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doesn’t declare war or authorize the use of force within 60 days, or grant a 30-day extension, U.S. forces must be withdrawn.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.”

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‘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.”

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‘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.”

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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.

The US government shutdown reached its 36th day yesterday, making it officially the longest in the nation’s history – and there’s no end in sight.

There have been 15 federal shutdowns – “the product of partisan standoffs” over government spending – since 1981, and these episodes have “become a recurring feature of US politics”, said Bloomberg.

Why do shutdowns happen?

The federal government budget is outlined over 12 appropriations bills, each covering a broad area, such as defence or agriculture. These are normally passed each year by Congress and then signed by the president. If all 12 bills aren’t adopted by October, the start of the US fiscal year, then short-term extensions of the existing funding arrangements are passed to minimise disruption. But if Congress refuses to agree to these extensions, that quickly leaves the government with a funding shortfall.

This year, at the end of September, Congress failed to pass a stopgap for the new fiscal year, triggering the latest shutdown. The stand-off centres around Covid-era healthcare subsidies that are due to expire at the end of the year. Democratic lawmakers say millions will be left struggling to afford healthcare if they are not extended. Republicans have maintained that they will not discuss the subsidies until government is reopened.

What effect is it having?

Around 750,000 federal employees have been furloughed without pay, with almost as many continuing to work without receiving any money. Many are seeking temporary jobs, while others have been forced to resort to using food banks.

The shutdown is also affecting the 42 million Americans who receive benefits through Snap, a federal programme that provides food stamps to low-income families. Although the government said it will use an emergency fund to cover around half of the normal benefits, payments for November have already been delayed for millions. A programme that helps millions of low-income households with energy bills is “also taking a hit”, and centres for pre-school children have been cut off from federal funds, said Sky News.

Flight delays are also “piling up” due to shortages of federally employed air traffic controllers and security officers. More than 3.2 million passengers have had flights delayed or cancelled since the shutdown began, according to Airlines for America.

When will it end?

“Despite the punishing toll of federal closures on the country”, an imminent agreement remains unlikely, said The Associated Press. A string of Democrat victories in state elections on Tuesday – which Donald Trump blamed partly on the shutdown – has been seen by many Democrats as a “validation of their strategy” of holding out for a deal.

A “small bipartisan group of rank-and-file senators” are “in conversation” to try to end the shutdown, said ABC News, but a reopening of government is unlikely before the week of 17 November, say Democrat leaders in the House, according to Politico.

The government is shut down and so, apparently, is the House of Representatives. Speaker Mike Johnson has kept the House on an indefinite hiatus over the last month. That decision has halted the work of passing bills and doing oversight, while also blocking the swearing-in of a new Democratic representative.

Johnson’s decision has “diminished the role of Congress and shrunken the speakership” at a moment when President Donald Trump is claiming more power for himself, said Annie Karni at The New York Times. Johnson has “chosen to make himself subservient to Mr. Trump” instead of a “governing partner” as speakers before him have been. The president is taking notice. “I’m the speaker and the president,” Trump reportedly said to associates. That has created a “strange dynamic” in which Johnson seems to have used his “considerable power” to “render the House irrelevant.”

Shifting the balance of power

Johnson is “ostensibly” making the point that the House has “done its job and voted to fund the government,” said Leigh Ann Caldwell at Puck. It is Senate Democrats who are blocking the passage of a continuing resolution to end the government shutdown, after all. But his decision is also “inadvertently reducing the legislature’s own authority,” while Trump “seizes de facto spending and taxation powers” that constitutionally belong to Congress. Johnson’s deference to the president is accordingly “shifting the balance of power in a way that has not been seen since the Nixon administration.”

The House was “central” to the Founders’ vision of “what democracy looks like,” Will Bunch said at The Philadelphia Inquirer. Small districts and biennial elections were intended to “closely bond its members to the people” and be an “antidote to Western civilization’s monarchy problem.” Now the “absence of a functional Congress” is allowing Trump to “run the country by fiat.” Johnson may lead the House, but he is ceding “all of the job’s actual power to the president.”

House Republicans largely agree with Johnson’s tactics, said NOTUS. “What would we be doing?” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.). The battle over the shutdown is being waged in the Senate. Most House members would say they should come back when “we’ve got something to vote on,” Cole said. At the moment “we really don’t.” But “cracks are growing” in the GOP caucus, said Axios. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Dan Crenshaw of Texas, among others, have “raised concerns about being on recess during the shutdown.”

Deepening suspicions

It is difficult for Johnson to argue that he is “serious about swiftly reopening the government” when he will not call the House into session, James Downie said at MSNBC. Another side effect: Johnson has used the House hiatus to delay the swearing-in of Democratic Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona. Grijalva has said she would be the 218th signature on a House discharge petition to force the release of the government’s files on Jeffrey Epstein. The delay in swearing in Grijalva “only deepens suspicions that the White House is hiding something” in the Epstein case.

The government shutdown is about health care. Democrats say they want to extend tax subsidies for the Affordable Care Act's insurance plans or else premiums will spike. Republicans are refusing, saying they want to replace Obamacare with something better. The details are elusive, though, and so is an end to the shutdown.

GOP leaders “don’t appear to have an alternate plan for what happens next,” said The Hill. When the shutdown ends, “we wil be open to have good conversations, productive conversations” about the future of health care, said Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.). He did not offer details. There are a “lot of options there,” he said.

Such vagueness has “increasingly emboldened” Democrats as the shutdown drags on, said The Hill. Democrats are vowing not to “back off their health care funding demands” as a condition of ending the shutdown. Republicans will not "even entertain the idea of an extension in the context of ending the shutdown.” So the stalemate continues.

What did the commentators say?

“Millions of consumers” have received notice that their health insurance premiums are “expected to spike next year,” said The Washington Post. Republicans are worried that Democrats’ demands to renew Obamacare subsidies are “proving salient with voters — including their own.” That is because GOP voters will be “disproportionately hurt” by rising costs: Residents of Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina are all “more dependent on tax subsidies” to obtain health insurance.

Democrats have the upper hand in the shutdown fight “because Republican voters like Obamacare,” Chris Brennan said at USA Today. Researchers say that three-quarters of the 24 million Americans enrolled in the program live in states won by President Donald Trump in 2024. That is why Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is now warning that “insurance premiums for her adult children will double” if the subsidies are not extended into next year. But Trump does not “sound like a man with a plan,” said Brennan, perhaps because he is a “billionaire who doesn’t have to worry about the cost of his health insurance.” The question is whether GOP leaders will “keep marching along to Trump’s disastrous orders.”

A Republican deal to extend the subsidies “would be a stunning move for a party that spent years campaigning on repealing" the ACA, Audrey Fahlberg said at the National Review. Republicans do not even have to take action now — they can “simply let the credits expire.” But “political pressure” ahead of next year’s midterm elections “may just be too much for Trump and moderate Republicans to bear.” For now, there is a “huge chunk of GOP lawmakers and policy experts” ready to let the health subsidies end.

What next?

There are several possibilities for compromise, said Politico. Congress could extend the subsidies, but with new income limits for eligibility. Or they could “grandfather” current enrollees into the program while cutting off subsidies for new enrollees. Whatever the solution, it has to be “something not only Democrats can accept but also Republicans.”

Many lawmakers are working to head off a shutdown come next week when the federal government is scheduled to run out of allotted funds. The White House, meanwhile, is taking what some observers see as an extraordinary step to capitalize on a potential disruption of federal services. In a memo shared with multiple agencies on Wednesday, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) instructed agency heads to prepare plans for permanent mass layoffs of certain employees should the government shut down on Oct. 1.

‘Attempt at intimidation’

Agency heads are “directed to use this opportunity to consider reduction-in-force notices” for all employees involved in programs that will run out of funds, do not have alternate funding avenues and are “not consistent with the president’s priorities,” said the OMB. The threat of mass layoffs “escalates the stakes” ahead of next week’s deadline and is a “significant break” from how shutdowns have been handled over the past several decades, said Politico.

The administration’s “extraordinary ultimatum” appears “designed to pressure Democrats,” coming hours after President Donald Trump “refused to negotiate” with party leaders Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) over the budget showdown, said The New York Times. This is an “attempt at intimidation,” Schumer said in a statement Thursday. Shutdown firings will eventually be “overturned in court,” or the administration will “end up hiring the workers back, just like they did as recently as today.”

This latest and “perhaps furthest-reaching” effort by the Trump administration to fire huge swaths of the federal government comes months after the White House’s Elon Musk-led DOGE enterprise yielded “mixed” results on that front, said CNN. Hundreds of federal employees who “lost their jobs in Musk’s cost-cutting blitz” were asked to return to work this week, said The Associated Press.

In “another unusual move,” the OMB has “yet to post agencies’ shutdown contingency plans on its website,” said the AP. Ordinarily, those plans direct “which functions and employees are deemed essential during a shutdown and will continue despite the impasse,” said CNN.

By continuing to agitate for a potential shutdown after the administration’s memo, Democrats are “eagerly marching forward into a box canyon,” said the National Review. Stuck between being in the minority and avoiding being tagged by the left flank of his party as a “man unwilling to ‘fight,’” Schumer will “likely have to concede and lose the fight in the not-so-distant future.”

To CR or not to CR?

At its core, the shutdown fight centers largely on whether Democrats will support a GOP-backed “clean” continuing resolution (CR) to essentially fund the government at its current levels through Nov. 21 or force a vote on a shorter stopgap CR that includes “several of their priorities,” predominantly focused on health care, said The Washington Post. While Democratic leadership was loath to risk a government shutdown earlier this year, Schumer now says the situation has changed and Democrats must “fight to improve health care in the wake of cuts implemented under the GOP tax and spending law,” said the Post.

Here we go again: The government is on the verge of a shutdown, and Democratic votes are needed to keep it open. But congressional Democrats might be happy to let a shutdown happen rather than help Republicans.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer “voted to keep the government open” back in March and “endured furious blowback from the left,” said CNN. This time, he and other Democrats say President Donald Trump’s actions since then “require a hardened approach.” “The vibes are bad,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii). One Democratic demand is to renew Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year. That is a “big red line” for many Republicans, said Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.).

Some congressional Democrats think a shutdown might be necessary to send a message that Trump “can’t continue to steamroll Congress,” said The Hill. A shutdown is “one of the very few levers where we can actually push” Trump, said one anonymous senator. But the party isn’t united. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) will vote to keep the government open. A shutdown “is never a good idea,” he said.

What did the commentators say?

Democrats are the “pro-government party,” so shutting down the federal government “goes completely against their brand,” said Jackie Calmes at the Los Angeles Times. But what can Democrats do when the “federal government is wholly run by Republicans” who have already “stripped states, cities, universities and federal programs of funding” that had been approved by Congress? While shutting down government “hurts Americans” who rely on it, the “vulnerable are suffering anyway.” A temporary shutdown is “worth it.”

The idea of forcing a shutdown is “folly” for Democrats, Oren Cass said at the Financial Times. Some Democrats argue that voting to fund the government “would make Democrats complicit in the Trump administration’s conduct.” But the history of shutdowns is that the “side initiating the shutdown lost the fight every time.” Democrats’ poll ratings are already low. Instead of forcing a shutdown, they should “acknowledge their errors and move forward with a fresh agenda.“

Democrats in Congress should “do nothing,” said Chris Brennan at USA Today. Republicans hold majorities in the House and Senate. If the GOP wants “total control in approving how our government is funded,” then Democrats should “let them feel the total consequences as well if the funding runs out.” Democrats are not really allowed to steer the process anyway, so they should stick to the sidelines. “That’s the only power they have, at least for now.“

What next?

The GOP-controlled House on Friday morning passed a stopgap bill to keep government open until Thanksgiving, but the Senate “looks likely to reject it,” said NBC News. Democrats this week unveiled their own proposal, which would extend the Obamacare subsidies and reverse Medicaid cuts made under Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” said The Washington Post. Republican leaders said that will not work. Democrats are “trying to take a hostage” to take actions that “can’t be done on a short-term funding resolution,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.).

President Donald Trump's tariffs are suddenly on shaky legal ground. A federal appeals court on Aug. 29 ruled that Trump overreached his authority by raising taxes on imports. That leaves open the question of what comes next.

The court's ruling "represents a major setback" for the president, said CBS News. Congress has the constitutional power to impose tariffs, but Trump said a 1977 law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), allowed him to take action by declaring America's trade deficits a "national emergency." The 11-member court panel said it was "unlikely" that Congress intended the law to "grant the President unlimited authority to impose tariffs." The ruling is a "serious threat to one of the president's most high-profile economic policies," said Nigel Green, the CEO of deVere Group.

Next stop: The Supreme Court. Trump is betting justices will back his "sweeping assertion of his own authority," said The Wall Street Journal. That optimism "makes sense" given the conservative justices' penchant for going along with the president's moves. But the tariff case "may not be so easy to predict." The plaintiffs in the tariff lawsuit are relying on arguments the justices themselves used to "strike down excesses it found in Biden administration policies."

What did the commentators say?

Trump could solve his legal problem simply by asking the "compliant, Republican-controlled Congress" to put its stamp of approval on the tariffs, said The Washington Post editorial board. The case at the Supreme Court will be tricky: IEEPA "doesn't even mention the word tariffs." If the Congress that passed the law wanted the president to have that kind of power, "it would have said so." It is telling that Trump will not take the matter to a GOP-controlled Congress that has "so far shown nothing but loyalty to this president's agenda."

The Supreme Court "could uphold Trump's tariffs," said Jonathan H. Adler, a law professor at William & Mary Law School, at The Wall Street Journal. The "whole point" of IEEPA is to "give the president broad authority" to respond to emergencies. The law may not explicitly authorize tariffs in such circumstances, yet courts have "rarely felt competent to second-guess" the president when it comes to "national security considerations." But there is a "ready solution" to make the argument moot: "The executive can ask Congress for authority" to implement the import taxes.

What next?

The White House is "putting maximum pressure on the high court" to override Friday's ruling, said Axios, insisting that "fentanyl flows from overseas and trade deficits" justify the president's use of emergency powers. The end of Trump's tariff regime would be the "end of the United States," said trade adviser Peter Navarro. Other observers simply want the issue resolved one way or the other. Business owners "just want to know what the rules of the road are," said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.). They will have to wait: The appeals court stayed its ruling to Oct. 14, leaving the tariffs in place while the Trump administration prepares its appeal.

The Constitution unambiguously grants Congress the power to determine how tax dollars are spent, an uncomfortable reality for the Trump administration's efforts to unilaterally slash spending. Many of the cuts recommended by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the spring therefore needed the retroactive blessing of Congress, a process known as "rescission." And media reports suggest that the Trump administration is soon set to escalate its war on Congress' spending power by using something dubbed a "pocket rescission" to block funding without giving Congress enough time to consider the request.

What is the Trump administration trying to do?

Congress frequently rescinds money it has previously allocated for all kinds of reasons. But the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under Director Russell Vought might "employ a pocket rescission sometime before the Sept. 30 government funding deadline," said The Hill. Vought's plan involves using not the ordinary rescission process driven by Congress but rather section 1012 of the 1974 Impoundment Control Act. This allows the president to pause, or impound, allocated funding for 45 days. If Congress doesn't act to officially rescind the funds, the executive branch is obligated to resume the spending.

This actually happened quite recently. In July, the Republican-controlled Congress complied with the Trump administration's request to rescind $9 billion in spending, including funding for public broadcasting. While critics lambasted Congress for capitulating to the White House, the maneuver was legal. The Trump administration, however, is reportedly planning to use this provision in a way that the U.S. government has recently deemed unlawful. This so-called "pocket rescission" is "when a president asks Congress to rescind (or cancel) funds very close to the end of the fiscal year," said the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Because "not enough time is given to consider this request," the president is "bypassing congressional authority over government funding" and taking a knee to let the clock run down on spending he dislikes.

The current fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, and therefore any rescission request that pauses funding after August 16 (45 days before the end of the fiscal year) would qualify as a "pocket rescission." The GAO is an independent, non-partisan agency located in the legislative branch that was created to "make sure that the appropriation laws enacted by the Congress are properly implemented," said the American Enterprise Institute.

A pocket rescission is "neither a rescission nor is it legal," said the Center for American Progress. After all, a "loophole that allowed the president to impound funds over the will of Congress" would ultimately "undermine the entire intent of the law." But the "OMB asserts that there is nothing controversial about pocket rescissions," said Lawfare. The record shows "they have been used this way before," and past presidents, including Jimmy Carter, employed them without being accused of precipitating constitutional crises.

Can anyone stop a pocket rescission?

During the second Trump administration, the boundaries of legality are being redrawn by the president in conjunction with a Supreme Court determined to legitimize virtually every action by the White House. This dynamic was perhaps clearest when the Supreme Court blessed the Trump administration's decision to fire Democratic members of the bipartisan National Labor Relations Board, in clear violation of congressional statute and existing Supreme Court precedent on the matter. While the Supreme Court's May decision in that case was "technically a temporary one," it nevertheless "clearly forecasts the eventual outcome of the case when it is argued before the court," likely sometime in 2026, said NPR.

So while pocket rescissions are of dubious legality according to widespread understandings of the U.S. Constitution as it existed prior to Trump's second inauguration, the Supreme Court seems quite unlikely to halt them. Instead, in keeping with the doctrine of the "unitary executive theory," the court will almost certainly grant the Trump administration wide latitude to interpret existing law as it sees fit.

As President Donald Trump pushes Texas Republicans to adopt a controversial new redistricting plan to pad their congressional majority by up to five seats, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has begun to float a similar scheme of his own. He's considering redrawing his state's legislative districts to further benefit Democrats; as Newsom said on X, "two can play that game."

Newsom, who has spent much of the second Trump administration pitching himself as a party leader for Democrats, justified his California redistricting plan as necessary to reporters on Wednesday. The "existential threat of what Donald Trump and some of these Republican states are trying to do" necessitates equally drastic measures from liberals, Newsom said, framing himself and his plan as at the forefront of the Democrats' growing opposition to this White House.

While Newsom's blue gerrymandering plan has excited some in the party looking for a more aggressive response to the Trump administration, not all Democrats are eager to delve into the messy business of redistricting. As befits a plan as audacious and disruptive as the one Newsom has proposed, opinions vary.

'Not going to fight with one hand tied behind my back'

Democratic supporters of blue-state gerrymandering deem it an "essential offensive posture" that could "make the difference in reclaiming the House" next year, The Texas Tribune said. The party needs to "fight fire with fire," said one Democrat to the outlet. "I'm not going to fight with one hand tied behind my back," said another, adding that "we shouldn't be so nice" if Texas' redistricting moves forward. Voters are "looking for a fight from the Democratic Party," said former Biden administration official Neera Tanden to Politico. Newsom's "response to Texas is the kind of thing I think they are looking for."

For some Texas Democrats, there is even a hope that efforts to counter their state's potential redistricting with similar measures in blue states might "dissuade Republicans from going ahead with the plan" altogether, said the Tribune. The notion of "lowering themselves to Trump's level" has "some Democrats feeling uneasy," said Ja'han Jones at MSNBC. The "counterpoint" to that, though, is that no matter how "concerned about the civil rights implications of California's responsive gerrymander" one may be, the "implications of sitting idly as Texas implements its own are arguably worse."

Redrawing California's electoral maps to "squeeze between five and seven more Democratic seats" for the party is a "brazen political gamble," said Punchbowl News. It's also "exactly the kind of ploy that the Democratic Party base has been demanding," even though it will be "extremely hard to pull off."

'Legitimizing the race to the bottom'

Newsom's plan is "all hat and no cattle," said the Los Angeles Times, using a Texas expression. To successfully redraw California's congressional districts, Newsom would have to break the state's 2010 law that left redistricting to a bipartisan commission, leading to an "inevitable lawsuit" in which he'd "prevail with a sympathetic ruling from the California Supreme Court." Alternately, Newsom could put the redistricting question back to voters "through a new constitutional amendment, in a hurried-up special election ahead of the 2026 midterms."

Ultimately, there is "no downside" for Newsom to try either method, said redistricting expert Paul Mitchell to the Sacramento Bee. Even if both fail, "maps that are really pretty good for Dems are still in place." But by "legitimizing the race to the bottom of gerrymandering, Democrats will ultimately lose," said California Assemblymember Alex Lee (D) at Politico. The "optics" of politicians retaking power formerly delegated to a non-partisan panel are "horrendous and indefensible," said an unnamed Democratic consultant to the outlet. "That's a crazy hill to die on."

As an "ambitious governor" who is ostensibly arguing that the state's constitutionally enshrined redistricting commission "ought to be ignored," Newsom risks "violating his oath," said the National Review. Doing so offers "ample justification for impeachment and removal from office."

Newsom's "inclination to want to retaliate" is understandable in the "national context," said Pomona College Politics Professor Sara Sadhwani to the San Francisco Chronicle. But the people of California have "made it clear at the ballot that the governor does not have that power."

'The new nicotine product replacing e-cigarettes to addict teens'

Leana S. Wen at The Washington Post

Teen "nicotine use is finally declining again," but this is "now at risk of being undone," says Leana S. Wen. The "culprit: nicotine pouches that, like electronic cigarettes, are marketed as a less harmful alternative for adult smokers." In "reality, these products could reverse public health progress by addicting a new generation to nicotine." A "factor especially attractive to youths is the wide variety of available flavors." This "comes right out of the electronic cigarette playbook."

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'Lisa Murkowski, Charles Sumner, and a cowardice crisis in Congress'

Will Bunch at The Philadelphia Inquirer

Americans "are wondering if our flawed experiment in democracy can survive," but "something feels very different this time," says Will Bunch. Sen. Lisa Murkowski's "honesty about a climate of fear on Capitol Hill has been echoed by other colleagues." It's "like nothing you ever saw on 'Schoolhouse Rock,'" and "resembles the omerta-driven terror of the Gambino crime family." It "doesn't seem too much to simply ask that our senators and House members speak the truth about the dangers to democracy."

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'The yellow BRICS road'

Ted Snider at The American Conservative

As "American hegemony continues to strain and the U.S.-led unipolar world shows signs of stress and fractures," BRICS "continues to organize and grow," says Ted Snider. It's an "international organization whose primary purpose is to balance U.S. hegemony in the new multipolar world." BRICS "does not oppose the United States," but it "does seek to end the American-led unipolar world and replace it with a world with many poles and many nations who have equal voices."

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'The lingering shadow of India's painful partition'

Sam Dalrymple at Time

The "trauma of" India and Pakistan's "partition continues to define South Asian attitudes toward past, present, and future," says Sam Dalrymple. The "edgy, militarized border renders Indians and Pakistanis, who had lived together in overlapping communities before the Partition, almost completely inaccessible to one another." Despite a "ceasefire holding, even the most modest cultural and diplomatic exchanges between India and Pakistan have now vanished." Yet "Indo-Pak relations haven't always been defined by hostility alone."

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Congress has passed President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill," handing the administration a major legislative victory, but both sides of the aisle have been sending mixed messages about what the legislation will actually do. Republicans have been lauding the bill for its supposed assistance to the middle class, while Democrats say it is primed to help the rich while cutting benefits for the needy. With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, it seemed mostly inevitable that the bill would eventually be passed.

What did the commentators say?

The bill's passage means that "seniors, students, taxpayers, children, parents, low-income Americans and just about everyone else will be affected," said CNN. While Republicans have been tweaking versions of the bill to send between the different chambers of Congress, the "general contours of the massive piece of legislation are known." This includes a $4.5 trillion extension of Trump's enormous first-term tax cuts that would leave the wealthiest households with $12,000 more yearly, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and offsetting of "revenue loss and additional spending with cuts to federal support for the social safety net that helps Americans afford food and health insurance."

Most notable are funding slashes to key programs for low-income Americans, including Medicaid, food stamps and the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. The version of the bill as passed "cuts federal spending on Medicaid and Affordable Care Act marketplaces by about $1 trillion over a decade," which "could lead to nearly 12 million more people without insurance by 2034," said NPR, citing the CBO estimate. Beyond individuals themselves losing insurance, this would "harm the finances of hospitals, nursing homes and community health centers" and "may force them to reduce services and employees, as well as close facilities."

These Medicaid cuts would come via a proposed work requirement, which "would cut off coverage for millions of enrollees who do not meet new employment or reporting standards," said NPR. But most "working-age Medicaid enrollees who don't receive disability benefits already work or are looking for work," meaning the requirement would likely have "little impact on employment."

Republicans say "concerns are overblown and they are making both Medicaid and [food stamps] more sustainable by targeting waste, fraud and abuse in both programs," said ABC News. The bill additionally "includes a key campaign promise: no federal income taxes on tips and overtime." Trump also "keeps saying that Republicans' mega tax and spending cut legislation will eliminate taxes on federal Social Security benefits," said The Associated Press.

But this is false, as "it does not" eliminate Social Security taxes, said the AP. Trump's "'no tax on Social Security' claim exaggerates the benefits to seniors if either the House or Senate-passed proposals are signed into law." Instead of eliminating these taxes, the House and Senate "each passed their own versions of a temporary tax deduction for seniors aged 65 and over, which applies to all income — not just Social Security." But "not all Social Security beneficiaries will be able to claim the deduction."

There are also aspects of the bill that have been less reported on. This includes a phasing out of "tax credits for solar and wind projects — meaning that development will slow and consumers will face higher prices," said Axios. Funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been "slashed by about half in the new bill," which "could lead to hundreds of job cuts and severely disarm a group that has returned billions to American consumers."

What next?

The bill passed the House 218-214 on Thursday, sending it to Trump's desk to be signed into law. Its passage is a "major victory for Trump and Republican leadership in Congress," said USA Today. Despite unified opposition to the bill, Democrats "see it as a ticket to winning back congressional majorities in 2026."

President Donald Trump's decision to attack Iran has renewed a long-running debate about war powers. The Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the authority to declare war. But presidents routinely wage war anyway, citing their role as commander-in-chief. Where does the power really reside?

Trump "faces bipartisan pushback" for authorizing the attack on Iran without congressional input, said ABC News. Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) introduced a resolution to restrain Trump from acting, saying there was "no imminent threat" to the U.S. that would justify attacking Iran without congressional approval. But Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Trump has all the authority he needs. Congress "can't be the commander-in-chief," he said.

Trump's decision to act unilaterally "comes at a uniquely volatile moment" both in America and around the world, said The Associated Press. The War Powers Act, a 1973 law, says the president should consult with Congress in "every possible instance" before authorizing an attack. But it has been "habitual practice" for presidents to "minimally" meet the requirements, said Scott Anderson of the Brookings Institution. The law is "so vague and open-ended" that it is difficult to enforce.

What did the commentators say?

Congress has "tried and failed" for two decades to have a meaningful voice in war-making decisions, said Paul Kane at The Washington Post. Presidents of both parties have sent American forces into battle "without any real constraint from Capitol Hill." Congress passed its last "use-of-force" authorization in 2002. Since then, presidents of both parties have ordered attacks on Islamic State forces in Syria and elsewhere. Before that, though, the legislative branch approved six different resolutions to cover every theater the United States fought in during World War II. The change demonstrates Congress' "slow and steady slide into irrelevance."

"Bypassing Congress weakens American democracy," said Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic. Earlier congressional debates "helped educate lawmakers and the public" about arguments for and against war and "left a record of who made claims that later proved incorrect." The process allowed citizens to lobby Congress, and later to "hold members of Congress accountable for their choices." Skipping that process "isn't merely anathema to a self-governing republic; it is dangerous."

What next?

Democrats in the Senate are still trying to "forge ahead" with a war powers vote, said The New York Times. But the resolution "stands little chance of approval" in the GOP-controlled Congress, and the shaky ceasefire between Israel and Iran may mean the moment for legislative action has passed. If the war really is over, the "resolution becomes a moot point," said Massie.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Tuesday he believes the War Powers Act is unconstitutional. "Many respected constitutional experts" say the law violates the president's constitutional authority as commander-in-chief, said The Hill. "I think that's right," Johnson said. Trump's decision to attack Iran's nuclear sites played out "as the framers of the Constitution intended."

It's being called President Donald Trump's "revenge tax." The GOP budget bill currently stuck in the Senate would create a new levy of up to 20% for some foreign companies operating in the U.S., a move critics say would deter foreign investment at a critical moment in American economic history.

Why is the provision called a "revenge" tax? Because it would be used to "punish companies based in countries that try to collect new taxes from American firms," said The New York Times. That includes nations that levy a 15% "global minimum tax" under an international agreement the Biden administration helped broker in 2021, as well as countries that tax digital services provided by U.S. tech companies. But foreign companies might decide not to put their money into America if it means they might run afoul of the revenge tax. That "directly contradicts the president's investment vision" of bringing jobs and manufacturing back to America, said Jonathan Samford, the CEO of the Global Business Alliance. Business lobbyists are in a "scramble" to kill the tax, said the Times.

What did the commentators say?

The purpose of the tax is to "intimidate, not to raise revenue," said The Economist. The effects would be counterproductive. The Joint Committee on Taxation, a watchdog group, found that the tax would actually cut into government revenues by "scaring off foreign investors and therefore lowering American asset prices." And it sends a signal. The Trump administration's "protectionist logic" does not just apply to goods and services provided by other countries but also to "capital flows." That is dangerous territory for a president who has "already made investing in America a riskier bet."

Foreign countries have been "seeking ways to pilfer our tax base" for years, said Rep. Ron Estes (R-Kan.) at Bloomberg Tax. The global minimum tax would "erode our tax base" while giving other countries the "ability to target and tax U.S.-owned companies." Taxing countries that take aim at U.S. companies "isn't 'revenge,'" but it does allow the federal government to "advocate for U.S. companies and workers."

Escaping the revenge tax "is simple," said The Wall Street Journal editorial board. If foreign governments do not like how the tax might affect their businesses and investors, they can "stop doing these things" that trigger its implementation. That would include "scrapping" the digital services tax and reforming the global minimum tax to exclude corporate revenue taxed by the United States. Foreign governments "know exactly what to do to spare themselves."

What next?

The budget measure would give the Trump administration new taxing authority just as "courts are already debating the legality of the sweeping tariffs" the White House has imposed on global trading, said MarketWatch. Some analysts say the logic of mutually assured destruction is at play. The hope behind creating a revenge tax is that it "will never be applied," said Morgan Stanley credit strategist Michael Zezas. But that hope may not be sound — after all, the White House, said MarketWatch, has already "proved willing to risk disrupting facets of the globalized economy."

The GOP budget bill is stuck in the Senate, where Republicans are having an intramural debate over how much the legislation will drive up the deficit. And on a more existential note, lawmakers are questioning what it will mean for the nation's future.

What did the commentators say?

Republicans are "squabbling over math" as they try to get President Donald Trump's bill to the finish line, said Axios. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the tax cuts and spending contained in the bill would "add trillions to the deficit," though House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said that is wrong because the CBO's estimates assume "anemic growth" in the economy. Even so, more spending cuts are needed, critics like Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) say. Washington cannot "continue to mortgage" the future, he said to Fox News.

The "basic rule of thumb" with the budget is that the government "should spend heavily during times of crisis," said The New York Times. The GOP bill "turns that rule on its head" by creating trillions in debt during relatively good economic times. That risks a "tipping point" in which investors will "demand punishingly high interest rates" to lend the government money. America should not "exhaust our credit line before we hit some bad times," said Harvard University economist Douglas W. Elmendorf.

The bill's tax cut provisions will be "cripplingly expensive for most Americans" and end up weighing down the economy in "more government red ink," said Jessica Riedl at MSNBC. That is because the "modest growth effects of tax relief" will be drowned out by the "economic drag of adding tens of trillions of dollars" to the federal debt. That money will be diverted from efforts to "start businesses, create jobs and raise incomes." Conservatives prefer low taxes, but "tax cuts without spending cuts are just tax deferrals with interest."

Congress is "whistling past the downgrade," said The Washington Post editorial board. Moody's became the last of the big three agencies to "downgrade America's credit rating" in May, driven by concerns about America's mounting debt. The United States already owes a $29 trillion debt, "just about equivalent to the nation's gross domestic product," and the current budget bill would make the hole deeper. Fixing that "must be a top economic priority" for Republicans.

What next?

"Big changes" to Trump's bill could be made in the Senate, said NPR. A small group of GOP senators, including Johnson and Rand Paul (R-Ky.), are digging in their heels against increasing the debt. White House officials are trying to allay their fears. The Trump administration is "going to bring the deficit down slowly," said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Sunday to CBS' "Face the Nation."

Powerful skeptics remain. A group of six Nobel Prize-winning economists said the bill will "weaken key safety-net programs while greatly lifting the federal debt," said CBS News. That will be bad for Americans, said the economists: Growing the federal debt "will put noticeable upward pressure on both inflation and interest rates in coming years."

"Now would be a very good time for Washington to bring back its debt obsession," said Rogé Karma in The Atlantic. That's because the perfect storm for turning the federal deficit into a "genuine crisis" has arrived. In recent years, the Federal Reserve has "raised interest rates dramatically in an effort to tame inflation." Since that means the federal government has to pay higher interest on its bonds, "government payments on debt interest soared to $881 billion in 2024." That's more than the U.S. spent last year on national defense. At the same time, President Trump's tariff policies have led "almost every credible" forecast this year to anticipate slowed economic growth. Then there's Trump's "big, beautiful," and bloated budget bill, which would add "more than $3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade." The warning signals are flashing red, and if Washington continues to ignore them, "very bad things can happen," from 1970s-style stagflation to a panicked flight from U.S. Treasuries and a global financial meltdown.

So far, bond markets are showing concern but not panic, said Victoria Guida in Politico. The credit rating firm Moody's slightly downgraded the safety of U.S. bonds, and investor unease pushed interest rates on those bonds above 5%. Still, if Congress doesn't heed these warnings and "shift the trajectory" of the budget bill—which would add trillions of dollars in tax cuts "without also making politically painful spending cuts"—"something more painful" than a mild Moody's downgrade could occur.

Don't bet on lawmakers acting responsibly, said Clive Crook in Bloomberg. The 2008 bank bail-outs and Covid-related spending under both Democrats and Republicans ballooned the national debt to previously unimaginable levels—it's now $36.2 trillion. Rather than confront debt of that magnitude, all but a few remaining deficit hawks "just stopped thinking about it." Facing it would mean huge spending cuts and major tax increases, both of which are very unpopular. Instead, Republicans are now trying to hide the bill's "unfathomable cost" from voters, said Jessica Riedl in MSNBC.com. But it's the voters who will suffer as a result. The rapidly growing debt and massive interest payments create "economic drag," diverting wealth "away from the investments that would start businesses, create jobs, and raise incomes." As Washington continues to take an ostrich-like approach to the national debt, something large and unpleasant is bearing down on all of us.

President Donald Trump's effort to exert control over the Library of Congress by firing its leaders could give him an unprecedented amount of leverage over the legislative branch of government. Can Congress stay independent?

By firing former Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, Trump is "trying to take control of Congress through its library," said Rolling Stone. One of the library's sub-agencies, the Congressional Research Service, offers "confidential legal advice" to House and Senate members. The CRS also has a "database that has all the questions that every member has asked for the last 50 years." That endangers the independence of Congress, one expert said. "How can a member of Congress ask CRS for legal advice or other advice when the administration can get their hands on it — or they can direct the answer?"

The burgeoning fight over the Library of Congress is "really about the separation of powers," said The Associated Press. Discussions between members of the legislative branch and the CRS have been considered so delicate they are "protected under the speech or debate clause of the Constitution," which offers Congress protection from legal liability for official legislative acts. The clash between Trump and Congress over the agency is a "power struggle with potentially vast consequences."

Congress 'standing up for itself'

Trump's takeover bid is the "latest example of executive overreach into the realm of congressional power," said the Project on Government Oversight. Congress relies on the CRS to be "confidential and nonpartisan." The threat to that independence "hamstrings" the legislative branch's ability to "understand and respond" to important issues. It also could "undermine congressional oversight of the executive branch."

Congress is finally "standing up for itself a little," Yuval Levin said at National Review. In "calmer times" it would be easier to solve the issue with legislation clarifying that the librarian of Congress is "appointable by Congress alone." (That is already the case with the Congressional Budget Office.) These are not calmer times: The president has been committing "brazen abuses of the separation of powers" while the legislative branch has mostly stood by. If this controversy is what forces Congress to stand up for its own powers against Trump "then by all means let's fight for the library."

'Needs to be a consultation'

Congress is "quietly resisting" Trump's attempt to control the library, said The Washington Post. The president designated Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as acting librarian, but lawmakers say control of the library sits with the top career official, Robert R. Newlen. Congressional leaders "made it clear that there needs to be a consultation around this," said Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.). Democrats are urging more overt resistance. "It's the Library of Congress," said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), "not the library of the executive branch."

Nestled deep within Republicans' massive budget reconciliation bill, unveiled this week, is a surprising measure advocates say is necessary to ensure American dominance in the growing field of artificial intelligence. The bill is designed to capitalize on the GOP's congressional majorities with provisions aimed at scaling back Medicaid and other conservative policy priorities. But it would also enact a full moratorium on any state-level AI regulation for the 10 years following the bill's enactment.

Supporters argue the measure aligns with the Trump administration's focus on American AI leadership. However, critics contend that the proposed legislation would allow a predatory tech industry to run roughshod over local efforts to grapple with the challenges of the still-developing field.

What did the commentators say?

The focus on state-level AI laws comes as AI regulation at the federal level "remains in limbo," The Hill said, leaving state legislatures to consider "nearly 700 AI bills" last year alone. "It's very difficult to imagine us figuring out how to comply with 50 different sets of regulation," said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing last week.

That patchwork of local legislation, Altman insisted, would "slow us down at a time when I don't think it's in anyone's interest for us to slow down." A "web of inconsistent laws" will "fragment national policy, delay innovation" and "create legal and technical barriers to scaling AI systems across state lines," said Center for Data Innovation director Daniel Castro.

But by establishing the federal government as the "sole regulator for U.S. tech firms in a booming industry," critics say, the bill represents a "giveaway" to an industry that will "enable harmful and discriminatory uses of the emerging technology," said The Washington Post. The push for reduced local regulatory authority "also stands in contrast to Republicans' advocacy of states' rights in education and abortion policies."

The language of the proposed legislation is "broad enough to cover relatively new generative AI tools," said Emanuel Maiberg at 404 Media, while still applying to "technology that has existed for much longer." The result will be that it will become "impossible to enforce" laws designed to "protect people from and inform them about AI systems." Ten years of deregulation "isn't a path forward," said AI researcher Gary Marcus in an open letter signed by multiple state lawmakers. "It's an abdication of responsibility." The measure would be "deeply problematic under any circumstance," Marcus said, but it's "especially dangerous" given the way AI is already disrupting health, education, employment and other fields.

States have "quietly become the front line" in the tech regulation effort, said NYU Center on Technology policy director Scott Brennen and NYU Center for Social Media & Politics executive director Zeve Sanderson at the Post. Congress, meanwhile, has "puttered, backtracked and ultimately produced little AI regulation" and will "undermine the only concerted legislative effort aimed at balancing AI's myriad risks and benefits" without offering a solution of its own.

What next?

A state-level push for AI regulation may ultimately "force Washington to move," said the Financial Times — particularly as "some members of the MAGA crowd support a more interventionist approach." When even "anti-regulation evangelist" Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who cosponsored the bipartisan Take It Down Act to address AI-generated sexual imagery, has accepted the "necessity to act in certain cases," some form of AI regulation will likely be inevitable. This will lead to "strange alliances and unpredictable zigzags along the way."

As part of a reconciliation bill, the proposed limits on AI regulations cannot be filibustered, which could "ease their path to passage" in the broader legislation, said the Post. If the entire bill passes, the logic of including AI regulation in a bill ostensibly restricted to budgetary issues will "face scrutiny from the Senate parliamentarian."

What happened

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) Tuesday joined Democrats in pushing back against President Donald Trump's effort to install his own leadership team at the Library of Congress, which is part of the legislative branch. Trump fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden last week and Shira Perlmutter, head of the U.S. Copyright Office, over the weekend. But the Justice Department officials he named as their replacements have been rebuffed at the Library of Congress, with congressional support.

Who said what

Congress' quiet resistance to the president's "attempt to exert control" over "the legislative branch's premier research body" is a "rare bipartisan effort to defend its institutional authority" from Trump, The Washington Post said. On Monday, Trump named Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, a close ally and his former personal lawyer, as acting librarian of Congress, but lawmakers said Hayden's deputy, Robert Newlen, was still in charge for now.

Library of Congress employees on Monday turned away two Trump appointees seeking to take over the Copyright Office. "For the time being, the acting librarian is the acting librarian," Sen. Alex Padilla (Calif.), the top Rules Committee Democrat, said Tuesday, and Trump's people "seem to be respecting that."

Thune told reporters that Trump administration officials met with the Senate Rules Committee and "we made it clear that there needs to be a consultation around this" and congressional "equities" must be respected and protected. "It's the Library of Congress, not the library of the executive branch," said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).

What next?

The implications of Trump "installing a close ally as librarian of Congress could be far-reaching," above and beyond separation-of-powers concerns, The Associated Press said. The librarian, for example, could see and pass on confidential "requests made by lawmakers to the Congressional Research Service" for analysis on legislation. And some conservatives were as worried as Democrats that Elon Musk's DOGE team would siphon up the library's vast trove of copyrighted works to train AI, a move Perlmutter warned would be illicit in a report released days before Trump fired her.

It has been nearly impossible to go to an airport in the past few years without seeing signs about Real IDs. The updated identification card, required at the behest of Congress, has long been in the news, as the deadline to get one has approached (and been continuously pushed back). But the time has finally come, and anyone looking to board a plane will have to have a Real ID to do so as of this week. Some Americans may already be Real ID compliant, even if they aren't aware.

What is a Real ID?

It is a key part of the Real ID Act of 2005. Passed by Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the act "establishes minimum security standards for license issuance and production," according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The act also stops certain federal agencies from accepting certain forms of identification, such as a state driver's license or state identification card, because they don't meet these specific requirements.

Per the DHS, people without a Real ID-compliant form of identification cannot access certain federal facilities and military bases or enter nuclear power plants. The most pressing restriction for most Americans, though, is that people without a Real ID cannot board a commercial flight. Once the law goes into effect, a driver's license or state identification card without a Real ID seal will not be accepted at any airport security checkpoints.

It is unclear what exactly will occur if someone without a Real ID attempts to pass through security. But passengers who "present a state-issued identification that is not REAL ID compliant and who do not have another acceptable alternative (e.g., a passport) can expect to face delays, additional screening and the possibility of not being permitted," said the DHS.

Why is the Real ID program being implemented?

Following Sept. 11, the 9/11 Commission was established to investigate the causes of the attacks. In its official report, one of the commission's recommendations was to establish uniform federal standards for all forms of identification documents — particularly those involved in air travel.

"The federal government should set standards for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification, such as driver's licenses," the report said. "At many entry points to vulnerable facilities, including gates for boarding aircraft, sources of identification are the last opportunity to ensure that people are who they say they are and to check whether they are terrorists."

As a result, if someone wants to "use a state-issued ID for plane travel, you'll need to have an enhanced driver's license, an enhanced ID card or another type of state ID that is compliant with the federal Real ID Act," said Axios. However, there are some exceptions, as "passports, green cards, military IDs and certain other documents also will be accepted for air travel between U.S. states," meaning people without Real IDs will still be able to board planes if they have one of these.

How long do you have to get a Real ID?

Many people already have one, as the DHS reports that "81% of travelers at TSA checkpoints present an acceptable identification using a state-issued Real ID." Otherwise, the deadline to be Real ID compliant is May 7, 2025; on that day, travelers "must be Real ID compliant to board domestic flights and access certain federal facilities," said the DHS. This marks the final chapter in a series of setbacks for Real ID deadlines, largely because of the Covid-19 pandemic disrupting international travel. In 2022, the DHS pushed the deadline back from May 7, 2023, to the current date of May 7, 2025.

But again, experts say a Real ID is not technically necessary if you have a passport. According to Passport Health, a company that provides travel medicine and immunizations, "an official U.S. passport will get you through airport security and can be used in place of a Real ID. If you are only traveling domestically, you can use a Real ID or passport." This has been backed up by the DHS itself, which states, "The card, itself, must be Real ID compliant unless the resident is using an alternative acceptable document such as a passport."

Why is the Real ID program controversial?

It is largely based on the purported invasion of privacy. Real IDs will "facilitate the tracking of data on individuals and bring government into the very center of every citizen's life," said the American Civil Liberties Union. It will "definitively turn driver's licenses into a form of national identity documents," which will have a "tremendously destructive impact on privacy."

The debate about the Real ID program has been raging almost since Congress put pen to paper. The bill faced opposition from "hundreds of civil liberties groups, immigrant support groups, and government associations," said a 2005 Wired article, as "critics say it would produce a de facto national ID card, cost states millions of dollars and punish undocumented immigrants."

Despite some opposition, it is unlikely that the Real ID Act is going to go away, with DHS saying the program has "significantly improved the reliability and accuracy of state-issued driver's licenses and identification cards." The agency will "implement innovations to make the process more efficient," Former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in 2023, but current Secretary Kristi Noem has spoken little on Real IDs. She did, however, say that the new IDs will "make identification harder to forge, thwarting criminals and terrorists," on X.

"Why is a president imposing tariffs at all?" asked Jessica Levinson in MSNBC.com. Lost in the chaos of President Trump's global trade war is the fact that the Constitution grants Congress—not the executive branch—the "Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises" and regulate foreign commerce. But since the Great Depression, the legislature has "ceded much of its authority to the president," letting the White House set tariffs without congressional approval. Trump has overstepped the considerable powers delegated to him by Congress, said Rich Lowry in the National Review. He claims that 1977's International Emergency Economic Powers Act lets him unilaterally impose import duties "to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat." The U.S. trade deficit is neither: We've been running one since the 1970s, making it "the very definition of a chronic issue." And if the concern really is national security, as Trump claims, why are we slapping tariffs on "Australian beef and Guatemalan bananas," neither of which affects "our ability to make precision missiles."

"Normally, we wouldn't hold our breath" waiting for congressional Republicans to rein in Trump, said The Boston Globe in an editorial. "But the potential economic damage from tariffs is so great that some are already rebelling." Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) joined Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to introduce a bill that would require any new tariffs to be approved by Congress within 60 days. At least six other Republicans—including Kentucky's Sen. Mitch McConnell and Indiana's Sen. Todd Young—have signed on to the legislation. The Grassley-Cantwell bill is likely dead in the water, said Jordain Carney in Politico. House Speaker Mike Johnson has vowed "to give the president space" on tariffs, while Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the bill doesn't have "a future" because Trump has threatened to veto it.

What a "dereliction of duty," said Jeet Heer in The Nation. Trump's sweeping tariff regime "could lead to a crash comparable to 1929 or 2008." But among GOP lawmakers, "the fear factor is paramount": They know that challenging Trump could invite retaliation and primary challenges from the MAGA faithful. "The dereliction of duty is bipartisan." Ten Democratic senators last month voted for a continuing resolution that not only passed a GOP budget but also included a provision making it harder to undo the kind of emergency declarations Trump has used to justify his tariff power. The rest of us will pay for Congress's "political cowardice."

Despite President Donald Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs causing economic calamity and potential harm to millions of Americans, his congressional backers remain in the White House's corner. But some Republican lawmakers are beginning to cautiously speak out.

What did the commentators say?

Republican lawmakers have expressed "varying degrees of shock and alarm" at the "scale" of Trump's sweeping global tariffs, The Hill said. Many of Trump's latest tariffs have been "met with skepticism from even his strongest allies on Capitol Hill," including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). Worried about a "brutal week ahead," a "growing number" of Republican lawmakers are joining bills designed to "rebuke Trump's tariff strategy," said Politico. There is a brewing "backlash" among a "handful of Republicans in Congress, former Trump administration officials, conservative activists and other prominent supporters," said USA Today.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a "right-wing firebrand from a deep red state," has been "raking in surprising praise from his Democratic colleagues" for pushing back on Trump's apparent "overreach" into Congress' constitutionally allotted power of the purse, The Washington Post said. Nascent congressional efforts to curtail Trump's budgetary infringement are, meanwhile, a "win-win situation" for Democrats, said James Downie at MSNBC. If Republicans block those bills, Democrats can "hang those votes around GOP necks next fall." Conversely, if those votes "make GOP defections from Trump even a little regular," it threatens the narrow GOP majority's ability to govern entirely.

Already "unpopular with the American public in general," Trump's tariffs are "even more unpopular" with the 2024 voters who helped secure his electoral victory, said Vox. A "stark divide is emerging" between Trump's "core base" of MAGA voters and the "less ideological, more diverse (albeit smaller) group of Republican voters" who propelled Trump into office but don't consider themselves "MAGA-aligned." That divide has expanded to include the GOP's funding mechanism, as well: "I don't know if I would be this worried about what will happen to the economy if Bernie f---ing Sanders were president," said one "big Trump and Republican Party donor" to Rolling Stone. But, the donor said, "I am not willing to go public yet."

What next?

For many Republicans, Trump's tariffs are a "risk like no other," said The New York Times. If the "economic fallout" from these market-roiling measures is "bad enough," leading to previously safe red states looking "plausibly competitive" ahead of the midterms, GOP support for Trump "could be in jeopardy." Trump's tariffs are like a "long ball deep into the end zone," said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on his "Verdict" podcast this week. If the lasting impact is a "bad recession," then the 2026 midterms "in all likelihood politically, would be a bloodbath" for Republicans.

For now, however, GOP defections from Trump's tariff agenda are relatively rare. "If Republican members start drifting away from supporting President Trump," said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) to Politico, "everybody gets weaker." House Republicans are "going to give" Trump the "space necessary to do it," said Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to reporters. "We'll see how it all develops."

'With his marathon speech, Cory Booker showed us how to fight'

Karen Attiah at The Washington Post

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) "displayed a historic level of legitimate cardio — stamina — speaking on the Senate floor," says Karen Attiah. To "stand for 24-plus hours is an honorable display of physical and mental strength," and we "need to see way more fighting spirit from the Democrats." This is "where Booker's spectacle and persuasion matter the most: to stir the masses." What he did "will live on for the history books, but we need bodies on the line."

Read more

'What it's like to be a U.S. historian right now'

Thomas A. Foster at The Hill

The "current cultural climate is filled with historical consciousness, but also with widespread misunderstandings and misrepresentations of history," says Thomas A. Hill. Historians are "often distanced from this sensation because we know how past events turned out," but "living through history in real-time makes that sense of unpredictability palpable in a way that is rarely captured in historical narratives." Adding to this "uncertainty is the intense battle over our national narratives and historical identity."

Read more

'50 years after fall of Saigon, Vietnam can't heal by erasing half its past'

Nghia M. Vo at USA Today

April "marks 50 years since the fall of Saigon, and the wounds of the Vietnam War remain open — not just for Americans who fought there, but also for those who lost everything when the war ended," says Nghia M. Vo. For "those who fought alongside the United States, the past five decades have been defined by discrimination and erasure under Vietnam's communist regime." The "Vietnamese government must acknowledge the suffering of those who had fought for South Vietnam."

Read more

'For beauty products, natural isn't always better'

Joshua Britton at Time

Many "people believe that natural ingredients are always preferable in beauty products," but this "ignores fundamental truths about the toll of global ingredient harvesting," says Joshua Britton. Earth "cannot keep up with consumer demand for natural ingredients in beauty," as its "cultivation is hugely water and energy-intensive, necessitating pesticides and other agrochemicals." We "need to find another way and biotechnology offers a solution. It "reduces our dependence on unsustainable ingredient extraction and addresses our enduring love of naturals."

Read more

It is getting contentious out there for elected Republican officials. The Trump administration's upending of the federal government, along with economic fears raised by the president's trade war, has sparked a show of anger at the usually polite home district town halls hosted by GOP members of Congress.

Republicans like Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas and Rep. Chuck Edwards of North Carolina have been "booed out of their own events and drowned out after giving unsatisfactory responses," said The Verge. In a different era, news of such encounters with angry constituents might have been contained to local news reports, but "now, they go viral, agitating even those at the highest levels of government." The apparent backlash has "rattled Republicans," the outlet added.

Those rattled House Republicans have "hit the brakes" on such gatherings, said NBC News. GOP leaders have told members of Congress to "do tele-town halls or at least vet attendees" to avoid scenes of confrontation. But President Donald Trump has "shrugged off" the backlash, said The Hill. He blamed the belligerent gatherings on "paid 'troublemakers'" without offering any evidence.

What did the commentators say?

Republicans would "rather hide from their voters" than defend Trump, said Sara Pequeño at USA Today. There is "no proof" that so-called troublemakers have been paid to show up at GOP town halls. Instead, voters are "rightfully angry" about cuts to agencies that help them, and "upset about the overreaching influence" of billionaire Elon Musk. Republicans ought to be able to deal with their constituents' anger, Pequeño said. The voters "are allowed to be furious."

"Buyer's remorse is boiling over" at the GOP town halls, said Theodore R. Johnson at The Washington Post. Voters from "California and Kansas and Wisconsin" are making it clear "they're getting a government they didn't vote for." And they're mad that their representatives "don't appear interested in doing much" about it. It's actually an old debate: Do elected officials "act as vessels for the people's voice," or are they "trustees who do what they think is best" for the country? What's clear is that "people want accountability" for the governance they are getting.

What next?

There are other signs that GOP voters have "objections, frustrations and fears" about the Trump administration's moves, said Axios. A focus group of Trump voters from the swing state of Michigan called the president's actions "erratic," "frightening" and "disruptive." "It's getting to the point where I'm almost scared to watch the news," said one attendee. Notably, though, only one out of 10 of those voters said they would "choose Kamala Harris for president if they could do it over."

Democrats, meanwhile, see an opportunity. The party plans an "extensive series of town halls in Republican-held districts" across the country, said The New York Times. The first of the "People's Town Halls" will focus on battleground districts currently held by Republicans, in places like Arizona and Pennsylvania. "If they won't talk to their own voters, then Democrats will," said Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee.

What happened

President Donald Trump celebrated the upheaval he has brought to Washington and global trade in a televised speech before Congress Tuesday night. Speaking for a record 99 minutes, Trump drew cheers from Republicans for saying he was "just getting started" with his "swift and unrelenting action" on immigration, the economy and foreign policy. Democrats mostly registered their displeasure with written signs, though Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) was escorted from the chamber after yelling at Trump, "You don't have a mandate!"

Who said what

Trump's speech came at a "critical juncture in his presidency, as voters who returned him to the White House on his promise to fix inflation are instead finding economic chaos," The Associated Press said. He "presented a swaggering view of his administration," The Wall Street Journal said, and made "few entreaties for unity" while claiming "a mandate to enact far-reaching change" despite his narrow victory.

Much of Trump's "lengthy speech was filled with grievances about his treatment by Democrats and exaggerations about his accomplishments," The New York Times said. When he defended his tariffs and said more were on the horizon, "many Republicans remained seated," Reuters said.

In the Democratic response, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (Mich.) told Americans that Trump was "going to make you pay in every part of your life," from groceries and home prices to health care and government services. "America wants change," she said, but Trump's way is "reckless."

What next?

The American public "remains polarized and Trump has made some supporters second guess their choice," the Journal said. "Recent polls are mixed," but "the overall trend suggests that approval of his job performance has slipped."