What happened
FBI Director Kash Patel yesterday sparred with Senate Democrats at a Judiciary Committee hearing that touched on his firings of experienced agents, melding of personal and taxpayer-funded travel, alleged agency politicization, the Jeffrey Epstein files and refusal to rule out sending federal agents to voting sites in November. Some of the “most noteworthy questions” involved Patel’s recent decision to remove bestiality and prostitution as automatic disqualifiers for FBI job applicants, Reuters said. His explanation that “he did not want ​to bar trafficking victims who had been forced to have sex with animals” drew an “incredulous response from Republicans and Democrats alike.” 

Who said what
The “fiery” hours-long hearing “featured the name-calling and bitingly personal exchanges that have come to define Patel’s appearances on Capitol Hill,” The Associated Press said. As Patel “lashed out at Democrats,” said NBC News, an FBI social media account “launched attacks on several” committee members. The “tension climaxed,” Politico said, when the “normally genial” committee chair Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) “angrily asked” Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) if he was “ready to shut up.”

What next?
Patel’s suggestion that he was “open to sending federal agents to polling places” raised alarms among Democrats, The New York Times said. “Do you pledge that you will not, in any way, interfere in the will of the American people when they go to the polls in November?” Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) asked. Patel said he would “pledge unequivocally that I will not participate in your charade of lies.” 

What happened
Ed Sheeran’s world tour unraveled yesterday after all his remaining supporting acts quit in solidarity with the rapper Macklemore and his onstage support of Palestinians. Macklemore said Monday that he was dropped from the tour after New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft “rallied some of the other stadium owners” to give Sheeran an ultimatum: No Macklemore or no concert. 

Who said what
Yesterday’s tour pullouts by Finneas, Danish band Lukas Graham and Irish acts Aaron Rowe and Beoga“put enormous pressure on Sheeran (pictured above), who has tried to avoid politics and taking a side in the Gaza conflict,” The Associated Press said. “Artists must not be silenced when they speak up for the oppressed,” Finneas, brother and collaborator of Billie Eilish, said on social media. 

Kraft said Monday that Macklemore’s pro-Palestine statements at Sheeran’s recent New Jersey shows and “broader history of antisemitic rhetoric” crossed a line. Dropping Macklemore “was the promoter’s decision, it was not mine,” Sheeran wrote on Instagram. “I have my personal views on this devastating conflict,” but “I choose not to speak publicly” because concertgoers “do not expect a political forum.” That “doesn’t mean I don’t care.” 

What next?
Sheeran has shows scheduled in North and South America through December. Most of the seven U.S. stadiums “are publicly owned,” CNN said. At least two recently had or will soon host concerts by Ye, “who made a spate of antisemitic comments that he now attributes to a brain injury and untreated bipolar disorder.”

The Italian government is moving in a “unilateral and arrogant way, treating Sardinia like the Cayenne of Italy,” regional governor Alessandra Todde said in a statement earlier this month, after high-security prisoners were transferred in without local involvement. Cayenne, nicknamed Devil’s Island, is a former penal colony off the coast of French Guiana. Sardinia just wants to be “involved in the decisions that directly affect its own territory,” Todde said.

Sardinia lodged its complaint as 88 high-security prisoners arrived on the island, said The Times of London. They are among the “746 inmates held under Italy’s toughest solitary confinement rules,” taking Sardinia’s total to 183, or a quarter of the national total.

Starting in February, Sardinians have vigorously protested the prisoners’ relocation to the island. “We can’t send them to Sicily, because many of them come from there in the first place,” one Italian prison officer told The Times. Locals fear that as more of the prisoners arrive, mafia clans could “move from mainland Italy to be near jailed relatives,” bringing white-collar crime, said The Independent.

With its “silky, white beaches, turquoise bays and terracotta villages, Sardinia has worked hard” to “position itself as one of Europe’s most popular holiday destinations,” said The Telegraph. Adding to the island’s already high prisoner-to-inhabitant ratio could also strain local services in a region with a “fragile healthcare system and an aging population,” The Independent said. If, for example, a “mobster” in prison were to need hospital treatment, it would require an escort of “dozens of prison guards,” and could force authorities to “shut entire wards” for safety.