewed for “NAZA”, a new film, coolly described destroying people’s lives as if they were discussing “a routine errand”; one likened it to a “video game”.

Their testimonies form the basis of the documentary, whose title comes from an Israeli military acronym for “collateral damage”; it is a term used to indicate how many civilians are likely to die in each air strike. The film shows that, guided by AI and automated surveillance, thousands of Palestinian civilians were knowingly killed during the war in Gaza.

‘Factory-scale’ killing

The film received a record 25-minute standing ovation at the recent Venice Film Festival, where it won a jury prize. And in Israel, it has whipped up a storm of outrage, said Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times. Miki Zohar, the culture minister, accused its directors, Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham, of “treason” and called for them to be stripped of their citizenship, a demand endorsed by PM Benjamin Netanyahu.

“After seeing it, I can understand why Israel finds it so threatening.” It describes “factory-scale”, AI-enabled targeting. Interviewees claim that “20 Naza” – 20 civilians killed for one Hamas member – is the basic benchmark. But to kill one Hamas fighter, one source claims, 500 civilian deaths were approved. (The Israel Defense Forces denies this.) The film shows how indifference to civilian death shades “into deliberate mass killing”.

The allegations warrant serious scrutiny, said Ariel Oseran on i24News (Tel Aviv). But the very fact that the IDF calculates “Naza” figures shows that it assessed, and tried to minimise, civilian fatalities while fighting the war in Gaza. Besides, some of the film’s claims seem very dubious. According to Hamas’ own figures, the largest single strike during the conflict killed 132 people – far below the 500-death figure claimed in the film.

Reality under attack

We need to examine “NAZA” carefully, said The Jerusalem Post. The interviewees speak anonymously; we don’t know their rank or their motivation for speaking out. Their testimony cannot be a “final judgement on Israeli conduct”. And “if ‘NAZA’’s case is flawed, the flaws should be demonstrated in public”. But attacking the filmmakers does not help. “It weakens Israel’s argument by replacing a factual dispute with a loyalty test.”

In Israel, the debate is being played out “purely on the basis of emotion”, said Eli W. Kowaz in Haaretz (Tel Aviv). No ministers have even watched the film, as it is yet to be released here. Nor have the public; yet there have been angry protests outside one of the filmmakers’ parents’ homes. It shows “how detached Israelis are from the global conversation about the Gaza war”.

While the world outside has seen reams of coverage of the war – and seems to have largely forgotten that it started with Hamas’ massacre of some 1,200 people – Israel’s media has mostly averted its eyes from the suffering in Gaza. Consequently, to many Israelis, the film feels like an attack on their country, and “an attack on their reality”.

President Donald Trump has dominated the GOP for a decade. But that hold may be slipping, as Republicans prepare for an anticipated “blue wave” in the midterm elections driven by his unpopularity. Conservative candidates are starting to break with Trump, and the right’s pundits are rooting them on.

‘Trumpism is exhausted’

Trump has “become a real liability” for GOP candidates, said The Boston Globe. Senate candidates Ashley Hinson of Iowa and Mike Rogers of Michigan called for an end to the war with Iran, as did incumbent Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio. (Husted voted Thursday against a measure to withdraw troops, however.) The break “isn’t about just one issue,” either. Rep. Maria Salazar (R-Fla.) last week criticized the president’s immigration policy, while Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) called for an investigation into the Russian oligarch who paid for Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding reception. There may be nothing “stopping a full-on revolt” against Trump’s brand.

MAGA acolytes could once argue that Trump’s agenda is “what Americans voted for in 2024,” Jim Geraghty said at The Washington Post. But polls now suggest that the electorate is “sick and tired of this version of Trump” and that “Trumpism is exhausted.” The mood was especially apparent in Vice President JD Vance’s recent plea to voters to “give us another chance.” That is not a “particularly inspiring rallying cry,” Geraghty said. Republicans have to decide if they still want to be the party of tariffs, enmity toward Canada and mass deportations to remove every “agricultural worker, hotel maid and restaurant busboy.” Vance, if he wants to save his own ambitions, will need to lead the way. “The clock is ticking.”

The GOP under Trump has “blown one of the great opportunities in political history,” Gerard Baker said at The Wall Street Journal. Trump’s election in 2024 was a “real chance to establish a new governing order” favorable to conservatives, and the president could have succeeded by controlling the border, reining in prices and keeping the U.S. out of “costly, ineffective” foreign wars. Trump instead has “widened the deficit,” levied tariffs and set off on a “reckless military adventure” that is damaging the U.S. economy. All due to “hubris, vanity, recklessness” and the GOP’s “abdication of accountability.”

‘Wide open’ GOP future

Polling shows that Trump is “slipping significantly with his own party,” pollster G. Elliott Morris said at Strength in Numbers. His approval rating with Republican and GOP-leaning independent voters remains high at 71%. But that is still an “11-point drop and the lowest we have recorded.” Those GOP defections have helped drive the president’s overall voter approval ratings to new lows.

This could be the beginning of a longer process for the Republican Party. The GOP candidates breaking with one or two Trump policies today “might be repudiating parts of his legacy tomorrow,” Andrew Prokop said at Vox. If Republicans truly start to believe that Trump is a “failure,” then a full-on reassessment could occur. The party’s future “will be wide open.”

“The new business-casual aesthetic has permeated not just politics (where relatability is more important now than gravitas) but all modern professions,” said Joseph Bullmore in The Sunday Times. And the tie, “which has declined steadily in health and relevance over the past decade or more”, appears to be the “victim of changing formalities”.

Feigning maturity

“The tie used to be what the boss wore; the symbol of power”, said Bullmore, but now it’s “almost solely” a gesture of subservience or service: “the graduate at the job interview, feigning at maturity; the doting waiter at the Mayfair members’ club”. Meanwhile, a photo taken at the 2022 G7 summit showed the “collected leaders of the world” with “their collars gaping louchely open, like a parade of ushers come 10pm at a Surrey wedding”.

Sales of ties have decreased by 7.5% year-on-year over the past five years, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity. However, the picture is less bleak than it may appear: second-hand clothing platform Depop reported a 42% rise in searches for ties in the six months to February.

“I don’t think ties are completely dead, they’re just having a down moment,” Guy Hills, a fashion photographer and owner of London clothing shop Dashing Tweed, told The Guardian. For a younger generation “more interested in sustainability and proper clothing”, he said, the tie is ripe for a comeback.

Sign of rebellion

Indeed, successive obituaries for the necktie have proved “premature”, said The Art of Manliness: the necktie has “kept on beating the odds”.

A previous generation saw the tie as an “office relic” and traded it in for the freedom of “open collars and elevated loungewear”, but for younger people it has become “a sign of rebellion”, wrote Shane C. Kurup on Country & Town House.

Inspired by the experimental styles of celebrity aficionados like Harry Styles, ties with “regimental stripes, natty foulards and 80s abstract-print silks” are “being worn excessively long, a touch short, layered up, undone, tucked in or backwards”. Dior, Hermès, and Saint Laurent all featured neckties in their Spring 2026 collections.

Menswear “tends to move in cycles” and after “periods of looseness, where comfort becomes the dominant language of getting dressed”, there’s “a pull back toward structure”, wrote Ryan Fidell on the Vintage Tie Shop. After a decade that “leaned hard into casual”, the tie is “interesting again”.

“Strictly Come Dancing” returned on Saturday, bringing “plenty of promising twinkle” and “some inevitable nerves”, said Liz Edwards in The Sunday Times.

In the launch show, celebrity contestants including Dani Dyer and Sarah Storey were partnered up with their professional dancers in a “sequinned spectacle” ahead of the first live performances next week.

This year, the seasonal stalwart has undergone a “‘Doctor Who’-like regeneration”. The accomplished presenting duo of Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman departed after the last series, and have been replaced with seasoned TV host Emma Willis, former “Strictly” dancer Johannes Radebe and comedian Josh Widdicombe. After their debut show, the judges’ scores are in.

‘Played a blinder’

“There’s a lot riding on this new series”, the country’s final link “to a time when joy, sparkle and diversity brought the nation together”, said Emine Saner in The Guardian.

The new trio have nailed a “can’t-quite-believe-we-got-the-gig humility combined with superfan credentials, which is absolutely the right note”. Willis is a “class act” with bags of experience, Widdicombe is at his “best when he’s given the space to gently rib the contestants”, and Radebe’s “air of gentle benevolence” is “genuinely fresh”. “Maybe I just really want it to work”, but overall “the signs are good”.

“‘Strictly’ has played a blinder,” said Sarah Carson in The i Paper. There were fears the departure of Daly and Winkleman from the show “spelled its demise”, but “all it took was one dance” to put us at ease: a “sublimely thrilling, playful opener loaded with details for superfans”. There was much speculation about the new hosts, but frankly, “Pingu could have been presenting and it would still be the slickest programme on television”.

With Willis, we’re in “safe hands”, and Radebe’s experience in the studio makes him look “at home”, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. But “schoolboy” Widdicombe “looks out of place alongside this glam duo”, turning it into an “awkward throuple”.

The “fluid” set-up, where the new hosts moved between the dancefloor and what was previously the “Clauditorium”, looked like “musical chairs”, said Frances Taylor in Radio Times. Overall, the trio “weren’t ah-may-zing… but they also weren’t a dis-ah-ster” either. The real test will be next week, when the show is live and there “really will be nowhere to hide”.

‘Worst’ celeb line-up yet

Other revamps are working well, said Edwards in The Sunday Times. There are five new professional dancers and a new way of announcing “celeb-pro” pairings, which gives proceedings a “hint of jeopardy”. Instead of pre-recorded announcements, and pairs walking down the stairs arm in arm, the partners were revealed “via a sort of pass-the-parcel dance routine, or spangly spin the bottle”. It was “chaotic, but it worked”.

Still, there are clouds surrounding the show, including some questioning whether it had become too repetitive and “lost its lustre for celebrity contestants”. Viewing figures have slumped, but even the current audience of around 7.8 million per episode is something that rival programmes would “give their eye teeth for”.

In recent years, the regularity of trying to figure out “who on earth the celebrities are” on “Strictly” is becoming as “steady as a rotating glitterball”, said Taylor in Radio Times. Without a doubt, the “calibre of star signings seems to dip every year” – “if you’ve heard of more than, say, five of the names taking part, give yourself a pat on the back”. Sadly, this line-up “really is the worst yet”.

The show has many flaws: the “D-listers, the judging, the pretence that half of these people haven’t had years of dance experience”, said Singh in The Telegraph. Yet every year millions flock to it and, ratings permitting, we are again set to fall in love with “contestants we hadn’t heard of a month before”.

“The Iran war is metastasising,” said Adrian Blomfield in The Telegraph. Having evolved into a struggle for control of the Strait of Hormuz, the conflict is now threatening another key oil-shipping route.

One of the reasons that global oil prices haven’t risen higher in recent months is that Saudi Arabia has still been able to export large amounts of Gulf oil via the Red Sea instead. But this lifeline is now in peril.

Last week, Houthi rebels in Yemen launched a lightning offensive against Yemeni government forces, seizing control of the country’s entire Red Sea coast, including the towns and islands around the strategic Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

On Friday, another militia group aligned with Iran – this one based in Iraq – launched drone attacks on Saudi Arabia’s vital East-West oil pipeline to the coast, forcing its closure. The combined assault pushed oil prices above $110 a barrel.

Saudi Arabia’s ‘nightmare’

Until the middle of last week, the Houthi forces had appeared to be on the back foot, said Mark Urban in The Sunday Times. But they achieved a sudden breakthrough against divided government factions, reportedly with the help of an AI-generated spoof message that purported to be from a Yemeni government commander and ordered a general troop withdrawal.

It has produced a “nightmare scenario” for Saudi Arabia, which faces a threat to its vital national interests but also knows from “bitter experience” how hard it is to defeat the Houthis in Yemen, having tried and failed to do so for over a decade. Turkey and Pakistan, with whom Riyadh signed a much-vaunted defence pact last month, aren’t rushing to help the Saudis out.

‘Global solution’

Nor is the White House, which already has enough on its plate with Iran and “is increasingly aware of the limits of what it can achieve through military force”, said Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times. Yet the US administration is also in a bind. Until the Houthis’ intervention, the oil situation had appeared just about manageable, thanks to Red Sea exports and the US shepherding vessels through Hormuz; oil shipments there are now at roughly a third of pre-war levels. Enough oil was reaching the global market to keep prices safely below the $100 a barrel level.

But supplies of Gulf energy to the West are now looking much more precarious. This is a global crisis requiring a “global solution”, said The Times. President Trump needs to work with China and other consumers of Middle Eastern oil to help stabilise the situation in Yemen and remove the Houthis’ threat to these crucial sea lanes. “Otherwise, the Bab al-Mandeb will continue to live up to its name: the Gate of Tears.”

The Democrats made a very wise decision this spring, said Lauren Egan on The Bulwark. They were considering whether to host their own midterm convention to steal attention from the one staged by the Republicans in Dallas.

In the end, they opted not to, because they were short on cash and thought it might be “strategically smart to cede the stage to Donald Trump in hopes that he would dig his own political grave”. Boy, did that pay off.

Trump, who has already alienated voters this summer by talking about how great data centres are and how he loves inflation, was on unhinged form in the two-day conference. He boasted that America “controls the Trump Strait”; he demanded that the audience join him in a pledge (“I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States...”); he even promised every American a $5,000 bounty if his party wins the midterm elections.

Democrat insiders have long joked that Trump is trying to lose November’s midterms, but some are now seriously wondering whether he has lost his grip on reality.

An ‘incredibly risky’ bet

Republican candidates contesting swing seats in November certainly regard him as a liability, said Ayman Mohyeldin on MS Now. Many of them stayed well away from Dallas, wary of association with a president whose approval rating is down to below 35%. The Republican Party has nevertheless decided that, despite everything, it’s worth making Trump the face of the midterms, because of his unrivalled ability to drive Republican voters to the polls.

It’s an “incredibly risky” bet, said Kimberley A. Strassel in The Wall Street Journal. The Maga base is already “fired up”. It’s among the larger category of traditional Republicans that the GOP has a turnout problem. They need to inspire these people to vote by offering a coherent agenda.

There’s little evidence of that, said The Washington Post. Trump’s wild proposal to pay $5,000 to every adult citizen if the GOP retains control of Congress in November beggared belief. It’s a “desperate gimmick” that betrays a total lack of seriousness about America’s fiscal situation. It would cost more than $1.2 trillion, in a country already saddled with $40 trillion in debt.

The Democrats are in no position to accuse Trump of trying to “trade votes for cash”, said Charles C.W. Cooke in National Review. It’s what they do in every election, albeit in more disguised ways. But this bribe is still a terrible idea, not least because it would stoke inflation. Trump says he’s defending America from the socialists, but if his populism means throwing money at voters, “what need is there of socialism at all”?

Another Trump ‘con’

Trump’s cheques will never arrive, said Steve Benen on MS Now. Congress wouldn’t approve the move, the courts would object, and the money’s not there in any case. It’s just another Trump “con”. He pulled the same trick before the 2018 midterms, when he claimed that he and Congress were preparing a new, “very major” tax cut that would exclusively benefit the middle class. Even White House officials were “mystified” by this declaration, which had no basis in reality.

It’s bad enough that Trump spouts nonsense, said Eric Boehm in Reason Magazine. Worse was the sight of his VP, J.D. Vance, defending the bribe plan and insisting it could be funded through tariffs. Vance is supposed to be the heir apparent to Trump – “the guy with the political and policy chops” to redefine this populist movement for the next generation. Yet he has no problem with the concept of bribing Americans with their own money? “Trumpism is out of ideas, and soon it is likely to be out of power – no matter what ridiculous promises the president makes along the way.”

Over a year after courting controversy with an American Eagle ad, actor Sydney Sweeney is facing another firestorm for a racy campaign in which she appears in various states of undress. Posing for the sports trading app Novig, Sweeney has stirred a debate regarding oversexualization in the world of advertising.

A ‘kick in the face’

Despite not wanting to “give this any more attention,” Australian Olympic swimmer Ariarne Titmus posted on Instagram that she could not “keep” her “mouth shut” upon seeing the ad, per the Sydney Morning Herald. Sweeney’s ad is not only a “kick in the face to every woman who has dedicated her life to perfecting her craft” but also to every woman who enjoys sports for what it really is: “teamwork, friendship, dedication, excellence, unity,” Titmus wrote. How do we live in a world where “monetizing a woman’s body and sexualizing women’s sport is still a thing?”

The criticism isn’t about “being jealous or insecure,” it is about this already being a “male-dominated field” where women are “constantly having to prove why we belong,” Marissa Womack, the manager of game day promotions and programming for the minor league baseball team the Harrisburg Senators, said in a TikTok video, per The Hollywood Reporter. The backlash against Sweeney is coming in defense of “having passions and joy working in this industry” since when the “only representation is sexualization,” you see “less and less young women wanting to pursue this!”

The controversy is about “more than one advertisement,” Vivienne Lewis, a clinical psychologist, said at The Conversation. It “raises a bigger issue” about the “attention we give to what women look like” rather than “who they are and what they can do.” Body image includes “our thoughts, feelings and attitudes toward our bodies” and how much “importance we place on appearance when valuing ourselves.” Sports provide a “wonderful opportunity to shift that focus.” This is why the “discussion goes beyond Sweeney” or elite athletes. It isn’t about “criticizing Sweeney’s body or telling women what they should wear.” The more useful question is “why we give appearance so much importance in the first place.”

‘Hardly an unusual strategy’

Not to be a “crazed optimist,” said Marina Hyde at The Guardian, but the great thing about where women’s sport is today is that it “feels a whole lot bigger and stronger and more compelling” than whether Sweeney “did or didn’t get her tits out for a gambling ad.” It would have been “cooler for women’s sport” to simply “not even mention the naked gambling ad at all.” If it felt it had to, maybe “focus on the gambling bit rather than the woman advertising it.” Instinct says “gambling wrecks a lot more lives than Sydney Sweeney.”

We all know “exactly what Sydney Sweeney was doing,” advertising copywriter Paul Burke said at The Spectator. She was “selling a sports betting app.” She did not “pretend that she was an elite athlete.” Neither did she “decry the great talent, strength and sacrifice involved in becoming one.” Athletes “weren’t even mentioned.”

Novig’s decision to cast Sydney Sweeney was a “savvy one,” Burke said. Her “sultry and provocative performance,” building on last year’s “denim-based outrage,” was bound to “appeal to the people most likely to download this app.” This is “hardly an unusual strategy.” To “rage against beautiful people in adverts” is as pointless as “raging against athletic people in the 400 meter hurdles.” As far as Sweeney is concerned, the “voluble minority” who told the world how much they hated the ad “played right into her hands.” The “power of smart, cynical advertising” and a “certain brand of female empowerment” have once again “emerged victorious.”

Artificial intelligence developers are expressing alarm that AI could destroy humanity in the next few years, and industry leaders are calling for a slowdown in its development. Congress, however, seems uncertain about what role it should play in reining in the onrushing technology.

‘Kill all humans!’

AI researchers believe that now is “crunch time for humanity,” said Jacob Coxon to Wired. (Coxon recently resigned from a short stint at Anthropic, following several years at OpenAI.) Workers at the big companies building artificial intelligence “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” he said on X.

Anthropic’s Evan Hubinger agrees. AI really could “kill all humans!” he said on X. And such warnings present AI companies with a “dilemma,” said Axios: “Slow down and risk falling behind, or press ahead and risk losing control.”

Coxon’s high-profile alarm is “part of a wave of warnings about unchecked AI systems,” said Ian Prasad Philbrick at Slate. The trend raises the question of why companies like Anthropic and OpenAI do not stop or slow their work on increasingly complex and capable models.

Some developers have “talked themselves into continuing to work” on AI, believing that their less-conscientious industry colleagues will otherwise have the playing field to themselves, said Philbrick. But that kind of thinking is a “one-way ratchet toward greater AI risk.” Still, the risks might be “overstated.” Voter anger over data centers may also “compel Congress to act” with rules and guardrails.

The warnings “merit a certain skepticism,” said The Washington Post in an editorial. (The Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, who cofounded the Prometheus AI lab in 2025.) The people working most closely with AI do not have “special knowledge of what machines that do not yet exist will someday become.” And they can’t say how “society will adapt to the challenge.”

But their warnings could spur Congress to overregulate the sector, which may curb the development of a promising new technology. “The dawn of the AI era cries out for humility and patience,” said the Post.

‘Monumental human stupidity’

Coxon’s and Hubinger’s concerns are “unpersuasive,” said Thomas Claburn at The Register. A “Skynet scenario” would “require monumental human stupidity” in the face of AI superintelligence. But new laws should be enacted to “put executives in jail when their models do harm.” If AI models really are that dangerous, society should “hold people accountable for the harm they cause.”

Congress “won’t lead the charge” on regulating AI, said Axios. Guardrails are needed, but “we have got to make sure that we don’t lose our edge in the global competition on this with China,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

President Donald Trump is also hesitant to act. Artificial intelligence is “going to be more good than bad,” he said to reporters, per The Associated Press.

Compared with the likes of BMW (which sold more than 2.5 million cars last year), JLR is a “minnow”, said Steve Fowler in The Independent. It sold just over 352,000 vehicles last year, employing 43,000 people globally, and 34,000 in the UK. But the company, owned by India’s Tata Motors, is a “big fish in a small pond”, creating work for businesses in supply chains up and down Britain. And the “decline of a single species can cause a whole ecosystem to collapse”.

‘Rotten 12 months’

So the news that JLR is cutting 4,000 jobs is worrying, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian. The firm has had a “rotten 12 months” thanks to Trump’s tariffs, luxury taxes in China, inflation in materials costs and a disastrous cyberattack. But it’s a decent business, making sensible redundancies in the name of competitiveness, and is not facing a “VW-like existential crisis”.

Or not yet, said Ben Marlow in The Telegraph. JLR has not yet recovered from its “preposterous” pink rebrand in 2024. Combined with the cyberattack, a four-year new product drought, and the success of Chery’s Jaecoo 7 (the “Temu Ranger Rover”), the company looks wobbly.

Tom Homan is owed an apology, said Rich Lowry in National Review. When President Trump put his border czar in charge of unwinding Operation Metro Surge – the immigration enforcement drive that caused such controversy in Minneapolis earlier this year – critics on the Right took it as a sign of a climbdown.

Trump, they said, had clearly lost his nerve on his signature issue and was retreating from the ambition to carry out mass deportations. Yet while things have been quieter since Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) ended its Minneapolis crackdown, there has been no lull in efforts to deport illegal immigrants.

Homan has avoided militarised raids, relying instead on picking up illegal aliens at routine traffic stops, immigration check-ins and airports. His low-key approach has been highly effective: in August, for the third month in a row, Ice achieved a new record for arrests, detaining almost 51,000 illegal aliens.

Campaign promise

Nobody can accuse Trump of failing to deliver on his campaign promises on immigration, said Daniel J. Flynn in The American Spectator. He pledged to stop “the invasion at our southern border” – and he did. Net migration in 2025 fell to its lowest level since the Great Depression. There are 2.3 million fewer illegal immigrants in the US today than when Trump began his second term.

Given that, as recently as 2024, Americans told pollsters that immigration was their number-one concern, you’d think voters might credit Trump “for more or less solving this vexatious problem”. No such luck. As is often the case in politics, “success engenders not gratitude but complacency”.

Shrinking workforce

Trump’s immigration restrictions may have been successful on his terms, said Stuart Anderson and Mark Regets in The Washington Post, but they’ll cost America in the long run. They’re largely responsible for the fact that Trump is set to be possibly the first ever US president to preside over a reduction in the labour force.

The labour force grew by 6.7 million during Reagan’s first term, and by 8.7 million in his second. Falling birth rates later slowed growth, but thanks to migration, Obama’s terms still added 1.6 and 3.9 million workers, respectively.

In Trump’s second term, by contrast, the workforce has fallen by 1.6 million. Economic growth is hard without a growing supply of workers. “A declining labour supply is new territory for America” – and it will leave everyone worse off.

Guy Ritchie made his name in the 1990s with films set in cartoonish criminal underworlds; but he is himself of posh stock, and owns a shooting estate in Wiltshire. In his Netflix series “The Gentlemen”, he mixes his fantasy vision with his personal history, said Nick Hilton in The Independent.

Ludicrously entertaining

The show stars Theo James as Eddie, aka the 13th Duke of Halstead, who inherited the family seat at the start of series one – and discovered that it was playing host to a cannabis factory run by a crime family (headed by geezer-in-chief Ray Winstone).

Eddie, who recently left the Army and is as hard as nails, gets in on the action and in series two, he extends his criminal empire and forms a transactional alliance with a shady fellow aristocrat (Hugh Bonneville).

Unfolding over eight episodes, this brash gangster romp is ludicrous enough to be entertaining in its own way; but the dialogue and plotting really are unforgivably bad.

Baroque deaths and showdowns

A “caper composed primarily of fists, shouting and men made of fists shouting ‘faaackin’ ’ell’ in tweed” sounds like a composite of everything Ritchie has ever made, said Sarah Dempster in The Guardian. It is fun, but it lacks the energy that fizzed through his early work.

You feel that Ritchie wants to say something meaningful about Eddie’s moral descent, said Ben Dowell in The Times; but the show is far too in love with carnage and wisecracks to hold on to anything serious. Besides, you don’t come to this unsophisticated series for that. You come for “chases, showdowns and more baroque deaths than you can shake a shooting stick at”.

“Zia Yusuf is a brilliant man, and he’s a genius actually, and he’s an incredible communicator,” Tory defector and Reform member Nadine Dorries told Times Radio recently. But, she added: “I wish he closed down his Twitter account.”

The interview followed a tweet by Reform’s self-styled “shadow home secretary” in response to reports that Somali-born Sagal Abdi-Wali, the leader of Camden Council, was the favourite to be Labour’s candidate to replace Keir Starmer in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election. Yusuf asked his followers: “Do you understand what’s happening?”, a remark that drew condemnation from across the political spectrum for its apparent racial undertones.

‘Remarkable and rare gifts’

“Even in these polarised times”, it is hard to imagine another politician as “unlikeable”, “rebarbative” and downright “sneery” as Yusuf, said Sean O’Grady in The Independent. I can’t help feeling that “every time he appears in the media or tweets a controversial opinion, he shaves another slice off Reform UK’s increasingly fragile poll ratings”.

Take, for example, his decision to call former defence secretary Ben Wallace, a former Scots Guards officer who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, a “traitor”. Just for good measure, he then added a poll asking if Wallace should be prosecuted for treason.

That episode earned Yusuf a “ticking off” from Nigel Farage, but “the more one sees and hears from Yusuf, the more obvious it becomes that he is a liability for Reform”, said Stephen Pollard in The Spectator.

The son of Sri Lankan immigrants, Yusuf built a hugely successful business career and is clearly “a man of remarkable and rare gifts”. But he is also “the latest example of the truism that business success is no indicator of political acumen, let alone political success”.

‘Ticking timebomb’

Whether Yusuf is or is not a nice person, “behaving as he does is entirely politically rational”, said Daniel Finkelstein in The Times. In labelling former Army officers traitors or arguing those not born in Britain shouldn’t be able to stand for Parliament, Yusuf is signalling “an assault on established institutions” and conventions. “The very fact that this alienates people unnecessarily makes his signal – that with him there is no compromise or messing about – more reliable.”

This has also endeared Yusuf to rank-and-file Reform members. A poll conducted in June found that 22% of those asked would opt for him as leader in a contest to replace Farage, ahead of current deputy Richard Tice, party chairman Lee Anderson and Reform’s “shadow chancellor” Robert Jenrick, said the Daily Express.

Politically this makes sense, said UnHerd. Having seemingly failed to absorb and replace the Conservative Party, Reform is “reasserting itself as an unambiguously populist party. All it needs now is an unambiguously populist leader.”

Senior figures within the party are forming what they call an “Anyone but Zia” group to try to prevent him from succeeding Farage, should he step down, said The Observer . “They all know [Yusuf’s] a problem, but he is popular among the grassroots,” one critic told the newspaper. “He’s a slowly ticking timebomb.”

Syria is on the verge of an “economic revolution”, said Ksenia Svetlova in Haaretz. Its interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former al-Qa’eda militant who led the rebel offensive that overthrew dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, has been struggling to rebuild a nation devastated by almost 14 years of civil war.

One of his biggest coups last year was to persuade the Trump administration to lift the strict economic sanctions imposed on Syria in 2019. But the country was still on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation first made in 1979 in response to Damascus’ support for Iran and its harbouring of Palestinian terrorist groups. So, like Iran, it remained cut off from the international banking system, and large-scale reconstruction proved impossible.

But that all changed last week at the stroke of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s pen. Now, at long last, the flow of “dollars, dinars and dirhams” to Syria can begin in earnest. Saudi Arabia has promised to build desalination plants and two airports, and invest in telecommunications projects worth more than $1 billion. Other countries are keen to follow suit. “If everything goes according to plan, Syria will soon become one vast construction site.”

‘Limited progress’

The rehabilitation of Syria into the world order has happened at “remarkable speed”, said Ilan Berman in The Washington Post. And there’s an obvious logic to it. By removing Damascus from its terrorism list, the US has pulled it towards the West and away from Iran and Russia’s orbit. Yet there are dangers to being so hasty: Washington is “basing its bet more on hope than hard evidence”. For all their promises of liberalisation, Sharaa and his government haven’t fully moved on from the past. Jihadist ideology is prevalent in school curriculums, and there has been no more than “limited progress” in removing 5,000 foreign fighters – extremists loyal to the current regime – from the new Syrian army.

Sharaa also won a significant victory last week in his quest to centralise power, said Smadar Perry on Ynet: he has managed to disband the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurdish-led militia founded in 2015 to fight Islamic State and create a secular, democratic and federalised Syria. At its height, it controlled at least a quarter of the country, including its major oil fields. Its commander, Mazloum Abdi, has now agreed to let his troops be incorporated into the national army, in what he calls “a genuine transition from battlefields to the fields of construction”. But the truth of it is that Sharaa forced his hand by seizing swathes of the SDF’s territory in a lightning offensive in January. Folding the SDF into the army is going to be a hard ask: and though the president has promised to make Kurdish a national language and to protect Kurdish rights, many Kurds still don’t trust him.

Victor’s justice

Sharaa’s government has also been busy bringing members of the Assad regime to justice, said Chris Doyle in Arab News. In August, nine of its most senior figures, including Assad himself, were sentenced to death for war crimes – verdicts that gave rise to an “outpouring of joy”. However, only Atef Najib, Assad’s cousin, a security chief infamous for his brutality, is likely to face execution, the rest having been tried in absentia.

Nor is this exactly a victory for the rule of law: the accused can hardly be said to have received a fair trial; and no corresponding action has been taken against the perpetrators of last year’s massacres of over 1,400 Alawites, the minority sect to which the Assad family belongs. There’s a strong smell of victor’s justice about it all.

Still, progress is undoubtedly being made and “the psychological importance of the removal of sanctions should not be underestimated”, said The National. We have room to hope that the barriers now being torn down in Syria will be replaced “with bridges, roads and tunnels en route to a more stable, secure and prosperous future”.

“Now is the twilight of Donald Trump’s supremacy,” said Rafael Behr in The Guardian. The US is “still the richest and most heavily armed nation on Earth”, and the president – indulged by a “supine” Congress – still has far-reaching powers. Nevertheless, with more than two years of his second term still to run, Trump looks “thwarted and impotent”.

‘Deranged demands’

History will record that the disastrous war against Iran was a “turning point”. But evidence of his policy failures can be seen all around the world. Canada, citing unreasonable last-minute demands from US negotiators, has promised all-out trade war. The Ukraine conflict is as bloody as ever, despite Trump’s promise to end it. Europe, horrified by his indulgence of Vladimir Putin and his “deranged demands” for Greenland, has turned away. In the Middle East, America’s allies are furious that they’re bearing the brunt of Iran’s attacks. And at home, fuel prices are rising, and electoral disaster is looming: November’s midterms are set to flip the House of Representatives, and maybe the Senate too, against the Republicans.

In a matter of months, Trump has “burned through decades of accumulated goodwill” across the democratic world, said Daniel Hannan in The Sunday Telegraph. “He has created a sense that it is better to be America’s enemy than its friend, for it buys its enemies and sells its friends.” Never once has Trump spoken about Putin in the way he talks about Canadians, Danes, South Koreans and other partners.

‘Erratic behaviour’

A couple of years ago, it would have seemed impossible, said The Spectator. Now it’s quite normal for Washington, in its dealings with its allies, to threaten economic coercion, the withdrawal of military support, and even outright annexation. When Russia behaves like this, it is sanctioned. But in the case of the US, we sit back and do nothing.

There are still some who believe that “Trump’s erratic behaviour is part of a cunning plan to discombobulate opponents and get his way”, said Sam Freedman on Substack. The truth, as his lack of success makes clear, is simpler: “this guy is in obvious cognitive decline, ill-informed, and doesn’t know what he’s doing”.

Worse may be to come, said The Economist. Many would be delighted if “a fuming, friendless Mr Trump, so weakened by his own blunders and by plunging approval ratings” were to retreat to the White House to “tinker with plans for his ballroom”. Alas, that is not in his character. He’ll be less a “lame duck”, and more an ageing “silverback gorilla” – lashing out ever more viciously at anyone within his reach. “Now that his dominance is threatened, the world will find him more disruptive than ever.”

President Donald Trump last week announced the United States is obtaining rights to 65 million barrels of Venezuelan oil reserves. The agreement was made under the auspices of unelected President Delcy Rodríguez, who owes her position to the January U.S. military operation that snatched her predecessor out of the country. It is the “biggest oil deal in world history,” Trump said in a statement. Critics say the pact is illegal and exploitative.

‘Almost certainly unconstitutional’

Venezuela is “becoming the 51st state in all but name,” Joseph Zeballos-Roig said at MS NOW. Trump’s deal would give the U.S. “privileged access” to the country’s oil production and allow the United States to replenish its “dwindling stockpiles” of petroleum depleted by the war with Iran. The agreement will also “temporarily shore up” Rodríguez’s government thanks to an influx of tax revenues. But it looks like “gilded imperialism” and will likely “deepen a disconnect between Venezuelans and hopes for a new government” after the downfall of dictator Nicolás Maduro.

The agreement is “almost certainly unconstitutional” under Venezuelan codes, Elliott Abrams said at The Washington Post. The country’s laws say petroleum resources “are the property of the Republic” and “not transferable” to outside entities. Trump’s deal “hardly meets that criteria.” The scheme also relies on a private company led by Alejandro Betancourt, who has been accused of money laundering and made his fortune “under the corrupt Hugo Chávez and Maduro regimes.” What seems certain: “The deal will fail if democracy ever returns to Venezuela.”

The Venezuela deal has given the U.S. a “strategic victory” over its rivals, Arturo McFields said at The Hill. The country’s oil fields were previously controlled by Russian and Chinese companies, and revenues flowed also to Maduro’s allies in Cuba and Iran. No more. The U.S. is obtaining “energy security” and lower gas prices, while the government in Caracas gets an agreement that “revitalizes its oil industry, creates jobs and fosters prosperity.”

‘Old-school colonialism’

The agreement could be remembered as the “moment Venezuela shut the door on communism,” Yuri Perez said at Fox News. Critics who say the government “lacks legitimacy for long contracts” are right that legitimacy “must be completed at the ballot box.” But the alternative should not be “idle oil fields and an open door to Cuba, China and Russia.” A “future democratic congress” can and should ratify the deal on behalf of Venezuelans.

“The deal smacks of old-school colonialism,” Liam Denning at Bloomberg. And it is unlikely to draw major oil companies back to Venezuela. (Chevron, the only outside oil company that remained, said this week it will double its production there.) The “opaque settlement” possibly puts new elections “further out of reach” and will thus be “inherently brittle.” Rebuilding Venezuela’s oil production and its democracy will be the “work of many years of intense effort.” Trump has instead opted for a “shortcut” that relies on “raw U.S. power.”

Anticipation for Grand Theft Auto VI reached a fever pitch in August when developer Rockstar Games finally released a first look at gameplay. But while the long-awaited project is widely expected to have the biggest premiere in video game history, there is also concern about what it means for the gaming industry’s future. Some say it could be the industry’s coup de grace; others are more optimistic.

Gaming’s ‘time of tumult’

GTA VI is expected to be a slam dunk for Rockstar financially, projected to generate up to $5.2 billion in sales by the end of its first launch week this November, according to gaming analytics firm Newzoo. But the game’s release also “comes at a time of such tumult for the gaming industry as a whole,” as “open-world games are arguably tired and online multiplayer games with $200 million budgets can crash and burn the moment they are launched,” said Troy Farah at Salon.

Part of the problem is that this game is “such a big release that it’s scaring off other studios from releasing their own games around the same time in November” lest they fail because “everyone is spending their cash on Rockstar’s latest,” said Farah. GTA VI’s $80 base game price and $100 ultimate version may “just seem like typical capitalist extraction, but the end result will likely be a narrower industry that squeezes creatives and makes things a lot more miserable for players.”

With the “cost of living crisis that’s eating every last penny of disposable income out of average household budget, it won’t take much to turn a chorus of Champagne corks into a firing squad aimed directly at the games industry’s already-exposed guts,” said Jim Trinca at IGN. The “real issue here is that so much of the games industry finds itself both scared by and dependent on the success of one single project.” Gamers should prepare for the “possibility that GTA VI, rather than being the savior of the video games industry, might trigger its next big crash.”

A ‘halo effect’

Despite some nerves about current trends in the industry, Rockstar hopes its upcoming blockbuster will “retain cultural influence for another decade,” said Christopher Byrd at The New York Times. Many are hoping a strong debut from Grand Theft Auto VI will also “boost the struggling console market, which has seen higher prices due to the rising cost of memory and storage,” said Jenni Reid and Alex Buckmaster at CNBC, though this game is only being released digitally.

Many insiders also hope the game will have a “halo effect for the entire industry,” said Rob Fahey at gaming news outlet GamesIndustry.biz. If it succeeds, GTA VI “will be a rising tide that lifts many other boats around it,” as the effects from the “biggest media launch of the decade being a video game will be very significant.” It could also cement a “reaffirmation of video games’ position on an equal footing with other media in the flow and transfer of styles, influences and ideas.”

Even amid industry falterings, GTA VI is the “type of game that can pull a lot of people back into gaming and even convince them to buy a new console to play it,” Dan DeFrancesco said at Business Insider. But the jury is still out on what the full effect of the release will be. “Big fires burn bright, but they need a lot of oxygen to grow.”