‘After honeymooners crash in a helicopter, tourist choppers give us pause’

Chicago Tribune editorial board

Helicopters are often “vital tools,” and “there are many diligent, safety-conscious operators of helicopters that serve tourists,” says the Chicago Tribune editorial board. But recent crashes are “enough to give us pause about getting on one, especially if there is another choice of transportation to a popular destination.” It’s a “timely reminder there are lots of ways in these final weeks of summer of making it to a secluded vacation place: by boat, car, minibus, train or even a sturdier plane.”

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‘Death stalks the Irish pub’

Jude Webber at the Financial Times

Death is “revered in Ireland more than it is feared — unless it’s the pub that’s dying,” says Jude Webber. From a “peak of more than 8,600 in 2005, the number of public houses has shrunk by a quarter in two decades,” and some fear a “terminal decline of one of Ireland’s best-loved institutions, especially in rural areas.” The “slow extinction of the Irish pub itself, with its cosy snugs, live music and warm welcome, is cause for increasing alarm.”

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‘Humanitarianism is not collapsing. It is being traded and compromised.’

Amitabh Behar at Al Jazeera

As we “mark World Humanitarian Day, we must reflect on the state of humanitarianism,” says Amitabh Behar. Humanitarianism “has always been framed upon the collective assumption that there are lines that should never be crossed.” For a “generation, we had binding international agreements that treated the act of protecting a child in need of food or a medic treating the sick and wounded as a fundamental legal right,” but “today, the consensus and meaning behind these laws are gone.”

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‘A fake poll made real news. What does that say about political polling?’

Ren LaForme, Angela Fu, Amaris Castillo and Phoenix Chapital at the Poynter Institute

Polling “has always presented journalists with a tricky proposition,” say Ren LaForme, Angela Fu, Amaris Castillo and Phoenix Chapital. There is “something irresistible about them,” but “polls are estimates, not predictions.” Their “usefulness depends heavily on who conducted them, who they surveyed and how.” As a fake poll by “Median Strategies demonstrated, the appearance of a methodology, a sample size and a margin of error can make invented numbers look a lot like real ones.”

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The Federal Communications Commission this month voted to repeal its 39% cap that limits how much of the national television market a single owner can legally own. In doing so, the FCC has supercharged an ongoing debate over media consolidation and monopolies in the Trump era.

Moving forward, the FCC said in a press release, station purchases will be adjudicated “with a granular, case-by-case review.” But concerns over increased monopolization and questions about the commission's authority in this case have some critics crying foul — and predicting a rocky legal road for FCC Chair Brendan Carr.

‘Shift from local to national ownership’

The FCC claims that its 39% ownership cap had “become outdated” and “hindered broadcasters’ ability to compete for viewers and advertising dollars” against digital services that “face no comparable restrictions,” said The Wall Street Journal. Removing the cap will “foster a competitive media market, enhance localism and promote investment in trusted sources,” said the FCC in its release.

But the change is a “big win” for media companies “aligned with President Donald Trump and the Republican Party,” said CNN. If allowed to stand, removing the cap means “big station group owners” will be able to “buy up more TV stations, furthering a shift from local to national ownership.” Companies including “Nexstar, Fox, CBS parent Paramount and E.W. Scripps” already sit “at or near the 39% ownership limit,” said the Journal. “Industry analysts” have similarly “identified Sinclair and Gray Media as potential acquirers” should the restrictions remain loosened.

Carr’s “rationale” for the change is to “balance the power between local broadcasters and networks,” said Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democrat and sole “no” vote on removing the rule cap, per NPR. In practice, the FCC is “putting its thumb on the scale” on behalf of “content that this administration likes and against content that it dislikes.” The rule change comes as ABC and Disney have sued the FCC for allegedly violating their First Amendment rights as part of a broader ongoing fight between the broadcaster and the regulator.

‘Serious concerns’

The FCC’s new rule is “already facing legal challenges,” with experts warning of a “real chance the agency loses in court,” said Axios. Some observers, including a surprising array of conservative lawmakers, are skeptical of the FCC’s legal ability to make the changes in the first place.

Despite being a Republican who supports “deregulation and the Trump administration,” my “ultimate loyalty rests with the Constitution, which gives certain prerogatives to Congress,” said former GOP Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who helped set the 39% cap in 2004, at Daily Wire. Chair Carr “cannot defy or modify laws enacted by Congress” and should instead “ask Congress to pass a law giving him authority to do that.” Said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in a statement to Politico, “I’ve raised serious concerns that the commission lacks the authority to carry that out without congressional authorization.”

The 39% ownership cap was enacted by Congress to “protect localism, viewpoint diversity and consumer choice,” said Hunter Wilson, the spokesperson for the American Television Alliance lobbying group, to Variety. The FCC has “ignored Congressional intent” and “opened the door to unchecked ‘Big Broadcast’ consolidation that will drive up costs for viewers and reduce local news programming.”

‘I grew up watching Hayden Panettiere. Her death is a reckoning.’

Sara Pequeño at USA Today

The “late-night Aug. 16 notification that Hayden Panettiere died took my breath away,” says Sara Pequeño. Every “so often, a celebrity’s death will feel like an exposed nerve,” and “millennials and Gen Z are still getting used to that feeling.” In the “last years of her life, Panettiere was talking about serious topics that many young women can empathize with.” Hers is “not simply a cautionary tale — it is also a story about the importance of speaking your truth.”

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‘By disparaging 2020 protests as “Woke 1,” liberals are following the right wing’s lead’

Andre Gee at The Guardian

This month has “brought us a referendum on ‘Woke 1’ — a term that reductively brands 2020’s social justice movement — as prominent liberal voices reflect on that time period with disappointing hindsight,” says Andre Gee. “Woke” has “long shifted from Black America’s prideful adjective to a mocking noun that has been weaponized to ridicule Black liberation movements.” Progressive liberals “now adopting that dismissive language while placing confines on the movement for Black lives is damning.”

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‘You cannot rebuild a country with people who are shattered’

Lilia Yapparova at The Boston Globe

“Stigma around mental health care still runs deep in Ukraine,” says Lilia Yapparova. This happens “even though the scale of trauma in Ukraine is extraordinary.” If the nation’s “mental health crisis goes untreated, overlooked grief and loss could become indelible parts of Ukraine’s social fabric, with cascading effects on future generations.” It is “not only soldiers who continue to live in a nightmare of ongoing trauma,” but there is “no systematic, streamlined approach to mental health support in Ukraine.”

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‘Pilots and flight attendants face a real cancer risk. Frequent fliers shouldn’t panic.’

Vishal R. Patel, Christopher M. Worsham and Anupam Jena at Time

There’s a “particular unease that comes from seeing that an ordinary part of life has been linked to cancer,” as “pilots and flight attendants die of radiation-related cancers at higher rates than workers in over 500 occupations,” say Vishal R. Patel, Christopher M. Worsham and Anupam Jena. The “next time a flight attendant hands you a coffee at 30,000 feet, there’s no need to fret over the tiny radiation dose,” but “do consider the doses they take on, day after day.”

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What happened

A federal judge in Boston on Tuesday lifted his order blocking the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status for about 5,000 Ethiopians living in the U.S. The Supreme Court in June “curtailed the ability of judges” to review the administration’s efforts to “end TPS designations ⁠for 13 countries,” Reuters said, and U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy’s new order “lifted the last judicial block.”

Who said what

“All TPS terminations are in effect!” Homeland Security Department General Counsel James Percival said on social media after the ruling. The “crisis in Ethiopia is still ongoing,” said Diana Konaté at African Communities Together, one of the plaintiffs, “and this decision puts the lives of thousands” of TPS holders “at severe risk.”

Between Haitians, Somalis, Venezuelans and other groups, Trump’s DHS has moved to end TPS “for an estimated million-plus” people, “straining industries” like home care, nursing care and construction, Axios said. TPS expiration dates are also “looming for thousands of others,” including “some 170,000 people from El Salvador and 101,000 from Ukraine.”

What next?

Murphy ruled that the Supreme Court had rendered most of the plaintiffs’ objections moot, but he allowed them to “continue to litigate over whether ⁠DHS’s action ​was motivated by racial or national origin animus,” Reuters said.

What happened

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

Who said what

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

What next?

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

What happened

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

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

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

Who said what

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

What next?

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

Following his reforms in Manchester, Andy Burnham “enters No. 10 understanding what drives the crisis” of rough sleeping, said Jennifer Williams in the Financial Times.

To fund his A Bed Every Night scheme – 600 new beds across shelters in each of Greater Manchester’s 10 boroughs, open 365 days a year – he donated 15% of his own salary, and used the media to draw attention to the issue. And in the region, rough sleeping numbers are 25% below where they were in 2017.

But crucially “in the almost-decade Burnham was mayor he never ended rough sleeping in Greater Manchester”, said email newspaper The Mill. And that’s why there remains a healthy dose of scepticism about his pledge that every person sleeping on England’s streets is to be offered somewhere to stay this winter. “Ever an optimist” it could be that Burnham “feels that with the power afforded to him as prime minister he can finally make good on the promise”, said The Mill. But regardless, “it is still an incredibly bold one to make”.

What did the commentators say?

He may have failed to meet the Manchester target, said the FT, but he “galvanised a fragmented local system to focus on the crisis, while experimenting with a series of local policies, some of them successful”. But a growing group of long-term rough sleepers are now emerging from the asylum system.

This policy raises “all sorts of political questions” when it comes to homelessness, said Britain editor Anoosh Chakelian in The New Statesman. Primarily, “regarding ‘no recourse to public funds’”, which bans migrants without settled status claiming most benefits. This condition is a “significant cause of hardship and rough sleeping”, and is only getting worse through the “closure of asylum hotels” which is “contributing to more visible destitution on Britain’s streets”.

Burnham’s pledge to end rough sleeping by Christmas echoes the success of the Everyone In scheme undertaken during the Covid pandemic, said the BBC, which saw “thousands of rough sleepers housed in hotels and temporary accommodation”. In total, around “37,000 people were helped by that scheme”. But currently, according to government data, an estimated 4,793 people were sleeping rough on a single night in autumn last year, which is a 96% increase since 2021.

“The Christmas pledge is a major test for Burnham’s key day-one promise to tackle homelessness,” said Vicky Spratt, housing and society correspondent in The i Paper. And “it is possible that not all councils will welcome being asked to work towards this goal”. Currently in England, more than 1.3 million households are “languishing on local councils’ social housing waiting lists”, and addressing this issue with local authorities is “non-negotiable” for Burnham and Minister for Housing Angela Rayner.

This is one of the “hardest-to-achieve” pledges in office, said Caroline Hug in Politico. His announcement of an additional £102 million gives his “big rough-sleeping pledge some meat”, but it is light on detail. “It still doesn’t set out a route to zero or say when the government actually expects to get there.” And while highly effective efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic show a solution is possible, it is “harder to make that solution stick”. This policy will test Burnham’s resolve on devolution, as he “has not given his government control over all the levers to achieve it”. And it could backfire: “if shop doorways empty over Christmas but fill again in spring, who will the public decide is responsible?”

What next?

The issue is not whether ending rough sleeping is “desirable or achievable”, it is figuring out why “previous attempts have collapsed”, said Jo Richardson, professor of housing and social inclusion at Nottingham Trent University, on The Conversation. Even if enough homes were built, the “biggest fear” for rough sleepers is not being able to provide rent, it is “being alone behind a locked door”. “Any serious homelessness strategy needs to fund social connection as deliberately as it funds bricks and mortar.” This requires a dedicated support workforce, and integrated partnerships across health and social care: a “bigger, more specific commitment than five years of funding alone can achieve”.

‘LinkedIn users are rewriting the past to land their next jobs’

Beth Kowitt at Bloomberg

LinkedIn “has inadvertently become a treasure trove for economists studying the modern labor market,” says Beth Kowitt. New research “has uncovered a problem with treating LinkedIn as a historical record: users keep mucking up the data.” People “have been polishing their resumes for as long as resumes have existed,” but “today when workers rewrite their own career histories, they’re also altering the public record and our understanding of the labor market.” The “result is a kind of arms race.”

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‘Debbie Wasserman Schultz running in a Black district is brought to you by the Supreme Court — and the GOP’

Andra Gillespie at MS NOW

After the Supreme Court “gave Florida Republicans permission to redraw district lines to benefit their party, the biggest news is the decision by Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a white woman, to run in the state’s only plurality-Black district,” says Andra Gillespie. Her “candidacy there highlights the tensions between descriptive and substantive representation and the strategic risks that emerge when a large field of candidates run for the same seat.” But “she could still win with a plurality.”

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‘The age of big-spending Republicans is here’

Merrill Matthews at The Hill

It “may be hard for the Gen Z crowd to accept, but there was a time when Republicans in Congress believed in fiscal responsibility — restraining government spending,” says Merrill Matthews. Now “all most Gen Zers have ever known is big-spending Republicans.” The GOP “used to be serious about controlling federal spending, but that was before Trump.” These party members “may soon find voters and the economy demanding they return to their conservative roots.”

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‘What my dad’s generation of engineers can teach the AI industry’

Len Khodorkovsky at Newsweek

“Half of companies rolled out an AI agent that passed internal testing but still failed once real customers began using it,” and the “gap isn’t a failure of engineering. It’s a permanent feature of it,” says Len Khodorkovsky. It’s the “everyday cost of manufacturing at scale.” A “model that aces its benchmarks but fails in the real world is like a tolerance that only looks good on paper,” and “every factory learned a long time ago that reality humbles perfect designs.”

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What happened

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

Who said what

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

What next?

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

What happened

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

Who said what

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

What next?

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

What happened

The Trump administration on Monday said it was temporarily halting construction on a contentious border project in Texas’ Big Bend National Park. In a video on social media, Customs and Border Protection chief Rodney Scott said he had “put a pause on all activity in that park, as far as construction goes, until I can get down there” to West Texas to “do a personal evaluation” and “talk to some stakeholders.”

Who said what

Scott’s announcement “comes amid massive outcry from local residents, businesses and law enforcement officials,” The Texas Tribune said, and “bipartisan frustration” over CBP’s shifting accounts of its plans for the treasured national park. CBP earlier this year “backed off plans to build a 30-foot-tall bollard wall” through Big Bend, The Associated Press said. But it is “still moving forward with other border protection measures such as a new road, lights” and vehicle barriers.

The deployment of bulldozers last week drew “national attention and bipartisan criticism” from across Texas over the project’s “speed” and “seeming disregard for a prized piece of untrammeled wilderness,” The New York Times said. Local sheriffs argue the project is “costly and unnecessary in a desolate and undeveloped area where few migrants have ever crossed.” The CBP’s Big Bend Sector “covers a quarter of the U.S.-Mexico border,” CNN said, but “sees only about 1% of border apprehensions.”

What next?

CBP did not say how long it would pause construction. If Scott “doesn’t alter the trajectory after visiting,” Jeff Leach, the owner of Big Bend’s Basecamp Terlingua hotel, told CNN, “this place is going to go nuts and the national pressure will only increase.”

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

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

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

Who are the main contenders?

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

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

What is the likely outcome?

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

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

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

What is Trump up to?

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

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

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

Reform UK’s plans to cut £50 billion per year from the welfare bill – unveiled yesterday by Robert Jenrick – are “extremely ambitious”, but also a “political risk”, said Ben Chu on BBC Verify.

Nigel Farage has said the party will not cut pensions, meaning roughly £207 billion of the overall £353 billion welfare budget is up for grabs, and Jenrick aims to cut around 25% of that.

Under the plans, long-term welfare claimants who are fit to work would be forced to do 20 hours of community work a week, and foreign nationals would be banned from claiming benefits altogether. Personal Independence Payments (Pip) to disabled claimants would be scrapped and replaced with a “health security allowance” with more stringent eligibility criteria that could exclude up to two-thirds of current recipients.

These proposals may fit Reform’s “current ideological appeal”, pollster Sir John Curtice told The Independent. But this has limitations to their wider appeal, and has the potential to significantly backfire with their base.

What did the commentators say?

The “centrepiece” of the policy is to exclude foreign nationals from claiming most UK benefits, said an editorial in The Times, including European Union citizens with ­settled status in the UK.

This is just another “calculated bang on the populist drum”: the majority of foreign nationals “don’t qualify in the first place”. UK visas stipulate a clause of “no recourse to public funds”. Not only would stripping entitlement from the 4.3 million EU citizens who have been in the UK for many years antagonise relationships with the bloc, it would be “pointless”; many of those with indefinite leave to remain would have a “near-certain chance of being granted British ­citizenship should they apply”.

But for the Reform base, a more pressing issue is the “proposed abolition of Pip”, said journalist Fraser Nelson on his Substack newsletter. “Every Reform MP sits on more Pip claimants than the majority that elected them.”

In Jenrick’s seat of Newark, where he was elected as a Conservative with a majority of 3,572, there are 6,011 residents who claim Pip. And almost all of Reform’s target seats are “heavily welfare dependent”. Jenrick risks going into the next election as “the Pip-snatcher, the grim reaper of welfare”. “The Labour attack lines write themselves.”

There’s no doubt that the welfare state “needs reform – but not Reform”, said The Independent’s editorial board. Not only would the proposed cuts impose “much misery on the most vulnerable in society”, but they would also “substantially weaken” the British economy.

Employers with more than five staff would “take on the role of the state in social insurance and health care”, carrying a “significant increase” in cost, risk and pastoral responsibilities. Afforded only “tiny tax breaks” in return, employers would be “even less willing to take on people with long-term conditions, or who they perceive as liable to develop them”.

There may be “flaws” in the Reform approach, but the ambitious scale of the reforms is “laudable”, said an editorial in The Telegraph. Jenrick is seeking to “revive” the “something-for-something contributory principle” of William Beveridge, “founder of the welfare state”, but is up against a system that is growing at an “unsustainable” pace.

What next?

Reform has been overtaken in the polls by Labour “for the first time in more than a year”, because of the “bounce” under Andy Burnham’s leadership, said the Financial Times. The government has said that it was “already reforming welfare by narrowing the gap between standard and health universal credit rates”, by reintroducing face-to-face assessments and “investing £3.5 billion in employment support”.

Burnham’s willingness to get to grips with the expanding welfare state is “likely to emerge as the key dividing line over the coming months”, said Rupert Yorke, former deputy chief of staff to Rishi Sunak, in The i Paper. “It remains to be seen whether he prioritises this issue with his backbenchers over his ambitious plans for regional devolution or social care”.

Abdul El-Sayed has issued a “call for Democratic unity,” said Toluse Olorunnipa and Elaine Godfrey in The Atlantic. That’s a new message for Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, a charismatic left-wing populist who earlier this month edged the establishment-backed Haley Stevens in a bitterly contested primary. During the campaign, El-Sayed—a former public health official who’s aligned with Sen. Bernie Sanders—denounced the Democratic Party’s brand as “so bullshit.” Since then, he’s started making amends, and Stevens has endorsed him. El-Sayed will need moderate votes to defeat the Republican nominee, former Rep. Mike Rogers, in a crucial November race that could determine if Democrats gain control of the Senate. El-Sayed, who beat Stevens by only a point, advocates Medicare for all, ending unconditional military aid to Israel, and getting “money out of politics.” He hasn’t shown any signs of moderating his stances, even though his primary support in a purple state came mainly from highly educated whites and college students, not the working class or Black voters.

Republicans have already chosen their campaign strategy—“anti-Muslim bigotry,” said Paul Waldman in Public Notice. Republicans all refer to El-Sayed by his full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, as a way to make him “sound alien and threatening.” President Trump calls El-Sayed “a jihadist” and posted a photo of himself with Melania and El-Sayed with his wife, American-born psychiatrist Dr. Sarah Jukaku, to call attention to her hijab. It’s unwise for Republicans to focus so heavily on El-Sayed’s religion or to call him a radical socialist, said Abe Greenwald in Commentary. “When a candidate makes his opponent’s unfitness the central message of his campaign, he also makes the race all about his opponent.” Rogers needs to make a case for himself.

El-Sayed will do plenty of self-damage, said Dace Potas in USA Today. He still “holds the same arrogant attitude” he did during the primary, and he won’t ditch his pal Hasan Piker, an “antisemitic Twitch streamer” and far-left bomb thrower. El-Sayed won’t reach for “an ideological middle ground,” said Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times, because he doesn’t believe any reasonable person can disagree with his positions. He’s absolutely certain that “there’s a hidden reservoir of voters hungry for progressive populist policies” among the working class. In November, El-Sayed and other left-wing populists “may get a hard lesson on the necessity of pragmatism.”

The man whose “best-known culinary accomplishment is maintaining ‘a freezer full’ of roadkill” wants to teach you to cook, said Emily Heil in The Washington Post. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently debuted The Real Food Show, a government-funded YouTube series intended to help Americans “make healthful meals at home on a modest budget.” In the first episode, Kennedy and celebrity chef Andrew Gruel whip up crispy salmon cakes with a white bean, apple, and arugula salad. I followed the recipe and the dish was “quite good.” But actual cooking is not the main focus of the show. Kennedy and Gruel spend far more time ranting about the evils of seed oils and the Biden administration’s “war” on saturated fats than providing “meaningful culinary instruction.” Under Kennedy’s “grim glare,” making a meal becomes “an exercise in airing grievances against the government and a food system hell-bent on keeping people addicted to processed foods.” When he finally samples the finished meal, all he can muster is a muttered “amazing,” a politician’s thumbs-up, and a “pained grimace.”

Kennedy’s fish cakes are supposed to be budget-friendly, said River Page in The Free Press, but it’s clear he has no idea “what it is like to go grocery shopping as a broke person.” I spent nearly $100 buying the ingredients for four servings—including such luxuries as avocado mayo and nutritional yeast—that RFK Jr. claimed would cost a mere $20. This show is less concerned with delivering affordable meals than advancing conservative ideology, said Ashlie D. Stevens in Salon. Underpinning everything is the idea that “if Americans can be taught to eat correctly, perhaps they will require less care”—freeing the government to cut the safety net. Republicans already did that last year, slashing projected federal spending on Medicaid over the next decade by nearly $1 trillion and food benefits by $187 billion.

Of all the terrible things Kennedy is doing, hosting this show is “probably the least offensive,” said Arwa Mahdawi in The Guardian. But shouldn’t he be busy tackling the nation’s more pressing health problems, like the more than 22,000 cases of explosive diarrhea caused by the parasite cyclospora? RFK Jr. is supposed to be heading the response to that lettuce-linked outbreak. Or perhaps he could focus on the raging measles crisis— this is the worst year for the disease in the U.S. since 1991—which he has fueled as the country’s top anti-vaxxer. But that would mean doing the hard work of being a government official. He’d rather just “play one on TV.”

What happened

President Trump’s former personal lawyer Todd Blanche was sworn in as U.S. attorney general last week, after a contentious confirmation fight focused on whether he would exert independence as the nation’s top law officer or serve at the whim of a president who regards the Justice Department as a tool of political vengeance. Blanche—who has led the DOJ in an acting capacity since Trump’s April firing of AG Pam Bondi—was approved by the Senate 50 to 49, with two Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, joining all Democrats in opposition. “The country needs an attorney general who will check the worst impulses of this administration,” said Murkowski. But Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who cast a decisive yes vote after expressing doubts about Blanche, said the choice was “not between perfection and Mr. Blanche,” but between Blanche and another acting AG “who may not run the department effectively.”

Blanche faced particular scrutiny over his role in settling a lawsuit Trump brought against the IRS. Settlement terms included the creation of a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund—widely derided as a slush fund for Trump allies, including pardoned Jan. 6 rioters—and an agreement giving Trump and family members immunity from tax audits. Two GOP senators, John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, held up Blanche’s advancement in the Judiciary Committee over those measures, but voted yes after Blanche provided written assurances that the fund was “rescinded” and that tax immunity would not apply to future audits. Democrats excoriated their colleagues for approving Blanche. “We’re surrendering any shred of integrity left,” said Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.).

What the columnists said

Senate Republicans’ rubber-stamping of Blanche is “shameful,” said Ruth Marcus in The New Yorker. Sure, Trump could have kept him on as acting attorney general, “but the symbolism matters.” Under Blanche’s leadership, the DOJ has pursued “flimsy prosecutions of Trump’s political adversaries” and purged its workforce of perceived enemies. Missteps and misstatements have cause numerous cases to flop in court, damaging the department’s credibility with judges, and its botched handling of the Epstein files has even alienated members of the MAGA base. It’s all “on Blanche,” and a yes vote “represents a ratification” of his malfeasance.

Cornyn and Tillis were “played for fools,” said Chris Brennan in USA Today. Blanche’s written assurances on the weaponization fund and audits have “zero value” as legal documents—legal settlements can’t be amended by one party. Trump clearly wants to resurrect his slush fund, and you can bet Blanche will do his bidding. Indeed, Blanche wasted no time showing his true colors, said Edith Olmsted in The New Republic. Just hours after he was sworn in, the DOJ’s office of legal counsel argued Trump could claim executive privilege over his communications with “private advisers”—essentially anyone he’s ever talked with—which could limit Democrats if they retake the House and start investigating the president’s corruption spree.

Blanche will soon take aim at abortion rights, said Rachel Rebouché in The Nation. In a recent call with religious leaders, he vowed to ensure that the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade “becomes permanent in every single state.” His apparent goal is to use the “archaic” 1873 Comstock Act to “impose a blanket ban on mailing abortion medications”—drugs that today account for the majority of abortions in the U.S.

Blanche has a daunting job ahead, said Jeremy Roebuck in The Washington Post. In Trump’s second term the DOJ has “been ravaged by firings, departures, and low morale.” And he’ll face “competing pressures” from congressional critics, “an attorney general’s obligations to the rule of law,” and “a president intent on seeing his enemies put on trial.” Charging decisions loom in a number of “sensitive cases,” including a months-long investigation into former Obama- and Biden-era officials, among them former CIA director John Brennan, who Trump allies claim violated Trump’s civil rights by conspiring to undermine his presidency.

Blanche’s confirmation drives home just how much Trump has “dismantled” long-standing norms, said Julian E. Zelizer in Foreign Policy. When President Nixon weaponized the Justice Department during Watergate, Americans woke up to the perils of “allowing the nation’s chief law enforcement officer to serve as an agent of the president.” A “firewall” has held since then, but with loyalist Blanche in charge, the DOJ is once again “a presidential instrument, wielded to target opponents and reward supporters.” It’s “a dangerous moment for a democracy that depends on the rule of law.”

‘Subtraction isn’t the way out of the Colorado River crisis’

Jim Madaffer at The Washington Post

The Colorado River Compact of 1922 is “designed to divide a fixed supply of water, but there’s a problem: The river no longer offers one,” says Jim Madaffer. The “21st century must create water for the region,” but the “existing policies, designed as they were for another era, don’t create anything,” so “commercialization of water innovation is the path to giving Lower Basin states and their residents stable and full water supplies.”

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‘Black Americans are reviving an ancient Nigerian apprenticeship model to build wealth’

Ibe Imo at The Philadelphia Inquirer

There is a “growing, informal network” of apprentice programs using the Nigerian “Nwa Boy model’s core promise: a credentialed path from labor to ownership, built on relationships and trust rather than credit scores or venture capital,” says Ibe Imo. As “race-conscious funding efforts designed to level the playing field for African Americans are dismantled, that promise is drawing new attention from investors, workforce officials and Black entrepreneurs looking for an alternative route to generational wealth.”

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‘Why Gov. Newsom should commute every death sentence in California before he leaves office’

Nadia Daar at the San Francisco Chronicle

“Shockingly, 25% of those on death row in the U.S. are sitting in California prisons,” and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) “should seize a historic opportunity to move California closer to ending the death penalty by commuting all of the death sentences in the state,” says Nadia Daar. Newsom’s “promise to pause executions is only good until he leaves office in 2027.” What he “does next will determine whether California merely delayed executions or truly ended them.”

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‘Colleges shouldn’t give up on letter grades’

The Dallas Morning News editorial board

Some colleges are “experimenting with ‘ungrading,’ where students agree to contractual terms for a particular letter grade or are evaluated in more qualitative ways,” says The Dallas Morning News editorial board. These “experiments show a genuine effort on the part of colleges to grapple with a broken grading system, but dropping letter grades altogether is not the answer.” A “transcript filled with broad pass marks can’t communicate whether a student produced exceptional work or just barely got by.”

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The USS Abraham Lincoln has been at sea for over 260 days, marking a record deployment for a modern aircraft carrier. And there are now allegations of grim conditions aboard the 5,600-person vessel. Things on the ship reportedly got so bad that multiple sailors attempted to jump overboard rather than remain on the carrier. But the Defense Department is denying these reports, even as it moves to replace the ship.

What are conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln like?

There have been widespread reports of “deteriorating living conditions and worsening mental health during the ship’s record-breaking deployment,” said CNN. Many of these reports have indicated a dearth of basic supplies and food on the ship, which has been deployed since November 2025, starting on a path for the South China Sea before being rerouted to the Middle East at the outbreak of the Iran war. There have also been accounts of limited toiletries and moldy showers.

The USS Abraham Lincoln has seen “water contamination, plumbing issues, deck safety concerns, and disruptions in the mail system, which have caused many care packages en route to the ship to be lost in transit for months,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in a letter. These issues, particularly regarding mental health, are corroborated by family members of the ship’s sailors, who met with officials in a “combative face-to-face confrontation” where they “expressed concerns directly to Navy leaders about the well-being and safety of their loved ones,” said MS NOW.

As the poor conditions continue, at least two sailors tried to jump overboard in an attempt to die by suicide, according to two military news outlets, the Military Times and Stars and Stripes. In one of the incidents, a sailor “on watch saw a shipmate preparing to go overboard, and he intervened,” said the Times. And in the other, sailors were informed of the attempted jump “during a ship-wide announcement,” said Stars and Stripes. In a separate third incident, a sailor actually did go overboard while “wearing a life vest and was not injured,” said CNN.

What is the Pentagon doing?

The Pentagon has denied all accusations of poor conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln. “We ​make sure every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide ​them at every single moment,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters. Reports of problems on the ship are “completely misrepresented.” The White House is also standing behind the Pentagon’s assessment. The Trump administration is committed to ensuring ships are “equipped ​with the resources necessary to counter any threat” to the U.S., White House spokesperson Olivia Wales told Reuters.

As the controversy grows, reports have confirmed that the military is planning to “replace the USS Abraham Lincoln with the USS George Washington as part of a scheduled Middle East deployment,” said The Wall Street Journal, with the Washington currently on its way to the region. However, President Donald Trump seems to think the replacement is unnecessary. It was “not nearly long enough,” he told reporters of the ship’s stationing.

As the USS Abraham Lincoln prepares to be replaced, Democrats are still pressing for answers about what happened. “These reports warrant immediate attention, but they also raise a broader question: whether the Navy can sustain the operational tempo now being demanded of its carrier force,” said Blumenthal in his letter, “particularly as this administration repeatedly commits U.S. forces to conflicts of its own choosing and increasingly relies on aircraft carriers to sustain those operations.”

Kemi Badenoch is not a fool, said Tom Harris in The Telegraph; nor is she remotely an antisemite. So why did she stick her neck out for Joshua Bonehill-Paine, the former neo-Nazi who’d hoped to stand as a Tory councillor in Somerset?

Having served time in jail for waging a repulsive campaign of racial hatred against the former Labour MP Luciana Berger, Bonehill-Paine claims to be a reformed character, dedicated to fighting antisemitism.

And perhaps he is – but that didn’t make it appropriate for him to stand for office, especially when he hadn’t even apologised to Berger for what he termed “Operation Filthy Jew Bitch”.

Belief in ‘second chances’?

Yet when his candidacy was being condemned by all sides last week, said Harris, Badenoch defended it; and when he withdrew it, she gave him a role as an adviser on radicalisation instead. The Tory leader is savvy enough to have seen the risk to her reputation. So the only possible explanation for her apparent poor judgement is that she believes in second chances – and has the courage to stick to her principles, even if they make her unpopular.

I don’t buy it, said Rachel Cunliffe in The New Statesman. Her belief in “second chances” was not in evidence in 2024, when it emerged that the Labour minister Louise Haigh had been convicted of fraud a decade ago. We need “conviction politicians”, she said, “not politicians with convictions”.

Yet Haigh’s offence – falsely reporting the theft of a mobile phone – was as nothing compared with Bonehill-Paine’s (who also has a conviction for assault). Unwisely, Badenoch tried to further justify his candidacy by saying he’d only sought a local platform – “looking at parking and sorting out bins” – thus insulting her existing councillors at the same time.

‘Wider concerns’ about strategy

In May, Badenoch impressed many by taking a clear stand against antisemitism, said Kate Maltby in The Observer. Yet last week found her supporting a former neo-Nazi – presumably because she’d decided that the Tories needed his Crewkerne Gazette platform, known for its viral AI videos mocking Labour, to be on its side.

This row has revived “wider concerns” about her entire strategy of tacking to the right, said Kitty Donaldson in The i Paper. Only days earlier, Badenoch had warned that ex-centrist MPs – who support net-zero targets, or don’t want the UK to leave the ECHR – won’t be allowed back into the parliamentary party. But while she seeks to win votes from Reform UK, her critics argue that, for an outright majority, the Tories need to win back the seats they’ve lost to the Lib Dems. Time will tell who is right, but for now, the One Nation lot are well and truly out in the cold.

‘What’s the value of an hour?’

Joshua Rothman at The New Yorker

Government is “only one participant in a much larger conspiracy to waste our time,” says Joshua Rothman, as “many conveniences also have hidden time-wasting downsides.” All “around us, systems calculate, markets churn and clever people find ways to monetize seemingly everything,” but “hours are thrown away and used up randomly,” as “time, our scarcest resource, feels beyond our reckoning.” People “grapple with time, of course, finding ways to domesticate it,” and “we’re outrageously suggestible when it comes to our temporal attitudes.”

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‘We’re paying for climate disasters instead of preventing them’

Sienna Shankel at Newsweek

Home insurance “has become one of the defining economic issues of 2026, yet our response remains dangerously small,” says Sienna Shankel. Americans “argue over premiums, subsidies and regulations while ignoring the structural failure driving them.” Until “that changes, households will pay more.” A “mistake is believing that higher premiums are the crisis,” as “they are only symptoms.” The “real problem is that every climate disaster now triggers an economic chain reaction that extends far beyond damaged buildings.”

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‘Black liberation requires investment’

Reginald Thomas Brown at The Progressive

By “no coincidence, Black August and Black Philanthropy Month are observed at the same time,” as “both are rooted in a simple truth: Our liberation is never granted; it is built, protected and sustained,” says Reginald Thomas Brown. The “Black liberation movement commemorated by Black August gave us the blueprint for organizing,” while Black Philanthropy Month underscores what communities have always understood — that collective action, from mutual aid networks to civil rights campaigns, is our greatest strength.”

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‘How to squander a superpower’s credibility’

Fareed Zakaria at Foreign Policy

Saudi Arabia and Turkey “pledged to go to war in each other’s defense,” even as they’ve “been bitter regional rivals,” says Fareed Zakaria. What “brought them together? U.S. President Donald Trump — or rather the two countries’ diminishing faith in him and his word.” The “Iran war has been a master class in how to squander credibility.” Trump’s “word is as solid with his counterparts abroad as it was with his bankers in New York.”

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

What happened

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

Who said what

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

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

What next?

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

What happened

The Department of Homeland Security secretly surveilled and infiltrated labor unions and progressive groups during ICE’s surge in Minnesota, beginning four days after an immigration agent killed protester Alex Pretti in January, according to newly released government documents filed Thursday. The filing, from a defense attorney for one of 15 indicted protesters, documents “an array of invasive tactics” used to gather information on “many groups and individuals who were never accused of crimes,” The New York Times said, evidently “crossing the line that has traditionally stood between investigating criminal activity and political dissent.”

Who said what

DHS opened two investigations, according to the filing. “Operation Puppet Master” involved “extensive use of undercover informants” to “probe gatherings at churches,” union halls and other places, Talking Points Memo said, while “Operation Whipple Shield” was a “sweeping campaign to obtain financial records from people and groups organizing against” the ICE surge. The “surveillance reports in particular documented what largely appeared to be political activity protected by the First Amendment,” the Times said.

What next?

“So far, none of the organizations targeted” in the operations “have faced charges,” the Times said. But “prosecutors showed grand jurors a PowerPoint slide asserting that 18 groups — including the AFL-CIO, the country’s largest federation of labor unions — were part of a conspiracy to impede the work of immigration officers,” and the subpoenaed financial records went “well beyond the civil unrest in Minnesota.”

“What was the point of it all?” said Joe Pike on the BBC. Given that Nigel Farage “triggered this race and the result was entirely predictable”, did the Reform leader get what he wanted out of the Clacton by-election?

If he did, he didn’t celebrate it at the count. Reform UK claimed that Essex Police had warned of a threat to Farage’s safety, which meant he stayed away from the result declaration. But that claim was denied by the police.

When Reform chair Lee Anderson was pressed on this counter-narrative he told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme: “It’s not up to you at the BBC to decide if there’s a credible threat, it’s up to Nigel and his security team. He celebrated a stunning victory in Clacton. The people have stuck two fingers up to people like the BBC, the establishment, the whole blob.”

Not everyone agrees though. Farage “wanted a narrative of him taking on all comers on his own terms”, said James Ball in The New World. But the reality is, he “ended up in a low-stakes fight for his political survival against a comedically oversized bin”.

Farage won with 63% of the vote, with comedy candidate Count Binface coming second with 27% in an election boycotted by all of the main Westminster parties, who dismissed it as a stunt.

What did the commentators say?

In calling the by-election Farage “hoped to cock a snook at an establishment he feels is trying to bring him and his party down via allegations about financial contributions to himself and his party”, said polling guru John Curtice in The Times. In practice, “his decision was followed by an immediate fall in his party’s support, just when its year-long lead in the polls was under threat”. Reform’s national vote share in the polls is down to 24% after hitting a high of 32% last September.

What the by-election has revealed is that Farage, “a savvy, guerrilla political operator, and perhaps the most able political communicator of his generation, can be guilty of missteps”, said Jonny Ball on UnHerd. His victory “will not put a stop to awkward questions” and “the standards inquiry into his donations row will now continue”. He had hoped the by-election “might allow him to chalk up another success on his long political journey, but this victory will feel pyrrhic, and particularly hollow”.

But will it? I'm not so sure, said Ross Clark in The Spectator. Farage has shown that in Clacton “his personal support is every bit as strong as it was before”. It is remarkable that he won “more votes than he did in the 2024 general election in spite of the turnout collapsing”. Yes, Clacton “tells us nothing about the state of political play in Britain at the moment, because it wasn’t a proper contest”, but “I would be wary of anyone claiming that Farage has been weakened by it”.

What next?

Farage has “managed to professionalise Reform UK”, said Pike on the BBC. In securing significant funding and recruiting high-profile figures like Robert Jenrick and Zia Yusuf he is seeking to prove “that the third political party he has led during his long career is not just a one-man-band”.

But ultimately it is “voters nationally, and not in this corner of Essex”, who will decide Farage’s future and whether this by-election will “mark a downward shift in Farage’s brand”, or whether it will “be a springboard towards achieving his bigger aspiration of getting to Downing Street”.

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

‘Syria’s leaders need to prove they can be trusted’

Ilan Berman at The Washington Post

The United States’ “rehabilitation of Syria has proceeded at remarkable speed,” but it is “becoming increasingly clear that, at least at the moment, Washington is making its bet based more on hope than hard evidence,” says Ilan Berman. The “ideological makeup of the country’s new rulers has not changed nearly as much as Western officials might wish to believe” and “reflect an officially sanctioned effort to shape Syria’s next generation according to a radical, rejectionist worldview.”

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‘Critics can no longer claim ESPN is “woke”’

Michael McCarthy at Front Office Sports

If “you want proof the ‘woke’ era at ESPN is over, all you had to do was watch President Donald Trump’s inaugural Freedom 250 Patriot Games,” says Michael McCarthy. The “happy, smiling scene between ESPN/Disney power players and the second Trump administration was a far cry from some of the media giant’s previous tense interactions with ‘The Donald.’” ESPN “might not want to enlist in the culture wars anymore, but the culture wars will draft them anyway.”

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‘The US is now using the “terrorist” label to interfere in Brazil’s election’

Raphael Tsavkko Garcia at Al Jazeera

In “designating Brazil’s two largest criminal organizations” as terrorist groups, the U.S. “has asserted its own definition of Brazil’s security threats, with consequences that reach far beyond law enforcement,” says Raphael Tsavkko Garcia. This “says far more about politics than security.” The “designation reflects a dangerous convergence between Washington’s longstanding interventionist instincts in Latin America, echoing memories from the U.S.-sponsored dictatorship that lasted from 1964 until 1985, and the interests of Brazil’s far right.”

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‘How AI poses a threat to journalism, already weakened by 20 years of digital upheaval’

Aude Dassonville at Le Monde

For the “media, the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence has proven to be an earthquake, profoundly shaking journalistic practices and relationships with readers, along with the economic models of newspapers, magazines, television channels and news websites,” says Aude Dassonville. How “can organizations continue to exist if, on top of having their content scraped by AI, readers drop and advertising revenue is siphoned off?” A “worrying trend is that, quite often, chatbot users are confident with answers generated by AI.”

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What happened

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

Who said what

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

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

What next?

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

What happened

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

Who said what

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

What next?

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

‘Shopping is impossible’

Rachel Sugar at The Atlantic

With online shopping, the “problem is the overabundance of options” and “too much information, or too little information,” says Rachel Sugar. At “this point, the boundary between ‘shopping’ and ‘not shopping’ has all but collapsed.” There is “now a third state: ‘a little bit shopping,’” the “constant thrum of consumer opportunities that lead mostly to more consumer opportunities.” It is “both a genuine attempt at making a purchase, and a hobby that is infinitely expandable to fill any length of time.”

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‘Why must a socialist also be woke?’

Janan Ganesh at the Financial Times

It is “natural to forget what a normie Karl Marx could be,” says Janan Ganesh. From the “beginning, it was possible to be a socialist, the socialist, and culturally middle-of-the-road.” It was “possible to believe in seizing the means of production without being avant-garde on matters of sex, race, crime or war,” but “that point has got lost over time.” The “hard left will always pair a conceivably popular economic program with a provably hated cultural one.”

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‘The death toll of a mass shooting doesn’t end at the scene’

Vishal R. Patel, Christopher M. Worsham and Anupam Jena at Time

When a “mass shooting tears through an American community, we count the dead,” say Vishal R. Patel, Christopher M. Worsham and Anupam Jena. But the “damage doesn’t stop at the victims.” The impact that a “shooting spreads across the whole country cannot be seen the way we can see a wound,” but “we can see its footprints in the form of antidepressant prescriptions filled, in accidental gun deaths” and in “lives lost on the road,” as “decades of research show that stress and distraction make drivers more dangerous.”

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‘Why fashion falls for fascists’

Ari Hoffman at UnHerd

A “Dorian Gray-like question comes to mind in the wake of the decision” by Anna Wintour to “devote the 2027 Met Gala to John Galliano, a designer hailed as a visionary who has also spewed baroque bigotry,” says Ari Hoffman. Beyond the “judgment of Galliano’s character — by all accounts, it’s troubled — lies a more difficult reckoning with fashion’s fascination with cruelty and fanaticism, which all too often has lain behind the glittering surfaces.”

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

‘Confusion and concern’

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

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

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

Trump’s ‘personal project manager’

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

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

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

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

What happened

Primaries on Tuesday in Minnesota and Wisconsin offered mixed verdicts for the progressive and establishment wings of the Democratic Party and for candidates endorsed by President Donald Trump. In the most-watched contest, establishment-backed David Crowley eked out a projected win in Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, beating democratic socialist Francesca Hong by less than 1%. He will face Rep. Tom Tiffany (R) in the general election. Michael Alfonso, the Trump-backed son-in-law of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, won the GOP primary for Tiffany’s seat.

Trump-endorsed “MyPillow Guy” Mike Lindell lost Minnesota’s GOP gubernatorial primary to state House Speaker Lisa Demuth. She will face Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D). Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (D), the more progressive candidate in the primary to replace retiring Sen. Tina Smith (D), beat Rep. Angie Craig and will face Republican former sports broadcaster Michele Tafoya.

Who said what

Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, dropped out of the “chaotic race” in July but “reactivated his campaign” after the “implosion” of two top establishment rivals, CNN said. His “stunningly narrow, surprise win” over Hong “seemed to settle little in the party’s national battle” between establishment and “insurgent, populist” left, The Associated Press said. A week after progressive Abdul El-Sayed beat out his moderate rival by a similarly “razor-thin” margin in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, “neither side” appears to be “winning the argument convincingly.”

What next?

In South Carolina, Trump-endorsed Sen. Darline Graham (R) advanced to an Aug. 25 runoff in Tuesday’s special GOP primary to replace her brother, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, on November’s ballot. She will face hardline conservative Rep. Ralph Norman.

Ann Widdecombe, who has died aged 78, enjoyed a level of prominence in public life that was unusual for a politician whose most senior role in government was as a mid-level minister.

That was partly due to her robust opinions on a range of issues, some informed by her Christian faith – which she never shied away from voicing. It also helped that she was instantly recognisable, said The Times, with her pudding-bowl haircut, no-nonsense manner and rasping voice. In a typically forthright appraisal, she said of herself: “I am toothy, dumpy, ugly, overweight and a spinster – what the hell.”

As a politician, her most significant action was arguably sinking Michael Howard’s leadership bid following the party’s defeat in 1997. The pair had feuded at the Home Office, and Widdecombe got her revenge by giving a speech in Parliament in which she tore into her ex-boss’s character and record; her leaked private comment – that there was “something of the night about him” – followed him for years.

Second career

Yet Widdecombe was a kinder, more sensitive person than her uncompromising “carapace” suggested, said The Guardian. This became more apparent when she retired from front-line politics, and embarked on an unexpected second career as a TV personality. On “Strictly Come Dancing”, she gamely allowed herself to be hauled across the dancefloor like a sack of potatoes; she was a runner-up on “Celebrity Big Brother” in 2018; and she appeared in several pantomimes.

The public learnt that “Widdy” had for years acted as a surrogate mother-figure to the children of a local kebab shop owner, said The Daily Telegraph, and that she had spent thousands to get a nephew off drugs. When, in 2009, the Telegraph published its report about MPs’ expenses, she was singled out as one of the “saints” at Westminster, reinforcing the view that whatever else she was, she was not corruptible.

Westminster controversies

Widdecombe was born in 1947. Her father was a civil servant in the Admiralty Office. Although she was Anglican, she was sent to a Catholic boarding school. She read Latin at Birmingham University, and then PPE at Oxford, where she became involved in student politics and had her only boyfriend: Colin Maltby was president of the Oxford Union. On graduating, she worked first for Unilever, and later as a university administrator.

Widdecombe spent years trying to become a Tory MP, applying to scores of constituencies. She stood twice unsuccessfully before finally being elected MP for Maidstone in 1987; she would represent that part of Kent for 23 years. At Westminster, she soon made her mark with the first in a series of aggressive efforts to restrict access to abortion. She also supported capital punishment, and voted against the repeal of Section 28, the law banning the promotion of homosexuality in schools, and civil partnerships. When the Church of England allowed the ordination of women priests, Widdecombe converted to Catholicism.

As prisons minister from 1995, she made waves by seeming to defend the practice of female prisoners being kept in handcuffs during childbirth. In fact, they were only shackled until they went into labour, and after they’d given birth, but the public was not impressed by the distinction and in the media she was dubbed Doris Karloff. Her row with Howard was over his sacking of the director of the Prison Service, Derek Lewis, which she thought unfair. From 1999 to 2001, she was shadow home secretary.

Having insisted that she’d never leave the Tories, she defected to the Brexit Party in 2019 and later joined Reform UK. Since 2010, she had lived in a bungalow at the edge of Dartmoor that she had named Widdecombe’s Rest. She was found dead there in July with serious injuries; police have opened a murder investigation.

‘Before more E15 reaches the pump, boaters deserve a real warning’

David Kennedy at The Hill

An E15 ethanol “blend, although approved for many cars and trucks, is not for boats,” and “using higher ethanol blends can damage fuel systems, create performance problems, increase safety risks and even void warranties,” says David Kennedy. “Clearer labeling at the pump could have saved me that expense and time lost on the water,” and it is a “warning for policymakers to inform their constituents of potential risks to their boats as E15 becomes more widely available.”

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‘An HBCU has banned durags and bonnets. That reinforces anti-Blackness.’

A.D. Carson at The Guardian

Tuskegee University’s bonnet and durag ban “has produced polarized responses,” says A.D. Carson. The “policy is ultimately rooted in politics of respectability.” One of the “damaging implications of such a dress code is the reinforcement of anti-Black standards that have been externally and internally imposed on Black people in the United States for decades and have never equaled success or safety.” Debates “about ‘proper attire’ have polarized the country throughout its history” and are “tied to violence.”

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‘How science fiction hijacked our political imagination’

David Albertson and Jason Blakely at The Boston Globe

The “most extravagant sci-fi utopians today are also the richest men on the planet,” say David Albertson and Jason Blakely. But it is “not only the billionaires and Marxists who dream of sci-fi abundance.” It is “high time to dispense with outdated nostrums that assume utopianism is either silly or dangerous.” Utopianism “ought to be considered a plausible politics, alongside progressivism, libertarianism and neoliberal realism.” But the “contemporary menu of futuristic imaginings offers rather limited and bizarre fare.”

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‘America’s manufacturing future starts with industrial hemp’

David M. Klein at Newsweek

America is “making a costly mistake by treating industrial hemp as just another crop,” says David M. Klein. It is an “industrial material that can strengthen manufacturing, create jobs, reduce dependence on imported raw materials and help build more resilient supply chains.” If Americans “keep limiting hemp to an agricultural debate, we will hand another major manufacturing opportunity to other countries.” If “we build the industries that process and manufacture hemp-based products here at home, America wins.”

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What happened

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

Who said what

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

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

What next?

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

What happened

Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) will remain on the ballot in November after Monday’s state deadline to replace him passed. Allegations that Miller physically and emotionally abused his ex-wife and 2-year-old daughter helped turn what had been a safe Republican district into a competitive race against Democrat Brian Poindexter, a union ironworker. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report on Monday shifted Miller’s 7th Congressional District from “likely Republican” to “toss-up.”

Who said what

Republican officials had “led an intense push” to get Miller out of the race, CNN said. But as it became clear he wouldn’t drop out, members of President Donald Trump’s political team urged Ohio Republicans “not to wage a public pressure campaign” against him, arguing that such “moot” efforts “would complicate messaging” when “those same leaders would likely later have to defend Miller’s candidacy,” said Politico.

What next?

Local Republican leaders in North Carolina’s 11th District on Monday selected state Rep. Jennifer Balkcom to replace Rep. Chuck Edwards, who dropped his reelection bid last week after the House Ethics Committee urged his censure over troubling conduct toward two female aides. Balkcom “will now have roughly 80 days to crisscross” the mountainous district and raise a “crush of cash” to compete against well-funded Democrat Jamie Ager, said The New York Times.

Colombia’s short-lived era of leftist leadership has ended, as far-right politician Abelardo de la Espriella takes office as the nation’s 36th president. Unlike his predecessor Gustavo Petro, who was the only left-wing president in modern Colombian history, de la Espriella wants to shift the South American country to the right. He is also dealing with a major natural disaster in his first days in office.

What did the commentators say?

The new president represents a “sharp” turn from former President Gustavo Petro, who “stopped awarding new oil and gas exploration contracts while pushing Colombia toward renewable energy” and encouraging a “global transition away from fossil fuels,” said The Associated Press. De la Espriella instead has pledged that “energy security would be a cornerstone of his administration,” as he makes plans to “revive the country’s oil and gas sector, restore state-owned energy company Ecopetrol and strengthen the electricity system.”

Alongside this energy agenda, de la Espriella will also be making changes stemming from his stance on social issues, including crime and drug trafficking. He has “promised to confront rebel groups in Colombia with greater military force while cutting government spending to reduce a budget deficit,” said NPR. In a symbolic move, de la Espriella was inaugurated not in the capital of Bogotá but in Cali, a city which has been “hit hard by drug violence and attacks from rebel groups.”

De la Espriella also “campaigned on promises to crush his country’s powerful drug traffickers with the help of the United States” and in collaboration with the right-wing Trump administration, said The New York Times. The White House has “made targeting traffickers in Latin America a priority,” although before de la Espriella’s election, President Donald Trump “made little headway with Colombia, the world’s largest cocaine producer and traditionally Washington’s closest ally in the region.”

Overall, Colombia’s new leader is “basically shifting the entire region, especially South America, toward the right,” the Washington Office on Latin America’s Gimena Sánchez said to PBS News. De la Espriella will be “feeling the pressure to make really big moves from the get-go because there’s so much expectation from the U.S. that he’s going to be hard on narcotraffickers.” It could “have a tremendous influence on the direction that Colombia takes.”

While all of these issues are simmering, the new president is simultaneously contending with the aftermath of a 7.4-magnitude earthquake that struck western Colombia on Aug. 10. Officials in several major cities, including Cali and Pereira, “reported dozens of injuries, people trapped inside collapsed buildings and serious damages,” said NBC News. “The quake felt here was very severe,” taxi driver Luis Angel Sarrio told NBC.

What next?

The earthquake killed at least 100 people, with casualties expected to rise significantly in the coming days. In the first major check of his power, de la Espriella “declared a national disaster situation,” which gives his government “special powers to react to the emergency, including to reallocate budgets,” said BBC News. Alongside earthquake recovery, de la Espriella’s government is still focusing on anti-crime efforts. In another sign of a looming partnership, the United States notably pledged at least $1 billion in security assistance to Colombia soon after de la Espriella took office. The U.S. State Department said this money would help the new president achieve shared goals, including fighting organized crime and illegal immigration.

Covid killed more than 1.1 million Americans. But in the “twisted narrative” that has become Republican Party dogma, said Will Saletan in The Bulwark, “the villain isn’t Trump, China, or even the virus. It’s Anthony Fauci.” At a Senate committee hearing last month, Republicans demonized and slandered Fauci, the now-retired director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who served the public under seven presidents back to Ronald Reagan. Several senators suggested Fauci helped China create the virus in a lab, even though studies have traced its probable origin to animals in the Wuhan wet market. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna compared Fauci to Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. Sen. Ron Johnson ludicrously suggested Covid vaccines were “experimental gene therapy” that killed millions of Americans. Fauci declined to answer questions on the grounds that committee chair Rand Paul had vowed to use his testimony to put him in prison. Why the witch hunt? For Trump’s GOP, “someone has to be blamed for what went wrong in the pandemic, and it can’t be the party’s god-king.”

Fauci and other health officials did make mistakes, said Megan McArdle in The Washington Post. The messaging on masking was muddled, and schools stayed closed longer than they had to. But public health experts “were doing the best they could in an unprecedented disaster.” What we need is “the kind of systematic, non-partisan, and nonpunitive investigation” that followed previous national crises, not a mean-spirited “blame game” that serves only to make us less prepared for the next pandemic.

The official who really “bungled” the pandemic was the man in charge—Donald J. Trump, said Molly Olmstead in Slate. But with Republicans likely to “take a beating” in November, they’re using the bogeyman Fauci as a tool to distract and energize their fractured base. As an alternative to Fauci and science, said Nick Catoggio in The Dispatch, Trump and his populist allies are offering “witch-doctor lunatics.” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. denied last week that Covid vaccines—which saved millions of lives—did “more good than harm” and claimed that at the height of the pandemic ICUs were “empty all over the country, including in New York.” Rather than a serious effort to explore “what went wrong with Covid,” Republicans are giving us crackpot conspiracy theories, quack miracle cures like ivermectin, and pseudo-experts “with brains worms. Literally.”

The “knives are out” for JD Vance, said Natalie Allison in The Washington Post. As he prepares for a likely White House run in 2028, the vice president is facing a growing barrage of attacks from self-declared “Never Vance” Republicans, both online and in the opinion pages. Pro-Israel conservatives, including prominent commentators like Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin, have claimed that the populist Vance is “unfit” for the top job because of his reported opposition to the Iran war and for “looking weak” during peace negotiations with Tehran. And columnists in the Rupert Murdoch–owned Wall Street Journal—the voice of traditional conservatism—have slammed Vance for his skepticism of free-market capitalism and for echoing “the anti-Israel left.” Vance’s allies claim the veep is delighted to have earned the enmity of “the pre-Trump GOP establishment,” said Mike Zapler in Axios. But the scale of the hostility shows his coronation as Trump’s successor is no sure thing, and that many in the GOP would prefer Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the nominee in 2028.

The anti-Vance campaign is understandable, said Bret Stephens in The New York Times, because he “is by far the worst person ever” to serve as vice president. Consider his recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast: He talked conspiratorially about aliens and claimed without evidence that Jeffrey Epstein may have been a Mossad agent and that Israel is trying to “manipulate” U.S. public opinion to keep the Iran war going. A “callow and sinister opportunist,” Vance likely doesn’t believe this bunk, but he knows the MAGA base will still lap it up. If it’s a choice between Vance and Rubio in ’28, I’ll take Vance, said Ross Douthat, also in the Times. The vice president has at least tried to get the U.S. out of the Iran quagmire, while Rubio has been “a profile in evasion, letting other officials take risks to either own the war or seek a peace while he keeps his options open.”

This fight is not just about Vance, said Kathy Gilsinan in Politico. The more traditional wing of the GOP is increasingly worried about “the rising generation of young staffers in their party,” many of whom seem happy to spout antisemitic and racist rhetoric and have no loyalty to the historical GOP platform. If Vance—who last year dismissed a racist Young Republicans group chat as “edgy jokes”—becomes the GOP’s torchbearer in 2028, it raises the question of whom exactly he’ll welcome into the fold, “and what exactly they’ll do with power once they get it.”

How popular is the parks system?

The National Park Service recorded some 323 million visits to its 433 parks, properties, battlefields, and monuments last year. That’s a slight drop from 2024’s all-time high of 332 million, but more than the combined attendance of professional football, baseball, basketball, NASCAR, soccer, and Disney theme parks. Established in 1916, the NPS is today one of America’s most beloved institutions. A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that 76% of Americans, including overwhelming majorities of both Republicans and Democrats, view it favorably, a higher share than for any other federal agency. But the NPS, which manages more than 85 million acres across the U.S., now faces an uncertain future because of staffing cuts and the reallocation of critical funds by the Trump administration. Author and conservationist Wallace Stegner once declared national parks America’s “best idea,” but the administration “is treating our treasures like anything but,” said John Garder of the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA).

How many national parks workers have been laid off?

The agency has lost nearly 25% of its permanent workforce—over 4,000 positions—since the start of the second Trump administration, according to the NPCA. About 1,000 parks employees with probationary status were fired in early 2025, while senior staffers have been let go through deferred-resignation and early-retirement programs. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who oversees the NPS, said the agency can keep up standards with a reduced workforce by getting staff to focus on hands-on jobs, such as clearing trails. “I want more of that,” he said. “I want less overhead.” Staffers who traditionally work behind the scenes have been pushed into more frontline roles; at Yosemite National Park, a shortage of custodial workers in spring 2025 meant the park’s scientists, IT specialists, and senior management had to take shifts cleaning toilets. Personnel cuts and delays in hiring seasonal workers have caused backups at entry gates, which at some big parks have been exacerbated by the scrapping of timed entry reservation systems. “The traffic reminded me of L.A. at rush hour,” said Sacramento resident Walter Meyer, who visited Yosemite in April.

Are these cuts affecting park safety?

Dive team operations were quietly suspended at southern Nevada’s Lake Mead National Recreation Area in May because of staffing shortages and the need for more training and equipment. The lake has consistently ranked as one of the deadliest sites managed by the NPS, with an average of 20 people dying in the park annually, mostly by drowning; one of the dive team’s responsibilities is recovering the bodies of drowning victims. An NPS employee at Yosemite told The Guardian that a lack of workers last year meant visitors could “wreck the park with no consequence” and get away with doing potentially dangerous things, such as not properly storing their food. “We don’t want bears eating people food because they can get aggressive,” the staffer said. “I worry the park will degrade to the point where safety is a problem.” And the problems faced by national parks have only grown this year, as President Trump redirected funding toward his preferred projects.

How is Trump spending that money?

At least $90 million from visitor entry fees to parks such as Big Bend and Yellowstone has been diverted to Washington, D.C., The Washington Post reported in early June. Much of that cash went toward Trump-requested beautification projects ahead of the country’s 250th birthday celebrations, including $76 million for fountain repairs and for the botched relining of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Entry fees were used to fund a Fourth of July firework display in the capital; it cost $1.6 million, more than five times the bill in past years. NPS also spent $689,232 this spring to rip up the walkway connecting the Oval Office to the White House residence, a 45-second commute. Trump didn’t like the historic beige Tennessee flagstone and has replaced it with polished black African granite carved in Italy. Park advocates say all that cash would have been better spent tackling the NPS’s $24 billion backlog of needed infrastructure repairs and improvements. “That is not how it was designed to work,” said the NPCA’s Ed Stierli. “It shouldn’t just be all at one park at the expense of the entire national park system.”

Are many parks missing out on funding?

More than 900 NPS projects that were slated to be funded this year have yet to receive money. They include a $1.5 million roof replacement at the Yellowstone Center for Resources, which is dealing with water leaks and pest invasions. Guardrails won’t be replaced along a cliff edge deemed a “significant safety hazard for visitors” at Colorado’s Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, and crumbling walls along a scenic drive won’t be fixed at Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park. At Crater Lake in Oregon, potholes riddle the main drive and two housing units for employees have been shuttered because of mold.

Is anyone trying to protect the NPS?

Some members of Congress are speaking out, as are NPS staffers. When the Trump administration started shrinking the workforce, a group of off-duty and former employees formed Resistance Rangers to document NPS’s cuts and policy changes, while fired workers flew an upside-down American flag—a distress sign—at Yosemite. Meanwhile, lawmakers in Washington have rejected plans in Trump’s 2027 budget to lay off nearly 3,000 more NPS workers and shrink the agency’s budget from $3.2 billion to $2.2 billion. No lawmaker wants to be responsible for defunding such a beloved agency. Plus, said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), “I just need to know that I’ve got people out in the park who are keeping the bears at bay.”

After notching a string of Democratic primary wins in New York City and Colorado, the far-left Democratic Socialists of America will face its “biggest test” soon, said Caroline Vakil in The Hill. If the polls are right, the likely winner of the Democratic gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin will be state Rep. Francesca Hong, 37, a tattooed former restaurant worker and “proud” DSA member who a few years ago called for the abolition of Thanksgiving. Hong has sought to distance herself from that statement and from the DSA’s radical platform, which includes such proposals as abolishing the police, prisons, borders, and the U.S. Senate, as well as ending U.S. support for Israel. Because of that baggage, mainstream Democrats like current Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers doubt Hong can beat the GOP’s presumptive nominee, Rep. Tom Tiffany, in November, and worry she’ll hurt downballot candidates. But Hong’s supporters see no need to stress. They note the rising antiestablishment mood among Democrats and voters in general, and say the narrow win by progressive Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s Senate Democratic primary shows there’s a possible path to victory in purple states.

The “Democratic machine is fighting back” as best it can, said Noah Rothman in National Review. The Democratic National Committee last week tweaked its presidential primary schedule to favor centrist-leaning states like Nevada and South Carolina, which should help ward off “the insurgent socialists in their ranks.” But with 1 in 3 Democratic voters now identifying as a democratic socialist it may be too little, too late. This is “a story of establishment collapse rather than left-wing ascension,” said Astead Herndon in Vox. Candidates like Hong are winning over normie Democrats not with the DSA’s extreme ideas but by pushing popular measures: new taxes on the superrich, Medicare for all, restraining the artificial intelligence industry. The “rudderless” Democratic establishment, by contrast, is offering nothing except ineffective opposition to President Trump.

We need better labeling, said Jonathan V. Last in The Bulwark. The truth is that a likely majority of DSA members, and the overwhelming majority of those who tell pollsters they’re “democratic socialists,” aren’t “socialists” at all. “They’re social democrats, in the European tradition.” Like the DSA-endorsed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), their main objectives are an expanded welfare state, including universal health-care coverage, funded by a more progressive tax code. Social democrats also want to win elections, meaning they could be a great asset within the Democratic coalition. Not so the DSA’s “Das Kapital–loving, Mao-admiring” genuine socialists who need to be rejected before they “do to the Democratic Party what MAGA did to Republicans.”

Democrats should stop “whining,” said Paul Waldman in Public Notice. With the primaries largely over, it’s electoral self-harm to keep screaming “half our candidates are crazy!” The party’s centrists need to understand that, with control of Congress in the balance, “they have an interest in seeing all Democrats succeed—even those who are too progressive for their taste.” Whatever happens in November “will inform 2028,” said Nia-Malika Henderson in Bloomberg. If DSA-backed candidates can “pull off victories in purple states,” then a new template will emerge on how to win. But if those candidates lose, the Democratic Party will have less power than ever to “rein in Trump’s many excesses,” and will sail toward 2028 still “wrestling with itself” over what it actually believes.

What happened

Progressive firebrand Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated establishment-backed Rep. Haley Stevens in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary last week, in a race viewed by many political observers as a referendum on the party’s identity. That fight turned out to be much closer than polling suggested. El-Sayed, a former public health official endorsed by independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), used his campaign as a litmus test for Democratic support of Israel, and blasted Stevens for receiving more than $30 million—about half her advertising funding—from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Stevens said El-Sayed, who would become the first Muslim U.S. senator if he wins in November, wants to “blame all of your problems on Jewish Americans.” After his victory was confirmed, El-Sayed called on Michigan Democrats to “mend fences” ahead of his race against the GOP nominee, former Rep. Mike Rogers.

Another Michigan progressive, William Lawrence, won his Democratic primary in a battleground House district following a campaign that focused heavily on opposing data centers. But the party’s leftward momentum stalled in St. Louis, where Missouri Rep. Wesley Bell defeated his challenger, former Rep. Cori Bush, in a House primary. A pro-Israel moderate, Bell unseated Bush in 2024 after she became one of the first sitting lawmakers to call Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide. Following that loss, Bush vowed to run again and warned AIPAC that she would “tear your kingdom down.” Bell won this week by more than 20 points.

What the columnists said

El-Sayed’s win was not the “resounding verdict in the Democratic civil war” he had anticipated, said Adam Wren in Politico. He was confident throughout the race, bragging about feeling no stress as voting began. Can you blame him? Some polls gave him a double-digit lead. But in the end, Stevens lost by only a point, thanks to strong support from Black and lower-income voters. Still, it was “an impressive effort” from the grassroots El-Sayed, who was outspent by Stevens by almost $60 million.

Are Democrats “playing for fun” or “playing to win”? asked Kevin D. Williamson in The Dispatch. Defeating Rogers, the GOP’s “bland Trump factotum,” in November ought to have been “pretty easy.” But it won’t be after Democrats nominated El-Sayed, a “left-wing goofball” who fixates on Jews, parties with podcaster and “Hamas apologist” Hasan Piker, and “advocates a state-monopoly health-care system that would strip Michigan union members of cherished benefits.” In a must-win battleground state, polls show he’s trailing Rogers, 46% to 43%.

Stevens may have been a safer bet, said William Kristol in The Bulwark. But once the bitterness of the primary subsides, the “national environment will still help the Democratic nominee.” It’s Rogers, not El-Sayed, who’s tainted by the historically unpopular President Trump. If El-Sayed leaves his squabbles with fellow Democrats for another day and sticks to “the fundamentals” of fighting Trump, he can help them flip the Senate.

‘Why are we just watching America become a surveillance state?’

Sara Pequeño at USA Today

There is a “larger issue of mass surveillance becoming mainstream,” says Sara Pequeño. Flock cameras have “recently been in the news for what happens when police officers misuse the technology,” but “faceless corporations aren’t the only ones policing our behavior through mass surveillance.” Americans are “also creating the panopticon among ourselves.” People “can opt out of a culture that calls on us to record our fellow man if we ourselves would not like to be documented.”

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‘What should a 21st-century central bank look like?’

Daniel Moss at Bloomberg

Central banks “have done a sterling job in responding to swings in prices and employment, and severe gyrations in capital markets,” says Daniel Moss. Still, they “haven’t always gotten everything right.” Then “there’s the perceived overreach.” Politicians “might insist that they support central bank independence but now want to peel back what policymakers can do, how they can do it and when they can do it.” The “case for freedom to implement policy has never been stronger.”

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‘A “Free Palestine” T-shirt at a Holocaust memorial is no contradiction’

Gideon Levy at Haaretz

“Teenagers from an international anti-fascist youth camp visited Austria’s Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial last week,” and a “number of them wore T-shirts with slogans calling for the liberation of Palestine,” says Gideon Levy. The “notion that there is no better place than the ruins of a concentration camp to fight for the liberation of 2 million human beings who are currently incarcerated in the Gaza Strip is beyond the grasp of Israelis.” The “call to free Palestine is not antisemitic.”

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‘Should an insurer or a doctor decide where your care takes place?’

Edmund Pribitkin at The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Every day, physicians, patients and the families who care for them make hundreds of decisions together about where and how care should be delivered,” says Edmund Pribitkin. “Increasingly, however, these collective judgments are being second-guessed — and often overruled — by large insurance companies through policies that prioritize administrative convenience and cost-shifting over clinical judgment.” Healthcare decisions “should be made by patients, their families and their care teams — not by insurance company policies.”

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What happened

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

Who said what

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

What next?

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

What happened

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

Who said what

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

What next?

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

What happened

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

Who said what

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

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

What next?

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

‘My laundromat accepts Apple Pay. Why won’t they take my cash?’

Mary Anna Mancuso at the Miami Herald

Cash “isn’t going out of circulation; it’s disappearing from everyday transactions,” says Mary Anna Mancuso. Businesses “prefer electronic payments” because it “reduces the risk of robbery, digital transactions go into the bank almost immediately and the bookkeeping is simpler.” But it is “worth asking what we lose when convenience becomes the only option.” A “modern payment system should accommodate everyone — whether they choose to tap their phone, swipe a card or hand over a dollar bill.”

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‘Ukraine has always been here — and always will be’

Lidia Pilecky at the Chicago Tribune

Ukraine’s “history tells the facts. We were here. We are here. And we will remain here,” says Lidia Pilecky. For “centuries, Russian rulers repeatedly tried to ban the Ukrainian language and suppress the very identity Putin claims never existed.” But “today, Ukrainians defend the universal principle that no nation should be destroyed because a more powerful neighbor claims it has no right to exist.” Ukraine’s “fight is also taking place in classrooms where children learn the truth.”

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‘Cyclospora outbreaks will only get worse as climate chaos grows’

Amy Moas at Newsweek

This “has been one of the most dangerous summers on record, and experts have been warning about it for decades,” says Amy Moas regarding “two deaths linked to the outbreak of cyclospora.” It is “easier to associate loss of life with extreme weather when it’s tied to a singular event.” But “you can ‘contact-trace’ this now-fatal outbreak back to the ongoing climate crisis.” If “summer gets longer and warmer, we’ll see a longer, hotter mechanism for the parasite to thrive.”

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‘Fancy sodas fall flat with me’

Brenda Cronin at The Wall Street Journal

Fancy sodas “come in winsome bottles or sleek cans and have ridiculous flavors like watermelon-dandelion or rosehip-jacaranda,” but “they taste like carbonated cough syrup with a Windex chaser,” says Brenda Cronin. People “should be reveling in the gourmet soda parade,” if “only the flavors didn’t sound like products from Bath & Body Works” or “taste like a mashup of SweeTARTS and Jolly Ranchers.” When “drinking feels more like penance than a party, I’ll do without.”

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What happened

The Senate Homeland Security Committee on Thursday voted along party lines to hold former U.S. infectious disease chief Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress for repeatedly refusing to answer questions during testimony on the federal response to Covid-19. Committee Chair Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and other Republicans contended that Fauci could not invoke his Fifth Amendment rights “because he’d already received a preemptive pardon from former President Joe Biden,” CNN said. But “GOP lawmakers also openly acknowledged” last week that they “hoped to get Fauci to perjure himself in his testimony, allowing them to bring new charges.”

Who said what

“Fauci faced no risk of federal prosecution,” Paul said. “All he had to do was tell the truth.” Fauci’s lawyer called the vote a “crude political stunt” to “punish” a public servant for “exercising his constitutional rights.” Paul appears so “hellbent on putting Fauci in jail” that his office immediately hand-delivered the contempt resolution to federal prosecutors, Politico said. Contempt referrals “rarely bypass the full Senate,” The Wall Street Journal said, and “it isn’t clear whether a referral made in such a manner is legally valid.”

What next?

The Justice Department on Thursday evening said it had received Paul’s referral, is “reviewing it and will work with the Senate accordingly.” If prosecutors decide to file charges and win a conviction, Fauci faces up to a year in prison.

What happened

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

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

Who said what

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

What next?

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

The UN is preparing to choose a new secretary general for the first time in a decade as six candidates vie to succeed António Guterres of Portugal.

But the winner faces a huge challenge, with a host of geopolitical crises and the very status of the body itself in question.

Who is in the running?

Calls for a “madame secretary general” have been growing “louder”. So the next appointment will “test whether the UN is committed to breaking glass ceilings” by appointing a woman to the post for the first time, said the Australian Institute of International Affairs.

The candidates include Michelle Bachelet, former president of Chile; Maria Fernanda Espinosa, former foreign minister of Ecuador; Rebeca Grynspan, former vice president of Costa Rica; and Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett, former foreign minister of Guyana and permanent representative to the UN.

Several female candidates were overlooked in 2016, when Guterres was elected to serve the first of his two terms. “If I am polite, I would say the world was not prepared for it,” said Bachelet in April. “Is it prepared now? I hope so,” adding that appointing a woman as secretary general would be “a good signal”.

Among the men in contention is Rafael Grossi, the Argentinian diplomat who is director general of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Macky Sall, a former prime minister and president of Senegal.

The successful candidate will be chosen by the UN General Assembly following the recommendation of the Security Council, whose permanent members are the UK, China, France, Russia and the US.

Those nations “have the future of the world body in their hands”, said Agence France-Presse. Observers say “it is difficult to pick a favourite” because the world’s major powers are “divided on the outcome”, but Grossi has been “repeatedly mentioned”.

What does the secretary general do?

The secretary general is the chief administrative officer and public face of the UN. The role is “equal parts diplomat and advocate, civil servant and CEO”, according to the UN itself.

They oversee several important UN bodies, including the Security Council, which is charged with maintaining peace and security. However, unlike a prime minister or president, the secretary general does not have the power to make laws or command countries. The role is more about persuasion, diplomacy and authority rather than objective political or military power.

What will be in their in-tray?

Gaza and Ukraine will be high in the pile but they’ll have a “tough task” because the “relevance, power and financial capability” of the UN is “under an increasingly harsh spotlight”, said Deutsche Welle.

“Simply put,” said Politico, the UN is “an increasingly irrelevant global institution”, because the United States, “its most powerful member”, is “abandoning and defunding” many parts of its “sprawling structure”.

The Security Council itself “barely functions” because of the “rivalries” between the US, China and Russia, all of whom have the power of veto. “Even as a venue for international gatherings”, the UN is “fading” because leaders would “rather meet and make deals” at the G20.