‘Healthcare is more badly broken than political leaders admit’

Marj Halperin at the Chicago Tribune

While “rising costs are a barrier for too many, even those who can afford comprehensive health insurance are finding money can’t buy you a timely appointment,” says Marj Halperin. Americans in cities are “now in much the same bind as patients in rural areas who have long found limited doctors available for routine care, with specialists often a few hours’ drive away.” It is “time for political leaders to spell out a strategy to speed in the opposite direction.”

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‘A wildly popular movie meets the film world’s most revered label’

Sophia Nguyen at The Atlantic

“‘KPop Demon Hunters’ seems to have completely overtaken culture,” says Sophia Nguyen. But “even the most ardent fans likely did not anticipate the mega-hit’s next big merch drop: a disc release from the Criterion Collection, home to some of cinema’s most distinguished titles.” Some of the “label’s longtime devotees greeted the addition of ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ with an eye roll,” but “Criterion has good reason to widen the net: Netflix, Apple and Amazon make and distribute a significant share of films.”

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‘Trump’s tariffs prove even Canada can’t afford to be nice to the United States anymore’

The Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board

It “fell to Canada, a country famous for friendliness, to demonstrate the limits of an age-old friendship with the United States,” says The Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board. After a “decade of dealing politely with President Donald Trump’s manic ricocheting between trade agreements and trade warfare, supplies of northern niceness are sorely depleted, and rightly so.” Prime Minister Mark Carney’s “defiance in the face of his neighbor’s unprovoked bullying should inspire other traditional American allies to abandon appeasement.”

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‘Meta’s $18 billion settlement could reshape social media for young people’

Tom Jones at the Poynter Institute

Meta “reached a landmark settlement and agreed to pay up to $18 billion to 47 states” to settle claims it “endangered children through addictive features,” says Tom Jones. Meta’s promised changes are “meant to curb endless scrolling, which can interrupt sleep and have other negative effects on young people’s health and well-being.” The “smart move for Meta was to settle,” as a “major challenge for all social media companies is verifying the ages of their users.”

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What happened

President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America” inside the U.S. government, needling Canada amid an intensifying trade war. Trump’s order directed the Interior Department and the Board on Geographic Names to remove and replace Lake Ontario on all federal maps and documents within 30 days, though he told reporters the name change was “effective immediately.”

Who said what

Trump’s Lake America rebrand “most likely requires only federal entities to recognize the change,” The New York Times said. “It does not have to be recognized by other countries.” New York, the only state that borders the lake, “won’t be calling it that,” said Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), and neither will any Canadian entities. The name, from the “Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is big,’” is “more than 400 years old,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said on social media. “America is changing,” but Canadians “know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario — then, now and always.”

What next?

The hydronym snub is “likely to harden public sentiment against the Trump administration in Canada,” The Wall Street Journal said. But Trump suggested he wasn’t satisfied with Lake America and the Gulf of America. “Now, all we need is an ocean,” he told reporters. “Maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific.”

What happened

Federal courts on Thursday dealt President Donald Trump setbacks in several ongoing legal battles with broad implications. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston issued a new block on the U.S. Postal Service carrying out Trump’s executive order to limit mail voting. In Northern California, U.S. District Judge Rita Lin ordered the Pentagon to end its “illegal and baseless” blacklisting of Anthropic. And U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington, D.C., stalled administration plans to quickly inscribe Trump’s name back on the Kennedy Center.

Who said what

After Anthropic said it didn’t want its AI used for domestic surveillance or autonomous killing, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth labeled it a supply-chain risk using an “obscure government-procurement statute” designed to thwart “foreign sabotage,” Reuters said. The administration’s “contemporaneous words and deeds confirm” it was actually acting to “make a public example out of Anthropic,” Lin wrote. The “empty invocation of national ​security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics.”

Talwani issued a 14-day block of USPS mail voting action a day after lifting an earlier hold in response to a Supreme Court ruling. The “whipsaw of action” could “confuse voters,” The New York Times said. But “each delay has reduced the administration’s chances of clearing the legal hurdles to execute” Trump’s order before the midterms. Now that the USPS’ “likely unconstitutional regulation” is finalized, Talwani wrote, “compliance is practically impossible” before ballots go out “as early as next week.”

What next?

After Cooper threatened to block the Trump inscription if the Kennedy Center stuck to its Sept. 8 start date, the Justice Department last night said it would delay action until at least Oct. 8.

With three words, Democratic senator Jon Ossoff unleashed a furious row last week, said Jason Kyle Howard on Salon. Speaking at a campaign event, he declared that Donald Trump was neglecting his presidential duties because he just wanted “to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenceless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar”.

The Natalie in question is Natalie Harp, Trump’s 35-year-old executive assistant. Nicknamed Trump’s “human printer”, she’s always at his side – whether in the White House or on Air Force One or the golf course – armed with a portable printer, from which she feeds him favourable coverage and memes. Until now, Harp hasn’t drawn much public attention. But Ossoff’s comment, and the response to it, have changed that.

Fierce loyalty

Ossoff should be ashamed of his “disgustingly sly” insinuation, said Miranda Devine in the New York Post. Harp battled debilitating bone cancer in her 20s that left her in a wheelchair. Her fierce loyalty to Trump stems from the fact that she believes he saved her life by giving patients access to experimental drugs in his first term.

She expressed her gratitude to Trump in an impressive speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention, after which he offered her a job in 2022. “Does Ossoff really think a hard-working single professional woman can’t succeed without sleeping with her boss?”

An ‘in-house stalker’

If only Trump and Harp were having an affair, said Jonathan V. Last on The Bulwark. Their odd form of co-dependency is somehow worse. Harp has reportedly unnerved other staff by writing intense personal notes to Trump with messages such as “You are all that matters to me,” and “I don’t ever want to let you down.” In one, she thanked him for being her “Guardian and Protector in this Life”. Trump, in turn, reportedly told staff, concerning Harp: “All of you will go off and make money … She’ll never leave me.” It’s not healthy that the president is employing “an in-house stalker”.

This isn’t just tittle-tattle, said Rex Huppke in USA Today. Trump backers are presenting Harp as some “innocent bystander”, but she controls a lot of his media diet and helps draft his social media posts. It turns out she worked in the White House for more than a year without the requisite security clearance. Ossoff was right to draw attention to her, because her case deserves scrutiny and “highlights the weirdness endemic to this administration”.

‘Video gamers alone can’t keep our skies safe’

Sheldon H. Jacobson at The Hill

The FAA is “recruiting video gamers for air traffic controller job openings,” but “adding more people into the existing system does little to resolve the structural issues that have led to persistent shortages,” says Sheldon H. Jacobson. Skills “developed by video gamers” are “similar to the skills used to manage dozens of flights in the sky in real time.” However, recruiting “video gamers to be air traffic controllers makes good sound bites but falls short of resolving staffing shortages.”

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‘A new poll shows how John Fetterman has created a 2028 predicament for himself’

Zeeshan Aleem at MS NOW

Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman’s “popularity with Democrats has taken a nose dive in the last couple of years,” says Zeeshan Aleem. Fetterman “should not be shocked by how his own party’s voters have soured on him,” as he “still caucuses with the Democrats, but he’s made a name for himself by defecting from the party on several notable occasions.” Should he “seek reelection in 2028, it’s safe to wager that he would face tough chances of winning in a Democratic primary.”

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‘Trump’s Korean gambit exposes a shifting East Asian order’

Wenran Jiang at Al Jazeera

When President Donald Trump “ordered the Pentagon to cut the annual United States-South Korea Ulchi Freedom Shield military exercise,” he “laid bare the transactional logic of his approach to East Asia,” says Wenran Jiang. The move “blindsided Seoul and drew a calculated rebuff from Pyongyang, underscoring how growing doubts about the U.S. defense umbrella are reshaping strategic calculations across the region.” If Trump’s “rapprochement with Pyongyang produces only theater, North Korea’s nuclear program will continue to advance.”

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‘Public health advocates are so desperate for help against conspiracies they’ve turned to the place you’d least expect’

Molly Olmstead at Slate

Public health officials have one “innovative and surprising, if disconcerting, solution to our national public health information crisis: AI has the potential to help stave off a conspiratorial catastrophe during the next pandemic,” says Molly Olmstead. Looking to AI for “rescue is usually an eye-roll-worthy impulse,” as AI is a “Pandora’s box of yet-to-be-imagined evils.” But in “this case, the desperation of the situation might just call for public health advocates leaning into the dangerous new technology.”

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The trade war between the United States and Canada has turned white-hot, and it is not clear when or if the conflict will abate. America’s northern neighbor is hunkering down for extended economic pain, while President Donald Trump argues that Canada has been “ripping off” the U.S. for years. Tariffs are flying in both directions. Will anybody blink?

‘Undiplomatic’ bargaining

Last weekend’s breakdown of U.S.-Canada trade talks is a sign that Trump’s “bulldozer approach” to trade “may be reaching its limits,” said The Washington Post. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney walked away from negotiations “rather than accept a lengthening list of U.S. demands,” choosing to face new American tariffs on an “array of Canadian products” that includes “hockey sticks and Crown Royal whisky.” (U.S. consumers could also face a surge in toilet paper costs.)

Carney is digging in. Trump’s “undiplomatic style” of bargaining — including frequent references to Canada as a “51st state” — has made once-friendly Canadian public opinion “fiercely anti-American,” said the Post.

Canada is “among the worst Nations in the World to deal with,” Trump posted Monday on Truth Social. “WE DON’T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!” That proclamation “depends on the meaning of the word ‘need,’” Paul Krugman said on Substack. Canada “dominates” the type of lumber that U.S. contractors prefer for framing houses, and America “imports millions of barrels a day” of Canadian oil. The United States economy is much larger, but an “all-out trade war would create a lot of pain” at home when American voters are “already dissatisfied with Trump’s economic management.”

Trump’s latest trade conflict “makes no economic or political sense,” The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial. GOP candidates are “already getting pounded” on affordability issues on the campaign trail. The president’s abysmal approval rating is the result of voter perceptions as he wages “blunderbuss wars without a strategy.” Now Trump is providing fresh fuel for those concerns a “mere 10 weeks before midterm elections.”

‘United against Donald Trump’

Carney was “right to call Donald Trump’s bluff,” Tony Keller said at The Globe and Mail in Canada. There was widespread fear among Canadians that “Ottawa was about to sign a bad deal” with the United States that would make major concessions to Trump “in return for nothing much.” The good news for Ottawa: U.S. voters “won’t understand why Mr. Trump is so intent on severing our partnership.” Canadian leaders must now “appeal to Americans and American business” for support.

Canada is now “more united against Donald Trump than ever,” Stephen Maher said at the Toronto Star. The Canadian government is preparing aid to assist the country’s hardest-hit businesses. Trump seems equally determined. It is “time to teach Canada you can’t do this anymore,” he said Wednesday to interviewer Glenn Beck, per Reuters. This may be a long fight: Carney “sees little chance” of resuming trade talks until after the U.S. midterm elections in November, said Bloomberg.

Treasury Department regulators have granted World Liberty Financial, the Trump family-linked cryptocurrency enterprise, conditional approval to begin operating as a federally chartered trust bank. The status change provides “new powers and federal credibility” to an enterprise in which the Trump family retains a “substantial financial interest,” said Politico. But the prospect of Trump administration officials clearing a regulatory path for the president’s family businesses has many Democrats and ethics groups warning against corruption on a massive scale.

‘Pretty unprecedented’ arrangement

The preliminary approval for the Trump family’s “flagship crypto venture” allows World Liberty to “issue, redeem and safeguard USD1,” the “dollar-backed stablecoin” introduced by the firm last year, said The Wall Street Journal. USD1 is currently “custodied” with financial services provider BitGo, and has a market value of “about $4 billion.”

After relying on BitGo’s third-party services to “provide a stable digital currency,” said ABC News, World Liberty can “cut out the middleman and provide the service directly.” This marks the “first time in U.S. history” that a business “owned by the sitting president’s family has been granted bank status.”

The arrangement is “pretty unprecedented,” said New York University Stern School of Business Professor Austin Campbell to CBS News. There is now an “awkward situation” in which the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) will need to “police World Liberty, which has an affiliation with the president’s family.”

While World Liberty “won’t be able to take deposits or make loans,” said CNN, critics warn this could be a “new wrinkle on the classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse.” Moving forward, “corporations and foreign actors” will have a “new way to stealthily curry favor with the White House.”

‘Brazen act of self-dealing’

Although Washington has been “in knots” over the “steady drumbeat of news” regarding Trump’s expanding businesses during his presidency, the World Liberty decision “stood out to many,” said Politico. Critics call the arrangement “one of the clearest examples” of the conflicts of interest federal officials face as they “weigh the wishes of Trump family-backed companies.”

Trump is now the first ever president to “approve, operate and supervise his own bank” in the “most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren in a statement. “Congress cannot allow it to stand.” To that end, Warren and a group of Democratic Senators have introduced the Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act, a bill that would ensure no high-ranking government official or their families can “exploit their positions to own or control a bank, which could serve as a major vehicle for corrupt dealings.” Democrats will “likely probe the OCC’s approval of the World Liberty bank charter” should the party “regain control of Congress” in the coming year, said Politico.

What happened

Canada on Tuesday released a list of more than 700 U.S. products it plans to tax at up to 50% in response to 50% tariffs President Donald Trump imposed on $20 million of Canadian goods over the weekend. The “dollar-for-dollar, rate-for-rate counter-tariffs” will be paired with $5.4 billion in support to protect Canadian workers and businesses, said Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne in a press conference. Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said Canada was “targeting products” that will “put political pressure” on the Trump administration in certain states.

Who said what

Trump’s “trade war with Canada is escalating as the midterm elections approach,” voters are angry over rising costs and “control of the U.S. Senate hinges on states along the border,” like Michigan, Ohio, Maine and Alaska, The Associated Press said. Senior Canadian officials maintained that Ottawa “did not design the new measures around the U.S. electoral map.”

But Canada’s retaliatory tariffs “targeted products made in states with hotly contested congressional elections,” The Wall Street Journal said. Ottawa is “trying to show the Republican Party that there’s a systemic cost to doing this sort of thing,” former U.S. trade official Ed Gresser told the Journal.

What next?

Canada’s retaliatory tariffs don’t take effect until Sept. 8, so “there’s still time to pull back from the brink of an even bigger trade war,” the AP said. “Voters hate tariffs,” and Trump must be “hearing from political folks that if he wants any chance of salvaging the midterms he can’t start a trade war with Canada,” Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute told the AP. “My guess” is “cooler heads do prevail somewhere in the next few weeks.”

What happened

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Monday overturned a federal judge’s block of President Donald Trump’s executive order to restrict mail-in voting and make other election changes. The 6-3 emergency ruling was on procedural grounds and did not address the constitutionality of Trump’s order, much of which is still blocked through a different injunction from the same federal judge in Boston, Indira Talwani. The U.S. Postal Service issued a final rule late last week confirming that, if the courts allow, it would refuse to deliver mail ballots in states that did not comply with Trump’s order.

Who said what

The Supreme Court ruling “means the administration can move ahead with planning for restricting the use of mail ballots,” The New York Times said. But it “does not mean that any measure taken by the government to implement the order will necessarily be lawful,” the court’s unsigned majority opinion said. “On that score, time will tell.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a dissent that the ruling “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty” into the upcoming midterms and furthers the court’s “Kafkaesque nightmare” regarding “election-related challenges.” Monday’s ruling “may not lead to a single election procedure changing” before November, The Associated Press said, “but it has already thrown into uncertainty the method that nearly one-third of the country uses to vote,” including Trump himself.

What next?

“Time is running out” for Trump’s voting changes, the AP said. After the first mail ballots are sent from North Carolina on Sept. 4, it “would be virtually impossible for all states” to fully comply.

Karoline Leavitt “has served President Trump well,” said David Gardner in The Daily Beast. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the 29-year-old White House press secretary, who last week announced she was stepping down to look after her two young children, did so by defending him “with all the wide-eyed devotion of a member of a religious cult.” During her 20-month tenure, “the worst press secretary in modern times” routinely attacked reporters as biased lefty hacks, hotly defended Trump’s sharing of a social media video that portrayed the Obamas as apes, claimed the Democratic Party’s constituency was “Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals,” and called Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring a “hoax.” One of Trump’s most fiercely loyal aides, “she drank the Kool-Aid. The whole bottle.” Trump wanted to keep her, but he might have inadvertently driven her out, said Margaret Hartmann in New York. During her recent nine-week maternity leave, Trump reportedly “kept pestering her about when she was coming back,” making it clear to the burned-out Leavitt that she had to choose between her family and the very needy president.

Leavitt leaves behind “a press operation reimagined for the MAGA media landscape,” said Kara Voght and Meridith McGraw in The Wall Street Journal. During her tenure, the White House booted many mainstream journalists out of the press pool so it could seed it with pro-Trump podcasters and influencers. Leavitt knew she could count on “softballs” from Trump sycophants, said Bill Goodykoontz in The Arizona Republic, such as a question from a representative of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s streaming channel about how Trump managed to look “healthier than ever before.” She even ousted the Associated Press for refusing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. Leavitt’s predecessors were all spin doctors, but no one before had used the position “not just to defend their boss” but to deny what he said even when it was on video.

Why even try to fill the job after Leavitt’s “reign of error?” said Rex Huppke in USA Today. No one can replace this smiling, fake flunky who wore “incongruous” crucifixes while dutifully spewing “half-baked lies and insults.” Trump can save taxpayers $200,000 by eliminating the press secretary job and doing his own propaganda. “Cut out the distributor and serve me my fascism fresh, thank you very much.”

President Trump has again offered the world a “profile in cowardice,” said Michael Daly in The Daily Beast. Earlier this month, The Washington Post revealed that when Trump departed a NATO summit in Ankara in July, his security team pulled a stunt to protect him from a purported Iranian plot to target Air Force One. Trump boarded the plane along with numerous reporters, aides, and Cabinet members, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio. But then he was whisked away through a rear door in a catering cart and flown to England on a military jet. Upon arrival, he reversed his steps to covertly reboard Air Force One and rejoin the staff and reporters he had callously turned “into unwitting decoys.” Other presidents have pulled stunts to dodge a threat, said Ian Prasad Philbrick in Slate, such as when Bill Clinton secretly took an unmarked plane from India to Pakistan in 2000. But none used aides and press as “bait.” And those schemes were explained to press members off the record beforehand and then revealed to the public quickly afterward, not “hidden from the public until reporters exposed it” weeks later.

The Secret Service has one job, said Jim Geraghty in National Review: protect the president. There’s nothing “wrong or unethical about misleading the public” to serve that end. As for the outraged reporters: The president is a target, and traveling with him carries risk. There are questions about the seriousness of the threat, a supposed plot to target Trump with a shoulder-fired missile, which was flagged by Israel and dismissed by U.S. intelligence. But the Secret Service can’t just say, “Eh, it’s probably nothing” and take a chance. Certainly not when the threat is Iran, which “puts up billboards and murals of Trump lying in a coffin or drowning in a sea of blood,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Iran’s assassination efforts “are long-standing and help explain why the U.S. is fighting”—for Trump, it’s personal.

It’s no mystery why the White House kept the ruse secret even after “the danger had passed,” said Mohamad Bazzi in The Guardian. The image of the president huddled in a catering cart is “a stark contrast” to his attempts to project “strength and dominance.” It also “encapsulates Trump’s failure in his war on Iran.” He claims we’ve obliterated Iran’s military capability and terror threat, but the Secret Service feared it could reach into our ally’s airspace and threaten his life. Our “strongman” president just bared his weakness to the world “as he hid from the consequences of his own actions.”

What happened

President Donald Trump’s 50% tariffs on $20 billion in Canadian imports took effect Saturday after negotiations collapsed. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said U.S. negotiators “asked too much and offered too little,” and Ottawa would roll out “dollar for dollar” retaliatory tariffs starting Sept. 8. Trump’s latest tariffs cover about 5% of Canadian imports, ranging from wine, dairy and hockey sticks to overcoats and some Christmas ornaments.

Who said what

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Canada rejected the “best treatment” of any major U.S. trading partner. The U.S. terms were “uneconomic” and “unfair,” Carney said, and “unacceptable” last-minute demands would have restricted Canada’s ability to strike trade deals with other countries, among other infringements on sovereignty. “Canada wants the benefits of being a State, without being one!!!” Trump said Sunday on social media.

The “dumbest trade war in history” just “got dumber,” The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial. Trump is taxing an “array of consumer goods” a “mere 10 weeks before midterm elections,” when his approval rating is already “frigid” in part because voters believe he is “waging blunderbuss wars without a strategy, and on trade they’re right.”

What next?

Unlike some of the other laws Trump has used to impose tariffs, the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act used here “does not appear to impose a time limit on the duties,” CNN said. “We should be prepared to duke it out for two years,” until Trump leaves office, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew said, and “then hopefully, sanity will return.”

The city of Dakhla, on a “peninsula where the Sahara meets the Atlantic”, is advertised to holidaymakers as “Morocco’s hidden gem”, said the BBC. But tourists flying to this part of Western Sahara might not know they’ll “be landing in one of the world’s longest ongoing territorial disputes”.

A former Spanish colony, Western Sahara was annexed by Morocco in 1975. Since then, it has been the subject of a dispute between Morocco and its indigenous Sahrawi people, led by the Polisario Front and its government-in-exile in Algeria. Now classified by the United Nations as a “non-self-governing territory”, around 80% of the country is occupied and administered by Morocco, with an earthen strip separating that area from a Sahrawi-controlled portion in the east. Numerous UN-brokered talks to resolve Western Sahara’s future have failed.

‘Tomorrow’s Dubai’

Morocco has been pouring considerable resources into Western Sahara. Since 2015, it has spent £7 billion trying to “level it up”, said The Spectator. There are now water desalination plants, 620 miles of motorways, and plans for eight “green hydrogen plants” and a “centrepiece” £1 billion Dakhla Atlantic Port. This “massive undertaking” is still under construction but, when finished, “35 million tons of goods are expected to pass through every year”.

King Mohammed VI’s “development plan” for the country he refers to as Morocco’s “Southern Provinces” includes “metamorphosing” Western Sahara’s coastline into a hub for business and tourism. Christopher Nolan filmed several scenes for “The Odyssey” on the “otherworldly” White Dune, just outside Dakhla, and it’s hoped many will want “to follow Odysseus’ footsteps and flock” to this city on the up: “think of it as tomorrow’s Dubai”.

Western Sahara also has plenty of natural resources that Morocco could exploit. Surveys have pointed to “promising deposits for gold, silver and iron” in the region, said Bloomberg.

‘International consensus’ shift

Nolan’s decision to film in Western Sahara was bound to “revive debate” over this “half-century-old territorial dispute”, said Bloomberg. Morocco’s annexation has created “one of the world’s most enduring yet overlooked refugee crises”, said Metro. For the past 50 years, the indigenous Sahrawi people have been “forced to live under occupation or go into exile”: 173,000 Sahrawi refugees live in camps in Algeria, in the “harshest part of the desert”. Each camp is named after a city in Western Sahara, but “many have never set foot” in these places “where their parents or grandparents were born”.

In recent years, international consensus has shifted and consolidated in favour of Morocco’s “autonomy plan” for Western Sahara. Spain has endorsed the plan and both France and the US have recognised Morocco’s sovereignty over the region. In October, the UN Security Council approved a resolution that gave the “strongest backing yet” to Moroccan control, “while making no mention of the independence referendum” sought by the Polisaro Front, said Bloomberg.

Last month, Donald Trump thanked Moroccan authorities for naming a highway after him, said Al Jazeera. The gesture has not been confirmed by Rabat but “would be far from surprising”, since the US has provided “crucial support” in bringing Morocco “closer to securing greater control” over the Western Sahara. In recent weeks, the US Department of Commerce announced it would fund “the early stages of an ammonium project” in the region, adding “a new economic dimension” to the long-running, “competing claims over the territory”.

U.S. allies in Asia have long depended on the American military for their defense. But President Donald Trump in recent days has curtailed U.S. participation in joint exercises with South Korea and at the same time ordered the lone American aircraft carrier to depart for the Middle East. The question now is whether the United States remains dedicated to Asian security.

No more ‘pivot to Asia’

The Trump administration “promised a pivot from the Middle East to East Asia,” Matthew Petti said at Reason. The opposite is now happening, with the U.S. commitment in the Pacific “taking a back seat to the U.S. presence in the Middle East.” The war with Iran is “dominating both the long-term planning and day-to-day execution” of foreign policy in the Trump White House. This is not new: Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden also promised to redirect attention away from the Middle East and toward China but failed to do so. “The problem is deeper than the hubris of one president.”

Trump’s sudden decision to pull back from the South Korean drills “does not mean the U.S. alliance system in Asia is collapsing,” Retired Lt. Gen. Chun In-bum said in The Korea Times. The abruptness of Trump’s decision — and his linking it to his friendly relationship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un — does however mean that Asian allies will “inevitably begin asking how much they can rely on U.S. commitments during a future crisis.” The answer to that question is vital as China becomes “increasingly assertive” and North Korea begins “cooperating more closely” with Russia. South Korea’s “survival and security are at stake.”

Asia’s ‘indispensable military power’

The stakes of Trump’s apparent pullback are high “not only for U.S. allies, but for the United States, too,” Sheila A. Smith said at the Council on Foreign Relations. A reduction in American fidelity to the Pacific could cause South Korea and Japan to seek nuclear weapons, while also ceding ground to U.S. rivals such as China and Russia. Another factor: Reported shortages of U.S. munitions in Iran have raised questions about whether the U.S. is even capable of “offering protection to its allies in Asia.” But the apparent trend of “deliberately weakening” longstanding American alliances will be “cause for celebration” in Beijing, Moscow and Pyongyang.

The United States is Asia’s “indispensable military power,” Craig Singleton said at The Washington Post. The American president’s unpredictability has already forced U.S. allies to begin “assuming greater responsibility for their own security.” Japan has begun its “largest postwar defense buildup” by signing agreements with Australia and the Philippines, India is expanding its military commitments and Taiwan is spending heavily to “harden its military, civil defense and critical infrastructure” against a Chinese invasion. That should fit Trump’s “American First” agenda, but the region still depends on “predictable American commitments and clear crisis planning.”

What happened

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) on Thursday vowed to halt all of President Donald Trump’s nominees until his administration eases a wetlands conservation policy aimed at protecting the breeding grounds of ducks and other waterfowl. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last weekend said it would at least temporarily retain the Biden-era program, which bars farmers from draining land near protected federal conservation easements.

Who said what

“My farmers are furious and so am I,” Cramer said in a statement to The Hill. The Trump administration’s “blind defense of a Biden rule favored by environmental extremists” just “confounds me,” particularly when farmers are “hurting so badly” amid “rising fuel and fertilizer costs resulting from limited traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.” But “other Republicans and hunters staunchly oppose any changes that would allow farmers to drain wetlands” and potentially “cause steep declines in duck populations,” said E&E News. The Upper Midwest’s Prairie Pothole region “supports more than half of North America’s ducks,” said the Washington Examiner.

What next?

“There will be no pause in my aggression” on the issue, Cramer told E&E News. “I have put a hold on all nominees, period, of all agencies. So I hope Clarence Thomas stays healthy.” Such holds “don’t necessarily prevent confirmation” of a president’s picks, said The Hill, but “they can cause a significant setback.”

What happened

The United Arab Emirates said Wednesday it had halted “all trade, commercial exchanges and financial transactions” with Iran “until future notice” due to “escalations that undermine regional and international peace and security.” Hours earlier, the UAE had accused Tehran of firing two missiles into its territory. Iran’s Foreign Ministry called that accusation “baseless” and possibly a “false flag operation.”

Iranian Gen. Ali Abdollahi later warned “countries on the southern shores of the Persian Gulf” that “any assistance” given to the U.S. military “amounts to participation” in its war. President Donald Trump on Wednesday night threatened that “ANY country that allows its financial institutions” or other entities to “provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences.”

Who said what

The UAE is one of Tehran’s “biggest economic lifelines,” The Wall Street Journal said, and Trump’s “effort to squeeze Iran into submission will depend heavily” on Dubai. It’s unclear if the U.S. “played a role in the embargo decision,” The New York Times said, but it was announced “hours after a call” from Trump to the Emirati leader.

What next?

If “implemented broadly,” the UAE’s trade severance could significantly harm Iran’s economy, the Journal said. But “severing those links will be difficult” and “could hurt Dubai’s role as a freewheeling global hub for commerce.”

What happened

President Donald Trump on Tuesday night announced a three-day pause on 50% tariffs he had threatened to impose on $20 billion of Canadian imports. “Canada and the U.S.A., subject to the finalization of documents, have a DEAL!” he said on social media, about 90 minutes before the midnight deadline. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the two sides had made “substantial progress,” but there’s “important work still to be done.”

Who said what

Trump’s tariffs “would have risked escalation into a trade war between the North American neighbors,” The Wall Street Journal said. But the “political impact would likely have been bigger than the economic one,” The Associated Press said. Canada had “threatened to retaliate” with “levies of its own,” and Trump would be “taking a risk by imposing a hefty new tariff” on consumer goods ahead of midterm elections, with U.S. voters “already frustrated with the high cost of living.”

What next?

Trump has “previously announced deals with other countries, only to have them fall through,” The New York Times said. But the U.S. and Canada both have “reason to step back from the brink,” the AP said. Long-term government borrowing costs “hit their highest in decades” on Tuesday, Reuters said, as “Trump’s policies — from tariffs to war — upend the global order.”

What happened

Tuesday’s primaries in Florida, Wyoming and Alaska delivered another surprise win for democratic socialists, another loss for a House incumbent and a mixed bag for candidates endorsed by President Donald Trump. His pick for Florida governor, Rep. Byron Donalds, won the Republican primary and will face Democrat David Jolly, a former GOP member. But in Wyoming’s GOP gubernatorial contest, Trump-backed Megan Degenfelder lost to state Sen. Eric Barlow.

Trump’s candidate to replace Donalds in the House, Catalina Lauf, was defeated by conservative talk radio station owner Jim Schwartzel in a crowded GOP primary. And Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.), who previously had Trump’s backing, became the “fourth House Republican to lose his primary this year,” Semafor said, “solving a problem for colleagues who wanted him and his scandals” gone.

On the Democratic side, Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon, a new member of the Democratic Socialists of America, beat the better-funded Alexander Vindman to face Sen. Ashley Moody (R) in November. Nixon’s win was a “stunner,” CNN said. But the “progressive insurgency fell short in two other closely watched” Florida races, as Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Rep. Jared Moskowitz prevailed in newly drawn districts.

Who said what

Tuesday’s results were the “latest indication that Trump’s endorsement — the most coveted asset in Republican campaigns — is no guarantee of victory,” CNN said. They were also another “lesson in why not to write national narratives out of every race,” Semafor said.

What next?

“Very few” of the contested seats “will be competitive in November,” Semafor said. In an exception, former Rep. Mary Peltola (D) and Sen. Dan Sullivan (R) will face each other — and likely another Dan Sullivan — in Alaska’s four-way ranked-choice Senate election.

What happened

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump’s second request to throw out a jury’s $5 million civil judgment that he assaulted and defamed writer E. Jean Carroll. Trump paid Carroll the $5 million plus interest last month, a “few days after the court initially turned away” his appeal, The New York Times said. The court on Monday “formally declined” his “long-shot request to the justices that they reconsider.” There was no stated reasoning and no noted dissents.

Who said what

Trump’s legal team said in a statement that the American people “demand an immediate end to all of the witch hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll hoaxes.” Trump, they added, will “keep winning against liberal lawfare.” The “jury’s unanimous verdict that Donald Trump sexually assaulted and then defamed E. Jean Carroll is now final and cannot be challenged in any court,” Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan said after the ruling.

What next?

Trump’s appeal of a separate $83 million judgment for Carroll is “pending at the Supreme Court,” said CNN. The “justices are on summer recess,” the Times said, and “not expected to consider whether to take up that case until late September at the earliest.”

What happened

A federal judge in Maryland on Monday blocked President Donald Trump’s plan to keep the FBI headquartered in Washington, D.C., saying the decision illegally discarded the General Services Administration’s congressionally approved 2023 decision to build a new complex in Maryland. The administration said last year that the FBI would move from its longtime headquarters in the J. Edgar Hoover Building to the Ronald Reagan Building a few blocks away, the previous home of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Who said what

Congress, through a pair of laws, required the GSA to pick a site for the FBI headquarters “from ​among three suburban ⁠locations outside of Washington,” Reuters said. The Biden administration picked Greenbelt, Maryland, ending “almost 15 years” of debate on where to base the law enforcement agency. Maryland sued after Trump tried to reverse course, and U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang agreed, barring the administration from moving the FBI to the Reagan Building or diverting about $1 billion in funding approved for the Greenbelt campus.

What next?

Chuang’s ruling is “almost certainly not the end of the lengthy dispute,” The New York Times said. “In the meantime, the FBI continues to operate from its old headquarters, an aging colossus veiled in netting to keep concrete from falling on passers-by.”

Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has fired the starting gun on the next presidential election, and it’s shaping up to be the country’s closest and most consequential political contest in decades.

The left-wing leader, commonly known as Lula, has launched his campaign for a historic fourth term, vowing not to let the “shameless” right wing return to power. His chief rival will be Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year prison sentence for attempting a coup after losing office in 2022.

But the “two-man race” between Lula and Bolsonaro has “increasingly become a three-way fight” involving Donald Trump, said The Wall Street Journal. Lula has accused the US president of trying to interfere in the October election on behalf of Bolsonaro, while “tit-for-tat visa disputes and US tariffs” have plunged US-Brazilian relations to “their lowest point in years”.

Who are the main contenders?

Lula, whose first two terms spanned 2003 to 2011 and was elected again in 2023, is seeking re-election for the centre-left Workers’ Party. If the 80-year-old wins, Brazil would be the only left-wing major economy left in South America. Flávio Bolsonaro, a 45-year-old senator, “is running as the political heir to his father”, said The Wall Street Journal. There are several other conservative and right-wing candidates but all are currently polling in the single digits.

If no one wins more than 50% of the votes on 4 October, the two frontrunners will progress to a second-round runoff on 25 October. A BTG Pactual/Nexus ​poll reported this week by Reuters suggests that a runoff would see Lula receive 47%, with Bolsonaro on 44%.

What is the likely outcome?

Lula’s approval ratings are high: certainly at “levels at which incumbents can expect to win”, said The Economist. And Bolsonaro’s campaign “took a mighty blow in May”, when leaked recordings revealed he had asked for money from a “disgraced banker at the heart of Brazil’s largest-ever bank fraud”.

But “there could still be an upset”: Lula is “seen as weak” on corruption and crime – both top voter concerns. He also spent 19 months in prison for corruption himself before his conviction was overturned on a technicality in 2021. “Many voters have never forgiven him.”

It’s possible that disillusioned voters, “unenthusiastic” about either Lula or Bolsonaro, could boost the prospects of the currently low-polling Renan Santos, leader of the Missão party. A former entrepreneur, the “firebrand outsider”, who “models himself” on Argentina’s Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, criticises both Bolsonaro and Lula in “slick videos posted to millions of followers”.

What is Trump up to?

Trump has already interfered in several Latin American elections since he returned to the White House, said The Economist. And “right-wing lookalikes” have won the past seven. Experts say the Brazilian vote will “serve as a test case of how far Trump and an increasingly co-ordinated global right are willing to go to reshape Latin America’s political landscape”, said The Wall Street Journal.

The US president has recently “turned up the heat on Brazil”, said The Guardian. He has proscribed Brazil’s two biggest criminal groups as terrorist organisations, a move that some observers fear could be laying the groundwork for “a US military intervention”. Trump has also revoked the visa of Brazil’s ambassador to Washington, after Brasilia withheld approval of Trump’s own ambassadorial nominee, and denied entry to several US diplomats it accused of planning to meddle in the election.

“This reflects a dangerous convergence between Washington’s long-standing interventionist instincts in Latin America” and “the interests of Brazil’s far right”, said Brazilian journalist Raphael Tsavkko Garcia on Al Jazeera.

What happened

President Donald Trump said on social media Sunday night he had instructed the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” America’s annual joint military exercises with South Korea, citing their cost, his own “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Seoul’s disinclination to join the U.S. in the Iran war. The defensive drills, which began this week, are “totally inappropriate and hostile,” he said, as North Korea “has been unthreatening and respectful” while he is president.

Who said what

This is the “latest example” of Trump “appearing to turn against an ally in favor of a leader that previous administrations have cast as an adversary,” The Associated Press said. North Korea has been “pushing hard to enlarge its nuclear and missile arsenals since Kim’s high-stakes diplomacy with Trump collapsed in 2019.” Trump may intend this as “part of a larger effort to create a diplomatic opportunity” with Kim, Jenny Town at the Stimson Center think tank told Reuters, but the “haphazard nature of this move is unlikely to make much of an impression in Pyongyang.”

The Pentagon was “taken aback” by Trump’s “convoluted social media post,” The New York Times said, citing a senior U.S. military official. “We need South Korea as an ally more than ever to maintain deterrence on the Korean Peninsula and to reinforce our industrial base in critical sectors like shipbuilding and semiconductors,” Hudson Institute Asian security expert Patrick Cronin told The Wall Street Journal. “We should not punish Seoul for our lack of a strategy in the Middle East.”

What next?

The annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises are scheduled to last until Aug. 27.

Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to scale back annual joint military exercises with South Korea after the country stayed out of the war with Iran.

Writing on Truth Social, the US president said the exercises “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea, which “has been unthreatening and respectful” during his second term. He also noted that South Korea had recently declined to join the US in the “denuclearisation” of Iran.

What did the commentators say?

The US is losing the Iran conflict, so Trump has “taken the logical next step” of “punishing” a “loyal American friend”, said Tom Nichols on The Atlantic.

In fact, “scaling back the exercise” is an “insane” decision but in “Trump’s world, every loss, every defeat, is a personal insult”, and “when things go wrong, someone must be held responsible” and, of course, “that someone is never Donald Trump”.

So the world is “witnessing a public exhibition of narcissistic rage” because Trump “embarked on a war for personal glory”, but “what he got instead was ongoing humiliation”.

The Chinese, Russians and North Koreans will “draw the appropriate lessons from this deranged policy”, and notice that “when Trump fails, he hurts those he feels safe hurting”.

It is the “latest example” of Trump “appearing to turn against an ally in favour of a leader that previous administrations have cast as an adversary”, wrote Konstantin Toropin and Alanna Durkin Richer on The Associated Press. It’s a particularly “sharp turnaround” from how his administration has viewed South Korea recently.

The announcement could be “part of an effort to divert attention” from the war in Iran, which has “left energy costs high”. This has become a “sensitive economic issue” ahead of the US midterm elections, said The Korea Times.

It could “trigger a debate over whether the scaling down of joint exercises could affect the allies’ deterrence” against North Korea as the “recalcitrant regime has been doubling down on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs”.

The “sudden” announcement “risks renewing concerns” that “US forces are too stretched to support crucial Western allies or maintain deterrence against autocracies that threaten them”, said Brad Lendon on CNN. It’s also a “gift” to Kim Jong Un at a time when he has “ramped up his own nation’s threat to global stability and offered no concessions in return”.

What next?

Experts told the BBC that the “walking back” of these joint military exercises could “carry a high cost with relatively little benefit”.

They are “essential for military forces to be ready and capable of doing their jobs”, Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, told the broadcaster.

“Scaling them back” could “damage alliance coordination”, as well as “slow the process of South Korea taking on greater responsibility for its own defence, and weaken deterrence against possible conflicts in Asia”.

In a statement, South Korea’s presidential Blue House said it was reviewing Trump’s comments and added that it hoped a favourable relationship between Washington and Pyongyang could lead to meaningful talks.

August 2026 marks one year since National Guard soldiers began patrolling Washington, D.C., at the behest of the Trump administration, and the past 12 months of troop presence have changed what daily life looks like for many in the nation’s capital. While some feel the National Guard has helped to reduce crime and maintain a sense of safety in Washington, others say that the past year has been indicative of an authoritarian takeover.

What did the commentators say?

Throughout Washington, armed soldiers have become “fixtures in Metro stations, on downtown streets and around newly refurbished federal parks,” said The New York Times. These “federal agents in flak jackets patrol residential streets alongside city police officers” and appear unlikely “to go away soon,” as the White House recently extended the National Guard deployment through the end of 2029.

At the outset, President Donald Trump “cast the deployment in dire terms, describing a city overwhelmed by violence and disorder and promising that federal intervention would restore control,” said ABC News. But the deployment came as “violent crime is in precipitous decline nationwide, falling to record lows in cities with no federal intervention,” said the Times. Specifically in Washington, violent crime “was already reaching the lowest levels in decades” before the August 2025 mobilization; it has since gone back up 3% on the year, according to the city’s policing data.

Opinions on the National Guard remain “mixed among residents, politicians and experts,” said Al Jazeera. “For the most part, they’ve kept things peaceful and tranquil here,” Aaron Taslitz, a 30-year-old teacher in D.C., told Al Jazeera. Some residents feel they’ve overstayed their welcome. The soldiers “ain’t doing nothing but walking,” Ybonne Coles, a 60-year-old restaurant worker, said to Al Jazeera. “That money could go toward organizations to help people that really need help.”

Others are concerned about the continued symbolism of the National Guard, as it has become “part of the city scenery,” said NPR. “I worry about these troops standing on street corners fading into the background, and people starting to accept this as just a fact of life,” Joseph Nunn, a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security program, told NPR. Soldiers “standing on the street corners in an American city should never be normal.”

What next?

The White House’s extension of the troops’ stationing is set to keep National Guard soldiers in Washington through at least the end of Trump’s term in 2029. This will cost an additional $1.4 billion, according to estimates given to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Many are wary of what this extended stay could mean for the city’s future, and some find the situation ironic given that the U.S. “was the first to establish the modern democratic norm of divorcing the military and civilian policing,” Nunn said to NPR, also noting there is a line in the Declaration of Independence “condemning King George III for keeping standing armies among the population in times of peace.” The troops were “deployed to our communities under false pretenses,” Monica Hopkins, the director of the Washington, D.C., ACLU, told NPR. “It’s not a genuine emergency.”

What happened

President Donald Trump’s handpicked Kennedy Center board voted Thursday to add his name back to the building’s facade and follow through with his plan to close most of the center for two years of renovations. This apparent “attempt to find a creative workaround” to the federal law governing the Kennedy Center also “aggressively” tests U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper’s May ruling that blocked the center’s closure and ordered Trump’s name removed, The New York Times said.

Who said what

The board decided the center’s facade would now read “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump,” and its grounds would be renamed “President Donald J. Trump Plaza,” according to Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), the ex-officio board member who successfully sued to get Trump’s name excised. The new decisions are a “transparent effort to circumvent the court’s ruling,” Beatty said in a statement.

The Kennedy Center has become an “unlikely — and highly visible — metaphor for presidential power” in Trump’s second term, The Associated Press said. His name was removed in June, but a “massive tarp” has shielded the court-ordered void from public view. Board member and longtime Trump ally Paolo Zampolli told the Times his goal was to reinscribe Trump’s name “as big as it can get.”

What next?

As with the Kennedy Center’s prior legal issues, the board’s decisions will be subject to Cooper’s approval.

“It will work out. It always works out. It’s like a chess game,” said Donald Trump at the weekend, as an impasse over diplomatic discussions and disruption in the Strait of Hormuz continue. By letting economic pressure mount, we are “low-keying it” with Iran, Trump told Axios, and “only semi-negotiating with them”.

In response, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said that whether “lights out or lights on, Iranians showed they are professional chess players”.

With no end to the war in sight, inflation on the rise, fuel rationing and continued threats of strikes, the vast majority of the Iranian population appear not to be players, but pawns.

‘Extensive’ damage

Speaking openly about politics in Iran still “carries obvious risks”, said Nawal Al-Maghafi in The Guardian. Within Iran there is “no single narrative of the war”, with some believing it has “strengthened national unity”, and others saying it has only “deepened repression”. Nonetheless, the country has been “transformed” by the war and, as the conflict carries on, “so does the struggle to shape the legacy it will leave behind”.

Iran is facing “extensive” damage from US attacks, estimated to be “running in the hundreds of billions of dollars”, said Maziar Motamedi in Al Jazeera. But this plays into “decades-old economic structural issues” and being continually “strained by years of Western sanctions and local mismanagement”. During both world wars, the US and Israel “systematically bombed” ports, bridges, roads and other civilian infrastructure, and the country has a long history of internet shutdowns and a “cash-strapped” government.

Now, inflation has risen to “nearly 90%” in the last month, with food inflation “hitting 134%”, compared to a year earlier. Following two wars in less than a year, conflict with the US is “showing no signs of abating”.

Many Iranians feel “abandoned” by the West, said Roxana Saberi and Fatemeh Jamalpour in The Times. They believe the US and others have “largely stood by during the recent executions and the January massacre”. The crackdown since January has left Iranians with “widespread trauma” that “spans generations and classes”. The “greatest source of trauma” is the “inaction” of the international community, said head of a survivor charity Azadeh Afsahi. “If these Western countries have democracy, how come they don’t care to see that the Iranian people are suffering?”

Opinion is ‘far from uniform’

There is still a “fervour” among those who support the regime, said Krishnan Guru-Murthy on Channel 4. In June, the “streets were full” of people for national celebrations, and children fired foam darts at “targets bearing the faces of Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump was by far the most popular face to fire at.” Many are still eager to “express their love of country and their hatred of the enemy”. In many ways, ironically, it “reminds you of the most fired-up Maga supporters in America”.

Yet for others, the “greatest fear” is that “the war will end with the Islamic Republic still in power”, said Kelly J. Shannon on the Atlantic Council. However the conflict ends, the “remnants of the regime” will likely become “further entrenched and even more oppressive”. The massacres after protests in January, and an April order to “speed up executions of political prisoners”, support state television warnings that “any dissidents will be killed”. In the eyes of the Islamic Republic, the Iranian population is the “enemy, and it is willing to use any and all measures to keep them in line”.

Ultimately, “Iranian society is diverse, politically complex, and far from uniform,” said Mahmoud Rasouli on the European Consortium for Political Research. “Citizens hold differing views about domestic reform, foreign relations, economic priorities, and the country’s future.”

Yet this does not translate to political influence. Both Washington and Tehran invoke the interests of the Iranian people, but never do they allow such interests to “directly determine the direction of the conflict”. This creates a “paradox”: the Iranian people are “central” to the language used around the war, but “peripheral” in the “decision-making processes that shape their future”. They are neither “invisible spectators nor the main architects of the conflict”, but the “primary stakeholders in a confrontation largely shaped by others”.

A growing feud between the United States and Brazil has put both nations’ diplomatic corps on high alert, as South America’s largest economy finds itself on the receiving end of a Trumpian diplomatic spat. This month, Washington revoked the visa of Brazilian Ambassador Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti after Brasilia refused visas for several Trump administration officials whom authorities claimed were planning to denounce the country’s leftist government.

Brazil has said it will not formally accept Trump’s Senate-approved ambassador pick, Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez, until after its October election. The country also complained that the United States had named Perez before completing certain diplomatic obligations.

‘Protocol can double as a weapon’

The visa cancellation is the “latest split” between “two governments that have spent the past year oscillating between confrontation and detente,” said The New York Times. But this episode is “very, very unique and severe,” said Brazilian political science professor Carlos Poggio to the outlet. Visa revocations are typically reserved for diplomatic foes, but “Brazil is not a U.S. adversary. It’s actually a major ally.”

“On the surface,” the diplomatic kerfuffle “may seem like tit-for-tat pettiness,” said Puck. “True practitioners of statecraft” understand that “protocol can double as a weapon.” Countries whose diplomatic corps “undergo some of the most rigorous training in the world” are “not naive about the message Washington is sending.”

Voiding Viotti’s visa “is not an isolated incident,” said the office of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a statement to NBC. Rather, it is part of a “deliberate escalation of hostile measures” fueled by “ideological motives that are incompatible with a bilateral partnership that has always been guided by mutual respect.”

Questioning Trump’s ‘confrontational approach’

Some in the Brazilian diplomatic corps have questioned why Trump is “rushing to have an ambassador in Brasilia only months before October’s election,” said The Associated Press — particularly given that the post has been “vacant since Trump returned to the White House” last year. The deepening rift comes as da Silva, a leftist, runs for a fourth term.

His opponent this time is Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, himself a “close Trump ally on the political right” who was convicted of “trying to overturn the results of the last election,” said The Washington Post. Speaking on condition of anonymity, one State Department official decried Washington’s “confrontational approach” to the outlet. “Each time Brasilia portrays itself as standing up to Trump,” said the official, the leftist government’s “standing in the polls only improves.”

“This isn’t just about Brazil,” said Orna Blum, a former senior State Department official who focused on Brazil, to Puck. “It’s part of a pattern.” The Trump administration has aligned itself with “far-right political movements from Germany’s AfD to Marine Le Pen in France, and now with Jair Bolsonaro and his son Flávio in Brazil.” Being seen as “picking sides in another democracy’s elections” under Trump has “cost America credibility with allies around the world.”

President Donald Trump returned to office last year promising to unleash fossil fuels to power U.S. energy production. But the Iran war has sparked months of persistently high gasoline prices, threatening GOP fortunes in the midterm elections, and Trump is now talking about reining in the industry. Oil companies are “making too much money” and should lower gasoline prices, he said to reporters earlier this month. Executives are nervous about a crackdown.

What did the commentators say?

Oil industry officials are “rattled” by Trump’s “growing criticism of the sector,” said Politico. U.S. companies have profited from the Iran war, shipping American petroleum abroad to countries that have found their usual supplies cut off by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. There is now “upward pressure” on domestic gasoline prices as U.S. car owners “compete with the rest of the world for a suddenly shrunken supply.” Industry executives are now worried Trump might cut off American oil exports, though the White House has denied that is in the offing. The industry remains on alert. “Everyone knows Trump’s gonna Trump,” an anonymous executive said to the outlet.

The law of supply and demand is “as fundamental as they come,” but Trump is “acting like he’s above the law,” The Washington Post said in an editorial. The president has taken aim at Chevron and ExxonMobil’s “windfall profits” of $12.1 billion and $14.5 billion, respectively, during the second quarter. They should “give some of that back to the public,” he said to reporters. But gasoline prices have risen so much over the last year because of “decisions made in Washington, not by the oil majors,” said the Post.

The war is not Trump’s only inflationary policy. He has also imposed tariffs and “taken government stakes in private companies,” said the Post. Rather than criticize oil companies, the president “should focus on expanding the supply of oil at home and abroad.”

The war can be seen as the latest in a “history of handouts to the oil industry,” Jamie Friedman, Jenny Rowland-Shea and Alia Hidayat said at the Center for American Progress. Trump administration policies have made electric vehicles more expensive and gutted emissions standards for gasoline-powered vehicles, leaving Americans “more vulnerable to price spikes and gasoline dependency.” The way to bring gasoline prices down is to “stop the Trump administration’s reckless and unnecessary war in Iran.”

What next?

The Trump administration is considering several policies to expand production and bring down oil costs. The federal government has “fast-tracked an environmental review” for a proposed offshore fracking project off the coast of California, said the San Francisco Chronicle. The White House has also extended a waiver from shipping regulations to “keep fuel flowing amid the Iran war,” said CNBC. The move will “protect consumers from unnecessary price volatility,” American Petroleum Institute’s Kristin Whitman said in a statement.

What happened

President Donald Trump was sued in federal court on Wednesday over a new Trump Media offering that sells early access to his social media posts for up to $100,000 per month. The First Amendment “guarantees equal access to the president’s public announcements,” the Freedom of the Press Foundation and The Intercept argued in their suit.

Who said what

“A president selling priority access to news he himself generates for the benefit of a private company he controls” is “blatantly corrupt and unconstitutional,” the Freedom of the Press Foundation said in a statement. Trump owns more than 40% of Trump Media, Truth Social’s parent company.

Trump often uses Truth Social to “announce policy decisions, executive orders, personnel changes and war declarations,” CNN said, and “clearly, the company — and Wall Street — believe the special access holds significant value.” Trump Media on Wednesday called the plaintiffs “left-wing activists” who are “trying to wrongfully weaponize the courts to censor” Trump and “harm our shareholders.”

What next?

Trump Media, which reported a $238 million quarterly loss this week, “needs the money — and a lot more” — and “the clock is ticking,” The Associated Press said. Its lenders can “demand” early repayment of $1 billion in late November, and after Trump leaves office, it’s “not clear” why traders would still “pay as much $1.2 million a year for sneak peeks at his posts.”

What happened

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt “will be departing her role at the end of the month,” President Donald Trump said on social media Wednesday. Leavitt said on X she “made the bittersweet decision to depart the White House” after returning from maternity leave last month and realizing she couldn’t do the job and “be the best mom my two young children deserve.” Trump said it was a “decision I totally understand and respect.”

Who said what

The “youngest White House press secretary in history,” Leavitt has been one of Trump’s “closest advisers” and “fiercest defenders” in his second term, The Wall Street Journal said. She’s leaving “at a critical time for the White House,” The New York Times said, with Trump facing “multiple headwinds, foreign and domestic,” and midterm elections in “which he will need to sell policies” that Leavitt was “among the most effective at defending.”

What next?

“Karoline will now be one of my top outside advisers, and an influential voice within the Republican Party,” Trump said. The White House did not say when he would name Leavitt’s replacement — a position that “does not require Senate confirmation,” said Axios.

While hundreds of thousands of people rely on the U.S. government’s Head Start program for low-income children, major cut proposals by the Trump administration have families worried about what it could mean for their kids. Even as there has been some bipartisan pushback to the slashes, aspects of children’s lives from school to home to doctor’s offices could be affected.

Why is the government slashing Head Start?

The plan for the funding cuts is overseen by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which runs Head Start. The goal of the cuts is “removing unnecessary bureaucracy, strengthening nutrition and physical health, trusting parents and local communities, and opening Head Start to hundreds of thousands more children,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement.

The proposed cuts would constitute nearly a complete retooling of Head Start, which was launched in 1965 as the nation’s primary child antipoverty program, providing education, health and nutritional assistance. The agency’s changes would “remove most of Head Start’s 133 pages of federal requirements for math and literacy curricula, class sizes, medical screenings and home visits,” said The New York Times. Even a “requirement that children brush their teeth after meals would end.”

What effect will this have?

Many are concerned that the cuts would have a disastrous impact on the 1,600 Head Start providers who fight childhood poverty. Head Start “ensures children receive healthcare, developmental screenings, nutritious meals, disability services, highly qualified teachers and strong partnerships with families,” Joel Ryan, the director of the Washington State Association of Head Start, said to the Times. HHS’ proposal “would weaken those protections for hundreds of thousands of children.”

Part of the plan involves reducing the cap on federal money that can go to Head Start’s administrative costs from 15% to 5%. Trump administration officials hope this will “free up funding to serve as many as 268,000 more children,” said The Washington Post. It would also give states a “wide leeway to craft the program to their liking.” But some are concerned that stripping away Head Start’s nationwide criteria and shrinking the cap would have a largely negative effect.

“It wouldn’t be Head Start anymore,” Jen Bailey, who operates several Head Start programs in Madison, Wisconsin, said to the Post. Head Start could become a “shell of a program” without national standards, Bailey added. Even some Republicans appear worried. “Just walking away and turning a blind eye toward it, I don’t think that’d be a good idea,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said to USA Today. The program helps “a lot, a lot, a lot of kids.” And “a lot of times we can make it better, but there are ways we can make it worse too,” Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.) told the outlet.

“At first glance, these proposed changes might not seem so terrible, but as you dig deeper into it, what we will find is that there really are a lot of changes that will impact what is the heart of Head Start,” Yvette Sanchez Fuentes, the senior vice president at nonprofit Start Early, told The 19th. The current standards aren’t only the federal regulations. They “really are the foundation for how we ensure that programs across the country are supporting children, families and communities in the way that they want best.”

Even the relatively staid-seeming Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum hasn’t escaped the mud-slinging that has dominated and defined Donald Trump’s two-term tenure as president. After a high-profile White House clash this month between the former North Dakota governor and U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro over the latter’s failure to prosecute bystanders accused of marring the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool — a monument managed by the Interior Department — Burgum finds himself sweating under an uncomfortable national spotlight.

‘Confusion and concern’

“No one’s more involved” in Trump’s monumental “fix-it spree” than Burgum, said Axios. But the reflecting pool scandal has placed the secretary “in a weird spot” that is “overshadowing Burgum’s other projects.” Pirro has “lashed out at Burgum directly” and “blamed him for misleading” Trump about the reflecting pool, said ABC. Burgum not only “pushed the narrative about vandals damaging the blue lining publicly” but “also privately” to the president himself, said The New York Times.

“Just days after his Oval Office screaming match” with Pirro over the pool prosecutions, Interior Department staffers accused Burgum of “fostering a culture of secrecy and dysfunction,” said The Daily Beast. “Morale has tanked” under Burgum’s management, contributing to what officials describe as an “atmosphere of high turnover” with “leadership that ignores staff.” After trusting in Burgum’s “strong executive experience as governor of energy-rich North Dakota,” staffers have seen their hopes “replaced by confusion and concern,” said Politico. The department has now lost “thousands of the staff needed to manage the national park systems and millions of acres of public lands.”

The secretary “appears to combine arrogance” with an “utter lack of curiosity or humility,” longtime Interior official Tony Irish, who left the department last year, told Politico. “I think it shows his disdain for the rank and file.”

Trump’s ‘personal project manager’

Through it all, Burgum “appears to still be in the president’s good graces,” said Axios. He is “settling into life as a central player in Trump’s efforts to remake D.C.” after having moved “to the city — not the suburbs — with his wife.”

The secretary has “held the president’s line” on the Reflecting Pool, said Rob Port at Inforum. “Inside Trump world,” where it’s the “bootlicking that matters,” Burgum, “to his shame, has kept his tongue planted firmly on President Trump’s Oxfords.”

When Burgum is “not saying foolish things about how solar power works,” the secretary’s “principal responsibilities have focused on serving as the president’s ‘personal project manager,’” said Steve Benen at MS NOW. Given the reflecting pool “fiasco,” however, “those efforts have not fared well.”

In light of the difficulties facing the department, “it’s clear” that the Interior would “benefit from a strong and capable inspector general’s office” that can act independently, Benen said. To that end, last week Trump nominated Dennis Kirk to be the Interior’s inspector general. While the name “might not sound familiar,” you may have heard of Kirk’s “earlier work,” as he “co-authored the far-right policy blueprint Project 2025.”

What happened

A federal judge in Boston on Tuesday issued a second preliminary injunction, this one nationwide, barring the U.S. Postal Service from carrying out President Donald Trump’s executive order to limit mail-in voting before the November midterms. The president “has no authority to regulate elections,” U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled, and protecting voters from “chaos” and confusion “heavily outweighs the executive’s attempt to unconstitutionally insert itself into the domain of election regulation.”

Who said what

Under Trump’s order, USPS is “supposed to compile lists of eligible voters from states and deliver absentee ballots only to people on those lists,” NPR said. Talwani initially blocked the order in the 23 Democratic states that had sued, and Trump appealed that ruling last month. Her expanded injunction “creates another legal hurdle”, should Trump “get the initial injunction lifted by the U.S. Supreme Court,” The Associated Press said.

What next?

Trump has pushed Congress to limit mail-in ballots and other voting rules, but the Senate “bowed to political reality” early Saturday and adjourned for five weeks “without any concrete steps toward passing the voting restriction bill,” The New York Times said. Right-wing broadcaster Wayne Allyn Root urged Trump to enact his voting limits by declaring a “national security emergency for elections.” Trump, calling in for an interview, replied that “stranger things have happened.”

What happened

President Donald Trump left a NATO summit in Turkey last month aboard an alternate military aircraft after publicly boarding Air Force One, then secretly exiting from the plane’s opposite side in an “airport catering truck typically used to load meals and other supplies preflight,” The Washington Post reported Monday, citing U.S. officials and “corroborating material.” The “elaborate deception” to “spirit” Trump out of the region was prompted by a credible “threat against him and Air Force One from Iran,” The New York Times said.

Who said what

The “furtive operation” was apparently “developed in a matter of hours,” the Times said. Reporters flying with Trump were not told of the deception, thereby “making them unwitting participants in the ruse and leaving them, along with some White House staff members, to serve as unknowing decoys.” The journalists and staffers were not “made aware of the extent of the threat on Air Force One,” the Post said.

When reporters asked Trump later why they had been advised to keep their window shades closed on the flight from Ankara to Britain, he said they were “probably on a dangerous flight,” but since he’s Iran’s top target, “if I go, you go.”

What next?

Asked about the reports, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said “many enemies of America” have “their sights on” Trump and “we use every tool at our disposal to address those threats.”

What happened

President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order proposing a reduction in routine childhood immunizations to 11 from 17, and pushing for the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to be split into three separate single-disease shots administered over several doctor visits. This is Trump’s third attempt to “promote his long-held but discredited theory that childhood shots should be spaced out,” The Associated Press said, and a continuation of his fixation on “connecting autism to vaccines,” even though “scientific consensus and decades of studies have firmly concluded there is no link.”

Who said what

“Nothing bad can happen from what we’re doing,” Trump said before signing the order. But pediatricians and public health experts have “long warned” that spreading out vaccinations “will reduce immunization rates and leave children more susceptible to disease,” CNN said.

Trump’s “renewed focus on vaccines marks a departure” from his administration’s “recent efforts to emphasize less controversial health policies” ahead of November elections, the AP said. Trump’s “own pollsters have warned” that the issue is “unpopular” with voters, Politico said. But the president’s “personal interest” in changing vaccine policy has been “thrown into high gear by his allegiance with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” a longtime vaccine skeptic.

What next?

It’s unclear whether Trump’s order “has any legal power,” The New York Times said. Federal immunization recommendations come from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its outside experts, and “only states can require vaccinations for children to enter school or day care.”

What happened

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday publicly rejected President Donald Trump’s latest road map to a lasting peace in Gaza. When Trump announced the “historic agreement” two weeks ago, he said Israel was very happy with the plan. “Israel rejects the 15-point document,” Netanyahu said in televised remarks to his Cabinet, starting with the part where its military would incrementally withdraw from Gaza as Hamas disarms.

Who said what

Israeli forces “will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed,” Netanyahu said, and “I mean heavy weapons, less heavy weapons, light weapons, all the weapons.” Under pressure from Trump and his Board of Peace envoy Nickolay Mladenov, Israel has “effectively halted attacks in the territory” since last Monday, Reuters said. But Netanyahu is “caught between far-right ministers angered by concessions in Gaza and his key military backer, Trump.” Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim said he and his group “remain committed to the road map” and “expect” the U.S. and other mediators to “press Netanyahu and his government to adhere” too.

What next?

Netanyahu’s decision “risks angering Trump” by robbing him of a “major foreign-policy achievement” as he remains “embroiled in the Iran war,” The Wall Street Journal said. But the Israeli leader “also faces uphill elections in the fall,” and the “hard-right coalition partners” whose support he needs “have vociferously objected to the terms of the agreement.”

What happened

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi Sunday said a deal with Oman on control of the Strait of Hormuz was in the “final stages,” but that “does not mean reopening the strait” until “conditions” are fulfilled. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council on Saturday said the strait won’t be reopened until the U.S. “corrects its behavior,” permanently ending the war, lifting the naval blockade and sanctions, “unconditionally” unfreezing Tehran’s assets and “completely” compensating it for war damages.

Who said what

Between its leverage over global oil prices, the “diminishing stockpiles” of key U.S. weapons and the war’s deep unpopularity with U.S. voters, “Iran believes it holds the cards,” The Associated Press said. Trump Sunday told Axios that the U.S. was “low-keying it” with Iran, waiting for economic pain to bring it to heel. Iran’s demands are largely what Trump “already agreed to” in June, The New York Times said. And denying Trump the “ability to claim victory over the strait” is Iran’s “most efficient lever to persuade him to recommit to those agreements.”

What next?

Tehran’s emerging deal with Oman would give each country control of one direction of transit through the strait. There would be no “fees or tolls during the interim period,” the AP said, but “formal control over even part of the strait would be a clear win for Iran and a loss for the U.S.”

What happened

The Senate early Saturday narrowly confirmed Todd Blanche as attorney general, a position he held in an acting capacity since April, when President Donald Trump sacked Pam Bondi. The 50-49 vote was mostly along party lines, with Republicans Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) joining Democrats in voting no. Trump announced Sunday that his staff secretary, Will Scharf — like Blanche, a former member of his personal legal team — will take over as White House counsel next month.

Who said what

Blanche’s “path to confirmation” was “unusually rocky,” with his “loyalty to Trump at the center of the stalemate,” The Associated Press said. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday that Blanche’s continued support for shielding Trump’s family from IRS audits “almost weighed” his decisive yes vote to a no, but he was swayed by the deal Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) forced that “effectively” killed Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund.”

The “three lame-duck Republican senators” who “narrowly saved” Blanche’s job “believed he was the only person who had earned enough trust” to “rein in” Trump, Glenn Thrush said in a New York Times analysis. But Blanche is a “champion of unbridled presidential power,” and his confirmation “represented a powerful endorsement” of the new attorney general’s guiding philosophy that “he has a constitutional obligation to execute every lawful White House order” from his “meddling, demanding boss,” even if it “shatters longstanding policy and rule-of-law norms, or contradicts what he thinks is right.”

What next?

It’s “unclear whether Blanche will fare any better in delivering on Trump’s desire for retribution than Bondi,” the AP said.

Well, is it on or is it off? No one’s quite sure, said Al Jazeera (Doha). Two weeks ago, the United States and Saudi Arabia signed a multibillion-dollar deal allowing US companies to build and operate nuclear power plants on Saudi soil over the next 30 years.

But a day later, President Trump added a new condition, via social media: Saudi Arabia must fall in line with the UAE and other Arab nations that have signed the Abraham Accords, and recognise the state of Israel.

‘Reckless’ agreement

And that may prove a deal breaker, said David Frum in The Atlantic. Riyadh had been working towards this landmark pact for almost two decades. Thanks to the savvy of its de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), who ensured the private equity firm of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, would get its share of the billion-dollar nuclear licensing deals at stake, he almost got it over the line.

But now it must surely be in doubt, said Mohamad Elmasry on Middle East Eye. Riyadh has vowed it won’t normalise relations until Israel guarantees Palestinian statehood. And MbS has reportedly told US officials that hostility towards Israel is so great among Saudis in the wake of Israel’s devastating war in Gaza, that to sign a normalisation treaty would probably get him assassinated.

It’s obvious why the Saudis still badly want this nuclear deal, said Joseph Cirincione on MS Now (New York). It’s not, as they claim, to diversify their energy profile: that makes no sense for a nation sitting on an ocean of oil and blessed with the ideal wind and solar conditions for generating renewable energy – a far cheaper option.

No, the real reason is to gain atomic weapons to protect itself against its main foe: Iran. MbS has made no secret of his desire to build a bomb, and the deal would be a concrete step in that direction. Despite Trump’s claims to the contrary, it appears to permit nuclear enrichment on Saudi soil, thus enabling Riyadh to follow the likes of India, Israel and Pakistan in covertly enriching uranium to weapons-grade levels.

‘Guiding hand’

Who knows what’ll happen if this “reckless” deal goes ahead, said Mitchell Plitnick on Mondoweiss (New York). The “gold standard” nuclear-power pact that the US signed with the United Arab Emirates in 2009 required the UAE to forego the ability to enrich uranium, and obliged it to submit to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections: this Saudi deal has no such restrictions.

Which is why it would inevitably trigger a Middle East arms race, said Azriel Bermant in Foreign Policy. If the deal proceeds, Iran would openly seek its own nuclear deterrent, something it has so far officially forsworn. “It beggars belief that the US went to war against Iran to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon yet now acts in a way that is an open invitation for Tehran to weaponise.” And in a way that would also pour “proliferation kerosene” on Turkey and Egypt’s “smouldering nuclear ambitions”, said Matthew Kroenig and Henry Sokolski in The Wall Street Journal. Trump’s deal invites disaster.

Actually, the US is doing the right thing, said the Washington Examiner. The hard truth is that the “era of non-proliferation is coming to an end”: Pakistan and North Korea are both testing nuclear weapons. Given that sobering reality, better the US offer “a guiding hand” to the Saudis and oversee their nuclear agenda than let China or Russia fill the void.

Good or bad, the deal matters a lot to the US president, said Sharon Squassoni in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Chicago), so rumours of its death “are premature”. After all, it’s not some “spur-of-the-moment fantasy” cooked up by Trump. The same deal was also being considered under Joe Biden, and then too enrichment was a quid pro quo for recognising Israel.

The Saudis won’t do so, of course, given recent history, but they won’t have to. Although Congress can disapprove the deal once it’s submitted, the present Congress – due to adjourn on 18 December – is much less likely to do so than any freshly elected one. So the Saudis can “call Trump’s bluff by simply sitting back” and waiting for him to succumb to the pressure of the December deadline.

The House Ethics Committee this week announced it had opened an investigation into Ohio Republican Rep. Max Miller, after ex-wife Emily Moreno accused the lawmaker of violently assaulting her and the pair’s child. While Miller has denied the allegations against him, a growing chorus of Republicans, including Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), Emily’s father, has demanded he resign from Congress. Still, not everyone in the GOP is on board with calls for Miller to step down — particularly during an election cycle in which Republicans’ narrow control of Congress appears up for grabs.

What did the commentators say?

With “public scrutiny” of Miller and the allegations against him “quickly mounting,” many of his Republican colleagues have been “slow to respond,” said Politico. The “surge of attention” surrounding Miller “presents a dilemma for Republicans.” They can either “speak out against their colleague” amid a competitive race or “face accusations of hypocrisy” after “hammering multiple similarly scandal-plagued Democrats.” The situation risks being like “Graham Platner on steroids,” said one GOP operative to the outlet. Republicans may be “struggling up and down the ballot in the Rust Belt state” in general, but Miller’s situation in particular has “muddied their prospects,” said Axios.

Intra-party debate over Miller’s behavior has “led to one question,” said Ohio Capital Journal: “Where is the line in believing accusations when an election is at risk?” Although Miller himself is “confident he will win in the fall,” other Republican officials are “not as confident of a Miller victory.” This “general reluctance to publicly engage” with Miller’s case until this week has “raised questions” for Republicans about the “standards they maintain within their own party,” said The Free Press.

“There’s all sorts of domestic events going on with 435 members of Congress all the time,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to Politico. “It’s not my business to get engaged in it.” The public should wait for the “process to play out.” Johnson’s response to Miller “raises the question of what Johnson does think the speaker’s business is,” said The Atlantic. His “reluctance to become involved” in Miller’s “messy, lurid story” is “understandable, but it’s also one of the burdens that falls on leaders.”

Despite publicly defending Miller as a “good person” whose family should “figure that out,” President Donald Trump offered a more candid take on a private call with the congressman Monday evening, said Axios. During the conversation, the president reportedly told Miller that “things aren’t looking good” and “repeatedly said his reelection would be tough.” But the president “stopped short of asking Miller to step aside,” said The New York Times, and Miller “made it clear he had no intention of doing so.” Because Trump has yet to “publicly withdraw his support” for Miller, other Republicans remain “reluctant to do so themselves.”

Miller himself has responded to the increased scrutiny by comparing the domestic violence allegations that “threaten his reelection” to the “political attacks Trump weathered in 2016,” said Cleveland.com. He mentioned the president’s “sexual assault and harassment claims” and the release of the now-infamous Access Hollywood tape.

What next?

With Miller’s “relatively safe House seat in jeopardy,” the congressman would need to “resign or drop out by Aug. 10 for Republicans to be able to replace him on the ballot,” said The Hill. “With him on the ballot,” said one Ohio GOP official to the outlet, it’s “incredibly difficult to hold a seat that they should.” Republican party chairs for the counties Miller represents have a “window” to “name a successor as the Republican candidate on the ballot,” said Cleveland.com.

Nationally, Johnson is for now “declining to bear” the burden of leadership regarding Miller, said The Atlantic. But by doing so, he may ultimately “ensure that he doesn’t have to worry about the duties of the speaker when the new Congress opens next January.”

What happened

Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) lost his bid for reelection on Thursday, ousted in a Republican primary by former state Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Hatcher. The primaries were held under a new map Tennessee Republicans passed to eliminate the state’s last Democratic-held congressional district following the Supreme Court’s weakening of Voting Rights Act protections for minorities.

State Rep. Justin Pearson (D) won his primary for that previously Democratic Memphis-based seat, which was cracked into three GOP-leaning districts, and will face state Sen. Brent Taylor (R). Rep. Steve Cohen (D) “chose not to seek reelection to the seat, which independent political analysts now rate as safe Republican,” Reuters said.

Who said what

Ogles has “faced backlash over anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric” and previous campaign finance controversies, The New York Times said, but his loss was “seen as an upset.” It was a “rare rejection of a candidate endorsed by President Donald Trump,” The Associated Press said. Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) “tried to boost his campaign in the final days,” Politico said, but a “flood of outside money” for Hatcher from a renewable energy super PAC, “coupled with a newly redrawn district that forced Ogles to reach new voters,” helped seal his loss.

What next?

Sen. Marsha Blackburn won the GOP primary for governor, and she’s expected to prevail over Democratic nominee Jerri Green, a Memphis city council member. It’s the first time in Tennessee that “either major political party has nominated a woman” for governor, the Times said.

While the Trump administration has become known for its policy of anti-globalization, recent reports that the White House plans to shutter five overseas embassies and consulates have some worried about the implications. Several of the planned closures will occur in nations with close diplomatic ties to the United States, including Canada and Japan. The rare moves, which often happen only during times of conflict, could create new foreign affairs headaches, even as Republicans laud the plans.

What did the commentators say?

The U.S. State Department has reportedly informed Congress that it is planning to close the embassy on the Caribbean island of Grenada; the consulates in Nagoya, Japan, and Medan, Indonesia; the diplomatic post in Winnipeg, Canada; and the embassy in Douala, Cameroon. The closures are “expected to save the government roughly $4.4 million per year,” but the affected buildings also “employ very few people compared with others,” said The Associated Press.

The buildings in Grenada and Nagoya “have only one American staffer and five local employees each,” said the AP, and the Medan consulate has only 47 local employees; the Douala embassy has only 14 and the Winnipeg post has just two. The closure effort is “part of a broader push by the Republican president to transform the U.S. bureaucracy so that it is fully aligned with his ‘America First’ agenda,” said Reuters. People seem split on the closures. Supporters have “portrayed cost-cutting measures as necessary to right-size ​an organization many conservatives see as bloated and overly bureaucratic.”

But Democrats “argue that cuts to the U.S. diplomatic footprint — coupled with the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, ‌which ⁠provided billions of dollars worth of aid globally — risks undermining American leadership,” said Reuters. While “on paper, the move is about efficiency,” in practice it “goes far beyond the fate of five buildings,” said Newsweek. The consular slashing “suggests the Trump administration sees America’s overseas presence as a dollar figure to be managed on a balance sheet, not as a strategic asset to be maintained.”

Some of the buildings planning for closure are far less consequential than full embassies; the diplomatic post in Winnipeg does “not provide full consular services, only emergency assistance to Americans in distress,” said the National Post. But the closures also mark a “rare reduction of America’s diplomatic footprint outside a specific geopolitical crisis,” said Newsweek, even though the shutterings themselves are “modest in isolation.”

What next?

The State Department hasn’t specifically confirmed or denied the closures but said its officials were “​focused on ensuring that the ⁠nation’s diplomatic footprint was efficient and effective,” the agency told Reuters in a statement. The department also said it was “committed to following congressional notification procedures.” No exact timeline for the shutterings has been announced.

The decision follows a recent pattern of closures. Earlier this year the Trump administration announced it would “permanently close the U.S. consulate in Peshawar, Pakistan, which was the closest diplomatic mission to Afghanistan,” said the AP. At the same time, the U.S. is also “investing millions of dollars into reopening the U.S. embassies in Caracas, Venezuela; Damascus, Syria; and Tripoli, Libya,” to “restore America’s formal diplomatic presence following the ouster of long-ruling autocrats in those countries.”

What happened

The Trump administration has refunded about $100 billion of the roughly $166 billion collected through President Donald Trump’s 2025 “liberation day” tariffs, according to a court-ordered progress report filed Tuesday with the U.S. Court of International Trade. The Supreme Court ruled in February that those import taxes had been collected illegally using an authority the president did not have, and a judge subsequently ordered their return to the importers.

Who said what

Trump has “placed heavy-handed tariffs at the center of his economic and foreign policy agendas,” CNBC said, and he has “vented his rage over the court rulings.” The “speed at which the money has been refunded has surprised trade lawyers and analysts” alike, the Financial Times said. White House officials had “warned that the refunds would depend on further litigation.”

What next?

Trump’s administration has “recently taken a series of steps to effectively re-create” his initial sweeping tariffs “using other legal authorities,” said CNBC. On Monday, 25 states sued the administration over the new tariffs, “calling them a pretext for replacing” the axed “liberation day” levies, The Associated Press said.

It is hot out there. Summertime heat can take a deadly toll on workers, especially in the era of climate change and frequent heat domes. The Biden administration initiated rules to ensure that U.S. companies provide their employees with breaks to hydrate and recover while laboring in warm temperatures. Now the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are looking to roll back those protections.

‘A matter of life and death’

Heat causes “hundreds of workplace deaths” every year, but the Trump administration is rewriting rules that “mandate breaks and access to water and shade for workers,” said The New York Times. The details of those changes are still unknown, but already the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is “curtailing workplace inspections” that had been designed to “raise awareness of heat-related illnesses.”

A House committee last month also gave approval to a bill that would block the Labor Department “finalizing any worker protections for extreme heat,” said E&E News. The Biden-era rule solves a “problem that doesn’t need solving,” Rep. Mark Messmer (R-Ind.) told the outlet. At least a few workers disagree. “We didn’t sign up for the heat to become as severe as it is,” Trina David, a baggage handler at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, said to the Times.

“Trump will cause some of you to die from the heat,” Robert Reich said on Substack. There are countless workers who toil “under the hot sun, or in stifling warehouses or in delivery trucks with no AC,” which can “trigger heat stroke, organ failure and chronic kidney disease.” Those illnesses and deaths “can often be prevented with strong safety standards,” but the Trump administration is “retreating from worker safety.” Workplace heat protections are “literally a matter of life and death.”

The Biden-era rules had a “deep benevolent paternalism” to them, Matthew Kahn said at Environmental and Urban Economics. But workers possess a “degree of choice over where they live and work, what job they take and what shifts they agree to work,” Kahn and Joseph Tracy said in a 2025 paper for the American Enterprise Institute. They can “move or switch firms” if conditions are too onerous. There is “no ‘crisis’” in on-the-job heat injuries that requires a heavy regulatory touch.

‘Can’t afford to stay cool’

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in June signed an executive order “ensuring the safety of municipal workers in the heat,” said E&E News. Workers should not have to “choose between their paycheck and their health,” Mamdani said at the signing ceremony.

For many workers, though, the twin trends of “high temperatures and high inflation” are creating a “crisis that rarely makes headlines,” Sharon Block and Dr. Satchit Balsari said at USA Today. Cash-strapped workers increasingly “can’t afford to stay cool.” Rising prices force them to choose between paying for “food, rent and healthcare” or the electricity needed to “cool off during their off-hours.” The combination of low wages, increased costs and poor protections are forcing workers into “deadly trade-offs.”

What happened

President Donald Trump’s National Guard deployment to Washington, D.C., will cost the federal government another $1.4 billion through the end of his term in 2029, according to a Defense Department estimate for Congress obtained by news organizations Tuesday. The estimate “offers a glimpse of how much taxpayer money will be spent” on a deployment local officials call an “infringement of their city’s autonomy,” said The Associated Press.

Who said what

The White House “has not disclosed the full cost of the mission so far,” The Washington Post said, so the Pentagon’s new figure represents the “most comprehensive accounting yet” of Trump’s “unprecedented use of the military.” In January, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the deployment was costing about $55 million per month, or more than $700 million to date. “The National Guard are not pawns and taxpayer dollars are not a piggy bank for Trump’s political stunts,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement.

What next?

About 4,600 military personnel were stationed in D.C. as of last week, and the new estimate assumes that an average of 2,500 National Guard members will be there for the remainder of Trump’s term. But it’s unclear if governors will “extend their state units for more than two years,” said the AP.

‘One problem with attacking the Smithsonian? Americans like it.’

Kelsey Ables at The Atlantic

Even as the “museum complex continues to face a pressure campaign from the White House, public fondness for the Smithsonian — for its free entry and eclectic collections — is hard to break,” says Kelsey Ables. Museums have “been largely immune to the most deleterious effects of the culture wars.” Most “Americans, unlike the president, seem to trust these entities to do their thing” so “coming after a history museum may not be the base-galvanizing issue the White House hopes it is.”

Read more

‘The US government’s mislabeled map of Africa at a global AIDS conference shows again a failure to understand the continent’

Kenneth Ngure at The Guardian

At the 26th International AIDS Conference, a “slide presented by a senior U.S. State Department official displayed a map of Africa with country names glaringly scrambled and mislabeled,” says Kenneth Ngure. While the “mistake apparently occurred due to an overreliance on AI tools, it carried a painful symbolic weight.” The map “reinforced a longstanding frustration: that too many political leaders treat Africa as a monolithic abstraction rather than a continent of 54 distinct sovereign nations.”

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‘Why patients wait months for care they don’t get’

Tessa Adzemović at The Boston Globe

Hospitals “were never designed to become long-term accommodations, but that’s become a reality for a select population,” says Tessa Adzemović. These “patients are medically cleared to leave but cannot be discharged because of capacity bottlenecks, insurance delays or legal complexities.” Many “prolonged hospitalizations have significant implications for patient outcomes, hospital resource utilization and healthcare costs.” The “reasons for these delayed discharges range from financial to administrative to legal, so any solution to the problem must be multifaceted.”

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‘“Ted Lasso” is back, but is his moment over?’

A.A. Dowd at The American Prospect

As “comebacks go,” a new season of “Ted Lasso” is “not exactly improbable,” says A.A. Dowd. The show “remains one of the most widely watched series of the last decade, a true juggernaut of popularity.” But at “what point does a show go from having its finger planted firmly on the pulse of now to suddenly looking more out of touch than anything else?” We “may have reached the moment when Ted Lasso’s brand of turn-the-other-cheek humanism is no longer enough.”

Read more

What happened

President Donald Trump on Monday accused U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro of having “choked” over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool case. Trump told reporters that Pirro “folded like an umbrella” in moving to drop vandalism charges against four people, including former Olympic canoeist David Hearn. Announcing the decision last week, the Justice Department said Trump’s $14 million renovations of the Washington landmark were “hasty and botched.” It also criticized the Interior Department for withholding key information about the project.

Who said what

The president has reportedly considered firing former Fox News host Pirro, a longtime Trump loyalist, for contradicting his assertion that bad actors are to blame for the pool’s peeling paint. “To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM,” Trump wrote on Truth Social over the weekend. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said on social media that “the evidence is clear, vandals have repeatedly caused damage” to the pool.

Waterproofing experts concluded the peeling paint was “probably caused by application errors,” The Washington Post said. The president is miffed because “Pirro did not give the White House a heads-up about dropping the charges,” a White House official told the outlet. Pirro met with Trump in the Oval Office, but she was not fired and did not offer her resignation, two sources told The New York Times.

What next?

Hearn’s lawyers are expected to respond this week to Pirro’s request to dismiss the case against him. He has “legal options that could unearth more embarrassing details on how his case was handled,” CNN said.

America’s own Louis XIV has embarked on his next home improvement project, said Tiago Ventura in Time. President Trump recently announced the construction of a $5 million granite helipad engraved with the U.S. presidential seal on the White House’s South Lawn. It’s the latest flourish from a president who seeks to “refashion both the White House and Washington through a series of high-profile renovation projects.” The most well-known are the botched repainting of the Reflecting Pool and the demolition of the White House’s East Wing to make way for a still-unbuilt ballroom. But in total, Trump has launched 18 known projects to remake the U.S. capital in his own image and taste. The Oval Office has been adorned with so much gold leaf that it resembles the glittering excess of Versailles, while White House walls now bear gaudy gold script proclaiming “The Oval Office,” “The West Wing,” and “The Presidential Walk of Fame.”

Trump claims his renovations are being funded by private donors and won’t cost taxpayers a dime, said Andrew Feinberg in The Independent. But a close examination of public records reveals “a pattern of ballooning budgets, noncompetitive bidding, and the weaponization of federal funds” to bankroll Trump’s vanity projects. These “improvements” have drained at least $1 billion in taxpayer dollars. Trump’s projects are also illegal, said Edith Olmsted in The New Republic. By law, Congress is required to approve any construction on federal land. But because congressional Republicans fear crossing the president, he has been allowed to treat the White House “like one of his gaudy resort properties,” rather than the once-dignified, 226-year-old People’s House.

While Congress turns a blind eye, “a majority of Americans don’t approve,” said Sarah Davis in The Hill. A recent Washington Post poll found that 2 out of 3 Americans take a dim view of Trump’s extravagant renovations. When asked about Trump’s motivations, 64% said he was transforming Washington, D.C., to “glorify himself” or “leave his mark,” not to benefit the public. Renovation is easier than the economy or foreign policy, said Jackie Delamatre in The Guardian. With mounting troubles both domestically and internationally, it’s no surprise that Trump has retreated to the safety of these relatively small matters. He’s even been caught supergluing gold accents to the Oval Office’s mantle himself. In his desperation to self-soothe, Trump can’t stop himself from adding “just one more gilded vase.”

What happened

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Sunday formally rescinded the controversial plan for a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” that would have compensated President Donald Trump’s allies. Blanche also agreed to limit the scope of Trump’s tax audit immunity, which, along with the fund, was agreed as part of a settlement with the Justice Department after Trump sued the IRS for leaking his tax returns. Blanche’s announcement follows negotiations with two key Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee who were threatening to block his bid to become permanent head of the DOJ.

Who said what

Blanche had repeatedly sworn during Senate hearings that the fund was dead. But Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) “wanted to see the promise in writing,” NPR said, “especially as Trump continued to express support for the idea.”

“My team and I have met with committee members and Senators over the past several weeks and addressed any concerns or outstanding questions," Blanche said on X. In a statement, he also clarified that tax immunity for Trump and his family “applies only retroactively,” so it “does not protect the president from examination of future tax filings,” The Associated Press said.

What next?

A Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Blanche’s nomination is scheduled for Tuesday. His announcement “appears to clear the way” for his confirmation, Politico said, and GOP leaders hope to confirm his appointment “before the end of the week.”