With the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. complete, the amalgamated company, Skydance, now has control of both CNN and CBS News. Some seem happy CNN promised to maintain editorial independence; others worry the network could take the same controversial rightward shift as CBS.

What did the commentators say?

Skydance CEO David Ellison reportedly asked Thompson to stay at CNN, and the new company “confirmed that CNN’s Mark Thompson will stay on as editor-in-chief of the network — separate from CBS, where Bari Weiss remains at the helm,” said The Associated Press. But how the “combined company’s news operations will look farther down the road is yet to be seen.”

Ellison has pledged to maintain CNN’s editorial freedom, but he also has a “cozy relationship with President Donald Trump — who has been far from shy about targeting coverage he deems unfavorable from both CNN and CBS.”

Because of this closeness, many at CNN seem relieved that Thompson will stay aboard. “That sound you hear is a giant sigh of relief from the halls of Techwood,” a CNN producer told The Guardian, referring to CNN’s Atlanta headquarters. Even so, the “completion of the merger raises uncomfortable questions about media capture in the United States,” said the Columbia Journalism Review. CNN under Skydance “likely won’t replicate Fox News, but it will look to stay in Trump’s good graces.”

For CNN, Thompson remaining on board is the “best-case scenario under its new owners,” said the Poynter Institute. At the network, some “uncertainty about the new ownership has inflamed anxieties” about a potential Bari Weiss takeover, said The New York Times, which was especially true for CNN’s most famous anchor, Anderson Cooper, who “told colleagues that he did not want to work for her.”

What next?

Thompson’s staying on will “at least initially, establish a boundary around Weiss’ authority,” said The Wrap. It may also “ease some concerns among lawmakers, regulators and other merger critics about Ellison’s potential influence over CNN.” But just because the two media powerhouses appear separate, it “does not necessarily mean CNN and CBS News will remain editorially distinct over the long term.”

Have the Tories been written off too soon? As commentators point to a “Badenoch bounce”, Reform UK has fallen to third place behind the Conservatives in recent polls.

Nigel Farage’s party has slipped to 21%, two points behind the Tories and three behind Labour, according to a YouGov poll carried out this week. The Conservatives’ 23% – up three percentage points on the previous week – is their highest rating since January 2025.

What did the commentators say?

Recent polling seems to point to a “Badenoch bounce” after “the most trouble-free Conservative Party conference in some years”, said Sean O’Grady in The Independent. Her “improving recognition, policy announcements and forceful personality have helped to slowly drag her party back up in the polls”.

Badenoch “intends to reunite the right by welcoming back Reform UK’s voters while dismissing its leaders as racists, fraudsters and takers of dodgy donations”, said Andrew Gimson in The i Paper.

Boris Johnson “pursued” the same strategy seven years ago when he “proved he was serious about getting Brexit done by removing the whip from 21 Conservative MPs who refused to back him”, and this forced Farage “to stand down Brexit Party candidates in Tory-held seats”.

“Respectability is an important element in her pitch” and Badenoch “dares to be unfashionable”. This is “one reason why she carries conviction with those who might vote Conservative”, because “they too are unfashionable”.

Meanwhile, “cracks have begun to appear” in Farage’s “image as a straight-talking, honest alternative to the politicians whom he claims has let down the country”, said Jules Walkden on Politics Home. He “appears to be alienating the very voters Reform needs to win over”, and though he was once his party’s “greatest asset”, he “may fast be turning into a liability”.

You may be wondering “why much of the media are talking about a Badenoch revival”, said Jonathan Liew in The Guardian, when “her party lost 563 councillors and 40% of its councils” this year and “remains about four points below its apparent nadir of 2024”.

The fact is this “civil war on the right” is a “charade” – a “fake fight being enacted for our benefit” because the “right bloc is now a single basic substance, responsive and carefully calibrated to the different audiences it needs to capture”.

So if, “after all the bickering and infighting, a coalition should be required”, do we “really expect a Conservative Party founded entirely on the gain and exercise of power to suddenly turn it down?”

What next?

Following the successful Tory conference, Badenoch’s “first objective” is not “a spectacular leap in support, but to establish a consistent lead over Reform”. This would “begin changing the political dynamic on the right”, said Caroline Wheeler and Kitty Donaldson in The i Paper.

With sustained “small gains” leading to “incremental progress”, she can “gradually change how voters, commentators and rival parties perceive the contest”. This would increase the “evidence” that the Tories are “recovering” – a “perception” that might, “in turn”, help “attract voters who want a credible alternative to Labour”.

James Talarico is not the only Democrat with a shot at winning an election in Texas. Polls show challenger Gina Hinojosa, spurred on by Latino voters and the data center backlash, is running neck and neck with longtime GOP incumbent Greg Abbott in the governor’s race.

What did the commentators say?

Polls have the Hinojosa-Abbott race “statistically tied” heading into the final weeks, said The Center Square. It is a startling turn for Abbott, who is seeking a fourth term. He has never lost a statewide election “by less than 11 points,” said Slate. But some rural voters are defecting over Abbott’s “past support for data centers,” and Lone Star Latino voters are turning against the GOP because of the “president’s handling of the economy and mass deportations,” said NBC News.

Hinojosa is “perhaps the most serious electoral challenger” Abbott has faced, said the Houston Chronicle. The Democrat has sharpened a “populist message” that asks voters to “set aside the culture wars” in favor of policies and politicians that help them “make ends meet.” It is a message that arrives amid voter anger over “rising prices and seemingly unchecked growth of Big Tech.”

Democrats have long dreamed of a “blue Texas,” said Nicole Russell at USA Today. Nonetheless, the Lone Star state is “one of the top places Americans move” because it has no income tax and is affordable. All that is made possible by “embracing conservative values.” Voters will not want to “upend that way of life” by electing a Democrat.

What next?

Polls in previous elections have given Texas Democrats “reason to hope for an upset” only to end in disappointment, said The Washington Post. Hinojosa still faces an uphill climb. A Democrat has “not been elected to the governor's mansion in Texas since Ann Richards in 1990,” said CBS News. Still, national Democrats are “stepping up” their support for Hinojosa. The Democratic Governors Association and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker are both putting “at least $1 million” toward her election.

Donald Trump’s proposed “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine has been dismissed as unfair and partisan with the US leaving Kyiv significantly weakened.

As the challenges of winter draw near, Trump’s move has thrown the future of Ukraine into doubt.

“It had already been a terrible week in Ukraine” before Trump’s “one-sided ceasefire plan” put Kyiv “in a tough spot as winter approaches”, said The New York Times.

What did the commentators say?

The deal “comes at a particularly bad time”, said The New York Times, as Russia is “stepping up efforts to target Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, including, crucially, its energy infrastructure” as “part of an ongoing effort to both cripple Ukraine’s economy and break its will to fight”. The coming winter “might be the hardest yet” because Ukraine is “facing a critical shortage of air defences”.

But the “bigger problem” is that Trump is “pressuring Ukraine to give up the best tool it has for fighting back” – its attacks on Russian oil refineries. Ukraine “effectively has no operational oil refineries”, so “this ceasefire, such as it is, would really only tie the hands of one party”.

After Russian drones and missiles “pummelled nearby power stations, triggering power cuts” and Kyiv was “plunged into darkness”, there was a “sense of outrage and betrayal”, said The Economist.

A Ukraine government source said American officials warned that unless Kyiv stopped its drone assaults on Russian oil refineries, the US would block weapons shipments under the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List, under which Ukraine has received “about $10 billion [£7.5 billion]-worth of American weapons” paid for by Nato allies and partners.

This move would “further weaken some of the country’s defences” and although Trump’s “new turn against Ukraine may be as transitory as the earlier ones”, this is still “a dangerous moment for Ukraine”.

But Trump’s threat of a suspension is “far from hypothetical”, said Sasha Vakulina on EuroNews. In 2025, the White House “temporarily halted intelligence-sharing and military assistance to Ukraine amid a diplomatic confrontation with Kyiv”.

Although “both were subsequently restored” following talks, the episode “demonstrated how quickly Washington could use security cooperation as a source of political leverage” and “how dependent Ukraine remained on American capabilities”.

US intelligence “remains crucial to Ukraine’s ability to anticipate Russian attacks”, and it is still “unclear how far European allies could compensate should another American suspension come into force”.

Although Trump’s announcement “seemed to make Ukraine’s situation even more perilous”, said Eric Ciaramella on Foreign Affairs, it’s not “necessarily a major setback for Ukraine”, because it “comes amid a broader shift” by Trump to “move away from pursuing an elusive comprehensive peace agreement in favour of a mutual ceasefire on strikes against energy infrastructure”. This shift “could ultimately be beneficial to Kyiv”.

Also, “in his angry retort” to Zelenskyy’s criticism of the diesel deal, Trump “revealed a potential way forward: as long as Ukraine stopped hitting Russian refineries, the president said, ‘you can do whatever you want to Russia’”.

Ukraine has “more leverage than a year ago”, said Nicholas Vinocur on Politico, and European leaders are “warning” Trump “not to squander it by pressuring Kyiv to ease up on Russia”. Although Trump “wants the attacks to stop, Ukraine’s European allies are keen to cripple Russia’s war effort”.

What next?

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said “repeatedly” that Ukraine is ready to halt its strikes on Russian oil refineries and other energy facilities if Moscow “did the same”, said the BBC.

But Moscow said Ukraine does not deserve the “respite” a ceasefire would bring, because it would mean Europe would be able to “pump” Ukraine with new weaponry.

Leaders of India’s Cockroach Janta Party have been detained after breaching a security cordon to demand the resignation of the country’s election chief, who deleted 130 million names from voters’ lists.

The activists, who claim the mass deletion was designed to benefit Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, evaded security to enter Jantar Mantar, a “historic Delhi observatory popular for protests”, said the BBC.

The election commission insists the purging of electoral rolls was to remove voters who have died, moved, or cannot otherwise be verified, and that those impacted can apply to be re-enrolled. But over the weekend, tens of thousands of people, including prominent lawyers and journalists, were detained and released in protests that show no signs of slowing.

What did the commentators say?

It will be “difficult” for Modi, who denies the deletions were carried out to benefit his party, to “quell the turmoil”, wrote Andres Schipani and Jyotsna Singh in the Financial Times.

The Cockroach Janta Party emerged as a student-led movement focussing on alleged examination irregularities, but it is now targeting the institution that “oversees elections in the world’s largest democracy”, making it harder for Modi to “find the right response”.

If the PM concedes to the demand for Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation, he could open the door to questioning the wider legitimacy of his government, Ruchi Gupta, executive director of the Future of India Foundation, told the broadsheet. Fundamentally, “the government has a trust deficit that it needs to address.”

“If you pluck a chicken one feather at a time, nobody notices,” said Vidya Krishnan on Al Jazeera. Indian democracy currently resembles a “plucked chicken, stripped of its plumage”. The revision of the country’s electoral rolls was the last straw – an “exercise in bureaucratic fascism”, for “there is simply no other way to frame an event that strips 130 million Indians of their right to vote.”

Modi now finds himself “retreating behind barricades, facing the wrath of students for whom the slow erosion of democracy has left little to lose and even less to fear”. The mass protest on Saturday was “just an opening salvo”.

But even so, Modi “remains popular” among large swathes of the population, said Faisal Mahmud on Asia Times. His “popularity, cult-like charisma, organisational strength and electoral record cannot simply be wished away”, and “nor can allegations of electoral manipulation substitute for evidence”. But now, “the government’s handling of dissent has become an issue in its own right”.

What next?

The protesters and opposition party are showing no sign of letting up. Modi “does not understand that the game is over”, said the leader of India’s opposition alliance, Rahul Gandhi. “We will ensure that Modi pays for the crimes he has committed against the country.”

“The youth will keep coming out,” Uday Bhanu Chib, national president of the Indian Youth Congress, a unit of Gandhi’s party, told the FT. They’re “no longer afraid of this government”.

The Cockroach Janta Party protests “have laid bare the hollowed-out democracy that India holds up to the world as exemplary”, said Krishnan on Al Jazeera. There is little doubt that “history books will cast Modi in his proper role as the man who caused an entire generation of Indians to lose all respect for the government”.

Saudi Arabia has vowed a firm response to the deadly attacks on the kingdom’s airports and oil and gas facilities by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

The Iran-backed Houthis said their latest drone and missile strikes – some of which struck King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, killing 13 people and injuring more than 300 – were launched in retaliation for “brutal Saudi aggression” against areas they control in western Yemen.

“The events of recent weeks are serious. Our response must be equally serious,” said Saudi energy minister Prince Abdul Aziz bin Salman today. There is “no room for fear in the vocabulary of Saudis”.

What did the commentators say?

“No political slogan, ideological grievance or claim of resistance can justify turning airports into targets,” said Hani Hazaimeh on Arab News. The Houthis are reckless, and Saudi Arabia “has every right to defend its citizens” and its “critical infrastructure”. It’s easy “to urge calm from a distance, far from the airports” and homes under missile attack; “it is far harder to explain to grieving families why the international response remains trapped in a cycle of condemnation followed by inaction”. All thought of “diplomatic theatre is over. The time for effective action is now.”

The Houthis are “drawing from Iran’s playbook” and “vowing a painful escalation” by “targeting critical infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and imposing a global economic cost”, said Mostafa Salem on CNN. So far, Saudi Arabia has largely confined itself to providing air cover for the anti-Houthi Yemeni coalition but “whether that restraint will hold” is now “an open question”. Putting Saudi troops on the ground in Yemen would plunge the nation “into an expensive and grinding ground war” and undercut Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s carefully cultivated image “of a stable, investment-friendly kingdom and global tourism hub”.

But the airport death toll is “bewilderingly high” for the Saudis, who are “unaccustomed to such fatalities”, and that’s “likely to prompt a bloody response”, said Nesrine Malik in The Guardian. If so, the kingdom faces a “long, intractable war with a resourceful and impassioned antagonist, one willing to sustain a high degree of pain in ways that Riyadh can’t match without orienting itself entirely towards war”.

The Iran war has “stirred political loyalties, triggering a surge of Houthi advancement”, destabilising the “region’s tense equilibriums” as Donald Trump “decided that the safety and security” of America’s Gulf allies were “secondary” to his beef with Tehran. Saudi Arabia is “bewildered and losing lives and capital, stuck between old alliances that no longer work and new hostilities that are too calamitous to confront”.

What next?

The Houthi attacks on the Saudis could “drive global oil prices even higher”, said Sky News’ Middle East correspondent, Adam Parsons. “Were the Houthis to put a stranglehold” on the Bab al Mandab strait, “it would have a major influence on trade that would hit the price of oil”.

This would “anger Donald Trump, who sees the price of oil as such a barometer of his own success”. The US president has said he is reviewing the situation, and is “going to look at” joining any Saudi response.

President Donald Trump’s tariffs and trade wars were intended to reduce the U.S. trade deficit. It is getting bigger instead. The gap between imports and exports hit $100 billion in August, a sign that Trump is losing ground on a signature policy.

What did the commentators say?

The latest trade deficit report marked a “17-month high, after also rising significantly in July,” said The New York Times. The last time the gap reached $100 billion was in March 2025, before Trump launched his “Liberation Day” tariffs — later struck down by the Supreme Court — and this fall’s trade war with Canada. But U.S. imports “hit a record $420.8 billion” in August. The United States is “just as dependent as ever on foreign-produced goods,” said Christopher Rupkey, the chief economist at FWDBONDS, to the Times.

The trade gap has actually been “gradually increasing in fits and starts” for most of the last year, said Sabri Ben-Achour at Marketplace, driven in part by the artificial intelligence build-out. It is also a consequence of foreigners investing in “all kinds of American stuff.” The trade number is driven by foreign investors using their dollars to “invest in our companies, lend to our government and buy our assets,” said John R. Puri at the National Review. U.S. officials should “treat that preference as a compliment.”

The $100 million milestone suggests the president’s economic agenda is “failing on his own terms,” said Steve Benen at MS NOW. Trump’s trade deficit is “now larger than at any time during Joe Biden’s presidency.” The importance of the import-export gap may be “exaggerated,” but the president has also argued that “this is a metric that matters.” That makes the latest report “notable.”

What next?

Trump has “scrambled the politics of U.S. trade policy,” said Marc L. Busch at The Hill. A “durable realignment in U.S. trade politics” might come after he leaves the scene. Democrats are arguing the president’s tariffs “raise costs and undermine ‘affordability,’” and it’s unclear if Republicans will be “willing to defend” the regime going forward.

Tuesday “may go down as one of the most consequential days in the history of mathematics,” said The Economist. Less than a month after astonishing the world with its solution to the long-standing Navier-Stokes problem, OpenAI has released 722 maths papers, proving or disproving problems across numerous fields from algebraic geometry to number theory. OpenAI said it had consulted extensively with mathematicians about publishing the results but the news seems to have stunned maths world. How they react to this “mathspocalypse”, and the panic it’s inducing, could determine if there’s any human-led maths at all in 50 years’ time.

What did the commentators say?

“If you want some sense of what things feel like now in maths, imagine a hunter-gatherer who’s spent his entire life learning to survive deep in an unforgiving rainforest, then a giant resort hotel springs up right next to him with a helipad and heated pools and Airbnbs,” wrote Scott Aaronson, chair of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, according to Sky News.

This is “heartbreaking” for our community, said Jordana Cepelewicz, maths editor at Quanta Magazine. In mathematics, “problems are posed not so much because their answers will be practical and important, but because they represent interesting journeys”. As we “struggle to solve a problem” we might “come up with intriguing tools and connections, stumble on novel ideas and directions, take fruitful detours, and answer new questions” no one’s ever thought to ask. AI models “just skip to the end”.

AI was already changing maths. Researchers have stopped positing open conjectures at the end of their paper, so they’re not “scraped by bots”. Others are publishing their papers prematurely, to avoid getting “scooped” by AI. There is now widespread fear that new blood will no longer be “attracted to this remade discipline”, resulting in a “whole lost generation”.

“Releasing over 700 files at once is not a demonstration of scholarship, but a demonstration of power," said the Association for Human Mathematics in a statement. “We urge mathematicians to discontinue their work with OpenAI and to return to a vision of science that centres human understanding.”

The “floodgates are open”, said Joseph Howlett in Scientific American. This is without question the “biggest maths breakthrough in two decades”. But such is the speed of advancement, there are concerns the movement may be “coming too fast” even for the AI labs themselves. Not that they plan on slowing the tools down; they’re aiming to make them as powerful as possible to “show that their AI is really getting smarter”. The “consequences of this race are becoming harder and harder to predict”.

This could also have dangerous implications for cybersecurity, said Anthony Cuthbertson in The Independent. Cryptography forms the backbone of online encryption, used in web browsers, secure messaging and online banking. It also relies on “mathematical problems that are currently too difficult to solve efficiently”. There is no evidence that AI models have come close to breaking them but these latest advances could “lead to new algorithms capable of cracking them”, and reduce the time available to develop adequate protections.

What next?

It will take years to verify Open AI’s breakthroughs, said The Economist. Many of the papers are more than 100 pages long, only 127 of them “are accompanied by a code guaranteeing logical consistency (a norm in the field)”, and there is published internal reasoning for just 10. And it remains to be seen how many new research avenues the papers could open up. “For now, the mathematical problems AI is revealing are more existential than numerical.”

The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement has been invoked for the first time since it was signed in August, following Houthi-led attacks on Saudi infrastructure Mecca, Medina and the capital’s airport.

While not identifying the Yemeni group by name, the alliance, composed of Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, will undertake a “rapid deployment” of troops to Saudi Arabia as part of their “collective defence commitments”.

Saudi Arabia is also supporting an offensive by the Yemeni government to take back the capital, Sanaa, held by the Houthis since 2014. Three people have been killed in attacks on Saudi Arabian airports over two days, as fighting spilled across the Yemen border into the Kingdom. It is unclear how Pakistan and Turkey will contribute to this action.

As the US continues to focus on Iran, and has ruled out direct intervention in Yemen, the alliance’s success could redraw the lines of power and control in the region.

What did the commentators say?

“Even the threat of joint involvement could dramatically shift the Saudi-Houthi conflict,” said Foreign Policy. Although in its infancy, members of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement boast nearly 1.4 million active troops combined, as well as “3,400 aircraft, 6,000 tanks, and more than 340 naval assets”. Pakistan has nuclear capabilities – “the only nuclear-armed Muslim-majority nation in the world” – and Turkey stands second only to the US for the largest armed forces in Nato.

Defence relations between the countries had already been close, even before the Mecca Accord was signed in August, said Abid Hussain on Al Jazeera. Pakistan has trained Saudi military personnel since 1967, and a declassified CIA assessment from 1985 estimated that 13,000 to 14,000 Pakistanis were serving in the Saudi army.

However, the Turkish “footprint is less clear”. And there is a potential sticking point, as Article 92 of Turkey’s constitution stipulates that the “authority to send troops abroad rests with the parliament, which has yet to ratify the Mecca pact”.

The timing of the announcement also “carries deep symbolic weight”, said Sean Mathews in Middle East Eye. Pakistan has been positioning itself as an “honest broker” for peace in the region, mediating between the US and Iran in previous negotiations, and Turkey has overtly established its stance as a “rival to Israel”. And by invoking the pact, Saudi Arabia has demonstrated that it has the “support of the wider region in its counter-offensive against the Houthis” and, by extension, Iran.

In the grand scheme of things, the Mecca Accord should be perceived more as an “additional layer of regional security rather than a wholesale strategic realignment”, said international relations expert John Calabrese on The Conversation. Traditionally, states in the region have relied on external support to gain “greater strategic autonomy”. Yet, as the threats in the region become harder to “separate into discrete categories”, and suspicion of the conventional allies grows, Saudi Arabia is moving to “hedge” its bets to avoid becoming vulnerable.

What next?

Despite the invocation, a resolution in Yemen against the Houthis is “unlikely without a wider deal between the US and Iran”, said Samer Al-Atrush, The Times’ Middle East correspondent. Currently, however, Washington is intent on demanding “concessions” from Tehran by enforcing its own naval blockade.

The employee in the cubicle next to yours is probably a woman. Recent job gains under President Donald Trump have gone mostly to women, who now outnumber men in the workforce. But gainful employment and truly gainful employment — that is, with more pay and status — are two different things.

What did the commentators say?

U.S. jobs reports of late “may feel especially lousy for men,” said CNBC. Women have outnumbered them in the workforce for eight straight months, the longest such stretch since 2010. That gap during the Great Recession happened “because men were losing jobs,” said economist Cory Stahle to the outlet. Now “women are gaining” jobs faster than men.

“The pink-collar economy is here,” said Justin Wolfers at Platypus Economics. Men once vastly outnumbered women in the workplace. Women’s employment “rose quickly” since 1970 while men’s work “grew more slowly and occasionally plateaued.” The gender gap “flipped” because of the growth of industries, especially healthcare, in which the job force was “already dominated by women.”

The trends defy Trump’s vision of an economy in which men can earn a “good living but also a sense of accomplishment and status,” said Paul Waldman at MS NOW. The president could urge men to seek out jobs in women-dominated fields like healthcare instead of an ever-diminishing manufacturing sector. “But it’s not the kind of profession Trump will encourage men to go into.”

The flip is “not an entirely good thing,” said Noam Scheiber at The New York Times. Women have become the majority of workers amid the “diminishing status of many American jobs,” a trend driven by factors such as reduced union membership, outsourced work and the rise of artificial intelligence. Women spent decades “reaching for the brass ring” only to find out that “it’s hopelessly tarnished once they finally grasp it.”

What next?

The next milestone is narrowing the wage gap. Women on the job “still earn far less starting the day they graduate,” said Fortune. They also make up “two-thirds of workers in low-wage jobs” such as teaching and nursing but remain “underrepresented in more lucrative fields such as finance, construction and STEM.”

A seventh man has been arrested in connection with a suspected terror plot near RAF Fairford, Gloucestershire, last month, which Andy Burnham has said was most likely linked to Iran.

Amid fears that Tehran was planning a complex drone attack against Fairford, which serves as a forward operating base for US aircraft targeting Iran, the Trump administration made a “historic, unprecedented” decision to withdraw all its 12 B-1 bombers on Sunday, said David Dunn, a professor of international politics at the University of Birmingham.

The incident “tells us much about Iran, Britain and the emerging threats to US forces and assets. None of it is good,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial.

What did the commentators say?

The Fairford plot is far from an isolated event. On Tuesday, three Iranian men appeared in court accused of spying on British-based dissident journalists on behalf of Iran’s foreign intelligence service. Earlier this year, a wave of arson attacks targeting British Jews were linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). And in July, a Tehran-backed cyberattack halted operations at a UK power plant for four days.

It is important to note here that the UK is technically “not at war with Iran”, said BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner. But the US is, and “that is a distinction Tehran has publicly challenged”.

In July, Iran warned “any base used for aggression against Iranian territory constitutes a legitimate target for our forces”. As far as the IRGC “is concerned, Britain is already a participant in America’s war with Iran”, said Gardner.

The emergence of sophisticated state-run drone attacks, such as Ukraine’s Operation Spider’s Web last year, when low-cost drones were smuggled into Russia and carried on lorries to locations near airbases before being set upon strategic targets, have changed the game when it comes to perceived threats from hostile nations.

But “the question on minds in London is not whether Britain could stage such an attack but whether it could repel one”, said The Times’ defence editor Larisa Brown.

Given that it would require “months of planning, utmost secrecy and the purchase or smuggling of large quantities of explosives undetected by Britain’s security services”, one senior US diplomat asked, does Iran “really have the capability to pull off an Operation Spider’s Web on foreign soil? I think most of the community doubts that.”

“Yet there was enough concern for America to act”, said The Times.

What next?

The government’s strategic defence review published last year earmarked up to £1 billion for homeland air and missile defence over the next four years.

This week, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch ramped up this pledge to £10 billion over the next 10 years to go towards a “Britannia Shield” that would protect military bases and critical infrastructure from missile or drone attacks.

While defence experts have questioned these figures, for Britain the “bigger problem has been finding the will to confront the Iranians and go on offence against their terror networks. Does protecting US jets and UK Jews fit the bill?”, asked the WSJ.

“The IRGC, like Vladimir Putin, clearly doesn’t think it will pay much of a price for orchestrating terror in Britain – or many other states. Until that changes, even the best defence technology can only do so much.”

While some have accused Zohran Mamdani of antisemitism for his criticism of Israeli government policies, the Democratic New York City mayor recently unveiled a massive new plan to counter Jewish hatred in the Big Apple. It has been both lauded and scoffed at.

What did the commentators say?

The 35-page plan, titled “Tackling Hate: The Mamdani Administration’s Strategy to Combat Antisemitism,” is part of a $7.4 million “citywide commitment to confront antisemitism and to build a New York where Jewish New Yorkers can live their lives authentically on every block, in every neighborhood and across every borough,” Mamdani said in the plan’s introduction. While Jews make up only 12% of New York’s population, the city has the highest concentration of Jews in the world outside Israel.

Mamdani has been accused of antisemitism because he is a “longtime critic of Israel,” said The New York Times. But this report never expressly mentions the ongoing war in the Middle East. Rather, it “recommends continuing and expanding many existing city policies, such as teaching public school students about the Holocaust and providing training to city workers” about Jewish customs. The report’s “omission of any discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reflects the sensitive and fraught politics around the issue.”

What next?

Since the report’s unveiling, some have “welcomed the additional security and education funding but said the strategy glaringly omits the role that anti-Israel hostility plays in fueling anti-Jewish hostility,” said The Wall Street Journal. Others have praised Mamdani’s effort. At a “moment of real and rising antisemitism, extremism and violence across the ideological spectrum, our communities deserve a whole-of-government response,” Amy Spitalnick, the chief executive of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said to the Journal.

Antisemitism remains an ongoing issue in New York City. In 2026 so far, there have been about “223 antisemitic hate crimes, making up more than half of all hate crimes in the city,” said Politico.

Still, while Mamdani’s report does not specifically define “antisemitism,” that may not ultimately be its purpose. It is not the city’s “role to settle a debate over how to define” this, and governments that have “adopted the definition have not seen a reduction in antisemitism,” Phylisa Wisdom, the executive director of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, said in a statement. “No other hate crime category is formally defined by the city.”

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has launched a legal action against Thames Valley Police over search warrants issued for raids on his homes at the Sandringham Estate and Royal Lodge, Windsor, in February. He was subsequently arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office, before being released without charge. The investigation remains ongoing, and Mountbatten-Windsor denies all wrongdoing.

An initial judicial hearing will take place in private on Thursday, though it is not known whether the former prince will attend.

This is the “first time a member of the royal family has challenged the lawfulness of criminal actions against them since Charles I in 1649”, said royal editor Hannah Furness in The Telegraph. “And we all know how that went.”

What did the commentators say?

The review is the “last roll of the dice” to rehabilitate Mountbatten-Windsor’s image, said Furness. Winning would at least “put the idea of his innocence, or injustice, back in the public imagination”. With silence and charity work, he could in time have been able to at least become “unremarkable” in public life. However, this legal action will break that “stalemate”. Ultimately, though, there is only one way Mountbatten-Windsor can re-emerge: by “actually clearing his name”. “No loopholes, no PR – just the truth in the eyes of the law.”

There is an “unusual” form of “gamesmanship” going on here, former senior detective Martyn Underhill told The Times. “In about 50 years in policing I’ve never known legal action against a warrant,” because the threshold required to obtain one is “really quite low”. This looks more like an “effort to try and change the dynamic and narrative, to show he’s fighting back”.

His “calculated gamble” could destabilise wider accusations made against him, said Andrew Tillett in the Australian Financial Review. He will be encouraged by the “weakness” of the police’s “faltering” case against Peter Mandelson, and the failure of US investigators to make the full, unredacted version of the Epstein files available to UK forces.

Mountbatten-Windsor has lost almost everything, and challenging the police “won’t get that back”. But, with “customary arrogance”, he thinks he can “ease some of the shackles on his life in limbo”.

What next?

The former prince will have to finance proceedings on his own, said The Times. Mountbatten-Windsor’s “counter-attack” was made “seemingly without the King’s knowledge”, and Charles has “made it clear” that his brother’s private stipend – “understood to be in excess of £1 million a year” – “should not be used to fund the judicial review”.

“There are several possible scenarios ahead”, said The i Paper. The High Court will establish whether police had “reasonable grounds” for the searches. But even if the police were deemed to have acted unlawfully, “any material gathered in those searches could potentially still be used” against Mountbatten-Windsor.

Alternatively, the court could order that materials from the search be excluded from any case against him, and in the extreme, could award Mountbatten-Windsor compensation and a police apology. However, even if this were the case, “I can’t see that this judicial review would be able to derail the criminal investigation,” solicitor John Hagan told the newspaper.

Conservatives are in “revolt” over a new welfare-discouraging commercial from Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said Fox News. The ad touts Huckabee Sanders’ proposal that “able-bodied adults without dependents” meet employment, volunteer and training standards in order to “continue receiving assistance.” But it has also enraged critics who claim casting a “young white man as the face of welfare abuse” does not “reflect reality.” Given typical conservative support for anti-welfare efforts, the furor over this ad could either signal shifting MAGA policy priorities or prove a warning sign for the GOP ahead of a potentially catastrophic midterm cycle.

What did the commentators say?

The ad depicts the character “Brad,” an “able-bodied white man” who spends his days “avoiding work while relying on taxpayer-funded benefits,” said Fox News. The commercial comes as polling shows “younger men drifting from the Republican Party” during the second Trump administration, said Forbes. But “most of the critics” were silent on the “political risks of the ad in deterring a core demographic in the GOP base” and were instead “simply angry because of the actor’s race and gender.”

Republicans “don’t have the balls to do this ad with ‘Shaniqua’ as the villain,” said far-right pundit Matt Walsh on X — “even though that would actually be an accurate portrayal of the problem at hand.” The ad “seemed to provoke some of the anger” that has fueled President Donald Trump’s political fortunes, said The New York Times: “A feeling among men, and white men in particular, that the country has turned against them.” Although the criticism prompted Huckabee Sanders to “defend the ad,” she did not “address accusations of racism.”

What next?

“Despite MAGA’s outrage,” said The New Republic, “between 52 and 54% of food stamps or SNAP recipients in the state are white, as are 57.8% of those on Medicaid.” And Huckabee Sanders’ program “won’t solve any problems” anyway, since adding work requirements “doesn’t reduce poverty, and in some cases, makes people poorer.”

After having won Arkansas “by more than 30 points in 2024,” Huckabee Sanders is still “favored to win reelection in the red state,” said The New Republic. Her campaign has “continued to air the ad,” said the Times.

The Conservatives have kicked off their conference in Birmingham in a buoyant mood. Four years on from the Liz Truss mini-Budget that shredded the party’s economic credibility, and a mere two years since the party’s worst general election result in history, Kemi Badenoch has “a modest spring in her step”, said Politico’s Noah Keate.

The Tory leader “can point to disarray” in Reform’s ranks, “decent personal ratings” and the establishment of “clear dividing lines with Labour” as “reasons to be cheerful”. But “it’s still a massive road back” for Britain’s “once-dominant” centre-right party.

What did the commentators say?

Last year’s conference “marked a low ebb for the Conservatives”; they were “in a fight for relevance and, perhaps, survival”, said Rob Ford, Sky News’ election analyst. A year on and “things are looking up at last”. The public have “warmed to Kemi Badenoch, soured on Nigel Farage” and the party has hauled itself “back into polling contention”.

Key to this turnaround has been the Tory leader’s stance as the “common sense” candidate, combining low-tax economic policies with a disdain for identity politics and a promise to put “foundation conservative values” at the heart of her offering to the public. Although 50% of voters still do not see her as a prime-minister-in-waiting, her net favourability rating is up 20 points from this time last year, according to YouGov polling in August

“Reports of the death of the Conservative Party now look premature,” political scientist Tim Bale told Agence France-Presse. Yet despite attempts by the Tories and their allies in the media to “create some momentum”, it’s still “too early to talk about a ‘Kemi-naissance’”, with the party itself far less popular than its leader and still four points below its disastrous general-election showing in 2024.

There has been “one clear message” from Badenoch’s public announcements: “that Britain must get off benefits and back to work”, said Robin Ashenden in The Spectator. She had framed this as a moral crusade, saying that a life of work, rather than dependency, is not just “better for society” but “better for the soul”. Badenoch’s lean into Thatcherite “Victorian values”, along with “her customary war-cry of ‘What a lot of nonsense!’ may have increasing voter appeal”.

With its talk of benefits scroungers and repealing the Human Rights Act, the party “the country still regards as toxic is determined to double down on its toxicity”, said John Crace in The Guardian. Badenoch seems “desperate to track ever further to the right and abandon its centre right to Labour and the Lib Dems.” This “feels like madness” but “this conference is all about Kult Kemi”.

What next?

Badenoch has released a 30,000-word treatise, “The Right Way” outlining her core principles. This is “the sacred text of the Badenoch project, designed to underpin this week’s Tory conference, the manifesto and – she hopes – a return to government”, said The Times’ political editor Ben Riley-Smith.

With unfavourable economic headwinds likely to limit Andy Burnham’s ambitious reform agenda, there’s now a question Labour strategists “dare not ask”, said Keir Starmer’s former speechwriter Alan Lockey in Arguably: Has Kemi Badenoch managed to turn her party round like Keir Starmer did his? “Is she, after two years of patient preparation, finally ready to make her move?”

President Donald Trump was impeached twice during his first term. As the midterm elections inch closer, there is impeachment talk in the air again, but this time with a twist. Democrats are now talking about impeaching members of Trump’s Cabinet, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth could be first on the list.

What did the commentators say?

Democrats “stumbled” onto the Cabinet-impeachment strategy thanks to Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, said MS NOW. Massie, who lost his primary election to a Trump-endorsed opponent, introduced articles of impeachment against Hegseth last month. This is a “highly underrated” strategy for forcing accountability on the administration, Massie said to the outlet.

Some party leaders are mum about the idea for now. Democrats “haven’t ruled anything out” if they win the midterms, said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to MS NOW. “And we haven’t ruled anything in.”

Impeaching members of Trump’s Cabinet would be an “effective accountability measure,” said David A. Graham at The Atlantic. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has “done serious damage to American public health,” Hegseth “waged an unauthorized war against Iran” and Attorney General Todd Blanche turned the Justice Department into a “partisan tool for persecuting Trump’s political adversaries.” Cabinet impeachments would focus on “actual administration actions and policy” and avoid a presidential impeachment likely to prove a “dead end.”

An impeachment push could “derail” Democrats’ affordability messaging in the midterms campaign, said Chad Pergram at Fox News. While the party’s “hard left” may demand impeachment “for someone,” this could prove “politically toxic” for scandal-weary voters.

What next?

Hegseth might be particularly vulnerable to an impeachment push, with even GOP members expressing “doubts about his leadership” amid a stalemated war in Iran, said The New York Times. The defense secretary has not “developed any productive relationships, even with Republican members,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) to the outlet.

Impeachment is “not a fetish” for Democrats, said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) to NBC’s “Meet the Press.” It is a “critical tool.” But the party’s higher priorities after November are “getting healthcare to the American people and ending the lawlessness.”

The price of diesel has hit £2 per litre – the most expensive it has ever been – at a third of UK petrol stations, said The Sun.

This is “uncharted territory”, financial analyst Kathleen Brooks told City A.M. Donald Trump has already sent markets into a “frenzy” by threatening to ban diesel exports from the US, said the same paper. Weakened infrastructure for refining diesel and lower reserves than European counterparts mean the UK could be uniquely “exposed” to any further “ripple effects”, including more price rises.

What did the commentators say?

President Trump is trying to bring diesel prices down for US consumers ahead of the midterm elections in November. If he does decide to ban exports of US diesel, it would “hurt the countries which heavily depend” on it, said the BBC, including the UK. But it might also have “unintended effects that could hurt US production” in the longer term.

Trump’s threats have “highlighted Britain’s over-reliance on the goodwill of other countries” for its diesel needs, said an editorial in The Times. Last year, the UK imported more than 50% of its diesel supply, around a sixth of that from the US.

Our infrastructure depends on it: around 10 million cars, a quarter of the country’s trains, 70% of buses, virtually all tractors and “almost 99% of HGVs” run on diesel. Yet the UK has enough reserves to last for only around six weeks, according to International Energy Forum data, compared to around six months for France, Italy, Spain and Germany.

Breaking the £2 threshold for a litre of diesel should “set alarm bells ringing in Downing Street”, said The Telegraph in an editorial. The government’s response so far has been to remove VAT from energy bills in an attempt to cushion the blow to consumers, but this “hardly addresses the fundamental issues”. As a nation, we have “failed to prepare”, allowing our refining capacity to “wither away” to leave us “dangerously exposed” to market fluctuations beyond our control.

The diesel crisis could “deepen” after the UK’s largest refinery shut down production for up to 10 weeks, said energy editor Jonathan Leake in The Telegraph. The Fawley refinery in Hampshire – which produces “one fifth of the fuel used on UK roads” – has closed for planned maintenance, a move that “will add to fears about another diesel price spike hurting drivers at the pumps”.

In the 1980s, the UK had 18 refineries, but that has dropped to just four. Two closures last year – in Grangemouth, Scotland and Lindsey in Lincolnshire – “slashed UK refinery output by about a third”. Now, any closures, planned or unplanned, temporary or permanent, have a “rapid impact on supplies”.

What next?

“Rising diesel costs aren’t just a problem for drivers generally but a wider inflation threat,” said Sky News. Diesel is the “engine of the UK economy” and shortages would heavily disrupt supply chains and lead to costs being passed on to consumers, particularly in the run-up to Christmas. This is the type of inflation that “worries” the Bank of England, which is “widely tipped” to raise interest rates in November.

Taxes on fuel – which account for “just over half of the cost of a litre” – are also set to rise. Hikes planned by former chancellor Rachel Reeves are set to come into effect in January, but her successor, John Healey, should “question the wisdom of raising prices at the pump at a time when they are clearly inflationary in nature”. As such, they are likely to be “scrapped or further delayed” at the upcoming Budget.

As the Israel-Hamas war nears its three-year mark, an outbreak of algae throughout Israel’s desalination plants is threatening the country’s water supplies, which could affect the sewage systems in Gaza. Experts say the ongoing war is likely to exacerbate the problem.

What did the commentators say?

The issue began after a microalgae bloom in the Mediterranean Sea forced five out of six desalination plants on the Israeli coast to shut down, according to Israel’s national water company Mekorot, per CNN. These plants remove salt from seawater, and their closures caused a ripple effect due to the “country’s heavy dependence on desalination for drinking water,” said the outlet. Israel is “arid and has neither big rivers nor abundant rainfall, but its mastery of this technology has made it a water superpower.”

While Israel itself is unlikely to see a shortage of water, it could lead to a compounding crisis in Gaza, which has already seen “many of its pipelines and water infrastructure destroyed during the devastating war with Israel,” said NBC News. The algae currently attacking Israel’s water supplies may actually be caused by the situation in Gaza.

The “discharge of untreated sewage from the Gaza Strip into the sea is contributing to the worsening crisis affecting the Israeli desalination facilities,” the Zalul Environmental Association, an Israeli environmental NGO, told The Guardian. The wastewater “contains nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, which feed microalgae.”

Scientists are “trying to assess possible environmental fallout from Gaza’s destroyed wastewater infrastructure” and determine how much of a role it may have played in the algae bloom, said Middle East Eye. Regardless of the cause, it is a “reminder of the dire humanitarian conditions facing 2 million Gazans,” said The Washington Post. Gazans have “faced severe water shortages and have often resorted to using makeshift latrines.”

What next?

This kind of event will probably keep happening thanks to the steadily warming planet. It’s a “fair estimation that this will not be a once-in-a-lifetime” thing, Edo Bar-Zeev, an associate professor in water research at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University, said to CNN. People “can assume that this will occur more and more through climate change.”

Andy Burnham has promised to “undertake the most ambitious review of Brexit since Britain left the EU”, said Jon Stone in Politico. And, “for now at least, he’s keeping all his options open”.

With different figures within his party arguing in favour of joining the single market, joining the customs union or rejoining the EU altogether, the prime minister is keeping his powder dry, saying only that he hopes to “find consensus” around one option at the UK-EU summit later this year. With nothing yet ruled in or out, there’s “plenty of space for interpretation” about the direction he might take.

What did the commentators say?

Burnham’s pledge undoubtedly marks a “turning point in the story of Brexit”, said Denis Staunton in The Irish Times. He’s signalling a “readiness to rip up Keir Starmer’s red lines on Europe”, which included no return to the single market or the customs union and no unrestricted freedom of movement.

Burnham’s “dramatic shift on Brexit” comes after EU leaders warned him to “tone down British demands to be included in the bloc’s Made in Europe policy”, said Arj Singh, The i Paper’s deputy political editor. The UK’s push for inclusion, in exchange for lower tuition fees for European students, “sparked anger in Brussels” and “underlined the limits” of Labour’s red lines. Days later, Burnham has “used his conference speech to say he was now prepared to drop” them.

The prime minister risks “reopening the bitter division” that followed the 2016 referendum, said Reuters. His “desire to find a consensus will test his political skill in a nation still scarred by the tumult” of Brexit. But the timing makes sense: Donald Trump’s geopolitics are “reshaping alliances around the globe”, and the “threat of war in Europe” adds weight to an argument for a closer UK-EU relationship.

A commitment to stronger ties with the EU is “vital” for the Labour’s chances at the next general election, said Tom Brufatto of campaign group Best For Britain, on Politics Home. Voters would “resoundingly reward” any parties “who take the plunge”, increasing support by 7%, according to a Best For Britain/YouGov poll.

Rejoining the EU would first require another referendum and then “potentially years of de-Brexit negotiations”, said The Guardian. And Brussels would want “cast-iron guarantees that the UK wouldn’t just walk out again”.

It would create a “decade of trading chaos”, said Matthew Lynn in The Spectator. Any discussions will “take a long time”, and require Burnham to win at least one election while they are ongoing, and the EU would almost certainly demand “tough terms”, including signing up to the Euro. Then, in all likelihood, “all our other trade agreements will have to be cancelled”. The last thing that the British economy needs is a “decade of wrangling over the issue all over again”.

What next?

It’s obvious that none of this can be “rushed,” said The Independent’s editorial board. Even in the Labour Party, most recognise that “rejoining is no simple matter”.

There have been calls for Burnham to make reversing Brexit his top policy pledge at the next election but it would not be “right or sensible to try to fight an election on a single issue”. Labour’s next manifesto needs “imaginative solutions” and “now is the time to open up the debate” and “start clearing the way forward from Brexit”.

Who wants to see the new, nearly four-hour documentary about Elon Musk? Not Musk.

The former trillionaire is threatening a defamation lawsuit over explosive claims in Alex Gibney’s film “Musk.” Social media companies are hesitant to allow promotion on their platforms, and Hollywood is whispering that the tech mogul’s power might keep the public from opportunities to see the film.

What did the commentators say?

“So much for free speech,” said The Hollywood Reporter. Social media platforms YouTube, TikTok and Meta’s Instagram and Facebook all initially declined to run the trailer for “Musk,” though YouTube and Meta later backtracked. (Musk-owned X is not accepting ads for the movie.) A hesitance to provide publicity is a problem for the film because “traction on social media is key” to the success of most modern documentaries.

The social media freeze-out comes amid “concerns” that “political considerations are influencing the rollout” of the film, said The New York Times. “Musk” is set for an Oct. 9 release in the United States, but Universal “has yet to announce any release dates” overseas. The studio counters that it “simply needs more time” to schedule foreign markets.

Audiences at this month’s Venice Film Festival “loved” the documentary that depicts Musk as a “plutocrat with questionable judgment and unchecked power,” Lorraine Ali said at the Los Angeles Times. There was a time when Musk would have been featured as a forward-thinking entrepreneur. Now audiences want to see depictions of the “dark side of wealth, fame and alleged genius.”

What next?

“Musk” is scheduled to stream on HBO Max after its theatrical run. But Gibney is nervous the streamer “may not be inclined to back the film” following the merger of Paramount with HBO parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, said The Atlantic.

Paramount is reportedly seeking funding from Musk to help complete the merger. The tech mogul, meanwhile, is making his feelings clear about the film and its future. “Musk” is a “hit piece that misses,” he said on X. The documentary is guilty of the “fatal sin of being boring for four hours.”

Political campaigns are awash in cash, thanks in part to U.S. Supreme Court decisions declaring that campaign contributions are a form of free speech. Montana voters are poised to push back with a proposed ban on corporate political spending.

What did the commentators say?

The November ballot measure is an attempt at “threading the needle” of the Supreme Court’s precedents, said The New York Times. Corporations that violate the proposed ban would have their state corporate registration revoked.

States, backers argue, have the right to “define corporations as ‘artificial persons’” that lack First Amendment rights, said the Times. Montana is not “necessarily associated with anticorporate sentiment.” But advocates say there is “widespread frustration” over the “influence of special interests” in Big Sky politics.

“There’s just one catch” to the Montana plan, Jessica Levinson said at MS NOW. The Supreme Court has found that “corporations should be treated the same way as individuals” when it comes to the First Amendment rights associated with political contributions. Montana is “attempting a clever solution” to the problem of money in politics, but even if voters approve the measure, “it is doomed to fail in court.”

Money “will always play a role in politics,” John Westenberg said at the Missoula Current. The Montana plan, however, would be a “huge step” to keep that money “honest” and stop political spending by “artificial persons” like corporations, nonprofits and trade unions to feed the “dark money machines.” The aim is to “take dark money out of Montana politics.”

What next?

Nearly three-quarters of U.S. citizens believe “money in politics is a problem,” said Bloomberg. As such, other states are joining in the effort to limit corporate political spending. Hawaii has already passed a Montana-style law, which is being challenged in court. And “reformers” in Oregon are pushing for a similar ballot measure, said Oregon Public Broadcasting. Such efforts have “national momentum right now,” Jason Kafoury of Honest Elections Oregon said to the outlet. Expect the Supreme Court to offer the last word.

For most of this century, homebuyers could depend on relatively low mortgage rates at no more than 5%. But that’s no longer true. The average 30-year mortgage rate hit 7% this week, and high rates may be here to stay, which could profoundly impact an already dysfunctional U.S. housing market.

What did the commentators say?

The 7% rate has no significance “beyond the psychological effect of the round number,” said NPR. But it reflects a “sharp rise” in rates in recent months that is “squeezing the budgets of homebuyers” and seems likely to “deepen the freeze” on a housing market that has been stymied by high prices in recent years. Rising rates “contributed to a 2% decline” in existing home sales in August.

High mortgage costs are “forcing home sellers to slash prices,” said Bloomberg. Nearly a fifth of homes for sale “had a price cut in August,” the highest rate since the pandemic. It is true that current rates are “far from the double-digit levels of the 1980s,” but they discourage homebuying when combined with other factors like “stubborn inflation, rising energy prices” and “record-high home prices.” Plus, would-be buyers who can afford the higher rates are “coming to the table expecting to negotiate the price down.” The result: Home sellers are “feeling the strain.”

More buyers are moving to adjustable-rate mortgages “where the rate changes typically after five, seven or 10 years,” said Marketplace. That can “make a big difference in affordability” for buyers but is also risky. An adjustable-rate mortgage that starts out at 6% today “could, depending on the term, in five years be 8.10%,” Susan Wachter, of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said to the outlet. Many buyers take the adjustable mortgages betting that rates will drop, and “they’ll be able to refinance,” said Marketplace. Trying to predict future rates “can be a dangerous game,” Longbridge Financial’s Chris Mayer told Marketplace.

What next?

The high rates may play a role in November’s midterm election, said Politico. President Donald Trump in 2024 “vowed that interest rates on mortgages would drop to 2%.” His promise is “looking less likely than ever” to come to fruition.

Rates briefly dipped under 6% in February before the Iran war began, said CNN. But somebody buying a house at today’s rates would likely “pay hundreds of thousands of dollars more in interest” over the life of a 30-year mortgage. There may be no going back to the good old days of six months ago. “Expect 7% as the new normal,” economist Lawrence Yun said in a blog post for the National Association of Realtors. Unsurprisingly, this is putting off potential homebuyers: Mortgage applications “fell 11% last week from the same week a year ago,” said CNN.

Near-term relief is unlikely. Rates are “far more likely to go up than down by the end of the year or in the next month or two,” Realtor.com’s Jake Krimmel said to CBS News.

What do “Seinfeld,” “The Office” and “Family Guy” have in common? Each was used in a recent White House promotional video for the launch of what the administration has dubbed Trump TV, an official White House broadcast that has thus far largely been limited to previously recorded MAGA speeches and events.

Notably, the splashy, if dubiously copyright-compliant, rollout of what the White House has deemed its “Essentials Station” comes as the Trump administration escalates its running altercation with mainstream media outlets. So what exactly is Trump TV, who is it for, and what does this White House have in mind for the programming’s future?

What did the commentators say?

Trump TV was “born of necessity” after multiple major media companies “boycotted the White House press pool in response to the president’s ban on certain outlets,” said New York magazine. But unlike the “Oprah Winfrey Network-esque conservative media company Trump (allegedly) envisioned” as a potential outlet over the years, Trump TV is, for now, “just a dinky livestream on the White House YouTube page.” Still, the launch of an “administration-operated, around-the-clock video channel” places Trump TV “at the center of a coverage gap” caused by multiple major networks pulling out of the White House press pool, said USA Today.

“Not every big moment has made it on your tv,” said the White House in a social media post announcing the new service. “Now it can.”

In addition to streaming on YouTube, “Trump TV” is also featured on the White House website, alongside a “box titled ‘White House Live,’” which noted that it was “‘Off Air’ but advised viewers to ‘Stay Tuned,’” said The Hill. The window also features a “chyron reading official updates” and “statements praising Trump’s actions as president, among other texts.”

In launching Trump TV, the president “follows in Hugo Chávez’s footsteps,” said Al Jazeera. The former Venezuelan autocrat, with his “Hello, President” television program, “sang, took calls from viewers, attacked his opponents and sometimes announced major policy live on air.”

The White House is “drawing sharp backlash from critics” over the platform’s launch, said NJ.com. After banning independent media from the White House, President Donald Trump has launched “what is quite literally state-run TV,” said California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), rumored to be mulling a presidential run himself in 2028, on X. Trump is “drowning out the fact that he and his corrupt administration are failing the American people.”

Trump TV “peaked at 8,000 viewers” for its Monday evening premiere before “dipping to around 4,000,” said The Independent. “Some 1,600 people” tuned in the following morning, “when footage showed the president signing an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico ‘Gulf of America’”

Some MAGA loyalists have “supported the launch of Trump TV” for “punching holes in the mainstream media propaganda,” said The Independent. Trump critics have “lost their minds over Trump TV,” said conservative commentator Benny Johnson, per the outlet. “The White House has perfectly trolled them again.”

What next?

It remains “unclear” whether the streaming platform will air “all current events and conferences involving the president,” said NJ.com. “Weirdly,” said New York magazine, Trump TV “did not even air the president’s big address” to the United Nations on Tuesday. “So far,” said Axios, Trump TV has “no anchors or news ticker.” It does display “banners asking viewers to text White House officials,” although it’s “unclear who staffs the channel, makes programming decisions or sets its schedule.”

Given this “calamitous start to life after the press pool,” The Daily Beast asked the White House if it “intends to try to fix the viewership issues” or if it is “waiting to patch things up with the TV networks,” said the outlet. The White House, to date, has not responded.

China is being quietly credited with keeping energy prices down in the wake of Donald Trump’s war with Iran, in turn helping prop up the global economy while cementing its own power on the world stage.

By tapping into its huge reserves of oil, “China kind of saved the day,” and helped the world avoid the “doomsday scenario” when the Strait of Hormuz closure choked off 20% of global energy supply, said Paul Gruenwald, global chief economist at S&P Global Ratings.

What did the commentators say?

For decades, China heavily depended on imported crude to meet its ever-growing energy needs. But over the past few years Chinese President Xi Jinping has sought to address what has long been viewed in Beijing as a major security weakness by spending billions of dollars amassing the world’s biggest stockpile of oil.

Last year China’s reserves were estimated at nearly 600 million barrels bigger than the US. This enabled it to dramatically cut its oil imports when the war in the Middle East broke out, keeping a lid on global oil prices and safeguarding its own economy.

Not only has this enabled China to weather the global commodities storm resulting from the closure of the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, it has seen China emerge as a “clear winner” from Donald Trump’s foray into the Middle East, said The Guardian, citing the findings of a report from geopolitical consulting firm Asia Group.

Long thought to be vulnerable to oil supply shocks, the conflict has made clear how China has “managed to transform that weakness into a surprising source of geopolitical power”, said The New York Times.

This has “big implications for the global energy industry, where oil producers like Saudi Arabia and the United States — not importers like China — have traditionally held most of the cards”.

“If they come to feel that in this domain, they are less vulnerable than they and many others may have assessed previously, that is a profound and important shift in one of the key inputs to how China makes decisions about its global strategy,” said Julian Gewirtz, a former White House and State Department official who worked on China issues in the Biden administration.

What next?

While the Iran crisis has vindicated Xi’s investment strategy, the “buffer” of China’s stockpile of oil, which has helped the world avoid a far deeper energy crisis up to now, “may face a test as Beijing shows signs of resuming purchases”, said CNBC.

Should this happen, the drag on global growth from elevated oil prices would deepen well beyond current estimates, said Krishna Srinivasan, director for the Asia and Pacific Department at the International Monetary Fund.

But the Iran crisis has also shown how “China’s muscular energy policy has afforded Beijing a major tool it could use, for instance, in a war over Taiwan”, said The Wall Street Journal.

“In the future, such power could be wielded in a clash with the US In the event of a war over Taiwan”. For example, “Beijing’s ability to slash oil imports for months on end could help China resist efforts by the US and its allies to block energy shipments”.

For China, “oil is not the Achilles’ heel we thought it was,” said Michal Meidan, head of China energy research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. “I think a lot of people thought China was very, very vulnerable to oil supply disruptions. It’s not.”

China and the U.S. are locked in a race to develop the most powerful artificial intelligence models. Industry leaders are increasingly calling for regulations and guardrails to keep the technology from threatening humanity, which means the competing nations must collaborate to rein in AI as it gallops ahead. But observers are skeptical that Washington and Beijing can find the will to do so.

What did the commentators say?

AI safety is “on the agenda” for this week’s summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, said The Associated Press. But both sides “see the other as the problem.” Trump has warned that “any efforts to regulate the technology would help China,” while Chinese leaders see talk of new safety rules as an attempt to slow their nation’s rapid advances so that the U.S. can create a “monopoly” on AI.

Some experts say Trump and Xi do not need to come to a full agreement on rules to create room for a slowdown. The two leaders “just need to create political space by acknowledging AI poses risks to both countries,” said Samm Sacks, a fellow at John Hopkins, to the AP.

Chinese leaders don’t see AI as an “existential threat to humanity,” said Kyle Chan, of the Brookings Institution, at The New York Times. The two countries have different anxieties. U.S. companies like Anthropic and OpenAI use AI to “develop even better AI systems,” creating concerns about a “feedback loop” in which humans “no longer have control over the process.”

Chinese companies like DeepSeek and Moonshot, by contrast, have “limited access to AI computing power” and so see that tipping point as being a “long way off.” Beijing is more worried about AI being used to spark a “mass movement powerful enough to topple the Communist Party.” It will be hard for the two countries to find common ground on the issue “without a baseline level of mutual understanding.”

Beijing would be “perfectly happy to watch Washington scare America into slowing itself down,” said Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) at the National Review. China’s Communist leaders are “actively working to exploit Americans’ fears” about the technology, and Beijing wins every time the U.S. “makes itself slower, more expensive and more afraid to experiment.” Washington is “flirting with exactly that mentality on AI.”

What next?

The U.S. is proposing an “emergency AI hotline” with China, said Axios. “More transparency” between the world’s AI superpowers is “very important," said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to reporters, per the outlet.

Still, neither nation “expects a breakthrough” at this week’s Trump-Xi summit, said The Economist. The growing risks posed by artificial intelligence “demand more urgency” than either side is bringing to the table. Until that urgency arrives, the “best hope is that the two sides keep talking.”

“What is the point of the Liberal Democrats?” asked Joanna Williams in The Times. Even those at the party conference weren’t sure: a Lib Dem council leader said the party was “lacking ambition”, while MP Roz Savage wondered why they were “struggling for relevance at precisely the moment when so many people feel powerless”.

During his headlining speech, leader Ed Davey campaigned for an anti-Reform firewall, income tax cuts and a closer proximity to the EU. Yet despite achieving a record number of MPs at the last election, the party is sliding in the polls and its blueprint to Westminster, for many members, is blank.

What did the commentators say?

“Younger readers may not believe me, but we used to take the Lib Dems seriously,” said Gareth Roberts in The Spectator. “Or at least more seriously.” We are surrounded by swathes of “repulsive or infuriating politicians”, but even so Davey is “merely laughable”. There have been calls from within for him to step down, but such is the predicament of the party, these outbursts “hardly seemed to register”.

Davey’s campaign to rejoin the single market in his closing speech underlines how the party’s strategy is “built on sand”, said columnist Sherelle Jacobs in The Telegraph. Traditionally, yes, the issue of Brexit proved the “ultimate gift” for the Lib Dems, allowing them to move to the left economically, while profiting as the “right tore itself apart”.

But now, the subject ranks “as a fifth-order issue” electorally, and placing it at the core of the party’s agenda “just seems odd”. In practical terms, Davey’s claim that his personal allowance reforms would be offset by “growth from a new EU partnership” would take “years to negotiate”, and also just “doesn’t seem credible”. The Lib Dem leader, aptly, is using the nostalgia of “exhuming the corpse of remainerism” to mask the problem that his party’s present “relevance is too terrifying to face”.

Given the current political climate, it “ought to be a boom time for Britain’s traditional third party”, said The Times. Labour is “tilting left”, the Conservatives are also “struggling for national relevance”, and Reform UK is embroiled in funding controversies. But Davey is leading them “towards irrelevance”. At the conference, all he could offer was a “grab-bag of woke talking points”, and he strayed from the popular issue of social care to pursue economic growth, “the standard fallback for the fiscally challenged (see Reeves 2024)”. Davey’s vision is “neither liberal nor democratic. Nor, for that matter, is it ­especially inspiring.”

Unlike other parties, the Lib Dems don’t crave the “sugar rush of going for temporary poll bounces”, said Ailbhe Rea, political editor of The New Statesman. Davey has a “seat-first, not vote-first, strategy”, a source told the outlet. His strategy is founded on local initiatives, building support “typically from councils up”, said Rea, and efficiently targeting only seats it can win. The party had 11 MPs when Davey took over in 2019, and rose to 72 after the 2024 general election, and made gains in “eight consecutive sets of local council elections”. This approach may grind out “unimpressive poll numbers”, but produces “sustainable gains”: “many of the party’s MPs are fully behind both it and him”.

The strange thing is, if a general election were to be called tomorrow, the Lib Dems would “probably repeat their record-breaking performance of 2024, or get very close”, said Hugo Gye in The Economist. They have “firmly dug in to their core areas”, such as Richmond-upon-Thames, where the Lib Dems won all 54 positions in recent council elections.

More pressingly, the party thrives most by riding a certain “brand of eccentricity”, appealing to a concoction of “wealthy, woke and weird” constituents who advocate for “cultural leftism” but hold “centrist views on the economy”. It may have strength in this demographic, but it’s difficult to see where the party will go next. “Not everywhere can be Richmond.”

What next?

Davey has a “balance to strike”, said Rafael Behr in The Guardian. He must hammer home his “progressive credentials” by showing his “anti-Farage firewall will be suitably robust”, and consolidate support among former Tory voters in “blue wall” seats that his economic policies will hold.

Local elections next year will test whether Davey’s method is working and a by-election win “may settle Lib Dem nerves”. Currently, while it is difficult to pinpoint the purpose of the party, if its firewall tactic works its “utility to British democracy won’t be in doubt”. Then again, you can only find out if it holds water “when you need it most, and then you don’t get a second chance”.

Andy Burnham, stateside for the United Nations General Assembly, is meeting Donald Trump for their first in-person talks today in a stronger position than Keir Starmer was as a new PM. Trump is increasingly unpopular at home, and preoccupied with the Iran war and looming midterm elections, while the UK has been strengthening its ties with Europe and Canada. “It’s completely different this time,” one official told Politico. “There’s no drama about having to stay in his good books.”

But Trump has previously called Burnham “extremely liberal” and dismissed him as the “mayor of a town”. And if his past meetings with world leaders are anything to go by, there’s still plenty of potential for drama.

What did the commentators say?

In 2024, sucking up to Trump was the “medicine required”, one UK diplomat told Politico. Burnham, however, has inherited “an established relationship” with no need to lavish praise. His job is therefore to “fix the mess of unresolved threads left behind” – and “avoid a barrage of abuse on Truth Social”.

He is “not expected to take a big list of deliverables or policy goals”. His aim, according to senior UK officials and MPs, is: “Get in, smile, press the case for Ukraine, and try to leave without a major upset.” Officials are hopeful that he will encounter a “more pro-Ukraine atmosphere” in Washington, after the House of Representatives approved a “sweeping Russia sanctions bill”. Burnham hopes to persuade the US to increase the deliveries of air defence interceptors – but it’s unlikely that Ukraine is even in the top five of Trump’s priorities, said Daniel DePetris in The Spectator.

Burnham’s more assertive approach seems to be working so far, said Reuters. His team pointed out that Trump “did not push back” against Burnham’s ban on imports from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. But Trump is a “notoriously fickle and unpredictable” man who “spreads trade tariffs like confetti”, said The i Paper. Burnham will have to avoid the “minefield” of some of Trump’s “fixations”, such as North Sea oil and defence spending.

There is “no suggestion” Burnham will go further and emulate “the more combative approach” of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, said The Guardian’s Pippa Crerar. Nor would it be wise to; Trump is still angry the UK didn’t join him in strikes on Iran, and recent comments on the Falklands and Irish unification “suggest his displeasure has not abated”. The meeting will be “fraught with tension” with “potential for further clashes”. The US president might be weaker domestically, but he’s still in office for two more years. For now, “the power still rests with Trump”.

What next?

Even if Trump and Burnham hit it off, the meeting itself “isn’t the most important event”, said DePetris. “What truly matters is the follow-through.”

The Iran war remains “a dark storm cloud hovering over US-UK relations”, and with Houthi rebels continuing to advance, effectively controlling Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, Trump could grant Saudi Arabia’s request for military intervention. In that case, “you can be almost certain the Trump administration will expect the UK to get involved”, and Trump could slam Burnham’s government for insufficient defence spending in next month’s Budget. Remember, things were fine between Trump and Starmer – “until they weren’t”.

President Donald Trump won the White House in 2024 while making inroads among Latino voters despite his ardent promise of an immigration crackdown. Two years later, the reality of that crackdown is producing a backlash that could cost Republicans control of the House and Senate.

What did the commentators say?

There is “mounting political worry” among Republican candidates that the president’s “heavy-handed” immigration policies will “cost the GOP” in November, said Axios. The clearest sign of that backlash: Rep. Maria Salazar (R-Fla.) unveiled a new ad warning Trump that his policies have gone too far for Latino voters. “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today,” she said in the advertisement.

The 900,000 Cuban-American voters who live in Salazar’s Miami-Dade County district have long proven “reliably Republican,” said Al Jazeera, but last year’s election of Miami’s first Democratic mayor in three decades “fueled speculation of a political shift under way.” One reason for that shift: The Trump administration has deported Cubans “who have lived in the country for decades,” often to “third-party countries, where they have no ties.”

Latino Americans are “losing faith in the American Dream,” American University’s Diana Orcés said at The Conversation. Two years ago, surveys showed that 52% of those voters believed that “if you work hard, you’ll get ahead” in the United States. The number has slipped to 40%. They now feel “less safe, less welcome and more like strangers in their own country” no matter whether they are Republican, Democrat or independent.

The 2024 vote was trumpeted as the beginning of a “permanent political realignment in the GOP’s favor,” Ed Kilgore said at New York magazine. But the president has since “alienated a lot of the voters” he won in that election. A poll for The Cook Political Report and TelevisaUnivision found Democratic candidates leading among Texas Latinos by a two-to-one margin. Another survey by Hart Research and Univision found Democrats leading among Florida Latinos by 13 percentage points. A Democratic victory in November “will owe a lot to Trump’s actions alienating Latinos.”

“It’s all about dignity,” León Krauze said at The Washington Post. Democrats will have to tread carefully. Latino voters broadly have “nuanced” views on immigration and will need to be courted not just on migration issues but also with “promises of economic renewal.”

What next?

Latino voters have the “most voting power” in the districts where “Congress will be decided,” Juan Wulff said at VoteHub. Those voters could be a “defining force, especially in deciding the makeup of the House.”

But Latinos are “not necessarily turning Democrat,” said American Community Media. The demographic appears to be “swingy,” Equis Research’s María Isabel Di Franco Quiñonez said to the outlet. This, said the outlet, makes those voters “one of the most consequential and unpredictable electorates in the 2026 midterms.”

Donald Trump has hailed a deal that gives the US “permanent control over security” in Greenland, while backing down from threats to annex the semi-autonomous Danish territory.

The US president said on Friday that “from now on, no US adversary can EVER have a base in Greenland, have a military presence in Greenland, or make sensitive investments in Greenland, without our express written approval”. This was an “infinite life agreement”, he added.

The deal has been described as a win for both sides but, as ever with Trump, “the devil is in the details” and “the details about this deal are still scarce”, said Sabrina Escobar on Barron’s.

What did the commentators say?

The US has made it easier to “control encroachment on Greenlandic soil by China, Russia and other adversaries” and the Arctic is undoubtedly “a safer place for America and its allies today”. For this, “due credit must go to” President Trump, said The Economist.

A 1951 agreement with Denmark already granted the US military exclusive privileges over the “valuable strategic territory”, but the new deal is “a hedge against the risk that Greenlanders might someday declare independence from Denmark”, said The Wall Street Journal. Having said that, it is still “fair to ask whether this deal could have been reached without the collateral damage to US alliances from Trump’s bullying threats”.

“It is perhaps a triumph of optics,” said Marc Jacobsen on Al Jazeera. Despite all the backslapping in the White House, changes to the existing arrangement appear to be “relatively limited”. This is “a testament to the negotiating skills of the Danish and Greenlandic representatives”, who have given Trump “the opportunity to claim the victory he needed, while preserving sovereignty”.

Henrik Dahl, a Danish member of the European Parliament for the Liberal Alliance, agreed that, in practice, little appears to have changed. “A wise Danish politician once said that you can achieve almost anything if you are willing to let others take the credit,” he told The Telegraph. “So let us give Donald Trump the credit for something very close to the status quo. From a Danish and Greenlandic perspective, it could hardly be much better.”

Despite the US president’s “long-standing rhetoric on invading and annexing Greenland”, this deal “once again shows the limits of Trump’s disruptive politics”, said Swasti Rao in The Print. “The theatrics he created were annexation, but the transaction he got was substantive access,” though Trump still remains “extraordinarily capable of collapsing the distance between the two”.

What next?

The deal is expected to be signed on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, and will still need to be approved by legislators on both sides of the Atlantic before it comes into force.

But there are hopes the agreement “signals a weather change in Washington”, said The Times. The ongoing war in Ukraine and the chaos on energy markets caused by US and Israeli strikes on Iran “require a united Western response”, so Nato allies must now lay the matter of Greenland “to rest” and “humour the president and let him savour his supposed victory”.

Rebuilding trust will take time, however, said Tillie Martinussen, a former Greenlandic MP. “Even if it’s your best and brightest and strongest sled dog, and it turns around and bites you, you can never trust that dog again.”

“Wouldn’t it be lovely if Canada was the 28th state of the European Union rather than the 51st state of the United States?” asked Finnish President Alexander Stubb recently. That fanciful notion now appears to have taken a step closer to reality. In a speech to the European Parliament, the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney welcomed the European Union’s ambition for Canada to become its first “associate member”, calling for closer cooperation on defence, critical minerals and energy security.

His comments came a day after President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen proposed “opening the door” to Canada’s associate membership – “a status that does not currently exist”, said the BBC.

What did the commentators say?

The “not entirely straightforward case for CanadEU predates Trump”, said The Economist last year. “Canada is vast and blessed with natural resources but relatively few people, while the EU is small, cramped and mineral-poor.” Its Arctic border with Russia presents shared strategic interests with Brussels, while, culturally, Canada’s social-welfare state and social-democratic foundations align with the values of European democracies.

These arguments have only grown stronger since the start of Trump’s “combustive, combative second term”, said Ishaan Tharoor in The New Yorker. So much so that “a conversation once consigned to academic circles and the parlour rooms of Brussels and Ottawa has entered the mainstream”.

In the face of a hostile Trump administration waging an all-out tariff war with its biggest trading partner to the north, the thinking in Ottawa is simple, political scientist Bruno Maçães told The New Yorker. “If you cannot change your neighbour geographically, change it institutionally.”

Carney has ruled out Canada becoming a full EU member or joining the single market, even if such a thing were possible. But associate membership could, in theory, allow Canada to tap into Europe’s strategic supply chains in key sectors such as energy, AI, critical minerals needed for batteries or semiconductors and, crucially, defence. Underwater cables could be laid under the Atlantic linking data centres and cloud storage, and new pipelines could redirect Canadian gas to meet Europe’s ever-growing needs.

What next?

One Canadian official involved in the talks said in The Wall Street Journal this is a “tectonic change” that would be brought about by “working groups and bureaucracy”. “It’s terribly unsexy but terribly consequential nonetheless.”

Canada is already the first non-EU nation to join the bloc’s defence procurement programme, said Anand Sundar, from the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank. But if European leaders really “want to shift the relationship into a new gear”, they will have to rethink their arms-length attitudes towards third countries, “particularly in defence and security, where both sides’ dependence on the US runs deepest”.

And while Canada’s economy is “increasingly interested in the European market, diversification away from the US will not come overnight”, said Peggy Corlin for Euronews. “Geography, after all, matters.”

President Donald Trump last week promised to send a $5,000 check to every U.S. adult — but only if Republicans win the midterm elections. Polls prove voters are skeptical, Trump’s GOP allies in Congress are leery and experts say a mass payout might add to the growing national debt. The president, meanwhile, says the payments will “happen 100%.”

What did the commentators say?

Polls show people “narrowly oppose” the checks and “don’t expect them to materialize,” said Axios. Sixty-one percent of likely voters doubt Trump will keep his word and feel it’s unclear “whether Republicans have the will to make” the checks a “reality.” The pledge looks like a “publicity stunt, and I don’t think that it’s ever gonna happen,” one voter said to Fox News. The president made previous vows to send out big checks — $5,000 from DOGE savings, $2,000 tariff rebates — that never came. “This isn’t America’s first rodeo with Trump’s check promises,” said Axios.

The $1 trillion-plus cost of Trump’s financial guarantee “would be enormously expensive to fulfill,” and there is little sense of where the money would come from, said The New York Times. The “conceit” of the aborted DOGE and tariff check pitches was that “money to pay for them was already available,” but the “envisioned funding sources proved illusory.” The president did deliver big tax cuts last year in the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” but that was provided by “reducing federal spending on healthcare and food assistance for poor Americans.”

Funds for $5,000 checks would not come “from taxpayer money,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said to NBC News. Cash could come from sources like the administration’s new stake in chipmaker Nvidia or the “Trump Platinum Card” that lets wealthy foreigners pay $5 million to extend their U.S. visas. “We’re going to pay that money to the Americans.”

There are “reasons to be skeptical” of Trump’s claims, Larry Persily said at the Anchorage Daily News. The federal government is already $40 trillion in debt, and the president “lacks the legal authority to issue a dividend on a whim, whether it’s $5 or $5,000.” There are more honest options on the ballot than to “vote Republican and wait for the $5,000 check that will never arrive.”

What next?

Trump doubled down on his commitment this week. The U.S. government is “taking in tremendous amounts of money,” he said to reporters, per USA Today. He will not press to send out checks before the election because “our country will be in shambles” if Democrats win the midterms. But the “$5,000 is going to happen” if Republicans win.

Russian voters joke that, if there’s a “special military operation” in Ukraine, there’s now a “special electoral operation” for their parliament, said The Economist. Polls open for the Duma ballot on 18 September – the first parliamentary election since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine – and, despite ever greater public opposition to the war, Vladimir Putin’s grasp on power is unlikely to be shaken.

But battlefield “bodies are piling up” and “smoke is billowing” from oil refineries across Russia hit by Ukrainian drone strikes. The failing Russian economy and continuing fuel shortages are weighing more heavily on the population and, although this election’s outcome is all but certain, the people’s “tacit consent is crumbling”. The educated and politically conscious, who always voted in the past “no longer see much point in the charade”.

What did the commentators say?

“The system of power in Russia is often referred to as ‘managed democracy’”, where “the Kremlin does the managing”, said the BBC’s Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg. Critics dismiss the elections as “neither free nor fair” but, frankly, the Kremlin “doesn’t care what the critics say”. Does this mean there will be “no surprises”? “Far from it.” We’ve already seen a TV debate with “six empty lecterns”.

The election of 450 deputies to Russia’s lower legislative house “gives the impression of some diversity”, with communists, nationalists and “even some self-described liberals” on the ballot, said Brawley Benson on Foreign Policy. “In reality, scope for disagreement is vanishingly small.” United Russia – Putin’s party – holds 70% of the seats and there’s “little tolerance for genuine opposition”. The other Duma deputies are seen as “systemic opposition”, or parties that partially differ in their priorities, but “broadly support” Putin.

“United Russia’s popularity has been hovering around 32% in public opinion polls,” said political science professor Regina Smyth on The Conversation. That’s the lowest percentage since the invasion of Ukraine, and “even then, the number is likely inflated by respondents’ fear of revealing their opposition”. But the Kremlin has long deployed an “arsenal of tools” to retain its grip on power. Gerrymandering, “significant” levels of electoral fraud and, this time round, the banning of eight out of 19 political parties have, in effect, “eliminated non-partisan organised opposition”. The election is not about who wins but what could be telling is seeing how heavily the Kremlin needs to place “its thumb on the scale to maintain its party’s two-thirds majority”.

“Engineering” the outcome too tightly is “not without a risk for the ruling regime”, said The Guardian’s editorial board. “Too blatant” an election steal can be “a sign of weakness”. Already last month, Russia’s supreme court blocked the “old and marginal liberal party”, Yabloko, from participating in the vote. It does not “pose a serious challenge to the regime” but it is opposed to the war in Ukraine. The case for banning it was “spurious to the point of absurdity”. Putin wants to look as if he is well supported but “the harder the Kremlin is seen to work at constructing electoral proof of that support, the less confident it looks”.

What next?

While there may be “little reason to care” about this “snoozefest” election and its “foregone conclusion”, many Russians “are worried” about what might follow, said The New York Times’ Moscow-based correspondent, Valerie Hopkins.

“Rumours of a large, forced mobilisation are rampant”, as the military “burns through” troops in Ukraine. And, for a country that is a major oil producer, it “has found itself in the unusual position of running short of fuel”. Nearly 60% of Russians think the “people around them are experiencing anxiety”, according to a July poll from the state-affiliated Public Opinion Foundation. That’s “a four-year high”. And the state-owned Sberbank reported Russians withdrawing more money from banks this summer “than in the previous six years”.

Most significantly, the Kremlin public relations machine has been forced to switch tack. Picking up on the fact that many people are “struggling and scared”, it has abandoned its old “business as usual” message for a call “to rally around President Vladimir V. Putin and his war”.

Republicans have usually claimed the faith mantle in U.S. politics. This year’s midterm elections are developing along a different path, with Democrats like James Talarico in Texas and Adam Hamilton in Kansas highlighting their religious bona fides on the campaign trail.

What did the commentators say?

“Faith is back in Democratic politics,” Jim Wallis said at Religion News Service. Democrats have often chosen to “ignore, dismiss or even discredit religion” because they did not know how to talk about such values without sounding as though they were “imposing their religion upon a pluralistic society.” But a new generation of “faith-forward” candidates is “reclaiming religion” as a “moral framework for public service.” They talk of faith “with authenticity instead of apology.” There could be broad benefits. “Faith may be our last line of defense in saving, and then restoring, our democracy.”

Democratic Socialists have received a lot of attention this campaign cycle, “but Democratic Christians may prove more influential this November,” Bill McKibben said at The New Yorker. Candidates like Talarico and Hamilton are leading a “resurgence of the once dominant and long-dormant mainline Protestant tradition” in Democratic politics. Their prominence can be seen as a response to the “right-wing evangelical hijacking of the Gospel message” and evangelicals’ embrace of Donald Trump. “Everyone should welcome a new depth to the debate.”

Other faith-centric Democrats in this year’s midterm elections include Iowa’s Sarah Trone Garriott, a Lutheran minister, and Arkansas’ Robb Ryerse, an evangelical pastor. Iowa’s Rob Sand is not a pastor, but his campaign has featured messaging about “how his faith is deeply woven into his public service,” Vote Common Good’s Doug Pagitt said at The Hill.

A “sense of belonging” is important in “both religion and politics,” said Pagitt, but Republicans are “narrowing their definition of who belongs and which faith matters” with conservative Christian Nationalist rhetoric. Democrats have an opportunity to “welcome those Trump is denying.”

Democratic efforts to “reclaim God” are “unlikely to succeed” unless the party moves toward the center, Eric Teetsel said at The Washington Post. Barack Obama embraced religious rhetoric during his rise to the presidency, but once in the White House he advanced causes — abortion access, LGBT rights — that were “at odds with evangelical priorities.” Today’s progressive Christians are “not reaching out to religious voters by taking a more moderate stance” on transgender rights or euthanasia. Trump is problematic, but he has been able to “achieve reasonable policy wins consistent with a Christian understanding of the good.”

What next?

Republicans are pushing back. Democratic candidates “don’t profess the true gospel of Jesus Christ,” Iowa congressional candidate Joe Mitchell said at July’s Family Leadership Summit, per Religion News Service. Democrats also have to figure out how to speak the language of faith without alienating the large number of secular voters who make up their base, said ABC News. Achieving that balance is a “tricky road,” the University of Notre Dame’s David Campbell said to the outlet. Some candidates “do it better than others.”

Does money matter in an election?

In the US, where billions of dollars are spent each election cycle, the answer has long been a definitive yes. But in the UK, in part because of strict campaign spending limits, the jury is still out.

Now, two record-breaking donations to Reform UK totalling £72 million look set to test the theory to its limits.

Despite calls to strengthen legislation going through Parliament to include a cap on individual domestic donations, government sources insist last week’s mega-donations by two crypto-billionaires are “not being viewed inside Downing Street as a game-changing moment in this debate”, said Jack Fenwick on the BBC.

“But people across the political spectrum are now asking whether this massive injection of money will be remembered as a key moment when politics in this country changed.”

What did the commentators say?

“For all the failings of modern British politics, one virtue has largely remained,” said Lee David Evans on UnHerd: “big money plays little role in deciding our elections.”

In total £94.5 million was spent across the entire 2024 UK general election campaign, according to the Electoral Commission. By contrast, $11.6 billion is reportedly going to be spent in advertising alone for this year’s US mid-terms, said Reuters.

It would be “too defeatist (or triumphalist, depending on your perspective) to conclude that these [Reform] donations mean the next election is already over”, said Evans. But they are likely to “leave the ordinary party member feeling more irrelevant”. And if it means Britain’s political parties and politicians have to spend more time fundraising, “then our politics will have become a lot more American – and will be worse for it”.

The focus up to now has been on foreign influence, and “for good reason; it is for UK voters to choose their government”, said The Guardian. But now “ministers must look beyond the narrow question of outside interference” and find ways to limit mega-rich donors paying for “years of polling, advertising, data and staff, before election-period limits apply”.

But this is just “frothing at the mouth and gnashing of teeth”, said Ameer Kotecha, chief executive of the Centre for Government Reform, in The Spectator. There has been a “collective amnesia” from the mainstream parties, who have long received multimillion-pound donations from wealthy individuals and trade unions.

Arguments about how such donations help level the playing field for upstart parties such as Reform aside, these are “huge and potentially transformative sums for British politics”, said Ian Birrell in The i Paper. Yet Labour and the Tories have “only themselves to blame for this toxic situation after their failure to clear the stench of corruption that hangs over Westminster, despite a string of funding and lobbying scandals”.

The two parties have “tinkered at the edges of real funding and lobbying reforms” and now Reform “threatens to wash them both away with a tide of cash from a couple of billionaire crypto kings”.

People also naturally “assume that the donors are driving a bargain – that for a large donation, they expect something in return”, said former Conservative parliamentary candidate Iain Dale on LBC. “In my experience, that is not true, and most donors act philanthropically.”

The only alternative “is for the taxpayer to fund political parties through a regime set up by the state”. I do “wonder how many taxpayers would think this was a wise use of their taxes”.

What next?

Labour’s Angela Rayner has said the law to stop foreign and crypto donations will be used “retrospectively” and “backdated to 25 March” when it was announced.

But surely the “real question here is whether Labour is trying to save British democracy or itself”, said David Maddox on The Independent.

It’s a dangerous game they’re playing. “They may celebrate forcing Reform to hand back £72 million”, but if Reform were to win power “they could easily point to Labour’s actions to justify their own attempt to stop other parties receiving funding”.

Andy Burnham and his ministers “need to beware of creating a tit-for-tat scenario, which could be far worse for British politics in the long run”.

President Donald Trump last week promised to send $5,000 checks to Americans if Republicans win the midterm elections. But he is seemingly intent on making the election a referendum on his increasingly unpopular presidency, doubling down on policies — data centers, tariffs, war with Iran — disfavored by voters. That leads some observers to wonder if he really cares about GOP victories in November.

What did the commentators say?

Trump is “not spending a ton of his mind share on the races,” White House reporter Maggie Haberman said to The New York Times. The president believes GOP candidates “should be doing more to defend what he sees as his many accomplishments,” and he is committing the bulk of his time to “legacy projects” like the “triumphal arch, the ballroom on the White House complex, his goldification of the Oval Office” instead of policy and governance.

Trump has reportedly told advisers that he is “proud” that Republican candidates “don’t do as well when he’s not on the ballot,” said Haberman. His administration’s efforts to exert control over the elections process, however, remains a “significant X-factor” in the midterm election outcome.

House and Senate candidates usually try to “detach themselves from the national brand” when their party’s president is down in the polls, Jonathan Chait said at The Atlantic. Trump is making that “impossible,” launching a national ad campaign “focused on himself” and holding last week’s GOP convention highlighting the “synonymity of the party and its leader” to voters. The president “probably” cares about the midterms outcome “but not enough to permit Republicans to acknowledge his lack of popularity.” All of this makes sense if it is understood that “Trump’s interest in politics is purely egocentric.” But it leaves Republican candidates in a tough spot.

The president’s ideological allies are also perplexed. Trump “often sounds as if he’s campaigning against the Republican Senate,” The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial. GOP seats in “at least six races are in serious jeopardy,” and even traditional red states like Kansas and Nebraska are looking shaky for Republicans. But Trump has made it difficult for his party by launching a “tariff brawl” with Canada and working to oust GOP incumbents like Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. If Republicans lose their majority in the Senate, Trump will be the “main reason” why.

What next?

The president is “signaling that he might not accept the outcome” if Republicans lose in November, Bruce Stokes said at Chatham House. A Democratic win in the House or Senate would likely lead to two years of investigations into Trump’s “corporate donors and alleged ‘pay-to-play’ arrangements, and investments by foreign sovereign wealth funds in Trump family-linked businesses.” That provides a “powerful incentive” for Trump to “undermine the outcome of the election.” American democracy “may never be quite the same again” if the president tries once again to reject an election loss.

Amid stark warnings that artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity by the end of the decade, the heads of the largest AI firms in the US have all backed a proposal by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to slow down development to ensure public safety. Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark went even further, saying all AI software should have a mandatory “kill switch”, so society can “pull the plug” on anything that gets too dangerous.

The warnings sent both tech stocks and Donald Trump into a tailspin. The US president dismissed calls for “guard-rails” on the development of AI as a “SICK conspiracy” that would only benefit China.

What did the commentators say?

We’re long past “more mundane” warnings about AI causing job losses or cheating in exams, said BBC Tech and AI editor Zoe Kleinman. Talk now of “existential threats” to humanity has led to “a chorus of serious voices urging a slowdown”. And yet that’s “far from an easy solution” because it relies on AI companies who “haven’t been behaving responsibly enough” so far. It’s like a bull escaping a farmer’s field and wreaking havoc, leading computer scientist Wendy Hall told Kleinman. “Of course it’s not the bull’s fault – it’s the farmer.”

The problem, said AI sceptic Ed Zitron, is that “nobody has given a substantive explanation of what ‘slowdown’ means”.

Amodei’s broad-brushstroke proposals include independent monitoring of AI models as they’re developed, and global agreements on safety standards and security issues. While laudable, these are seen by many as unrealistic, given the current geopolitical landscape. “The US federal government is committed to a global AI arms race”, and “previous proposed AI legislation has wilted under intense, well-financed corporate lobbying”, said The Guardian.

And then there is China. Its state-run newspaper, Global Times, characterised Amodei’s essay as a thinly disguised effort to restrict Beijing’s tech ambitions, arguing that it was “packed with containment provisions targeting China and is, in essence, a ‘Cold War playbook’ for the AI sector”.

America “appears to be increasingly weaponising its dominance in the sector, seeing it as a strategic asset to be protected”, said CNN’s John Liu. China, which is “lagging in the race”, prefers “a more open model” but has given no indication it would mirror any US slowdown in AI development. With so much at stake, it seems neither side would be willing to back down.

What next?

Anthropic is caught in a “classic prisoner’s dilemma”, said Tim Higgins in The Wall Street Journal. If it “is the only one to heed the call, it falls behind OpenAI”; if all US AI labs follow through on a slowdown, “it could well benefit all of humanity” but this would probably see America “fall behind China”.

With both Anthropic and OpenAI planning to list on the US stock market, some have also questioned if their new-found security concerns are all they seem. “That is the IPO story in essay form: we are the responsible firm; we are the cure; buy the safety premium,” said AI entrepreneur Brian Roemmele on X. For him, these dire warnings are nothing more than a sales pitch.

The first ministers of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland will meet today to affirm their right to seek independence from the UK, with SNP leader John Swinney warning Andy Burnham he “must now be facing up to the idea that he will go down in history as the final prime minister of the United Kingdom”.

In what The Telegraph called an “unprecedented summit” in Cardiff, Plaid Cymru’s Rhun ap Iorwerth, Swinney, and Sinn Féin Vice-President Michelle O’Neill are expected to “put pen to paper on a joint declaration demanding the right to hold independence referendums”.

Labour was routed by Plaid at May’s local elections, the SNP maintained its dominance at Holyrood and Sinn Féin, which won Stormont elections in 2022, is widely expected to do so again when the nation votes next year.

“For the first time ever, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are led by pro-independence first ministers,” said Swinney. “There could be no clearer sign that the status quo is not sustainable – and that Westminster must prepare for a post-UK future. The momentum behind serious constitutional change is undeniable.”

What did the commentators say?

Already boosted by talk of further devolution of powers away from Westminster, two seemingly off-the-cuff interventions last week gave fresh impetus to independence movements ahead of today’s meeting. First, Burnham was forced to row back on comments at PMQs on Wednesday when he suggested he would authorise another Scottish referendum if there were a “clear consensus” in favour of one, wrongly stating that the trigger for a separation vote was “exactly the same situation in Scotland” as Northern Ireland, where the Good Friday Agreement provides for a referendum on Irish unity when there is evidence that a majority would support it.

“Burnham has not read his brief and doesn’t seem to know the basics of the UK Government’s position on the Union,” a source close to Swinney said. “If I was a Unionist I would be very worried.”

Then there were Donald Trump’s comments on Saturday, when he said he would “love” to see a united Ireland, and called the idea of reunification “fantastic”. In so doing, the US president “cast aside decades of White House neutrality”, leading “officials on both sides of the dispute” scrambling to “tamp down the fallout, leverage it or just make sense of Trump’s latest diplomatic curveball”, said Steve Hendrix in the Washington Post.

Trump’s remarks may have been quickly dismissed by No. 10, but they matter because they “potentially change how political actors calculate what can be demanded, defended or negotiated”, said Grace Russo Bullaro on VNY: La Voce di New York, a US Italian English news site.

And in a UK “already arguing over who has the right to determine its constitutional future, his finger on the scale can bear consequences”.

What next?

The legal significance of the so-called Cardiff initiative “lies in the contrast between a shared political claim and three different constitutional positions”, said Edmarverson A. Santos on Diplomacy and Law. “Self-determination, legislative authority to hold a referendum, and a legal entitlement to secede are separate questions.” Scotland and Wales currently require consent from Westminster, while Northern Ireland already has a consent-based mechanism governing the possibility of Irish unity contained in the Good Friday Agreement. “That distinction is essential to understanding what claims of a ‘right to decide’ mean in legal rather than purely political terms.”

Latest polling suggests only around a third of voters in Northern Ireland would currently back reunification, with a similar percentage in Wales supporting independence. Support for Scottish independence is stronger, hovering around half of decided voters. In all three cases, however, support is substantially higher among those aged 45 and under, meaning time is on the side of those seeking the break-up of the UK.

“There seems to always be a troubling aura of delusion and ignorance when it comes to Unionists,” said Steph Brawn in The National. But “whichever way Burnham looks, he should be on edge about a UK that is falling apart around him”.

Twenty-five years on from the most deadly terrorist attack in history, and almost 25 years into the War on Terror, “the world is a less safe place despite our actions”, said Iraq veteran Joslin Joseph on The Hill.

According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, the military interventions after 9/11 led to the deaths of over 900,000 people and cost the United States more than $8 trillion (£5.9 trillion). “Afghanistan and Iraq ended in failure”, said The American Conservative’s David Brady, while “most Americans believe that the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East were a mistake”. Indeed, this was a major part of Donald Trump’s initial appeal: “They lied,” he said of the War on Terror architects in 2016.

But while “there is much to criticise in the war on terrorism,” said Douglas J. Feith in The Washington Post, on its main objective “the success has been remarkable”. There has been no second 9/11. “Terrorists have not exploded skyscrapers, stadiums and power plants across the country” and “they have not transformed America into a police state.”

What did the commentators say?

“Hasn’t Osama Bin Laden gotten everything he wished for?” asked The American Conservative’s Brady. The financial costs “have taken an undeniable economic toll, fuelling unprecedented levels of debt” while the “human costs have soured many Americans, not just on Mideast wars, but on the elites who got us into them”. Syria is even “run by a former member of al-Qaida, who has been welcomed to the White House”.

But the “most costly single event to the US would have been another successful major attack”, said The Guardian’s Jason Burke. The fact that this never came is an “unarguable success of US policymaking since 9/11 and a major failure for al-Qaida”. And despite the obvious economic problems in the US, “no one could argue that the country has suffered a similar fate to the USSR”.

The terrorist group that Bin Laden headed up, meanwhile, faces the question of whether it can replace its ageing fighters. Although this is conceivable, al-Qaida as a brand is “visibly fading”, terrorism expert Behnam Heidenreuter-Said, head of the research centre for Strategic Police Research at Hamburg Police Academy, told Deutsche Welle. In Europe in particular, militant jihadism has become less attractive.

Some analysts “add together the presumed strength of groups in Somalia or Mali that have very loose, historic links to al-Qaida, and warn that their total membership is higher than those loyal to Bin Laden in 2001”, said The Guardian’s Burke. However, “these few thousand young men with AK-47s have little in common with the organisation Bin Laden led 25 years ago, both in aims and capabilities”. The fact that al-Qaida “still exists is an achievement of sorts for the group and, posthumously, for its founder”. But “it should not be described as any victory”.

What next?

A key lesson of 9/11 is that “perils grow when enemies conclude that America lacks the will, capability or staying power to defend itself”, said The Washington Post’s Feith.

But America and the West are again under attack, this time “from a Cold War enemy” in Russia “that watched the US and its allies waste lakes of blood and trillions in treasure enfeebling themselves after 9/11”, said The Independent’s world affairs editor Sam Kiley.

The West is now “spiritually and politically impoverished, deeply indebted and unable to meet new defence needs, and therefore vulnerable”. Vladimir Putin “has Bin Laden to thank for that”.

Polls show data centers are broadly unpopular with both Democratic and Republican voters. President Donald Trump is championing the tech facilities anyway, raising concerns among his GOP allies that he is hitching the party to a losing issue ahead of the midterm elections.

What did the commentators say?

Communities will only reject data centers “if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. The president “knows the polling on data centers is bad,” said Politico, but sees them as one of the country’s “few investment engines humming in an otherwise sputtering economy.” His outspoken defense of the centers puts him at odds with GOP Senate candidates Mike Rogers in Michigan and Ken Paxton in Texas who have worked to “distance themselves” from the Big Tech companies building the facilities. Tech companies have “overplayed their hand and overstayed their welcome,” former White House strategist Steve Bannon said to the outlet.

“Has Mr. Trump lost his populist touch?” Matthew Continetti said at The Wall Street Journal. Not exactly. The president’s populism has “always had a pro-growth streak,” and his support of data centers reflects his belief that “national economic development” is the key to winning the United States’ “strategic competition” with China. AI is “supercharging investment and GDP” and is one area where the U.S. has a “qualitative edge” over its rivals. Republicans should not go down an “antigrowth, antidevelopment rabbit hole” but instead work to address “reasonable” concerns about data centers “without sacrificing economic prosperity and American prestige.”

The president is “losing touch with the public,” David A. Graham said at The Atlantic. Polls show that three-fourths of Americans “oppose a data center being built near where they live.” Politicians as disparate as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have critiqued the centers and put themselves on the side of voters. Trump’s defense of data centers puts him in the “unusual position of misreading, and opposing, a populist groundswell.”

Why the misstep? The president has surrounded himself with Big Tech figures like David Sacks and Larry Ellison, and “his financial disclosures show he’s become more of a tech investor,” said Graham. He is also spending less time giving speeches and hosting rallies where he can directly gauge voter sentiment. Trump is “not hearing from voters who might alert him to how unpopular data centers are.”

What next?

Democrats see Trump’s embrace of data centers as a “gift” ahead of the midterm elections, said The Hill. They are also reminding voters that nearly every Republican in Congress voted for the president’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” that “encourages the construction of new data centers by providing generous tax credits” for their construction. GOP candidates “are taking their cues from the public backlash, rather than the president.” But the president’s fierce advocacy “does cause some challenges for members,” a GOP operative said to the outlet.

Ukraine’s air defences are “dwindling” and Vladimir Putin is “planning to make the most of it”, said international relations expert Rajan Menon in The New York Times. While Russia might be suffering an estimated 30,000 casualties a month and is struggling to replenish its troops, its president appears “adamant he will pay whatever price – human or financial – necessary to win”.

Last week Donald Trump sent his son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow for talks with Putin. Then on Sunday they travelled to Ukraine for the first time to meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who announced plans to widen peace discussions. The Ukrainian president agreed that he wanted to resume trilateral negotiations with the US and Russia in September, amid mounting civilian casualties and intensifying Russian strikes.

But afterwards, senior Kremlin officials “doubled down on Putin’s demands for Ukrainian capitulation”, said the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, claimed the situation “worsens each day” for Ukraine.

What did the commentators say?

This year has brought “a series of Ukrainian successes that led many to believe Kyiv may have regained the initiative”, said Miro Sedlák on the Atlantic Council. But the “technological gap” between Russia and Ukraine is narrowing, “dramatically reducing” the chances of battlefield breakthroughs. Zelenskyy’s dismissal of his “tech-savvy” former defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov sparked “widespread dismay” in Ukraine, while many Russian commentators “cheered the news”.

Ukraine has run out of Patriot missile interceptors, said Menon in The New York Times. Russia is gearing up for “massive strikes” on Ukraine’s energy grid during the winter, aiming to “break morale” and increase pressure on Zelenskyy to “seek a deal”.

Ukraine’s drone strikes are still “inflicting pain on some of the most strategic sectors of the Russian economy”, said Alexander Osipovich in The Wall Street Journal, especially on oil refineries, leading to fuel shortages. “The costs are adding up.”

Ukrainian air strikes are “bringing the war home to a misled, disillusioned public”, said Simon Tisdall in The Guardian. But does “out-of-touch” Putin even realise? He doesn’t use a smartphone or the internet, and relies on “inner circle apparatchiks” and loyalists telling him what he wants to hear. He’s likely to “double down” by becoming more aggressive and expanding the war beyond Ukraine, intensifying “hybrid warfare operations across Europe”, than to sue for peace.

Putin’s understanding of the war is “severely distorted by the Russian military’s systematic lying”, which is emboldening him to insist on “his maximalist demands”, said the ISW.

And if Putin cared about the Russian economy, he wouldn’t have launched the invasion in the first place, said Owen Matthews in The Spectator.

He remains “determined” to keep fighting and Trump has “no new plan for peace” other than letting the war end on Putin’s terms. Zelenskyy is “deluded about Ukraine’s chances of defeating Russia”, and about stopping Moscow’s “slow but relentless advances” and its “ruthless campaign to render Ukraine’s cities unliveable”.

Western sanctions on Russia have “basically failed” because of the West’s “hunger” for its cheap oil and gas. Russia is “stepping up” its defence capacity, while Ukraine’s allies in Europe are also “prioritising their own defence”. Ukraine is heading into “the hardest and most punishing winter of war”, and it’s about to run out of missiles, men and money.

What next?

There are signs that Europe’s “political taboo” on talking to Putin is cracking, said Matthews in The Spectator. Alice Weidel, co-leader of the pro-Russia AfD in Germany, has called for “an open channel to Russia” to reach “an understanding and achieve a peaceful solution”. Putin’s intention seems to be to give Ukraine “a brutal final kicking” before settling the war “on his terms”.

He may try to freeze the conflict while reorganising and re-arming, said Tisdall in The Guardian, or he could accept Zelenskyy’s ceasefire offer “without sincerely committing to a lasting settlement”. But a ceasefire without “cast-iron, pre-agreed security guarantees” could leave Ukraine more, not less, “vulnerable to renewed aggression”.

After the Russian parliamentary elections from 18-20 September “we’ll see whether Putin is going to throw the kitchen sink at this wall to finish it, in his view, once and for all”, said Sky News military analyst Michael Clarke.

President Donald Trump had a clear goal when he appointed Kevin Warsh to lead the Federal Reserve: lower interest rates to spur economic growth. Now Warsh has signaled that the Fed could raise rates to rein in rising prices, putting him on course to clash with the president.

What did the commentators say?

Raising rates before the midterm elections “would create an immediate showdown with the Trump administration,” said The New York Times. The president “has gone to great lengths” to get the Fed to lower rates and Warsh was “handpicked” for the job after an “elaborate audition process” shaped by Trump’s rate preferences.

The financial markets have demanded signs that Warsh is “serious about bringing inflation under control,” said the Financial Times. Warsh last month bent to those demands. Rising prices are “concerning,” and the central bank has “work to do,” he said at a Wyoming Fed meeting, per FT. Observers saw that as a signal that rate increases could come as soon as this month.

The Fed chairman is in a tough spot. The war with Iran has “sent global energy prices soaring,” which has “kept inflation from slowing,” Jonathan Levin said at Bloomberg. The AI spending boom has also “kept prices elevated.” A rate hike before the midterm elections “would surely raise the ire of the White House,” but it would be the “right thing” for Warsh to do in order to bring rising prices under control. It would also “bolster his credibility in the financial markets” if he was seen “putting American households above politics.”

What next?

There is “still significant uncertainty” as to whether Warsh will move to oppose Trump’s pressure campaign and raise rates this month, Jamie McGeever said at Reuters. In addition, the president might benefit if Warsh decides to ignore the White House and set his own course. Trump “doesn’t want higher interest rates,” but rising prices and higher borrowing costs “aren’t particularly palatable” to voters heading into the midterm elections.

“Not everyone is convinced” that Warsh will move to raise rates, said CNBC. The chairman’s comments at Jackson Hole were “only marginally” more hawkish on inflation than his previous remarks, Citigroup economist Andrew Hollenhorst said in a client note, per the outlet. And Trump administration officials maintain that a rate hike is not justified by the current evidence. Core inflation “has remained very, very restrained,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview with CNBC.

Trump’s preferences remain clear. The Fed should lower interest rates “OR I’LL STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT,” the president said in a Truth Social post. The next Federal Reserve policy meeting is Sept. 15.

“The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank – perpetrated by settler terrorists.”

With these words, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband has delivered the “biggest reset in UK relations with Israel for decades”, said The New Statesman political editor Ailbhe Rea.

His decision to introduce a ban on imports from illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank is not without “political risk”, but it marks a determination to “inject values and politics into British foreign policy” that many at home and abroad feel has been lacking for years.

What did the commentators say?

“Ethnic cleansing” and “forced displacement” are often seen as acts of genocide, a word Miliband was careful not to use, said The Independent’s world affairs editor Sam Kiley. In this context, sanctions against settlers seem “disproportionately low and leave the State of Israel off the hook”, but the “effects of the new British legislation will be felt far more widely”.

Israel has reacted strongly and swiftly by announcing four “counter-measures” against the UK, including the closure of the British Consulate in Jerusalem, and the denial of entry to Israel to 12 “British elected representatives and other British nationals involved in antisemitic and anti-Israel activity”. Among these are former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, also hit back on X with: “The Brits have lost it. The Jew hate of their government knows no boundaries and knows no facts”.

With this announcement, Britain “risks moving from being a country capable of connecting Israel, the Gulf, Washington and Europe to one whose positions are increasingly predictable but whose involvement is decreasingly necessary”, said Labour peer Jon Mendelsohn in The Spectator. This could result in a “remarkable loss of influence in pursuit of policies which have yet to demonstrate that they have made peace, Palestinian statehood, regional security, the safety of British Jews or Britain’s national interests more attainable”.

Miliband will hope his Jewish heritage – his mother was a Holocaust survivor who fled to Israel – and “staunch support of Israel’s right to exist will reassure the Americans”, and he “emphasises the difference” between targeted West Bank sanctions and the full boycott of all Israeli goods which Miliband himself opposes, said Rea.

What next?

Aside from the heavily signposted but underreported impact that West Bank sanctions will have on Palestinians living there “there are other potential prices to pay for this muddled gesture,” said The Times View. Not least, in next month’s crucial Israeli general election where a “siege mentality could rear its head, propelling more hardliners into power”. Were this to happen, the current feel-good mood created by joint UK, French and Canadian sanctions could prove “hugely counterproductive”.

Still, Miliband shows no signs of backing down, and intends to use the UN General Assembly later this month to shine the “clearest and harshest spotlight on what is happening and what must change” in Gaza, he told the Commons.

Those who have long claimed the UK has no influence on the world stage are “missing what’s happening”, said former foreign office special advisor Ben Judah on X. By pulling together CANZUK countries (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK) with EU members and their associates into these “issue coalitions of non-US led Westerners”, the UK has “found a role and an influential one, partially as a consequence of America abandoning hers”.

“This move against the Israeli settlement project to attempt to protect the possibility of a two-state solution from an extremist Israeli government is a continuation of this geopolitics.”

This week’s midterm GOP convention in Dallas will be a “rally like none other” and a “truly Historic Event,” President Donald Trump said on Truth Social in June when he first announced his unexpected plans for an off-season conservative confab. Despite Trump’s enthusiasm, not everyone in the GOP is making the trek to Texas — especially during a brutal campaign cycle that has pushed many battleground Republicans into an electoral crouch.

What did the commentators say?

Republicans are “privately questioning” whether Trump’s midterm convention “strikes the right tone amid the electorate’s tightening budgets,” all while “diverting candidates from their districts just weeks out from Election Day,” said CNN. The “overarching fear,” though, is that an event “once dubbed ‘Trumpapalooza’” will end up being “far more about promoting the president than the candidates who are actually on the ballot.”

Republicans are staring down a “bleak political environment” in which Trump’s approval is at a “record low,” said The New York Times. GOP candidates in battleground races may therefore be “keeping their distance” from Trump’s Dallas rally, “choosing to stay home and campaign instead.” Republicans face “growing hesitation” about associating themselves with the “polarizing president so close to the election,” said Politico. “More than 70 GOP candidates and members” polled by the outlet revealed that “most either do not plan to attend or are still weighing whether to go.”

“I can’t control what the president’s going to say at the convention,” Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.), who faces a “tough campaign to keep his central Michigan seat,” said to Politico. “But I can control where I’m at, what I’m doing.”

Still, party officials see the convention as their “best opportunity to rally voters behind Trump’s agenda,” said Reuters, even as some “remain skeptical” that the event can “meaningfully shift voter sentiment.” For organizers, the convention is “expected to serve a familiar purpose as a fundraising and networking hub for candidates and donors.” Many will feel “obliged ​to attend” in order to “court donors and raise their profiles through media appearances,” said RNC member Oscar Brock to the outlet.

Although traditionally “major party conventions” orient themselves around a “specific item of business” such as “formally nominating” candidates, the Dallas convention has “no such line items,” said The New Republic. Steep attendance costs reflect that the event has been “billed as a big Republican party” for which House members are asked to pay a “minimum of $25,000 to get in the door with a guest,” with “better packages” fetching “closer to $100,000.” The event also features multiple “corporate sponsors” whose funds are “being dumped into a nonprofit that does not have to disclose its donors.”

Given the peculiar funding and “poor planning,” many GOP campaign strategists are “seething” that the convention is “little more than a fundraiser for an unnecessary Trump production,” said Puck. And then “there are the optics” of an event scheduled days after the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. “Imperfect timing, perhaps,” for officials to be “photographed carousing in elephant hats with the party’s wealthy elite.”

Compounding those optics concerns is the convention being scheduled for the “same nights as the first two games of the NFL season,” said CNN. Primetime speakers, presumably the GOP’s heaviest-hitting figures, will be forced to compete with the “most-watched sport in the country.”

What next?

The convention is scheduled to last two days, said Texas Republican consultant Brendan Steinhauser to The Hill. “Not two weeks.” The short time frame won’t be “taking away from anything else,” and so long as the event is a “net positive financially” and makes use of the time to “deliver a message,” then “it’s a good thing.”

Donald Trump suggested last week that the US might reconsider its tacit support for British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands in retaliation for the UK’s failure to support him in the Iran war. The US president implied that he would not support the UK in a territorial dispute with Argentina.

Soon after, in a televised address, Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, said he would reopen the country’s claim to the islands it calls las Malvinas, declaring that the geopolitical “winds of change” would favour Buenos Aires. He proposed a “handover” of the islands akin to the transfer of Hong Kong to China, dismissing Britain as a country “in decline”.

What did the commentators say?

During the Falklands War in 1982, Margaret Thatcher had “the solid backing of the special relationship, and her ideological soulmate, Ronald Reagan, in the White House”, said Robert Tait, The Guardian’s US political correspondent. But Andy Burnham “must contend with the chill wind emanating from the menacing and destabilising presence of Trump”.

The US president’s “vindictive mindset” is to Milei’s advantage and “was almost entirely the trigger” for his address; the Argentinian president is trying to counter his own “falling political popularity”. Indeed, the same factor “may have played a key role” in the military junta’s decision to invade the Falklands in 1982.

But there’s no suggestion that Argentina would “dream of repeating” that “disastrous” decision, which led to the death of 907 sailors and soldiers, said The Economist. Milei “appears uncompromising” but, in truth, he knows forcing any change in status for the Falklands is a “tall order”. In a 2013 referendum with a turnout of more than 90%, all but three of 1,517 islanders voted to remain a British Overseas Territory .

Milei claims “this territory is ours”, but he wants to reach a “consensus solution” over the future status of the islands, similar to Britain’s agreement with China to cede control of Hong Kong. There are “risks to stirring up fresh confrontation”: Britain could block the sale of weapons containing British parts to Argentina, or influence how the International Monetary Fund “deals with” Milei’s struggling government. Milei may simply be trying to “shore up the more conservative parts of his base” ahead of elections next year. “Amping up his rhetoric” is less a show of strength than a reflection of Milei’s weakening domestic position.

In the event of a conflict, even a deployment of “two destroyers and three or four frigates” would be a “stretch” for the Royal Navy, said Lewis Page in The Telegraph. However, the UK’s aircraft carrier capability would be “completely dominant against Argentina”. Their forces are “even more run down than ours”.

While the UK could not sustain an aircraft carrier presence “indefinitely”, we could “dominate the skies over the Falklands for long enough to mount a campaign there”. And, unlike in 1982, the Falklands are “at least somewhat garrisoned”, which would be a “serious problem for a renewed Argentinian invasion”.

What next?

Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said British support for the Falkland Islanders’ right to determine their own future was “unwavering”.

However, as part of a “furious backlash” to the UK’s plans to sanction Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, Israel is now calling for sanctions on Britain over the Falklands, said The Independent. Far-right security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir described the islands as “Argentine territory under occupation”. Yair Netanyahu, the son of the Israeli prime minister, took aim at what he called Britain’s “hypocrisy and hostility towards Israel”, saying Israel would only “stop recognising the Malvinas” once Britain stops “recognising Palestine”.

Plans for large-scale oil production around the Falklands “raise the economic stakes”, said Al Jazeera. Milei declared that the Sea Lion deep-sea oil project, a joint UK-Israel operation due to begin production in 2028, was a “clear and present danger” to Argentinian interests. Argentina has threatened to file criminal charges against Israeli energy company Navitas Petroleum and its executives, claiming they have violated Argentinian law by holding UK-issued exploration and exploitation licences.

John Healey has said Britain’s economy is finally “turning a corner” as he set out his mission to “make Great Britain growth Britain” again.

In his first major speech as chancellor, Healey sought to reassure the markets by pledging to stick to Labour’s tax and spend fiscal rules, while trying to present a more optimistic view of Britain’s economic prospects. But only days ago a global bond sell-off saw UK yields hit their highest level since the 2008 financial crash, further increasing the cost of borrowing for the UK government.

But Healey “begins with a credibility problem that is not entirely of his own making”, said Simon French in The Sunday Times. He is the eighth chancellor in 10 years, so many businesses, households and investors are “fatigued and sceptical” about yet another new vision for growth.

What did the commentators say?

“A glance at the news could easily reinforce the gloomy impression” that the UK economy is in dire straits, but some key indicators are “telling a more cheerful story – one of growth”, said James Moore in The i Paper.

There is a “surprising level of optimism” among businesses in the services and manufacturing sectors, with overall GDP growth expected to beat Bank of England forecasts for the third quarter, boosted by warm weather and the men’s football World Cup. The data shows “that UK plc is more resilient than anyone really expected in the face of the strong headwinds that it is battling against”.

There are tentative signs that “consumer confidence has also improved”, said Delphine Strauss in the Financial Times. Private new car registrations are up by almost a fifth compared to last summer, while earlier figures from the Bank of England show growth in consumer credit.

UK recruiters also saw hiring pick up in August for the first time in four years. It adds to “evidence that the UK’s weak jobs market was stabilising and business and consumer confidence were improving – albeit from a low base – before a renewed rise in gas prices and sovereign bond yields that again threatens to hold back the economy”.

Most members of the public who describe the economy as broken “put its condition down to poor political priorities rather than to other reasons, such as global shocks, immigration or failings on the part of individual citizens (such as not working hard enough)”, said Anoosh Chakelian in The New Statesman.

Andy Burnham and his chancellor are constrained by costly rising debt – interest on debt costs more than the defence, Home Office and justice departments combined – rigid fiscal rules, and Labour’s manifesto pledge not to raise the three main taxes. But they need to find a way to pay for their ambitious policy platform “that commands the confidence of markets – and a public more and more convinced that the economy is broken by design”.

What next?

While the underlying numbers look positive, were the Bank of England to raise interest rates later this month, or Healey to announce tax rises in the Budget at the end of October, things could turn sour very quickly.

For now, the chancellor is trying to strike a more upbeat tone than his predecessor. After the equivalent speech in the last two years since Labour returned to power, the public has been “left with a clear message of tough times, and significant tax rises ahead”, said the BBC’s economics editor Faisal Islam. Today was different.

The chancellor is “trying to nurture some fragile early signs that confidence is returning” but “the burning question is how to fill multi-billion gaps in public finance plans before the Budget, in a way that minimises the economic impact.

“While vibes are important, policy matters more.”

The American military is often lauded as the fiercest fighting force in the world, but there are gathering signs that something is off-kilter. Morale problems aboard rust-coated Navy ships, a purge of top officers in the Army, and a shortage of munitions in the Middle East have contributed to a growing sense of alarm. And critics, including some Republicans, are pointing the finger at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

What did the commentators say?

The Pentagon is in “turmoil,” said Axios, riven by internal ideological disputes while fighting a war with Iran. The secretary’s “firings and feuds” have left the Army “rudderless,” said The New York Times. The service has been without a permanent leader since Hegseth dismissed Gen. Randy George in April “without explanation.” Internal disputes reportedly led to this week’s resignation of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who had been seen as a possible Hegseth successor.

The war, meanwhile, is “piling pressure on budgets across the military,” said The Guardian, with the Navy forced to dip into its payroll budget to “cover the costs of combat.” The conflict is also taking a visible toll on the service: The rust-covered and morale-sapped USS Abraham Lincoln this week “shocked” observers who encountered it at a Thai port after 286 days at sea, said CNN.

The various crises have led senior commanders to warn Hegseth the war is “unsustainable and risks weakening their ability to confront threats elsewhere,” said The Washington Post. Hegseth is nonetheless “escalating the strain” on U.S. forces by “quietly extending troop deployments” in the Middle East, said The Wall Street Journal. The Pentagon is “giving up presence in other regions” like the Pacific in order to devote those resources to Iran, the Hudson Institute’s Bryan Clark told the outlet. The Navy, in particular, is “officially stretched beyond its limits,” Mackenzie Eaglen and Nicholas Carl said at The National Interest.

Hegseth’s “purges” of top officers has “created a dangerous leadership vacuum” that is “jeopardizing national security,” Max Boot said at The Washington Post. The secretary’s focus appears to be “publicly performing pushups” and eliminating diversity programs in the military, Jeff McCausland said at MS NOW.Hegseth still having his job is a sign that President Donald Trump “simply likes the way” the secretary is performing despite the growing criticisms, Shane Croucher said at Newsweek.

What next?

A growing number of Republicans in Congress are “sick” of Hegseth, said The New Republic. Trump should “find a new leader at the Pentagon,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said this week on X. Hegseth “has not been a very good leader in many ways,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said on CNN.

Trump disagrees. Hegseth is “doing a fantastic job,” Trump told reporters this week. But polls show that Hegseth is “possibly the most unpopular” member of the president’s cabinet, said CNN. His problems — and the challenges faced by the military — “are getting harder to ignore.”

“We hate the French! We fight wars against the French! Did all those men die in vain on the fields of Agincourt?” What would Edmund Blackadder think to see Emmanuel Macron and King Charles cosying up in front of the Bayeux Tapestry?

The tapestry, as Andy Burnham said at its unveiling at the British Museum this week “shows a new leader emerging from a northern territory, travelling to the south of England in search of the crown. Something clearly that couldn’t happen today.”

Macron has now become the first EU leader to visit Burnham at No. 10. This week of renewed bonhomie between the British and the French comes as Donald Trump’s America “is threatening to leave Europe to fend for itself”, said The Economist. So that might be one reason why France is “being so nice to Britain”.

What did the commentators say?

Another reason for this French “love-bombing”, as The Economist put it, is that “it costs France very little and buys it so much”, said the UK’s former Brexit negotiator David Frost in The Telegraph.

Much of the British establishment loves this kind of thing and it does so “because it sees diplomacy primarily as a matter of personal relationships and symbolism”. But that belief “generates the besetting sin of British diplomacy: the wish to be liked rather than respected” and sadly “nowhere is that truer than with France”.

But “in these fractured times, the enduring appeal of this 11th-century artefact speaks of a need for a national story”, said The Guardian. The Bayeux Tapestry is a “devastatingly human saga” and, with war raging in Europe, “this medieval masterpiece is a reminder of conflict’s brutality, human suffering and the importance of collaboration between countries”.

Indeed Macron himself “played an instrumental role over nearly a decade in pushing for the tapestry loan”, said France24, and it “is viewed as another step towards healing the rancour of the Brexit years”.

On a political level there is “no shortage of common ground” between Burnham and Macron, said Le Monde, “particularly regarding their policies on the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East”. The French president praised Burnham's recent trip to Kyiv, but also highlighted that, while Paris and London “collaborate in vital areas such as defence, nuclear energy, space or artificial intelligence”, they “do not always agree on everything”.

What Macron “seems to be saying is that despite Brexit, despite Donald Trump, or perhaps because of both, France and Britain need to stick together now”, said The Economist.

A new Charles De Gaulle biopic “not only evokes nostalgia for an age of unimaginable bravery” but “also speaks to modern worries about national sovereignty, dependence and democratic values”. The film “carries another message too”: that “the dark forces of nationalism can be beaten”. With Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage on the rise, the new-found affection from Macron could signify that “this battle is yet another that Britain and France are in together”.

But “what did the love-in between Andy Burnham and Emmanuel Macron actually achieve?” said The Sun. “For a start, don’t expect the small boats to stop any time soon” as it remains in “France’s interest to let migrants set sail and wait for British border forces to rescue them – especially as we pay £1 billion for the privilege”. And Burnham was “gushing over France’s role in another terrible idea: helping him achieve closer ties to the EU”.

What next?

“To move forward on all these issues and put the entente amicale to the test,” said Le Monde. A French-British summit is due to take place later this year, Burnham confirmed, but he did not give a date.

Zack Polanski will need to reverse his party’s faltering fortunes if he is to win the Holborn and St Pancras by-election created by Keir Starmer’s decision to leave Westminster.

Membership of the Greens has more than tripled since Polanski was elected leader almost exactly a year ago and they won their first Westminster by-election in Gorton and Denton in February. Now the leader has said he wants to stand in the vote to replace former PM Starmer in the London constituency and become his party’s sixth MP.

But the Greens have also been dogged by accusations of antisemitism, while Polanski has been criticised for a series of gaffes. There have been questions over his tax affairs, his “inflated CV and ever-presence on social media”, said Pieter Snepvangers in The Telegraph.

What did the commentators say?

Polanski’s likely candidacy “makes what was expected to be a Labour hold into a much more interesting race, with Green activists already flooding [the] constituency”, said The Guardian’s political editor Pippa Crerar on X.

With Andy Burnham riding a wave of optimism as the new prime minister, the Green Party’s popularity has “plunged to its lowest level ever recorded”, said Snepvangers. A YouGov poll carried out in July put its net approval rating at -23, down 28 points from last August. A majority of the public (56%) has a negative view, up from 39%.

Polanski is “easy to dislike”, said Eliot Wilson in City A.M.: there is something “preposterous and confected about him”. He demonstrates “armour-plated self-belief”, even when he’s declaring “the most implausible silliness”.

But many voters still “like what they’ve heard”. And party leaders compete now not to be the most popular, but to be the least unpopular – Polanski is far less unpopular than Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage. But “the party’s position has begun to slide” and its policy platform is “uncompromising yet unrealistic”. The question now is: “How is the Green Party to stop this leakage?”

To be fair, a fifth of the country still likes Polanski, said Ben Walker in The New Statesman. But “a lot more people now feel negatively towards him”, especially voters over 35. “This may not be down to any missteps on his part. Rather, the Greens may have just reached their natural ceiling.” But the prospect of winning power “looks far away”.

True, the “unexpected resurgence of hope” in the Labour Party poses “an unmistakable threat” to Polanski, who previously “had a virtual monopoly on such things”, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. Newcomers to the Green Party are now “squarely in Burnham’s sights” as he apologises for the way Starmer handled the Gaza war. But it would be “ridiculous” to assume “this Labour honeymoon can last”. With the Greens “unconstrained by the realities of government”, they will have “the freedom to say whatever Labour won’t”. That could “easily become a powerful weapon”.

At the 2024 general election, the Green candidate came third in Holborn and St Pancras, nearly doubling the party’s vote share in 2019. Meanwhile, Labour’s majority fell dramatically. Hence the “immediate pressure” on Polanski to stand, said John Rentoul in The Independent. I expect Labour will hold it, provided they choose a “solid candidate” – it is “by no means” a safe seat. But Burnham has “calmed the anti-politics rage a little, and I think Polanski will fail to catch the wave at the right moment”.

What next?

Polanski is now under pressure from Green activists to “take more radical left-wing stances to halt the rising popularity of Labour”, said Aubrey Allegretti in The Times. Animah Kosai, a member of the Green Party Council, has tabled a motion to be debated at the Greens’ conference in October. It urges the party to “embrace more enthusiastically the kind of radical policies which excite activists”, said Wilson in City A.M., including the pledge to introduce a wealth tax and attacking Labour for the sale of arms to Israel.

Holborn and St Pancras “has long been a Labour stronghold” and Labour “will throw everything at defending it”, said The Guardian’s Crerar. In the way Makerfield was Burnham’s proof of concept that he could beat Reform, “Holborn and St Pancras will be his test that he can win back progressive voters to the Labour fold”.

A California high-speed rail was supposed to connect San Francisco to Los Angeles by 2020. Billions of dollars later, no track has been laid, and completion of the project is still a distant dream. Now, officials are raising questions about the project’s future.

What did the commentators say?

The rail project was approved by California voters in 2008. It has since cost “billions more than planned” and is “years behind schedule,” said The Wall Street Journal. The original price tag of $33 billion has risen to $126 billion and could grow further before the completion date, now projected for 2040. Whether that goal could be achieved is an open question. The rail system’s inspector general is warning it “could run out of money by December 2027,” said KCRA. “I honestly don’t think [it] will ever run," farmer and attorney Michael Dias said to the TV station.

Progress has been plagued by “rising costs, funding shortfalls and construction delays,” said the Daily Caller. Authorities point to the Golden State’s intensive regulatory environment as a factor. California was once “able to build infrastructure like this in a very short amount of time,” but “we kept regulating ourselves more and more and more,” rail system CEO Ian Choudri said this month in a speech, per The Fresno Bee.

China has “laid enough high-speed rail to circle the globe” during the same period that California has struggled to get traction, said the Caller. Big projects are “much easier to do in countries with weak or nonexistent individual property rights,” energy analyst David Blackmon said to the outlet.

Another locale that has won the rail race: Morocco. The country and California are “remarkably similar in size,” but the Golden State is “more than 20 times richer,” columnist Joe Mathews said at the San Francisco Chronicle. Still, Morocco built a 201-mile line thanks to a “structural simplicity” and “raw political will” that California does not possess. It helps that Morocco is “highly centralized,” while California has a “labyrinth of zoning, lawsuits, and YIMBY-NIMBY politics” that let citizens more easily obstruct construction projects. Morocco has a completed railway; “California has excuses.”

Maybe there is an alternative. The rail system will not be complete until 2040, but “robotaxis could use the I-5 sooner,” AgentCloak CEO Peter Yared said at Inc. Robotaxis from Tesla and Waymo have already “started operating on highways,” which makes them a plausible alternative to the “large capital expense and long timelines of high-speed rail.” While the state waits around on rail, self-guided electric vehicles “could easily be deployed in less than a year.”

What next?

The first high-speed rail segment connecting Merced with Bakersfield will be complete “sometime in the next decade — if it gets built,” Dan Walters said at CalMatters. Meeting that goal depends on the state continuing to dedicate revenue from its greenhouse gas permits system, but that would “require cuts in other projects.” For now, progress on the rail project continues to be mired in “seemingly endless political melodrama.”

Two top-level summits held simultaneously this week offered contrasting visions for the world and who will lead it in the coming years.

Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomed world leaders including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Indian PM Narendra Modi, and Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek, presenting Beijing as a driver of stability and champion of an “orderly multipolar world”.

Meanwhile, 6,826 miles away at a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Asheville, North Carolina, the mood could not have been more different. Western finance ministers expressed outrage at the Trump administration’s decision to invite Russia. There was anger at the US’s ongoing trade spat with Canada, Trump’s decision to punish South Korea and, of course, the continuing economic fallout from his war against Iran.

What did the commentators say?

If the Bishkek summit was “designed to project solidarity”, then the G20 gathering “offered an image of fracture”, said David Pierson for The New York Times.

China is using ever-closer ties with Russia and Iran, which are both at war with the West, to “project its influence”, at the same time as the US is “straining the alliances and economic relationships that have underpinned decades of global leadership”.

“China’s theory of the case for bending the international political order in its preferred direction is to amass support from the ‘global majority,’” said Ryan Hass, a former White House national security official now at the Brookings Institution think tank. Xi’s role as lead convener “builds a narrative around China gaining momentum in building support for playing a more central role on the world stage”.

This shows that the “emerging global order is not simply dividing into two fixed camps”, with countries such as India “maintaining relationships with competing powers while pursuing their own strategic interests”, said Business Insider Africa. That is why Xi has also sought to build bridges with the West, hosting the leaders of Germany, Britain and Canada this year, as long-standing allies turn away from the US under Trump.

The world’s two leading economies are “uneasily preoccupied with their trajectory these days”, said Evan Osnos in a recent New Yorker article entitled “The future, made in China”. China is “eager to restore its historical eminence”, but, in a sign the centre of global politics may be shifting, having long “looked West for visions of the future”, nowadays “it favours its own”.

What next?

China’s show of strength, on display not only in Bishkek but also in Asheville where it blocked a G20 joint statement, comes ahead of a crunch meeting between Xi and Trump in Washington DC later this month.

With China now viewed more positively than the US in the majority of 36 countries surveyed by the Pew Research Center, Xi could do worse than acknowledge the assessment by Beijing’s Renmin University when meeting the famously vain US president.

Entitled “Thank Trump”, it hailed his efforts to hasten the “twilight of an empire” by undermining America’s international alliances, its institutions at home and credibility abroad, said The Economist.