‘Class warfare is smoldering in America — and it’s about to catch fire’

Austin Sarat at The Hill

In April, an arsonist “set fire to a warehouse used by a major corporation in Los Angeles,” which “should be a wake-up call to political leaders that they urgently need to address the growing despair felt by many Americans,” says Austin Sarat. Some “seem to have gotten the message. But at the national level, unfortunately, all signs are pointing in the opposite direction.” The arsonist “channeled the feelings of millions of Americans who have been mistreated.”

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‘Trump says he can do “anything I want” to the island. It doesn’t belong to him.’

The Guardian editorial board

In Cuba, the U.S. “wants economic reform, the closure of Chinese and Russian intelligence posts, and reportedly the removal of President Miguel Díaz‑Canel,” which “would reinforce the administration’s message that it controls the Americas,” says The Guardian editorial board. Cuba’s “highly educated population is ripe for change that would allow older generations dignity, and give younger ones opportunity.” Instead, they “appear to face ongoing collapse.” Donald Trump “talks of ‘taking’ Cuba. But it belongs to the Cuban people.”

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‘Why aren’t there more Covid-19 memorials?’

Miles Howard at The Boston Globe

Finding a “Covid memorial felt like finding a rare heron in a nearby marsh. Why aren’t there more of them?” says Miles Howard. The pandemic “deprived millions of Americans of their loved ones and robbed millions more of their long-term health.” In the “aftermath of tragedy, remembering those we lost and the sacrifices of those who lived can help us find meaning and closure.” More “cities and towns could step up,” as memorials “give our grief somewhere to go.”

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‘The meme-stock economy is coming for your 401(k)’

Nitish Pahwa at Slate

If Americans “already thought the stock market’s booming reactions to this geopolitically chaotic economic moment were irrational — well, it’s about to get much more surreal,” says Nitish Pahwa. Investors are “looking to what may become the biggest IPOs in history, courtesy of artificial intelligence.” The “incoming IPO wave is rewriting stock market rules in real time so that companies can attract massive public investment with fewer safeguards, less transparency and more risk pushed onto ordinary investors.”

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What happened

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) lost his bid for reelection, placing third in Louisiana’s Republican primary on Saturday. Rep. Julia Letlow, the candidate endorsed by President Donald Trump, came in first and will face state Treasurer John Fleming in a June 27 runoff.

Cassidy’s defeat was the “latest example of Trump’s unrivaled power over the Republican Party,” even amid “persistent inflation” and “sagging approval ratings,” The Associated Press said.

Who said what

Cassidy was one of seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict Trump in 2021 for trying to remain in office after his 2020 defeat, but he has “rarely bucked Trump since he returned to the White House,” The Washington Post said. Cassidy is a “disloyal disaster” and a “terrible guy,” Trump said on social media Saturday morning, before later celebrating his defeat: “That’s what you get by voting to Impeach an innocent man.”

“Insults only bother me if they come from somebody of character and integrity,” Cassidy said in his concession speech. “Our country is not about one individual,” and if you lose in a democracy, “you don’t pout. You don’t whine. You don’t claim the election was stolen.” Cassidy spent five years “sucking up” to Trump, all for nothing, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday. He “paid a price last night. And guess what? I think he deserved it.”

What next?

Cassidy’s “suddenly pointed criticism” of Trump “suggests he could quickly turn into a headache for the White House” during his final months in office, Politico said.

Chinese president Xi Jinping told Donald Trump last week that he hoped the US and China could avoid the “Thucydides trap”. He was referring to an ancient Greek theory of war that has become a staple of geopolitical commentary in recent years. But what was he implying – and what do classical battles have to do with current US-China relations?

What is the Thucydides trap?

It’s the theory that, when a rising power threatens to displace an established power, the result is often war.

It is named after Athenian general and historian Thucydides, whose account of the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens 2,430 years ago included the observation that “the growth of power of Athens, and the fear that this instilled in Sparta, made war inevitable”.

The implication is that, if an established superpower “manages the rising power badly”, it can feel “obliged to go to war when that’s not necessarily the only option”, said David M. Pritchard, an associate professor of Greek history at the University of Queensland, on The Conversation.

The Thucydides quote was re-popularised in the 2010s by US political scientist Graham Allison. He identified 16 moments in the past 500 years when a rising power threatened to dominate a major ruling power, and pointed out that 12 of them resulted in war.

How does it apply today?

In 2026, the established superpower is the United States, and the rising power is China. There is tension between the two over trade and tariffs, and over China’s claims to sovereignty over Taiwan. Analysts believe there’s a danger of both sides misinterpreting each other’s actions. The US may see Beijing’s expansion as aggressive and a challenge to US influence, while China may see US alliances and military presence in Southeast Asia as attempts at containment.

So, according to the Thucydides trap, if Washington insists on a policy of confrontation with Beijing, war will be the likely outcome. Xi’s remarks were “an entirely unsubtle warning, and even a threat”, said Aaron MacLean on The Free Press. He was not voicing a “friendly expression of a shared desire for peace”; he was making it clear that, to avoid conflict, the US must “radically change” its “attitudes and actions”, and “accommodate” itself “to a Chinese-led world order”.

Is it historically accurate?

“Many scholars of ancient Greece take issue with the way the term is used today,” said Pritchard on The Conversation. The word “trap” implies Sparta “made a mistake in 431BC and could’ve handled things better”. But Sparta “had good reason to fear the rising Athenians”, who were “stripping allies off Sparta left, right and centre”. It was pressure from their remaining allies that pushed the Spartans to act against Athens. And, although it took them 27 years, they won.

Nonetheless, there are lessons to be learned from the Peloponnesian War. It “may be foolish” for an established superpower to “check the rise of an emerging one”; although Sparta managed to do so, it came “at a terrible cost”. Decades of war wiped out much of its fighting population and forced it to depend on unreliable allies, triggering its eventual decline. If it had found a way to accommodate Athens and its ambitions, Sparta could have continued as a superpower “well into the fourth century”.

What happened

Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted President Donald Trump for a lavish tea ceremony on Friday, the second and final day of their summit in Beijing. The two leaders exchanged niceties throughout the high-profile state visit, marking a “departure from turbulence of the relationship in recent years,” said CNN. But Xi also warned Trump not to “mishandle” the situation with Taiwan, the island China has long claimed as its own sovereign territory.

Who said what

China and Taiwan could “enter into conflict” if the U.S. handles the ongoing tensions poorly, pushing the “entire China-U.S. relationship into an extremely dangerous place,” Xi said, according to Chinese state media. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said America’s policy on Taiwan remains “unchanged.” Despite Xi’s “stark” warning, the “pomp-filled” meeting was mostly “friendly and relaxed,” said Reuters. Trump said the leaders had “made some fantastic trade deals,” but did not immediately elaborate.

What next?

On the back of the summit, China is expected to announce an agreement for “double-digit billion purchases” of American agricultural goods, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said. Trump returns to Washington later Friday.

‘Why Spain is standing up to Donald Trump’

Ishaan Tharoor at The New Yorker

Spain has “denied the U.S. access to its military bases for operations linked to Iran,” and Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez “seemed to revel in the clash,” says Ishaan Tharoor. Sánchez’s “criticism of the war has set him up as a conspicuous foil to Trump” and Spain’s “stand is a matter of principle, consistency and adherence to the importance of international law.” The nation “has a distinctly different relationship with the United States than countries such as Britain, France and Germany do.”

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‘The real reason why people are losing trust in universities’

Elizabeth Bradley at USA Today

The “recent and widely discussed Yale report on the loss of public trust in higher education offers a sophisticated reflection” but the “study — and the broader national discourse it represents — suffers from a significant case of tunnel vision,” says Elizabeth Bradley. By “centering the debate on the selective few, we are effectively ignoring the heart of the trust problem.” The media “attention on higher education too often focuses on a critique of the most selective institutions.”

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‘Remote work made life easier. It also made us rusty.’

Renée Loth at The Boston Globe

Supporters of a “return to office — mostly business interests, of course — cite improved productivity,” but “another argument for dragging ourselves back to the office gets far less attention: the need to reboot the workplace social skills that have atrophied,” says Renée Loth. The “office is a petri dish of human interaction,” and the “grit, wisdom and compassion it takes to thrive in an office environment are virtues that protect and enrich experiences throughout a whole lifetime.”

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‘Trump’s “weird war” on wind power will jeopardize our energy future and cost Americans billions’

Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times

Donald Trump’s “weird war against wind is full-blown,” and on “some level, this crusade resembles Trump’s misguided effort to revive the American coal industry,” says Michael Hiltzik. Trump is “waging an explicitly partisan and ideological battle,” and his “anti-wind program is part of his campaign to dismantle U.S. renewables policy because of its roots in the Biden administration.” What’s “especially wasteful about Trump’s crusade against wind power is that it’s almost certain to be time-limited.”

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The war in Iran is still simmering, but President Donald Trump may already have eyes on his next target: Cuba’s Communist government.

An invasion of Cuba “could be imminent,” said Axios. The administration last week “imposed additional sanctions on Havana” amid a “worsening humanitarian crisis” of food shortages and power blackouts exacerbated by a U.S. blockade of oil shipments to the island nation. The U.S. has also surged surveillance flights off of Cuba’s coast, said CNN, and Trump on Friday suggested he might send an aircraft carrier to the region.

The president is “growing impatient” that “months of sustained U.S. pressure” have not caused the Communist regime to collapse, said NBC News. Trump speaks about Cuba “as if he wants to make it the 51st state,” a former U.S. official told the outlet.

What did the commentators say?

Trump knows “he can’t bomb his way to victory” in Iran, Heather Digby Parton said at Salon. He instead appears willing to start “yet another military operation” closer to U.S. shores. Invading Cuba seemed “less likely as the quagmire in Iran has developed,” but the president may see pivoting back to the Western Hemisphere as a way to “distract from his failure in Iran.” Cuba is in weakened condition right now. A quick victory might be achievable. “The real question is what happens then.”

It is “not clear how it’s supposed to end,” Joseph Zeballos-Roig said at MS NOW. The Trump administration “has yet to release a basic strategic road map” of its aims or how to achieve them. The U.S. has long wanted economic and political reforms to “loosen the Cuban government’s tight grip on its citizens,” but Havana should not be underestimated. The regime has “managed to foil the well-laid plans of 13 presidents dating back to Dwight Eisenhower.”

The Trump administration is unlikely to install a “new democratically disposed government” in Havana, Renee Pruneau Novakoff said at The Cipher Brief. But it is “realistic” to demand the regime boot Russian and Chinese intelligence operations from its shores. That “important milestone” would allow the U.S. and Cuba to “move forward with the relationship” between the two countries. Beyond that, however, “regime change will have to be a Cuban affair.”

What next?

Senate Republicans are “cautioning” Trump against a Cuba attack, said The Hill. The U.S. should remain “focused on where we are and that is trying to get the Strait of Hormuz opened up,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said to reporters. “I want less war, not more,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). GOP senators last month blocked a resolution forbidding military action, said the outlet, but sentiment in the party is “shifting as a military operation against Cuba appears more likely.”

It is possible Trump will hold back, said Reuters. “Cuba is asking ⁠for help, and we are going to ​talk!!” the president wrote Tuesday on Truth Social. He did not provide more details.

What happened

Consumer prices last month shot up 3.8% from a year earlier, the biggest year-over-year uptick since May 2023, the U.S. Labor Department reported Tuesday. The heated inflation was driven largely by a 28% year-over-year jump in gasoline prices tied to President Donald Trump’s war with Iran.

Who said what

The latest consumer price index underscored how “daily life in America is getting more expensive,” The New York Times said. Airfares were up 21% from a year ago and food prices rose 3.2%, with coffee prices jumping 19% and tomatoes up 40%. Trump’s tariffs are “still slowly filtering through to some goods,” The Wall Street Journal said, but the war “has presented a much quicker and more obvious shock that could be hard to reverse.”

Asked Tuesday if cost-of-living concerns were motivating his dealmaking with Iran, Trump said “not even a little bit.” His only concern is Iran’s nuclear program, he said. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.”

What next?

In a separate report Tuesday, the Labor Department said real average hourly wages fell 0.5% from March to April, meaning “most workers are effectively taking a pay cut even as the White House touts its economic record,” The Washington Post said.

With the Supreme Court set to rule on President Donald Trump’s challenge to birthright citizenship, an oft-cited practice is at the center of it all. The practice, called birth tourism, has become commonplace for women who want their kids to have U.S. citizenship. But the Supreme Court may further support the Trump administration’s anti-immigration stance by cracking down on it.

‘Side issue into a main argument’

Birth tourism occurs when pregnant women from other nations “travel to the U.S. for the purpose of giving birth, thereby obtaining citizenship for their babies,” said The Philadelphia Inquirer. The practice is regularly mentioned by legal scholars, yet birth tourism is “actually rare, despite the outsized role it’s gained in the debate over citizenship.” There are about 26,000 cases of birth tourism in the U.S. annually, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

While this is just a small fraction of the 3.5 million yearly U.S. births, the White House has “elevated what was once a side issue into a main argument for revocation,” said the Inquirer. It is part of Trump’s “aggressive immigration agenda that includes attempts to restrict birthright citizenship,” said Newsweek. Trump signed an order banning birthright citizenship in 2025, triggering a “series of legal challenges now before the Supreme Court” given that the practice is enshrined in the 14th Amendment.

The Trump administration continues to use birth tourism as a primary point of contention when presenting its case to the court. Immigration laws have “spawned a sprawling industry of birth tourism as uncounted thousands of foreigners from potentially hostile nations have flocked to give birth in the United States in recent decades, creating a whole generation of American citizens abroad with no meaningful ties to the United States,” U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in oral arguments to the Supreme Court.

‘The scale of the problem is marginal’

Even though the White House has positioned birth tourism as a major factor in why birthright citizenship should be overturned, proponents “say that the scale of the problem is marginal,” said The New York Times. They typically “argue that it can be addressed through regulation and law enforcement without eliminating what has long been considered a central tenet of the United States — equality at birth, regardless of race, religion or the immigration status of the parents.”

Republicans have long used birth tourism as a way to highlight criminal enterprises. In 2019, officials in California “arrested three people who operated multimillion-dollar birth tourism companies and had charged as much as $100,000 to Chinese couples” for a luxury bundle that included “housing, nannies and shopping excursions to Gucci,” said the Times. GOP lawmakers have also “cited birth tourism in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory that has looser visa requirements and is closer to China.”

Support for overturning birthright citizenship remains low. Nearly two-thirds of Americans, 65%, think citizenship “should be granted to all children born on American soil, no matter the circumstances,” according to a recent AP-NORC survey of 2,596 adults. Republicans are less convinced; only 44% are in favor of birthright citizenship. “It’s fundamental to sovereignty, being able to determine who is a citizen,” said Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, to the Times.

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

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

Awkward timing

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

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

Political misstep

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

What happened

The federal Court of International Trade on Thursday ruled against the 10% global tariffs President Donald Trump imposed in February after the Supreme Court struck down steep import taxes he had enacted under a different legal authority. Trump’s tariffs under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 are “invalid” and “unauthorized by law,” the trade court said in its 2-1 decision.

Who said what

Thursday’s ruling dealt “yet another legal setback” to Trump’s “efforts to wage a trade war without the express permission of Congress,” The New York Times said. But the court “only explicitly blocked” collecting the tariff from two small businesses and Washington state, finding that the other 23 states in the lawsuit hadn’t paid any relevant tariffs. Another reason the ruling’s “immediate impact might be limited,” The Wall Street Journal said, is that the tariff expires July 24, at “which point the administration plans to pivot to different tariffs” that are “more routinely used and seen as legally durable.”

What next?

The ruling “weakens” Trump on his “core economic initiative” a week before he meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss bilateral trade, The Washington Post said. It also “sets the stage for another protracted legal battle” over refunding the billions collected under another illegal tariff regime, Reuters said.

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

‘Touted his drug pricing deals as transformative’

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

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

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

The mechanism ‘remains a black box’

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

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

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

What happened

Tehran is considering a U.S. proposal to formally end the Iran war and start a 30-day clock to negotiate a full agreement, Axios and other news organizations reported Wednesday. Iranian and Trump administration officials “offered contradictory and rapidly changing assessments of the state of the war and peace talks,” The New York Times said, all “while providing few details about those negotiations.”

Who said what

If Iran doesn’t agree to “give what has been agreed to,” President Donald Trump said on social media Wednesday morning, the “bombing starts,” and “at a much higher level and intensity.” Hours later, he told reporters the two sides “had very good talks over the last 24 hours” and a deal was “very possible.” An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tehran would relay its response through Pakistan, while another Iranian official dismissed the proposal as an “American wish-list.”

The one-page U.S. memorandum of understanding involved “Iran committing to a moratorium on nuclear enrichment, the U.S. agreeing to lift its sanctions and release billions in frozen Iranian funds, and both sides lifting restrictions around transit through the Strait of Hormuz,” according to Axios. But the proposal would “not initially require concessions from either ​side,” sources told Reuters, and it leaves “unresolved key U.S. demands” on Iran’s nuclear program and reopening the strait.

What next?

The “biggest obstacle to an Iran deal may be Trump’s ego,” Politico said, citing U.S. and Arab officials. Trump’s “history of nursing grudges, ridiculing opponents and insisting he wins everything doesn’t bode well” for striking a deal with Iran’s respect-conscious leaders.

What happened

Senate Republicans faced an uproar Tuesday for including $1 billion for President Donald Trump’s “East Wing Modernization Project” in their $72 billion party-line bill to fund immigration enforcement through September 2029. The East Wing project is what the White House calls Trump’s $400 million ballroom, which he has repeatedly claimed will be built only with private funds.

Who said what

Democrats “pounced” on the “surprise addition” to the GOP’s reconciliation package, The New York Times said. “Republicans looked at families drowning in bills and decided what they really needed was more raids and a Trump ballroom,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on X.

The bill, released late Monday, allocates $1 billion for Secret Service “enhancements” related to the East Wing project, including “above-ground and below-ground security features.” A spokesperson for Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said the bill “does not fund ballroom construction.” But “security costs would seem to be a significant portion” of the ballroom project, said CNN, and “no other project is mentioned in that section of the bill.”

What next?

Republicans hope to pass the filibuster-proof $72 billion package by the end of the month.

What happened

Pope Leo XIV’s public opposition to the Iran war is “endangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people,” President Donald Trump said in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt broadcast Tuesday. Trump’s renewed criticism of Leo could complicate Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s “fence-mending visit” to the Vatican on Thursday, The Associated Press said.

Who said what

“The pope would rather talk about the fact that it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said in the interview. Leo has spoken out against the Iran war and “taken aim at invocations of God” to justify the violence, The Washington Post said, but “he has never suggested that it is acceptable for Iran to have a nuclear bomb.” In fact, the pope has “repeatedly called for a world free of all nuclear weapons,” The Wall Street Journal said.

“The mission of the church is to preach the Gospel, to preach peace,” Leo told reporters Tuesday. “If someone wants to criticize me for announcing the Gospel, let him do it with the truth.”

What next?

After his audience with the pope, Rubio is expected to meet Friday with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a “long-time Trump ally” who has split with the president over his criticism of Leo, the AP said.

What happened

A slate of Midwestern elections on Tuesday set up a key U.S. Senate race in Ohio, assured Michigan Democrats control of the state senate and ousted at least five Indiana Republicans targeted by President Donald Trump for voting against a mid-decade gerrymander. In Ohio, Trump-backed entrepreneur and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy won the GOP gubernatorial primary and will face Democratic former state public health director Amy Acton in what’s expected to be a competitive race.

Who said what

Former Sen. Sherrod Brown won Ohio’s Democratic Senate primary and will face Sen. Jon Husted (R), appointed last year to fill the seat vacated by Vice President JD Vance. Democrats face an “uphill climb” to flip the Senate in November’s midterms, Reuters said. But “they think they have momentum nationally,” and Brown’s race is one of four they “plan to pour resources into.”

In Michigan, firefighter Chedrick Greene (D) handily won a vacant state Senate seat in a closely divided district, giving Democrats a 20-18 majority. In Indiana, Trump’s “loyal and energized supporters turned out to punish” five of the seven state Senate incumbents he sought to oust, Politico said. One incumbent won and the other race was too close to call. The “stunning” results showed Trump’s “continuing ability to exact political revenge,” The New York Times said, even as his “poll numbers sag.”

What next?

Tuesday’s elections “reinforced a picture that’s becoming increasingly clear,” The Associated Press said: Trump “still dominates the Republican Party,” but “Democrats seem to have the momentum” heading into the midterms.

Donald Trump has paused the US operation shepherding ships through the Strait of Hormuz to see if a lasting peace deal with Iran can be agreed. But there remains scepticism on both sides that a permanent end to the conflict is near.

The ceasefire, which was extended indefinitely by Trump on 21 April, “opened up a chance for diplomacy that looked for a short time as if it might make progress”, said BBC international editor Jeremy Bowen. A first round of talks in Pakistan ended without agreement, but while both America and Iran “want to have a deal” they have “different deals in mind and are sticking to their red lines”.

Trump is demanding the immediate reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of global oil and gas exports pass, and cast-iron restrictions on Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Tehran wants an end to the war, guarantees against future attacks, a withdrawal of US forces from around Iran, the release of frozen Iranian assets worth billions of dollars and the lifting of sanctions.

What did the commentators say?

Iran has “slightly softened” its proposal around the US blockade of the Strait, but on the two biggest issues – enrichment of uranium and transferring its highly enriched uranium – both sides remain “far apart”, Paul Musgrave, from Georgetown University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera.

Kenneth Katzman, from the New York-based nonprofit Soufan Center, said Iran’s mistrust of Trump remains a bigger obstacle.

This is partly driven by the president’s “increasingly contradictory statements about the United States’ strategy” and the administration’s “shifting timeline for the war’s end”, which has been “one of the clearest examples of its flip-flopping messaging”, said Julia Ledur in The Washington Post.

Trump “clearly wants to end the war in Iran”, said Katrin Bennhold in The New York Times. At first, “he tried scare tactics” but his ultimatums “proved flexible and his threats to wipe out a civilisation empty (at least so far)”. He is now trying “to inflict financial pain on the Iranian leadership” but his blockade isn’t “faring much better”.

Trump’s “conviction that more economic or even military pressure will bring about Iran’s capitulation is deeply flawed”, said Steven Erlanger in the NYT. Officials and analysts say it is a “misreading of the Islamic republic’s strategy, psychology and capability for adaptation”.

What next?

For now, “diplomacy is not entirely frozen”, said Barak Ravid and Marc Caputo on Axios, as Trump’s envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are still in contact with Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi.

But things could still go either way. One senior US official said: “There are talks. There are offers. We don’t like theirs. They don’t like ours. We still don’t know the status of the [Supreme Leader]. And they’re carrying messages by hand to caves or wherever he or whoever is hiding. It slows the process down.

“It’s either we’re looking at the real contours of an achievable deal soon, or he’s going to bomb the hell out of them.”

“But if history is any guide, there’s a real chance the war continues to drag on,” said Will Walldorf, from the Defense Priorities think tank, in Foreign Policy.

This is because a “few core elements that have turned past conflicts into forever wars are present in this one, too”. These include “high resolve by the weak, erosion of cost-benefit thinking by the strong, and weak institutional constraints to war-fighting on at least one side”. Combined, they mean that “resisting the expansion of the Iran conflict into a forever war won’t be easy”.

What happened

The four-week ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran faltered Monday as President Donald Trump’s attempts to reopen traffic through the Strait of Hormuz prompted Iranian attacks on U.S. warships and commercial ships. The United Arab Emirates and Oman also reported the first strikes on their territories since the ceasefire began, and the UAE blamed Iran. U.S. Central Command said that two U.S.-flagged merchant ships passed through the strait and that U.S. military helicopters sank six Iranian military speedboats; Iran said none of its boats were destroyed.

Who said what

Tehran “did not outright confirm or deny” its attacks, The Associated Press said. CENTCOM said it had shot down all Iranian missiles and drones fired at U.S. Navy ships and the commercial vessels they were guiding through a passage it had “successfully opened” through the strait. Trump appeared “willing to look past” Iran’s attacks, The Wall Street Journal said. But Monday’s violence put his “desire to end the Iran war” to the test.

What next?

Shipping companies said that Trump’s “offer to provide them safe passage” through the strait “fell short of the sort of arrangements that would persuade them to make the trip,” The New York Times said.

What happened

A California man accused of trying to storm the White House Correspondents’ Dinner with an arsenal of guns and knives was charged last week with attempting to assassinate President Trump, as investigators dug through writings and social media posts that showed his increasing fury at the administration. Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old high school tutor from Torrance, checked in to the Washington Hilton ahead of the black-tie dinner there. As waiters cleared salad plates in the ballroom—packed with more than 2,000 journalists and Beltway insiders—Allen sprinted past a security checkpoint carrying a shotgun and .38-caliber handgun. One federal agent opened fire and another in a bulletproof vest was shot in the chest but was unharmed; ballistics experts are investigating whether he was shot by Allen or by the other officer. Allen tripped and was jumped on by agents, who stripped him of his weapons. In the ballroom, attendees crouched under dinner tables as the president and first lady Melania Trump were rushed out along with Vice President JD Vance and Cabinet members. “It scared all of us,” said CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer. “We had no idea what was going on.”

Before the attempted attack, Allen wrote a note detailing his plan to target Trump administration officials “prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.” He referenced abuse in ICE detention camps, the U.S. bombing of a girls’ school in Iran, and the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” he wrote, in apparent reference to Trump. Neighbors and acquaintances described Allen, a leader of his college’s Christian Fellowship, as quiet and respectful. But on social media he raged against Trump. “Everyone already knows trump is a f---ing awful person in multiple dimensions and no one has done shit,” read one April 2025 post on the Bluesky platform.

Trump called for unity at a press conference following the incident. But the tone soon shifted, as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt blamed the assassination attempt on the “deranged lies” of Democrats who “falsely label and slander the president as a fascist and threat to democracy.” Trump, who has survived two previous assassination attempts, called this one a marker of his success. “The most impactful people,” he said, “are the ones they go after.”

What the columnists said

This was a “security fiasco,” said Hugh Dougherty in the Daily Beast. How was Allen able to stroll into the Hilton with a shotgun in his luggage, check into a room, and roam freely? After I checked in, I was never asked for ID, and I walked into the dinner with a ticket that could easily “have been a photo-copy.” Actually, the Secret Service did its job, said Garrett Graff in his Substack newsletter. Securing a hotel with some 1,100 rooms isn’t their responsibility, nor is it “to prevent any incident at a high-profile event.” Their task is to set up a security perimeter and keep the president safe—which is exactly what they did.

Allen presents a puzzle, said Odette Yousef in NPR.org. A well-liked young man with a master’s degree in computer science, he was incensed by Trump administration policies. But his online history displays none of the extremist or conspiratorial views that typically drive would-be political assassins. His writings express “pretty moderate left-wing” views, said extremism researcher Jared Holt. It’s left him and other experts unclear as to what tipped Allen over the edge.

There’s no mystery here, said Jeffrey Blehar in National Review. Allen hung out on lefty-dominated Bluesky, and “seems to have been radicalized into committing violence by the panic and apocalypticism common in such spaces.” In his “manifesto,” he accused Trump of being a pedophile—a “wild, reckless lie” that is commonly bandied about by Trump haters, and one that “is intended to inflame.” Now “we see where that line of rhetoric can lead.”

The Right’s attempt to pin this attack on Democrats is cynical and bogus, said Peter Hamby in Puck. But progressives can’t shy away from the fact that “a rising miasma of conspiratorial thinking, dangerous fact-denying, and dehumanizing language has taken hold on the American left.” Before a trans-rights supporter shot dead conservative activist Charlie Kirk and Luigi Mangione allegedly murdered a health-care CEO “in a fit of anti-corporate rage,” it was easier for liberals to claim “the nutjobs and wackos were mostly on the other side.” That’s no longer the case.

Trump is the primary cause of our “culture of political violence,” said Jonathan V. Last in The Bulwark. At the start of his political project in 2016, he urged his supporters to punch people they disliked. Since then, Trump has unleashed a mob on the U.S. Capitol, referred to anti-ICE protesters “murdered by his regime as ‘domestic terrorists,’” called his political opponents “enemies of the people,” and cheered the deaths of his critics. Now he and his supporters are shocked that the violent world he willed into being is coming for him.

We’re watching “the best democracy on earth destroyed by madness,” said Will Bunch in The Philadelphia Inquirer. In a nation where firearms outnumber people, we’ve reached the stage where attempted assassination sites are “getting recycled”—President Ronald Reagan was shot and wounded outside the same Hilton in 1981. Last month, we collectively shrugged when a disturbed father killed eight children in Shreveport, La., and a mall in Baton Rouge “erupted in a Wild West shoot-out.” We’ll no doubt soon move on from this latest grim spectacle, in an “unserious America” where “appalling forms of violence” feel increasingly like business as usual.

What happened

President Donald Trump said the U.S. was launching a new effort Monday to “guide” blockaded commercial ships “safely” through the Strait of Hormuz, which has effectively been closed to maritime traffic since Trump and Israel launched the Iran war Feb. 28. Trump offered few details in his social media announcement, but described “Project Freedom” as a “humanitarian gesture” on behalf of the U.S., Middle Eastern countries and “in particular” Iran. Iranian state-run media said the announcement was part of “Trump’s delirium.”

Who said what

U.S. Central Command said guided-missile destroyers, drones and more than 100 aircraft would support Trump’s new initiative. But the plan “doesn’t currently involve U.S. Navy warships escorting vessels through the strait,” The Wall Street Journal said, citing senior U.S. officials. Traders and shipowners “expressed skepticism” that the “arm’s-length effort to unblock the vital supply route” would be effective.

Trump’s announcement was “essentially a challenge to Iran, and a bet that it would not want to take the risk of firing the first shots — or laying mines” — to challenge the U.S., The New York Times said. Ebrahim Azizi, the head of Iran’s parliamentary National Security Committee, said on X that “any U.S. interference” in the strait “will be considered a violation of the ceasefire.”

What next?

Two months into the war, Trump’s “predictions of a relatively short-term conflict with minimal economic consequences appear to be crumbling around him,” the Times said. “Voter backlash is building” as average U.S. gas prices hit a “wartime high of $4.39,” The Washington Post said, and “inside the White House, the options to lower prices at the pump are dwindling.”

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

Midterms looming

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

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

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

‘This can’t go on’

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

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

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

President Donald Trump’s first term in office was marked by the cyclonic speed with which his White House’s revolving door spun for aides both incoming and outgoing. During his second term, Trump’s penchant for abrupt staffing changes has continued — if not apace, then at least with the same mercurial fickleness that characterized many of his first-term firings. Here’s who has already been shown the exit, shuffled into a new role or given little choice about their continued employment in the administration.

Attorney General Pam Bondi

Trump’s early-April 2026 announcement that Attorney General Pam Bondi was “transitioning to a much-needed and important new job in the private sector” offered “no specific reason for why she would be leaving,” CNN said. Bondi’s firing came “less than two months” after a “tense congressional hearing” in which she faced “aggressive questioning from politicians, with sometimes heated exchanges,” Al Jazeera said. While Trump may have been “frustrated” with Attorney General Pam Bondi’s “handling of some of his key priorities,” changing DOJ leadership “doesn’t guarantee the president the outcome he seeks,” NBC News said.

Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino

Former Secret Service agent-turned-MAGA podcaster Dan Bongino spent less than one year as the FBI’s number two under Kash Patel before announcing in late 2025 his plans to leave the agency by the start of 2026. Bongino had previously spoken “publicly” about the “personal toll” the job was taking on him, Fox News said. In an interview with the network, Bongino said that he “gave up everything for this.”

Bongino’s assertions that sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein did commit suicide “frustrated many of Trump’s supporters” and led to a “contentious meeting between him and Bondi” in July, the BBC said. Bongino has since returned to podcasting, where he “won’t have the pressure of having to work in the reality-based world,” said MS NOW.

CBP ‘Commander at Large’ Greg Bovino

As the face of the Trump Administration’s Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota and Midway Blitz in Chicago, Customs and Border Patrol Commander At Large Greg Bovino played a key role in enacting the White House’s controversial immigration actions in both states. Bovino was “removed from his role” in January 2026 following the “deaths of two U.S. citizens” in Minneapolis and quickly returned to his prior position as CBP sector chief in El Centro, California, Fox News said.

Shortly after, he retired from federal work. Although he was “popular with direct subordinates for his bold and unapologetic leadership,” multiple DHS officials described Bovino as a “chronic institutional headache” whose behavior “alienated even those who generally shared his politics,” The New York Times said. Since his retirement, Bovino has found a “new target for posts on X: his former employers in the Trump administration,” who he has “taken to criticizing” for being “soft on immigration,” The Chicago Tribune said.

Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer

Former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer quietly exited her cabinet-level role in the Trump administration in late April 2026 to “move into a private sector job” following “scrutiny over several misconduct scandals,” said Axios. Any allegations of wrongdoing are merely the work of “high-ranked deep state actors who have been coordinating with the one-sided news media” to “undermine President Trump’s mission,” Chavez-DeRemeber said on Instagram in an emphatic denial of the accusations against her.

Chavez-DeRemer’s departure came at the tail end of a “monthslong investigation into a whistleblower’s allegations of professional misconduct,” said The New York Times. The “likelihood” that the inspector general’s pursuit might “reveal embarrassing details” was “compounded by a parallel inquiry on Capitol Hill.”

National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent

In resigning from the Trump White House this past March, former anti-terrorism official Joe Kent became the “most high-profile figure within the Trump administration to publicly criticize the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran,” said the BBC. Rights groups had spoken out against Kent’s initial nomination to the NCTC over “extremist links of his in the past,” including with far-right figures such as Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, said Liz Landers on “PBS News Hour.”

Kent, with a resignation letter rife with “potentially anti-Semitic undertones,” cast Trump as "someone swept up in events rather than driving them,” The Atlantic said. “I always thought he was weak on security,” Trump said to reporters in the Oval Office after Kent published his letter. “I didn’t know him well, but I thought he seemed like a pretty nice guy.” After reading Kenz's resignation letter, Trump said, “I realized that it’s a good thing that he’s out because he said that Iran was not a threat. Iran was a threat.”

Acting ICE Directors Todd Lyons and Caleb Vitello

Longtime Immigration and Customs Enforcement official Todd Lyons’ mid-April 2026 announcement that he plans to retire at the end of May 2026 adds to the “list of leadership shakeups at the Department of Homeland Security,” said NPR News. Though it was “not immediately clear” what prompted Lyons’ retirement announcement, the news came amid “continued scrutiny” of ICE’s “aggressive immigration tactics” and a “record-long funding lapse from Congress.”

Lyons had initially been tapped to lead ICE to replace previous Acting Director Caleb Vitello in 2025, after administration figures “expressed anger that the number of people being deported” was “not higher,” said NBC News. Vitello had been seen as “‘very popular’ among the rank and file during his month as acting director,” said a source to the outlet.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem

As the first cabinet secretary to be fired by Trump in his second term, former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s “tumultuous tenure” culminated in “two high-profile killings of U.S. citizens by federal agents” and a “pair of congressional hearings that displayed bipartisan frustration with her leadership,” The Wall Street Journal said. Prior to her firing, multiple DHS figures “privately questioned how much longer the secretary would remain in the post” given what they saw as a “series of missteps” on Noem’s part, said CNN.

Noem will be “moving to be Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere,” said Trump in his announcement about the firing. As Secretary, Noem was the “architect” of a “frenzied bid to snap up commercial warehouses across the country and turn them into Amazon-style migrant processing hubs,” The Daily Beast said. After her firing that plan has been “beset by community uproar, scrapped deals and Republican revolts.”

Secretary of the Navy John Phelan

“Months of simmering tension” between former Secretary of the Navy John Phelan and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth came to a head in late April 2026, with Hegseth dismissing Phelan “in a phone call” that took place “just minutes” before the Pentagon released an official statement on the firing, The Wall Street Journal said. The dismissal followed extended “infighting” among Pentagon leadership and “disagreements over how to revive the Navy’s struggling shipbuilding program,” The New York Times said.

Phelan’s was a “short tenure” for someone who “prior to being confirmed” was a “big Trump and GOP donor,” with criticism “largely centered on his lack of a military background,” said Military.com. Though military experience is neither “mandatory” nor its lack thereof “completely unusual,” Phelan was nevertheless the “first Navy secretary since 2006 to be appointed” without a Pentagon background.

National Security Advisor Mike Waltz

Trump’s May 2025 announcement that he had removed National Security Advisor Mike Waltz marked the “first major staff shakeup since the president took office,” said CNN. Waltz’s position in the administration had been “in limbo” after the White House notified him that “his time leading the National Security Council had come to an end” in the weeks leading up to the announcement.

Although Waltz was the official responsible for the White House’s infamous “Signalgate” security breach, “in the end, it wasn’t Signalgate that toppled Mike Waltz,” said Politico. It was instead “increasing ire” over “Waltz’s hawkish stance on Iran,” a position that, at the time, placed him “out of step with the administration.” But “as a concession prize, the onetime congressman was nominated to serve as United Nations ambassador.”

What happened

President Donald Trump on Thursday tapped radiologist Dr. Nicole Saphier to be U.S. surgeon general, withdrawing the stalled nomination of nutrition influencer Dr. Casey Means, an ally of Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. and the Make America Healthy Again movement. Saphier is Trump’s third nominee, after Means and Dr. Janette Nesheiwat.

Who said what

The “MAHA movement had pushed hard for Means’ nomination,” The Washington Post said, and it blamed its failure on Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and two other Republican senators skeptical of her qualifications and stance on vaccines. Trump called Saphier, a former Fox News contributor, an “INCREDIBLE COMMUNICATOR” on “complicated health issues” in a social media post. Kennedy called her a “longtime warrior for the MAHA movement.” But unlike Means, Saphier “does not appear to be a heroine” of MAHA, The New York Times said. Its “leaders view her as too conventional” due to her tempered praise of vaccines and criticism of Kennedy, though she has “also embraced” some of his agenda.

What next?

Even as MAHA lost its “favored influencer for surgeon general,” it “notched a big win on pesticide regulation” in a House farm bill, Axios said. Thursday’s events highlighted how MAHA retains “clout on matters related to the food supply” but “can be a political liability” on “vaccines and other public health matters.”

Ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary this July, you might spot a historical exhibit on wheels: Six mobile museums are crisscrossing the contiguous United States to showcase the country’s history. But these ‘Freedom Trucks,’ funded by the right-wing company PragerU, heavily feature artificial intelligence, and some say this AI presents a whitewashed version of the country’s past.

What do these museum trucks showcase?

The trucks are a “traveling exhibition of touchscreen displays, Revolutionary War artifacts and AI,” designed to teach children about the United States’ founding, said The New Yorker. They are part of PragerU’s goal of “developing programming for America’s birthday,” and the trucks themselves “received a $14 million grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services,” an agency that provides funding for educational institutions.

The museums feature AI-generated displays of early figures in colonial America, including “Revolutionary figures like George Washington, Betsy Ross and the Marquis Lafayette,” said 404 Media, as well as a wall of 50 “American heroes” throughout U.S. history. The museums also feature digital copies of famous American documents such as the Declaration of Independence alongside quizzes on U.S. history. Each AI video “ended with a title card showing the White House and PragerU’s logo,” plus a closing video of President Donald Trump.

Why are the trucks controversial?

They have come under fire for their perceived whitewashing of history, as well as their use of AI to do so. The trucks do not completely omit non-white figures, as “several Black luminaries are mentioned: among the 50 American heroes are Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks,” said The Guardian. But the majority of the exhibits are geared “toward the white men who led the charge to nationhood, with minor roles granted to their women dutifully holding the fort back home, and on God as the source of the country’s greatness.”

Christianity features heavily in the displays. The AI-generated Washington “says that ‘our rights are a gift from God,’” while a nearby placard “makes the point overtly: ‘The foundational principles of America are rooted in the Western and Judeo-Christian traditions,’” said The Guardian. Many dark moments in U.S. history are also allegedly downplayed; slavery “makes an entry, though it is presented as a sort of wrinkle in America’s perfect design that was ironed out in time,” not as an endeavor “whose consequences still loom large over the country.”

Other marginalized groups are reportedly treated similarly in the museums. Native Americans “get barely a look in,” and there isn’t a “single reference to the large swathes of the country that were acquired from Spanish colonies and Mexico,” said The Guardian. Some critics claim the museum as a whole is historical revisionism. The trucks are a “work of propaganda that promises to tell only one side of American history” and “promote only one set of so-called American values,” said Book Riot.

While controversy looms over the content of these trucks, the people directly involved don’t appear to have many concerns, including Trump himself. “I want to thank PragerU for helping us share this incredible story,” the president says on the museum’s closing video, which reportedly plays on a loop. “I hope you will join me in helping to make America’s 250th anniversary a year we will never forget.”

President Donald Trump has long understood the power of a brand name — specifically his. And as world leaders flatter and impress upon him the merits of their prospective partnerships, his very name has become a global currency for appealing to his ego. From crucial transportation corridors to wholesale swaths of European countryside, these are the international Trump-titled pitches.

‘Donnyland’ in Ukraine

A growing push to name Ukraine’s embattled Donbas region after the president may be the “most improbable instance” of Trump’s name being “lent to a geopolitical flashpoint,” said The New York Times. Ukrainian officials have reportedly pitched renaming an approximately 2,000 square mile section of the Donetsk area of the Donbas as “Donnyland.”

The idea was “raised partly in jest but also as a diplomatic gesture,” The Kyiv Independent said. The “appeal to Trump’s vanity” has yet to be reflected in “official documents” from the ongoing Ukrainian peace negotiations, however. What’s important is that the Donbas’ various regions “remain Ukraine,” said Zelenskyy to reporters. “As long as it’s not ‘Putinland.’ That is the most important thing.”

Still, it could be in Ukraine’s long-term interests to apply Trump’s branding to their territory, said RAND Corporation Political Scientist Samuel Charap at the Times. Ukraine would likely see having a “Trump imprimatur on a free economic zone” as “something of a deterrent” against Russian aggression.

‘Fort Trump’ in Poland

First pitched publicly by Polish then-President Andrzej Duda during a 2018 White House visit, plans for a $2 billion Fort Trump military base ultimately fizzled before they were resurrected in the first year of Trump’s second term. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “talked about the fact that I hope that Fort Trump, which we talked about” during Trump’s first term, will “really be established,” Duda said to The Associated Press after a series of Warsaw meetings with American officials in 2025.

The proposal returned as Polish officials work to “preserve the U.S. commitment to NATO” over “growing” fears of Russian aggression, the AP said. Polish lawmakers are “convinced” that a strong U.S. alliance and a “high level of spending on defense will help its cause.”

The plans were initially met with public skepticism in Poland when first raised in 2018. Critics “castigated” Duda for what they framed as his “craven behavior,” said The New York Times. “What an embarrassment in front of the entire world,” said Polish lawmaker Tomasz Siemoniak on X, per the Times. “Even leaders of banana republics had more respect for themselves” than Duda.

‘Trump Heights’ in Israel

As thanks for Trump’s 2019 presidential recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the contested Golan Heights, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that he would “bring to the government a resolution calling for a new community on the Golan Heights” to be named on Trump’s behalf. Despite a high-profile groundbreaking ceremony, a “large-scale influx of new residents never materialized,” said The Times of Israel. Still, after Trump’s 2024 reelection, residents hoped their namesake’s victory would “breathe new life into this tiny, remote community.”

‘Trump National Golf Course’ in Syria

When a group of wealthy Syrian investors seeking sanction relief for a luxury rebuilding project for their war-torn nation turned to Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) for advice, his message was simple. “I know how to get the president’s attention,” Wilson said during a meeting with the group. “Make it a Trump National Golf Course in Syria.”

The group, however, was “way ahead of the congressman,” with one member bragging that he “already planned to propose a Trump-branded resort,” said MS NOW. This type of “mixing of personal and diplomatic affairs” has “long been the norm in Middle Eastern nations,” said The New York Times, which first reported the meeting. The blending has “become the way Washington operates in Mr. Trump’s second term too.”

‘Trump Park’ in Israel

Trump “took a brave and unprecedented step that none of his predecessors were willing to take,” Mayor David Even Tzur of the Israeli city of Kiryat Yam said, per Arutz Sheva, after Trump’s 2017 declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. “We must honor him for it.”

Kiryat Yam subsequently invested $1.4 million in a nearly two-acre Trump Park that borders an “existing science park in the center of the city,” said The Times of Israel. “I am grateful for your gesture,” said Trump in a letter to Tzur, according to The Forward. Trump was “moved to know that the people of Israel are encouraged by my decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”

‘Trump Promenade’ in Israel

Donald Trump is “Israel’s best friend ever,” said Netanyahu at a 2025 groundbreaking ceremony for a seaside promenade in the president’s honor in the central Israeli city of Bat Yam. The concept of this “President Donald Trump Promenade,” said The Jerusalem Post, “originated from Trump’s idea to turn the Gaza Strip into beachfront property.” Israel has “wonderful beachside properties here,” Netanyahu said Trump had told him, clarifying that Trump had been “talking about one that’s a bit to the south here, in Gaza.”

“This is so great,” Trump said in a “personal note” to Netanyahu following the naming ceremony. The message was written on a printout of a post Netanyahu made on X showing the groundbreaking ceremony, the Post said.

‘Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity’ between Azerbaijan and Armenia

A key feature of a fragile brokered peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity “promises to become a vital connectivity link between Europe and Asia” that “could go down as” one of Trump’s “most impressive foreign policy achievements” since reelection, said the Atlantic Council. The project’s name was a “concession” sure to “delight Trump,” CNN said, as the president sought to “brand himself in his first six months in office as a global peacemaker.”

Though the project’s stakeholders “share the ambition” that the rail portion of the route “can be completed by 2028 and the end of Trump’s presidency,” the peace process is “still at an early stage,” said the Carnegie Russia Urasia Center. Local groups in the region are also “far less engaged in it than the leaders are.” The plan has elicited a minimal response from Russia, which is “cautious not to antagonize a U.S. administration led by Trump, whose name is tied to the project.”

What happened

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday he will remain on the Fed Board of Governors “for a period of time to be determined” after his term as chair expires May 15. His announcement came at the end of a two-day policy meeting in which the Fed voted to keep rates unchanged, and shortly after the Senate Banking Committee voted along party lines to advance Kevin Warsh’s nomination to succeed Powell.

Who said what

Powell’s “decision to stay, which he can do until January 2028, breaks with tradition” and denies President Donald Trump the chance to “appoint another governor” until he leaves, The New York Times said. Powell underscored that he was still concerned about the Fed’s independence and “made clear his decision hinged on the outcome of a criminal investigation” of him that the Justice Department has halted, with caveats.

His continuing presence could “make it a bit harder for Warsh to engineer the rate cuts that Trump has demanded,” The Associated Press said. But Powell downplayed concerns about a “‘two Popes’ scenario.” There’s “only ever one chair,” he told reporters. “I’m not looking to be a high-profile dissident.”

What next?

The Fed’s next policy meeting is June 16-17. “I won’t see you next time,” Powell deadpanned at his last post-meeting press conference.

What happened

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

Who said what

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

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

What next?

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

Donald Trump has hailed the relationship between the US and UK as “a friendship unlike any other on Earth” during what is widely being seen as a hugely successful state visit by King Charles.

After delivering a much-praised speech to Congress, the King, with Queen Camilla, last night joined the US president and first lady for a star-studded banquet. In a playful toast, Charles joked about Trump’s “readjustments” to the East Wing of the White House following his “visit to Windsor Castle last year”, and presented the president with the bell from the British Second World War submarine, HMS Trump.

Officially a celebration of 250 years of American independence, the three-day visit “has also been billed as a rescue mission”, said the BBC’s North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher. With US-UK relations “strained” by Britain’s refusal to fully back the US-Israeli war against Iran, “the King’s goal has been to ease those tensions with a royal charm offensive”.

What did the commentators say?

King Charles delivered a “masterclass in Trump II diplomacy” at the banquet, said Shawn McCreesh, White House reporter for The New York Times. His speech had “all the right ingredients”: “dry British understatement”; jokes tailored to “Trump’s proclivities”; “a little obsequiousness balanced with a little prodding about Nato”, and “the shiniest, Trumpiest of gifts”.

The president was “on his best behaviour” and, apart from one protocol-breaking moment when he suggested that the King had agreed with his views on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he “seemed like putty in the bejewelled hands of the monarch. There are few foreign figureheads who can work this president the way this king can.”

“Entirely predictably”, Charles’ speech to Congress did not directly mention Iran, Israel, climate change, immigration, Jeffrey Epstein, “nor a bunch of other hot potatoes in the Trump era”, said David Smith, The Guardian’s Washington correspondent. But it was “exquisitely measured” in its “less-is-more” emphasis on “common bonds that long predate” this president and – “hopefully! – will long outlast him”. Judging by the applause, this “soft power flex worked a treat”.

Charles showed “deep respect for his hosts”, said CNN’s Stephen Collinson. But it’s no small irony that “it took a king to remind America of its republican values: the rule of law, democracy and the power of its international example”.

What next?

After recent “fraught” weeks, this state visit will “probably help stabilise relations” between Britain and America, said former Tory foreign secretary William Hague in The Times. But “it cannot, on its own, reverse the trend of declining trust and mutual respect”. We will still look at Trump, “fearing this might be the future”, and the US will “look at us and worry that our glories are all in the past”.

The special relationship will endure, “whatever the quarrels over Iran”, said the Financial Times editorial board, but “Britain’s place in the world is not what it was” in its heyday. “In the harsh new world of the 21st century, other connections are going to matter a lot, too.”

President Donald Trump is, by his own repeated admissions, first and foremost a businessman. Even after entering the rarified echelons of hegemonic decision-making, he often touts his track record as a corporate wheeler-dealer as proof he's prepared for the pressures of managing a geopolitical superpower. Now, as commander in chief, Trump has seemingly merged the political with the profitable. From teasing tariffs to raking in royalties, the president has used the Oval Office for his own financial interests in many ways. (edited)

Cryptocurrency

Of all the various Trump-linked business projects operating concurrently with the president’s administration, “none” pose a conflict of interest that can “compare to those that have emerged since the birth” of cryptocurrency firm World Liberty Financial, said The New York Times. Trump is now “not only a major crypto dealer” but one of the industry’s “top policy makers,” whose family-owned foray into digital currency is “eviscerating the boundary between private enterprise and government policy.”

During the first year of his second term, Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law, thereby establishing federal regulations that the “industry had sought around stablecoins, a kind of cryptocurrency pegged to the U.S. dollar,” said Time. “Earlier that year,” Trump launched USD1, “his own stablecoin business.”

World Liberty also offers “governance tokens,” which can be purchased to offer owners “certain voting rights in its business, though not equity stakes,” The Associated Press said. The result? “Hundreds of millions of dollars” for Trump and his family from his World Liberty ownership and a “separate side deal allowing them a cut of these sales.”

Real estate development

You can take the president out of the cutthroat world of elite property deals, but you can’t take the elite property deals out of the president. At least that is how Trump seems to have operated since taking office, with his geopolitical responsibilities in office often overlapping with international development deals being pursued in his corporate name.

While the eponymous Trump Organization “did zero deals in foreign countries” during the first Trump term, it has done at least eight in his second, “all ostensibly complying with the Trump Organization’s self-imposed rule not to do business directly with foreign governments,” said the AP. But “authoritarian” and one-party states “rarely take a hands-off approach” when it comes to big business deals — “especially when the business belongs to a sitting president.”

The president “continues to profit” from his partnership with a “major Saudi developer with a history of close ties to the royal family,” said The New Yorker. This past winter, the Trump organization began “licensing its name” for the development of a “new golf club, a luxury hotel and a number of mansions in Diriyah, near Riyadh.” It has also “sold the use of the president’s name for a Trump Plaza development in Jeddah.”

Tariffs

In his second term, Trump has centered tariffs as a load-bearing policy of his entire administration. But to “truly understand why Donald Trump likes tariffs so much,” said Jen Psaki on MS NOW, “you have to look at the Trump International real estate development” project moving forward in Vietnam.

Trump’s threat to slap the Vietnamese government with exorbitantly high tariffs on the self-titled “liberation day” came amid a push for luxury developments in and around the country. Hanoi was facing “intense pressure to strike a trade deal that would head off President Trump’s threat of steep tariffs,” said The New York Times. That pressure prompted Vietnamese officials to request support from the top levels of government, as the project was “receiving special attention from the Trump administration and President Donald Trump personally,” per a letter obtained by the Times.

Trump’s “freewheeling use of tariffs as a tool of American power” has seen him apply the economic measure toward “national security goals, as well as the interests of individual companies,” The Washington Post said. Tariffs are a “tool the president enjoys because it’s personal power,” former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said at HuffPo.

With tariffs, Trump doesn’t “have to go through Congress” and can “exercise personal power” instead. Tariffs, to Trump, are a “potent and unilateral mechanism for reintroducing systematic corruption into the economy,” said Mother Jones. Controlling tariffs allows the White House to “grant waivers and exemptions,” which forces “people, corporations, localities and even nations and foreign actors to come seeking reprieve on bended knee.”

Tchotchkes and royalties

The first year of Trump’s second term in office was a “lucrative” one when it came to “royalty payments for the various goods that are sold featuring his name and likeness,” said NBC News. Per his 2025 financial disclosure forms, Trump that year earned more than $1 million from sales of his “45 guitar, which features Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ phrase inlaid in ‘authentic pearl’ on the neck of the guitar, as well as the “number ‘45’ on the headstock, referring to his time as the 45th president of the United States,” said Fox Business.

The disclosure forms also list him as earning $2.5 million in royalties from “Trump Sneakers and Fragrances” and an additional $1.3 million from the “Greenwood Bible,” inspired by singer Lee Greenwood — a frequent Trump supporter — and his “God Bless the U.S.A.” anthem. “Besides a King James Version translation,” Trump’s bible contains “the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Pledge of Allegiance, as well as a handwritten chorus of the famous Greenwood song,” The Associated Press said.

Trump’s licensing and merchandise windfalls come after he “launched a number of new licensing deals” in late 2024, a “couple of weeks before taking the oath of office,” Time said.

Settlements and suit threats

Since returning to office, the famously litigious Trump has raked in at least $90 million in lawsuit settlements from tech and media juggernauts, including X, Meta and Paramount, The New York Times said, even as many of Trump’s suits weren’t “justified on the merits.” Several of those high-profile settlements were then used to “help fund the creation of Donald Trump’s presidential library,” The New Republic said.

The Miami-based site, which, in a “perfect Trumpian twist may also double as a hotel,” has earned congressional notice for its unique funding origins. “Not one” of the companies whose settlement funds are being applied “can say with any clarity where their multimillion-dollar donations to Donald Trump’s library slush fund are or where they will go,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said to The New Republic.

Scrutiny over Trump’s settlement-funded library comes as the White House is “engaged in discussions’ with the president’s IRS and Treasury Departments to “resolve” a $10 billion lawsuit filed this past winter that accuses the agencies of an “unauthorized leak of his tax information during his first administration,” CNN said. Trump filed that suit “personally, not in his official capacity as president,” although any monetary settlement would see “Trump’s own administration paying him and his family.”

Like father, like sons

For as much as Trump has expanded the horizons of potential presidential profiteering, so too have his eldest sons, Don Jr. and Eric, done the same for the Trump dynasty. Last spring, the pair “contributed their family name — and nothing else of obvious value — to a complicated series of transactions” to take a significant stake in the cryptocurrency mining firm American Bitcoin, said The New Yorker. Had their father lost in 2024, “surely” they wouldn’t have been granted “such a large stake in a business that they had virtually no experience in and to which they had contributed so little.”

As the pair’s “new drone company seeks Pentagon contracts,” other government contracting companies in which at least one brother owns an ownership stake “are taking in tens of millions of dollars of new taxpayer money,” the AP said. Still, the notion that Donald Jr. should “cease living his life and making a living to provide for his five kids” simply because of his father is “quite frankly, a laughable and ridiculous standard,” said a family spokesperson to the outlet.

What happened

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump on Monday separately demanded that ABC fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over a parody White House Correspondents’ Association dinner roast during last week’s show in which Kimmel joked that the first lady had a “glow like an expectant widow.” The outcry followed the shooting incident at the real gala two nights later. Federal prosecutors on Monday charged the alleged gunman with trying to assassinate Trump.

Who said what

Kimmel’s “rhetoric” was “completely deranged,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters. “Who in their right mind says a wife would be glowing over the potential murder of her beloved husband?” It was “obviously” a “very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than I am,” Kimmel said on Monday night’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” The joke “was not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination, and they know that.”

What next?

The controversy over a joke about a “dinner meant to honor the First Amendment is sure to revive” the censorship battle between Trump and Kimmel that “erupted” last fall, The New York Times said. After a brief suspension following a joke involving Charlie Kirk, Kimmel signed a one-year contract extension due to keep him on air until May 2027.

What happened

Iran has proposed a deal to open the State of Hormuz provided the U.S. and Israel cease their attacks and the U.S. ends its naval blockade of Iranian ships and ports. Tehran’s nuclear program and enriched uranium would be discussed at a later date. The proposal, passed to the U.S. through Pakistan on Sunday, followed an Iranian offer to suspend its uranium enrichment that President Donald Trump rejected.

Who said what

Trump is “unhappy with Iran's proposal as he wants nuclear issues dealt with from the outset,” Reuters said, citing a U.S. official. The proposal was “subject to a vigorous debate inside the administration” over which side “has more leverage,” The New York Times said, “and which country is better positioned to endure the economic hardship” from the strait’s closure.

Iranian officials are “serious about getting themselves out of the mess that they’re in,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Fox News. The Americans “have achieved none of their goals, and this is why they are asking for negotiations,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told reporters in Russia. “We are now considering it.” Leaders of European nations also weighed in: the U.S. “quite obviously went into this war without any strategy” and has “no truly convincing strategy in the negotiations either,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Monday. “A whole nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership.”

What next?

The “tense stalemate” has “entered a Cold War-like phase of financial sanctions, gunboat interdictions and talks about having talks,” with “no immediate end in sight,” Axios said. With the midterms six months away, a “frozen conflict is the worst thing for Trump politically and economically,” said a source close to the president.

The Trump administration’s threat to review its position on Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands could have a significant impact on the future of the South Atlantic British Overseas Territory, analysts have said.

A leaked internal Pentagon memo published last week by Reuters revealed that, as punishment for not supporting Donald Trump’s war against Iran, the US could reassess diplomatic support for longstanding European “imperial possessions”, such as the ⁠Falkland Islands, which have been administered by Britain since 1833 but are still claimed by Argentina.

Argentina’s President Javier Milei is “upbeat about the prospects”, said Reuters, after the Trump ally told a radio show that “we are doing everything humanly possible to bring the Falkland Islands back into Argentine hands”.

On Monday, his vice president, Victoria Villarruel, ramped up rhetoric further by calling for Falkland Islanders to go back to England.

What did the commentators say?

Donald Trump “has repeatedly demonstrated his desire to use transactional diplomacy to pressure both allies and adversaries”, said the BBC. The Falklands are a “pressure point for the UK but irrelevant to the US”, making them a perfect target for this kind of “leverage”.

Given the current state of Britain’s armed forces, the UK would “struggle to defend the Falkland Islands if Donald Trump followed through on threats to withdraw American support for British sovereignty”, said The i Paper.

But while the loss of American backing for UK control of the islands would “make it easier for Argentina to press its claim more assertively”, said Dr Johanna Amaya-Panche, senior lecturer in international relations and politics at Liverpool John Moores University, an invasion remains unlikely.

“Argentina is not capable of retaking the islands militarily, and there is no credible indication that it intends to try,” but the Milei government “may adopt a more assertive diplomatic or legal strategy, seeking to internationalise the dispute and mobilise external support”.

Downing Street has insisted that the Falkland Islands’ status will remain unchanged, with the prime minister’s spokesperson saying “sovereignty rests with the UK and the islanders’ right to self-determination is paramount”.

“Such robustness is a welcome surprise,” said The Telegraph in an editorial. The government will be hoping the state visit by King Charles will help defuse tensions with the White House. The reality is that “casting doubt over the ownership of the Falklands would hardly be in Washington’s interests”. Even in 1982, the Royal Navy “had to leave other missions unresourced in order to retake the islands” and today its numbers are “so shrunken that it could never act meaningfully in the South Atlantic and in support of the US simultaneously”.

What next?

If the US did change its position to one in which it supported Argentinian claims over the islands, that would be “pretty significant”, Ed Arnold from the Royal United Services Institute security think tank, told the BBC, as “it might cause other countries to move that way as well”.

“You could potentially see a situation where Argentina pushes for some intervention at the UN and the US may support or just not actively block.”

“A change of US policy towards the sovereignty of the Falklands will not mean we will face a repeat” of the 1982 war with Argentina, said former defence secretary Penny Mordaunt in The Express. “But it should be a reminder that the world can change fast” and that “we owe it to all Brits, whether they reside in the UK or in her territories, that we are capable of defending them and their interests.”

Following an assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on April 25, President Donald Trump wasted little time in framing the still-ambiguous episode to support his legally dubious ballroom construction efforts. He also used the opportunity to attack a familiar list of political adversaries, including Democrats and members of the press.

What did the commentators say?

After the attack on the WHCA dinner, Trump and his allies have “coalesced” around the embattled ballroom construction project as their “solution for presidential security,” The New York Times said. Trump’s plans for the White House ballroom include a secure bunker under what was once the East Wing. But Trump and his administration’s “coordinated effort” to connect the WHCA attempted shooting to the ongoing legal “tug of war” over the ballroom “ignored the realities of the annual dinner and the circumstances of the breach.” The shooting attempt has become “fodder to support building the president’s pet project,” said Zeteo. “Even before Trump addressed the public, the talking points already seemed to be circulating.”

Trump has a history of using attempts on his life as a “political symbol” to “rally his supporters and strengthen his grip on state affairs,” said South Korea’s The Chosun Daily. His post on Truth Social requesting the WHCA “LET THE SHOW GO ON” after the attack shows that even during a “crisis that could have led to a disaster,” Trump was able to display his “signature showmanship.”

It is “notable” that “neither Trump nor anyone on his team rushed to assign a political motive” in the hours immediately following Saturday’s attack, said The Sydney Morning Herald. Instead, Trump “predictably” spent the time turning the attack “to his own purposes.” The president’s behavior in the immediate aftermath of the shooting attempt, including at his press briefing that evening, “underscored his instinct to spin narratives with himself as the undaunted hero” while “rarely missing a chance to plug his priorities,” said Reuters.

There is a “pattern” at play, said Politico. After an attempt on Trump’s life, there are “calls from both sides to turn down the temperature. And then, a pivot.” After initially pushing for Americans to “resolve” their differences, it took “less than 24 hours” for Trump to insist in a 60 Minutes interview with CBS’s Norah O’Donnell that the “hate speech of the Democrats” is “very dangerous.”

As in previous instances where Trump has asked for bipartisan calm after facing violence, such calls “proved to be very short-lived,” said The Associated Press. A host of “right-wing politicians and media figures” have begun “laboring to blame the apparent assassination attempt on rhetoric from Democrats,” said Zeteo. It is this dynamic that has allowed Trump to cast himself as a unifier who, on Sunday, “vowed that violence should not win,” while at the same time “accusing the Washington press of being in league with Democrats and covering him unfairly,” said CNN.

What next?

That there were still WHCA after-parties and associated events in the hours following the assassination attempt is a “testament to the nonstop insanity of the Trump era,” during which an “active shooter getting close to the president — for a second time” can be so “quickly metabolized by Washington,” said New York magazine.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has already begun using the episode to “pressure a preservation group to drop a lawsuit seeking to halt the construction” of Trump’s ballroom, The Guardian said. “I hope yesterday’s narrow miss will help you finally realize the folly of a lawsuit that literally serves no purpose except to stop President Trump, no matter the cost,” Blanche said in a letter to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which has sued to stop what it claims is Trump’s illegal ballroom construction. “Enough is enough.”

Ultimately, Trump has “experience” with the “opportunities presented by such moments,” Reuters said. “No one can turn danger into a political asset better than this president,” one White House official said to the outlet.

What happened

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in Russia on Monday morning after a weekend of diplomatic trips to Pakistan and Oman, but no direct talks with the United States. President Donald Trump on Saturday called off an announced trip to Islamabad by his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, saying it would be a waste of time given Iran’s lack of commitment to meet with them.

Who said what

“If they want to talk, they can come to us, or they can call us,” Trump told Fox News on Sunday. With U.S.-Iran talks “derailed, at least for now,” The New York Times said, “Tehran and Washington are sinking into an awkward limbo of neither peace, nor war,” with each projecting confidence they can “outlast the other in a standoff with drastic stakes for the global economy.” Pakistani officials said “indirect talks” were ongoing even as they “scrambled to reignite” direct negotiations, The Associated Press said.

What next?

Trump was “expected to hold a Situation Room meeting” on Monday after receiving an Iranian proposal to “reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the war,” Axios said, “with nuclear negotiations postponed for a later stage.”

What happened

The gunman accused of trying to charge into the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday night appears to have “set out to target folks who work in the administration, likely including the president,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said over the weekend. Law enforcement officials said they are trying to determine the assailant’s motive, but he was believed to have acted alone.

The suspect, identified as 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen of California, was tackled after sprinting through a security checkpoint at the Washington Hilton carrying a handgun, a shotgun and knives, police said. A Secret Service agent was shot but protected by a bulletproof vest.

Who said what

After popping sounds were heard outside the ballroom during the salad course, Secret Service agents swarmed in, ushering President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and top Cabinet officials to safety as most guests ducked for cover. The gunman “barely breached the perimeter,” Blanche told CNN, calling it a “massive security success story.”

At a White House press conference after the shooting, Trump “was unusually conciliatory,” The Associated Press said. But he “flashed a familiar anger” during a “60 Minutes” interview on Sunday, when Norah O’Donnell read from a manifesto Allen reportedly sent relatives before the attack, even though it did not mention Trump by name, Politico said. “I’m not a rapist,” and “I’m not a pedophile,” Trump said. “You shouldn’t be reading that on ‘60 Minutes,’ you’re a disgrace.”

What next?

Allen is scheduled to be arraigned in federal court Monday on preliminary charges of assaulting a federal officer and weapons charges.

As polarisation increasingly divides America, violence is becoming embedded in its politics.

“We do believe it was administration officials,” said Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche, when asked for the target of the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington. “But as far as exacting threats that may have been communicated beforehand, we’re still actively investigating that evidence.”

For many Americans, Saturday night’s events were “at once shocking and familiar”, said Lisa Lerer in The New York Times. Politically motivated violence has become a “routine intruder” into our lives, bringing with it a “numbing narrative of assaults, bomb threats and assassination attempts”.

What did the commentators say?

“Instead of a speech stacked with heated barbs against the media, the event ended like many in the US do: with gun violence,” said Rachel Leingang in The Guardian.

The association’s initial decision to continue the event (it was later rescheduled) may have surprised some, but for many it “struck a chord about the regularity of gun violence in American life”. Trump said afterwards that the presidency is a “dangerous profession”, but the fact that violence in the political domain is a “feature”, rather than an “outlier, rang true on a night meant to celebrate the freedom of the press”.

Attacks like these are “convulsing” American politics from both sides of the partisan divide, said Guy Chazan in the Financial Times. The suspected gunman had barely been apprehended before “ranks of Maga influencers” were blaming Democrats, and left-leaning conspiracy theorists claimed it was a “staged” hoax to “advance Trump’s political agenda”.

So-called “conflict entrepreneurs” are “getting rich by making us angry at one another”, fuelled by a “loss of trust in democratic institutions that makes it easier to see illegal violence as a solution”, said William Braniff, from the American University. Modern assassination attempts are “backed by a growing public acceptance of the use of violence in the pursuit of political ends”, said Chazan. “Things could get even worse.”

Saturday’s events reveal how “dangerous” US politics has become over the last few years, said James Piazza, political science professor at Penn State, on The Conversation. Intense polarisation means opponents are “suspicious and hostile” towards each other, believing others to be “evil or immoral” instead of merely sharing a different view.

In turn, this has made violence more “normalised”, and because public backlash is “dampened” at each attempt, further violence becomes even “more likely”. Disinformation and social media have also accelerated this trend. Disinformed users are “hermetically sealed off” from alternative sources and this “facilitates radicalisation” for isolated communities.

Even with America’s “grim history of political violence”, Trump “certainly seems to attract a higher share than others of would-be assassins”, said Edward Luce in the Financial Times. He has now been the target of three assassination attempts: his “ear was grazed” by a bullet in Butler, Pennsylvania; there was the Mar-a-Lago golf course incident that was foiled by Secret Service agents; and then Saturday’s Washington dinner.

Nearly following in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy, Trump said that he was “honoured” by comparisons with the four assassinated presidents because he’s “done a lot”. Let’s not forget that eight children were killed in Louisiana last week, but it “only briefly made the headlines”: mass shootings are now “part of the texture of American life”, said Luce.

What next?

It is “absolutely critical” that both Democratic and Republican politicians “unite to condemn this attack and all political violence”, said Piazza on The Conversation.

Commentators should condemn any violence with political aims and political elites should “adopt rhetoric that does not normalise this sort of behaviour. If the message comes from across the political spectrum, it will be that much more effective at reducing the public attitudes that nurture political violence.”

Following the Pennsylvania assassination attempt the image of Trump with a bloodied face raising his fist “partly defined his campaign”, said Luce. This time around, “any sympathy wave is likely to be more limited”.

Before the incident at the Washington Hilton Hotel, Trump’s approval ratings hit a “personal low of below 40%” in some polls last week, and the “rising unpopularity” of the war in Iran is “driving his nadir”.

Though there is no doubt Trump will “try to make political hay” from the attempt on his life, “ironically” it has been his “early zeal for assassinating senior Iranians” that is “shaping his political future”.

Congratulations to Kevin Warsh, President Trump's preferred pick to be the new chairman of the Federal Reserve, said Hakyung Kim in the FT. He managed to get through an eagerly awaited grilling about his nomination by the Senate Banking Committee “without causing a Treasuries market meltdown”.

Risk of escalation

Warsh carefully “sidestepped multiple gotchas on his independence from Trump” – including the suggestion that he is “a human sock puppet”. But ultimately the world's most important central bank still faces a political deadlock, said DealBook in The New York Times.

Thom Tillis, a Republican committee member, has vowed to block Warsh's appointment unless the Department of Justice drops its investigation into the current chair Jay Powell's building renovations. Powell has refused to quit next month as scheduled unless his successor is in place; Trump has threatened to fire him. For the moment, investors “are largely ignoring the drama”. But any escalation “carries huge risks”.

Even if this soap opera is swiftly resolved, Warsh faces “a high-wire act” convincing investors that he's his own man, “without angering Trump”, said Nick Timiraos in The Wall Street Journal. An erstwhile inflation “hawk”, he auditioned for the job by constructing a case for the rate cuts Trump wants – arguing that an AI boom “would soon deliver a productivity surge”. Yet the Iran war has changed everything.

Regime change

When Trump picked Warsh in January (in part because of his “central casting” looks), markets were factoring in at least one or two cuts this year, probably more, said The Economist. But the soaring oil price pushed headline inflation to 3.3% in March (up from 2.4% the month before) and next month's data could be equally painful. Few now expect cuts this year. Moreover, Warsh's AI argument has always been “shaky”. If the technology really does make US workers more productive, “the correct monetary response might well be to raise interest rates”.

Warsh's most interesting views, which also potentially bring him into conflict with politicians and the markets, concern the Fed's balance sheet, said John Authers on Bloomberg. “He is loudly on record that it should be smaller” – meaning that the Fed should sell down some of the huge portfolio of bonds it took on to deal with the 2008 financial crisis and then the pandemic. “At the margin, that would mean less liquidity in the market, and higher bond yields.”

Yet we're no clearer how he might actually go about this, said Hakyung Kim. Warsh is proposing “regime change”. But “if you're going to rip up the current playbook, you'd better have a better one, and it's not clear that Warsh does”.

President Donald Trump’s desire to outdo and undo the achievements of former President Barack Obama is well-documented. Trump in 2018 tore up the 2015 agreement by his predecessor to limit Iran’s ability to develop its own nuclear weapons. Now Trump faces a challenge of getting a better deal as he tries to wind down a costly war.

The president is “adamant” he can exceed Obama in Iran, said The Hill. The 2015 nuclear agreement was “one of the Worst Deals ever made,” Trump said on Truth Social. But foreign policy experts warn that getting a satisfactory deal with Iran will be “much easier said than done,” said The Hill. The “dizzyingly complicated” Obama agreement took two years to negotiate and involved experts “poring over the details of nuclear technology, sanctions and international banking.” The U.S. decision to abandon that agreement and go to war may have convinced Tehran that a “nuclear weapon would be the best deterrent they can pursue,” said Allison McManus at the Center for American Progress to the outlet.

The earlier agreement “capped Iran’s uranium enrichment for 15 years,” said CNN. Trump is now demanding a 20-year pause, while Iran wants limits for just five years. But Tehran is negotiating with new leverage: Its closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a “weapon that is far more usable than nuclear weapons,” said CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.

What did the commentators say?

Trump has sold himself as the “ultimate dealmaker,” but that image is in conflict with his “intensifying love of unilateral power,” Bill Scher said at Washington Monthly. A good negotiator has “knowledge, patience, creativity and flexibility,” but the president prefers “impatiently breaking laws and norms.” Trump launched the war with Iran amid weeks of negotiations, which have left the regime’s leaders leery of reengaging. Obama, it now seems clear, mastered the “art of the deal” and avoided a disastrous war. “Trump didn’t, and here we are.”

One big difference between the 2015 agreement and any deal the U.S. makes now: Iran’s nuclear program is “largely in rubble,” Eli Lake said at The Free Press. Tehran may still possess as many as 500 uranium-enriching centrifuges, but the country’s ability to quickly develop a weapon “has been taken away through military force” and will be difficult to rebuild. Even if Trump fails to get a deal at this moment, he has nonetheless “destroyed the nuclear program that Obama legitimized.”

What next?

Trump faces “major hurdles” getting a better deal than Obama did, said The Guardian. And if a deal is reached, he will be asked to demonstrate that the war with Iran provided a superior outcome than what pre-war negotiations in Geneva were set to deliver. Otherwise the president will have “inflicted massive damage on the world economy” when other options were available. Getting to an agreement will be a challenge. There is a “trust deficit” between the two sides that “makes a solution so difficult.”

What happened

The Justice Department on Thursday reclassified marijuana as a less-dangerous Schedule III drug for medicinal and research uses, effective immediately. The order aligns federal policy more closely with the 48 states that allow some form of medical marijuana use.

Who said what

The reclassification “will make it easier to study medicinal applications of marijuana and could shore up support from influencers who support the research,” Axios said. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to reclassify cannabis in December and appeared impatient last weekend when signing a separate order to loosen restrictions on psychedelics. “Joe, they’re slow-walking me on rescheduling,” he told podcaster Joe Rogan.

This is “one of the biggest changes to U.S. drug policy in decades,” Reuters said. But after “shares of cannabis companies jumped between 6% and 13% following the decision,” they “reversed their gains” as investors in the $47 billion industry digested the “limited scope of the federal government’s immediate moves.”

What next?

Marijuana for recreational use, as allowed in 24 states and Washington, D.C., remains an illegal Schedule I controlled substance, alongside heroin and LSD. But the Justice Department said it scheduled a June 29 hearing to consider a broader Schedule III reclassification for all cannabis.

The S&P 500, the benchmark US stock index, hit a record high on Wednesday. This is being mirrored in other major stock markets across Asia and Europe, despite growing concerns over global fuel and energy prices as a result of the war in Iran and the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz.

“There’s a lot of risk out there and yet asset prices are at all-time highs,” Sarah Breeden, deputy governor of the Bank of England, told the BBC’s business editor Simon Jack. “We expect there will be an adjustment at some point”, she said. What “really keeps me awake at night is the likelihood of a number of risks crystallising at the same time”.

As Jack said: “It is unusual for a senior figure at the Bank to be so forthright on market movements.” With confidence fluctuating around peace talks, and reverberations in energy markets continuing, what has gone up could just as easily come down.

What did the commentators say?

“Nothing, it seems, can dent the almost inexplicable optimism coursing through financial markets,” said the ABC’s chief business correspondent Ian Verrender. In the past, stock markets would “shudder” and “tumble”, then spend a decade recovering from economic “calamity”; nowadays the recovery time is cut down to weeks, “if they bother to react at all”.

Investors are not “oblivious” to what is happening in the world, said Joe Rennison, financial markets reporter for The New York Times. They are just attuned to “what exactly the markets are measuring”, looking beyond the “immediate upheaval from the war” to concentrate on its “long-term effects on corporate profits”. Americans may be struggling to afford fuel for their cars, but companies have been “very profitable indeed” for “quite a while now”. Big tech is “riding a wave of enthusiasm”, and it is these bigger companies, like Microsoft and Meta, who have been shielded from the war and tend to influence the market more profoundly.

Although the market “rapidly rebounded – and then some” after Trump’s ceasefire announcement, having been on a steady slide for most of March, investors are “not simply taking Trump at his word” that the war is “almost over”. Instead, they are responding to the White House’s “apparent eagerness” to find an end to the combat. “Investors might not believe Trump, exactly, but they do seem to believe that the worst of the war has already passed.”

After “years of headline-driven volatility” and a “dip-buying mindset”, investors have learned not to “stay bearish for too long”, said Bloomberg. The current pattern echoes the “Ukraine-war playbook from early 2022, when an initial equities sell-off and commodity price surge” soon reversed to normal.

“It is never easy to price uncertainty,” said Tej Parikh in the Financial Times. Investors have long relied on “ebitda”, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, to ascertain the “core value of a business”. But it now appears they have changed their tune, relying on “earnings before Iran, tariffs and dubious announcements”.

What next?

Since the war in Iran began, analysts have “actually raised their expectations for upcoming profits” for S&P 500 companies, said The Associated Press. Major companies such as PepsiCo and GE Vernova have either “stuck by” or “raised” their revenue forecasts for the year, which were initially published before the start of the war. S&P 500 profits could “accelerate to 20% in the second quarter, and companies aren’t giving them many reasons to reconsider”.

Of course, the US stock market “can easily return to falling”. If US-Iran peace talks break down, or if oil supplies cause greater concern, Wall Street’s mood could “swing quickly back to fear”. If oil prices, in particular, stay elevated for long enough, that could “erode” profits and raise costs, not to mention “weaken the spending power” of consumers around the world.

The FBI and a congressional committee are investigating the mysterious cases of 10 missing or dead scientists and staff who worked at sensitive nuclear or space technology laboratories.

Social media has “lit up” with theories about the disappearances and deaths, said CBS News, as speculation has “swirled” about whether they are part of an effort to “harm” US nuclear or space programmes.

‘Sinister connection’

William Neil McCasland, a retired US air force general now director of technology at an aerospace defence firm, went missing from his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on 27 February.

Investigators soon became aware of other aerospace and nuclear officials and researchers who have gone missing or died in mysterious circumstances. These cases included a nuclear physicist and MIT professor who was fatally shot outside his Massachusetts home, an aerospace engineer who went missing during a hike in Los Angeles, and two scientists working on nuclear fusion and astrophysics who were murdered in their homes.

“The similar circumstances of some of the disappearances” and the subjects’ involvement in sensitive and secret research have “fuelled speculation about whether coordinated foul play or foreign espionage may be involved”, said The Hill.

The FBI confirmed it is “spearheading the effort to look for connections” between the 10 cases that have come to light and the Republican-led House Oversight Committee said it will examine “questions about a possible sinister connection”. In a post on X, Nasa said that it was cooperating with the investigations, but “at this time, nothing related to Nasa indicates a national security threat”.

The speculation has drawn in the US president. “I hope it’s random, but we’re going to know in the next week and a half,” Donald Trump told reporters, confirming that an investigation was under way. It is “pretty serious stuff” but “hopefully a coincidence, or whatever you want to call it”.

‘People do just die’

People familiar with the cases said that what “underlies” these deaths and disappearances is “not a spy-thriller plot”, but “something more personal and tragic”, said CBS News.

McCasland’s wife said in a Facebook post that it “seems quite unlikely that he was taken to extract very dated secrets”, pointing out that her husband retired from the air force more than 12 years ago.

Julia Hicks, the daughter of Michael David Hicks, a scientist who worked at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and died in 2023, told CNN there is “no train of logic” connecting her father’s death to that of other scientists. “I can’t help but laugh about it, but at the same time, it’s getting serious,” she said.

The cases are “scattered across several years at different and only loosely affiliated organisations”, said Joseph Rodgers, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “If all of the scientists were working on one project or weapons system, then I’d be more suspicious,” he said.

A former US Department of Energy official was more succinct. “People do just die,” they said.

The Department of Justice is throwing hot charcoal on the meatpacking industry’s grill, as the agency has reportedly opened an antitrust investigation that could have wide-ranging implications for the beef market. The probe, which comes following repeated pressure from President Donald Trump, is happening as beef prices continue to rise, causing consumers to have a negative view of the economy.

What is the investigation about?

The DOJ is looking into whether “large meatpackers that supply American consumers engaged in criminal anticompetitive conduct,” according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the investigation. The probe is “looking at all of the major companies that sell beef in the U.S.” Four companies currently control 85% of the country’s beef market share: the U.S.-based Cargill and Tyson Foods, and the Brazilian-owned JBS and National Beef.

The crux of the investigation is whether these companies “reached illegal agreements over how they purchase cattle from ranchers,” said Bloomberg. The Justice Department reportedly believes beef companies could be doing this to cut costs, as “beef processors have been losing money for the last 20 months as they pay producers higher prices for cattle.” The investigation appeared to come at Trump’s behest. The president said in November 2025 he would “order the Justice Department to investigate the meatpacking industry for alleged collusion,” said Axios.

Other food companies, like McDonald’s, have also accused “big beef packers of collusion and price-gouging,” said The Guardian. As of now, the probe remains a noncriminal investigation. None of the companies or their employees “have been accused of any wrongdoing and probes don’t always lead to charges or lawsuits being filed,” said Bloomberg. JBS “isn’t aware of any criminal investigation” and “operates in a highly regulated industry and is committed to complying with all applicable regulations,” a spokesperson for the company told the Journal. Cargill, Tyson Foods and National Beef haven’t commented.

What is the bigger picture?

Questions about the beef industry aren’t new, as ranchers have “long complained about anticompetitive conduct by the four companies,” said Bloomberg. Evidence of consolidation within the beef industry is “reflected in sharply increased spreads between cattle prices and wholesale beef prices,” said a U.S. Department of Agriculture report from 2024, with “stronger evidence of market power in the meatpacking industry.”

But a criminal investigation perhaps beginning “raises the stakes considerably for the companies and their executives, who face the prospect of steep fines and prison time,” said Bloomberg. A prior investigation “into alleged price-fixing during the Covid-19 pandemic closed without action.” The current high beef prices are “driven mostly by structural factors,” Dennis Follmer, the chief investment officer at Montis Financial, told Axios. Consumers “shouldn’t expect near-term relief.”

The prospect of Trump becoming directly involved due to rising prices remains on the table, as the president’s approval rating on the cost of living has been consistently falling throughout 2026. When Trump called for the DOJ to investigate meatpackers in November 2025, the average price of ground beef was $6.54 per pound, up 91 cents year-to-year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. It has continued rising since then and is currently $6.70 per pound.

Prosecutors in El Salvador have opened a mass trial of 486 alleged members of the infamous MS-13 gang on charges ranging from homicide and femicide to extortion and arms trafficking.

They have been accused of more than 47,000 crimes between 2012 and 2022, including an estimated 29,000 homicides. These trials encapsulate President Nayib Bukele’s “iron-fist approach” to fighting organised crime, said The Associated Press, in a country that has been in a state of emergency for four years.

But mass trials have been criticised by human rights organisations, including a group of UN experts who claim they “undermine the exercise of the right to defence and the presumption of innocence of detainees”. Many are held in custody for years before their trial, facing blanket rulings from unknown judges.

What is MS-13?

The MS stands for Mara Salvatrucha, thought to be a combination of “Mara” (“gang”), “Salva” (a shortening of Salvador) and “trucha” (“which translates roughly into street smarts”), said the BBC. “The 13 represents the position of M in the alphabet.”

The gang was formed “on the street corners of Los Angeles” in the 1980s by Salvadoran immigrants who had fled civil war, said Sky News. It only spread to Central America when the members were deported from the US.

Donald Trump designated the group a terrorist organisation last year and made “deportation agreements” with El Salvador to “exchange prisoners affiliated with the gang and others”.

The main aim of the mass trial is to target the “ranfla” – the “highest echelon” – of the gang, said The Times. Alongside its rival gang, Barrio 18, MS-13 at one stage controlled up to 80% of El Salvadoran territory through “extortion, drug dealing, contract killings and arms trafficking”. Prosecutors allege that the gang’s attempts to gain complete control amounted to a “parallel state, undermining national sovereignty”.

“Over three decades” Bukele’s government estimates the gangs have killed around 200,000 people, including many listed as disappeared.

Has a trial like this happened before?

The first “collective” trial of this magnitude took place in March 2025, said AP. At its conclusion, 52 members of Barrio 18 were convicted, with one individual sentenced to 245 years in prison.

In November, a similar trial found 45 members of a rival faction, Barrio 18 Sureños, guilty of several crimes and “handed down a 397-year prison sentence to one leader”.

What is the criticism?

Bukele’s “crackdown has drawn sharp criticism from human rights organisations”, said The Times. There is significant risk that, given the limited evidence specific to individuals, mass trials risk convicting innocent people.

Human Rights Watch estimated that El Salvador’s prison population has reached 118,000, “more than double the country’s capacity”. Set against “significantly worsening already poor prison conditions”, nearly 2% of the country’s entire population was incarcerated, “among the highest rates in the world”.

More than 500 people have already died in state custody under Bukele, and there have been reports of torture, said Agence France-Presse. Bukele has also acknowledged that “at least 8,000 innocent people” have been arrested under the crackdown, and have since been released, said AP.

Who is behind this?

President Bukele’s stance on criminal gangs has “made him the most popular elected head of state in the world”, said The Times. According to official figures released by his government, the rate of homicides fell from 7.8 per 100,000 people in 2022 to 1.3 last year, said Reuters.

Trump is a close ally. He said he had “the best relationship” with Bukele after the El Salvador president’s visit to the White House in 2025, said The Telegraph, despite previously accusing Bukele of sending MS-13 gang members to the US. Trump also signed a deal with Bukele last year, paying El Salvador between $6 million (£4.5 million) and $15 million (£11.3 million) to hold deportees in its prisons – “seemingly with little due process”.

What will happen next?

At the beginning of the trial, the judge stated that armed groups had disturbed “the peace of the Salvadoran population and the security of the state” for decades, and would be tried “with the full force of the law”.

Of the defendants, 413 of them are being held at the Terrorism Confinement Center (“Cecot”) in Tecoluca, and will watch proceedings on a screen. Cecot, a maximum-security prison built by Bukele in 2023, has “become a symbol of his controversial security policies”, said AP. The other 73 remain at large and will be tried in absentia.

Prosecutors say they have “overwhelming evidence” and will seek the maximum permitted sentence, said The Times. The trial could last up to six months.

‘The Constitution doesn’t make an exception for misusing police powers’

George F. Will at The Washington Post

Policing is an “indispensable and demanding craft requiring skills acquired through repetitions of good judgment in bad situations,” says George F. Will. So “litigation arising from law enforcement excesses acknowledges the craft’s exacting standards,” and “sometimes reluctant courts should provide remedies that affirm those standards.” The “militarization of law enforcement has been dramatized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents operating with too little training,” and courts may “eventually acknowledge the absence of a police-power exception.”

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‘Honoring America’s 250th through service’

Mike Lawler and Bonnie Watson Coleman at Newsweek

There is “no other nation on earth, past or present, that can pride itself on citizens dedicating as much personal time and resources to causes dear to them,” say Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.). Every American “has a definition of ‘service’ — and that is something worth celebrating.” In “choosing service, we progress beyond division to action, helping write the next chapter of American history as one grounded in unity.”

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‘The terrifying convergence of fetal personhood laws and abortion bans’

Melissa Gira Grant at The New Republic

“Fetal personhood laws and abortion bans are often intertwined,” says Melissa Gira Grant. But the “direct harm caused by the abortion bans has typically overshadowed the more abstract and punitive laws defining fetal personhood.” These laws “may not mention abortion at all. But fetal personhood laws are layered onto existing laws and emerging legal trends.” These are “not just legal or rhetorical strategies; they also shape how patients make health care decisions.” People’s “fears are not unfounded.”

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‘Trump showers health care crooks with love’

Whitney Curry Wimbish at The American Prospect

Donald Trump has “hit on a new role as a crusader against fraud,” but a new report “shows that Trump appears to support medical fraud, as long as corporate executives and other elites are the ones committing it,” says Whitney Curry Wimbish. Republicans “stump for Trump’s pet project to punish blue states under the guise of protecting taxpayers from medical fraud” but “those talking points are a smokescreen for Trump’s real aim: justifying his destruction of the American health care system.”

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New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani ran for office promising to raise taxes on the rich to pay for new social welfare programs. Now he is backing Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal to levy a new tax on expensive second homes.

Manhattan “may have more billionaire residents per square foot” than just about anywhere in the world, said New York’s ABC 7. But many of the “luxury, multi-million dollar apartments” in the city are second homes. Hochul’s proposed “pied-à-terre” tax would apply to more than 13,000 such residences worth more than $5 million. Those locations are owned by the “super wealthy” to “store their wealth to benefit from New York City’s real estate market,” Mamdani said in a statement. Critics say the proposed tax will hurt the city’s construction and real estate industries.

The proposal comes as blue states are looking to raise taxes on wealthy residents. Golden State voters are contemplating a “one-time, 5% ‘wealth’ tax on roughly 200 California billionaires,” said USA Today. And the Maine Legislature this month passed a “millionaire tax” on the Pine Tree State’s wealthiest residents, said Maine Morning Star. Getting the highest earners to “pay just a small percentage more” will help solve the state’s revenue problems, Democratic State Rep. Drew Gattine told the publication. But there is a backlash.

What did the commentators say?

New York’s business community believed that the moderate Hochul “would surely stand in the way” of Mamdani’s tax-the-rich ideas, Crain’s New York Business said in an editorial. And Hochul is “adamantly opposed to the broader tax hikes Mamdani continues to champion” to close the city’s budget gap. But her backing of the second-home tax “moved the needle significantly to the left.” A similar proposal in 2019 failed after getting “scorched-earth opposition” from New York’s real estate sector. Broader tax reform would be more beneficial, but it is easier to sell voters on taxing “foreign oligarchs who spend two weeks of the year in a luxury Billionaires Row penthouse.”

If the concern is that taxing the rich will drive out wealthy New Yorkers, the second-home tax “threads that needle by targeting people who are, by definition, not full-time New Yorkers,” The New York Daily News said in an editorial. The people who buy second homes in the city do so because it is a “global hub of business and culture” and can “happily” pay the tax. They already “enjoy and benefit from the enormous services and amenities that the city offers,” so they can “pay a little bit more on their assets” to contribute to that vitality.

What next?

One notable second-home owner is loudly criticizing the proposed tax, said The Hill. “Mayor Mamdani is DESTROYING New York!,” President Donald Trump, a Florida resident who owns a residence at New York City’s Trump Tower, said on Truth Social. Mamdani and Trump had previously found “common ground on the issue of affordability.” That ground may be lost. “The TAX, TAX, TAX Policies are SO WRONG,” Trump said.

What happened

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer is leaving the Trump administration “to take a position in the private sector,” the White House announced Monday. She had been under scrutiny for months over a series of workplace misconduct allegations. Unlike the recent ousters of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi, Chavez-DeRemer’s exit “was announced by a White House aide,” not President Donald Trump, The Associated Press said.

Who said what

The Labor Department inspector general opened an investigation in January into allegations that Chavez-DeRemer was having an affair with a security staffer, often “drank on the job” and “concocted official events to facilitate her personal travel plans,” Politico said. The White House and Labor Department initially called the claims baseless, but the “official denials got less full-throated as more allegations emerged,” the AP said.

Among the “embarrassing details” likely to emerge in a pending inspector general’s report, The New York Times said, were text messages sent to “younger female staffers” with “inappropriate requests” from Chavez-DeRemer, her husband and her father. “The text messages were the final straw,” a Republican close to the White House told Politico. “I think the secretary demonstrated a lot of wisdom in resigning,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told reporters.

What next?

Deputy Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling will take over as acting secretary. Sonderling, a “longtime ally of business leaders,” had “already been directing policy and personnel-related decision-making in Washington” as Chavez-Remer spent much of her tenure “on the road,” The Washington Post said.

Every day and every week, it becomes more alarmingly evident that in the White House “a mad king reigns, virtually unchecked,” said Jackie Calmes in the Los Angeles Times. Since he launched the frustrating war in Iran, President Trump has “reversed and contradicted himself repeatedly” about its goals while descending into enraged, profanity-flecked threats of genocide. On Easter Sunday, with Iran defying his demands to open the Strait of Hormuz to oil tankers, our commander in chief posted on Truth Social: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell.” He threatened to completely destroy Iran’s power plants, bridges, and infrastructure—leaving 93 million Iranians without electricity, running water, or functioning hospitals—and followed two days later with this genocidal vow: “A whole civilization will die tonight.” In everything the nearly 80-year-old Trump does, he shows the world “he is mentally unstable, unfit for the office.” When Pope Leo XIV criticized the war in Iran and Trump’s brutal immigration roundups, Trump posted that the pontiff was “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” before following up with an AI-generated image of himself as a robed Jesus Christ healing a sick man—later claiming it depicted him “as a doctor.” That was too much even for onetime acolytes, said Makena Kelly and David Gilbert in Wired. Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and podcasters Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones, among others, denounced Trump’s depiction of himself as the Messiah, and called for him to be removed from office, with Greene suggesting that Trump may actually be the Antichrist. Greene told former MAGA allies: “I know all of you and him and he has gone insane, and all of you are complicit.”

It’s no longer just Democrats and late-night comics questioning Trump’s sanity, said Peter Baker in The New York Times. Retired generals, former Republican officials, and foreign leaders are expressing deep concern about the “state of mind” of “the oldest president ever inaugurated.” In his second term, Trump “seems even less restrained and more incoherent,” publicly using profanity, wandering off at official meetings “into odd tangents” about poisonous snakes, Sharpie pens, and his White House ballroom, and repeatedly calling Greenland “Iceland” while insisting it should belong to him. He appalled allies when he gloated that liberal Hollywood director Rob Reiner had been allegedly stabbed to death by his son, and when, after the death of former FBI director and special counsel Robert Mueller, he said, “Good. I’m glad he’s dead.” After Trump’s genocidal threats against Iran, Democrats have called on the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump for mental unfitness, but he has surrounded himself with fawning loyalists, “rendering that idea moot.” Trump’s “chest-thumping and semi-coherent bluster” are nothing new, said Becket Adams in National Review, but now that he’s started a war of choice in the Middle East, he’s provided “the added bonus of a ticking body count”—including more than 3,600 Iranians and at least 13 Americans. It’s “fully reasonable” to question why our president keeps “teetering frantically between talk of peace and threats, promising terrible outcomes that no American has had time to consider, let alone endorse.”

Trump haters may “clutch at their pearls,” said Hugo Gurdon in the Washington Examiner, but he has a long, successful track record of issuing “bellicose threats” and making “outlandish” demands to get the other side to the negotiating table. Hasn’t anyone learned “he should be taken seriously, not literally?” Sorry, said Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times, but it smacks of “desperation” to claim Trump is cleverly using Richard Nixon’s “madman theory” to intimidate Iran into concessions. Trump’s wild, irresponsible threats “achieved next to nothing.” Iran did not reopen the strait or surrender to his other demands.

All this “is utterly exhausting for Americans and the world,” said Sohrab Ahmari in Unherd. Trump owes his presidency to voters who grew tired of technocrats such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama overriding the public will to make trade, economic, and immigration policy, “often to the benefit of themselves and other elites.” But Trump “went into mad-king mode,” and the results make liberal technocrats “look better by comparison.” This is life “under a personalist regime,” said Lisa Needham in Public Notice, where all power is held by a cultlike leader “not accountable to the military or to a political party.” Trump “reverses decisions based on nothing but whims.” He demands that aides and followers show loyalty by “agreeing to believe the same lies he does.” When “Congress and the Supreme Court simply step aside and abdicate their power, then it’s all Trump, all the time.” Personalist government has brought us nonstop chaos, corruption, bitter division, and foreign conflict, and “it’s wrecking us.”

For weeks, the Trump administration has waged a brutal war on Iran. But now that Iran has successfully shifted the conflict’s nexus to the oil-shipping bottleneck in the Strait of Hormuz, the White House has a new plan to inflict maximum pressure: economic warfare, the “financial equivalent” of a bombing campaign, said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a White House briefing last week.

What did the commentators say?

Blocking Iranian ports and shipping lanes and pivoting from “kinetic to economic warfare” is an attempt to “end the conflict without a new U.S.-Israeli onslaught,” said CNN. Per the White House’s “rationale,” the “ruinous financial and humanitarian consequences” of being unable to ship and sell oil leave Tehran with “no choice but to accept U.S. terms” to end the conflict.

Although focused on Iran specifically, the administration’s threats stretch beyond the Islamic Republic to those who would do business with it. Countries that are “buying Iranian oil” or hold Iranian funds in their banks now risk “secondary sanctions, which is a very stern measure,” Bessent said on PBS News. Iranians themselves will feel the “financial equivalent of what we saw in the kinetic activities.”

Bessent’s threat came one day after his Treasury Department notified “financial institutions in China, Hong Kong, the UAE and Oman” that they are at risk of secondary sanctions for “allowing Iranian illicit activities to flow through their financial institutions,” said The Associated Press. The “argument being made to Trump” is that no matter if the Iranians think they can “weather the storm,” any inability to pay their “loyalists” could “pressure Iran to the table.”

Approximately one-third of the oil Iran exports through the Strait of Hormuz “directly funds the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” said The Foundation for Defense of Democracies Senior Fellow Miad Maleki on Fox News. Bessent’s threats will “shut down a lifeline that the regime desperately needs right now to keep its economy on some life support.”

Trump himself has been a “heavy user of financial sanctions” targeting “countries, individuals and companies,” The Washington Post said. At the same time, his administration seems to have been “caught unawares” when rivals like China and Iran “weaponized their economic advantages.”

While sanctions have long been the “instrument of choice for applying pressure on Iran,” the White House’s pivot toward “more kinetic forms of economic coercion” blurs the line between “financial restriction and military intervention,” said Harsh Pant, an international relations professor with King’s India Institute at King’s College London, at The Economic Times. “By physically interdicting maritime traffic” with its naval blockade, Trump is showing a willingness to enforce America’s “economic objectives through direct control of global commons.”

What next?

In many ways, the “damage” caused by economic weapons is already “sparking a response,” with nations that depend on the Strait of Hormuz “making plans to reduce their vulnerability to a future closure,” the Post said. But critics warn that attempts to impose other financial consequences on Iran could ultimately backfire on the United States and its allies. Much of the previous phase of war has “helped Iran’s economy,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), per the AP. Imposing further economic conditions is simply an attempt by Bessent to “mop up the mess that Donald Trump has created by initiating this war.”

The administration could still be making a “sound bet,” said CNN. Iran’s economy has been “shattered by sanctions” and could “quickly suffer critical food shortages, hyperinflation and a banking crisis” that would push Tehran to settle with the Trump administration. But this hope shared by “U.S. officials, conservative editorial pages and analysts” may ultimately “rest on an assumption” that has “led the U.S. astray in the Middle East” many times in the past.

‘AI and robotics will aid, not end, human space exploration’

Mark R. Whittington at The Hill

Some people “contend that advances in AI, robotics and electronics will allow Earth to explore and even commercially exploit other worlds such as the moon and Mars with just machines,” says Mark R. Whittington. But “humans will not be replaced either on Earth or in space” and robotics “will actually enhance human capacity.” While robots can “take over tasks that involve pattern optimization,” humans “will still retain tasks that require creativity, emotional intelligence and determining why actions need to be undertaken.”

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‘Trump’s presidency is what evil looks like: absurd, frightening, cruel’

Nesrine Malik at The Guardian

Trump “defies attempts to make his actions cohere,” says Nesrine Malik. His “lack of vision or ideology are misread as attributes that make him somehow less dangerous than the authoritarians of the past who have become the template for what evil looks like.” But Trump’s “constant self-aggrandizement, his grudges against political adversaries, the fury at being challenged by the press, the revenge he promises to wreak” are “ways to erase and avoid what is a permanent terror of humiliation.”

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‘How American schools can address political polarization’

Deborah Kenny at Time

Polarization “has become one of the defining threats to American democracy,” says Deborah Kenny. To “address these issues, some schools have turned to civics content, media literacy and dialogue initiatives.” But these efforts “misunderstand the problem. Polarization is more than a knowledge deficit. It is a self-government deficit.” Students “should be exposed to competing views and learn to articulate multiple sides of an issue,” and schools “must defend free inquiry, reject dogma and privilege the unencumbered search for truth.”

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‘Why are workers stuck? Not enough employers.’

Kathryn Anne Edwards at Bloomberg

What “makes recessions so harmful to workers is the freezing of movement,” says Kathryn Anne Edwards. The “gears of the labor market — gears that are constantly shuffling workers from job to job to unemployment to job again — slow to a crawl.” This is “what is making today’s labor market so damaging.” The “market has been heading toward a situation like this — with recession-like conditions of slow gears even when the market should be tight — for a while.”

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