‘What a 150-year-old oak teaches about Juneteenth’

Theodore R. Johnson at The Washington Post

The “white oak in my backyard is living history,” as it has “been standing for about a century and a half, dating to the end of Reconstruction,” says Theodore R. Johnson. With “trees, as with history, what is measured matters as much as how.” Juneteenth “signifies both the end of slavery and the rebirth of a nation.” But the “majority of Americans don’t celebrate,” and that “makes it harder for the idea of a second founding to take root.”

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‘Trump and Vance’s spin on the Iran agreement is completely incoherent’

Michael A. Cohen at MS NOW

The White House agreed to a “ceasefire extension that met none of its prewar objectives while providing enormous financial concessions to Tehran” and “now, the administration is desperately trying to argue otherwise,” says Michael A. Cohen. Donald Trump “got played by the Iranians, and no one is buying his spin job.” The “most telling sign that the ceasefire deal is a dud is the White House waited until Wednesday to share the text.”

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‘The culture wars in pro sports go on — for now’

Michael Brendan Dougherty at the National Review

The San Francisco Giants “recently held a Pride Night” and “two Christian players wrote Bible verses on their caps,” says Michael Brendan Dougherty. This is “far from the first controversy about Pride celebrations and American sports, and probably far from the last.” The “major sports leagues are perhaps the last relics of 20th-century American mass culture.” There are “fights over the values expressed in these arenas precisely because there is an assumption that they reflect shared American values.”

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‘Federal cap on student aid will hurt nursing workforce’

Jinhee Jeong at The Seattle Times

Some states are “already experiencing a nursing faculty shortage, and the problem will only get worse with the U.S. Department of Education’s Reimagining and Improving Student Education, or RISE, rule,” says Jinhee Jeong. This “excludes post-baccalaureate nursing degrees from the ‘professional degree’ category, and sets nursing students’ loan limits at $20,500 annually.” With the “increasing cost of graduate school, fewer nurses will be able to obtain a graduate degree in nursing, which will significantly worsen the shortage.”

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

What happened

President Donald Trump on Wednesday scuppered plans by Senate Republicans to quickly confirm his nominee for director of national intelligence, Jay Clayton. Posting on social media from the G7 summit in France, Trump said he was canceling Clayton’s confirmation hearing, hours before it was set to begin, until the Senate confirmed his former lawyer James McDonald as U.S. attorney in Manhattan. “To add a slight bit of intrigue,” Trump said, he won’t sign a reauthorization of FISA’s lapsed Section 702 spying tool until the Senate approves voter-eligibility legislation that lacks the votes to pass.

Who said what

Trump’s “extraordinary” dictates make it “more likely that his temporary pick for the intelligence job,” housing official Bill Pulte, takes over Friday, The Associated Press said. Democrats balked at reauthorizing Section 702 if Pulte became acting DNI, and senators had been “rushing to get Clayton confirmed by the end of the week, to get ahead of Pulte’s scheduled start,” The Wall Street Journal said. Pulte is an unqualified “sycophant,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said, and Trump is “undermining our ability to produce the results that he wants.”

What next?

Trump is “presumably happy for the highly partisan Pulte to have access to powerful spying tools for 210 days,” The Washington Post editorial board said in an op-ed, as Senate Republicans decide “how much humiliation they are willing to tolerate.”

What happened

Republican lawmakers in Georgia on Wednesday rejected Gov. Brian Kemp’s (R) push to redraw the state’s political maps to erase one or two Democratic congressional districts before the 2028 elections. Kemp had called the special legislative session expressly so Georgia would join other Southern states in breaking up majority-Black districts after the Supreme Court gutted the last main pillar of the Voting Rights Act.

Who said what

Wednesday’s decision “marked a setback for both Kemp and President Donald Trump,” who started the national redistricting war to improve GOP odds of keeping control of Congress, The Associated Press said. Georgia Republican legislative leaders “cited a desire for a more methodical process that included greater input from voters and a better understanding” of the legal challenges, The New York Times said. But the redistricting retreat followed “weeks of mounting pressure from Democrats, voting rights groups and even some uneasy Republicans who warned that reopening redistricting could energize Democratic voters” in the increasingly competitive state, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said.

What next?

Kemp and other Georgia Republicans vowed to push ahead with the redistricting bid. The Supreme Court “left no doubt that we would need to draw new maps,” Senate President Larry Walker III (R) said at a news conference. “The question was when.”

What happened

President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Wednesday signed a memorandum of understanding to open the Strait of Hormuz, allow Iran to sell oil on the global market and start unfreezing its assets. The deal also kicked off 60 days of negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program and “at least” $300 billion for Iran’s “reconstruction and economic development.”

The text of the 14-point agreement was read to reporters by a U.S. official, and Iran later released a similar version. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, a key mediator, said the agreement was in “force with immediate effect.”

Who said what

The truce will mostly “restore the status quo before the war,” The Associated Press said. However, the text suggests Iran might “negotiate some permanent way to exercise sovereignty” over the strait, including new shipping “fees,” after 60 days, said The New York Times. The Iranians have “emerged from a confrontation with the world’s most powerful military” intact and “with much to celebrate.”

“Everything we sought to achieve through military action, we obtained several times over through negotiation,” Iran’s lead negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on state television. The deal is “very strong,” Trump told reporters at the G7 summit in France. “Most people seem to be very happy.” Critics, including many Republicans, are “stupid and bad people,” he said. But “if I don’t like it, we’ll go back to shooting at them, dropping bombs.”

What next?

Instead of the planned signing ceremony in Geneva on Friday, Vice President JD Vance and other Trump envoys will “attend three days of negotiations with their Iranian counterparts,” The Wall Street Journal said.

While Republicans have generally been associated with deregulation since the 1970s and 1980s, President Donald Trump has overseen a stratospheric rise in deregulatory policies during his second term. The White House argues these deregulations are about eliminating the red tape of Washington, but critics are worried about Trump’s rolling back of protections.

‘Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation’ executive order

Just days after Trump took office again, the White House enacted perhaps its most consequential policy regarding deregulation. Trump’s Executive Order 14192, titled “Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation,” established a 10-to-1 rule for federal agencies; it ordered that anytime an agency enacted a “new regulation, it shall identify at least 10 existing regulations to be repealed,” according to the order. The goal of the rule is to “alleviate unnecessary regulatory burdens placed on the American people.”

The EO, beyond establishing deregulatory guidelines, “also requires more upfront disclosure of forthcoming rules,” said Forbes. The order led to a slew of actions being taken by federal agencies and also stated that all new regulations should have no cost. This is “effectively impossible to accomplish when issuing any regulation at all, as nearly every regulatory change represents some level of cost to come into compliance,” said the Economic Policy Institute.

Global warming deregulation

Trump has worked to repeal several factors of the country’s standing on climate policy, most notably a 2009 finding, which “focused on emissions from motor vehicles but later regulations of carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and methane emissions from oil and natural gas operations are based on it as well,” said the Brookings Institution. The repeal removed a “key federal tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and moving the United States toward a greener economy.”

White House officials say that “overturning the regulation will save more than $1 trillion and will help cut the price of energy and transport,” said BBC News. Environmentalists don’t seem to buy this argument. The deregulation is “going to force Americans to spend more money, around $1.4 trillion in additional fuel costs to power these less efficient and higher polluting vehicles,” Peter Zalzal from the Environmental Defense Fund told BBC News. At least 24 states are suing the Trump administration over the 2009 repeal.

Workplace safety

Throughout its first year back in office, the Trump administration aimed to “rewrite or repeal more than 60 ‘obsolete’ workplace regulations, ranging from minimum wage requirements for home healthcare workers and people with disabilities to standards governing exposure to harmful substances,” said The Associated Press. The changes also applied to workers in other high-risk industries, including those in mines, and would “limit the government’s ability to penalize employers if workers are injured or killed while engaging in inherently risky activities.”

Many labor rights organizations lambasted the move. The deregulation “indicates a readiness to compromise the health and lives of workers, especially Black and brown workers who are overrepresented in the blue-collar industries that would be impacted, in pursuit of corporate profits,” said the Center for Law and Social Policy. Despite the pushback, the government maintains the slashes will “cut regulatory burdens, spur job creation and fuel economic opportunity for American workers and businesses,” said the Department of Labor in a press release.

Commercial fishing

Trump, in another bit of climate-related deregulation, signed a proclamation to restore commercial fishing “within three of America’s marine national monuments in the Pacific Ocean, rolling back protections for areas that are considered pristine ocean ecosystems,” said USA Today. The proclamation expanded the legal commercial fishing area to “about half a million square miles in the Pacific,” with the White House saying the move is “aimed at boosting the U.S. fishing industry and lowering seafood prices for consumers.”

The deregulation has many worried about fish health, especially because Trump is also a big promoter of ocean mining. The move also came as the Trump administration shut down the Ocean Observatories Initiative, which involved the “decommissioning of a vast network of ocean floor sensors that collect data on marine ecosystems, ocean currents and global climate data,” said Truthout. The White House is ultimately “ developing the ocean for offshore oil drilling and mining — basically, as a gas station and a garbage dump,” ocean policy expert David Helvarg told the outlet.

Nuclear power

The White House also turned its crosshairs toward some of the alleged red tape around nuclear energy. The Trump administration “overhauled a set of nuclear safety directives and shared them with the companies it is charged with regulating, without making the new rules available to the public,” said NPR. These changes were implemented to “accelerate development of a new generation of nuclear reactor designs.”

Energy experts cautioned that nuclear deregulation comes with safety risks. The White House is “taking a wrecking ball to the system of nuclear safety and security regulation oversight that has kept the U.S. from having another Three Mile Island accident,” Edwin Lyman, the director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told NPR. The nuclear free rein is “yet another example of the Trump administration's push to accelerate nuclear energy, albeit through unconventional methods,” said Reason magazine.

Financial services

Trump has taken aim at the banking industry as a major arm of his deregulatory platform. With Trump’s authority, financial services regulators are “undertaking the biggest overhaul of bank supervision since the 2008 financial crisis,“ said Reuters. These regulators argue that less stringent policies are needed because banks have “become too preoccupied with processes and pursuing minor issues, and should focus on core financial risks.”

The president himself has also “personally complained that banks have hidden behind reputational risk management to deny services to conservatives, claims they deny,” said Reuters. Financial experts say rolling back these regulations has weakened the banking industry’s power to “police problems that do not inherently amount to material financial risks, but which may eventually ⁠lead to problems — such as control lapses, governance or other process issues.”

Governmental powers

All of the deregulations point to a general withering of the federal government. The White House’s “structural deregulation” approach “aims to compromise the capacity of the federal government to fulfill its core functions,” said Lawfare. Within weeks of retaking office, Trump went on a federal deregulation push “more sweeping in scale and scope than what we anticipated and far beyond what the president tried to do in his first term.”

Trump’s “structural deregulation” is “distinct from standard, ‘run-of-the-mill’ deregulation that aims to weaken or rescind certain agency rules or policies but falls short of a wholesale attack on agency capacity,” said Lawfare. Rather, Trump’s agenda includes “regulatory rollbacks that weaken health, safety, financial or labor standards.” Trump’s executive orders have also played a role, most notably Executive Order 14215, which applies the “White House regulatory review process to independent agencies,” said The Regulatory Review, a change that has not historically been implemented.

‘Tech’s private subsea cables are a threat to everyone else’

Elisabeth Braw at the Financial Times

For “decades, the world’s undersea cables have been owned by various companies,” but now U.S. “tech giants are installing their own cables — primarily for their own data traffic,” says Elisabeth Braw. This “risks creating a two-tier system on the seabed and dangerous dependencies on America.” Traditional “cable owners will continue to transport general traffic, while hyperscalers will transport their own.” It’s “like asking locals to look after a road open to all while a few rich citizens operate their own.”

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‘Pope Leo’s visit lays bare Spain’s tangled politics of faith and migration’

Santiago Zabala and Claudio Gallo at Al Jazeera

Pope Leo XIV’s visit to Spain “exposed the tension between” Spanish politics and the “Church’s own teaching on migrants, war and human dignity,” say Santiago Zabala and Claudio Gallo. Leo’s “speech to the Spanish parliament” summoned a “Catholic tradition that measured power by its treatment of the vulnerable.” In a “country now convulsed by the politics of immigration, no one could miss what kind of politics that history was meant to indict.”

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‘We are all looksmaxxers’

Renée Graham at The Boston Globe

“Famous or not, we are all, in our own ways, looksmaxxers,” says Renée Graham. The term “originated in the misogynistic bowels of social media, where young men believe that achieving their idea of physical perfection will attract more women.” But “even those who would never consider whacking their jawline or cheekbones with a metal tool still take what measures they deem necessary to look their best” such as “veneers for their teeth, hair transplants and weaves and increasingly available weight loss drugs.”

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‘What the proposed merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. means for Atlanta’

Jennifer Porst and Kate Fortmueller at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Paramount’s “proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery threatens to reverse Atlanta’s fortunes and prominent position in the media and cultural industry,” say Jennifer Porst and Kate Fortmueller. Beyond the “loss of corporate media jobs and the radical alteration of the physical spaces in Georgia,” consolidation “threatens the vibrant production culture and health of soundstages” that Atlanta “has been developing over the past 20 years.” It’s “time to pay more attention to monopolies, protect workers and challenge anti-consumer practices.”

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Earlier this week, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators delivered a letter to the National Science Foundation urging Acting Director Brian Stone to “reverse course” on a Trump administration plan to dismantle the “vital” Ocean Observatories Initiative. Comprising “over 900 unique deep-sea buoys and other instruments,” the OOI “provides insights into changing ecosystem conditions and extreme weather events,” said the group. The administration’s plan threatens the “safety of our coastal communities” and undermines the U.S.’s “ability to monitor coastal environments, marine currents and extreme weather events.”

What did the commentators say?

The National Science Foundation’s order to remove Initiative equipment from coastal waters off Alaska, North Carolina and Washington came with “no warning and no scientific review” last month, said The Associated Press. The program had been “slated to run another 15 to 20 years.” Pulling back now “reflects the further lack of understanding that the current administration has of scientific value and scientific merit,” said Craig McLean, who was the acting chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during the first Trump term, to The New York Times. Dismantling the OOI pushes the U.S. “back yet again into a rear seat in global scientific leadership.”

OOI data on “waves, currents, salinity, the soundscape for marine mammals, carbon dioxide levels, alkalinity and more” has been a “godsend to public researchers, hazard planners and private companies alike,” said The Bulwark. The loss, for example, “could well be existential” for North Carolina’s “tourism-dependent Outer Banks economy” and will be “pretty problematic for the rest of us, too.” The change is “pulling the plug on some of the most important science being done,” said retired coastal geologist and East Carolina University teacher Stanley R. Riggs to the outlet.

The plan to shutter the OOI was originally “laid out by conservative strategist the Heritage Foundation,” said Oceanographic Magazine. The group’s Project 2025 authors “explicitly targeted the network” for its contributions to climate change research. Dismantling the ocean monitoring system “marks another step” in Trump’s “rollback of science and climate initiatives,” said The Guardian. It also comes amid Trump’s “push to expand deep-sea mining and loosen fishing regulations.”

“Preserving and improving OOI” and oceanographic science overall is “critical to advancing U.S. ocean science,” said the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine in a statement. Doing so takes on additional significance as “other countries, including our competitors,” are “increasing their investments in ocean science and advancing their capacities.”

These cuts are “part of a broader retreat from environmental and climate-related science” by this White House, the AP said. Federal law requires congressional notification “at least 30 days in advance of any planned decommissioning of agency-owned facilities.” Instead, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) “learned of the dismantling through news reports.”

“The alarm bells just went off,” said Merkley to the AP. “None of us” were given advance notice.

What next?

The National Science Foundation should respect “congressional intent and legal direction,” which is “clearly to maintain the operation of this cost-effective research system,” said the bipartisan Senate group in their letter. Any subsequent efforts to alter oceanographic research should follow a “thorough evaluation of OOI, including engagement with the marine science community and other impacted stakeholders.” The foundation must “cease this expensive, destructive and, crucially, illegal action at once,” a separate group of Democrats said in a letter signed by members of the House Committees on Science, Space, and Technology and Natural Resources.

For scientists who work with the OOI’s shared data, the program’s closure is only part of the frustration. “If we want to put [the instruments] back out again, we need people who know how to do it,” said Hilary Palevsky, a marine biogeochemistry and oceanography professor at Boston College, to The Guardian. However, the team with that exclusive expertise is “being dismantled along with the infrastructure program itself.”

Data collection for the OOI is a “huge engineering challenge,” said Palevsky in a separate interview with the Times. Researchers can’t simply leave “notes for the next person who comes in. There’s a lot of expertise that has the potential to be lost.”

What happened

Federal law enforcement officials on Tuesday said they disrupted a plot to attack last weekend’s UFC cage match at the White House with explosive-laden drones and “snipers,” after an alleged plotter’s mother called local police. FBI Director Kash Patel disclosed on social media that “multiple” arrests had been made in a “multi-state operation.” Hours later, the Justice Department announced five suspects had been arrested in Ohio, Nebraska, Missouri and California.

Who said what

The mother of the Ohio suspect, 19-year-old Tycen Proper, told police that her son had been communicating online with “ex-military and Christian-based” people who “expressed ultra-religious and antigovernment sentiments,” according to an FBI affidavit. Proper allegedly said the attack on the UFC fight was meant to “jumpstart” a revolution. The charging documents “outlined a plot ambitious in scope” but “left less clear that the conspirators had the means to carry it out,” The New York Times said.

What next?

Secret Service officials are “angry” with Patel for having “prematurely posted” news of the arrests, CNN said. The Secret Service led the “ongoing” investigation “from the beginning,” Deputy Director Matthew Quinn said at a news conference. And to “maintain the integrity” of the investigation, “we chose not to leak it.”

What happened

Voters in Georgia, Alabama and Oklahoma on Tuesday picked nominees for governor and Congress. All three Senate candidates endorsed by President Donald Trump won their Republican primaries. But his pick for Georgia governor, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, lost to billionaire Rick Jackson, and Trump’s gubernatorial choice in Oklahoma placed a close second and will advance to a runoff.

In Washington, D.C., city council member Robert White Jr. won the Democratic primary to succeed retiring 18-term Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D). Democratic socialist Janeese Lewis George had a large lead in the open mayoral race as of Wednesday morning.

Who said what

In deep-red Oklahoma, Rep. Kevin Hern won the GOP primary to fill the Senate seat vacated by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. Rep. Barry Moore won Alabama’s Republican runoff to replace Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R). And in Georgia, Trump-backed Rep. Mike Collins defeated former football coach Derek Dooley in the GOP runoff to face Sen. Jon Ossoff (D) in a pivotal battleground Senate race. Ossoff had “worked quietly for months to undermine” the more moderate Dooley, The New York Times said.

But Jones’ loss was a “major upset” for Trump, Politico said, and proved that “an endless stream of cash” can “overcome the power” of his endorsement. Jackson, a health care tycoon, personally “supplied most of the $100 million-plus that his campaign has spent to persuade Republican primary voters to overlook Trump’s advice,” The Associated Press said.

What next?

Trump, who “loves to boast of the win-loss record of his endorsed candidates,” is considering endorsing both Republicans in South Carolina’s June 23 gubernatorial runoff, The Washington Post said.

President Donald Trump’s preference for personal loyalty in his subordinates may pose an insurmountable problem for a White House in search of a permanent attorney general. Nominee and acting AG Todd Blanche, the president’s onetime personal lawyer, faces a steep nomination process, as concerns grow over his alleged willingness to subvert the role of attorney general for the president’s political purposes.

Is Blanche’s nomination dead on arrival? Or does Trump still command the senatorial clout to ensure his longtime consigliere survives a bruising nomination fight?

‘Credibility on the line’

Blanche will test whether a “handful of increasingly restive Republican senators” are “prepared to defy Trump on a high-profile nominee,” said The Washington Post. As acting attorney general, Blanche “played a central role in setting up” Trump’s $1.8 billion Department of Justice weaponization reparations fund, a move that “triggered a rare revolt by Senate Republicans” before the courts froze the project entirely.

Blanche would replace former AG Pam Bondi after she was “forced out of the administration following the botched handling of the Epstein files,” said Politico. But during a closed-door congressional interview last month, Bondi told lawmakers that it was Blanche who was “responsible for the Justice Department’s handling of the files.”

In the Senate Judiciary Committee, “just one GOP rebel could stop the whole thing,” said Semafor. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina has had “no issue gumming up Trump’s nominees” in the past, said ABC News. Blanche’s odds of a successful nomination “go up immensely” if the controversial weaponization fund is truly dead, Tillis said to reporters last week, per ABC. However, he remains “undecided” at the moment.

Blanche has “told us and the world that we’re not going to do” the fund, and “I believe him,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) to reporters, per Semafor. “He’s put his credibility on the line, and that’s what I expect him to say in a hearing.” Whether Blanche remains as committed as he’s indicated “will obviously impact the story.”

‘Corruption’ and ‘competence’

There are “two stories” playing into Blanche’s nomination, said MS NOW legal analyst Andrew Weissmann to Slate. The first is a “story about corruption” and the “complicity he is willing to engage in for the president.” The second is a “question of competence” about someone who has “made a series of serious missteps.” Given “such an array of things to ask him about, the only question is whether senators will be effective in asking those questions.”

Having voted in lockstep for Bondi during her nomination, “by contrast, Republicans seem noncommittal on Blanche,” said The Independent. In a “healthier political climate,” there would be “dozens” of GOP senators who would “immediately pronounce Blanche unqualified for the job,” said The New York Times. Today, the list of senators who “may have the courage to do so is shorter, yet plenty long enough.”

‘Why Chicagoans should welcome, and care for, the Obama Presidential Center’

Chicago Tribune editorial board

There is an “absurd prejudgment” about the Obama Presidential Center that a “museum celebrating a presidency could not coexist with an institution also focused on offering art, basketball and a plethora of gathering spaces to a community that has suffered from disinvestment,” says the Chicago Tribune editorial board. The museum “will be a major new tourist attraction for Chicago” by “drawing people to a part of the city they likely would not have otherwise visited.”

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‘Trump celebrates while America capitulates’

Tom Nichols at The Atlantic

Trump “announced that the United States and Iran have reached a deal to end their war,” but the “U.S. has little to celebrate: Trump and his team, in record time, just lost a war to a militarily mediocre — but nonetheless extremely dangerous — adversary,” says Tom Nichols. Trump “failed to achieve every one of the goals he put forward for this war of choice, and now he is determined to sign, seal and deliver America’s capitulation.”

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‘Trump, Xi overlooked fentanyl in Beijing. It can't happen again.’

Rahul Gupta and Brandon P. Yoder at USA Today

Work “must start now on a key issue that received little attention in May: China’s role in the global fentanyl trade,” say Rahul Gupta and Brandon P. Yoder. The “problem is not that fentanyl was overlooked entirely.” But “based on the public readouts, Xi made only limited commitments to curb the flow of chemicals from Chinese firms that fuel illicit fentanyl production.” Americans “suffering from the opioid epidemic need the Trump administration to take immediate action.”

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‘What the Knicks’ championship means to New York’

Sean Gregory at Time

The New York Knicks’ NBA championship “means everything to New Yorkers because we play this game, hoops, everywhere,” says Sean Gregory. New Yorkers “take the lumps of a sweltering train stranded under the East River, and like these Knicks, come out on the other side.” Fans “love the Knicks, but especially these Knicks,” because “though they’re a big-market team with the second-highest payroll in the NBA, they fight like underdogs.” The Knicks “have formed a true brotherhood.”

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What happened

Hungary’s parliament on Monday approved a constitutional amendment barring prime ministers from serving more than eight years in office. The amendment, which passed 135 to 50, was “written to apply retroactively,” effectively blocking former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán from returning to power, Politico said.

Who said what

The amendment, pushed through by Prime Minister Peter Magyar’s Tisza party, also “paves the way for the dissolution” of tools created by Orbán to consolidate his power, Reuters said, including a Sovereignty Protection Office that “stigmatized opposition figures and journalists” and public trust foundations that transferred valuable “state assets” to Orbán’s political party and allies. The legislation was part of Magyar’s promised “crusade for ‘regime change’” after 16 straight years of Orbán rule, Politico said, but would also put a “significant limit on Magyar’s own power, as he vows to restore liberal democracy in Hungary.”

What next?

The bill now goes to President Tamás Sulyok, an Orbán appointee who has refused Magyar’s calls to resign. Sulyok “could attempt to block the measure,” said Ukrainian outlet United24 Media, but Tisza’s two-thirds parliamentary supermajority “has the power to override a veto.”

Host Emmanuel Macron is expected to pull out all the stops for this week’s G7 summit to prove that this gathering of the world’s richest democracies still matters in an age of strongman politics.

In one of his last big diplomatic set pieces before his presidential term winds down next year, Macron “will seek to paper over divisions” between Donald Trump and the other six leaders, said Euronews. Top of the agenda will be trying to “forge common positions on how to end the war in Ukraine”, on the resumption of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and on “the development of safer technologies”.

What did the commentators say?

The summit is being held in the alpine spa town of Évian-les-Bains. The last time the G7 met here was in June 2003, when the US had invaded Iraq despite “the strident objections of France and Germany”, said Mark Landler, France editor of The New York Times. Then-US president George W. Bush “got chilly handshakes” but he worked hard with the other leaders “to maintain the veneer of like-minded countries uniting to confront the perils of an unruly world”. Two decades later, it’s the same town but another American war in the Middle East, and any “veneer” of unity has been “stripped away”.

The G7 is “a forum created to solve geopolitical crises but it was excluded from the US-Israeli planning for war” with Iran, said Flavia Krause-Jackson, Bloomberg’s Europe editor. And it was ignored by the US in both the diplomacy for and the timing of the peace deal, which Trump announced the day before the summit, with the signing taking place after it ends.

The truth is that while, collectively, the G7 nations – France, Italy, Germany, the US, the UK, Canada and Japan – might account for 45% of global GDP, individually, few would count as one of the world’s “biggest or indeed most powerful economies”, said Jonathan Moules in the Financial Times. And Trump would clearly rather play geopolitics with Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping than waste time building consensus with leaders he views as weak.

For their part, Canada and Europe “no longer view the US as a partner on key issues such as climate change and security”, said Landler in The New York Times. And some even see America as a “threat”, given Trump’s “deepening disdain for Nato” and his repeated pursuit of Greenland. Across the group, there are “diverging opinions” on “how far to pull away from the US” but that’s certainly the direction of movement.

What next?

Expectations of what this three-day summit can achieve are “already low”, said Clea Caulcutt on Politico. “Despite all the efforts of the French presidency, the G7 format has lost much of its relevance,” an EU official told the website.

“They will talk, but I’m not sure anything will come out of it,” said a former French official. And even if it did, “any gains secured could be fleeting” with such a mercurial US president. In the end, it’s really all about keeping up appearances. As one European diplomat put it bluntly: “It will be a success if there is a family photo.”

‘One city might have just cracked the housing crisis’

Binyamin Appelbaum at The New York Times

Vancouver is the “place that has failed most spectacularly in the basic work of building enough housing,” says Binyamin Appelbaum. But Canada has “returned 10 acres in the middle of Vancouver to the Squamish, the First Nation whose ancestors lived there” and “freed from Vancouver’s rules, the Squamish are providing the city’s residents with a chunk of the housing they so desperately need.” The area “will make a modest dent in Vancouver’s housing crisis,” but is a “rebuke to the surrounding city.”

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‘Ocasio-Cortez appears to be recreating Obama’s multi-racial voter coalition’

Juan Williams at The Hill

Turnout is “key to this year’s midterm fight for control of Congress,” and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is “ringing the bell for people to rush the polls,” says Juan Williams. Ocasio-Cortez “looks to be intent on recreating the energy of the last Democrat to build a multi-racial coalition of Democratic voters,” as she “echoed Barack Obama’s 2004 appeal to Democrats.” The Democratic Party is “listening to a promising Latin beat mixing with the Black gospel thanks to Ocasio-Cortez.”

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‘America’s charitable food system is missing a key ingredient’

Daniel Leckie at Newsweek

Many households have “turned to the charitable food system for assistance,” says Daniel Leckie. But “protein is missing,” and “many families receive diets built primarily around shelf-stable carbohydrates, which are cheaper.” This “should concern us all: As nutrition insecurity deepens, it fuels a parallel crisis in chronic disease.” As the “need for charitable food support grows, the system will have to evolve if it's to provide the nutrient most essential for satiety, muscle development, metabolic stability and healthy aging.”

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‘AI schools like Alpha promise efficiency, but can’t replicate the messy process that helps kids learn’

W. Ian O’Byrne at The Conversation

AI-powered “educational programs like Alpha School, a growing private network of schools, replace much of the school day with adaptive software that adjusts lessons to each student’s pace and abilities,” says W. Ian O’Byrne, the director of the Initiative for Literacy in a Digital Age. The “pitch is personalized learning” but the “deeper you look at how children learn, the clearer it becomes that this growing brand of alternative schools might remove the discomfort that often comes with learning — taking away what matters most as kids develop.”

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

Foreign funds and ‘profoundly alarming’ allegations

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

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

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

‘Defrauded, in real time’

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

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

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

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

What happened

President Donald Trump celebrated his birthday by hosting a UFC mixed martial arts cage match on the South Lawn of the White House on Sunday night. He kicked off the spectacle by saluting a military flyover alongside UFC chief Dana White on the Blue Room balcony, and ended the night watching fireworks from inside the blood-splattered cage.

Who said what

Using the White House lawn for a “violent sporting event sponsored by light beer and cryptocurrencies was overwhelmingly unpopular, garnering the support of just 31% of Republicans and 11% of independents in a Reuters-Ipsos poll,” The Washington Post said. But the spectators, which included at least nine Cabinet secretaries, “reveled in the unabashed masculinity of the scene,” The Wall Street Journal said, “cheering on fighters as they bloodied each other’s faces.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the fights as a “gift to the American people.” But it was “streamed exclusively on Paramount+,” a subscription service whose “owners have close ties to Trump,” the Journal said.

What next?

Trump “sought to tie the fights to larger celebrations” of America’s 250th anniversary, The Associated Press said. But the event “was so geared toward himself” that fellow G7 leaders “pushed back” their summit in France so he “could attend his cage-match party and then fly to Europe” overnight.

Presiding over America’s 250th anniversary celebrations should have been an easy win for Donald Trump, said David Frum in The Atlantic. “He is a showman, after all. He loves parades and extravaganzas.” But the president’s plans for Washington DC are shaping up to be “a fiasco”. They were set to include a series of concerts on the National Mall; but almost all of the acts scheduled to headline the 4th of July weekend have pulled out, complaining that what they’d been told would be a non-partisan event had turned into something else.

An irate Trump said that “instead of having overpriced singers, who nobody wants to hear”, he’d bring the “Number One Attraction anywhere in the World”: himself.

‘Threadbare’ celebrations

Celebrations will officially kick off this Sunday, Trump’s 80th birthday, with, of all things, a series of Ultimate Fighting Championship mixed martial arts bouts in an arena at the White House. Are Americans ready for this, asked Jack Crosbie in Rolling Stone: “bloody cage fights” on the South Lawn?

Back in 2024, a friend told me that he was voting for Trump in part because he couldn’t bear the thought of Kamala Harris and the Democrats presiding over the 250th anniversary. He had a point, said Jeffrey Blehar in National Review. Just imagine. “It would have been a year-long lecture with 4 July a day of solemn reflection and recrimination.” As it is, though, we’re still not getting much of a celebration, just another Trump rally, and some cage fights; even the remarkable collection of musical “has-beens and one-hit wonders” assembled – Vanilla Ice is the headliner – has begun to fall apart. While the semiquincentennial party will still be special to Americans, “it will feel far more threadbare than it has any right to be”.

Insatiable ego

It’s a shame, said Max Burns in The Hill. America’s bicentennial, in 1976, also came at a tense time. America was “only beginning to process the traumas of the Vietnam War”. President Ford had recently faced two assassination attempts in a month. Yet the country still managed to unite to celebrate.

Trump has ruined America’s 250th birthday by making it all about himself, with his vainglorious architectural schemes, his cage fights, his plans for a new $250 note bearing his image. His insatiable ego has made it impossible for anyone who isn’t a diehard Trump fan to enjoy what should be a shared cultural moment. “Oh, well – maybe we’ll get it right for the tricentennial in 2076.”

‘San Diego’s big bet on salt water’

The Washington Post editorial board

While “cities across drought-stricken western states struggle to meet their water needs, San Diego has a surplus of the all-important resource,” says The Washington Post editorial board. This is “largely thanks to the county’s investment in desalination, which other localities would be wise to consider.” The “strategy has had plenty of critics, especially environmentalists who say desalination is not worth its hefty price tag.” But the “problem with the opposition to desalination is that there are few good alternatives.”

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‘Here in Georgia our festivals are full, but our poets are in prison — and now we feel abandoned by Europe’

Archil Kikodze at The Guardian

There are too few Georgians to “create communities and diasporas abroad,” says Archil Kikodze. Georgians “will simply dissolve, scatter across the world and disappear. Or rather, the part of us that loves thinking and is incapable of flattery will disappear.” For “those of us who remain here, literary festivals and similar cultural events are places where it is possible to breathe freely.” The “doors are open to everyone, but regime conformists have no need to meet foreign or Georgian authors.”

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‘America’s teachers can’t afford to teach’

Randi Weingarten at Time

Teachers’ salaries “have never fully reflected their passion or professionalism, but as America’s cost-of-living crisis persists, educators increasingly cannot afford even life’s basic necessities,” says Randi Weingarten. Educators “play a crucial role in our society, and the affordability crisis among America’s teachers can no longer be ignored.” The U.S. “has lionized teachers as ‘heroes’ and then turned around and underinvested in public education, chipping away at the wages that once made teaching a stable middle-class profession.”

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‘The bald eagle perfectly embodies America’s flaws’

Alexandra Tay at The Nation

The U.S. “has invested its identity in the bald eagle as a noble apex predator, but the eagle of our national imagination distorts the real bird along lines that parallel our country’s deepest flaws,” says Alexandra Tay. In “truth, the bald eagle is a larcenous opportunist that gets by on brute strength.” But Americans “have come to identify a set of virtues in the bald eagle that we claim for ourselves — when, in truth, they are virtues we both lack.”

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What happened

The Supreme Court on Thursday night rejected Alabama’s emergency request to proceed with the execution of convicted murderer Jeffery Lee using nitrogen gas, despite lower courts finding the method unconstitutionally cruel. Three conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — said they would have allowed the scheduled execution to proceed. Lee, convicted of killing two people in a pawnshop in 1998, would have been the ninth inmate killed by nitrogen hypoxia since Alabama pioneered the oxygen-starvation method in 2024.

Who said what

The Supreme Court’s decision “capped an extraordinary legal back-and-forth over the humaneness” of nitrogen hypoxia, The Associated Press said, and handed “at least a temporary, rare victory for opponents of capital punishment.” It is “highly unusual for the Supreme Court to stop an execution at the last minute,” The New York Times said, and this aberration “potentially sets the stage for a broader legal battle over the constitutionality” of the controversial execution tool.

What next?

Alabama is “prepared to do whatever is necessary” to see Lee’s “lawful sentence carried out,” state Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement. Lee’s legal team urged Gov. Kay Ivey (R) to “restore the jury’s verdict of life without parole,” which the trial judge overruled using a since-abolished override option.

What happened

President Donald Trump on Thursday named Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton to replace Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence. Trump picked Clayton after a “revolt from lawmakers” over his choice of housing official Bill Pulte as acting DNI, The New York Times said. Pulte’s appointment “derailed the congressional reauthorization of one of the government’s most powerful surveillance authorities.” The House left town earlier this week after rejecting a three-week extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which expires at midnight Friday.

Who said what

Before Pulte’s elevation, lawmakers “were close to assembling a bipartisan coalition” to reauthorize Section 702 after months of “difficult” negotiations “over surveillance reforms,” said Axios. Clayton’s nomination “garnered praise from both parties in Congress,” The Washington Post said, even though he also lacks the “extensive national security expertise required for the position by law.”

Clayton would be a “terrific DNI,” said Rep. Jim Himes (Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. But “there’s really not a negotiation” on Section 702 “until the president backs away from Bill Pulte — and that is a near-unanimous belief” in Congress. Trump told reporters he still plans to make Pulte acting DNI “for a little while” starting June 19.

What next?

The Senate Intelligence Committee scheduled a June 17 confirmation hearing for Clayton. The House is “not expected to vote again until June 23,” Politico said, “effectively ensuring” that Section 702 remains “stuck in limbo.”

As the UK reels from anti-immigration protests, its neighbours on the continent are driving through a massive overhaul of their migration and asylum rules.

From today, all 27 EU states must follow a single set of rules on border screening and asylum procedures that include expanded detention and fast-track removal powers. The new Pact on Migration and Asylum will be backed by a shared digital database, and the establishment of “return hubs” outside EU borders for failed asylum-seekers. The aim “is to end a patchwork system where someone arriving in Greece faces an entirely different legal reality than someone arriving in Germany”, said Euronews.

It’s unclear what knock-on effect these stricter, uniform EU rules will have on UK asylum claims and irregular arrivals. But some are already warning that it could make Britain more attractive to migrants – just as tensions around immigration rachet up.

What did the commentators say?

There is “growing recognition” that, to curtail “the rise of hard-right parties” across the continent, “centrists must be able to show that they are responding to their citizens’ concerns about ­increasingly uncontrolled immigration”, said The Times’ editorial board.

The EU’s new goal is to “reduce irregular arrivals, speed up procedures” and “limit the number of people who fall off the radar” within the bloc, said Politico. Member countries that “receive the most migrants” will also get more support, either in the form or cash “or the relocation of migrants from one country to another”.

But the new deportation rules “will enable what more than 80 human rights organisations call ‘ICE-style’ detection, raids, detention and offshore return practices across Europe”, said geopolitical analyst Shada Islam in The Guardian. One MEP “quite rightly calls the pact a ‘legal arsenal serving a xenophobic ideology’”. All the talk of control and deterrence hides “what the European Network Against Racism calls an ‘imagined whiteness’, a political construct that defines who naturally belongs to Europe and who remains a permanently suspect outsider”.

The impact on the UK “is likely to be uneven”, said the UK in a Changing Europe think tank. It’s possible that, if Europe is rejecting asylum claims more quickly, “some rejected applicants may attempt onward movement toward the UK”. But “stronger” border enforcement in the EU may reduce overall “movement towards the north”.

No, more illegal migrants may now “look to Britain, which has no returns deals and weaker defences”, said James Crisp, Europe editor of The Telegraph. “One such weakness is the soft border with Ireland.” We can’t harden that border without threatening the Good Friday Agreement and Brexit treaties. Keir Starmer could use his much-vaunted EU reset negotiations “to pitch for an EU-wide migrant return deal” but that would mean “agreeing to European Commission migrant quotas”, which “could be politically suicidal”.

What next?

The ambition of the EU pact “is already running into reality”, said EuroNews. Member states are not signing up to anything like their share of asylum-seeker relocations, “with Hungary and Slovakia committing to none.”

For the UK, the “more realistic” approach is to push for greater intelligence sharing and more cooperation on migration, said The Telegraph’s Crisp. Both “Northern Ireland and Ireland are struggling to adapt to the challenges of modern migration”, so if everyone wants to “preserve and protect a common travel area that has lasted more than a century, they need to find a way to ensure its safeguards are still fit for purpose”.

“Women are angry. Vexed. Livid. FUMING,” said Helen Coffey in The Independent. And women in Britain are "apparently the angriest in Europe”.

According to the latest Hologic Global Women’s Health Index, nearly one in four of us feel rage, compared with one in seven on the continent. The annual league table (based on polls of more than 76,000 women) revealed a “remarkable upsurge in fury”; rates of anger were 47% higher than the previous year, while levels in other European countries “remained fairly stable”. The UK dropped to its lowest-ever position, from 41st to 48th out of 142 countries in just a year.

This “fall from grace” of the world’s fifth-largest economy by GDP is “little short of a disgrace”. But given the medical misogyny, the crisis in women’s health and gynaecological care, significant gender pay gap, and relatively high rates of femicide, it’s “depressingly unsurprising”.

‘Lack of hope’ and profound pessimism

I might account for all that rage “all on my own”, said Deborah Ross in The Times. Only 27 of the 2,300 paintings owned by the National Gallery are by women – “you’ll be in and out in a flash”. Less than 3% of reported rapes result in charges. About a third of women have experienced sexual harassment or assault on public transport. Only 3% of venture capital goes to female founders. Male screenwriters have “sewn up all the television factual dramas”, so we are “spared a woman’s take on real events”. Care and domestic labour “still fall disproportionally on women”. Women are more likely to have their pain “dismissed by doctors”. Three women are still killed by men every week.

One in four women in England and Wales has also been raped or assaulted, said Emily Lawford in The New Statesman. Many have also been radicalised by Israel’s war in Gaza (and the government’s “apathy”), or the Jeffrey Epstein revelations.

Polling by Merlin Strategy for The New Statesman found that women aged 18 to 30 are 26 percentage points “less likely to feel positively about capitalism than young men”. They are also “much more pessimistic about the future”.

A “significant majority” feel isolated, ignored by the two main political parties, and fearful of Reform, but few seem to believe that voting Green will make a difference. And people they interact with online “reinforce their beliefs”; the femosphere both “reflects young women’s disaffection and perpetuates it, radicalising them further”. A profound “lack of hope” and pessimism has emerged over the past decade. “How could they not be angry?”

Lack of perspective on ‘how far their sex has come’

Actually, women in the West have never had it so good, wrote gender historian Zoe Strimpel in The Telegraph. They have an “overflowing cup”: the right to education, to choose whether to have children, to work, to keep our salary, and to “demand freedom from male coercion and violence”. A woman just flew past the moon, and “nobody even batted an eyelid”. Of course there are problems, and (sometimes violent) misogyny persists, but if Western women “want to make their mark”, there is very little stopping them.

These “furious young women”, with rights that women of the past “could only have dreamed of”, are channelling their anger into “false, often malign causes”, squandering their power. They seem to “lack any perspective on where they are now, and how far their sex has come”.

But “even those who are winning the game want to overthrow it”, said Jack Davey in The Critic magazine. The internet is “abuzz with the topic of ‘angry young women’”, but the ones I’ve met aren’t angry – they’re politicised. Gen Z women are “by far the most left-wing demographic in the country”; even the most privileged “want radical change”. That’s because, unlike young men’s problems, young women’s are “far less tangible”.

Most of these so-called “angry young women” are far more reasonable than the online caricatures, and “far more willing to compromise than polling would suggest”. But get used to them: angry young women are “here to stay”.

‘The myth of white Argentina still shapes the nation’

Federico Pita at Al Jazeera

While a “majority of countries acknowledged the need to address the contemporary consequences of slavery and colonialism,” Argentina’s “rejection of reparations is part of a state-sponsored tradition that has organized the nation, since its independence, based on specific racial hierarchies,” says Federico Pita. The “formation of the Argentinian state was marked by its elites’ explicit project of demographic and cultural whitening.” This “institutional architecture consolidated one of Latin America’s most enduring national narratives, that Argentina is a white and European society.”

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‘Can the World Cup transcend Donald Trump?’

Ishaan Tharoor at The New Yorker

Donald Trump “clearly sees” the 2026 FIFA World Cup as a “source of prestige to boost his flagging presidency,” says Ishaan Tharoor. Trump is “dominating the buildup to the World Cup for all the wrong reasons.” It is “difficult to look beyond the gloom surrounding this World Cup, whether because of the cringe-inducing bonhomie between Trump” and FIFA officials, the “disenchantment of foreign fans, or the frustrations of domestic supporters who are angry about exorbitant ticket prices.”

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‘High-tech seeks skilled tradesman’

Dina Powell McCormick and Mike Rowe at The Wall Street Journal

America has “claimed the lion’s share of the world’s greatest inventions,” but it was “generations of American workers who strung the telegraph wire, laid the railroad tracks and built the interstate highways and buried the fiber,” say Dina Powell McCormick and Mike Rowe. The “artificial intelligence revolution shows that America’s technological progress and skilled workforce are still inseparable.” To “maintain our technological edge, we need to build infrastructure at scale and with great speed.”

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‘The end of Pax Americana at sea’

Michael Hochberg at UnHerd

Ukrainians “have a lot to teach the United States and the Trump administration about naval warfare,” says Michael Hochberg. Unmanned naval warfare is “transforming everything we thought we knew about maritime military strategy.” How the U.S. “adapts — or fails to adapt — to this technological threat will have implications for years.” Some “assumed that only maritime powers could field the sort of navies that win wars” but “cheap autonomous craft are already falsifying that assumption.”

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Swiss voters will decide this month whether to limit the country’s population to 10 million people. Critics say the anti-immigration measure could upend Switzerland’s economy.

The June 14 referendum has been “likened to a ‘Swiss Brexit,’” said Reuters. The right-wing Swiss People’s Party asserts that migration-driven population growth is “driving up rents and crime,” as well as pushing roads and other local infrastructure “to the limits.” They are selling the measure as a “sustainability initiative.” But opponents from the business community fear the measure would “limit Switzerland’s access to skilled labor and damage relations with the European Union.”

Foreign residents now make up 28% of the population, growing Switzerland’s population from 7.3 million to 9.1 million over the last quarter-century. Some residents are feeling the squeeze. “More and more people are living in the same space," Swiss banker and parliamentarian Thomas Matter said to Reuters.

Dismantling the ‘openness that has made the country rich’

The proposed cap features “two main measures” to curb population growth, said The New Yorker. One would impose “restrictions in the areas of asylum and family reunification” if the population exceeds 9.5 million. The other would terminate the right of European Union citizens to “work, study and live” in Switzerland if the population exceeds 10 million, a target that could arrive as soon as 2033. That would “rupture” Swiss relations with the EU and represent a dramatic shift for a country known as one of the “most cosmopolitan nations in Europe.”

Business leaders say those measures would also damage the Swiss economy. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, employs “5,000 foreign workers from 85 countries” in Zurich, said Seeking Alpha. Pharmaceutical company Roche employs thousands more. The country “cannot meet the need for bright minds on its own,” Roche CEO Severin Schwan said to shareholders earlier this year. The EU is more than a source of workers for Switzerland’s businesses, said Seeking Alpha. It is also the “biggest export destination” for Swiss products, and that business could dry up if the referendum passes.

The measure would “dismantle the openness that has made the country rich,” Joseph de Weck said at The Guardian. Switzerland’s diversified economy “keeps salaries high and income inequality comparatively low.” But there is “resentment that not everyone is getting their fair share of the pie” amid “sky-high rents and increasing urbanization,” said Bloomberg. The country should “put on the brakes before things get out of hand,” said Zurich bike shop owner Roland Meyer to the outlet.

‘Voters don’t like immigrants’

The vote reflects a “broader European trend” of right-wing parties “capitalizing on anxieties surrounding immigration, housing and public services,” said The Independent. That is creating a dilemma for EU governments. Their “rich economies” need workers to create wealth, Alan Beattie said at the Financial Times, “but their voters don’t like immigrants.”

Polling shows that “supporters and opponents are neck and neck,” said SWI, a Swiss news agency, with 52% opposed to the initiative and 45% in support. Swiss voters “vote with their wallet,” retired dentist Jan Kedzior said to Bloomberg. If the measure does pass, said the outlet, lawmakers “may try to water it down later to limit any economic fallout.”

President Donald Trump is once again making baseless accusations of election fraud. This time it is in California, where right-wing Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt failed to survive this month’s primary election.

Trump treats “any Democratic election victory” as “suspicious on its face” even if it happens in “one of the most liberal cities in America,” said The New York Times. His evidence-free assertions of vote-rigging in the California race are an “unusually clear preview of how he could greet any disappointing results for his party in November.” It is “not possible” for Pratt to have lost this month’s election, the president said on Truth Social.

Trump’s efforts to take greater control of voting processes have so far fallen short, said the Times. His SAVE Act that would require voters to provide proof of U.S. citizenship failed to advance in the Senate. But as the Jan. 6, 2001 insurrection demonstrated, the president still can “sow substantial chaos” with false allegations of fraud.

‘Petty and tired strategy’

The president is using a familiar playbook, LeBron Antonio Hill said at The Sacramento Bee. Trump is attempting to “sow doubt, divide the country and rally his base with conspiracy” in order to upend elections that do not go his way. California is actually a “model for voter access and participation” with features such as “universal mail-in ballots, early voting and same-day registration” that have led to “record turnout” in elections. That achievement is “something to celebrate, not undermine.” Americans should not allow Trump’s “petty and tired strategy to become the norm.”

Trump’s California accusations have “naturally elicited eye rolls,” but the state really does have a “leaky election system” that juices Democratic votes, The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial. With the Golden State’s “sloth-like pace of counting ballots,” it can take days for results to emerge. That is why Pratt, who first appeared to be in second place in the early results, dropped to third and out of the race as more votes were counted. The delayed results are a “disservice to democracy,” but Democrats do not seem to care “as long as progressives are winning.”

‘Cried wolf too many times’

The debate makes California the “new ground zero for free and fair elections,” Marc Elias said at Democracy Docket. Trump has attacked its voting processes repeatedly over the years, claiming he would have won the famously liberal state if not for fraud. “If Jesus Christ came down and was the vote counter, I would win California, okay?” Trump said to Dr. Phil in 2024. That seems unlikely. Trump simply “cannot “bear the fact that there are people willing to stand up to him and his lies,” said Elias.

Trump’s fraud claims “may backfire on him in the fall,” Richard L. Hasen said at MS NOW. Pushback now against the president’s accusations could “inoculate the public against similar unsupported charges” in the midterm elections. “The boy has cried wolf too many times.”

What happeed

Consumer prices rose 4.2% last month from a year earlier, the highest inflation reading since April 2023, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Most of the increase was due to rising fuel prices. But the “higher energy costs are rippling through the food supply chain,” affecting beef, coffee and produce, The Washington Post said. Asked about the rising cost of living, President Donald Trump “took a surprisingly optimistic tack,” The Associated Press said. “I love the inflation,” he told reporters.

Who said what

Trump’s take was “unexpected” given that voters rank the economy “as a top concern — and have given Trump low marks on that issue” after he’d pledged in 2024 to “quickly vanquish inflation,” the AP said. “His argument now is that higher prices are solely a function of the Iran war” and that “relief is already on its way” because of a “secret mission” that he said had already moved 100 million barrels of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. “As soon as this war is over,” he told reporters, prices will drop “like a rock.”

What next?

Despite Trump’s claims, efforts to reopen the strait “have so far stalled” and oil disruptions are already baked in through 2026, Reuters said.

What happened

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

Who said what

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

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

What next?

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

Police have deployed water cannons to quell another night of violent protests in Belfast, and “civil war predictions seem to be increasing by the hour,” said John Harris in The Guardian.

Despite the family of stabbed Belfast man Stephen Ogilvie insisting that “unrest is not welcome”, online figures including Elon Musk and Tommy Robinson have fuelled anger, promoted protest, and are pushing the idea of a civil unrest – not only in Northern Ireland but also in the rest of the UK. Online fury is starting to have tangible consequences in the real world.

What did the commentators say?

This is not the first time “far-right figures” have used “incendiary language” to target ethnic minorities and migrants, said Shane Raymond in The Journal. Violent disorder in Southampton after Henry Nowak’s murder, “weeks of riots” last year in Northern Ireland, and the Stockport riots in 2024 were all triggered online. Misinformation, snowballing quickly on social media, played a large part in this week’s Belfast protests: there were even claims that the victim was a child, and had died from their wounds – that “was shared by an Irish county councillor”.

This is a “new type of civil disobedience”, said Finn McRedmond in The New Statesman. Northern Ireland’s “sectarian angst” has been replaced by a simmering resentment shared throughout England and the rest of the British Isles. It is “all connected now”: the “new atavistic rage of our time” is binding “north and south, east and west” in a “more straightforward form of ethnic conflict”.

Social media is being used to recast Britain as a “violent dystopia”, said Harris in The Guardian, and “smooth the path to power of some of the most terrifying politicians Britain has ever seen” – including “king of the civil war genre”, Nigel Farage. A vision of Britain in perpetual crisis is fed into “algorithmically curated video feeds” of fighting and riots. Politicians need to understand what people are seeing on phones “so overused that their screens are full of cracks” – “much like their owners’ understanding” of what is still a “largely stable country”.

Claiming we are on the verge of a civil war is “not only unconvincing, but potentially harmful”, said Jonathan Portes of the UK in a Changing Europe academic think tank. Throwing the term around “distracts from underlying issues”, contributing instead to a “more polarised and less constructive political environment”. Yes, “trust in institutions has declined”, but “this is neither new nor unique to the UK”. What is new is the rhetoric of crisis emerging from “fringe spaces” to “mainstream commentary”. This “exaggeration” is not “harmless” but “protest is not insurgency, and polarisation is not civil war”.

What next?

“It’s past time to moan about values and tolerance,” said The Times’ editorial board. Keir Starmer has condemned the Belfast protests but his “bemused and drifting government has done nothing to tackle the root cause”: a perception, however erroneous, that legal and illegal immigration “is out of control”.

Some suggest the solution is an end to the open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland but that’s a “keystone” underpinning the Good Friday Agreement. What’s needed is “more intensive cooperation” with Ireland, and above all, Starmer needs to recognise the “explosive dimensions of immigration” and its “exploitation” by bad actors. Failure to do so would be a “national security risk”.

“Tofu Talarico.” “Six-Gender Jimmy.” “James Talafreako.” These are just some of the nicknames allies of Texas Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton have levied against his Democrat competitor, James Talarico.

Paxton himself attacked Talarico as being “too low-T for Texas” in a campaign ad that accuses his opponent of being a “threat to everything we hold dear.” Now, by deploying these aggressively gendered lines of attack against Talarico, Republicans have positioned dueling definitions of masculinity as a key issue in one of the most combative campaigns of this election year.

‘Obviously coordinated and unusually overt’

Since winning the GOP Senate primary late last month, Paxton and Republicans have “pushed the issue of manliness and masculinity to the forefront,” said USA Today. Their push “encapsulates the broader thinking” in our “current man-o-verse of faux-tough-guy podcasters, politicians and influencers.” In this paradigm, men “are to be bold, dominating and aggressive” and “must mock other men who don’t fit their criteria.” The “explicit, sometimes vulgar emphasis on masculinity as an electoral argument” is “one highly visible way” of tracking Donald Trump’s political and cultural influence over the past decade, said NPR.

The GOP’s “anti-Talarico blitzkrieg” is both “obviously coordinated and unusually overt,” said The Atlantic. Talarico’s “aw-shucks niceness and youthful looks” is “reframed as the result of low testosterone,” while GOP attacks manifest as “99,999 dog whistles implying that he is gay.” The “obvious explanation” for the intensity of the GOP’s gendered attacks on Talarico is that “Paxton’s nomination has created certain challenges for Republicans,” given the attorney general’s many legal and personal scandals, said columnist Matt Lewis at The Hill. Conservatives must now “dirty up a squeaky clean seminarian who appears to be something of a Boy Scout.”

Any politician who can “discredit a candidate right out of the gate” by suggesting that they “don’t share the culture of the people” and aren’t “up to the task of representing a state like Texas” has ultimately won, said Southern Methodist University political science professor Cal Jillson at the CBC. The GOP’s masculinity attacks “wouldn’t necessarily work in places like California or New York, or possibly parts of the Midwest,” said Monika L. McDermott, the co-editor of the book “Masculinity in American Politics,” to the outlet.

’Rather strange vision of masculinity’

Conservative japes about Talarico’s masculinity “never come from a place of comfort or security,” said Dave Holmes at Esquire. Rather, the politicians and pundits attacking Talarico “fall short of their own definitions of masculinity, and it is killing them.” Republicans are working to “inflict a rather strange vision of masculinity on America,” said The New Republic. Theirs is “meant to look like a parade of Aryan Ubermenschen” but instead reads as a “depressingly absurd circus sideshow.”

Ironically, the “very qualities that make Talarico a ripe target today” — his relative youth, faith and vocal enthusiasm for “servant leadership” — were “once traits that many conservatives would have regarded as virtues,” said Lewis at The Hill. The “sad thing” isn’t simply that Texas conservatives are publicly questioning “whether these cultural signifiers say he’s a real man.” It’s that “it just might work.”

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

Blake Fontenay at USA Today

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

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

Alison Downham Moore at The Guardian

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

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‘How Nancy Mace self-immolated’

Matthew X. Wilson at the National Review

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

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

Jack Ohman at the San Francisco Chronicle

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

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What happened

A federal audit released Tuesday detailed waste, neglect and deadly abuse at ICE’s largest immigration detention facility, Camp East Montana in Texas. The Government Accountability Office’s report attributed most of the camp’s “significant, pervasive issues” to ICE and the Army awarding an expedited $1.3 billion contract to a company with no experience running detention facilities. The mismanagement was found to have“created unsafe conditions that contributed to detainee deaths and suffering” and “millions of wasted tax dollars,” The Associated Press said.

Who said what

ICE wasted up to $11.5 million on meals and other services before the first detainees arrived at the desert tent camp in August, the report said, and a guard lost a loaded firearm that was never found. Three detainees have died in custody, and in the case of Geraldo Lunas Campos — ruled a homicide by the medical examiner — the contractor failed to provide ICE with required use-of-force reports, and evidence “was missing or destroyed.”

What next?

“Camp East Montana needs to be shut down, the contractor investigated” and “the crime of destruction of evidence referred to law enforcement,” Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) said in a statement. A Homeland Security Department spokesperson said that “far from closing, Camp East Montana is upgrading” under a new contractor.

What happened

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

Who said what

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

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

What next?

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

What happened

Primary voters in Maine, South Carolina and Nevada on Tuesday set up key races that could determine which party controls Congress after November’s midterms. Democrats chose Maine oyster farmer and combat veteran Graham Platner to challenge Sen. Susan Collins (R). Republicans picked House candidates for Maine and Nevada seats they hope to flip, and Democrats chose Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford to take on Gov. Joe Lombardo (R).

A week after California’s primary, The Associated Press projected Tuesday night that Republican Steve Hilton beat Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer for second place in the gubernatorial race and will face Democrat Xavier Becerra in the general election.

Who said what

On a busy primary night, Platner’s “character test” was the “main event,” USA Today said. And despite recent “embarrassing revelations about his personal life,” he “cruised to victory.” In his victory speech, Platner “openly acknowledged” he has “repair work to do,” the AP said.

South Carolina’s GOP gubernatorial primary was the “latest test of President Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican electorate,” CNN said, and while his endorsement was “helpful,” it wasn’t a “slam dunk” for Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, who failed to get 50% and faces a June 23 runoff. On the other hand, Trump “appears to have ended the political career” of Reps. Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman, said Reuters, as both gave up their House seats to run for governor and fell far short.

What next?

California has come under fire for its slow vote-counting, the AP said, but the “final results for Maine could take even longer” thanks to its ranked-voting system.

Kemi Badenoch’s call to scrap equalities guidelines for police and other public bodies has opened up a new front in the culture wars amid tensions over the death of Henry Nowak and riots in Belfast sparked by a knife attack by a Sudanese asylum seeker.

The Tory leader said the landmark Equality Act 2010 does offer a valuable “shield” against discrimination. But the Public Sector Equality Duty, which places an active requirement on public bodies to demonstrate the promotion of equality, had become a legal “minefield”, she said. It should be repealed “in its entirety”.

What did the commentators say?

Comparisons have been made between Henry Nowak and George Floyd, “but a more accurate precedent” for the murder of 18-year-old student Nowak would be the case of Stephen Lawrence”, said Andrew Doyle, the author of “Free Speech and Why It Matters”, in The Washington Post. That “horrific crime led to a much-needed overhaul of police practice” characterised by institutional racism.

Today, UK policing suffers from a “different form of institutional bias, which prioritises group identity and the tenets of diversity, equity and inclusion over impartial and rigorous law enforcement”. Nowak’s death “should lead to a similarly urgent reappraisal”.

By “incubating” diversity, equality and inclusion guidelines in the public sector, Labour and the Conservatives have “presented Reform UK with an open goal”, said The Times. With the Makerfield by-election coming up on 18 June, Nigel Farage has “weaponised the Nowak case”, alleging institutional “anti-white prejudice” and a “two-tier” justice system, giving fresh impetus to Reform’s calls to scrap the Equality Act entirely.

Keir Starmer is “right” to claim that Farage is “playing politics with a tragedy” but the PM “downplays genuine concerns about politicised policing”. In this febrile political atmosphere, it is Badenoch’s “common sense” approach that “emerges from this debate with most credit”, said The Times.

Badenoch’s response “should be commended for its sensible and responsible tone”, said The Independent. While suggesting improvements to the Equality Act, her speech “was in effect a strong defence of the principles behind it” and has Farage’s “simplistic slogans on the run”.

Given the recent “attacks on transgender rights” in the UK, “it is perhaps not surprising that the equalities consensus is all but dead now even with race”, said David Maddox in The Independent. Farage’s colourful rhetoric wins headlines but he remains a “policy vacuum”, so Badenoch has “spied her opportunity” to take the lead in “a policy arms race on the right of politics to own the culture wars agenda”.

What next?

Badenoch’s intervention has turned the “once uncontroversial” public sector equality duty into the “new battleground in Britain’s culture wars”, said Aamna Mohdin in The Guardian. She linked equality guidelines to the Bank of England’s decision to replace historical figures on banknotes with images of British wildlife.

But experts in equality law say many of the examples cited by critics “misunderstand its purpose and how it operates in practice”. They stress that the duty “does not require public organisations to provide a particular service or introduce a particular policy”.

Human rights barrister Karon Monaghan said the attack on equality guidelines in the public sector fuelled the right-wing attack on anti-discrimination provisions more broadly, including the Equality Act. “Do we want a society where women can be paid unequally, where black people can be told they can’t have a job, where disabled people can’t get into work?” she said.

With Farage and now the Tories expected to make scrapping “woke” equality rules a major part of their campaign at the next general election, “we may get our answer” then, said Mohdin.

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

‘Hunter Biden is becoming a populist internet guy. I have questions.’

Zeeshan Aleem at MS NOW

Hunter Biden’s X account “marked the opening salvo of a deliberate bid to reinvent himself using the miraculous powers of the social internet,” says Zeeshan Aleem. The “reason Biden is breaking through is he’s making blunt, self-deprecating humor a significant part of his online persona.” But “there’s an aspect of his new identity that I find more troubling: his attempts at cross-partisan political populism.” Regardless of “what his intentions are, he’s exhibiting a naivete about noxious right-wing ideas.”

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‘Big Tobacco didn’t just sell cigarettes. It shaped what Americans eat.’

Leana S. Wen at The Washington Post

Junk food is “designed to be addictive,” and “much of it comes from the same people who made a living selling another highly addictive and harmful product: cigarettes,” says Leana S. Wen. In the 1980s, Big Tobacco “diversified their business holdings at a time of declining cigarette sales by aggressively expanding into the food industry.” Since “tobacco companies helped create the modern unhealthy food environment,” some of the “same approaches that proved successful in tobacco control may be worth considering.”

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‘What the latest judicial sex scandal tells us about a broken system’

Aliza Shatzman at Slate

Georgia Judge Eleanor Ross “received a ‘private reprimand’ for having sex with a law enforcement officer in chambers,” says Aliza Shatzman. But “more important are the larger issues this illustrates — an outrageous lack of transparency and accountability in the courts; the judiciary’s inability or unwillingness to “self-police”; and Congress’ refusal to conduct oversight, pass legislation or cut judiciary funding to check a lawless co-equal branch.” Judges “hold positions of public trust, yet they’re never held accountable.”

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‘Haiti is still a house on fire. Senate, extend Haitian TPS for three years.’

Thomas Wenski at the Miami Herald

The House “passed a bill that would extend TPS (Temporary Protective Status) protections for Haitians for three more years — a critical lifeline for those desperate to avoid returning to the chaos on the island nation,” says Thomas Wenski. It “would be an act of abject cruelty for the United States to send families back to such dangerous and unsafe conditions.” It is “up to the Senate now to vote ‘yes’ on extending TPS protections for Haitians.”

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What happened

Progressive Los Angeles city council member Nithya Raman placed second in the city’s mayoral primary race and will face Mayor Karen Bass in a runoff election, The Associated Press projected Monday. Republican reality TV personality Spencer Pratt was initially in second place after last week’s election but lost ground with every vote update, and Raman overtook him over the weekend. Pratt’s slide to third place is “not possible,” President Donald Trump claimed on social media. “Rigged Elections!”

Who said what

In California’s “notoriously slow vote-counting process,” Republicans typically vote in person and Democrats mail in their ballots, which get counted later, the AP said. These “fleeting Republican leads are common enough to have a name — the ‘red mirage,’” The New York Times said. And this year, with the Democratic gubernatorial field in flux until the end, the election was “primed to create even more of a red mirage” than normal.

“There has been no evidence of impropriety” in Los Angeles, a “deep-blue city” that “hasn’t had a Republican mayor in more than two decades,” The Wall Street Journal said. But by “escalating allegations of election fraud in California,” Trump and his allies are “turning to a playbook they have used previously to sow doubt about election results,” including his 2020 loss.

What next?

Trump’s baseless “Democratic scam” claims “gave an unusually clear preview of how he could greet any disappointing results for his party in November, when control of Congress is at stake,” the Times said.

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

Henry Nowak would “still be alive today” if Britain and Europe had “stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants”, said J.D. Vance on X. The “proper response – the only response – is righteous anger”.

The “most outspoken member” of an “evangelistic” administration, Vance’s ire does seem to have a “particular focus on the UK”, said The Times. He has commented on protests around abortion clinics, and told Keir Starmer that there have been “infringements on free speech” in Britain.

Vance is now using the Nowak murder to “bolster” his narrative of Britain as a “once powerful nation” “pandering to liberalism”. This could just be a reminder for American voters that the Republican Party retains an “uncompromising approach to wokeism, borders and policing” in the upcoming mid-terms. But if Vance is anointed successor to the Maga movement, comments such as these could be a sign of things to come.

What did the commentators say?

“J.D. Vance is wrong to intervene in the controversy around the murder of Henry Nowak,” said The Telegraph in an editorial. That said, “there is a good deal of hypocrisy on show”: Labour Remainers had no issue with Barack Obama “intervening” in the Brexit debate, and have had “no compunction about condemning Donald Trump over domestic US policy. “Inevitably, politicians welcome foreign interference only if it suits their arguments”, when “it would be far better if each stayed out of the other’s business”.

Vance was “surely right” to call out the “politics of self-hatred” in the British justice system, said Ameer Kotecha in The Spectator. It is “perfectly legitimate” for the US to comment publicly on what is happening in the UK. The government’s reaction, arguing he has “crossed a red line of diplomatic protocol”, has been hypocritical and “frankly pathetic”.

Britain is just as guilty. For instance, the Labour Party sent 100 activists to campaign for Kamala Harris in 2024. “Rather than engage in shameless pearl-clutching, Starmer’s government should listen to what our closest ally is telling us.”

Interventions like Vance’s are “deepening the split between the Trump administration and Britain’s Labour government”, said Dominic Green in The Wall Street Journal. The division is inherent. Where Vance sees a mission to “stabilise values and societies after decades of self-inflicted confusion”, Britain sees “Bible-bashing and race-baiting”, and hears “only atavistic calls to the wrong kind of identity politics”.

This “political opportunism” against Britain goes far deeper than the vice president, said James Schneider in The New Statesman. “The exploitation of Nowak’s death is of a piece with a clear US state strategy, one which turns Europe into a source for American rhetoric.” Vance talks about Britain “not as an equal, but as a provincial outpost of the imperial system, nominally independent and permanently available for correction”.

What next?

Vance’s stance could have implications for the next election on this side of the Atlantic, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. If Vance remains in the White House as vice president, “or even as Trump’s successor” after the US elections in 2028, it’s hard to imagine him “standing idly by” when the UK goes to the polls, likely in 2029.

At best, the reaction to the Nowak intervention shows us that “plenty of Britons still reflexively dislike being lectured by Americans”. Yet, it has also warned us “not to take our political sovereignty for granted. Sooner or later, we may need to defend it.”

Is President Trump finally tired of winning? asked Shawn McCreesh in The New York Times. Asked in a Cabinet meeting two weeks ago if he feels pressure to end the Iran war before November’s elections, Trump airily replied, “I don’t care about the midterms.” In the context of Iran, Trump’s “posture of nonchalance” is defensible. Presidents shouldn’t let politics sway their thinking on matters of war. But GOP lawmakers are starting to wonder if Trump couldn’t care less about their party’s bleak electoral prospects. Republicans trail Democrats by 7.6% in the generic ballot, dragged down by Iran, high gas prices, Trump’s slumping approval rating (38% and falling), and the belief—shared by 77% of Americans, including most Republicans—that Trump’s policies have driven up the cost of living. Without a course correction, the GOP could lose both the House and Senate in November, a prospect suddenly more likely after Trump’s endorsement lifted Ken Paxton, the scandal-drenched MAGA loyalist, over incumbent Texas Sen. John Cornyn in last week’s primary. But instead of assuring cash-strapped Americans that he feels their pain, Trump spends his days constructing “pricey pet projects,” from his gilded White House ballroom to a 250-foot triumphal arch. These don’t seem like the actions of someone who’s especially bothered “about what’s coming after the summer.”

“Don’t be fooled,” said Frank Bruni, also in the Times. Trump’s ego won’t let him confess his midterm anxieties. But beneath the “bluster and makeup, he’s sweating.” Look at how hard he’s pressured red-state legislatures to redraw their electoral maps to gain a handful of seats in November, and how he’s “haranguing congressional Republicans” to pass new voting laws to depress Democratic turnout. And the electoral landscape this fall might not be as grim for Republicans as it looks now, said Mene Ukueberuwa in The Free Press. Progressives are pushing Democrats toward nominating class warriors like Maine’s Graham Platner and Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed, potentially alienating moderate voters in what would otherwise be “easily winnable races.”

I suspect Trump is relaxed about the midterms because “there might be political upside regardless of who wins,” said Abby McCloskey in Bloomberg. If the House and Senate turn blue, Trump will gain the scapegoat that his second term has lacked. He can blame “any and all shortcomings on Congress’s new Democratic majority.” And if empowered Democrats push left-wing legislation and try to impeach him, Trump will get to replay his favorite roles: “victim of the elite” and “protector against the progressive tide.” There’s a Jan. 6–size hole in such analyses, said Joel Mathis in his Substack newsletter. Trump’s indifference to the midterms more likely flows from the fact that he has plans in place—this time fully thought-out—to ignore or reverse the results “unless they are favorable to him.”

None of this explains why Trump suddenly cares so little about his popularity, said Paul Waldman in MS.now. Perhaps he’s contemplating his post-2029 legacy. He may be comfortable with being loathed by two-thirds of the country “so long as there are gigantic buildings with his name on them.” And his newfound indifference to approval ratings may be liberating. Trump has spent his life trying “to free himself of any and all constraints”—the law, civility, political norms, international alliances—“so he can do whatever he wants.” The interests of his party, and Americans, are just more things tying him down. “And he’s going to cut those cords.”

Maine’s Graham Platner was seen as a potent populist challenger to incumbent GOP Sen. Susan Collins. But revelations about the Democrat’s Nazi-linked tattoo, charged social media posts, and past treatment of women now have his party’s leaders debating whether to pull their support. And either choice might cost them a shot at winning the Senate in November.

Democrats should “cut Platner loose,” David Frum said at The Atlantic. Republicans in 2017 ditched Alabama’s Roy Moore over revelations about his pursuit of underage girls as a thirtysomething adult. GOP leaders then had to “choose between character and power.” Now it is time for Democrats to “muster equal shrewdness and toughness.” Other observers disagree. Democratic critics must “stop submarining” Platner, Michael Tomasky said at The New Republic. The party should stick with the candidate unless there are revelations “involving murder, rape or a taste for child pornography.” That is admittedly a “low bar,” but Collins has spent her public career helping Republicans “pick the pockets of working-class people.”

‘Scandal fatigue’

The party is “betraying its own values” if it does not denounce Platner, Michael A. Cohen said at MS NOW. The evidence suggests Platner is a “moral and political train wreck” with an “unceasing drumbeat of scandals about him.” The latest revelations include reporting that he has been “volatile, unfaithful and physically threatening” to the women in his life. Supporting Platner “opens up Democrats to charges of hypocrisy” in their criticisms of Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton and risks “losing both the Maine Senate race and their souls.”

Democrats’ chances of retaking the Senate now depend on a “baggage-laden candidate with clear character issues and a sketchy past,” Nia-Malika Henderson said at Bloomberg. “Scandal fatigue” could dampen enthusiasm for Platner, but America’s “ultrapolarized” politics could also “work the other way, hardening support for Platner.” It is a dynamic that has worked for GOP candidates like President Donald Trump and Paxton, who have both succeeded “despite a raft of scandals.” After years of criticizing Trump’s transgressions, “Democratic voters face a character test of their own.”

‘Fed up with rolling revelations’

“Unfortunately for Graham Platner, he needs women on his side to win,” Steve Collins said at the Portland Press Herald. Independent and Democratic women voters in Maine are “increasingly fed up with rolling revelations” about the candidate’s past, and social media is “full of Maine women who say they’re no longer buying what Platner’s selling.” Maine Gov. Janet Mills, who suspended her campaign in April, could pick up votes in Tuesday’s primary as a result.

Critics “at the national level misunderstand” his populist campaign, Platner said Friday to supporters, per Politico. “They think this is a race about me, but it isn’t.” Platner’s supporters remain similarly “unfazed” by the revelations, said The Wall Street Journal. The scandals demonstrate “that he is a real person,” Maine voter Amanda Nicholson said to the outlet.

‘Flu vaccines should not be this hard’

Katherine J. Wu at The Atlantic

In a “typical year, the process of bringing a new seasonal flu shot to market is one of the United States’ most predictable vaccine routines,” but this is “not a typical year,” says Katherine J. Wu. The job would normally “fall to the CDC’s expert vaccine advisory panel, known as ACIP, which guides the agency’s recommendations,” but “currently, no functional ACIP exists to guide this autumn’s immunization campaigns.” This “could further undermine ACIP’s role as a key scientific check on government policy.”

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‘How women are shaping Minnesota’s cannabis industry’

Clemon Dabney at The Minnesota Star Tribune

Cannabis legalization “created a market in Minnesota. Women are helping create its culture,” says Clemon Dabney. While women are “still underrepresented in cannabis ownership,” the “women who are launching dispensaries across the state” are “doing far more than opening stores.” These women are “claiming space in an industry where they have too often been overlooked, underestimated or asked whether a man is really behind the business.” They “are setting the tone for what this market becomes.”

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‘Is Britain getting a new prime minister?’

Eliot Wilson at The Hill

In “America, changes of leaders are predictable,” but “in Britain, it is more nuanced,” says Eliot Wilson. It is “impossible to predict whether Sir Keir Starmer will still be prime minister at the end of this year, this month or perhaps even this week.” There is “no bar to a party in office changing its leader, who then becomes prime minister.” Will the United Kingdom “have a new prime minister by autumn? Yes. Or possibly no.”

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‘AI leaders are cosplaying James Bond villains’

Gautam Mukunda at Bloomberg

“Shark Tank impresario Kevin O’Leary wanted to build data centers on 40,000 acres in rural Box Elder County, Utah,” the “latest battle in the war that might determine the future of artificial intelligence,” says Gautum Mukunda. AI “might unleash miracles of productivity, cure cancer or make energy too cheap to meter,” but it “can’t do any of those things — or at least it can’t do them in the United States — if the public rejects the technology.”

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What happened

President Donald Trump abruptly ended an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” broadcast Sunday after Kristen Welker challenged his assertions that last week’s California primaries and the 2020 election were “dirty” and “rigged.” During the interview, taped at a farm in Wisconsin, Trump “made a series of false, misleading or exaggerated comments,” NBC News said, including that he “didn’t promise” no new conflicts or “guarantee no war.”

Who said what

Trump “repeatedly pledged not to involve the United States in war,” The New York Times said, including in his 2024 victory speech, when he said, “I’m not going to start a war.” During Welker’s interview, Trump “appeared to become agitated” when she asked about the purportedly defunct $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, The Washington Post said. And when she pressed Trump for evidence that there was cheating in California’s notoriously slow election count, he raised his voice, called Welker “either stupid or crooked” and said the “fake, dirty press” knows about the “rigged” elections. “Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough,” Trump said. “Thank you, darling. Have a good time.”

What next?

Welker said that Trump later agreed that heavy rain on the metal barn roof had caused audio complications and agreed to sit down for another interview at an undisclosed time.

President Donald Trump’s executive order that voluntarily allows artificial intelligence companies to receive more government oversight marks a shift in the White House’s attitude about AI. It seems Trump, Republicans and even some Democrats are changing their tune.

What did the commentators say?

The order signed by Trump is “relatively toothless” because most major AI companies “already had agreements in place that allowed the government to preemptively test their models for safety risks,” said The Atlantic. But it is also “meaningful in that the president is doing something — anything — about AI” given that when Trump retook office, he largely “signaled to tech companies that he would stay out of the way.”

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett previously said the administration was considering federal guidelines that would “require AI models to go through an evaluation process similar to that used by the Food and Drug Administration,” said The Hill. This idea seemed to fizzle out as AI advocates became “concerned that an evaluation process from the White House could strangle development.”

The order that was signed “nonetheless represents a sea change in Washington’s willingness to tighten oversight of the technology,” said Politico. For the “first time it’s on a piece of paper, a structure and a process,” former Trump adviser Steve Bannon told the outlet. Some argue that Democratic politicians were already doing the same thing. “This executive order is implementing a voluntary regime to do pre-deployment evaluations of models for security risks,” Saif Khan, a tech adviser under former President Joe Biden, told Politico. “That is the thing that the Biden administration was doing.”

What next?

It is unclear where the Trump administration may go next with AI. The “entire chaotic saga — a wishy-washy White House, confused statements from populist and tech-elite Trump whisperers — is only the latest in a long string of strange, often contradictory AI policy positions,” said The Atlantic. There is a chance Trump could change his mind again, as his policies on the matter have been “inconsistent, if not incoherent, almost since the day he retook office.”

While Trump says he is focused on AI security, his White House has also slashed major portions of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA), the “government agency that aims to protect the nation against hackers,” said The Atlantic. The budget cuts mean CISA is “heading into the AI era with shrinking resources and a diminished role,” said Axios, which could pave the way for future vulnerabilities. Many fear the agency “no longer has the capacity to help utilities, banks and other critical infrastructure operators prepare for a coming wave of AI-fueled cyberattacks.”

Others believe that both sides of the aisle have it wrong. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wants to ban data centers and is currently “calling for the government to own 50% of AI companies” — and it “would be easier to dismiss his ideas if they weren’t partially built on bipartisan consensus,” said The Washington Post editorial board. But U.S. tech policy works, and the “U.S. is a wealthy country because it doesn’t engage in the kind of government ownership schemes that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are fond of.”

How Kemal Atatürk – founder of modern Turkey, the man who transformed the decrepit Ottoman monarchy into a modern secular republic – must be “turning in his grave”, said Jonas Roth in Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Zurich).

Last week, Turkish riot police stormed the headquarters of the CHP, the social democratic party Atatürk set up in 1923, to flush out the party’s current leader, Özgür Özel. For three days, Özel and a group of party officials had barricaded themselves inside the building in protest at a highly controversial court ruling that had just ordered Özel to stand down, claiming there had been voting irregularities at the CHP party congress that elected him leader in 2023.

Using batons, tear gas and rubber bullets, the police rushed in to evict him; Özel emerged to address the cheering crowd outside and then led a march to the parliament building.

‘No longer unbeatable’

It isn’t hard to detect the hand of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan behind all this. For 13 years, from 2010 to 2023, the CHP under its former leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroglu, had proved an ineffectual opposition, losing every single election, local and national, to Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP). But under Özel, the CHP has been transformed into a political force capable of ending Erdogan’s 23-year rule.

So the fact that the judiciary, which Erdogan has made his tool, should now have ordered Özel to be replaced by the perennial loser Kılıçdaroglu, speaks for itself. The crackdown on the CHP began in earnest after it inflicted a “historic defeat” on the AKP in local elections in 2024, said Ecehan Balta in Xekinima (Athens). Holding Erdogan responsible for the economic crisis that had seen inflation rise above 80%, voters turned en masse to Özel’s party, which won 35 provinces to the AKP’s 24. This was a huge blow to the president, a sign that his political machine, for all its grip on state institutions and the media, was “no longer unbeatable”.

And, since then, hundreds of CHP officials have been arrested, notably Ekrem Imamoglu, the popular mayor of Istanbul, who was detained last March on the same day that he was chosen as his party’s next presidential candidate.

Hope not lost

What happened to Imamoglu was a travesty, said Raphael Geiger in Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich): he faces up to 2,352 years in jail, if convicted of corruption and espionage. But the dethroning of Özel is even worse. It “eliminates everything that remains of Turkish democracy”, effectively snuffing out “the faint hope” of a different government being elected.

Indeed Turkey, now lacking a genuine opposition, is closer than ever to “one-man rule”, said The Economist. Özel could try and found a new party, but without the “powerful brand” of the CHP behind him, he is unlikely to succeed. In any case, Erdogan is expected to call a snap election before the next scheduled vote in May 2028. In doing so, he would be exploiting a loophole which allows him to stand again if he doesn’t fully complete his current presidential term, which the constitution mandates should otherwise be his last.

All hope is not lost, though, said Dogan Ertugrul on Turkish Minute. Imprisoning your main challenger and sowing chaos in the ranks of their party is a sign not of strength, but of insecurity.

And these risky political steps could well backfire. Look at the Gen Z-led protests that have erupted across the country since Imamoglu’s arrest. They are still going strong and have Erdogan worried, said Giorgio Brizio in La Repubblica (Rome). On the same day police raided the CHP’s offices in Ankara, thousands of students and staff staged a demonstration at Bilgi University in Istanbul, a bastion of liberal thought that the president had just closed down. In scenes “unthinkable” until a few years ago, police burst onto the campus, targeting protesters with batons and pepper spray. Many of the students were arrested; but they stood firm, and soon after Erdogan issued a decree to reopen the university. The students’ victory is clear proof that Erdogan is not invincible.

Young people in Britain today risk becoming a “lost generation” owing to job opportunities shrinking, “not growing”, a landmark report warned last week.

Compiled by the former Labour minister Alan Milburn, the report said that almost a million 16- to 24-year-olds (equivalent to one in eight young people) are now “Neets” – not in education, employment or training.

He called this a “catastrophic failure” and said that, without urgent action, the proportion would reach one in six within five years.

‘Getting stickier’

In his 232-page report, Milburn said the rise in Neets could be attributed to factors including rising employment costs (such as increases to the minimum wage); a decline in Saturday jobs; and a 70% increase over a decade in those who are Neet because of ill health, nearly half of whom cite mental health conditions. Ministers said the review had laid bare “the scale of the challenge [...] we need to confront”.

Keir Starmer is often criticised for commissioning “endless reports”, rather than “forging ahead with policies”, said the Financial Times. But Milburn’s review serves a vital purpose, and “deserves to be heeded”.

Britain’s “Neets problem” isn’t new: the proportion has been at 10% or above for 25 years. But it’s “getting stickier”. The UK has three times as many Neets per capita than the Netherlands, and more than any EU country except Romania. Six in ten Neets today have never had a job, up from four in ten in 2005, and 15% have degrees. With data showing that nearly half of young Neets on benefits will not be working 15 years later, this is more than an economic problem; it’s a “moral” issue.

‘Transformative’ implications

“Milburn’s charge list is long,” said The Daily Telegraph. He criticises an education system that fails to prepare students for work, and a welfare system that spends £25 on benefits for the young for every £1 spent on getting them into work. Young people themselves, however, are rightly absolved of blame, said The Independent. Milburn stresses that 84% want to work, but are being let down by a failing system.

Milburn’s report provides “an excoriating overview” of this failing system, said Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. It identifies huge structural problems – from the 1.6 million “first-rung jobs” that have vanished in the past 20 years, to a more than 40% fall in the number of young people starting apprenticeships since 2016. It gives a voice to those who spend their days firing off job applications to firms that use faceless AI systems to screen CVs, and that don’t even bother to notify rejected candidates. And it outlines how the pandemic led to a surge in truancy levels (which are closely linked to youngsters becoming Neets), and left a generation utterly ill-equipped for the jobs market.

Crucially, it also details how the welfare boom is exacerbating this crisis, said Fraser Nelson in The Times. With the right political will, the report could trigger a total rewiring of the benefits system – continuing the “transformative” tradition of reviews such as the 1942 Beveridge Report, which laid the foundations for the welfare state.

‘Moral crusade’

Milburn deserves credit for dragging welfare back onto the agenda, said Lana Hempsall in The Spectator. But much-needed reform hasn’t been stymied by a prior lack of analysis, but rather by the unwillingness of MPs to grasp the nettle. It’s only a year since the government proposed some “relatively minor” tweaks to the welfare system, only to be forced into a climbdown by its own backbenchers.

Milburn’s “mammoth” report gives the government cover to have another crack at overhauling the system, said Josh Glancy in The Sunday Times. Rooted in data and humanised by the voices of real people, it cleverly frames welfare reform as a “moral crusade” through which Labour can create a better future for the young. Admittedly, it will still be hard to persuade Labour MPs to make cuts, and the Treasury to fund the cost of moving from one system to another. But if Labour doesn’t seize this opportunity to mend a broken system, the party will “deserve to watch as Nigel Farage or the Tories” cut the welfare bill “their way”.

Milburn is due to publish his recommendations in the autumn. As part of a radical restructuring, he is said to be considering the case for an “entirely separate welfare system for young people who have never worked”, reports the FT, with a focus on getting them into jobs. Pat McFadden, the Work and Pensions Secretary, is due to join Milburn on a fact-finding trip to the Netherlands next week. The country has similar levels of mental ill health in young people as Britain does, but has much more success at keeping them in work or education.

As Pride Month begins in the U.S., numerous Republican governors have “bestowed alternative titles” for Pride Month that “both supporters and opponents view as counterprogramming,” said The Associated Press. But this is just one of several ways the current Republican Party’s stance on LGBTQ+ rights has revealed itself during President Donald Trump’s time in office.

What did the commentators say?

The GOP governors of both Indiana and Tennessee “rebranded June as Nuclear Family Month to celebrate units made up of ‘one husband, one wife and any biological, adopted or fostered children,’” said the AP. Alabama deemed June Strong Families Month, whose “proclamation says fathers are ‘the head of the household.’” And Utah and Arkansas christened June as Fidelity Month, which “emphasizes fidelity to faith, country and family.” The “contest over the month of June reflects decades-long culture war questions, exacerbated by partisan polarization and a sense that red and blue states increasingly represent different values,” said Deseret News.

The current White House has also attempted to “enact a nationwide ban on transgender girls participating in girls’ sports,” expel transgender service members from the military and prevent “transgender Americans from having their gender on their passport,” said Roll Call. These efforts are a result of “rank animus against transgender people,” Jessica Clarke, a law professor at the University of Southern California, told the outlet. The “legislation dovetails with administration efforts and state laws intended to curb the rights of transgender Americans,” said Roll Call.

While both of Trump’s presidencies have been defined by anti-LGTBQ+ stances, his second term efforts are “more far-reaching and extreme than those he put in place during his first term,” said The 19th. Civil rights groups pushed back against Trump’s anti-trans executive orders during his first four years in office, but the courts are “not as friendly as they once were,” Mike Zamore, the national director of policy and governmental affairs at the American Civil Liberties Union, told the outlet. These groups shouldn’t assume that a court case “that was successful in the first Trump administration would necessarily prevail this go around.”

What next?

The Republican ramp-up against the LGBTQ+ movement is likely here to stay, as “every Democratic president since Bill Clinton in 1999 has signed a Pride proclamation each year — and no Republican president has,” said the AP. There also appear to be changing public views on whether same-sex marriage should be legal, which is “largely because more Republicans oppose them” now than before Trump retook office.

Approval of “same-sex marriage, moral acceptance of gay and lesbian relations and endorsement of gender changes are all down from peaks reached in the early 2020s,” according to a recent Gallup survey. The poll of 1,001 adults found that 65% of Americans support same-sex marriage. While this still represents a majority of Americans, it is also “down six percentage points from the peak in 2022 and 2023.”

Many people also appear to be going back on their acceptance of the transgender community, according to Gallup’s results. The “share of Americans who consider changing one's gender morally acceptable has declined eight points over the past five years, to 38%,” said Gallup.

President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) has no known national security experience. But the new interim intelligence director, Bill Pulte, does have a history of going after Trump’s rivals. And this combination is raising alarms in Congress.

The 38-year-old Pulte is an “unusual selection” to be the interim intelligence chief following Tulsi Gabbard’s resignation, said The Hill. Before leading the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) under Trump, he owned a construction company and private equity firm and has “no high-level national security experience.”

Pulte at FHFA “proved his loyalty to the president by combing through the mortgages of Trump’s enemies,” said Talking Points Memo. His inquiries led to federal mortgage-fraud cases against New York Attorney General Letitia James and Fed Governor Lisa Cook.

Pulte has “deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America,” Trump said, per The Hill. But the president’s GOP allies are concerned. “We don’t need a weaponized DNI,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said to reporters, per Axios.

‘Vocal attack dog’

“Everybody hates Bill Pulte,” said The New Republic. That may not be entirely correct — Trump is clearly a fan — but Pulte has a knack for inspiring bipartisan revulsion even within Trump’s own cabinet. At a 2025 event involving White House officials, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Pulte he was “going to kick his ass,” according to Bessent’s testimony in a Senate hearing this week, per CBS News.

Pulte’s willingness to scrap with Trump’s enemies both online and through official channels has earned him a reputation as a “vocal attack dog,” said The Washington Times. But his dearth of national security credentials may be a challenge. The law that created DNI says the director “shall have extensive national security experience.”

The office was created after 9/11 to ensure the coordination of the nation’s various intelligence agencies. But Pulte’s history of fractiousness may not make him a “promising person” to get “top officials to work together,” David A. Graham said at The Atlantic.

‘Senate GOP rebellion’

Trump’s announcement of Pulte as his choice prompted pushback from Democrats. Pulte’s willingness to investigate the president’s enemies demonstrates he “can’t be entrusted to protect our national security,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), per Roll Call.

The pick has also prompted a “Senate GOP rebellion,” said Axios. Pushback is coming from Thune, along with Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas). So Pulte might not have the support to get Senate confirmation for the long term.

Senate Democrats may tank efforts to “renew a powerful surveillance program” over the Pulte pick, said The Guardian. Reapproval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was already facing obstacles but has an even more difficult path forward, said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) to NPR, as long as “someone with no intelligence background” and a “record of misusing private information” is in the running to lead DNI.

‘Why gambling won’t ruin sports’

David Bockino at The Boston Globe

Even the “most vocal critics of widespread legalization concede that gambling has always been part of American sports,” says David Bockino. Gambling “wasn’t an inconvenient intrusion upon the nascent American sports industry but rather an essential catalyst — perhaps the essential catalyst — for nearly every major American sport.” This “revelation also suggests that our current sports betting mania isn’t the result of a national attitudinal shift.” People “have always wanted to bet on stuff. Especially young people.”

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‘Texas is America Inc’s new center of gravity’

The Economist

Texas is “establishing itself as America Inc’s new center of gravity,” as “no state receives more business investment or is adding more people to its population,” says The Economist. The “state’s appeal to yuppies is also growing,” and it “seems there is no part of America with which Texas is not competing.” Texas’ cultural “ascendancy” is “making it easier for firms to convince workers to move there,” though “cultivating homegrown talent is a big part of Texas’s economic plan.”

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‘It’s time the US got serious about Canada’

Richard M. Sanders at Newsweek

One of the “more bizarre features of Donald Trump’s second term in office has been the enormous effort he and his senior officials have put into damaging relations with Canada,” says Richard M. Sanders. The U.S. “has some genuine trade issues with Canada,” but the “administration seems locked into a policy of taking shots.” What “seems clear is that diplomacy by insult and provocation, which has characterized the administration’s approach, has only led to suspicion and hostility.”

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‘What a week in the hospital showed me about our broken healthcare system’

Gregg Gonsalves at The Nation

A successful surgery happened “thanks to the miracles of modern medicine,” but it “was no thanks to modern American healthcare,” which is “fundamentally broken,” says Gregg Gonsalves. The “system is sclerotic, and trying to get appointments, even for things I have been told are urgent, is a challenge.” This is a “cry for help that goes unheard and unaddressed year after year.” The “rot deepens in the day-to-day foundation of American medicine, at the level of the physician-patient interface.”

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