Frustrated homebuyers should be celebrating “one of the most significant pieces of housing legislation passed in decades,” said Emma Janssen in The New Republic. The bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act automatically became law on July 11 after lingering on President Trump’s desk for 10 days without his signature. He had refused to sign the legislation in protest of Congress’s failure to pass the strict voter ID bill that he’s been pushing, but to Republicans’ relief he also decided not to use his veto pen. The law makes a sweeping effort to ease the affordability crisis by boosting housing supply and limiting rules around construction. Small measures—like “removing the requirement that manufactured homes have a permanent steel chassis beneath them”—could lower costs of a new unit by $10,000, according to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who co-sponsored the bill. Other substantive victories include “a restriction on the purchase of new single-family homes by large institutional investors,” who Warren claims have turned America into “a nation of renters.”

The law does get a few things right, said Conor Dougherty in The New York Times. America needs more housing, but local governments—not the federal government—are “often the ultimate deciders of where, how, and if housing is built.” The housing act aims to address that “through carrots and sticks,” such as a $200 million annual “innovation fund” to reward local governments that build more housing. It also cuts several strings attached to the production of factory-built or modular homes, which could “unleash a wave of innovation in construction techniques” to make them cheaper and more attractive. Of course, Trump refused to “slap his name on the one thing he should,” said Zeeshan Aleem in MS.now. In a “tantrum so baffling and self-destructive it beggars belief,” he called the housing bill “a big yawn.” Someone should remind him that “the high cost of living is the defining policy issue in our country.”

Too bad the law does more “to expand the federal bureaucracy than the supply of homes,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. It “dangles money” for housing construction that “comes with federal mandates”—like what wages need to be paid to workers. The White House has been actively eliminating “superfluous government programs.” Here goes Congress adding more. Ultimately, this law is “a medley of 47 promising ideas,” said Robert Kuttner in The Boston Globe, “virtually all at token levels.” That’s not adequate. “My generation and the one that came before us got an incredible deal” on homeownership thanks to New Deal programs that have long since vanished. It’s laudable that the sponsors of the bill are finally “shining a light on a dire national problem.” But it will take “a great deal more to make housing truly affordable.”

What happened

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a Senate committee on Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s Iran war had cost an estimated $37.5 billion so far, and that the $67 billion in supplemental war funding he was requesting is an “urgent, necessary” stopgap as Congress debates Trump’s $1.5 trillion annual Pentagon budget request. Hegseth faced “fiery questions” during the “combative Senate Appropriations Committee hearing,” The Associated Press said. And the scrutiny was “bipartisan,” The Washington Post said, as “frustrated lawmakers” pressed him to “explain the Trump administration’s strategy for the war” amid “renewed hostilities.”

Who said what

Hegseth’s appearance “represented an attempt by the administration to sell the unpopular conflict as a necessary expense,” Politico said. But Senate Democrats “questioned both the success of the war so far and the need for more military money, citing $75 billion in unused funds” from last year’s huge GOP-only spending package. “The problem is not a lack of money, but poor planning,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) told Hegseth. “This war is now spiraling out of control again,” and Trump is “asking for $70 billion more — and for us to just trust him it’ll all work out fine.”

What next?

The House plans to quit Washington on Thursday “for a month-long recess,” the Post said, “leaving any deal on military funding weeks away at the earliest.”

‘Trump’s war on journalists’

Ruth Marcus at The New Yorker

President Donald Trump “seized on another opportunity to threaten journalists,” as New York Times reporters “received subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury,” says Ruth Marcus. The Justice Department has “depicted the subpoenas as a benign move,” but “journalists’ access to information will evaporate if they cannot assure their sources of confidentiality.” This “risk is omnipresent, but it is heightened in the current moment, when reporting about the inner workings of government is more crucial than ever.”

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‘Vamos España? Why this World Cup victory for Spain feels so different from the others.’

María Ramírez at The Guardian

Spain’s FIFA World Cup victory “felt as though the success belonged to many more people around the world, from Gaza, where Spain has come to represent solidarity with the Palestinian cause, to Brazil,” says María Ramírez. The “country itself is in a better place despite the deep political polarization and widespread mood of dissatisfaction.” Spain’s “strength on the pitch lies not in individual brilliance but in a cohesiveness that becomes greater than the sum of its parts.”

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‘AI will shift “prestige careers” to talent, not pedigree’

Marcus Collins at Newsweek

Amid the “broader discourse about AI’s impact on jobs, there’s been a lot of chatter about AI obliterating what many think of as the ‘prestige’ career track,” says Marcus Collins. With “execution available at the touch of a button, the white-collar prestige career bargain is collapsing.” For “people who were counting on it, this may feel like the end of the world,” but “for the people who were never on that path, the future is as bright as ever.”

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‘Too many congressional races are over before they start. Here’s a remedy.’

Mark Z. Barabak at the Los Angeles Times

As “recently as the late 1990s, around four in 10 congressional districts were considered competitive,” but today “only 18 of 435 House districts are considered toss-ups,” says Mark Z. Barabak. This is “hardly an accident, as lawmakers have increasingly manipulated the election process to suit themselves, rejiggering congressional districts to sideline voters and boost their political parties.” Congress should “enact changes in time for the next scheduled round of redistricting, which is due to take place after the 2030 census.”

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‘America’s trillion-dollar failure’

Ro Khanna at Foreign Affairs

The media’s Department of Defense coverage has “focused on military parades, high-profile firings and lectures about haircuts,” says Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). A “less-acknowledged but just as worrisome development has been progressively undermining the U.S. military: Defense acquisition remains stubbornly slow and wildly over budget.” The Pentagon “needs to be as nimble as it is strong or it risks losing its ability to respond to global hot spots and to deter great-power conflict.”

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‘When did sports get so loud?’

Ellen Cushing at The Atlantic

Baseball is “wall-to-wall stimulation,” and “in this way, baseball is explicitly following other sports, which were earlier to invest in state-of-the-art multifactor sound systems, huge screens and sophisticated lighting schemas,” says Ellen Cushing. Many organizations are “focusing not on season-ticket-holding diehards but on more casual fans who want a big night out, are willing to pay for it and may need to be guided through a game with aural or visual cues about how to feel at any given moment.”

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‘I see my father in the fathers killed by ICE’

Ingrid Rojas Contreras at Time

“As a Latina, it is impossible for me not to see my father when I think of” the men killed by ICE, says Ingrid Rojas Contreras. “In them, I see men who wanted nothing but a better life for their children.” Families “like mine can’t help but feel their families’ pain.” To “grieve is to take stock of what we have lost, can lose and to spend time deconstructing the harmful narratives that cause our grief.”

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‘How the networks handled President Trump’s speech about election integrity’

Tom Jones at the Poynter Institute

In the “days leading up to Thursday night’s address, there were questions about just how factual Trump’s address would be,” and “because of all the discourse beforehand, there were questions about whether or not TV networks would air Trump’s address,” says Tom Jones. It was “another night of networks trying to figure out how to cover a president who often makes claims that simply are not true or, at the very least, are misleading.”

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What happened

Todd Blanche, President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, faced five hours of intense questioning on Wednesday from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers during his confirmation hearing. GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas “raised serious questions” about Blanche’s involvement in creating a now-defunct $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund for Trump’s allies, The New York Times said. Democrats “seized on” his oversight of the Justice Department’s “sloppy redactions” in its release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, The Washington Post said. At one point Blanche, currently the acting attorney general, accidentally said he was the president’s lawyer, a “job he had earlier in his career,” Politico said.

Who said what

“President Trump trusts me to give him counsel,” Blanche told Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.). “Counsel does not mean I’m a yes man.” Democrats on ⁠the Judiciary Committee are united in their opposition to Blanche’s appointment, so “even one Republican committee vote against him would be enough to sink the nomination,” the Post said. “I continue to have some concerns,” Cornyn told reporters afterwards. Blanche’s gaffe about still being Trump’s lawyer “could haunt him,” Politico said.

What next?

Several witnesses are expected to testify Thursday about Blanche’s character, including Epstein accuser Liz Oyer, whom Blanche fired from her post as DOJ pardon attorney. The Senate Judiciary Committee could vote on Blanche’s confirmation as early as July 30. Committee chair Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said “he’ll be confirmed probably the last week before we go on August recess.”

With President Donald Trump’s refusal to either sign or veto a landmark bipartisan housing bill, the legislation automatically became law last week, and political analysts are hopeful the bill will help ease the pain of America’s nationwide housing crisis. But while experts laud Congress’ joint efforts to address the problem, the average American may not feel relief for years.

What did the commentators say?

The bill has a number of provisions that seek to “remove barriers to building homes, lower housing costs and shift greater control over housing to the local level,” said Time. One of the main goals is to increase the overall availability of houses, largely by mandating that the government “offer guidance on how communities could best reform zoning and land-use policies to reduce barriers to housing development.” Environmental reviews of housing construction will also be streamlined.

It also widens the definition of manufactured houses, which are “built entirely in factories before being transported to their sites,” said Time. The expanded definition will “‘unlock’ a segment of the housing market by making it cheaper and easier to mass-produce such homes,” Francis Torres, the housing and infrastructure director at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told Time. The current supply is “really not matching the growing and changing demand,” said Geoff Smith, the executive director of the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University, to WTTW.

The bipartisan nature of the bill, which easily passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate, “reflects both parties’ concerns with rising housing costs nationwide and shows that political compromise is still possible in Washington,” said The Dallas Morning News editorial board. If properly implemented, it has the potential to “modernize federal housing programs, streamline regulations and encourage innovation.”

But the effects of the bill may not be so profound for those in the worst financial situations. It will likely have a “fairly limited impact on affordability for the lowest-income folks in the country,” said Shamus Roller, CEO of the National Housing Law Project, to PBS News. The provisions “aren’t the kinds of sweeping policy changes many affordable housing advocates say will help dramatically reduce housing costs,” like major tax reforms and government-subsidized housing investments.

What next?

The legislation may take time to be effective because “many pieces of the legislation will require implementation from the now-diminished” Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), said PBS. About 32% of HUD’s workforce has left the agency since September 2024, according to the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, which could make it hard to bring some of the bill’s provisions to life. As of 2024, no states in the U.S. had an adequate supply of affordable housing for low-income renters, said the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

So even as many are hopeful about the new promises, some “immediate relief may not come just yet for homeowners and renters,” said Yonah Freemark, a housing research associate at the Urban Institute, to CNN. The bill creates a “situation where not only will the federal government have to make changes, but then state and local governments also will have to make changes and then businesses, developers and the like will have to make investments, which itself takes time.”

While some people may grow up dreaming of a career in public office, politicians sometimes come from a less conventional source: Hollywood. There’s a long list of film and television actors who have gone on to roles in politics, including President Donald Trump, who expanded his standing in the public eye as the host of “The Apprentice.”

Al Franken

Al Franken took perhaps the most ironic leap in U.S. politics: going from parodying a U.S. senator on television to actually getting elected as one. Franken was widely known for his time on “Saturday Night Live,” during which he often portrayed former Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.) during the show’s cold open sketches. But it turns out he wasn’t satisfied with merely pretending to be a politician.

In 2009, Franken became a Democratic senator for Minnesota in a contest that saw “more than 2.9 million Minnesotans cast votes in the state’s U.S. Senate race — one of the most expensive in the country,” said PBS News. After a judicial review, the election ended when Franken “won by 312 votes,” one of the closest Senate races ever. However, Franken’s political career abruptly concluded in 2018 when he resigned after several women said he “groped or tried to forcibly kiss them,” said Politico.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Action star Arnold Schwarzenegger dominated the 1980s in projects like “The Terminator,” “Predator” and “Conan the Barbarian.” But the Austrian-born actor became an “increasingly politically active Republican during the 1990s,” and he “ran for the California governorship and won when Gray Davis was recalled in 2003,” said Schwarzenegger’s gubernatorial biography.

Thus, the Terminator became the “Governator,” and despite initial skepticism, proved to be a popular leader of the Golden State. In 2006, despite a “poor year nationally for the GOP, he was re-elected with 56% of the vote” and a “margin of well over 1 million votes,” said Politico. But after this, Schwarzenegger’s popularity waned, and he left office in 2011 “with a record-low 23%” approval rating, only “1% higher than that of Davis when he was recalled.” Schwarzenegger has since taken on an active role in denouncing MAGA and the Trump wing of the GOP.

Clint Eastwood

After getting his start as a major Western star, Clint Eastwood publicly espoused a wide variety of political views, supporting both Democrats and Republicans. “Politics are evidently always simmering with Eastwood,” said The Guardian, though in his later years he became much more associated with the GOP. But even then, his views often remained fluid.

This became even more evident in 1986, when Eastwood was elected the nonpartisan mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. Though associated with conservative values, during his time as mayor Eastwood was “sympathetic to environmental concerns and less sympathetic to big business,” said The Guardian, bucking traditional GOP tenets. After leaving office, Eastwood remained in the political sphere, most notably the bizarre moment when he “spoke to that empty chair at the 2012 Republican National Convention,” said The Washington Post.

Jerry Springer

While Jerry Springer made several film and television appearances over the years, it was his eponymous television show that made him a household name, often featuring “controversial subjects like adultery, occasional nudity and even physical violence,” said Biography. But the show was a second career for Springer, who started in the Democratic political arena.

After working as a campaign adviser for Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.) in the 1960s, Springer made his way to Ohio and was “elected to Cincinnati City Council in 1971 but unexpectedly resigned in 1974,” said Biography. The hiatus didn’t last long, as Springer was re-elected to the city council in 1975 and “became Cincinnati mayor in 1977.” Though he only served as mayor for one year before his political career largely fizzled out, Springer “considered runs for the U.S. Senate and a second attempt as Ohio governor in 2018.”

Ronald Reagan

When thinking of actors who turned to politics, there is one name everyone probably recalls instantly: While other Hollywood stars have held important positions, former President Ronald Reagan is the only one to have occupied the nation’s highest office. Before moving into the White House, Reagan’s career started on screen in 1937, when a contest “won him a contract with Warner Brothers in Hollywood,” said the White House Historical Association (WHHA).

Over the next 20 years, Reagan “appeared in 53 films, including ‘Kings Row’ and ‘Knute Rockne, All American.’” He later turned to politics with a staunch Republican platform, and in 1966 “defeated incumbent Pat Brown to become governor of California, and was reelected in 1970,” said the WHHA. From there, Reagan looked to the national stage, and amid the Democratic Party’s rising unpopularity, he defeated sitting President Jimmy Carter in a landslide during the 1980 election.

Sean Duffy

Several television personalities occupy spaces in President Donald Trump’s White House, most notably Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Before earning his law degree, Duffy “got his TV start in his 20s on ‘The Real World,’ appearing on the Boston edition of the show's sixth season,” said People. This version of the show, as with the other seasons of “The Real World,” followed Duffy and six other strangers who lived together in a converted firehouse in Boston.

After his reality television debut, Duffy “moved into law in his home state of Wisconsin, serving as the district attorney of Ashland County for a decade,” said People. He went on to serve Wisconsin in Congress, “representing the state’s 7th Congressional District, from 2011 to 2019.” After winning the 2024 election, Trump nominated Duffy to lead the Transportation Department. Several controversies have marked his tenure.

Sonny Bono

Sonny Bono remains best known for the singing duo he formed with his wife Cher, which made the pair two of the most iconic celebrities of the 1960s. But Bono was also a longstanding member of the Republican Party and was active in GOP politics throughout his life. His entrance into the political sphere came after he “fell almost completely out of the public eye following the cancellation of ‘The Sonny and Cher Show’ in 1977,” said History.

Soon after the show was axed, though, Bono began to make a new name for himself in politics, and he was elected mayor of Palm Springs, California, in 1988. After serving as mayor for four years, Bono “set his sights on national office,” and in 1994 he was “elected to Congress as a representative from California’s 44th Congressional District,” said Biography. While in Congress, Bono became known for his “wit and his deeply conservative views,” and he remains the only member of Congress to have scored a number one single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

What happened

The Senate on Monday approved legislation intended to lower the cost of housing by increasing supply, cutting regulations and limiting the number of single-family homes owned by large institutional investors. The bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act passed 85-5 and is expected to clear the House as soon as Tuesday.

It’s the “biggest housing bill in more than 30 years,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Banking Committee. Committee Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said the legislation will “help more Americans achieve the dream of homeownership.”

Who said what

The vote was a “rare bipartisan legislative achievement” as “lawmakers in both parties try to address housing costs in an election year,” The Associated Press said. The “final bill has received widespread support in the housing community,” both from landlords and “groups that advocate for tenants and low-income renters.” But “housing economists and researchers” expect it to have “little impact when it comes to bringing housing prices down,” The Washington Post said, though some provisions should “make meaningful progress toward improving supply and affordability.”

“There is no magic wand that will fix this crisis overnight,” David Dworkin, chief executive of the National Housing Conference, told the AP. “But this bill is a significant down payment on a long-term effort to make housing more affordable for all Americans.”

What next?

Senate approval is “expected to set the legislation on a glide path to President Donald Trump’s desk for signature as soon as this week,” Politico said.

Republicans in recent years have tried to match President Donald Trump’s populism with tentative steps toward union-friendly rhetoric. Their policies have not always kept pace, but that may be changing in a small way.

The House of Representatives last week passed a Democratic-sponsored labor bill with the help of 20 Republicans who “broke party lines to support the measure,” said Time. The Faster Labor Contracts Act would amend federal law to “accelerate contract negotiations between newly unionized workplaces and their employees.” The right of workers to unionize is “crucial to improving wages, hours, working conditions and so much more,” said Rep. Pete Stauber (R-Minn.). It was the latest example of union-friendly Congressional Republicans “flexing their muscles” in the face of “furious” opposition from the GOP’s traditional free-market conservatives, said The Hill. The move is part of a “larger war” over the party’s future as it has “made inroads with unions” under Trump.

What did the commentators say?

Congressional politics “are shifting in labor’s favor,” Timothy Noah said at The New Republic. The House recently passed two other bills to restore collective bargaining rights to federal workers, thanks to a “breakaway Republican faction” that joined Democrats to provide a majority vote in support of labor rights. The union-friendly bills still face “dismal odds” in the GOP-controlled Senate. Nonetheless, the House passage of those measures demonstrates that House Speaker Mike Johnson is “losing control over his caucus.” And 20 GOP votes to defy party leadership for a pro-union measure might be a “sign that labor solidarity is starting to undermine partisan solidarity.”

The latest pro-union bill is a “gift to the cultural left,” The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial. Republicans who joined Democrats to pass the measure may “think they’re burnishing their populist credentials,” but they are actually “selling out their constituents to the progressive left.”

The vote to speed contract negotiations between businesses and new unions “isn’t only about wages,” said the Journal editorial. Instead, it will likely provide cover for those unions to force firms to provide reproductive and gender-affirming care coverage as part of their benefits packages. “We wonder if Republicans know what they’ve voted for.”

What next?

Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) are sponsoring the Senate version of the act, said The Washington Examiner. Hawley is a union-friendly Republican and a social conservative, but the bill is running into opposition from other religious conservatives who say it will “require employers to cover abortion and transgender medical procedures.” Those objections “show that giant corporations are desperate to kill legislation that would help American workers,” said a spokesperson for Hawley.

The debates arrive at a time when “many union voters have turned” on Trump over rising prices and the war in Iran, said The Washington Post. Trump won 45% of union voters in 2024 on the strength of “his promise to restore U.S. manufacturing jobs.” The discontent could be meaningful in November. The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations is vowing to turn out 16 million union voters for the midterm elections.

Lawmakers are exploring a new front in the electoral battle between Democrats and Republicans. Both parties have zeroed in on the other’s fundraising operations, with Republicans vowing to intensify their existing investigation into Democrats’ ActBlue online platform after Executive Director Regina Wallace-Jones repeatedly invoked her Fifth Amendment protections during a Republican-led House hearing last week. In turn, Democrats have increased calls for similar investigations into the GOP’s WinRed platform over allegations of illegal international contributions and fraud.

Foreign funds and ‘profoundly alarming’ allegations

Democrats on the House Administration, Judiciary and Oversight committees last week requested WinRed CEO Ryan Lyk sit for a “transcribed interview” and “preserve documents and communications” about WinRed’s fraud prevention, said Politico. Reports that “foreign nationals have used WinRed to donate money to President Donald Trump’s campaign” are “profoundly alarming,” said New York Rep. Joe Morelle, Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), and Robert Garcia (D-Ca.), in a letter to Lyk.

The letter is the “latest salvo in a long-running battle” between Democrats and Republicans over their respective online fundraising infrastructures, said Politico. Republicans have spent “over a year looking into ActBlue’s process for vetting foreign political contributions,” said Campaigns and Elections. Conservatives “escalated their probe” in April following a “bombshell New York Times report” that ActBlue’s lawyers had “previously warned Wallace-Jones that she may have misled congressional investigators” about ActBlue’s donation vetting practices. That warning “instigated a meltdown at the highest levels of ActBlue” and was a “key cause of the tumult” at the organization, said The New York Times.

The GOP’s pursuit of ActBlue is not “legitimate oversight,” said Wallace-Jones at The Washington Post. Rather, it is a “coordinated campaign of political retribution,” and last week’s hearing was the “latest assault in that corrupt campaign.” Democrats on the House Administration committee have meanwhile “sought to draw attention” to Ken Paxton, Texas’ Republican attorney general and Senate nominee, whom they claim has ignored questions “about any similar probes of GOP fundraising practices,” said Roll Call.

‘Defrauded, in real time’

“Dozens of political donors” have “begged Paxton’s office in recent years for recourse” against both WinRed and ActBlue, “complaining of thousands of dollars in unauthorized charges and nonstop text messages requesting more money,” said the San Antonio Express-News. But Paxton “hasn’t publicly taken action” and “deploys the same aggressive tactics” in his own WinRed fundraising.

By targeting ActBlue with a lawsuit this past spring, Paxton’s “willful blindness has come home to roost,” said Reps. Morelle, Raskin and Garcia in a letter to the attorney general demanding he preserve his WinRed documents. “Dozens of your constituents are being defrauded, in real time.”

Dueling allegations over both platforms are now “putting an otherwise bipartisan effort” for campaign finance reform “at risk,” said NOTUS. With four campaign finance bills “recently approved by the House Administration Committee,” subsequent “bipartisan progress appears strained” as partisan fighting intensifies.

Democrats, meanwhile, have only increased their threats ahead of November’s midterm elections. Congress “has a duty to investigate” cases of alleged fraud and malfeasance, said Rep. Morelle, per Politico. “House Republicans have not taken that duty seriously. But next year, rest assured, committee Democrats will.”

What happened

Bill Gates told the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday he made a “grave error in judgment” by ever meeting with Jeffrey Epstein but “never witnessed nor had any indication” of his “ongoing criminal conduct,” according to his opening statement. As Gates appeared for his closed-door testimony, The New York Times published new details on the White House’s “freakout over the Epstein files.”

Who said what

Gates met with Epstein between 2011 and 2014 to discuss global health fundraising, the Microsoft founder said, and later discovered he “was working to use information about my infidelities — in addition to many lies that he layered on top — to pressure me to re-engage with him.” Gates said his extramarital affairs had “nothing to do with” Epstein, but the “unsuccessful” blackmail effort “shows some of the ways he tried to leverage his interactions with me to further his agenda.”

The Epstein scandal “consumed and often paralyzed the highest levels of the Trump administration” last summer, the Times reported. President Donald Trump “wanted the whole thing buried,” but Vice President JD Vance “wanted to release all the files,” including “nipple-related documents” and other “unsubstantiated material” about Trump.

What next?

Following the Times report, the White House is “abuzz over the leak about leak control,” said Axios.

‘Nashville's a city on the rise. But can locals keep it real?’

Blake Fontenay at USA Today

While Nashville is “still the country music capital, it’s also a booming center for healthcare, technology businesses and, if you count the suburbs, car manufacturing,” says Blake Fontenay. But an “insurance company ranked Nashville as the fourth biggest ‘tourist trap’ in the world, with a vibe ‘more staged than real.’” When “your civic identity projects as being about as authentic as Las Vegas, that’s a problem.” Nashville is “much more than its music scene or its downtown party spots.”

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‘If we are to counter medical misogyny, women can no longer be treated as unreliable witnesses of their own experience’

Alison Downham Moore at The Guardian

The “struggles of people with endometriosis to access patient-centered and appropriate care continue in many countries,” says Alison Downham Moore. This is “part of a long pattern in which medicine has repeatedly treated women’s testimony as unreliable, women’s pain as less urgent and women’s reproductive bodies as peculiarly available for unwarranted surgical intervention.” Women are “often wronged not only in what is done to their bodies but in their status as the knowers of those bodies.”

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‘How Nancy Mace self-immolated’

Matthew X. Wilson at the National Review

Rep. Nancy Mace “built a reputation on Capitol Hill as someone who would say and do just about anything for attention — as someone who could be counted on to always make herself the story,” says Matthew X. Wilson. Mace “placed a distant fifth place in the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary,” but Trump’s “refusal to endorse Mace didn’t deliver the deathblow — her campaign was already in a downward spiral when the president stepped in.”

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‘With Becerra vs. Hilton, California gets the predictable governor race it deserves’

Jack Ohman at the San Francisco Chronicle

The “utterly unpredictable race for governor of California became utterly predictable late Tuesday” and “almost certainly means that barring some tectonic unforeseen event, Democrat Xavier Becerra will be elected governor in November,” says Jack Ohman. Becerra “probably won’t have to lift a finger against his, yes, charismatic but out-of-sync former Fox News host challenger.” The race “left progressives out in the cold” and a “golden opportunity to elect a truly progressive Golden State governor was missed.”

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What happened

The House on Tuesday gave final approval to $70 billion for ICE and Border Patrol using a budget reconciliation process that bypassed the need for any Democratic votes. The bill passed 214-212 along party lines. The Senate narrowly approved the bill last week. The funds are expected to pay for President Donald Trump’s migrant crackdown through the rest of his term.

Who said what

The bill’s passage capped “months of bitter gridlock that began in late January” when Democrats demanded reforms to ICE after agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, The Wall Street Journal said. This was a “major victory” for GOP leaders, The New York Times said. But “what began as a measure that unified Republicans eager to support” Trump’s hard-line deportation campaign had “devolved in recent weeks into a political albatross.”

The legislation “got sidetracked” over the $1 billion request for Trump’s White House ballroom and by thwarted bipartisan efforts to block his “politically toxic” $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, The Associated Press said. The ballroom funds were “scrapped,” but like the $140 billion Republicans gave ICE and Border Patrol last year, this new $70 billion “will come with virtually no strings attached.”

What next?

Trump was expected to sign the package into law on Wednesday.

President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Office of National Intelligence has thrown a contentious congressional battle into an even more precarious state. Appointee Bill Pulte’s off-color past, lack of requisite qualifications and history of pursuing Trump’s personal vendettas against perceived enemies have some lawmakers thinking twice about reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a controversial warrantless wiretapping law. Already worried about how this White House would use the authorities granted by the law, Democrats now point to the controversial nomination as further justification to vote against the polarizing spy powers.

What did the commentators say?

A bipartisan Senate group working toward reauthorizing the provision had been “expected to deliver the votes necessary to move ahead” with their plan last week, said The New York Times — until Democrats’ “anger” over Pulte being named “prompted an almost unanimous retreat from the emerging deal” on Friday. The failed vote reflected “growing unease” with Pulte’s having led a “campaign of retribution” on Trump’s behalf while leading the Federal Housing Finance Agency, as well as his “lack of national security experience.”

The “very nature” of America’s surveillance data collection is “now going to be put in the hands of somebody who has a history of seeking out private information for political gain,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), per Semafor. “Everything’s up in the air now,” said Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, a ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, per The Times.

Democrats are “threatening to let the government’s spy powers lapse,” said Axios. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has “suggested that Democrats would vote en masse against renewing FISA” because of Pulte, said Punchbowl News, echoing Warner’s “similar threat.”

It is “absolutely outrageous” that Democrats would “try to play politics right now,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) at a press conference last week. Among Republicans, however, opponents of the FISA renewal include “longstanding surveillance skeptics” who have been “some of the loudest voices within the conference” advocating for stronger warrant rules, said Politico. Now, Republicans “will likely need at least some Democratic support in the House” on top of a minimum seven Democrats in the upper chamber to reauthorize the FISA bill before a June 12 expiration deadline, said The Hill.

The GOP is “going to need some help from Democrats, obviously,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to reporters after Friday’s failed vote. Despite acknowledging that the “timing arguably wasn't the best” for Trump to announce Pulte’s appointment during the FISA negotiations, Thune “notably defended” Pulte from allegations he’d “targeted Trump’s opponents” at the Federal Housing and Finance Agency, said Punchbowl reporter Laura Weiss on X.

Pulte may not be “statutorily qualified” for the role, said Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul on ABC’s “The Week.” But failing to renew Sec. 702 during this summer’s World Cup and semiquincentennial celebrations would be the “most grossly irresponsible thing I’ve seen Congress do in my 22 years in office.”

What next?

Once “on track to pass a compromise bill after protracted negotiations” with Democrats, Republicans now “believe the renewal could be held up” past the June 12 deadline, said Reuters. The White House should “plan for a potential significant gap in foreign intelligence collection,” said Senators Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio this past weekend.

In their letter, the Republican senators “blamed the situation ​on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer,” Reuters said. However, on “one level,” the letter means “they’re acknowledging reality,” said Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes (D) on CBS’s “Face The Nation.” Pulte’s appointment has “taken 702 reauthorization off the table.”

Last week’s scuttled extension deal is now “empowering privacy hawks in both parties,” said Politico. Section 702 critics feel they “have momentum to kill any FISA deal” that doesn’t address their policy concerns, “whether Pulte gets yanked from his acting leadership post or not.”

President Donald Trump holds firm sway over the GOP and its voters. But his grip on Republican-controlled Congress may be slipping.

Trump’s White House “appears to be losing momentum” with a legislative agenda that has “stalled in Congress,” said Vox. His proposed “anti-weaponization fund” to reward allies “went down in flames after some unusual pushback from Republican lawmakers.” And Trump’s GOP allies are pushing back on personnel picks like Bill Pulte for acting director of national intelligence and Todd Blanche to serve as attorney general. House Republicans last week also “failed to block an effort to halt the Iran war,” said Politico, the “latest sign” that some members of the president’s party are “willing to buck him” on occasion.

What did the commentators say?

Trump is a victim of his own “petty revenge tour,” Chris Hayes said at MS NOW. The president recently demonstrated his mastery over the GOP by backing successful primary challenges to party figures like Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). Those “spurned” figures will remain in Congress through the end of the year, though they “don’t appear eager to bail out the president” and the more controversial aspects of his legislative agenda.

Republicans in Congress have mostly been “invertebrates” during the Trump years, Rex Huppke said at USA Today. They are showing the “faintest signs of embryonic spines” now that midterm elections are approaching and they will face constituents who “can’t afford gas or hamburger meat” because of the president’s policies. The GOP remains “largely in lockstep” with the president, but the “cracks will spread and deepen” the closer we get to November.

The midterm threat might be “stronger than the sway of a president who will be a lame duck” after the election, Jay Evensen said at The Deseret News. The president’s poll numbers “have dropped, even in Utah.” Congress has largely “abdicated its role” as a check on the power and corruption of the presidency, but “maybe that’s changing.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune “sounds like a man who’s had it with President Trump,” said Mike Zapler at Axios. The GOP leader has pushed back on the anti-weaponization fund and the president’s primary endorsements against Senate incumbents. “None of us controls what the president does,” Thune said to reporters, per the outlet.

Trump is reacting to the “widening rift” with Congress with a “blend of indifference and hostility,” said Isaac Arnsdorf and Natalie Allison at The Washington Post. He “lambasted” House Republicans who helped pass the Iran war measure and “brushed off” objections to his appointment of Pulte to the intelligence post. The president “does not think he needs Congress” as much as lawmakers might think and “feels no need to accommodate them.”

What next?

GOP opposition only goes so far. House Republicans this week are expected to approve long-delayed funding for immigration and border enforcement, said CNBC. The bill will fund those Trump priorities through the rest of his term.

What happened

The House of Representatives on Wednesday voted 215-208 to force President Donald Trump to stop military operations in the Iran war unless he gets authorization from Congress. Four Republicans joined all Democrats in passing the war powers resolution, which a bipartisan coalition pushed to the floor over the objections of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). It’s the first legislation to end the war approved in either chamber, though the GOP-led Senate advanced a similar measure in a procedural vote two weeks ago.

Who said what

The resolution’s adoption is a “remarkable rebuke” to Trump and his “handling of the conflict” from a GOP-led Congress that has “largely ceded its prerogatives” to curb his power, The New York Times said. Republicans who initially backed him on the war “have started to waver,” The Wall Street Journal said, as the conflict has “dragged on with no clear resolution in sight” and gas prices “continue to climb” while Trump’s poll numbers continue “sagging.” Later Wednesday, the House “bucked” Trump and Johnson on a “second foreign policy issue,” said The Washington Post, voting 218-204 to advance funding for Ukraine and “impose additional sanctions on Russia’s finance and energy sectors.”

What next?

The Iran war vote was “largely symbolic,” as the resolution is unlikely to gain the force of law, Politico said. But it “further stymies the White House’s political priorities” after Republicans recently “scuttled several Trump goals,” including funding his White House ballroom and paying off supporters with his $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund.

New Jersey Congressman Tom Kean Jr. won his GOP primary election yesterday, a notable event given that he has not been seen in public for months. And the question of his whereabouts is drawing increasing scrutiny.

The mystery is “frustratingly unsolved,” said The New York Times. Kean last cast a vote in Congress on March 5, then was sidelined by what his aides vaguely described as a “personal medical issue” from which he is expected to recover. Voters, journalists and House colleagues “haven’t seen or heard directly from Kean” since then, and it is “still unclear” when he might return to work or the campaign trail, said CNN.

Kean is “focused” on “recovery” and expects to return to work “within a matter of weeks,” he said in a Tuesday night post on X. But his ongoing and mostly unexplained absence is “rattling” Kean’s GOP allies, who worry the “massive public relations failure” will damage the party’s ability to defend his “critical swing seat” in November, said CNN.

What did the commentators say?

Kean “owes voters” answers about “his mystery illness,” The Bergen (N.J.) Record said in an editorial. His absence has coincided with House debates about the “Iran war, funding for the Department of Homeland Security and other critical issues.” His team spent weeks creating the “illusion of a fully functioning representative” by sending out a “steady stream of first-person social media posts and news releases” before acknowledging his medical issue in late April. New Jersey voters deserve a representative “who is straight with people about his own capabilities.”

The lack of transparency is a “slap in the face to voters,” Max Burns said at MS NOW. Kean is one of several House members who have gone “missing in action” in recent years. Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) missed weeks of votes after undergoing eye surgery, then announced her retirement. Kean and Wilson “can’t be blamed for battling health issues,” but they owe more candor to their constituents. And if they are “unwilling or unable” to work, they should “make way for someone with the capacity to serve.” The duo has a “right to privacy” but also a “duty as public servants to represent their voters.”

What next?

The congressman’s absence has not interfered with the operation of his political machine. At least five speeches in his name “have appeared in the Congressional Record” during his leave from Congress, said Roll Call. While it is “not uncommon” for House members to publish speeches in the record they did not deliver in the chamber, Kean’s “frequent submissions” while he is away have “raised eyebrows.”

Kean’s congressional district is “among the country’s most competitive,” said The Washington Post. The GOP “cannot hold the majority without this seat,” an anonymous operative said to the outlet. Republicans urgently need to know if Kean is “capable of running for reelection and winning.”

Kean still snagged President Donald Trump’s endorsement in the midterms, said The Hill. Kean “will never let you down!” Trump said on Truth Social.

What happened

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Kevin Warsh as Federal Reserve chair in a 54-45 vote, with only one Democrat joining Republicans. President Donald Trump has aggressively pressured the central bank to slash interest rates and made that a condition for his chair pick. But “hot inflation readings are clouding the path for the rate cuts Warsh advocated as he essentially campaigned for the job,” The Wall Street Journal said.

Who said what

Warsh will start his four-year chairmanship amid “resurgent inflation, public discontent with the economy and unprecedented attacks on the Fed’s independence,” Axios said. No Fed chair has “been confirmed by such a narrow margin,” said the Journal, reflecting Democratic concerns that Warsh will be Trump’s “sock puppet.”

The Labor Department reported Wednesday that producer prices jumped 1.4% last month and were up 6% from a year earlier, the highest wholesale inflation numbers in at least three years. With the jump in consumer prices, it’s clear “America’s inflation problem is getting worse, not better,” Axios said. The producer price numbers were “so far above expectations,” said Carl Weinberg at High Frequency Economics, they “will set off alarm bells at the Fed” and “in the financial markets, too.”

What next?

Warsh takes the reins from Jerome Powell on Friday. Powell’s decision to stay on as a Fed governor amid lingering criminal threats from Trump’s prosecutors “could prove awkward” for Walsh, who “has vowed to embark on ‘regime change,’” The New York Times said.

Nine weeks since the start of Donald Trump’s Middle East war, the US and Iran “have entered a precarious standoff”, said the Financial Times. Trump says he won’t lift the blockade of Iranian ports unless Iran agrees to a deal. The Islamic regime insists it won’t resume talks or reopen the Strait of Hormuz as long as the blockade is in place. This “intransigence” caused the cancellation of a second round of talks in Islamabad – and “Trump is now stuck”.

Midterms looming

He’s “trying to look relaxed”, said James Ball in The i Paper, but it’s not very convincing. The president promised voters a strong economy, with low inflation and cheap fuel; it’s becoming obvious he will deliver on none of these things. The midterm elections are looming, and there is an even more pressing deadline ahead of him: on 1 May, it will be 60 days since Trump notified Congress of his action against Iran, at which point, on paper at least, he needs congressional approval to continue military action. So far, most Republicans have not openly criticised his unpopular war. But they would prefer to avoid voting in favour of it.

Trump’s critics believe he has “worked himself into a trap”, said Walter Russell Mead in The Wall Street Journal, but the situation is “sustainable”, for now. True, the war has gone on longer than hoped, but financial markets have stabilised. Trump remains popular with his base. Without taking casualties, the US navy has “consolidated a crushing blockade of Iran”; and with a third aircraft carrier in the region, military options are expanding.

The pressure on Iran is great, said Jonathan Spyer in The Spectator, but the US has made the mistake of believing its leaders think “like us”. They are not remotely pragmatic: they have “mortgaged” Iran’s economy to its project of “resistance” for decades. There appears to be no appetite now for accepting anything they “regard as surrender”.

‘This can’t go on’

Trump could cut a deal, said Paul Krugman on Substack, but it wouldn’t look like a victory. In the meantime, oil markets are pessimistic. The oil price drop that followed the 8 April ceasefire has been near reversed. The world is coping by taking oil out of storage. “Since there’s only so much oil in the tanks, this can’t go on.”

The war has removed an estimated 650 million barrels of oil from the international market, said Andrew Neil in the Daily Mail. This could soon reach one billion. The effects are already all too visible in the Asia-Pacific region, which receives 80% of exports from the Gulf. Asian jet fuel has doubled in price. China has suspended exports of refined oil. The Indian rag trade is facing nylon and polyester shortages, because they’re made from Gulf petrochemicals. We’ve been shielded, because at the start of the war a record amount of oil was at sea, heading for Europe. It won’t last.

It’s not just Trump who has “no idea what to do”. Much of the world, including our government, is “sticking its fingers in its ears, shutting its eyes tight and loudly singing ‘la la la’”.

What happened

The House on Thursday passed a Senate bill funding all of the Department of Homeland Security except for its immigration enforcement arms, and President Donald Trump signed it, ending the longest-ever partial government shutdown after 76 days. DHS agencies, including the Coast Guard, Secret Service, FEMA and TSA are now funded through September. ICE and Customs and Border Protection never lost funding thanks to the GOP’s 2025 megabill.

Who said what

After weeks of delay and GOP infighting, the House “unanimously” approved the DHS bill “through voice vote with little fanfare,” suggesting Republicans were “finally ready to put the impasse behind them,” CBS News said. After Democrats refused to fund ICE and CBP without new guardrails, GOP leaders agreed to finance the rest of DHS and separately give Trump $70 billion for deportation operations through a filibuster-proof GOP-only reconciliation bill.

If the House had “waited for the Senate to pass a reconciliation bill, as some GOP lawmakers insisted, it would have left DHS closed until mid-May,” Axios said. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had been facing a “growing revolt from centrists in his party,” CNN said, and his “major retreat” on holding out for ICE funding was a “major win for Democrats.”

What next?

After lawmakers “return in mid-May,” The New York Times said, Republicans will “try to meet the president’s June 1 deadline” to get their $70 billion ICE-CBP bill to his desk.

What happened

King Charles III on Tuesday spent the first full day of his state visit to the U.S. conversing privately with President Donald Trump, extolling America’s democracy and trans-Atlantic relations at a joint session of Congress and charming his host at a White House state dinner. The visit, ostensibly to mark the 250th anniversary of the U.S. breakup from Great Britain, is also a “crucial diplomatic play” by the U.K. to mend strained ties with the “royal-loving U.S. president,” The Wall Street Journal said.

Who said what

The king’s address to Congress, the second ever by a British monarch, included “among the most pointed comments any allied leader has given on American soil” during Trump’s second term, Politico said. Sprinkled among well-received jokes, Charles said it was crucial to protect the environment, acclaimed the importance of NATO and urged “unyielding” defense of Ukraine.

He also highlighted England’s foundational Magna Carta, which “declared that even a king isn’t above the law,” said Politico. In the U.S., the Magna Carta is “cited in at least 160 Supreme Court cases since 1789,” Charles said, and “not least as the foundation of the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances.” That drew a bipartisan standing ovation in Congress. Trump “didn’t seem to mind” the “low-key criticism,” The Associated Press said. The White House posted a photo of Charles and Trump, labeling it “TWO KINGS.”

What next?

Charles and Queen Camilla travel to New York and Virginia before departing the U.S. on Thursday.

An “ethics earthquake” hit Congress two weeks ago, said Zachary Schermele in USA Today, and it’s only intensifying. The first tremor was the resignation of Rep. Eric Swalwell, the seven-term California Democrat and a leading candidate to be the state’s next governor, after he was accused of sexual assault and misconduct by multiple women. The married father of three says the accusations—including that he raped two women—are “false” and “lies.”

Just hours after Swalwell quit, Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), who admitted an affair with a female aide who later died by suicide, also resigned. In both cases, a bipartisan coalition of female lawmakers had signaled they were moving toward expulsion votes, but this “#MeToo moment” seems part of a broader reckoning, Schermele said. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.) resigned last week after the House Ethics Committee found her guilty of spending millions of Covid relief dollars on her 2022 election. And pressure is mounting on Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.), who’s being investigated over allegations of domestic violence, revenge porn, and campaign finance violations; he denies any wrongdoing.

Why is this happening now? asked Joan Vennochi in The Boston Globe. Maybe it’s a backlash to the #MeToo backlash. Maybe it’s our post-Epstein sensitivity to “power and perversion.” Whatever the reason, it’s good for the country that Congress is policing itself and “setting standards in a bipartisan way.”

Swalwell’s exit was about politics, not decency, said Allysia Finley in The Wall Street Journal. Democrats knew for years that Swalwell was a sex pest, but they still cheered his relentless attacks on President Trump and nodded along as he declared during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings that sexual assault victims “deserve to be heard.” But when the allegations against him became public, Democrats turned on Swalwell in case he threw the California governor’s race to a Republican. It’s nice that other resignations have followed, said Jon Allsop in The New Yorker. But the careful, scalp-for-scalp arithmetic carries “an unseemly whiff of partisan horse-trading.” Is this a real crackdown on ugly behavior? Or a choreographed effort to look like they’re “taking it seriously”?

The House’s “culture of turning a blind eye” will be hard to shake, said Michelle Cottle in The New York Times. Yes, the #MeToo movement “scared some people straight for a while,” but it didn’t change “the essential power dynamic on the Hill,” where members drunk on flattery and self-regard routinely abuse the often young, often female staffers who work for them. For the ambitious Swalwell, that culture of sexual tolerance was as much of a draw as fame, power, and the other “trappings of office,” said Melanie Mason in Politico. A protégé of former speaker Nancy Pelosi, Swalwell “thought he was untouchable—until he wasn’t.”

Republicans are in no position to moralize, said Christian Schneider in National Review, having handed their party to “inveterate horndog” Donald Trump. But Swalwell does represent a uniquely Democratic species of predator: the “male feminist” who trumpets his support for women as a “prelude to making advances,” then uses his progressivism as a “cloak of invisibility” when accountability looms. Swalwell, at least, has paid a price, and with criminal probes underway in New York and California, it could get higher, said Ingrid Jacques in USA Today. But until both parties stop recruiting “creeps and criminals,” and voters start demanding better, the swamp of congressional ethics will remain “a bipartisan problem.”

What happened

Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.) has died after nearly five decades in elected politics, his office announced Wednesday. The 80-year-old had recently filed to run for a 13th term and voted in the House as recently as Tuesday. Scott’s death widens the Republicans’ narrow majority in Congress ahead of November’s midterms. He was the fifth House member to die in office this Congress; four were Democrats.

Who said what

Scott, the first Black lawmaker to chair the House Agriculture Committee, was “once a leading voice for Democrats” on farm and food aid policy, The Associated Press said, but he “faced criticism and concerns in recent years because of declining health.” In his district, Scott sponsored “annual job and health fairs so popular they almost guaranteed his reelection every two years,” even as “age and physical ailments” limited his visibility, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said.

What next?

Scott had been facing “strong challenges from well-funded Democrats” in his May primary, the Journal-Constitution said. Under Georgia law, the governor “has 10 days to call a special election to fill Scott’s seat,” with the election held “at least 30 days after that,” The Washington Post said.

What happened

Voters in Virginia on Tuesday backed a new congressional map that could flip as many as four Republican-held seats, giving Democrats a boost in November’s midterm elections. Democrats currently hold six of Virginia’s 11 House seats. The redistricting referendum, approved 51.5% to 48.5%, endorses a 10-1 map passed by the Democratic-led General Assembly that would remain in effect until 2030.

Who said what

The new Virginia map put Democrats “slightly ahead in the national mid-decade gerrymandering wars,” Politico said, an outcome “few thought possible when President Donald Trump picked the fight by pushing Texas Republicans to redraw their map last summer.” Virginia voters told pollsters “they generally opposed partisan gerrymandering,” The Washington Post said, but “many said they were willing to approve it for a limited time to send an extraordinary message to the White House.”

Trump sat out of the campaign until the end. “This is really a country election,” he told a tele-rally on Monday. Democrats did not “roll over and play dead” in the gerrymander fight, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said in a statement. “When they go low, we hit back hard.”

What next?

The Virginia Supreme Court is still considering GOP challenges that would “make the referendum results meaningless,” The Associated Press said. And Florida’s GOP-led Legislature is meeting next week to consider a new map “targeting as many as five” Democratic seats, CNN said, though that effort “faces several obstacles of its own.”

What happened

The House early Friday morning approved a 10-day extension of a controversial surveillance law after a rebellion by libertarian-leaning Republicans. President Donald Trump had urged Republicans to “UNIFY” and pass an 18-month extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act without any changes. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) called an overnight session to pass either that bill or a five-year extension with some changes to win over GOP holdouts. Some 20 Republicans joined all but four Democrats to vote both down, and the 10-day extension was passed by voice vote.

Who said what

Section 702 allows the CIA, FBI and other intelligence agencies to surveil foreigners overseas — and any Americans they are communicating with — without a warrant. Debate over its reauthorization “has scrambled the usual polarized party lines,” The New York Times said. “Privacy and civil liberties-focused lawmakers in both parties have allied to press for greater limits, while centrists and national security hawks” want it renewed without changes.

What next?

Section 702 expires on Monday, and the Senate is “gaveling for a rare Friday session, as Congress races to keep the surveillance program running,” The Associated Press said.

What happened

The Senate on Wednesday rejected a fourth attempt by Democrats to limit President Donald Trump’s authority to wage war on Iran, in a mostly party-line 52-47 vote. The “repeated defeats underscore the durability of Republican backing” for Trump, The New York Times said. But “some GOP lawmakers suggested that their patience was wearing thin as the conflict drags on, its economic fallout reverberates among their constituents and the president’s bellicose statements intensify.”

Who said what

Republicans “say they will keep faith in Trump’s wartime leadership, for now,” The Associated Press said. But they “are anxious for the conflict to end, and some are eyeing future votes,” notably a statutory deadline at the end of the month. Under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, if Congress doesn’t declare war or authorize the use of force within 60 days, or grant a 30-day extension, U.S. forces must be withdrawn.

Trump originally predicted the Iran war would be over within four or five weeks, but with the 60-day deadline “rapidly approaching,” he’s sending “mixed signals,” The Washington Post said. Trump keeps insisting the war is almost over, but he just “imposed a naval blockade on Iran and sent thousands more troops to the Middle East.”

What next?

The House is expected to vote Wednesday “on its own resolution to block Trump from ordering more strikes on Iran,” the Post said. The outcome of the vote “is uncertain,” said the AP.

What happened

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) on Tuesday unveiled a bill to set up a bipartisan panel that could help remove a mentally or physically incapacitated president under the 25th Amendment. The legislation, which had 50 Democratic cosponsors, is a “matter of national security,” Raskin said in a statement. “Public trust in Donald Trump’s ability to meet the duties of his office has dropped to unprecedented lows” as he “threatens to destroy entire civilizations” and “aggressively insults the pope,” among other erratic behavior.

Who said what

The 25th Amendment empowers the vice president, plus the Cabinet or “such other body as Congress” provides, to declare the president unfit for office. “This body should have been set up” when the amendment was ratified in 1967, Raskin said. A White House spokesperson called Raskin a “lightweight” and praised Trump’s “sharpness” and “unmatched energy.”

The Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate would each pick four of the panel’s 16 members — physicians, psychiatrists and former top Cabinet officials — and the panel would pick a 17th member as chair. If a medical examination found the president unfit, a majority of the panel could vote to suspend the president with the assent of the vice president.

What next?

The legislation “is a long shot,” Axios said, as “Republicans control Congress, and Trump could simply veto it.”

Democrats are ready to be done with Donald Trump’s presidency. Trump’s critics are starting to talk more openly about removing him from office, using impeachment or the 25th Amendment. They assert that his recent social media tirades against Iran and Pope Leo reveal he is unfit for office.

Democrats in Congress mostly “steered clear of threatening impeachment” since Trump’s return to the White House, said The New York Times. The president’s threat last week to wipe out Iranian civilization “dramatically” shifted their calculations, spurring dozens of “formerly hesitant” House Democrats to back articles of impeachment. Trump “seems to be taking us on a path to mass war crimes,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said on X. The president’s recent “erratic behavior and extreme comments” have “turbocharged” discussion of his mental fitness, said the Times. The challenge: Removal efforts are “doomed to fail so long as Republicans control Congress,” said The Associated Press.

What did the commentators say?

The “fate of the Earth depends” on Trump’s removal from office, Will Bunch said at The Philadelphia Inquirer. The president’s growing list of “embarrassingly profane and unspeakably evil” social media posts demonstrates that he is “mentally and physically deteriorating,” a danger given his command of the “planet’s largest air force and a large cache of nuclear weapons.” The threat is too urgent to wait for Democrats to win control of Congress in November. Americans should join a May 1 general strike called for by the organizers of the “No Kings” protests to make their feelings clear. “It is a time for action.”

Democrats’ talk of impeachment “plays into Iran’s hand,” Peter Lucas said at The Boston Herald. Despite his words, Trump “will not end civilization in Iran.” But he will end Iran’s attempt to develop its own nuclear weapon. Democrats are looking for an excuse to “impeach him anyway if they gain control of the House in November.” They should instead acknowledge that Trump “saved the day” by taking action against Iran.

The 25th Amendment is “having a moment,” Ian Millhiser said at Vox, but it is unlikely to be used against this president. The constitutional provision would allow the White House cabinet to “temporarily prevent Trump from acting as president,” but the process is designed to replace an executive who is “physically or mentally incapacitated” rather than one who is “merely bad at being president.” Other democracies make it easier to remove an “incompetent, unfit or unpopular leader.” The United States should join their ranks.

What next?

Democratic leaders are trying to “shut down” impeachment talk, said Axios. That is not the “best use of our time” given that the effort would inevitably fall short, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) said to the outlet. Dean and other senior Democrats want the party’s focus to be on “concrete issues like the war in Iran and affordability” as midterm elections approach, said Axios. An impeachment that fails to remove Trump, said Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), “is worse than no impeachment at all.”

‘Have these people learned nothing?’

Michelle Cottle at The New York Times

Eric Swalwell “had his political career blown up by allegations of degeneracy and abject stupidity,” says Michelle Cottle. Many lawmakers “fail to learn from the ruined careers of the past in part because those around them too often shrug off the whispers, red flags and glaringly bad behavior until some line gets crossed.” The “problem is less a ‘boys will be boys’ tolerance than a sense of resignation among politicians, staff and other members of official Washington.”

Read more

‘Deportations are putting US disaster response at risk’

Yvette D. Clarke and Michael Shank at Newsweek

This year the U.S. “will be less equipped than in previous years to prevent, prepare for and respond to increasingly extreme weather,” say Yvette D. Clark and Michael Shank. The Trump administration made FEMA “less effective, less funded and less capable of helping Americans before, during and after a storm.” At the “same time, the administration’s immigration policies are shrinking the very workforce we rely on for disaster preparation, response and recovery.” The government “cannot operate in silos.”

Read more

‘Debating busting the filibuster’

Dan McLaughlin at the National Review

Some are “not against the idea of using the levers of the congressional rules to create theatrical confrontations that can move the public to apply pressure to members of Congress,” says Dan McLaughlin. But this is “undermined by senators believing that their votes are not necessary to passage.” The Senate “is dysfunctional, and it should debate and engage publicly more.” The filibuster is “more destructive than the benefits to be gained by any particular public debate.”

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‘Lebanon’s resilience is celebrated, as if survival were admirable rather than imposed’

Tayma Saliba at Le Monde

In Lebanon, “staying informed is both a dependency and a necessity,” says Tayma Saliba. Between “international media, local journalists, rumors and content generated by artificial intelligence, young people become informal analysts, cross-referencing sources and explaining the situation to relatives abroad.” A “recurring discourse celebrates Lebanese resilience, as if survival were admirable rather than imposed.” This is “meant to recognize endurance but ends up normalizing suffering, suggesting that the situation is manageable.” But “survival is not acceptance.”

Read more

What happened

Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif) and Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) separately said Monday they will resign from Congress as both face House investigations into alleged sexual misconduct and growing calls to quit or face expulsion. Swalwell ended his campaign for California governor over the weekend after an unidentified former aide accused him of sexual assault and three other women said he had sexually harassed them. Gonzales dropped his reelection bid in March after admitting to a coercive relationship with a staffer who later died by suicide.

Who said what

The House Ethics Committee, which was already investigating Gonzales for violating rules prohibiting sexual relationships with subordinates, announced Monday it had opened an investigation into Swalwell. The Manhattan district attorney is also investigating the assault allegation, which Swalwell denied while apologizing for other past “mistakes in judgment.”

Ethics Committee investigations can take months, and House leaders had been “facing loud demands to hold votes to kick out Swalwell and Gonzales” after the House returned from recess Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal said. “Lawmakers had coalesced around the idea of an even trade — one Democrat for one Republican — to spread the ignominy across both parties and preserve the fragile balance of power” in the GOP-led House.

“Expelling anyone in Congress without due process, within days of an allegation being made, is wrong,” Swalwell said on X. “But it’s also wrong for my constituents to have me distracted,” so “I plan to resign my seat.” About an hour later, Gonzales announced that “when Congress returns tomorrow, I will file my retirement from office.”

What next?

Neither lawmaker gave a time frame for his departure. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-N.M.) said she would file a motion to expel Gonzales unless he resigned “effective immediately” by 2 p.m. Tuesday.

President Donald Trump loves raging against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, regularly chiding the military partnership for alleged financial delinquencies while at the same time boosting the interests of NATO’s primary antagonist, Russia. Now, as the U.S.’s war on Iran continues, NATO’s ostensible neutrality in that conflict has prompted him to renew his threat of leaving the organization altogether. Trump often tries to dictate reality by presidential fiat, but the legal process for leaving NATO is largely out of his hands and in Congress.’ The result is a Trump who’s more constrained on paper but not without a toolbox of other, less absolute options.

Why can’t Trump just leave NATO?

Trump has often threatened to leave the military alliance, but he has his own Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, to thank for the legal inability to do so. In 2023, Congress enacted what “appears to be the first statute prohibiting the president from unilaterally withdrawing from a treaty (specifically, the North Atlantic Treaty),” said the government’s Congressional Research Service in a February 2026 report. This “might be understood as a rejection” of the position that presidents possess “exclusive power over treaty withdrawal.”

The bill ensures presidents cannot exit NATO “without rigorous debate and consideration by the U.S. Congress with the input of the American people,” said co-sponsor Rubio in a statement on Senator Tim Kaine’s site; Kaine (D-Va.) was the amendment’s other sponsor. Before this, any member nation could exit the treaty one year after notifying the U.S., which would then “inform the governments of the other parties of the deposit of each notice of denunciation,” said the NATO charter.

Per the bill, a bipartisan effort for which Rubio partnered with Kaine and others from across the aisle, a president may only exit NATO “by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, provided that two-thirds of the senators present concur or pursuant to an Act of Congress.” This is a virtual impossibility, given the Democrats’ current holdings in the upper chamber.

The 2023 effort was “spurred by worries that Trump, if he returned to power, might try to quit the alliance,” said The Washington Post. Fast forward three years, and Trump “insists he would be able to do it anyway,” said Deutsche Welle.

What can he do then?

While it’s possible a constitutional challenge to Rubio’s 2023 bill would “likely favor the power of a president,” there are still “plenty of ways” Trump could “kneecap” the treaty “without leaving” or complying with the congressional restrictions, said DW. Even without an “official exit,” Trump’s “increasingly hostile stance toward the alliance may leave it weakened,” said CBS News.

If other member nations “can’t trust” that the U.S. will honor the treaty’s Article 5 mutual defense pact, then the alliance is “already broken in the way that matters most,” said political scientist Ian Bremmer on X. As soon as the group’s mutual defense pact is “questioned,” NATO “loses its potency” as a Russian deterrent, said Politico. Trump has, in that respect, “turned doubting NATO into official policy.”

The president is also “considering a plan to punish” some NATO member nations he deemed “unhelpful” during the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, said The Wall Street Journal. This would involve relocating some of the 84,000 American troops stationed in Europe and deploying them to “countries that were more supportive,” including Greece, Lithuania, Poland and Romania.

Trump could also withdraw American military assets entirely and shut off funding for NATO operations. Or if he wants to be “very dramatic,” he might even “decide not to staff the position of Supreme Allied Commander Europe,” a post traditionally reserved for American officers, said DW.

The president could “just downgrade our participation,” said Jim Townsend, a former Pentagon official who oversaw Europe and NATO policy, to Politico. He could skip summits, and the secretary of defense “won’t go to defense ministerials.”

With the “language” of its 2023 bill, Congress has “prevented” a “total” and “formal withdrawal from NATO,” said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) to Politico. But the U.S. could “still be in NATO” with a president grasping “many different levers” so that the country’s impact would nevertheless be “diminished significantly.”

What happened

The Justice Department on Wednesday told the House Oversight Committee that ousted Attorney General Pam Bondi will not honor its bipartisan subpoena to sit for a deposition on her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, citing her firing last week. The notification “set off frustration” among lawmakers “clamoring for answers” about why she had not, “in their view, fully complied with the Epstein Files Transparency Act,” USA Today said.

Who said what

Bondi “cannot escape accountability,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) said on social media. The subpoena “was for Bondi by name, not by title.” If Bondi “defies the subpoena, we will begin contempt charges,” Rep. Robert Garcia (Calif.), the committee’s top Democrat, said in a statement. “The survivors deserve justice.”

Mace and four other Republicans “joined Democrats to force the subpoena” over the objection of committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), and lawmakers were “concerned” Bondi “would try to avoid the deposition” even before President Donald Trump fired her, The New York Times said. Comer last month promised to honor the subpoena, but according to sources, he and Bondi “had been quietly working together to avoid the deposition.”

What next?

The committee will contact Bondi’s “personal counsel” about “scheduling her deposition,” a spokesperson said.

Donald Trump’s political rivals have denounced him as an “unhinged madman” and a “dangerous and mentally unbalanced individual” after he directed a string of expletives at the Iranian regime. “Open the F***in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell!” the US president said on his Truth Social platform .

But Trump is far from the only potty-mouthed politician, and trends suggest that swearing in politics is increasingly going from taboo to mainstream.

‘Profanity seal’

Woodrow Wilson “broke the profanity seal” in 1919, when the then president recalled a time he made a “conspicuous ass of himself”, said Joseph Phillips, a politics lecturer at Cardiff University. “Since then, presidents, their seconds-in-command, and presidential hopefuls have used profanity at least 692 times” – but the vast majority of curse words, 87%, occurred in the last 10 years.

We’ve “come a long way from our shock” at John Major, not knowing he was being recorded, using the word “bastards” while prime minister in 1993, said Robert Crampton in The Times. Although “tough talk is nothing new in politics”, leaders “long avoided flaunting it”, said The Independent. But now, public vulgarity is “in vogue”. During a political rally in 2025, Trump “used profanity at least four times”. J.D. Vance has also sworn publicly, and former vice president Kamala Harris “earned a roar of approval from her audience” last October when she said of the Trump administration that “these mother******* are crazy”.

Members of Congress and the Senate have also sworn as a “volley of vulgarities underscores an ever-coarsening political environment” on social media. Posts that “evoke the strongest emotions are rewarded with the most engagement”.

‘Anti-intellectualism’

There’s a “misguided belief” that “profanity is more ‘honest’ or ‘authentic’ than polite speech”, said Solomon D. Stevens in the Illinois paper the Journal-Courier. This suggests that politicians who swear are “telling it like it is” or “being real”, while those who don’t must be “holding back and not telling the truth”. But “politicians who swear are just politicians who swear. They can lie just as easily as those who don’t swear.”

There’s also “an anti-intellectualism at work”, as politicians who swear imply that those who don’t are “putting on airs”. While some intellectuals can “certainly be pretentious”, “refraining from coarse language” is not in itself a sign of that.

Trump’s “disinhibited language” sounded like a “tantrum”, said Melanie Phillips in The Times. It “suggested that he’d lost self-control because Iran wouldn’t do what he wanted”. Swearing points to an “emotional release and thus a loss of reason”.

The president’s recent profanity also distracted from “the message itself”, said the Deseret News. A “rousing and well-crafted argument” could have “built a compelling case for ousting the country’s ruling regime”, because “when it comes to war, calm self-assurance speaks louder than ranting expletives”.

Politicians aren’t “bawling swear words because they can’t contain their outrage”, said Barton Swaim in The Wall Street Journal. They do it because, “like preteen boys trying to sound tough”, they believe “the odd public expletive enhances their authenticity” and gives them “an air of pugnacity apropos to the moment”. But they are mistaken. “Most Americans still prefer their leaders to talk like grown-ups.”

Nevertheless, Democrats are pushing back against the right, using bad language themselves and embracing more confrontational and crass tactics. They see it as a way to beat Maga at its own game, attempting to “step outside the bounds of the political correctness that Republicans have accused Democrats of establishing”, said The New York Times.

What happened

The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for the dismissal of Steve Bannon’s 2022 contempt of Congress conviction for defying a subpoena from the House’s Jan. 6 committee. After President Donald Trump returned to office, the Justice Department had asked the courts to dismiss the conviction of his longtime ally and former adviser “in the interests of justice.” Monday’s two-sentence ruling vacated a D.C. appellate court ruling upholding Bannon’s conviction and sent the case back to a lower court, with the expectation it will be tossed.

Who said what

Dismissing the case “would effectively wipe out” the conviction, The New York Times said, but it would “have little practical effect” since Bannon already served his four-month sentence. Trump’s Justice Department has “sought to undo a number of criminal cases” involving his allies, The Washington Post said. But it’s unlikely the Supreme Court acted “out of particular sympathy or ideological alignment” with Bannon, Stanford criminal law professor Robert Weisberg told the Post. “It’s simply saying as a kind of supervisory matter: let’s clean the court of cases the prosecution doesn’t want to pursue.”

What next?

Trump previously pardoned Bannon for criminal charges tied to defrauding donors to a charity, but Bannon “pleaded guilty in a New York state court” to similar charges, under a “deal that allowed him to avoid jail time,” The Associated Press said. “That conviction is unaffected by the Supreme Court action.”

The U.S. is now $39 trillion in debt. Politicians have been fighting over the federal spending for decades and even briefly balanced the budget at the end of then-President Bill Clinton’s term. But there are concerns the gap between the nation’s income and outlays will soon produce real consequences.

The federal debt has “surged under both Republican and Democratic presidents,” said The Associated Press, but it is growing faster than ever: The number “hit $38 trillion five months ago — and $37 trillion two months before that.” That rate makes it likely the government “will hit a staggering $40 trillion in national debt before this fall’s elections,” said Michael Peterson of the nonprofit Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which focuses on fiscal issues, in a statement. The consequences may include “higher borrowing costs for things like mortgages and cars” and “more expensive goods and services,” said the AP.

What did the commentators say?

The debt milestone is an important “moment in the nation’s accelerating self-assassination,” George Will said at The Washington Post. Interest payments on the debt are already the “fastest-growing part” of the federal budget and could reach $2 trillion annually within a decade. One reason for the balloon is the growing cohort of voters over age 65, who vote to “defend and enlarge their benefits” while leaving the next generation to pay the costs. That creates a danger. The bigger the debt is as a share of the economy, the “less leeway government has to respond to recessions or other economic shocks.”

It is “getting harder to kick” the debt can down the road, Timothy Nash and his co-authors said at RealClearMarkets. The debt now totals about 125% of the gross domestic product, up from 36% in 1981. That threatens American power. The Roman Empire collapsed “after decades of fiscal strain, inflation and military spending,” while Germany’s Weimar Republic failed after “economic instability and runaway inflation destroyed public confidence in the currency.” Unless the U.S. finds fiscal discipline, the debt “risks eroding the very economic foundation that made America prosperous in the first place.”

Congress should establish a “bipartisan fiscal commission,” David K. Young said at Fortune. That would “not solve the problem overnight,” but it could “focus both political parties on finding a solution” while bringing “bipartisan credibility to reforms.” For a commission to be successful, “everything must be on the table,” reviewing all spending and revenue sources. One thing is clear: “The U.S. debt crisis is already here.”

What next?

The U.S. continues to add to its “red-ink balances,” said Politico. The Congressional Budget Office reported in February that the annual budget deficit will likely reach $1.9 trillion this year and grow to $3.1 trillion by 2036, which is expected to help create a $64 trillion national debt within a decade. Interest payments and “spending on safety-net programs” are predicted to drive the “expanding gap” between revenues and spending.

‘Hormuz fertilizer block will upend world’s food production’

Chris Krebs at the Financial Times

Before the “first strike on Iran, the global food system was already running on reduced redundancy,” says Chris Krebs, and the Strait of Hormuz closure “isn’t breaking a healthy system. It is breaking one that was already compromised.” The “food security clock runs in months,” but the “geopolitical clock runs in years.” If “fertilizer isn’t moving through the Strait of Hormuz in two weeks’ time, we won’t be debating any more, we’ll be sending in aid.”

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‘Education decisions aren’t inevitable. They are rooted in history.’

Erika M. Kitzmiller at The Philadelphia Inquirer

Cities like Philadelphia have “always had choices — choices to enact educational policies and practices that replicate inequality or to pursue alternatives that disrupt it,” says Erika M. Kitzmiller. Too “many times in our city’s history, those with power have chosen the former.” The city’s “current challenges — shrinking school enrollments, outdated school facilities and persistent resource disparities — did not suddenly appear in the 21st century.” They “have a long history marked by injustice and disinvestment.”

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‘Why corporate America is coming home to the heartland’

Derek Kreifels at the National Review

For “decades, a handful of states such as Delaware, with its hospitable corporate law, and California, Illinois and New York, with their capital resources, held too strong a grip on the American corporate engine,” says Derek Kreifels. But taxes are “harming innovation, growth and the economic prospects of the people who live there.” As a “result, we are now witnessing a historic migration, as some of America’s most iconic companies pack their bags and head for the heartland.”

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‘Congress can’t protect radio without protecting artists’

Michael Huppe at The Hill

There is a “question for Congress: What good is radio without music?” says Michael Huppe. There are “thousands of artists across America” whose “performances are the product that AM and FM radio use to earn nearly $14 billion in advertising revenue each year.” But “unlike every other democracy, the U.S. still does not require radio corporations to pay the artists for that privilege.” Congress can pass “bills protecting AM radio in every vehicle and protecting the artists who make every recording.”

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What happened

President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday defended an upcoming funding request to pay for the ongoing Iran war, as Congress balked at the reported $200 billion price tag. The global cost of the conflict rose again as oil prices surged above $119 a barrel before settling at just under $109 after a chaotic day of trading. Qatar’s state energy company said retaliatory Iranian strikes on its Ras Laffan energy hub had cut its natural gas capacity by 17%, costing an estimated $20 billion in lost annual revenue and affecting deliveries to Europe and Asia.

Who said what

“Obviously, it takes money to kill bad guys,” Hegseth told reporters Thursday. “As far as the $200 billion, I think that number could move.” Trump called the unspecified funding request “a small price to pay to make sure that we stay tippy-top,” pointing to the “vast amounts of ammunition” needed. It “was not immediately clear” how long the $200 billion was intended to last or “what operations it would cover,” The New York Times said. But the “significant sum” suggests that the Pentagon is “preparing for a significant engagement.”

The funding request “met with stiff opposition” in Congress, Reuters said, “as Democrats and even some Republicans questioned the need for the money” after they “approved record funding for the military” over the past year. Republican leaders “do not believe they have the votes to fund the war even in their own party without far more detailed plans from the White House,” CNN said.

While some House Republicans “blanched” at the $200 billion price tag, others are “embracing the eye-popping number to help energize a stalled” effort to pass a second GOP-only reconciliation bill, Axios said. Senate Republicans are “decidedly cooler” on that plan. “The alternative — relying on a handful of Democrats to push it through the Senate — doesn’t look any more likely,” Politico said, as “energy prices rise and more Democratic lawmakers dig in against an unpopular war.”

What next?

The $200 billion funding fight “could turn into a referendum on the war in Congress,” Axios said, which could be harrowing for Republicans given the “unpopularity of the war” and “the Pentagon’s existing $1 trillion budget.” Already, “anxiety is creeping up in the GOP,” CNN said, as the war drags on and energy prices soar ahead of this fall’s “critical election.”

The GOP’s “latest ploy” to prevent election fraud is “a solution in search of a problem,” said David A. Graham in The Atlantic. President Trump is pressuring Senate Republicans to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE, Act. The bill requires voters to prove citizenship with a passport, birth certificate, or naturalization papers. But multiple studies have found that voter fraud is vanishingly rare, and SAVE could disenfranchise millions of Americans who don’t have passports or copies of their birth certificates. That would disproportionately affect older, poorer, and minority voters. The estimated 80% of married women who have changed their last names may also need to provide proof of marriage. In effect, SAVE would act like a poll tax, discouraging voting by creating added cost and time for certain groups. Republicans seem unlikely to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a Democratic filibuster, but Trump said if SAVE fails, he will issue an executive order requiring photo ID to vote. Even if it’s not enforced, it will achieve his goal of “creating uncertainty” about election integrity, so that he can claim that all Democratic victories are fraudulent.

Progressives assail voter ID laws as “racist and unjust,” said Rachel Bovard in The Free Press, but polls show that 83% of Americans support them. No one calls it discriminatory that we need ID to fly or drive. Trump is simply fixing a “gaping hole” in election integrity. Preventing voter fraud is “a virtuous and popular goal,” said National Review in an editorial, but the Constitution explicitly grants states the power to run elections. Federalizing them through the SAVE Act would weaken the states’ authority—which conservatives should fear. Besides, it’s already a crime for noncitizens to vote, and only a tiny number would risk arrest and deportation to cast a ballot. Why “swat a fly with a sledgehammer”?

The SAVE Act is only the Right’s “opening salvo,” said Annie Karni in The New York Times. The House is considering “an even more restrictive measure” that would ban all mail-in voting and end the counting of ballots on election night—another Trump demand. “Trump may not get away with this,” said Michael Tomasky in The New Republic, but he will try to keep GOP control of Congress by any means necessary. If in November you see “armed thugs” intimidating people at polling places, seizing ballots, and creating chaos, “it won’t be Tanzania or Bangladesh.” It will be Trump’s America.

‘Natural gas, renewables can help Democrats on energy affordability’

Mary Landrieu and Terry McAuliffe at The Hill

Americans are “facing a new energy reality: electric bills are rising and the risk of blackouts is growing as our power grid faces unprecedented demand,” say Mary Landrieu and Terry McAuliffe. This “moment presents an opportunity for Democratic leaders to reset the national energy conversation.” An “all-of-the-above energy approach that pairs renewable energy with dependable sources available 24/7 like natural gas is the most practical path forward to help decarbonize and cut costs, without sacrificing reliability.”

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‘Europe’s Israel policy faces a democratic test’

Majed al-Zeer at Al Jazeera

The “demand to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement is no longer confined to street demonstrations or activist circles,” says Majed al-Zeer. Over “more than two years of genocidal war, ethnic cleansing and the systematic destruction of civilian life in Gaza, solidarity across Europe has not dissipated.” It has “moved from protest slogans and street mobilization into a formal democratic instrument that demands institutional response.” The “call for suspension is rooted in broad and measurable public support.”

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‘What a 1921 Ford Model T can teach us about today’s tech’

Aaron Brown at The Minnesota Star Tribune

When the “Model T came on the scene in 1908, it famously changed everything,” says Aaron Brown. But “once underway, the driver must manipulate levers constantly as the vehicle sputters and spurts along the road,” and this “experience became the knowledge that developed today’s cars, which increasingly drive themselves.” It “helps explain why everything, and everyone, seems off these days. We’re unbound from our understanding of how the world works or how ‘progress’ benefits us.”

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‘People are leaving Congress because the job sucks’

Ed Kilgore at Intelligencer

There has been a “lot of buzz in Washington lately about the ‘exodus’ of members of Congress in the 2026 midterm-election cycle,” says Ed Kilgore. Anyone “familiar with the daily grind of congressional service, especially in the House, can tell you that in some cases members hang it up because the job sucks.” It “should not be surprising when anyone decides against making Congress a graveyard, particularly right now, when the institution’s power is at a historically low ebb.”

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What happened

Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., Tuesday tried and failed to secure indictments against six Democratic lawmakers who appeared in a video reminding military service members they can refuse to obey “illegal orders,” according to several news organizations.

A grand jury’s rejection of charges against Sens. Mark Kelly (Ariz.) and Elissa Slotkin (Mich.) and four House Democrats “marked the latest setback for the Trump-era Justice Department in its bids to prosecute the president’s perceived enemies,” The Wall Street Journal said.

Who said what

It was “remarkable” that U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro “authorized prosecutors to go into a grand jury and ask for an indictment of the six members of Congress,” The New York Times said. “But it was even more remarkable that a group of ordinary citizens” on the grand jury “forcefully rejected” President Donald Trump’s “bid to label their expression of dissent as a criminal act warranting prosecution.”

“Grand jury rejections are extraordinarily unusual,” The Associated Press said, but they have “happened repeatedly in recent months” as citizens presented with “the government’s evidence have come away underwhelmed.” This “latest extraordinary brushback” was especially notable, Politico said, because Trump “repeatedly posted that Kelly and his colleagues had committed sedition,” a crime punishable by death.

Trying to file criminal charges “because of something I said that they didn’t like” is an “outrageous abuse of power by Donald Trump and his lackeys,” Kelly said on X. “That’s not the way things work in America.” Having a “grand jury of anonymous American citizens” reject their charges was “embarrassing” for the Trump administration but also marked “another sad day for our country,” Slotkin said. “Hopefully, this ends this politicized investigation for good.”

What next?

Pirro’s office “could try again to present the cases to grand jurors,” The Washington Post said. “But even if they secure indictments, the cases could face obstacles in court.” This Justice Department has “brought questionable criminal cases” against Trump’s perceived foes “time and again,” the Times said. But “even though many of these cases have been weak,” the DOJ “apparently determined that it may be better to fail in court” than push back against Trump’s “well-known desire for revenge.”

What happened

White House border czar Tom Homan announced that he was pulling 700 immigration agents from Minneapolis and refocusing the enforcement blitz there, as Democratic lawmakers demanded Congress place new restrictions on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies they say have descended into lawlessness. Homan—whom President Trump put in charge of the operation as outrage swelled over the killings of protesters Renée Good and Alex Pretti—cited “unprecedented collaboration” from local officials, who are allowing ICE to take custody of undocumented inmates before they are released from jails. He said there would be a shift away from broad street sweeps to operations focused on immigrants with criminal records. But Homan stressed that Trump was still committed to mass deportations. “If you are in the country illegally,” he said, “you are not off the table.” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called the reduction “a step in the right direction,” but noted that with about 2,000 agents still on the ground, it was “not de-escalation.”

Homan’s announcement came a day after U.S. citizens who have been shot and violently detained by immigration agents testified at a Capitol Hill forum organized by Democrats. “I struggle every day with the pain and the suffering,” said Marimar Martinez, 30, a Chicagoan who was shot five times by a Border Patrol agent after she tailed the officer’s vehicle in her car. Good’s brother Luke Ganger told the forum that federal agents’ aggressive actions “are changing the community, and changing many lives, including ours, forever.” House Democrats released a report slamming agents’ “unlawful” tactics, as lawmakers voted to end a partial government shutdown and negotiated over new accountability measures that would be built into a funding package for the Department of Homeland Security. DHS is “completely out of control,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.). “Congress has a responsibility to step in.”

In Portland, Ore., Mayor Keith Wilson demanded agents leave the city after they lobbed tear gas at demonstrators, including young children, engaging in a peaceful protest outside an ICE facility. In Minnesota, federal Judge Patrick Schiltz decried ICE’s defiance of court orders, saying the agency has ignored at least 96 judicial directives this year. That “should give pause to anyone, no matter his or her political beliefs, who cares about the rule of law,” wrote the George W. Bush appointee.

What the columnists said

Tensions in the Twin Cities remain high, said Louis Krauss in The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, but residents, protesters, and city officials report “a seeming change in agents’ tactics.” They include fewer ICE caravans, fewer agents on foot rousting pedestrians, and “fewer confrontations with protesters.” But “intense fights still break out daily between agents and protesters following them.” Videos posted on social media this week showed agents pointing guns at observers trailing them in an SUV, forcing them out of the vehicle, and detaining them.

In neighborhoods “once alive with the pulse of immigrant communities,” the crackdown has “fractured families, rattled worried neighbors, and left residents feeling unsafe,” said Alaa Elassar in CNN.com. Ryan Strandjord never imagined he’d see “his tree-lined, lake-dotted hometown” transformed into a “battleground” by what he likens to a military occupation. U.S. citizens and immigrants alike are choosing to stay home and keep their kids out of school, he said. “There’s just overall a feeling of fear and dread.”

Far from de-escalating, ICE is seeking to expand its authority, said Noah Feldman in Bloomberg. The agency has authorized officers to arrest anyone they suspect of being undocumented, even if agents lack a warrant and the person isn’t a flight risk. That license for agents to “grab just about anyone they want” came on the heels of “another legally indefensible memo,” which said officers could enter homes of suspected undocumented migrants without a judicial warrant. It all reveals an agency bent on making its agents “into an all-powerful police force.”

Judge Schiltz flags another alarming trend, said law professor Ryan Goodman in The New Yorker—the growing “lawlessness” of an administration engaged in “flagrant” defiance of court orders. The nearly 100 cases Schiltz cited include repeated instances where the administration has refused orders to release detainees or present them in court, or has transferred them to other jurisdictions against direct orders. Their contempt of court is “truly extraordinary” and may be moving us toward a “constitutional crisis.”

Such actions are unsettling Americans, and not just Democrats, said William A. Galston in The Wall Street Journal. More than a third of 2024 Trump voters said in a Politico poll that while they back the president’s mass deportation campaign, they disapprove of how it’s being done. In a Harvard/Harris poll, majorities said “federal agents have gone too far and are violating civil liberties,” while a Pew poll found that Americans by “wide margins” think it unacceptable for agents to stop and question people based on their appearance or the language they speak.

Time will tell if the administration’s de-escalation talk is sincere or “just a cheap PR dodge,” said Andrew Egger in The Bulwark. But even if it’s the former, “these systems now have a logic of their own.” Homeland Security has systematically built ICE “into something that looks less like a disciplined law enforcement agency than a small paramilitary force,” recruiting bigoted “meatheads” with anti-immigrant “propaganda” and sending them into U.S. cities with minimal training. Once you’ve created the “monster,” it won’t be easily tamed.

Peter Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor are coming under renewed pressure to testify before US Congress over their links to Jeffrey Epstein.

Mandelson resigned his membership of the Labour party last night to avoid causing any “further embarrassment”. On Friday, newly released documents revealed a picture of the Labour grandee in his underwear, payments from Epstein to Mandelson, and email exchanges between the pair that appear to show Mandelson leaking confidential Downing Street documents to Epstein. The new batch of Epstein files also implicated Andrew, including a series of photos of the former prince kneeling on all fours over an unidentified woman lying on the floor.

Both men’s association with Epstein has wrecked their public reputation but, as the furore over the last few days has shown, they will find it hard to remain out of the spotlight.

What did the commentators say?

Keir Starmer has called on Andrew to cooperate with US authorities who are investigating Epstein. It is “rare for a prime minister to intervene on matters relating to the royal family”, said The Times’ editorial board, but “such is the anger and outcry” that – in an unusually “deft reading of the public mood” – Starmer hopes to pressure Andrew “into finally doing what he should have done" a long time ago. Unless he “fully explains his past actions and what he knew about Epstein’s lifestyle”, this will remain “a running sore for the royal family”.

A lawyer representing some of Epstein’s victims told ITV News that Andrew should be extradited and forced to testify. But US investigators “face a succession of legal obstacles which make” that “unlikely”, said Cahal Milmo in The i Paper.

US investigators may not have more luck with Mandelson. Congress is “poised to issue the peer with a demand to testify in Washington”, said Connor Stringer in The Telegraph, but it “cannot compel testimony from foreigners”, so “he is under no legal obligation to respond”. Of course, “he could be subpoenaed if he sets foot on US soil” and “if he were to ignore that request, he would be liable to arrest”.

What next?

“There will be a lot of Democrats on Capitol Hill who want to exert as much pressure on this as possible,” The Spectator’s deputy political editor James Heale told Sky News. Some would like the US to invoke the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty with Britain, under which each country can request cooperation to secure testimony, via court order if necessary, from witnesses abroad. But, given the Trump administration’s proximity to the scandal, few expect this to happen.

In Andrew’s case, what might eventually force his hand is not threats of legal action but rather “internal pressure from within the royal household”, royal historian and constitutional expert Ed Owens told The i Paper. “Prime ministers do not generally speak on these sorts of things without checking with the Palace first” so “I’m wondering whether, behind the scenes, there has been a changing of the wind”.

What happened

A man lunged at Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and sprayed her with an as-yet-unidentified substance during a town hall in Minneapolis Tuesday night. Omar appeared shaken by the attack but continued talking for about 25 minutes after security tackled the man to the floor. This “small agitator isn’t going to intimidate me from doing my work,” she said later on social media. “I don’t let bullies win.”

Who said what

The assailant, identified by police as Anthony Kazmierczak, 55, ran toward Omar with a liquid-filled syringe right after she called to “abolish ICE for good.” Forensic scientists were working to identify the “light-brown liquid,” which had a “strong, vinegarlike smell,” The Associated Press said. U.S. Capitol Police said in a statement that the attack was “unacceptable” and would be met with “swift justice.”

The number of investigated threats toward members of Congress jumped more than 57% between 2024 and 2025, Capitol Police said Tuesday. Omar, a frequent target of President Donald Trump’s vitriol, “has had the highest level of death threats,” The Guardian said. “Rank-and-file members of Congress are not typically assigned Capitol Police security details,” The New York Times said, but former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) approved a 24-hour detail for Omar during Trump’s first term. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) “has not offered her similar protection, even as threats against her have increased.”

What next?

“The cruel, inflammatory, dehumanizing rhetoric by our nation’s leaders needs to stop immediately,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) said on social media. “I don’t think about her,” Trump told ABC News when asked about the incident Tuesday night, hours after he had criticized Omar during a speech in Iowa. “I think she’s a fraud,” and “I hope I don’t have to bother” watching footage of the assault.

International law? No, “the only thing that can stop me” is “my own morality”, Donald Trump told The New York Times earlier this month.

It was the “most blunt acknowledgment yet” that the US president believes he has the “freedom to use any instrument of military, economic or political power to cement American supremacy”, said the paper. As Trump holds court in Davos today, Europe’s leaders should be in no doubt of his conviction that “national strength, rather than laws, treaties and conventions” will be the decider when “powers collide”.

Trump’s tariff-threatening show of strength in the Greenland row risks the collapse of Nato and the end of the international world order as we know it. Is there any way to counter the intimidating march of this emboldened president?

What did the commentators say?

Europe’s leaders have “responded to the latest escalation with steely unity”, said CNN’s Stephen Collinson. The EU is a “huge trade bloc” and any coordinated retaliation “could hammer US stock markets that Trump touts as a barometer of economic well-being”. But “trade reprisals” could also “end up damaging” Europe more than America.

Perhaps Trump could be made to stop short of fracturing the Nato alliance by Republican opposition in Congress or plummeting popularity with voters? “Dream on,” said Sarah Baxter, director of the Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting, in The i Paper. It is not clear if there are enough Republicans willing to block a Greenland takeover or whether Trump would even change course under pressure. “Trump thinks he is unstoppable, and no longer cares what anybody thinks”, including the Maga movement “he created”. With three years left in office, he “is now more fixated on legacy than the needs of the electorate”.

The US Supreme Court is due to make a ruling on the legality of Trump’s imposition of tariffs. These conservative-majority judges have a decidedly mixed record so far in checking this administration’s executive overreach. But even if they do “attempt to curb Trump’s power”, it seems likely he’ll swerve the move. US trade negotiator Jamieson Greer has already said the administration will simply replace tariffs with other levies.

That leaves those in the president’s inner circle. Many had hoped that Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser Jared Kushner and Secretary of State Marco Rubio might be moderating forces in the White House. But there’s no evidence of that so far. Cue then the president’s trusted chief of staff, Susie Wiles. Some see the 68-year-old moderate Republican as “the only person capable of tethering Trump to reality”, said Alex Hannaford in The Independent. But “to others, she is the master enabler, standing by in the shadows as the norms of the presidency are dismantled one hand gesture at a time”.

What next?

Trump is making a “special address” to the World Economic Forum in Davos this afternoon, followed by a summit with CEOs and an interview with CNBC.

Last night he said that “things are going to work out pretty well, actually” but refused to say how far he is willing to go to seize Greenland. With Nato and transatlantic relations already “at a new nadir,” said Politico’s Sam Blewett and Bethany Dawson, “the question now is whether Trump kisses and makes up, or pours on more fuel”.

The last federal government shutdown ended just a few weeks ago. The next may start just a few weeks from now. Congress’ deadline to avoid another shutdown “will be here sooner than you think,” said Politico. Despite a month of work to find a deal that can appease both sides, the Senate last week “gave up on passing a spending package” and adjourned for its holiday recess ahead of the Jan. 30 funding deadline. And when they return, the usual dynamics will be at play.

GOP hardliners in the House want to hold tight on spending and “could start making threats” to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) if they do not get their way. “This is people’s political livelihood on the line,” said Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas).

Democrats say they want a deal. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) is setting a “very different posture for his party” than he did before the 43-day shutdown that consumed much of the fall, said Punchbowl News. There will be some Democrats who want to use the deadline as “leverage in the Obamacare fight or something else.”

But Schumer believes there “aren’t enough Democrats willing to plunge into another shutdown,” said Punchbowl News. The party is “trying to work with the Republicans to get it done.” The problem is that “both chambers are far behind schedule” on full-year funding bills for 2026 and “key disagreements remain.”

What did the commentators say?

“Congress has learned nothing,” said The Boston Herald editorial board. Lawmakers should have gleaned from the recent shutdown the “level of pain it inflicted on the American people.” The suspension of SNAP benefits left families “panicked and scrambling.” A “kick-the-can-down-the-road mentality” meant Congress avoided dealing with the issue of health care subsidies for a few years until the issue became “leverage” for the latest round of funding fights. American voters “deserve better than this.”

Government shutdowns are a “relatively recent phenomenon” created by a “broken political environment,” said Scott Minkoff  and Josh Ryan at The Hill. Shutdowns also “disincentivize thoughtful lawmaking” in favor of a “warped” legislative process. The fix may be a two-year budget cycle with “automatic funding when legislators fail to act.” That will not solve all of Congress’ budgeting problems because “deficits, spending priorities and taxation” are always going to spark debate. But the rush of constant deadlines is too easily weaponized. A two-year budget cycle “would restore some sanity.”

What next?

There is “little appetite for another government shutdown,” but Democrats are weighing their demands anyway, said NOTUS. Appropriations bills in the Senate need 60 votes to pass, which means that seven Democratic votes are necessary for any successful bill. That gives those Democrats leverage “in theory,” but they forced the fall shutdown for the fight over Obamacare subsidies and ended up “with very little to show for it.” Some senators are keeping their options open. “We got a long list” of priorities, said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).

There is a political storm brewing in the US over the disclosure of the Epstein files and their link to President Donald Trump.

At least 13 files, including a photo containing Trump, were removed by the Department of Justice from the latest release of documents, only to be republished after a review following concerns over victim identification.

The evidence was reinstated without any “alteration or redaction”, said the DoJ, with deputy attorney general Todd Blanche explicitly stating on NBC News that “it has nothing to do with President Trump”.

What did the commentators say?

“The documents produced no major revelations,” said The New York Times. The photos in particular underlined how Jeffrey Epstein, the late convicted sex offender, “attracted a remarkably broad spectrum of famous people into his orbit”, with Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger and Walter Cronkite appearing in the latest batch.

The redactions have caused the most controversy, said The Guardian. Blanche argued that the government “did not have time to review all the files to make redactions needed to protect victims”, with at least one victim claiming that she had been identified in the DoJ dump.

Conversely, in some areas, the redactions were “too aggressive”. For instance, a picture of Clinton, Michael Jackson and Diana Ross was also mistakenly redacted to obscure a child’s face. The child was Jackson’s son, with images “readily available” from commercial photo archives.

There is only one “unequivocal takeaway” from this latest episode, said CNN. The Trump administration’s efforts to “quell the storm have whipped up a new vortex of political energy” that could potentially harm the president.

The most recent release has exposed the “stunning revelation that there are 1,200 people identified as victims or their relatives”, with “materials from dozens of hard drives, old CDs and computers”. Though there is nothing to suggest any direct wrongdoing on Trump’s part, it fuels the “ever-deepening political storm” surrounding him.

There are “several possibilities” explaining the administration’s actions. The “sheer size” of the data could be posing “genuine issues” for officials. The department “may lack the competence” to do such a vast job “comprehensively and quickly”, following “purges of career officials by Trump’s aides”. Lastly, critics of the president “would not be surprised” if the DoJ was trying to brazenly “protect” Trump. Whatever the reason, this will cause a significant “headache” for him.

If Trump has tried to “deflect attention” away from himself, he “may have succeeded”, as the latest tranche of documents “shifted the spotlight” on to former Democrat president Bill Clinton, said the Financial Times. After eventually signing the legislation to release the files, Trump has recognised the “political benefit” of using the files to “tarnish the reputation of a prominent Democrat” and “one of his great ideological foes”.

This speaks to how the files have become a “weapon in America’s escalating ideological war”. On the left, politicians are employing the new information to “discredit” Trump, while the president and his administration are using them to “attack his adversaries”. The conflict continues, as the battles over the files “underscore the claims of Democrats and others that Trump is using the DoJ to pursue his political opponents”: a charge that Trump has “repeatedly levelled at the Biden administration”.

What next?

Representatives Ro Khanna (Democrat) and Thomas Massie (Republican) are seeking to find Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt of Congress, for not releasing more documents related to Epstein. Both were involved in the original drafting of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and Khanna now wants to see the “60-count federal indictment of Epstein from 2007 and the accompanying prosecution memo”, said The Washington Post.

In a statement, the justice department said that materials “will continue being reviewed and redacted” in line with legal requirements, exercising an “abundance of caution as we receive additional information”.

The US president has the absolute right to grant pardons. But Donald Trump’s spree of pardons for loyalists and business allies has raised not only political eyebrows but also legal questions about abuse of power.

Since he began his second term in January, Trump “has begun to expand the pardon power both in nature and in scale”, said Benjamin Wallace-Wells in The New Yorker. He has issued nearly 2,000 presidential pardons and commutations, compared to 238 in his first term.

On his very first day back in the White House, Trump pardoned hundreds of people charged with and convicted of storming the Capitol on 6 January 2021. Last month, he pardoned his former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and dozens of others accused of trying to overturn the 2020 election. “More than any previous president,” Trump has “systematically deployed” pardons to “reward loyalists” and reassure “associates that they can violate the law with impunity”, said Thomas B. Edsall in The New York Times.

‘Rewarding partisan allies’

Over the past decade, the presidential pardon power has been subject to “grotesque abuses”, said Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times. In his first term, Trump pardoned “lackeys and war criminals”, then Joe Biden “issued blanket and pre-emptive pardons for his family”, and now Trump has “outdone” himself, pardoning “a rogue’s gallery of donors, partisan allies and people with business ties to him or his family”.

Take the recent pardoning of Changpeng Zhao. The crypto billionaire had allowed his Binance platform to be used by terrorists and criminal organisations and had pled guilty to money laundering. Yet he had “also worked assiduously to boost the Trump family’s crypto business, and it certainly appears that he got a pardon in exchange for services rendered”.

Trump is using his pardon power as “part of his effort to put the country on an authoritarian path”, Rachel Barkow, a law professor at New York University, told The New York Times. “He is rewarding his partisan allies”, instead of using the power “even-handedly, with a regular process that is available to all”.

‘Separate tier of justice’

It might be “quaint these days” to reference America’s founding fathers but, when they granted unlimited pardon power, “they anticipated at least a modicum of presidential restraint”, said The Wall Street Journal. As such, there are no provisions in the US Constitution to rein in a president who embarks on a pardoning spree.

Trump could still overreach. If, for example, he were to pardon his former friend Ghislaine Maxwell (currently serving a 20-year sentence for conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse minors), it would highlight – in a much more public way – the “separate tier of justice” he has built “for his allies and investors”, said Wallace-Wells in The New Yorker.

Congress can’t remove the presidential power of pardon without changing the Constitution, but it could seek to “circumscribe” it “around a few basic principles”, said Bloomberg. These could include barring self-pardons and pardons given “in exchange for anything of value”. And pardons “issued in conjunction with a case involving presidents or their family members should trigger the release of all relevant investigative materials to Congress, to ensure greater public transparency”.

Seeking to impose these principles “will surely invite legal challenges”. But it would be difficult “to oppose them on the merits. More to the point: doing nothing would be unpardonable.”

Donald Trump has repeatedly flirted with the idea that he could run for a third term in 2028. “There are methods which you could do it,” the president said in an interview with NBC News earlier in the year. He declined to elaborate further, but last month, during his Asia tour, he told reporters it was “too bad” he was not allowed to seek a third term, adding cryptically: "We'll see what happens”.

While mainstream Republican politicians have generally shied away from the idea of a third Trump term, several leading Maga figures have jumped on the bandwagon. Steve Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist turned influential podcaster, insisted: “Trump is going to be president in ’28, and people ought to just get accommodated with that. At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is. But there is a plan.”

What does the constitution say?

The original text does not impose any limits on how long a president can remain in office, but the notion that the presidency should be limited to two terms dates back to the Founding Fathers. George Washington, the first US president, set the pattern by stepping aside after two terms despite clear popular support for him to continue to serve. Thomas Jefferson, who saw “little distinction between a long-serving executive in an elective position and a hereditary monarch”, followed suit, said political scientist and term-limit scholar Michael J. Korzi, so cementing the tradition.

Since 1951, however, presidents have been limited to two terms by the 22nd amendment of the constitution, which states: “no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice”.

Why was the amendment adopted?

Successive presidents continued to observe the two-term convention until Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was elected to a third term in 1940 and had recently begun a fourth when he died in office in 1945.

When Congress convened for its 1947 session, imposing a constitutional term limit was high on the agenda. The debate was driven by the same “major concern” that motivated Jefferson: “to prevent a president from becoming a king”, said Mark Satta, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Law, Wayne State University, on The Conversation. But the then-recent experience of the Second World War, which had made Americans acutely aware of the dangers of allowing a leader to concentrate their power over a long period, had turned the issue into a priority. One representative said that a presidential term limit would assure the electorate that “we shall never have a dictator in this land”.

Could it be changed?

Not without an extraordinary legislative effort. Amending the constitution would need the approval of two-thirds of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, followed by ratification by at least three-quarters of state legislatures. It is almost impossible to imagine a plan to scrap the two-term limit getting the necessary levels of support, particularly to facilitate a president as divisive as Trump.

That has left Trump supporters pinning their hopes on what they see as a loophole. Under the constitution, the vice-president automatically accedes to the top job in the event an incumbent president dies, resigns or becomes incapacitated.

Some have suggested that Trump could join the 2028 election ticket as the running partner to a presidential candidate, who would then immediately resign after being sworn in. Trump would then automatically step into the role of president.

Legal experts dispute this argument, however. Derek Muller, an election law professor at the University of Notre Dame, told the BBC that the 12th amendment, which states “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of president shall be eligible to that of vice-president of the United States”, closed off that technicality. “I don’t think there’s any ‘one weird trick’ to getting around presidential term limits,” he said.

Would Trump likely try?

If the Supreme Court ruled that the wording of the 12th amendment did not preclude a two-time president serving as vice president, Trump could, in theory, “be president for life”, said Paul Gowder, Professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, on FactCheck.org. It would just be a case of “finding people to occupy the top of the ticket”.

But Trump has downplayed the idea of acceding to the presidency by the back door, saying: “I think people wouldn’t like that. It’s too cute. It wouldn't be right”.

A more likely avenue for Trump to retain his power and influence – if not legally his office and title as president – would be to get one of his family members to get elected in their own name, “and then serve as a figurehead president while Mr Trump makes the key decisions”, said The Telegraph.

When describing what it was like to discover how much her Affordable Care Act plan would cost next year, Stacy Cox “used one word repeatedly,” said Justin Gomez in ABCNews.com: “devastating.” The Utah-based photographer’s monthly health insurance premium will leap from $495 to $2,168, an unmeetable cost she says will force her and her husband to go without insurance. Cox, 48, is one of an estimated 22 million ACA enrollees who will see their premiums spike in 2026—by an average of 114%, according to health policy group KFF. That rise is largely due to the Dec. 31 expiration of pandemic-era “enhanced” premium subsidies, which are at the heart of the government shutdown, with Democrats insisting any funding bill must also extend the tax credits. If those subsidies disappear, “the impact will not be felt evenly,” said Robert King in Politico. It depends on an enrollee’s income, size of household, and where they live; some states are contributing funds to reduce the impact. That includes Maryland, where the average ACA premium will rise 30%; in New Jersey, it’s 175%. 

The “lavish subsidies” are a “Band-Aid” for a broken health-care system, said The Washington Post in an editorial. Passed as a temporary measure to help families—including those earning more than 400% of the poverty level, who were previously ineligible for subsidies—the credits led ACA enrollment to more than double between 2019 and 2025. That increased the demand for health care, which in turn raised costs. “Now the bill is coming due,” and Democrats’ only plan is to shovel “more taxpayer money into a pit of ever-larger subsidies.” Despite “Democratic howling,” the real problem isn’t the loss of subsidies, said The Wall Street Journal. It’s that the ACA “is a debacle” delivering plans “few deem worth buying unless they’re protected from the cost.” The GOP should seize this moment “to start building lifeboats from Obamacare.” 

Good luck with that, said Jonathan Cohn in The Bulwark. Since the day President Barack Obama signed the ACA into law in 2010, Republicans have assailed the program while promising “to provide cheaper, better health care without major coverage losses.” But their abject failure to deliver a plan has become “a running joke in Washington,” and the idea that it will happen now “is so fanciful” even GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene “has mocked it.” That’s why, with their own constituents getting sticker shock, a Republican compromise on subsidies may be coming. GOP lawmakers may hate Obamacare, but “they know the voters disagree.”

When Congress convenes after next year’s midterm elections, it will mark an auspicious milestone of sorts for the legislative body: For the first time in nearly four decades, California will not be represented by Nancy Pelosi, the longtime San Francisco lawmaker who led the House for years as its first woman speaker, after she announced on Thursday that this will be her last term in Congress. For Democrats, Pelosi’s departure is unambiguously the end of an era. But it also signals the potential start of something new for a party still finding its footing in the second Trump administration.

What did the commentators say?

While Pelosi faced criticism over the years for her policies and tactics, “nobody doubted her resolution, her vote-counting skills, her sheer political chops, and — most of all — her toughness in tight spots,” said New York magazine. Although her “gradual relinquishment” of political power made Pelosi a “regular symbol of Democratic gerontocracy,” not even those who hoped she would “gracefully retire” expected her successors atop the “Democratic power pyramid” would “equal her leadership qualities.” In retiring, the “Californian who proudly eschewed the state’s reputation for healthy eating” also leaves Democrats without a “prolific campaign fundraiser” who once claimed she had to “raise like a million dollars a day,” said Reuters. An “unmatched force” in politics, she has pulled in “more than $1 billion over her career” for Democrats, said The Associated Press.

Pelosi’s retirement announcement comes as she was expected to face a “tougher-than-expected group of primary challengers” in next year’s midterms, said Politico. Her upcoming departure “sets off a cascade of campaign maneuvering” both in terms of her San Francisco-area congressional replacement and the “political futures of her senior-ranking congressional allies.” After stepping down from the speakership in 2022, Pelosi has become a “ringleader” of some of her party’s “recent watershed moments of generational change,” including former President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the 2024 race, Axios said. But of the more than 60 democratic representatives over the age of 69, she is one of “just a half dozen” leaving without public plans to “seek higher office.”

In retiring, the lawmaker is “paving a pathway” for a “new generation of Democrats to take the stage in California,” said SF Gate. Pelosi is also joined by “many of the state’s most familiar names” in politics who are “stepping aside” lately. “The race to succeed Pelosi will blow open the door for other talented and ambitious candidates,” said Bay Area Democratic consultant Brian Brokaw to the Gate. No matter who that person is, they “will have massive shoes to fill.”

What next?

Pelosi’s skills have been put toward “convincing swing-district Democrats” to “cast unpopular votes to advance the ideological cause,” said the National Review. She also kept the “hardened progressives from making the perfect the enemy of the good.” Conservatives, therefore, may look back on her legacy as a “simultaneously radical but also a moderating force” fondly compared with what may come next. Lawmakers who come after Pelosi should look to her “remarkable career” for “lessons in how to effectively wield power” as well as in “pitfalls to avoid,” said Slate. Chief among them, that even the “appearance of using the office for personal gain” degrades public trust the same way overstaying your time in office “loses the party power.”

Even before Pelosi had made her announcement Thursday, the “battle” to fill her emptying seat “started heating up” weeks earlier, with two candidates already having thrown their hats into the ring, said The New York Times. State Sen. Scott Wiener, a “moderate and a business-friendly Democrat” (at least “by San Francisco standards”), has “long had his eyes” on Pelosi’s seat. Weiner is joined by Saikat Chakrabarti, former campaign manager for Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who has “devoted his life to progressive politics for much of the last decade.” The field is expected to begin crowding now that Pelosi has made her plans official.