The Democrats are “euphoric” in the wake of last week’s midterm elections, said Victoria Guida on Politico, but the truth is that the results “delivered a warning” to them as well as the Republicans. “People are angry about the cost of living, and they want their representatives to actually do something about it.”

Having captured both the House and Senate, Democrats now need to show dissatisfied voters that they can respond. “Excuses will only go so far in 2028 if the electorate is still mad.” The party must decide its “game plan” for two years of divided government. Is it worth drawing up partisan legislation and sending it to the president’s desk, only to see it vetoed? Or would voters respond better if the party worked with Donald Trump to pass more modest, compromise measures? And can Democrats “even agree enough” among themselves “to advance legislation”?

Populist momentum

They must be bold, said Michael Tomasky in The New Republic. Last week’s elections demolished the conventional wisdom that the party can only prosper by running cautious, corporate-friendly centrists. Both James Talarico in Texas and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan ran as “aggressive economic populists”. One of Talarico’s campaign riffs was that “the only minority destroying America is the billionaires”. Democrats who speak like that aren’t supposed to win Senate seats.

Yet both did, despite their opponents spending some $200 million on efforts to vilify them. The party should capitalise on its momentum, agreed Aaron Regunberg in the same publication. It has a wide array of popular economic policies at its disposal: anti-price-gouging laws to bring down the cost of energy and food; excess-profits tax on Big Oil; paid sick leave; a congressional stock-trading ban. “What is the downside to daring Trump to veto bills like these that are supported by 70%-80% of Americans?”

Overreach risk

Voters backed Democrat candidates in order to rebuke Trump, said The Washington Post, but it’s clear from many ballot measures last week that they “aren’t sold on left-wing economic policy prescriptions”. Voters in North Carolina, for instance, elected a Democratic senator, but also approved measures to cap income tax. The same thing happened in Iowa. Wisconsin elected a Democratic governor, but voted to ban affirmative action in state institutions.

The midterms weren’t an endorsement of the Democrats, agreed The Wall Street Journal. The party won just 29% approval in the latest NBC poll, to the Republicans’ 38%. Investigations into the murky finances of the Trump administration would be welcome, as would closer policy scrutiny in general, but Democrats must beware of overreaching. If they lurch to the Left and waste time on, say, another doomed impeachment drive, it “could lead voters to conclude in 2028 that the post-Trump Republican Party doesn’t look so bad after all”.

Pragmatic leadership

The Democrats could learn from Zohran Mamdani, said Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic. Many feared the worst when the avowed socialist became New York mayor last year, but it hasn’t led to a Marxist takeover. Mamdani retained Jessica Tisch, a pro-Israel billionaire hated by the hard-left, as police commissioner, and cut the red tape that slows private home building. He has dropped some progressive ambitions, such as free buses, and put others, like universal daycare, on a more gradual track. While still a fierce critic of Israel, he has unveiled an initiative to combat antisemitism.

Yes, he has stuck with the “goofy notion” of state-run grocery stores, but this supposed socialist firebrand has largely prioritised “humdrum municipal governance”. Democrats have long sought a pragmatic leader who can inspire the Left while “ignoring the incessant demands of progressive activists”. They might want to look to New York.

Last month, new US sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) began to take effect. All US-linked companies that provide services to the court face penalties; it has had to find European alternatives to US software, and end its relationship with insurance company Axa, which does business in the US.

The latest measures were announced on 9 October, but sanctions had already been imposed by the US on ICC officials: in Donald Trump’s first term (in response to an ICC probe into the actions of US soldiers in Afghanistan); and in 2025, after the court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, over suspected war crimes in Gaza. The US regards this as an overextension of its authority. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the ICC a “rogue court”, and said that if US allies did not rein it in, America would “continue its campaign to dismantle the ICC, brick by brick”.

What exactly is the ICC?

It’s not part of the UN, though it was created by the Statute of Rome, at the UN General Assembly there in 1998. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda provided blueprints for the ICC.

Describing itself as the “court of last resort”, the ICC, based in The Hague in the Netherlands, exercises its power only when states are “unwilling or unable” to investigate serious crimes against international law. The Rome Statute lists crimes it can prosecute: genocide; crimes against humanity; war crimes; crimes of aggression; and offences against its own legal processes (i.e. perjury or contempt).

There are 125 member states, but many others do not recognise its authority. More than 40, including China and India, never signed the treaty. Dozens of others, such as the US, Israel and Russia, signed the treaty but never ratified it.

What is its jurisdiction?

Usually, it can only exert authority over citizens of its member states or when a crime has been committed on member-state soil. For instance, although Russia is not an ICC state party, Vladimir Putin has been indicted for crimes committed in Ukraine, which has accepted the jurisdiction of the court since 2014. Palestine followed in 2015, allowing warrants to be served on Israeli ministers.

Although the ICC respects the primacy of member states’ courts, it can step in if it deems they are failing. But it has no police or army: signatory states are obliged to enforce its rulings; and since the world’s three most militarily powerful nations are not members, this limits its powers.

Why is it criticised?

For many reasons. Its proceedings are slow: since its first case in 2006, there have been only 34 cases before the court, and 15 convictions. These have been disproportionately focused on less powerful countries. The first ICC investigation against a citizen from outside the African continent did not take place until 2016; and the court continues to struggle with its image as the enforcer of “white man’s justice”. The US human rights lawyer Reed Brody complained in 2024 that it had “never indicted a Western official”, preferring to focus on “powerless outcasts, or opponents of the West such as Vladimir Putin”.

However, on the occasions when it has indicted Western allies, or investigated crimes potentially committed by Western nations, it is criticised for having a “globalist” left-wing agenda.

Why did the US never sign up?

President Clinton signed the treaty, but did not submit it to the Senate for ratification. Given the global deployment of US troops and the frequency of its use of force, the fear was that the ICC would make US officials and soldiers vulnerable, and would reduce its freedom of military action. The US has long rejected the ICC’s claim to jurisdiction over its citizens when they are in the territory of treaty states. President George W. Bush signed into law the American Service-Members’ Protection Act in 2002, declaring that it would take “all means necessary” to protect US military personnel and officials from ICC jurisdiction.

However, until recently the US has selectively supported investigations, for instance into war crimes in Darfur and during the Syrian civil war, and – under President Biden – into Russian atrocities in Ukraine.

Why is Trump so opposed to the ICC?

It is part of his wider war on multilateral institutions, which has seen the US withdraw from the Paris climate agreement and the WHO. The latest sanctions, however, seem to have had a particular trigger: they came hours after the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to one of the ICC’s former judges. South African judge Navi Pillay, currently at the UN’s International Court of Justice in The Hague, was awarded the prize for lifelong contributions to international justice. The prize, said the Norwegian Nobel Committee, was a “message to those who are attacking, undermin[ing] ... the international rules-based system”.

Where does this leave the ICC?

Sanctions mean officials cannot enter the US, or use US-affiliated credit cards or use Microsoft platforms. Staff say that the sanctions have not hindered the court’s work, but this seems improbable. The EU, whose states are heavily committed to the ICC, has given clear support, saying that US attacks on the court and its officials are “simply not acceptable”.

The EU last month awarded the court the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, commending its “important work in upholding international law and justice”. The campaign against it is likely to “further cement the reputation of the United States as an unhinged, domineering hegemon”, argues Stewart Patrick of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. But opposition to the ICC is practically a consensus position on the US Right.

American politics has never had to deal with someone like Elon Musk before, said Andrew Egger on The Bulwark. There are other wealthy donors, of course, but none comparable to the world’s richest man.

Musk lavished about $450 million on Republican campaigns ahead of this week’s midterm elections – more than any single donor has ever spent on a US election cycle. Around $180 million of that went on unsuccessfully trying to stop the Democrat James Talarico winning the Texas Senate race. And Musk wasn’t just writing cheques. On his platform X, where “he has 241 million followers and owns the algorithms that ensure everyone sees his posts”, he relentlessly tweeted attacks on Talarico, calling him a creep who “will vote to take away your children and transition them”.

Musk’s efforts to swing the outcome may have failed, but they raised questions about his degree of influence, and put him in the Democrats’ sights, said Paul Blumenthal on HuffPost. Kendall Scudder, chair of the Texas Democratic Party, declared: “If you think retribution isn’t on the way, you’re mistaken.”

‘Berserk’ hatred

The Left has “gone nearly berserk” in its hatred of Musk, said Victor Davis Hanson on American Greatness. Back in the days when he supported the Democrats (Musk voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and claimed he voted for Joe Biden in 2020), liberals loved him and proudly drove Teslas. But now that he votes Republican, he’s a Nazi who’s out to buy elections. Never mind that the billionaire George Soros and his foundations “have channelled well over half a billion dollars to left-wing candidates and causes in just the last six years alone”.

Democrats are itching to launch investigations into Musk, said Robby Soave in Reason. And some are now even talking of nationalising his companies, including Starlink, claiming that they’re too important to be left under his control. This is a “dangerous” notion. It would unfairly target Musk and send a message to other innovators that they’d better not be too successful or they’ll be punished.

Critics must keep their vengeful feelings in check, agreed Marian L. Tupy on The Dispatch. While Musk should of course be held accountable for any violations of the law or any harms caused by his decisions, opponents shouldn’t turn political disagreement into a reason to “obstruct legitimate enterprise”. Musk can be arrogant, vindictive and rude, but his “failings should be weighed against his contributions to human progress”.

Oligarchy vs. democracy

If Musk stuck to technology, his “capricious, emotionally stunted man-baby” antics might not matter, said David Futrelle in The National. But he’s a political force: apparently willing to switch off Starlink with shocking effects on Ukraine; increasingly sceptical of democracy and willing to leverage his immense wealth to undermine it.

The sums he’s spending to tilt elections are unprecedented, and he seems to believe his wealth puts him above the law. When the tech journalist Kara Swisher predicted in a recent podcast that the Democrats would soon be investigating Musk over his huge government contracts and his leadership of the job-slashing Doge agency, he reacted furiously. “Live by the sword, die by the sword,” he posted on X. “Sounds like Swisher really wants to go to prison.”

The good news is that Musk’s money couldn’t buy the Texas Senate seat, said Tim Murphy in Mother Jones – in part because Talarico’s campaign “was predicated on the idea that people like Musk would try to buy the seat”. Even so, this is a warning, said Perry Bacon in The New Republic. Democrats must restrict the vast and growing political power of billionaires, including liberal ones. “America can have an oligarchy or a democracy – not both.”

“We will kill Trump,” says a huge new billboard in central Tehran. There is a “good degree of triumphalism” inside Iran at the results of the US midterms, said Patrick Wintour, diplomatic editor of The Guardian. But supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei has warned those expecting an immediate shift in American policy towards Iran that they are “seriously mistaken”.

Donald Trump will soon face pressure on military spending from a Democrat-controlled Congress. But, in the two months before the new Congress convenes, “he has greater latitude and little accountability”. The president has paid a high “political price” for his war with Iran, and, “having come so far”, he may look to “cement his legacy and finish the job”.

What did the commentators say?

Trump will not “go gentle into the political twilight of his career”, said the BBC’s international editor Jeremy Bowen. Despite his drubbing at the ballot box, “he retains broad powers to use America’s military might”, and his “determination never to be seen” as a loser might tempt him to “blot out the electoral rout” by taking action abroad.

The new Congress will curb Trump’s “sledgehammer” approach to diplomacy, said Foreign Policy. The Democrats may not “get their way” completely but “the power of the purse will grant them considerable influence and negotiating power”. They could also “use their new oversight authorities” to hold hearings on the Iran war. If these are navigated shrewdly, any mistakes Trump makes in Iran could be weaponised as a “line of political attack” stretching to the 2028 presidential election.

“The president had been planning with Israel a new offensive after the midterm elections,” said Samer Al-Atrush, The Times’ Middle East correspondent. But such is the “historic drop in support for Israel” among US voters, that, even before the elections, Trump suggested he might soon “scale back American aid to Israel”. Key US ally Saudi Arabia will be “alarmed” by the Democrat triumphs and other Gulf nations that “initially opposed the war” will “welcome the moderating influence of an opposition-led Congress”.

But Trump “is peevish”, said Sam Kiley, The Independent’s world affairs editor. “His will has been thwarted, and his administration has been humiliated by Iran’s defiant resilience.” He will blame Iran’s survival, not his own actions, for “the spike in fossil fuel prices”. And if the world sees Iran as some “plucky underdog”, he “will want to shoot that animal”.

What next?

“All of Trump’s options are problematic,” said Axios. He could launch further strikes but going back to war would keep fuel prices high and be “highly unpopular”. Negotiation could be dogged by Iran, “sensing weakness”, refusing to make concessions, meaning Trump will have a “hard time reaching a deal”. He could continue to “strangle” Iran with naval blockades and sanctions but that “could take months to show progress”. The bottom line is: “there’s no tidy way for Trump to ‘finish the job’”.

Americans woke up to a decidedly bluer map this morning, as sweeping Democrat victories in Kansas, Texas and beyond dramatically realigned the country’s electoral makeup. With Congress soon to be under Democratic control, Republicans face a potential end to an era defined — and perhaps doomed — by President Donald Trump.

What did the commentators say?

After imploring voters “not once, not twice, but 47 times this fall” to act as if he himself were on the ballot, Trump got his wish, said Peter Baker at The New York Times. “Just not the way he hoped.” That Democrats won as decisively as they did suggests the country is “signaling the beginning of the end of the Trump era.”

There is “something bigger than the misadventures” of any one Republican candidate at play, said John Kennith White at The Hill. The “stench of political death has repelled even Trump’s most devoted followers,” as voters demand an “end to the anything-goes rhetoric” in favor of “leaders they can admire.”

GOP hopes that Trump’s previous victories were a “political realignment grounded in expanded support” from “working-class minority voters” have been “reduced to rubble,” said Ronald Brownstein at Bloomberg. The electoral “drubbing” also “exposed some cracks in the core MAGA coalition” of white men who did not attend college and rural voters that has “sustained Trump since 2016.”

Trump, “like lots of populists,” forgot the “economic bit of populism,” said Janan Ganesh at the Financial Times. That lapse made it “hard to distinguish him from a laissez-faire Republican of yesteryear.” A “voter rebellion” against Republicans could “force conservatives to rethink their undying allegiance” to the “80-year-old lame-duck leader,” said Steve Peoples at The Associated Press. Before polls closed Tuesday, some GOP candidates had already “begun to distance themselves from him.” These midterms mark the “beginning of a high-stakes fight” over the United States’ “political future in the twilight of the Trump era.”

What next?

How Trump responds to the midterm results will “shape the GOP’s fate,” not only for the remainder of his term but in the 2028 race to succeed him, said Bloomberg. While “Trumpism may be receding,” said the Times, its namesake has the “power of the presidency for two more years.” Trump may do “everything he can to remain a dominant voice for as long as he can.”

The US midterm elections were “a total referendum” on Donald Trump, said Marjorie Taylor Greene, the US president’s former-ally-turned-major-critic. “He told people to vote like he was on the ballot and they did” – with a mighty rebuke.

Trump has long relied on the support of a vocal, tight-knit fanbase but even the Maga faithful have wobbled as petrol prices soar, the Iran war staggers on and the president seems more interested in remodelling the White House than addressing their concerns. The crushing scale of last night’s defeats at ballot boxes across the country could loosen Trump’s grip on the Republican Party and weaken its contender in the 2028 presidential race.

What did the commentators say?

“The political weather in Washington and beyond changed overnight,” said Katy Balls, The Times’ Washington editor. This was not a Democratic “blue trickle” but a “blue tsunami”. Candidates from all wings of the party won so widely and broadly that any potential Democrat presidential candidate will be able to “find a statistic” to “back up” a claim that their bloc “is destined for the White House”. Trump’s failure to question the results could be “a rare show of magnanimity” but “the results were so bad, it would be hard to claim this was down to a few thousand lost votes”.

“Donald J. Trump is now officially, thoroughly, a lame duck,” said Jonathan Lemire in The Atlantic. For the first time, he may start to see the “fealty of the Republican party erode”. Such an “electoral wipeout” shows his “instincts and influence seem to be waning”, which could make his party “more willing to defy him”. As the US gears up for the next presidential race, Republicans will be trying to map out “what their post-Maga future will look like – and what role, if any, Trump plays in it”.

The Democrats have taken control of both chambers of the US Congress and that will have “two immediate consequences”, said Edward Luce, US editor of the Financial Times. First, the campaigns to replace Trump as the 2028 Republican nominee “will begin straightaway”; second, “Trump’s unpredictability” is likely to figure ever larger in the rest of his term. After all, “Trump is rarely outbid in the drama stakes”.

View Trump as a “spent force” at your peril, said Peter Baker, The New York Times’ chief White House correspondent. His power “may be receding” but he will still be president for two more years, and he will do “everything he can to remain a dominant voice for as long as he can”. There is a “natural tendency” to read too much into a “big midterm wave” but there are “plenty of examples” of when such an apparently “fundamental shift” in the electorate “did not last long”.

What next?

“The next two years will look nothing like the previous two,” said Moira Donegan, The Guardian’s US columnist. Trump will be facing “a hostile Congress”, a “cratering approval rating, and a term limit”. He’ll also have to lead a “fractured coalition”, having “split his inner circle and destroyed his credibility with the Republican rank and file” over the Iran war. Ambitious politicians in the party will “smell blood in the water” and “turn on him to shore up their own prospects”. He will “rage at their betrayal”, like a “stupid King Lear”, but, from now on, “his efforts” to “exact revenge may be severely diminished”.

US voters head to the polls today for midterm elections billed as a referendum on Donald Trump, even though the president’s name will not appear on a single ballot.

Up for grabs are all 435 seats in the lower house of Congress – the House of Representatives, where the Democrats expect to secure a majority – as well as 35 out of the 100 seats in the Senate, where the competition is predicted to be far closer.

Democrats would need to win four of seven Senate races deemed to be a “toss-up” by independent elections analyst The Cook Political Report to give them control of Congress, and with it “the power to limit Trump’s ambitions, reject his judicial nominations and investigate his administration”, said the BBC. Here are the races to watch:

Michigan

Probably the most hard-fought and vitriolic Senate race in this election cycle. Republicans have tried to paint Democrat candidate Abdul El-Sayed as a socialist and an Islamic extremist with links to the Muslim Brotherhood. Polls have remained neck-and-neck but a late shock endorsement for Republican challenger Mike Rogers by Haley Stevens, who lost the Democratic primary to El-Sayed, could have a decisive impact. Crucially, this is one of the few toss-up Senate seats currently held by the Democrats, and winning it back would be a boost to Republican hopes of clinging on to a majority in Congress.

Alaska

Democrat candidate Mary Peltola, the first Indigenous Alaskan to be elected to the House of Representatives, has campaigned for the Senate on a platform of “fish, family, freedom” to come within touching distance of flipping the Republican seat.

While Alaska’s ranked-choice system has historically made it harder for pollsters to predict the winner, the election campaign has also been marred by controversy and accusations of dirty tricks with the appearance of two Dan Sullivans on the ballot. One is the incumbent Republican senator, the other a retired teacher with no prior political experience, sparking claims he had been induced to run by the senator’s opponents in the hopes of confusing voters.

Texas

The Lone Star state has not sent a Democrat to the Senate in nearly 40 years, but polls show rising star James Talarico is in with a fighting chance. At more than half a billion dollars and counting, it is the most expensive Senate race in US history, with Republican challenger and arch-Trump loyalist Attorney General Ken Paxton trying to paint his opponent – who once suggested God was non-binary – as far-left on culture issues. But Talarico, a 37-year-old former teacher who studied to be a Christian minister, has nonetheless managed to cut through with voters in the traditionally deep-red Republican stronghold.

Kansas

Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, but rising farming and fuel costs linked to Trump’s war in Iran, as well as the impact of the president’s immigration crackdown on rural businesses, means the state is unexpectedly up for grabs. The Democrats have also benefited from picking charismatic Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton as their candidate in a state with a large evangelical and mainline Protestant population. The latest polls show him narrowly ahead of incumbent Republican Senator Roger Marshall in what would be a hugely symbolic gain for the Democrats.

The first shipment of Venezuelan oil has arrived in the US, under the terms of Donald Trump’s opaque and highly controversial deal with the South American nation.

The president claimed that, “the biggest oil deal in the history of the world” with Venezuela’s Washington-backed interim government would bring the US “BILLIONS of Barrels”. But many Venezuelans see it as an illegal surrender of natural resources to enrich a select few, at the behest of a colonial US. Trump further fanned these fears by suggesting that “someday soon” Venezuela might “become a prosperous 51st state”.

What do we know about the deal?

In August, the US announced a partnership agreement with North American Blue Energy Partners (Nabep), a private firm registered in the Bahamas and run by the Venezuelan billionaire Alejandro Betancourt López. The full text of the deal has since become “one of the most sought-after secrets in Washington”, said ProPublica.

Caracas has given Nabep control of 17 oil fields, and the Trump administration has taken a 35% stake in the firm. The deal allows the US government to purchase its first million barrels of Nabep’s crude oil, with no mark-up, for $30 (£23) a barrel, or less than a third of current market prices, sources told The Washington Post. The US then sells the oil to refineries run by Exxon Mobil and Venezuelan-owned Citgo Petroleum.

“The agreement has raised eyebrows to say the least,” said the BBC. Nabep is “little known” outside Venezuela and Betancourt has been under investigation in five different countries, mainly for corruption and money laundering. The 46-year-old oil baron has never been charged with a criminal offence, and denies any wrongdoing.

What’s in it for Trump?

Oil prices have skyrocketed across the US since the outbreak of war with Iran, while Trump’s approval ratings have fallen to record lows ahead of the midterm elections next week. This first shipment “gives Trump a chance to tout access to cheaper crude as ​evidence his policies are delivering economic benefits”, said Reuters. US petrol and diesel prices “will soon come plummeting down”, he wrote on social media – “JUST WATCH!”

Trump’s words show “the extent to which the White House is seeking to leverage its influence” over Venezuela for its own “political benefit”, said The Washington Post. But oil experts say the deal is “not expected to have a significant impact” on prices at US pumps. US refiners are already operating at maximum capacity, leaving them little room to scale up, and thick, heavy Venezuelan crude is particularly difficult to refine.

What’s in it for Venezuela?

Venezuela’s Trump-backed interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez, has insisted that Caracas retains sovereignty over its massive oil reserves. “The benefits” of this oil deal are “endless”, she said, bringing in revenues of more than $209 billion (£154 billion) and turning Venezuela into “an energy powerhouse”.

But the deal has “provoked outrage” across Venezuela’s political spectrum, said The Guardian. One prominent opposition figure called it “a massive land grab” by a “rapacious, mafioso” US.

What happened

Trump administration envoy Steve Witkoff praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “humanitarian” on a visit to St. Petersburg last week, after President Trump stunned U.S. allies and lawmakers from both parties with a string of decisions that will aid Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. In Russia to discuss possible peace talks between Trump, Putin, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Witkoff hailed Putin for releasing Stephen Hubbard, a retired American teacher who was snatched from his home in eastern Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion. Hubbard, 74, was imprisoned on what the State Department called false charges of fighting for Ukraine; fellow prisoners said he was tortured for being American. “You are a humanitarian, sir,” Witkoff told Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine has killed at least 15,000 civilians. “I salute that and I commend you.”

Trump issued an executive order last week suspending sanctions included in legislation that he signed last month, which would have hit top buyers of Russian energy and Russian officials and companies. Trump said the sanctions pause was needed because he didn’t want to “drive Russia away from the bargaining table.” The waiver came a week after Trump announced he was suspending other energy sanctions to buy hundreds of thousands of tons of Russian diesel fuel. Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials said the U.S. cut off advanced warnings on incoming missile strikes for several days and had limited Ukraine’s access to the satellite internet service Starshield, used to guide Ukrainian attack and defense drones. The Wall Street Journal reported that Elon Musk, whose Starlink supplies Starshield under a Pentagon contract, ordered the slowdown after consulting with Trump. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon had not manipulated the service, but noted that Starlink has “terms of service” that need to be complied with.

Zelensky said it would be a “historic mistake” for the U.S. to switch sides and support Russia. But Trump claimed “Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine” and hasn’t “been doing much,” despite its increasing attacks on Ukraine’s power grid and on civilians. He spoke just hours after a drone strike on a park in Kharkiv killed six people, including a 1-year-old who died in her stroller. “We’ve given tremendous amounts to Ukraine,” Trump said. “We’ve got nothing back.”

What the columnists said

“Trump’s assistance to Putin keeps growing by the day,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. In waiving the sanctions contained in the law — which was championed by the late GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham — Trump claimed he was serving the national interest. “But the opposite is true.” Trump’s best pal Putin responded to this “gift” with one of the war’s fiercest strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, hitting more than 15 power facilities. Meanwhile, the administration “still hasn’t come clean” on who throttled Starshield, or why the delivery of crucial Patriot interceptor missiles to Ukraine is being held up. After the midterms, there must be a “bipartisan reckoning.”

The dealmaker in chief may be eyeing business opportunities, said Jonathan Lemire and Simon Shuster in The Atlantic. Instead of “a battle for the modern, rules-based world order,” many Trump allies see the Ukraine war “as an impediment to future business deals with Russia.” If Kyiv just surrendered, it would “open up avenues to Russia’s diesel, rare earth minerals, and other resources.” The New York Times has reported that the administration has discussed a possible multibillion-dollar deal for assets owned by Russia’s Lukoil. That deal would directly benefit a Trump donor as well as Middle Eastern executives with ties to Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Trump has finally achieved his heart’s desire, said David Corn in Mother Jones: “a deal with Putin.” For decades he’s hungered to do business in Russia; as president, he’s laid bare his yearning “to be a Putin BFF,” providing cover for “a foreign adversary that has attacked American democracy repeatedly.” Trump, who couldn’t give a fig about international laws or Ukraine’s democracy, has seen Russia’s invasion “mainly as a nuisance” blocking him from the alliance he craves. “Putin’s criminality and barbarity were obstacles.” But Trump “has decided to move past that. Vlad is his man.”

For Republicans and Democrats alike, Trump’s “shocking” actions should be “the last straw,” said Andrew C. McCarthy in National Review. Russia is “an enemy committed to our destruction,” led by a “murderous dictator.” Trump is “giving him aid and comfort” as he wages war against a democratic ally, bent on its “conquest.” And he’s doing it all as Russia is “actively abetting Iran’s military operations” against the U.S. with intelligence and drone weaponry.

“America is now an ally of Russia,” said Tom Nichols in The Atlantic. In thrall to Putin, Trump has not only betrayed Ukraine; he’s “abandoned the Western order, the most successful—and powerful— security arrangement in human history.” And he seems to have done so to serve not national interests but his own. Until now, “Manchurian candidates and red presidents” allied with Russia were “the stuff of paranoid fiction. But this alliance now exists.”

“The question at issue is not just about Ukraine and Russia,” said Mark Hertling in The Bulwark. “It is about what the United States stands for.” For 250 years, Americans have believed in “sovereignty, self-determination, and opposition to territorial conquest.” Now Trump is executing a “disturbing and shameful abandonment” not only of Ukraine but of those bedrock principles. In America’s long history we haven’t always lived up to our values. “But rarely have we so obviously and notoriously abandoned them.”

What is the administration doing?

In a first in U.S. history, the government has separated tens of thousands of children from parents who were arrested on immigration violations, often deporting them without their kids. Many such parents entered the U.S. legally as asylum seekers and have been working and raising families while pursuing citizenship. This spring, the Brookings Institution counted more than 146,000 children who are U.S. citizens and have had a parent deported; more than 22,000 have had both parents deported. Sometimes deportees are given the option to take their children with them—but not always. When Physicians for Human Rights interviewed women deported to Honduras this year, they found that many had not been asked if they had children, while others simply had their kids taken. One was parted from her 2-month-old breastfeeding baby. Migrant advocates say the crisis mirrors 2018, when the first Trump administration’s policy of separating families at the southern border sparked an uproar. “It’s leading to all the same forms of trauma,” said Kelly Kribs, an attorney for immigrant children. “But the speed and the scale of the separations now is at a level we’ve never seen before.”

What happens to children left in the U.S.?

Many go to relatives or friends, but because deportees have little or no time to arrange for care, some end up in foster care. When Marlyn, a Venezuelan with a pending asylum application, landed in ICE detention after a traffic stop in Alabama, her two young children, including a 2-year-old just weaned, were left with her co- worker. When she chose to accept deportation rather than endure prolonged detention in a case likely to fail, she said she begged to have her children sent with her. “I told them, ‘I have no one to take care of them.’ But they never did anything.” Nearly a year later, Marlyn has been unable to arrange extradition for her toddler, who doesn’t recognize her in video calls. Some parents choose to leave their kids behind because they are returning to countries roiled by violence. One Haitian woman, identified by The Guardian only as L.T., made the wrenching decision to leave her sick baby with a grandmother, knowing that there wouldn’t be medical care in gang-plagued Haiti. Now she’s racked by fear that her daughter could wind up with strangers. “I’m terrified of losing my baby,” she said.

What does the law say?

The law allows for parents to be deported without their children, but until recently there were protections. ICE policy held that federal agents should avoid separating families and either deport them together or confirm a caregiver is in place. The Trump administration revised the policy to say agents should do that “when operationally feasible,” which advocates say gives ICE leeway to ignore it. The administration insists it doesn’t intentionally separate families, and that this only occurs when parents make the choice to self- deport. But critics say otherwise. ICE is intent on meeting its deportation quotas, said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), even “if that means tearing families apart and traumatizing children.” Migrant advocates also cite a growing trend of children being taken from parents and put into federal custody.

Why is this happening?

Children of detainees are being reclassified as unaccompanied minors and sent to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. When Luis, a construction worker from Venezuela, was detained with his 11-year-old son, Andrés, after being arrested in El Paso, he said agents removed Andrés and transferred him to ORR instead of sending him to his grandfather. Case workers said Andrés couldn’t sleep in foster care and screamed for his parents at night. It’s not clear how common such reclassifications are, but Mother Jones spoke to a dozen lawyers who confirmed the trend. “They’re kidnapping people’s kids and keeping them in government custody,” said Jen Smyers, who was a Biden-era ORR official. There’s a process for applying to get them out, but the administration has made it arduous—to protect children from predators, it says—and ICE has arrested undocumented people who apply.

Are minors ever deported alone?

Frequently. An analysis by Pro Publica found that judges have issued over 10,000 removal and voluntary departure orders for unaccompanied minors every month, a rate four times higher than in Trump’s first term. Most of these children came from Central American countries riven by violence and economic upheaval, have no criminal record, and are pursuing legal residence. Minors with Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, granted to those who’ve suffered parental abuse or neglect, used to be protected from deportation, but the Trump administration ended that policy. It also ended $200 million in annual funding for the Acacia Center for Justice, a nonprofit that provides legal services to migrant children.

Has there been pushback?

Not much. Migrant advocates say there’s been a notable shift from 2018, when blowback over family separations led to legal challenges, bipartisan opposition, and an eventual climbdown. This time, there’s no explicit policy to challenge in court, and the separations are happening outside public view—no media images of children in cages. Advocates also cite less resistance within the administration, as staffers who might have objected have left or been laid off. The fallout in human trauma will be vast, experts say, especially for the youngest children. “They are left with a sense of abandonment that’s kind of imprinted,” said Michele Heisler, a doctor with Physicians for Human Rights. Her organization also documented signs of trauma among separated mothers, including panic attacks and uncontrollable crying. The “gratuitous level of cruelty,” she said, “is hard for all of us to understand.

In late 2024, Donald Trump faced a “ticklish family situation”, said Ruth Marcus in The New Yorker. Until recently, his eldest son had been engaged to Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News host who had become a prominent figure in Trump’s orbit. But the couple had split, and Donald Jr was now seeing someone else. “I had to get her out of here,” Trump reportedly told people, and he duly did – by appointing her as ambassador to Greece.

Guilfoyle was sacked from that role last week over corruption accusations. A Wall Street Journal exposé alleged that, before being confirmed to the post, she had pressured a Trump donor to pay off her $100,000 American Express bill in return for a promise of access to “the Trump world”. As ambassador, she reportedly bragged about Greek tycoons funding her luxury trips, and brought an energy company lobbyist along to so many meetings that people assumed he was her chief of staff.

Bought and paid-for

Guilfoyle’s corruption was too blatant for Trump to ignore just before the midterms, said Nick Catoggio on The Dispatch: Democratic candidates are pushing hard on the corruption theme. But he can’t afford to alienate her entirely. As a Trump-world insider, she knows too much about “family malfeasance” to be exiled with no means of support. Trump will no doubt buy her silence by lining her up with a “well-paid sinecure” somewhere.

For him, everything is transactional, said Eleanor Clift on The Daily Beast. He has shown Guilfoyle the door, but he could also offer her a pardon – “a powerful incentive to swallow her pride and accept Trump’s terms”.

‘Pathetic’ behaviour

In a Trump team that now consists almost exclusively of “sycophants and family members”, Guilfoyle is just a small-time grifter, said Tom Nichols in The Atlantic. The president has engaged in epic levels of self-dealing, and plenty of other, still-serving officials – from his envoy Jared Kushner to FBI director Kash Patel – have faced serious corruption claims.

Guilfoyle’s real sin was the “pathetic” nature of her behaviour. “Honey please I need you to get this done for me today,” she texted the donor when asking for the $100,000. “You know, I can deliver the world to you. Which you deserve,” she was recorded gushing to another US businessman. Guilfoyle made a fool of herself, and in so doing committed the worst crime of all: she embarrassed the boss. That was why she had to go.

With polls looking dire for Republicans ahead of next month’s highly anticipated midterm elections, President Donald Trump and his allies are reportedly wasting little time on the most pressing question of this election cycle: Who will take the blame for the likely, if still theoretical, electoral drubbing? Cue the MAGA infighting, as various White House operators and GOP power brokers jockey to avoid, and in some cases direct, the president’s guaranteed post-midterm scapegoating.

‘Knives are now fully out’

Although Trump has “proven largely incapable of getting out of his own way,” he’s “keenly aware of the grumbling within his party” over the GOP’s midterm prospects and has “begun looking for someone else to take the fall,” said Puck. “Currently at the top of the list” is former White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair, who “crafted the party’s midterm strategy.” Days away from a potentially “dire midterm reckoning,” Republicans are “turning their cannons” toward Blair and consulting partner Chris LaCivita, the two men tasked with the “herculean job of maintaining control of Congress,” said Politico.

The hostility toward Blair and LaCivita follows their recent trip to the Balkans to “advise a Russia-friendly regime’s reelection effort” even as GOP prospects “dwindle back home,” said Politico. That excursion “opened the floodgates,” said one source to the outlet. The “knives are now fully out for these two.”

‘Ice maiden is melting’

“These days,” Trump has also been looking to place blame on Susie Wiles, his “once-unassailable White House chief of staff,” for the midterms, said Politico. The president is “musing about replacements for his top aide” while getting “plenty of encouragement from rivals” to Wiles and those settling scores.

Trump’s “ice maiden is melting,” said The New Republic of Wiles. She’s in “some deep sh-t,” said one Trump adviser to Zeteo. At the same time, the president has “tried to pour cold water” on rumors of her fate by “releasing effusively supportive statements” and characteristically condemning the media as “fake news.”

When President Harry S. Truman, Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met at Potsdam in 1945, the goal was for World War II’s victorious leaders to coordinate plans for postwar Europe. Eighty years later, Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed another seismic trilateral meeting — this time between himself, President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Meanwhile, Russia continues its attempted invasion of Ukraine, a country conspicuously left off the invitation list.

What did the commentators say?

Putin is attempting to “capitalize on warming ties” between himself and Trump in the hopes of negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine that “would favor Moscow,” said The Wall Street Journal. But by omitting Ukraine, Putin’s “unprecedented” summit would “send alarm bells ringing in European capitals and beyond.” Coordinating a summit of global superpowers “appeals to Trump’s idealized view of the world” — a vision that would entail powerful leaders carving up territory with Trump “taking his seat, recognized by all, as one of those great powers,” said Slate.

Publicly, Trump has shown interest in Putin’s summit as an opportunity to address atomic weaponry. “I would do it, not so much for Ukraine,” he said to reporters this week, per Bloomberg. “We would have it to talk about denuclearization.” For years, Trump has had an “aspiration to reach a deal” with Russia and China regarding nonproliferation, said Axios. But “so far, Putin and Xi haven’t shown much openness to the idea.”

While the three countries have “overlapping interests,” they lack a “common strategic vision,” said Denis Simon, of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, to the South China Morning Post. Nuclear weapons offer the “most obvious potential starting point,” yet issues like Ukraine, Taiwan and the “broader international order” would “inevitably enter any conversation” among the trio.

What next?

Chinese officials have “privately welcomed” the potential talks but “have not pushed aggressively for them,” said the Morning Post. There is “no clear understanding yet regarding the meeting itself or its potential agenda,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov to the Journal. Still, all three parties “acknowledge the hypothetical possibility of such a meeting taking place.”

Ukrainians are “gearing up for the worst-case scenario”, said Finbarr Toesland in The i Paper. In the face of an “emboldened Russia”, this winter is expected to be the “most brutal since Vladimir Putin launched his invasion in February 2022”.

Stunned by Donald Trump’s surprise announcement of an “energy ceasefire” that would favour Russia, and apparent plans for “peace talks” without Ukraine present, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is struggling to win back US favour. But he needs ways to help Kyiv make it through winter months where temperatures can drop as low as -20C.

What did the commentators say?

“Trump’s efforts on the part of Russia” are “the act of an enemy”, said The Independent’s world affairs editor Sam Kiley. He has “strangled” Kyiv’s intelligence systems and “crippled weapons on the battlefield”. That’s an “act of sabotage”, and “Europe’s leaders must stand up and say so”.

This “sorry episode” shows “just how dependent Ukraine still is on the US”, said The Telegraph’s editorial board. For all the “strong words” of Europe’s leaders, “there remains a gulf” between their “rhetoric and the reality” of their support. Iris2, the EU’s version of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network won’t even be operational before 2030, and the Americans are still the only ones who can offer “ballistic-missile defence”. Europe must step up its provision of hardware, or “Kyiv’s security will remain hostage to Mr Trump, who has shown repeatedly that he cannot be relied upon”.

Britain and Europe have already reached their “limit” of what they can deliver, said Dimitar Bechev, a foreign-policy analyst at Carnegie Europe, in Al Jazeera. Its €90 billion loan of frozen Russian assets to Ukraine now looks like it “might be exhausted well before the end of 2027”, and any attempt to find additional funding could “open a can of worms” in both EU budget negotiations and upcoming elections in member states like France, Spain, Italy and Poland. But the EU and the UK have nevertheless “replaced the US” as the “de facto guarantors” of Ukraine’s survival. Joining the EU – or, at least becoming a closely integrated partner like Norway – is the “best-case scenario for Kyiv in the long run”.

Zelenskyy may have to “consider a temporary, if unwelcome, change of tactics” to relieve the “terminal stress” on his relationship with Trump, said The Times’ editorial board. And two US senators have suggested “a useful compromise”: if Ukraine pledges to stop attacks on Russian energy assets, SpaceX’s Starshield coverage could be “extended to roughly 200 miles inside Russia” to “help Kyiv take out some of the launchers firing at civilians all over Ukraine”.

What next?

To “reduce the impact of Russian missile and drone attacks” on Kyiv’s small number of combined heat-and-power plants, Ukraine “needs to decentralise” such “critical infrastructure”, Olena Pavlenko of Ukrainian energy think-tank DiXi Group told Toesland in The i Paper, but this is not a “short-term solution”.

More urgently, Ukraine must find a way to halt Russia’s “devastating air onslaught”, said The Times. It needs “proper air defences – and fast”, even if that means halting strikes on Russian refineries in return for Patriot missiles. Trump “may not be minded to provide these weapons” but he is under “growing pressure” from the US Congress, where even members of his own party have “expressed disquiet at the so-called energy deal” with Putin. A strategic pause in strikes may help to “prevent further Trump hostility to Kyiv”, which would be a “welcome” contribution to Ukraine’s cause.

With affordability concerns threatening Republican control of Congress, President Donald Trump last week announced an agreement to increase supply by relaxing sanctions on Russian diesel fuel. But economists say lower prices are unlikely to result, and the announcement produced pushback from both Ukraine and Trump’s GOP allies. The only clear beneficiary may be Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

‘More dangerous world’

The president’s deal “has no winners,” said Keith Johnson at Foreign Policy. Trump’s announcement will not “help consumers, won’t help Kyiv and won’t mean riches for Moscow.” The global market consumes about 120 million tons of diesel monthly. The 500,000 tons offered by Russia is “too small to move prices.” And the move does nothing to address the U.S. war on Iran, which is the “real cause of the global energy crunch.”

It “makes no sense” to think easing pressures on Russia can “lower diesel prices before the midterms,” said Timothy Snyder at Project Syndicate. Moscow is already struggling with its own “domestic shortages” because of Ukraine’s attacks on Russian energy infrastructure. But the announcement has the effect of “visibly aligning” the United States with Russia. The president’s “openly pro-Russian foreign policy” is creating a “more dangerous world” of emboldened aggressors.

Trump’s move has created a rift with both “Republican allies and European leaders,” said Nick Wadhams at Bloomberg. It is a bet that “lowering fuel prices will be the best way to win more votes next month.” The gambit is “unlikely to succeed.”

Helping the Russian economy?

Trump “proffered sanctions relief for Russian diesel” while Putin “offered more war” in return, Paul Sonne said at The New York Times. The deal benefits Trump to the extent it enables his “stubborn denial that his own decision to go to war against Iran caused fuel prices to skyrocket.” And it could “pour billions of dollars into the Russian economy,” further enabling Putin’s war against Ukraine.

Putin is a “dictator reviled by most Americans,” said Axios. Polls show 81% of Trump’s voters dislike the Russian leader. That makes it “unclear” what the agreement will do for “American security, European allies or his own political fortunes.”

“After a career spent getting readers excited about credit-default swaps (‘The Big Short’) and sabermetrics (‘Moneyball’)”, the American journalist Michael Lewis “decided to try to help people understand the importance of civil servants”, said Sam Freedman in The Guardian.

He did this first in “The Fifth Risk”, his 2018 book about the damage caused by the first Trump administration’s “almost complete lack of interest” in the workings of government. Now, he has written a “loose sequel” dealing with Donald Trump’s return to office and, “this time around, the problem is not indifference but malicious intent to destroy”.

“Blockers” is an account of the vandalistic work of Elon Musk’s Doge and “other agents of chaos”, notably Republican operative Russell Vought, who essentially became Trump’s cost-cutter-in-chief when Musk fell out with the president. At the same time, it shines a light on the “blockers” – Musk’s derisive term for the “dedicated officials” who did their best to hinder his reforms.

The book is a “rollercoaster”, said Laura Miller on Slate. It alternates between “heartening stories of stellar federal civil servants” and “blood-pressure-spiking accounts” of the “Elon-worshipping idiot boys” sent to slash their budgets or hound them from their jobs. In one chapter, we see an IRS official “locking herself in a darkened conference room” to avoid a “capricious Doge goon who wanted her to give him confidential information on seven million taxpayers”.

Another is focused on Francis Collins, who was sacked from his senior role at the National Institutes of Health. Among a host of distinguished achievements, Collins was “instrumental in identifying the gene responsible for cystic fibrosis”. Yet he was forced to leave at short notice, carrying his possessions in “a small cardboard box”. Lewis suggests that, ironically, the person ultimately responsible for his dismissal was Vought, whose own daughter has cystic fibrosis.

Such stories aren’t just personal tragedies, said Tim Adams in The Observer; they are calamitous for America. The cuts carried out by Musk and others led to “vast institutional knowledge” being removed at a stroke, “to be replaced by venal incompetence”.

The aim was to “dispose of and humiliate” an entire class of people who cared about the good that government could do, and about following legal due process. Nor did Doge’s reforms even succeed on their own terms: despite Musk’s boast that he would cut $2 trillion from the government’s $7 trillion budget, this year’s federal spend is estimated to be $7.4 trillion. Lewis has produced an “essential record” of a dismal episode in American history.

Donald Trump’s proposed “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine has been dismissed as unfair and partisan with the US leaving Kyiv significantly weakened.

As the challenges of winter draw near, Trump’s move has thrown the future of Ukraine into doubt.

“It had already been a terrible week in Ukraine” before Trump’s “one-sided ceasefire plan” put Kyiv “in a tough spot as winter approaches”, said The New York Times.

What did the commentators say?

The deal “comes at a particularly bad time”, said The New York Times, as Russia is “stepping up efforts to target Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, including, crucially, its energy infrastructure” as “part of an ongoing effort to both cripple Ukraine’s economy and break its will to fight”. The coming winter “might be the hardest yet” because Ukraine is “facing a critical shortage of air defences”.

But the “bigger problem” is that Trump is “pressuring Ukraine to give up the best tool it has for fighting back” – its attacks on Russian oil refineries. Ukraine “effectively has no operational oil refineries”, so “this ceasefire, such as it is, would really only tie the hands of one party”.

After Russian drones and missiles “pummelled nearby power stations, triggering power cuts” and Kyiv was “plunged into darkness”, there was a “sense of outrage and betrayal”, said The Economist.

A Ukraine government source said American officials warned that unless Kyiv stopped its drone assaults on Russian oil refineries, the US would block weapons shipments under the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List, under which Ukraine has received “about $10 billion [£7.5 billion]-worth of American weapons” paid for by Nato allies and partners.

This move would “further weaken some of the country’s defences” and although Trump’s “new turn against Ukraine may be as transitory as the earlier ones”, this is still “a dangerous moment for Ukraine”.

But Trump’s threat of a suspension is “far from hypothetical”, said Sasha Vakulina on EuroNews. In 2025, the White House “temporarily halted intelligence-sharing and military assistance to Ukraine amid a diplomatic confrontation with Kyiv”.

Although “both were subsequently restored” following talks, the episode “demonstrated how quickly Washington could use security cooperation as a source of political leverage” and “how dependent Ukraine remained on American capabilities”.

US intelligence “remains crucial to Ukraine’s ability to anticipate Russian attacks”, and it is still “unclear how far European allies could compensate should another American suspension come into force”.

Although Trump’s announcement “seemed to make Ukraine’s situation even more perilous”, said Eric Ciaramella on Foreign Affairs, it’s not “necessarily a major setback for Ukraine”, because it “comes amid a broader shift” by Trump to “move away from pursuing an elusive comprehensive peace agreement in favour of a mutual ceasefire on strikes against energy infrastructure”. This shift “could ultimately be beneficial to Kyiv”.

Also, “in his angry retort” to Zelenskyy’s criticism of the diesel deal, Trump “revealed a potential way forward: as long as Ukraine stopped hitting Russian refineries, the president said, ‘you can do whatever you want to Russia’”.

Ukraine has “more leverage than a year ago”, said Nicholas Vinocur on Politico, and European leaders are “warning” Trump “not to squander it by pressuring Kyiv to ease up on Russia”. Although Trump “wants the attacks to stop, Ukraine’s European allies are keen to cripple Russia’s war effort”.

What next?

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said “repeatedly” that Ukraine is ready to halt its strikes on Russian oil refineries and other energy facilities if Moscow “did the same”, said the BBC.

But Moscow said Ukraine does not deserve the “respite” a ceasefire would bring, because it would mean Europe would be able to “pump” Ukraine with new weaponry.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “State of the Force” address had it all, said David Ignatius in The Washington Post: “the good, bad, and dangerous.” In September's histrionic speech, Hegseth strutted back and forth across a stage, combining culture-war rants “with genuinely radical” reforms. He declared he wanted “no fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals” in a military he’s refashioning with high-testosterone lethal patriots. He accused the media of treason for reporting his military’s Iran failures, and revealed he plans an overall 20% reduction in generals and admirals, continuing a purge that’s already eliminated 10% of top officers. But Hegseth also announced some sensible “attempts to transform a sclerotic Pentagon bureaucracy,” unveiling an “Autonomous Warfare Command” to oversee drone operations and enlisting tech founders Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey and former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich to study the future of warfare. Quite intentionally, Hegseth is overturning “military norms as aggressively as President Trump has shattered those in other spheres.

Hegseth only proved again that he’s “manifestly unfit for his job,” said Tom Nichols in The Atlantic. His speech was “a partisan disgrace,” filled with childish insults and resentment. He’s creating an Office of Religious Affairs and directing cadets to get degrees at conservative Christian schools like Hillsdale College, instead of elite “woke factories” like Harvard. To “redefine the future of national defense,” Hegseth is giving his “three wise men” in Musk, Luckey, and Gingrich just 120 days. The overall goal is to ensure the military becomes “a MAGA-looking, MAGA-sounding, MAGA- believing, and MAGA-supporting Christian praetorian guard,” said Rachel E. VanLandingham in MS.now. “The ideological clowns are out,” Hegseth proclaimed, but he’s “the real ideological clown—and a dangerous one at that.”

Everyone underestimated the former Fox News host, said Emma Ashford in Foreign Policy. He’s become Trump’s “most influential senior official.” Hegseth helped persuade Trump to invade Iran when many aides warned against a prolonged quagmire. Trump has fired other Cabinet officials for incompetence, but Hegseth has escaped blame for the fiasco in Iran. Why? Everything about him is so “fundamentally Trumpian”—his hatred of the media, his macho posturing, his TV persona’s “obsession with image over substance.” Hegseth is Trump’s “central casting” idea of a tough military leader, so he’s keeping his job. “The results will not be pleasant.”

Saudi Arabia has vowed a firm response to the deadly attacks on the kingdom’s airports and oil and gas facilities by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

The Iran-backed Houthis said their latest drone and missile strikes – some of which struck King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, killing 13 people and injuring more than 300 – were launched in retaliation for “brutal Saudi aggression” against areas they control in western Yemen.

“The events of recent weeks are serious. Our response must be equally serious,” said Saudi energy minister Prince Abdul Aziz bin Salman today. There is “no room for fear in the vocabulary of Saudis”.

What did the commentators say?

“No political slogan, ideological grievance or claim of resistance can justify turning airports into targets,” said Hani Hazaimeh on Arab News. The Houthis are reckless, and Saudi Arabia “has every right to defend its citizens” and its “critical infrastructure”. It’s easy “to urge calm from a distance, far from the airports” and homes under missile attack; “it is far harder to explain to grieving families why the international response remains trapped in a cycle of condemnation followed by inaction”. All thought of “diplomatic theatre is over. The time for effective action is now.”

The Houthis are “drawing from Iran’s playbook” and “vowing a painful escalation” by “targeting critical infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and imposing a global economic cost”, said Mostafa Salem on CNN. So far, Saudi Arabia has largely confined itself to providing air cover for the anti-Houthi Yemeni coalition but “whether that restraint will hold” is now “an open question”. Putting Saudi troops on the ground in Yemen would plunge the nation “into an expensive and grinding ground war” and undercut Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s carefully cultivated image “of a stable, investment-friendly kingdom and global tourism hub”.

But the airport death toll is “bewilderingly high” for the Saudis, who are “unaccustomed to such fatalities”, and that’s “likely to prompt a bloody response”, said Nesrine Malik in The Guardian. If so, the kingdom faces a “long, intractable war with a resourceful and impassioned antagonist, one willing to sustain a high degree of pain in ways that Riyadh can’t match without orienting itself entirely towards war”.

The Iran war has “stirred political loyalties, triggering a surge of Houthi advancement”, destabilising the “region’s tense equilibriums” as Donald Trump “decided that the safety and security” of America’s Gulf allies were “secondary” to his beef with Tehran. Saudi Arabia is “bewildered and losing lives and capital, stuck between old alliances that no longer work and new hostilities that are too calamitous to confront”.

What next?

The Houthi attacks on the Saudis could “drive global oil prices even higher”, said Sky News’ Middle East correspondent, Adam Parsons. “Were the Houthis to put a stranglehold” on the Bab al Mandab strait, “it would have a major influence on trade that would hit the price of oil”.

This would “anger Donald Trump, who sees the price of oil as such a barometer of his own success”. The US president has said he is reviewing the situation, and is “going to look at” joining any Saudi response.

The execution by firing squad of former US Army major Nidal Hasan will be livestreamed for the public to watch, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said.

This will make it the first public execution in the US since 1936, and the prospect has already been described as “medieval”.

Who is he and what did he do?

Hasan, a former US Army psychiatrist from Virginia, fatally shot 13 unarmed US soldiers at Fort Hood in November 2009, injuring another 32. The attack took place in a crowded medical building where soldiers were waiting for check-ups and vaccines. It was the deadliest ever non-combat attack on an American military base.

He admitted in court that he was the gunman, and said that he believed he was protecting Muslims and the Taliban in Afghanistan. He apologised for “any mistakes” but was convicted of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder.

Why is it being livestreamed?

Hegseth signalled that the execution would be livestreamed as a deterrent for the sort of crime Hasan committed. “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” he said.

The US government is sending “a very clear message”, said Sky News US correspondent David Blevins. Deborah Denno, a death penalty expert and law professor at Fordham University, New York, told The Associated Press that livestreaming an execution could make the process “much more transparent”, and inform the public about all that capital punishment entails. Those are benefits that she said would be useful at a time when Christa Pike’s botched execution has raised fresh questions about the manner by which criminals are put to death.

What’s the reaction been?

The Republican senator Thom Tillis said the plan is “beyond disgusting”. Chris Murphy, a Democrat senator, told CNN that public executions are “medieval” and mimic Islamic State killings. “That’s what America has become? That’s pretty extraordinary.”

Livestreaming “will not educate”, it will “terrorise”, and is “beneath the dignity that we owe to anyone”, even those who commit a “horrific” crime such as Hasan’s, Austin Sarat, a legal expert in the death penalty at Amherst College, Massachusetts, told The iPaper.

The decision to livestream the execution is “unprecedented in the modern era” and “on uncertain legal terrain”, John Mills, a lawyer who works with inmates sentenced to death, told the BBC.

The livestream may face a legal challenge because federal regulations forbid the “visual or audio recording” of an execution without a specific judicial order.

A seventh man has been arrested in connection with a suspected terror plot near RAF Fairford, Gloucestershire, last month, which Andy Burnham has said was most likely linked to Iran.

Amid fears that Tehran was planning a complex drone attack against Fairford, which serves as a forward operating base for US aircraft targeting Iran, the Trump administration made a “historic, unprecedented” decision to withdraw all its 12 B-1 bombers on Sunday, said David Dunn, a professor of international politics at the University of Birmingham.

The incident “tells us much about Iran, Britain and the emerging threats to US forces and assets. None of it is good,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial.

What did the commentators say?

The Fairford plot is far from an isolated event. On Tuesday, three Iranian men appeared in court accused of spying on British-based dissident journalists on behalf of Iran’s foreign intelligence service. Earlier this year, a wave of arson attacks targeting British Jews were linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). And in July, a Tehran-backed cyberattack halted operations at a UK power plant for four days.

It is important to note here that the UK is technically “not at war with Iran”, said BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner. But the US is, and “that is a distinction Tehran has publicly challenged”.

In July, Iran warned “any base used for aggression against Iranian territory constitutes a legitimate target for our forces”. As far as the IRGC “is concerned, Britain is already a participant in America’s war with Iran”, said Gardner.

The emergence of sophisticated state-run drone attacks, such as Ukraine’s Operation Spider’s Web last year, when low-cost drones were smuggled into Russia and carried on lorries to locations near airbases before being set upon strategic targets, have changed the game when it comes to perceived threats from hostile nations.

But “the question on minds in London is not whether Britain could stage such an attack but whether it could repel one”, said The Times’ defence editor Larisa Brown.

Given that it would require “months of planning, utmost secrecy and the purchase or smuggling of large quantities of explosives undetected by Britain’s security services”, one senior US diplomat asked, does Iran “really have the capability to pull off an Operation Spider’s Web on foreign soil? I think most of the community doubts that.”

“Yet there was enough concern for America to act”, said The Times.

What next?

The government’s strategic defence review published last year earmarked up to £1 billion for homeland air and missile defence over the next four years.

This week, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch ramped up this pledge to £10 billion over the next 10 years to go towards a “Britannia Shield” that would protect military bases and critical infrastructure from missile or drone attacks.

While defence experts have questioned these figures, for Britain the “bigger problem has been finding the will to confront the Iranians and go on offence against their terror networks. Does protecting US jets and UK Jews fit the bill?”, asked the WSJ.

“The IRGC, like Vladimir Putin, clearly doesn’t think it will pay much of a price for orchestrating terror in Britain – or many other states. Until that changes, even the best defence technology can only do so much.”

Donald Trump has said the US is looking “very strongly” at a suspected case of plague after the death of a researcher at a remote Siberian lab.

Darya Shipilova, 28, who worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East, died on 2 October two days after falling ill following reported exposure to pneumonic plague bacteria. Russia’s public health agency, Rospotrebnadzor, said that her diagnosis was “pneumonia of unknown aetiology”, meaning they cannot confirm what caused it or where it came from.

“I don’t think it’s cause for alarm, but it is cause for focus”, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters yesterday.

What do we know so far?

It is still unclear exactly how Shipilova became unwell. Local media outlet Lyudi Baikala suggested she may have been infected after accidentally breaking a test tube containing pneumonic plague bacteria on 25 September, although this has not been confirmed by Russian authorities. Rospotrebnadzor has said that expanded tests of samples from the patient had found no microorganisms associated with her work. Other reports suggest she contracted the disease on a field trip to a region where plague occurs naturally among wild rodents.

The uncertainty has been compounded by conflicting messages from local politicians and relative silence from Moscow. Alexey Tsydenov, governor of the neighbouring Buryatia region, initially wrote on social media that she had died of plague, before editing his post to add the qualifier “possibly”.

While Rospotrebnadzor has described the “sanitary and epidemiological” situation in the area as stable, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported on Monday that several hospitals in Irkutsk had been placed under quarantine. Lyudi Baikala has reported that nearly 200 contacts of Shipilova have been placed under observation.

How dangerous is pneumonic plague?

Plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, and pneumonic plague is the most virulent form of the disease, with an incubation period as short as 24 hours. The World Health Organization has said pneumonic plague is especially contagious because it “can trigger severe epidemics through person-to-person transmission via respiratory particles”.

Symptoms include severe respiratory symptoms such as shortness of breath and coughing, often with blood-tainted mucus. Common antibiotics can effectively combat the disease provided they are administered early enough. If left untreated, it can prove fatal within 18 to 24 hours.

This makes any outbreak “potentially very dangerous”, said The Times, but “it is important to distinguish the severity of the disease for an individual person, especially if untreated, from its ability to spread quickly”.

Could it be related to biological warfare?

Some US politicians have suggested the incident could be connected to military research into biological warfare. “I remember hearing from anti-Ukraine voices about their so-called bio labs,” Republican congressman Don Bacon, a senior member of the House armed services committee, wrote on social media. “But in reality it is Russia with the bio labs.”

Dr Ashish Jha, the White House Covid-19 response coordinator from 2022 to 2023, told NBC News that if this is an isolated case and no one else dies “it will probably end there”, adding that if there were “biological weapons programmes in these labs, that would be much more concerning to me,” and that “much more” information and transparency was needed from Russian authorities.

Simon Clarke, an associate professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading, told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme that it was “possible” that the lab in question might have been studying the pathogen’s potential as a bio-weapon. “Because this is Russia people’s thoughts are running to that”, he said, but added that medical research was still the “more likely” explanation.

What was the key factor that propelled Donald Trump back into the White House for a second term? If you’d asked him that a couple of years ago, said Virginia Heffernan in The New Republic, his answer would almost certainly have been the cost of living.

“The beautiful but simple word ‘groceries’,” he once rhapsodised. “I won on that word.” Well, we now know the word on which he’ll likely lose: diesel.

Supply disruptions caused by the Iran and Ukraine wars have had a particularly severe impact on diesel prices: they hit a record high of $6.52 a gallon in the US last week, up from an average of $3.63 at the start of 2025. The price hikes “aim a missile squarely at the voters Trump can least afford to alienate”, such as pickup truck owners, lorry drivers, and farmers in states such as Iowa. By upsetting the “diesel class, Trump may have bitten the final hand that feeds him”.

‘Cheap appeal’

To fix this problem, Trump is toying with the idea of banning US diesel exports, said National Review. The policy has “cheap appeal” ahead of the midterm elections on 3 November, but it would only bring down prices for a short while, and only in some areas. While America makes more diesel than it consumes, pipeline constraints mean that most of it remains relatively close to refining hubs on the Gulf Coast.

Other areas of the US, such the Northeast and the West Coast, largely rely on diesel imports, so would end up paying even higher prices if the US further reduced global supplies of the fuel. What’s more, if Gulf Coast refineries were unable to export diesel, they’d soon run out of storage space for it and have to slash their output. Result? Not just less diesel, but also a reduced volume of other refined products such as petrol and jet fuel.

‘Fake fix’

A diesel export ban wouldn’t help America, agreed Catherine Rampell on The Bulwark. And it would cause major problems for countries that rely on these exports, such as Mexico, the UK and the Netherlands, which trade with the US in other oil-based products, and could well decide to retaliate in some form.

Still, this is the Trump White House we’re talking about – a team of people with “zero policy expertise” and “zero patience”, who care “only about what talking points will get them through the next news cycle, tomorrow’s consequences be damned”. The worse the opinion polls get ahead of the midterms, the more tempted Trump will be to reach for this “fake fix”.

The age of artificial intelligence has ended. Now dawns the age of “super intelligence.” So says President Donald Trump, who this week signed an executive order mandating that the federal government abandon the term “artificial intelligence” for a more maximal adjective. (Other options floated across Trump’s social media included “supreme” and “superior.”) But not everyone supports the shifting labels. As digital intellect continues to develop at breakneck speed, why does what we call it matter?

Capabilities ‘far exceed’ outdated name

The terminology change is Trump’s “latest rebranding move,” said the BBC. It follows the White House’s effort to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario in Trump’s second term. The “use of the word ‘artificial’ makes intelligence fake,” said Trump in his address to the United Nations last month. “It’s not fake. It’s actually amazing.”

The capacities of what we call AI “far exceed what was envisioned” when the term “first came into use,” said the White House in Trump’s executive order explaining the change. For those “working in the AI industry,” the term super intelligence means “something slightly different” than casual usage implies, said USA Today. In that context, it describes digital intelligences “smarter and more capable than humans across every imaginable skillset.”

Accordingly, this word change might “suit the major U.S. AI players” eager to “play up their advanced models,” said DW. Developers have “every interest in calling it super, hyper, superior and whatnot intelligence,” said Pedro Domingos, a computer science professor at the University of Washington, to the outlet. But this is ultimately “just marketing.”

‘Forced rebrand’

It is doubtful that using super intelligence as a general term publicly “will stick,” said Simon Coghlan, a digital ethics lecturer at the University of Melbourne, to the BBC. The term “exaggerates the current capacities of AI.” Super intelligence as a descriptor “refers to future AI systems,” said Defense One, and “contrasts” with the “weaker forms of AI that exist today.”

Trump is nevertheless “attempting a forced rebrand for an industry he has tightly embraced,” said CNBC. Meanwhile, the public grows “increasingly wary about the rapidly advancing tech.”

The price of diesel has hit £2 per litre – the most expensive it has ever been – at a third of UK petrol stations, said The Sun.

This is “uncharted territory”, financial analyst Kathleen Brooks told City A.M. Donald Trump has already sent markets into a “frenzy” by threatening to ban diesel exports from the US, said the same paper. Weakened infrastructure for refining diesel and lower reserves than European counterparts mean the UK could be uniquely “exposed” to any further “ripple effects”, including more price rises.

What did the commentators say?

President Trump is trying to bring diesel prices down for US consumers ahead of the midterm elections in November. If he does decide to ban exports of US diesel, it would “hurt the countries which heavily depend” on it, said the BBC, including the UK. But it might also have “unintended effects that could hurt US production” in the longer term.

Trump’s threats have “highlighted Britain’s over-reliance on the goodwill of other countries” for its diesel needs, said an editorial in The Times. Last year, the UK imported more than 50% of its diesel supply, around a sixth of that from the US.

Our infrastructure depends on it: around 10 million cars, a quarter of the country’s trains, 70% of buses, virtually all tractors and “almost 99% of HGVs” run on diesel. Yet the UK has enough reserves to last for only around six weeks, according to International Energy Forum data, compared to around six months for France, Italy, Spain and Germany.

Breaking the £2 threshold for a litre of diesel should “set alarm bells ringing in Downing Street”, said The Telegraph in an editorial. The government’s response so far has been to remove VAT from energy bills in an attempt to cushion the blow to consumers, but this “hardly addresses the fundamental issues”. As a nation, we have “failed to prepare”, allowing our refining capacity to “wither away” to leave us “dangerously exposed” to market fluctuations beyond our control.

The diesel crisis could “deepen” after the UK’s largest refinery shut down production for up to 10 weeks, said energy editor Jonathan Leake in The Telegraph. The Fawley refinery in Hampshire – which produces “one fifth of the fuel used on UK roads” – has closed for planned maintenance, a move that “will add to fears about another diesel price spike hurting drivers at the pumps”.

In the 1980s, the UK had 18 refineries, but that has dropped to just four. Two closures last year – in Grangemouth, Scotland and Lindsey in Lincolnshire – “slashed UK refinery output by about a third”. Now, any closures, planned or unplanned, temporary or permanent, have a “rapid impact on supplies”.

What next?

“Rising diesel costs aren’t just a problem for drivers generally but a wider inflation threat,” said Sky News. Diesel is the “engine of the UK economy” and shortages would heavily disrupt supply chains and lead to costs being passed on to consumers, particularly in the run-up to Christmas. This is the type of inflation that “worries” the Bank of England, which is “widely tipped” to raise interest rates in November.

Taxes on fuel – which account for “just over half of the cost of a litre” – are also set to rise. Hikes planned by former chancellor Rachel Reeves are set to come into effect in January, but her successor, John Healey, should “question the wisdom of raising prices at the pump at a time when they are clearly inflationary in nature”. As such, they are likely to be “scrapped or further delayed” at the upcoming Budget.

President Donald Trump has dominated the GOP for a decade. But that hold may be slipping, as Republicans prepare for an anticipated “blue wave” in the midterm elections driven by his unpopularity. Conservative candidates are starting to break with Trump, and the right’s pundits are rooting them on.

‘Trumpism is exhausted’

Trump has “become a real liability” for GOP candidates, said The Boston Globe. Senate candidates Ashley Hinson of Iowa and Mike Rogers of Michigan called for an end to the war with Iran, as did incumbent Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio. (Husted voted Thursday against a measure to withdraw troops, however.) The break “isn’t about just one issue,” either. Rep. Maria Salazar (R-Fla.) last week criticized the president’s immigration policy, while Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) called for an investigation into the Russian oligarch who paid for Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding reception. There may be nothing “stopping a full-on revolt” against Trump’s brand.

MAGA acolytes could once argue that Trump’s agenda is “what Americans voted for in 2024,” Jim Geraghty said at The Washington Post. But polls now suggest that the electorate is “sick and tired of this version of Trump” and that “Trumpism is exhausted.” The mood was especially apparent in Vice President JD Vance’s recent plea to voters to “give us another chance.” That is not a “particularly inspiring rallying cry,” Geraghty said. Republicans have to decide if they still want to be the party of tariffs, enmity toward Canada and mass deportations to remove every “agricultural worker, hotel maid and restaurant busboy.” Vance, if he wants to save his own ambitions, will need to lead the way. “The clock is ticking.”

The GOP under Trump has “blown one of the great opportunities in political history,” Gerard Baker said at The Wall Street Journal. Trump’s election in 2024 was a “real chance to establish a new governing order” favorable to conservatives, and the president could have succeeded by controlling the border, reining in prices and keeping the U.S. out of “costly, ineffective” foreign wars. Trump instead has “widened the deficit,” levied tariffs and set off on a “reckless military adventure” that is damaging the U.S. economy. All due to “hubris, vanity, recklessness” and the GOP’s “abdication of accountability.”

‘Wide open’ GOP future

Polling shows that Trump is “slipping significantly with his own party,” pollster G. Elliott Morris said at Strength in Numbers. His approval rating with Republican and GOP-leaning independent voters remains high at 71%. But that is still an “11-point drop and the lowest we have recorded.” Those GOP defections have helped drive the president’s overall voter approval ratings to new lows.

This could be the beginning of a longer process for the Republican Party. The GOP candidates breaking with one or two Trump policies today “might be repudiating parts of his legacy tomorrow,” Andrew Prokop said at Vox. If Republicans truly start to believe that Trump is a “failure,” then a full-on reassessment could occur. The party’s future “will be wide open.”

What happened

The Trump administration on Thursday defended a campaign-style ad airing on Fox News and Newsmax that features President Donald Trump and says it was “paid for by the U.S. Government.” The White House “did not say what agency paid for the spot, which includes background music with singers crooning ‘love me’ over and over,” The Associated Press said. But in a statement, it called the ad a “public service announcement” aimed at “reminding Americans to love their country.”

Who said what

“Together we will defeat communism,” and “America will never be a communist country,” Trump says in the 30-second ad as his campaign slogans flash in the background. There are “several restrictions on how public funds can be used for PSAs,” including an annually renewed “ban on using funds for ‘publicity or propaganda purposes,’” ABC News said. The ad first ran Wednesday night, as Trump “welcomed Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, with a red carpet,” The Wall Street Journal said.

What next?

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) on Thursday sent White House chief of staff Susie Wiles a letter demanding details about the ad, including how much it cost and what agency was involved. JMSN, who wrote and recorded “Love Me,” said he “did not authorize” its use and was “looking for a lawyer.”

What happened

President Donald Trump on Thursday night hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping for a state dinner at the White House, after the two leaders spoke privately and toured Trump’s remodeling projects. Trump said he and Xi have “never gotten along better” and presented him with a bald eagle statue. Xi, whose gift for Trump was two pandas for Atlanta’s zoo, said the U.S.-China relationship should be based on “healthy” competition, not a “wrestle in which one either wins or loses.”

Who said what

The “lavish summit” was “heavy on symbolism but light on substance,” Reuters said, “with no sign of breakthroughs on thorny ​issues such as AI, trade, Taiwan and the war with Iran.” Trump is “drawn to the theater of summitry and his personal rapport with Xi,” The Wall Street Journal said. But “for all the pomp and circumstance,” he “appeared to walk away with few tangible gains while handing Xi the images of coequal standing he had come to Washington for.”

China “made clear it views Taiwan as the most sensitive issue in the U.S.-China relationship,” The Associated Press said. A Chinese readout of the private meeting said Xi had urged Trump to “adhere to the correct position of opposing Taiwan independence.” The U.S. did not release a readout as of Friday morning.

What next?

Xi’s visit “came six weeks ahead of the midterm elections in which Trump has branded Democrats as communists,” the Journal said. “Trump’s fawning drew complaints among several Republican senators, who said they weren’t sure what the GOP would gain from hosting the Communist leader and U.S. business rival.”

What do “Seinfeld,” “The Office” and “Family Guy” have in common? Each was used in a recent White House promotional video for the launch of what the administration has dubbed Trump TV, an official White House broadcast that has thus far largely been limited to previously recorded MAGA speeches and events.

Notably, the splashy, if dubiously copyright-compliant, rollout of what the White House has deemed its “Essentials Station” comes as the Trump administration escalates its running altercation with mainstream media outlets. So what exactly is Trump TV, who is it for, and what does this White House have in mind for the programming’s future?

What did the commentators say?

Trump TV was “born of necessity” after multiple major media companies “boycotted the White House press pool in response to the president’s ban on certain outlets,” said New York magazine. But unlike the “Oprah Winfrey Network-esque conservative media company Trump (allegedly) envisioned” as a potential outlet over the years, Trump TV is, for now, “just a dinky livestream on the White House YouTube page.” Still, the launch of an “administration-operated, around-the-clock video channel” places Trump TV “at the center of a coverage gap” caused by multiple major networks pulling out of the White House press pool, said USA Today.

“Not every big moment has made it on your tv,” said the White House in a social media post announcing the new service. “Now it can.”

In addition to streaming on YouTube, “Trump TV” is also featured on the White House website, alongside a “box titled ‘White House Live,’” which noted that it was “‘Off Air’ but advised viewers to ‘Stay Tuned,’” said The Hill. The window also features a “chyron reading official updates” and “statements praising Trump’s actions as president, among other texts.”

In launching Trump TV, the president “follows in Hugo Chávez’s footsteps,” said Al Jazeera. The former Venezuelan autocrat, with his “Hello, President” television program, “sang, took calls from viewers, attacked his opponents and sometimes announced major policy live on air.”

The White House is “drawing sharp backlash from critics” over the platform’s launch, said NJ.com. After banning independent media from the White House, President Donald Trump has launched “what is quite literally state-run TV,” said California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), rumored to be mulling a presidential run himself in 2028, on X. Trump is “drowning out the fact that he and his corrupt administration are failing the American people.”

Trump TV “peaked at 8,000 viewers” for its Monday evening premiere before “dipping to around 4,000,” said The Independent. “Some 1,600 people” tuned in the following morning, “when footage showed the president signing an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico ‘Gulf of America’”

Some MAGA loyalists have “supported the launch of Trump TV” for “punching holes in the mainstream media propaganda,” said The Independent. Trump critics have “lost their minds over Trump TV,” said conservative commentator Benny Johnson, per the outlet. “The White House has perfectly trolled them again.”

What next?

It remains “unclear” whether the streaming platform will air “all current events and conferences involving the president,” said NJ.com. “Weirdly,” said New York magazine, Trump TV “did not even air the president’s big address” to the United Nations on Tuesday. “So far,” said Axios, Trump TV has “no anchors or news ticker.” It does display “banners asking viewers to text White House officials,” although it’s “unclear who staffs the channel, makes programming decisions or sets its schedule.”

Given this “calamitous start to life after the press pool,” The Daily Beast asked the White House if it “intends to try to fix the viewership issues” or if it is “waiting to patch things up with the TV networks,” said the outlet. The White House, to date, has not responded.

What happened

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., early Thursday morning ordered President Donald Trump to immediately restore White House access to Politico, CNN and MS NOW. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly’s 14-day restraining order is a “temporary reprieve for the three outlets” while their litigation over Trump’s press ban proceeds, The New York Times said. But even after Kelly’s order, Secret Service agents still blocked the trio of outlets from entering the White House grounds on Thursday.

Who said what

The White House argued in letters and in court that the outlets’ reporting violated national security and “widely known” journalism standards. The objection about journalistic professionalism was “so vague it hardly does the trick,” Kelly wrote, and “the court is skeptical” that Trump’s “interest in safeguarding national security is the actual motivation for, or is even advanced by,” revoking the press passes.

The examples cited by the White House to shore up its case included Politico’s use of anonymous sources in an article “based on a press call the White House hosted,” The Washington Post said. “In the call, reporters were instructed to cite an anonymous ‘senior administration official.’” That official, Status reported, was Vice President JD Vance.

What next?

Many news organizations scaled back their “routine coverage of presidential events in solidarity with the three outlets,” the Times said. After the White House still refused to grant access Thursday, the outlets asked for an immediate court hearing to address the issue.

China is being quietly credited with keeping energy prices down in the wake of Donald Trump’s war with Iran, in turn helping prop up the global economy while cementing its own power on the world stage.

By tapping into its huge reserves of oil, “China kind of saved the day,” and helped the world avoid the “doomsday scenario” when the Strait of Hormuz closure choked off 20% of global energy supply, said Paul Gruenwald, global chief economist at S&P Global Ratings.

What did the commentators say?

For decades, China heavily depended on imported crude to meet its ever-growing energy needs. But over the past few years Chinese President Xi Jinping has sought to address what has long been viewed in Beijing as a major security weakness by spending billions of dollars amassing the world’s biggest stockpile of oil.

Last year China’s reserves were estimated at nearly 600 million barrels bigger than the US. This enabled it to dramatically cut its oil imports when the war in the Middle East broke out, keeping a lid on global oil prices and safeguarding its own economy.

Not only has this enabled China to weather the global commodities storm resulting from the closure of the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, it has seen China emerge as a “clear winner” from Donald Trump’s foray into the Middle East, said The Guardian, citing the findings of a report from geopolitical consulting firm Asia Group.

Long thought to be vulnerable to oil supply shocks, the conflict has made clear how China has “managed to transform that weakness into a surprising source of geopolitical power”, said The New York Times.

This has “big implications for the global energy industry, where oil producers like Saudi Arabia and the United States — not importers like China — have traditionally held most of the cards”.

“If they come to feel that in this domain, they are less vulnerable than they and many others may have assessed previously, that is a profound and important shift in one of the key inputs to how China makes decisions about its global strategy,” said Julian Gewirtz, a former White House and State Department official who worked on China issues in the Biden administration.

What next?

While the Iran crisis has vindicated Xi’s investment strategy, the “buffer” of China’s stockpile of oil, which has helped the world avoid a far deeper energy crisis up to now, “may face a test as Beijing shows signs of resuming purchases”, said CNBC.

Should this happen, the drag on global growth from elevated oil prices would deepen well beyond current estimates, said Krishna Srinivasan, director for the Asia and Pacific Department at the International Monetary Fund.

But the Iran crisis has also shown how “China’s muscular energy policy has afforded Beijing a major tool it could use, for instance, in a war over Taiwan”, said The Wall Street Journal.

“In the future, such power could be wielded in a clash with the US In the event of a war over Taiwan”. For example, “Beijing’s ability to slash oil imports for months on end could help China resist efforts by the US and its allies to block energy shipments”.

For China, “oil is not the Achilles’ heel we thought it was,” said Michal Meidan, head of China energy research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. “I think a lot of people thought China was very, very vulnerable to oil supply disruptions. It’s not.”

The Trump administration notified Congress this week of plans to admit up to 17,500 refugees into the United States during the coming fiscal year. Notably, the vast majority of those refugees will be white South Africans, for whom this White House and President Donald Trump have become reliable international patrons.

By focusing almost exclusively on Afrikaners, the white South African ethnic group responsible for that country’s former system of apartheid, Trump and his allies have dramatically reshaped the U.S. refugee program as a whole. And this change, critics argue, is at the material expense of other at-risk communities worldwide.

How has Trump helped resettle white South Africans?

The White House has predominantly portrayed Afrikaners seeking to resettle in the U.S. as “victims of racial oppression in postapartheid South Africa,” said CBS News. The group faces “seizure of agricultural property without compensation,” laws designed to “dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education and business,” and “hateful rhetoric fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored minorities,” said the State Department in its notification to Congress, per the outlet. The South African government has “consistently denied” persecuting the primarily Dutch-descended community.

Resettling the thousands of South African refugees is “expected to cost approximately $500 million,” said CNN. The push comes after Trump “increased the refugee cap for South Africans” in May, more than doubling it “from a limit of 7,500.” The U.S. refugee resettlement program had “historically enjoyed strong bipartisan support” for welcoming “tens of thousands of refugees from countries around the world to new lives in America,” said The Associated Press. “Instead,” Trump has “transformed it into a vehicle to resettle white South Africans" in the U.S.

Why are critics concerned?

By focusing solely on South Africa at the expense of other refugee communities, the Trump administration is “stranding people fleeing persecution without the safety they’ve been promised after years of waiting,” said the immigration advocacy group HIAS in a statement. The White House is “diminishing and distorting” the U.S.' refugee programs “in service of its political whims,” said Naomi Steinberg, the HIAS vice president of refugee and immigration policy and advocacy, in the same release.

After Trump “slashed the number of refugees approved every year” during his first term, said the AP, the Biden administration “built the system back up.” Then Trump “immediately” suspended it when he returned to office, “stranding people around the world who had been slated to come to the U.S.”

A refugee program that “centers one group and sidelines all others” is an “abdication of our global ⁠humanitarian leadership ​and an abandonment of thousands of vulnerable ​families,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the president and CEO of refugee advocacy group Global Refuge, in a statement.

What else has Trump done for white South Africans?

One week before notifying Congress of its new, almost exclusively Afrikaner refugee resettlement plan, the Trump administration announced it would “revoke U.S. visas or reject visa applications” from foreign nationals “responsible for discrimination against whites and other minority groups in South Africa,” said the AP. Trump had cited disparate instances of violence and various discrete local policies as “evidence of a larger antiwhite stance” in the country. In addition to encouraging Afrikaner resettlement in the United States, Trump last year “froze most foreign assistance to South Africa,” said Al Jazeera.

China and the U.S. are locked in a race to develop the most powerful artificial intelligence models. Industry leaders are increasingly calling for regulations and guardrails to keep the technology from threatening humanity, which means the competing nations must collaborate to rein in AI as it gallops ahead. But observers are skeptical that Washington and Beijing can find the will to do so.

What did the commentators say?

AI safety is “on the agenda” for this week’s summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, said The Associated Press. But both sides “see the other as the problem.” Trump has warned that “any efforts to regulate the technology would help China,” while Chinese leaders see talk of new safety rules as an attempt to slow their nation’s rapid advances so that the U.S. can create a “monopoly” on AI.

Some experts say Trump and Xi do not need to come to a full agreement on rules to create room for a slowdown. The two leaders “just need to create political space by acknowledging AI poses risks to both countries,” said Samm Sacks, a fellow at John Hopkins, to the AP.

Chinese leaders don’t see AI as an “existential threat to humanity,” said Kyle Chan, of the Brookings Institution, at The New York Times. The two countries have different anxieties. U.S. companies like Anthropic and OpenAI use AI to “develop even better AI systems,” creating concerns about a “feedback loop” in which humans “no longer have control over the process.”

Chinese companies like DeepSeek and Moonshot, by contrast, have “limited access to AI computing power” and so see that tipping point as being a “long way off.” Beijing is more worried about AI being used to spark a “mass movement powerful enough to topple the Communist Party.” It will be hard for the two countries to find common ground on the issue “without a baseline level of mutual understanding.”

Beijing would be “perfectly happy to watch Washington scare America into slowing itself down,” said Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) at the National Review. China’s Communist leaders are “actively working to exploit Americans’ fears” about the technology, and Beijing wins every time the U.S. “makes itself slower, more expensive and more afraid to experiment.” Washington is “flirting with exactly that mentality on AI.”

What next?

The U.S. is proposing an “emergency AI hotline” with China, said Axios. “More transparency” between the world’s AI superpowers is “very important," said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to reporters, per the outlet.

Still, neither nation “expects a breakthrough” at this week’s Trump-Xi summit, said The Economist. The growing risks posed by artificial intelligence “demand more urgency” than either side is bringing to the table. Until that urgency arrives, the “best hope is that the two sides keep talking.”

What happened

Senior FBI officials last year shut down a nascent “sweeping bribery probe” that included pay-to-play allegations involving Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), ProPublica reported Tuesday, citing a “trove of evidence gathered by the FBI,” legal records and dozens of interviews. The FBI investigation stemmed from three 2024 “tell-all interviews” with Martin Kao, the former head of a Hawaiian defense contractor that secretly donated tens of thousands of dollars to Collins’ campaign after she reportedly steered millions in federal contracts to the company for research “of no real value.” Kao pleaded guilty in 2022 to illegal campaign contributions and pandemic-aid fraud charges and was sentenced to 87 months in prison in February 2025.

Who said what

ProPublica’s “truly outrageous” report is “clearly a political hit job,” Collins told reporters Tuesday, and the “seven-year-old allegations” were “thoroughly investigated” and dismissed by the Biden Justice Department in 2021. Kao’s detailed 2024 confessions “opened up an entirely new phase of the investigation,” ProPublica said. But agents didn’t “uncover much evidence to corroborate” his claims about Collins and her advisers, The New York Times said, citing “current and former officials” who also “acknowledged that it was possible more could have surfaced if the investigation had developed further.”

What next?

President Donald Trump’s “purge of anyone who had ever investigated him” eviscerated the federal units “handling public corruption investigations,” ProPublica said, and the probe “sparked by Kao’s revelations is dead.”

What happened

President Donald Trump on Tuesday told the United Nations General Assembly in New York City he was deciding whether to make a deal with Iran or “annihilate the Islamic Republic” and “drive them into hell with no chance of survival.” After his speech, his envoys met indirectly with Iranian officials for what Trump described as a “very good meeting.”

Who said what

In his 35-minute address, Trump also celebrated his military operation in Venezuela, hailed a new agreement on Greenland and criticized efforts to regulate artificial intelligence. But the “heart of the address was a fulsome defense” of his Iran war, The Associated Press said. Trump “didn’t offer an answer” on whether he would annihilate the country, The Wall Street Journal said, leaving the “question to hang over the final weeks of the campaign season as GOP candidates are facing sharp questions” about the war and its fallout, including “sharp increases” in gas and diesel prices.

Trump was “again the center of attention” at the U.N., Politico said, but even as “world leaders scrambled to stay in his good graces,” there was an “undercurrent of discontent — and even defiance — from some leaders who are seemingly preparing for a life after the U.S.-led order.” After Trump threatened to destroy Iran from a “podium where world leaders typically champion peace and global harmony,” The New York Times said, other leaders “warned of the dangers posed by division and unilateral action.”

What next?

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is scheduled to address the General Assembly on Wednesday, where “his remarks will be closely watched,” the Times said.

What happened

CNN, Politico and MS NOW on Monday filed a federal lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s decision to ban them from the White House. CNN is one of five networks in a rotating pool that provides live coverage of presidential events, and to demonstrate their objections to Trump’s press ban, the other four — ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News — stopped their cameras indefinitely.

Who said what

“As far as I know, there is no precedent either for a president to ban cameras or networks — or for networks to boycott an event in solidarity,” Hunter College presidential media expert Harold Holzer told The New York Times. “Thrilled to see it.”

With the network cameras off, Trump was largely inaudible during Monday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony for his new White House helicopter landing pad. Trump tried to “shrug off the lack of network TV coverage,” The Associated Press said, but he has “long crowed about how the new helipad” would “impress Chinese President Xi Jinping” when he arrives on Wednesday.

What next?

None of the major networks traveled to New York with Trump, “nor were they planning to be present at his meetings with foreign counterparts” at the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, the Times said. “If the dispute remains unresolved,” the “most television-addicted president in history” will host Xi “without network cameras present.”

Andy Burnham, stateside for the United Nations General Assembly, is meeting Donald Trump for their first in-person talks today in a stronger position than Keir Starmer was as a new PM. Trump is increasingly unpopular at home, and preoccupied with the Iran war and looming midterm elections, while the UK has been strengthening its ties with Europe and Canada. “It’s completely different this time,” one official told Politico. “There’s no drama about having to stay in his good books.”

But Trump has previously called Burnham “extremely liberal” and dismissed him as the “mayor of a town”. And if his past meetings with world leaders are anything to go by, there’s still plenty of potential for drama.

What did the commentators say?

In 2024, sucking up to Trump was the “medicine required”, one UK diplomat told Politico. Burnham, however, has inherited “an established relationship” with no need to lavish praise. His job is therefore to “fix the mess of unresolved threads left behind” – and “avoid a barrage of abuse on Truth Social”.

He is “not expected to take a big list of deliverables or policy goals”. His aim, according to senior UK officials and MPs, is: “Get in, smile, press the case for Ukraine, and try to leave without a major upset.” Officials are hopeful that he will encounter a “more pro-Ukraine atmosphere” in Washington, after the House of Representatives approved a “sweeping Russia sanctions bill”. Burnham hopes to persuade the US to increase the deliveries of air defence interceptors – but it’s unlikely that Ukraine is even in the top five of Trump’s priorities, said Daniel DePetris in The Spectator.

Burnham’s more assertive approach seems to be working so far, said Reuters. His team pointed out that Trump “did not push back” against Burnham’s ban on imports from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. But Trump is a “notoriously fickle and unpredictable” man who “spreads trade tariffs like confetti”, said The i Paper. Burnham will have to avoid the “minefield” of some of Trump’s “fixations”, such as North Sea oil and defence spending.

There is “no suggestion” Burnham will go further and emulate “the more combative approach” of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, said The Guardian’s Pippa Crerar. Nor would it be wise to; Trump is still angry the UK didn’t join him in strikes on Iran, and recent comments on the Falklands and Irish unification “suggest his displeasure has not abated”. The meeting will be “fraught with tension” with “potential for further clashes”. The US president might be weaker domestically, but he’s still in office for two more years. For now, “the power still rests with Trump”.

What next?

Even if Trump and Burnham hit it off, the meeting itself “isn’t the most important event”, said DePetris. “What truly matters is the follow-through.”

The Iran war remains “a dark storm cloud hovering over US-UK relations”, and with Houthi rebels continuing to advance, effectively controlling Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, Trump could grant Saudi Arabia’s request for military intervention. In that case, “you can be almost certain the Trump administration will expect the UK to get involved”, and Trump could slam Burnham’s government for insufficient defence spending in next month’s Budget. Remember, things were fine between Trump and Starmer – “until they weren’t”.

A US federal appeals court has ruled Donald Trump’s policy of deporting migrants to so-called third countries is unlawful, setting up a potential showdown with the Supreme Court.

The case has become “a key test of what due-process protections the government must provide before removing people to countries with which they have no connection”, said Reuters. Trina Realmuto, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said the verdict shows such protections “cannot be circumvented by putting someone on a plane to a country that was never part of their removal proceedings”.

How many people have been deported, and to where?

Since Trump returned to office in late January 2025, more than 25,000 migrants, refugees and asylum seekers have been deported to third countries where they often have no ties. The Deportation Project, led by a collection of media organisations, has identified 35 countries where the US has secured agreements to receive third-country deportees. The majority of those deported so far – around 20,000 – were transported to Mexico, while others have been flown to Latin America, Africa, central Asia and the Caribbean.

Often done “under a cloak of secrecy” these have become a “core part of the Trump administration’s repressive migration policy”, said France 24. “At the beginning of the administration, they were really overt about the fact they’re carrying out these flights,” said Savi Arvey, director of Policy, Refugee & Immigrant Rights at the NGO Human Rights First. “But over the past year, the government has been very opaque about these third-country transfers.”

Why are people being sent to third countries?

Third-country deportations represent a solution to cases where deportees’ home countries either refuse to accept them or in which doing so would violate US law, under which “it is illegal to send people back to countries where they are likely to be persecuted”, said The Guardian. Many of those deported to third countries had previously been granted a “withholding of removal” in recognition of the danger they could face if returned to their home countries. However, third countries often go on to deport the arrivals to “the very place they fled”.

The US Department of Homeland Security says third-country deportations are part of a wider strategy that prioritises the swift removal of criminals. The agency said there were serious violent and sexual offenders among the more than 330 deportees sent to third counties in Africa. However, “many of them had already served their sentences”, said Politico, while “others had merely violated immigration regulations or had unsuccessfully applied for asylum”.

What is the future of third-country deportations?

On Friday, a three-judge appeals court panel unanimously agreed with a March 2025 ruling that the Trump administration’s third-country removals policy failed to give people enough notice of the decision to deport them, or the chance to legally contest their removal.

The government has 90 days to appeal, which would send the case to the Supreme Court for a final decision. In the meantime, “the third-country deportation policy continues,” James Percival, the Department of Homeland Security’s general counsel, said in a statement.

According to internal government records reviewed by The Washington Post, at least $410 million has been pledged towards securing more migration deals with third countries. The policy “marks an extraordinary break in US foreign policy, inverting the nation’s long-standing commitment to resettling refugees in need into an intensive focus on expelling them from the country”.

The music was loud, the flags were everywhere, and the “sense of panic” was inescapable, said Nikki McCann Ramirez in Rolling Stone. With Election Day less than two months away, and polls showing Republicans in danger of losing both the House and Senate, the GOP earlier this month held its first-ever midterm convention in Dallas. The MAGA luminaries addressing “Trumpapalooza” barely mentioned soaring gas prices or the quagmire in Iran, the related catastrophes that have dragged Trump’s approval rating down into the mid-30s. Instead, they gushed over Trump’s leadership; warned of an America overrun by Islamists, “killer migrants,” and trans athletes if “evil” Democrats win, and left it to Trump himself, addressing both nights of the event, to rally the MAGA faithful. But “the cult of Trump is waning,” said Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times. Speaking to thousands of unfilled seats—many left empty by swing-state candidates who skipped the event—Trump had attendees pledge allegiance to him personally, “the greatest president in the history of the United States,” and promise to “cheat like hell” in November. In what is surely one of our Republic’s lowest moments, Trump promised a $5,000 “dividend check” to every American, if Republicans win the midterms. “Far from juicing turnout” for the GOP, Trumpapalooza may have just “reminded the voting public” of why they need to elect Democrats.

Trump did make some questionable choices, said David M. Drucker in Bloomberg. He mocked voters’ affordability anxieties. He ridiculed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, now trailing Democrat James Talarico in the race for Texas’ open Senate seat, saying, “I don’t really like the way he looks.” But Trump may have accomplished his main goal: to have his die-hard supporters “pretend that I’m on the ballot.” Still, Republicans’ bigger problem is the president’s “evaporating support among GOP regulars who have never been Trump’s biggest fans.” Perhaps the promise of a “$5,000 payoff” will motivate some, but the fact that “Trump was compelled to resort to this sort of dubious measure is revealing.”

“No one is falling” for Trump’s dividend “gimmick,” said The Washington Post in an editorial. Congress would need to approve the payout, and not even the GOP’s Trumpified House delegation wants any part of a vote-buying scheme that would turbocharge inflation and add another $1.2 trillion to the $40 trillion national debt. Trump’s “$5,000-check promise may be the moment he finally underestimated his audience,” said Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic. Does he really think voters have forgotten the DOGE “refund” checks that were supposedly in the mail? Or the “tariff rebate” checks he also promised? Trump’s free-money “ruse,” like the rest of his shtick, has “worn thin.”

“Republicans’ best hope,” said Dana Milbank in The Washington Sun, is that most voters weren’t paying attention. The convention’s first night coincided with the NFL’s season opener, and while 25 million Americans tuned in to see the Seahawks beat the Patriots, only 3 million chose to watch Trump rhapsodize about his gilded ballroom. Viewership didn’t improve on night two, when Vice President JD Vance delighted the crowd by telling a protester with a Mexican flag to “get your ass” to Mexico. Vance’s Trumpy zinger underscored the predicament for a party that renounced all ideological commitments to become a “cult of personality.” When Trump leaves the scene, and a midterm drubbing would mark the beginning of his end, there may be nothing left but a “hollow shell.”

What happened

The Trump administration on Saturday barred reporters from CNN, Politico and MS NOW from the White House, following through on President Donald Trump’s post a day earlier warning he was “banning” the three outlets as a “result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!” The White House Correspondents’ Association and other media organizations condemned the decision, and the networks announced Monday they had filed a joint lawsuit against the Trump administration over the ban.

Who said what

Trump’s public and private “frustrations” with the media coverage of his presidency “reached a fever pitch” when “one of his closest aides, Natalie Harp, showed him clips of anchors on the cable network MS NOW criticizing his administration,” The Wall Street Journal said. His decision to ban the three news organizations hours later “caught many White House officials by surprise,” and “one senior administration official reacted with exasperation,” arguing that the move “would do little to achieve the president’s goal of improving press coverage.”

What next?

Trump is clearly “not interested in playing by traditional First Amendment rules and norms,” Penn State University media law expert Amy Kristin Sanders told The Associated Press. It’s “not an exaggeration to say his hostile actions toward news organizations and individual reporters have a chilling effect on freedom of expression around the world.”

Donald Trump has hailed a deal that gives the US “permanent control over security” in Greenland, while backing down from threats to annex the semi-autonomous Danish territory.

The US president said on Friday that “from now on, no US adversary can EVER have a base in Greenland, have a military presence in Greenland, or make sensitive investments in Greenland, without our express written approval”. This was an “infinite life agreement”, he added.

The deal has been described as a win for both sides but, as ever with Trump, “the devil is in the details” and “the details about this deal are still scarce”, said Sabrina Escobar on Barron’s.

What did the commentators say?

The US has made it easier to “control encroachment on Greenlandic soil by China, Russia and other adversaries” and the Arctic is undoubtedly “a safer place for America and its allies today”. For this, “due credit must go to” President Trump, said The Economist.

A 1951 agreement with Denmark already granted the US military exclusive privileges over the “valuable strategic territory”, but the new deal is “a hedge against the risk that Greenlanders might someday declare independence from Denmark”, said The Wall Street Journal. Having said that, it is still “fair to ask whether this deal could have been reached without the collateral damage to US alliances from Trump’s bullying threats”.

“It is perhaps a triumph of optics,” said Marc Jacobsen on Al Jazeera. Despite all the backslapping in the White House, changes to the existing arrangement appear to be “relatively limited”. This is “a testament to the negotiating skills of the Danish and Greenlandic representatives”, who have given Trump “the opportunity to claim the victory he needed, while preserving sovereignty”.

Henrik Dahl, a Danish member of the European Parliament for the Liberal Alliance, agreed that, in practice, little appears to have changed. “A wise Danish politician once said that you can achieve almost anything if you are willing to let others take the credit,” he told The Telegraph. “So let us give Donald Trump the credit for something very close to the status quo. From a Danish and Greenlandic perspective, it could hardly be much better.”

Despite the US president’s “long-standing rhetoric on invading and annexing Greenland”, this deal “once again shows the limits of Trump’s disruptive politics”, said Swasti Rao in The Print. “The theatrics he created were annexation, but the transaction he got was substantive access,” though Trump still remains “extraordinarily capable of collapsing the distance between the two”.

What next?

The deal is expected to be signed on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, and will still need to be approved by legislators on both sides of the Atlantic before it comes into force.

But there are hopes the agreement “signals a weather change in Washington”, said The Times. The ongoing war in Ukraine and the chaos on energy markets caused by US and Israeli strikes on Iran “require a united Western response”, so Nato allies must now lay the matter of Greenland “to rest” and “humour the president and let him savour his supposed victory”.

Rebuilding trust will take time, however, said Tillie Martinussen, a former Greenlandic MP. “Even if it’s your best and brightest and strongest sled dog, and it turns around and bites you, you can never trust that dog again.”

The Democrats made a very wise decision this spring, said Lauren Egan on The Bulwark. They were considering whether to host their own midterm convention to steal attention from the one staged by the Republicans in Dallas.

In the end, they opted not to, because they were short on cash and thought it might be “strategically smart to cede the stage to Donald Trump in hopes that he would dig his own political grave”. Boy, did that pay off.

Trump, who has already alienated voters this summer by talking about how great data centres are and how he loves inflation, was on unhinged form in the two-day conference. He boasted that America “controls the Trump Strait”; he demanded that the audience join him in a pledge (“I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States...”); he even promised every American a $5,000 bounty if his party wins the midterm elections.

Democrat insiders have long joked that Trump is trying to lose November’s midterms, but some are now seriously wondering whether he has lost his grip on reality.

An ‘incredibly risky’ bet

Republican candidates contesting swing seats in November certainly regard him as a liability, said Ayman Mohyeldin on MS Now. Many of them stayed well away from Dallas, wary of association with a president whose approval rating is down to below 35%. The Republican Party has nevertheless decided that, despite everything, it’s worth making Trump the face of the midterms, because of his unrivalled ability to drive Republican voters to the polls.

It’s an “incredibly risky” bet, said Kimberley A. Strassel in The Wall Street Journal. The Maga base is already “fired up”. It’s among the larger category of traditional Republicans that the GOP has a turnout problem. They need to inspire these people to vote by offering a coherent agenda.

There’s little evidence of that, said The Washington Post. Trump’s wild proposal to pay $5,000 to every adult citizen if the GOP retains control of Congress in November beggared belief. It’s a “desperate gimmick” that betrays a total lack of seriousness about America’s fiscal situation. It would cost more than $1.2 trillion, in a country already saddled with $40 trillion in debt.

The Democrats are in no position to accuse Trump of trying to “trade votes for cash”, said Charles C.W. Cooke in National Review. It’s what they do in every election, albeit in more disguised ways. But this bribe is still a terrible idea, not least because it would stoke inflation. Trump says he’s defending America from the socialists, but if his populism means throwing money at voters, “what need is there of socialism at all”?

Another Trump ‘con’

Trump’s cheques will never arrive, said Steve Benen on MS Now. Congress wouldn’t approve the move, the courts would object, and the money’s not there in any case. It’s just another Trump “con”. He pulled the same trick before the 2018 midterms, when he claimed that he and Congress were preparing a new, “very major” tax cut that would exclusively benefit the middle class. Even White House officials were “mystified” by this declaration, which had no basis in reality.

It’s bad enough that Trump spouts nonsense, said Eric Boehm in Reason Magazine. Worse was the sight of his VP, J.D. Vance, defending the bribe plan and insisting it could be funded through tariffs. Vance is supposed to be the heir apparent to Trump – “the guy with the political and policy chops” to redefine this populist movement for the next generation. Yet he has no problem with the concept of bribing Americans with their own money? “Trumpism is out of ideas, and soon it is likely to be out of power – no matter what ridiculous promises the president makes along the way.”

Whether President Donald Trump truly believes he can turn Canada into the 51st state remains as much a question of personal psychology as one of national policy. But it’s clear the president’s increased aggression toward America’s northern neighbor has convinced many in Canada that their national interests lie elsewhere. Despite sharing geographic, cultural and historic ties with the United States, Canadian officials are now turning to other international outlets, like the European Union, in an effort to wean themselves off the U.S.’ turbulent sphere of influence.

Pursuing a ‘unique alliance’ with Europe

With the United States and Canada “embroiled in the worst bilateral trade war in their modern history,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has pushed to “take Canada’s relationship with the EU to the next level,” said The Wall Street Journal. The effort is a “bold gambit” by Canada to “rewire the economic cabling of the Western alliance.” By “accelerating Canada’s pivot to Europe,” Carney is “matchmaking a shotgun marriage to offset the pain of its divorce with America.”

Talks between Canada and the EU have focused on “easing the movement of goods, services and specialized workers in critical sectors, including energy, artificial intelligence, defense and critical minerals,” said The Independent. The two bodies are also exploring “cooperation on subsea cables, cloud storage, data centers, satellite networks and infrastructure to export Canadian energy to Europe.”

“We’re not looking to become a member of the European Union,” said Carney to reporters this past weekend, per The Globe and Mail. “What we are looking for” is a “unique alliance between Canada and the European Union.” EU officials want to work on “opening the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the European Union,” said EU President Ursula von der Leyen this week in her State of the European Union address. Although “details remain scant and the linkup is not a done deal,” von der Leyen's announcement was “met with a standing ovation from lawmakers,” said The New York Times.

‘Cozying up is a no-brainer’

Talks of Canada actually joining the EU as a full member-state are “more meme than reality,” said Bloomberg. But the apparent “openness to talks on ‘anything other than membership’” has driven “justified enthusiasm among the Ottawa and Brussels crowds.” The “logic of cozying up is a no-brainer” as Canada works to “diversify trade away from its southern border,” and the EU hopes Canada’s “vast reserves of energy and minerals” will help it “carve a middle path between the U.S. and China.”

Carney hopes to “build an alliance of liberal powers” that are “committed to the multilateral order thrown into chaos by Donald Trump,” said the Financial Times. To that end, he intends to “show commitment to European allies” by potentially contributing to the EU-led 90 billion euro Ukraine Support Loan, of which the U.K. is the “only other non-EU country to have participated.”

While it’s unlikely that Canada and the EU will reach a “deeper overarching agreement any time soon,” they are slowly creating a framework for what it “actually means to be a ‘trusted partner’ in the context of economic security,” said Canada EU Trade and Investment Association President Mark Camilleri to the Financial Times. “If Canada and the EU can get this right, it is a model that can be adapted to other like-minded countries such as the U.K., Norway, Japan and Australia.”

In the meantime, said Politico, Canada is set to “make its Eurovision debut in 2027.” The country will “host an EU summit in Montreal” in late October.

“The United States now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action.”

This was US air force secretary Troy Meink confirming for the first time at a conference in Maryland this week that such weapons exist. Meink said the US was “ready to meet the challenges of evolving threats wherever they exist”.

It has been an “open secret” that the US, Russia and China are developing space weapons, but to say it officially is “extraordinary”, said The Guardian. Over time, the “cooperation” of the post-Cold War era has “gradually become a potential battlefield”, and announcements such as this threaten to “accelerate a risky arms race”.

What are the weapons?

Meink declined to give any details on the capabilities of the weapons, only that they were “important from a deterrence perspective”.

There is a “broad range of possibilities” for what they could be, Clayton Swope, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, told CNN. There could be “satellites capable of jamming enemy communications” or weapons that could “target and destroy ground-based equipment”. In the extreme, there might also be anti-satellite weapons that could “seek out and physically destroy” enemy satellites in orbit.

In its “war-fighting framework”, the US Space Force has acknowledged that threats of orbital strikes on the country can include “both kinetic – or physically destructive – weapons and non-kinetic ones”, said the Financial Times, implying weapons would need to be capable of nullifying them.

What is the US space strategy?

Donald Trump established the US Space Force in 2019, making it the first new branch of the US military in more than 70 years.

Under the control of the Department of the Air Force, its primary goal is “bolstering the nation’s defence capabilities” and maintaining satellites for communication and surveillance, said CNN. But last year, Trump issued an executive order underlining the USSF’s “role in not only defending assets, but also as an attacking force”, said the BBC.

Russia and China are perceived to be the main threats to US national security. The USSF claims that China already “operates space and counterspace capabilities”, while Russia “views space as a war-fighting domain and believes space supremacy will be a decisive factor in future conflicts”.

Next year, the department is “slated to have a budget of $71.3 billion”, said The Times. New space weapons form a part of the wider “Golden Dome” missile defence shield, protecting the US from foreign attack. Trump has “championed” the “$185 billion” programme, which “would potentially involve deploying interceptors to space”.

How have others reacted?

Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson for the Kremlin, told reporters that Russia believed “space must be free of any weapon” and called for “the complete demilitarisation” of space.

China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun has urged the US to “stop expanding military build-up in outer space, and uphold global strategic stability with concrete actions”. The country “stands for peaceful use of outer space and keeping it safe” and “opposes any arms race in outer space or any attempt to weaponise it and turn it into a war zone”.

Chinese military analyst Song Zhongping told the state-owned Global Times that “if the US continues down this path, other countries may be forced to respond”.

Could this development spread?

In theory, weapons in space are banned. Following Starfish Prime – the “largest nuclear test in outer space” – in 1962, nations signed the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which “banned weapons of mass destruction in orbit”, said The Telegraph.

But while it bans the use or testing of nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction in orbit, “it does not prohibit the use of conventional weapons in space or the use of ground-based weapons against assets in space”, said CNN. This leaves “room for interpretation”.

And the “emerging space weapons race is not limited to the US, Russia and China”, said Al Jazeera. India has already demonstrated “anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons” capability and is “developing technologies that could allow spacecraft to operate alongside other satellites”. France has reportedly begun developing similar “co-orbital capabilities”, and the UK has “conducted on-orbit cooperative operations” in conjunction with the US.

The Secure World Foundation found that while the threats from Iran and Israel are “less visible”, they are relying on “jamming and spoofing satellite-based services” and “electronic-warfare capabilities” respectively to advance their space security. North Korea is also “racing to develop more sophisticated space-based tech”.

What happened

Donald Trump Jr. and Bettina Anderson’s “lavish” three-day wedding celebration in the Bahamas was “heavily funded by a secret benefactor: Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin,” ProPublica reported Monday. Kremlev spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to rent out one of the “pair of ultra-exclusive private islands” that hosted the May wedding, plan the reception and put on a fireworks show, among other expenses.

Bettina Trump confirmed the “extraordinarily generous wedding gift” on social media. “Our dear friend Umar very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us AFTER our wedding,” she said, but he did not attend the “intimate” ceremony.

Who said what

Accepting Kremlev’s money was an “extraordinary flouting of ethical norms for an American president’s family,” which is “generally expected to steer clear of these sorts of personal and pricey gifts,” The New York Times said, “particularly from someone in a country like Russia.” About 50 guests attended the after-party, including Eric Trump and Jared Kushner, and some were “puzzled” by the presence of Kremlev and his Russian friends, ProPublica said. “Eric has absolutely no clue who this person is,” a spokesperson told the publication. President Donald Trump said in a statement he also had “no idea who Umar is,” but “it was an ‘after-party’ given in their honor. Not a big deal!”

What next?

“This should be unthinkable” for the son of the president, retired FBI counterintelligence agent Frank Montoya Jr. told ProPublica. “If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point, you’re going to owe me something.”

Amid stark warnings that artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity by the end of the decade, the heads of the largest AI firms in the US have all backed a proposal by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to slow down development to ensure public safety. Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark went even further, saying all AI software should have a mandatory “kill switch”, so society can “pull the plug” on anything that gets too dangerous.

The warnings sent both tech stocks and Donald Trump into a tailspin. The US president dismissed calls for “guard-rails” on the development of AI as a “SICK conspiracy” that would only benefit China.

What did the commentators say?

We’re long past “more mundane” warnings about AI causing job losses or cheating in exams, said BBC Tech and AI editor Zoe Kleinman. Talk now of “existential threats” to humanity has led to “a chorus of serious voices urging a slowdown”. And yet that’s “far from an easy solution” because it relies on AI companies who “haven’t been behaving responsibly enough” so far. It’s like a bull escaping a farmer’s field and wreaking havoc, leading computer scientist Wendy Hall told Kleinman. “Of course it’s not the bull’s fault – it’s the farmer.”

The problem, said AI sceptic Ed Zitron, is that “nobody has given a substantive explanation of what ‘slowdown’ means”.

Amodei’s broad-brushstroke proposals include independent monitoring of AI models as they’re developed, and global agreements on safety standards and security issues. While laudable, these are seen by many as unrealistic, given the current geopolitical landscape. “The US federal government is committed to a global AI arms race”, and “previous proposed AI legislation has wilted under intense, well-financed corporate lobbying”, said The Guardian.

And then there is China. Its state-run newspaper, Global Times, characterised Amodei’s essay as a thinly disguised effort to restrict Beijing’s tech ambitions, arguing that it was “packed with containment provisions targeting China and is, in essence, a ‘Cold War playbook’ for the AI sector”.

America “appears to be increasingly weaponising its dominance in the sector, seeing it as a strategic asset to be protected”, said CNN’s John Liu. China, which is “lagging in the race”, prefers “a more open model” but has given no indication it would mirror any US slowdown in AI development. With so much at stake, it seems neither side would be willing to back down.

What next?

Anthropic is caught in a “classic prisoner’s dilemma”, said Tim Higgins in The Wall Street Journal. If it “is the only one to heed the call, it falls behind OpenAI”; if all US AI labs follow through on a slowdown, “it could well benefit all of humanity” but this would probably see America “fall behind China”.

With both Anthropic and OpenAI planning to list on the US stock market, some have also questioned if their new-found security concerns are all they seem. “That is the IPO story in essay form: we are the responsible firm; we are the cure; buy the safety premium,” said AI entrepreneur Brian Roemmele on X. For him, these dire warnings are nothing more than a sales pitch.

What happened

President Donald Trump Sunday blamed Ukraine for rising diesel prices. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia,” Trump told reporters at his golf club in Ireland. “He’s causing a shortage of diesel fuel” and “that’s hurting the world.” The shortage “isn’t done by the Middle East,” he added. “This is done by what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine.”

U.S. diesel prices reached a record $6.20 a gallon Sunday, nearly 65% higher than when Trump attacked Iran in February. Crude oil was trading above $107 a barrel Sunday night “after new Houthi strikes on Saudi Arabia and Iranian attacks on ships” in the Strait of Hormuz “compounded supply concerns following the closure of a key Saudi oil pipeline,” Reuters said.

Who said what

For months, Ukraine has been “targeting Russia’s oil and gas industry with long-range strikes,” The Associated Press said, “prompting fuel rationing” and “causing Moscow to ban diesel exports.” Previously, Russia was the “second-largest exporter of diesel, behind the U.S.,” CNN said.

But “Russian exports of diesel and oil have never been significant for U.S. consumption — the very idea is absurd,” a senior European official told Politico. Trump and his team are “blaming Ukraine because they do not know what to do” with their unpopular Iran war.

What next?

Yemen is the “latest domino to fall in the chain of instability set off by the U.S. war with Iran,” The Wall Street Journal said. Last week’s Houthi “lightning offensive” to tighten control over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait “has put the two most important energy corridors in the Middle East” under the “sway of Iran and its allies.”

What happened

President Donald Trump over the weekend caused uproar by advocating for Irish reunification. Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom, and the independent Republic of Ireland have been separated since 1921 and coexisted in relative peace since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

Trump’s comments “touched a live rail” in Irish and U.K. politics, The Associated Press said.

Who said what

“I don’t want to cause any problems,” but “I’d love to see it unified,” Trump said Saturday during a meeting in Dublin with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin. It would be “fantastic” and “it’s going to happen eventually,” though “the U.K. will have something to say about it, obviously.”

Trump’s comments broke “longstanding U.S. presidential convention of not taking sides” on Northern Ireland’s future, Axios said, and “managed the unusual feat of delighting Irish nationalists while alarming some Northern Irish politicians who have previously expressed support for him.” Martin said there was “no need for an overreaction” and urged politicians to “keep a calm perspective.”

What next?

The Good Friday Agreement allows for reunification if Belfast agrees and Irish and Northern Ireland voters approve the merger in referendums. The British government said unification was “off the table” unless public opinion shifts.

Artificial intelligence developers are expressing alarm that AI could destroy humanity in the next few years, and industry leaders are calling for a slowdown in its development. Congress, however, seems uncertain about what role it should play in reining in the onrushing technology.

‘Kill all humans!’

AI researchers believe that now is “crunch time for humanity,” said Jacob Coxon to Wired. (Coxon recently resigned from a short stint at Anthropic, following several years at OpenAI.) Workers at the big companies building artificial intelligence “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” he said on X.

Anthropic’s Evan Hubinger agrees. AI really could “kill all humans!” he said on X. And such warnings present AI companies with a “dilemma,” said Axios: “Slow down and risk falling behind, or press ahead and risk losing control.”

Coxon’s high-profile alarm is “part of a wave of warnings about unchecked AI systems,” said Ian Prasad Philbrick at Slate. The trend raises the question of why companies like Anthropic and OpenAI do not stop or slow their work on increasingly complex and capable models.

Some developers have “talked themselves into continuing to work” on AI, believing that their less-conscientious industry colleagues will otherwise have the playing field to themselves, said Philbrick. But that kind of thinking is a “one-way ratchet toward greater AI risk.” Still, the risks might be “overstated.” Voter anger over data centers may also “compel Congress to act” with rules and guardrails.

The warnings “merit a certain skepticism,” said The Washington Post in an editorial. (The Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, who cofounded the Prometheus AI lab in 2025.) The people working most closely with AI do not have “special knowledge of what machines that do not yet exist will someday become.” And they can’t say how “society will adapt to the challenge.”

But their warnings could spur Congress to overregulate the sector, which may curb the development of a promising new technology. “The dawn of the AI era cries out for humility and patience,” said the Post.

‘Monumental human stupidity’

Coxon’s and Hubinger’s concerns are “unpersuasive,” said Thomas Claburn at The Register. A “Skynet scenario” would “require monumental human stupidity” in the face of AI superintelligence. But new laws should be enacted to “put executives in jail when their models do harm.” If AI models really are that dangerous, society should “hold people accountable for the harm they cause.”

Congress “won’t lead the charge” on regulating AI, said Axios. Guardrails are needed, but “we have got to make sure that we don’t lose our edge in the global competition on this with China,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

President Donald Trump is also hesitant to act. Artificial intelligence is “going to be more good than bad,” he said to reporters, per The Associated Press.

It has been more than six months since the first barrage of American missiles struck Iranian targets in what has become the defining foreign policy crisis of the second Trump administration. Less defining, however, is the language the White House has used to describe what is taking place between the United States and Islamic Republic.

While President Donald Trump himself often refers to the violence in bombastic terms, other members of his administration have conspicuously avoided calling the ongoing exchanges of missiles part of a larger “war.” Instead, they opt to downplay the conflict’s duration and severity for domestic audiences.

‘It’s small potatoes for us’

Vice President JD Vance argued this month that the “current hostilities shouldn’t even be called a ‘war’” since “‘active combat operations’ ended months ago,” said CNN. Vance’s claim came “despite three consecutive days” in which the U.S. and Iran exchanged fire. “I can understand what he’s saying,” said Trump during an Oval Office press scrum following Vance’s comments. “I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us. It’s not a big thing.”

From the start of the war, Americans have been “getting conflicting messages from the Trump administration and congressional leaders” about what to call the violence, said FactCheck in March. Given that Congress hasn’t officially declared it as such, “if political leaders were to say that this is a war, they would also be acknowledging that the administration’s actions were unconstitutional,” said Stephanie Savell, the director of Brown University’s Costs of War project, to the outlet.

“Because we haven’t officially declared war, my kids and I aren’t eligible for some benefits,” said Air Force widow Libby Klinner in a recent social media post highlighting the paradox of a nonwar war, per the Military Times. Air Force officials have since launched an “audit on our benefits to ensure that we receive all we are entitled to,” said Klinner in a subsequent message.

White House officials have “downplayed the scale of the conflict” in the “apparent hope that it will recede from the headlines” since hostilities have “already lasted far longer than the president’s initial predictions of victory within a few weeks,” said The Atlantic. Still, with “no end to the hostilities in sight,” the Navy is “staying on a war footing indefinitely.”

‘Just playing to his base’

Trump has “contradicted himself and his own Cabinet in the same week — and sometimes, the same day” in his assessments of the conflict, said the Los Angeles Times. The evolving language is part of an effort to “control the narrative of the Iran war.”

Trump’s more bellicose rhetoric, like when he personally and repeatedly refers to the Iran “war,” is being used in part to “save face for the quagmire he has put himself and Republicans in” ahead of the midterms, said Khaled Elgindy, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, to The New York Times. The president’s wartime language is “just playing to his base, whether it’s true or not.” It lacks “much of a strategy beyond trying to wish things into existence by sheer force of words.”