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.”

The first ministers of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland will meet today to affirm their right to seek independence from the UK, with SNP leader John Swinney warning Andy Burnham he “must now be facing up to the idea that he will go down in history as the final prime minister of the United Kingdom”.

In what The Telegraph called an “unprecedented summit” in Cardiff, Plaid Cymru’s Rhun ap Iorwerth, Swinney, and Sinn Féin Vice-President Michelle O’Neill are expected to “put pen to paper on a joint declaration demanding the right to hold independence referendums”.

Labour was routed by Plaid at May’s local elections, the SNP maintained its dominance at Holyrood and Sinn Féin, which won Stormont elections in 2022, is widely expected to do so again when the nation votes next year.

“For the first time ever, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are led by pro-independence first ministers,” said Swinney. “There could be no clearer sign that the status quo is not sustainable – and that Westminster must prepare for a post-UK future. The momentum behind serious constitutional change is undeniable.”

What did the commentators say?

Already boosted by talk of further devolution of powers away from Westminster, two seemingly off-the-cuff interventions last week gave fresh impetus to independence movements ahead of today’s meeting. First, Burnham was forced to row back on comments at PMQs on Wednesday when he suggested he would authorise another Scottish referendum if there were a “clear consensus” in favour of one, wrongly stating that the trigger for a separation vote was “exactly the same situation in Scotland” as Northern Ireland, where the Good Friday Agreement provides for a referendum on Irish unity when there is evidence that a majority would support it.

“Burnham has not read his brief and doesn’t seem to know the basics of the UK Government’s position on the Union,” a source close to Swinney said. “If I was a Unionist I would be very worried.”

Then there were Donald Trump’s comments on Saturday, when he said he would “love” to see a united Ireland, and called the idea of reunification “fantastic”. In so doing, the US president “cast aside decades of White House neutrality”, leading “officials on both sides of the dispute” scrambling to “tamp down the fallout, leverage it or just make sense of Trump’s latest diplomatic curveball”, said Steve Hendrix in the Washington Post.

Trump’s remarks may have been quickly dismissed by No. 10, but they matter because they “potentially change how political actors calculate what can be demanded, defended or negotiated”, said Grace Russo Bullaro on VNY: La Voce di New York, a US Italian English news site.

And in a UK “already arguing over who has the right to determine its constitutional future, his finger on the scale can bear consequences”.

What next?

The legal significance of the so-called Cardiff initiative “lies in the contrast between a shared political claim and three different constitutional positions”, said Edmarverson A. Santos on Diplomacy and Law. “Self-determination, legislative authority to hold a referendum, and a legal entitlement to secede are separate questions.” Scotland and Wales currently require consent from Westminster, while Northern Ireland already has a consent-based mechanism governing the possibility of Irish unity contained in the Good Friday Agreement. “That distinction is essential to understanding what claims of a ‘right to decide’ mean in legal rather than purely political terms.”

Latest polling suggests only around a third of voters in Northern Ireland would currently back reunification, with a similar percentage in Wales supporting independence. Support for Scottish independence is stronger, hovering around half of decided voters. In all three cases, however, support is substantially higher among those aged 45 and under, meaning time is on the side of those seeking the break-up of the UK.

“There seems to always be a troubling aura of delusion and ignorance when it comes to Unionists,” said Steph Brawn in The National. But “whichever way Burnham looks, he should be on edge about a UK that is falling apart around him”.

It was “a predatory move” that reeked of old-school colonialism, said Le Monde (Paris). Last week, in a typically grandiose social media post, Donald Trump announced that the US and Venezuela had struck “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY”. It would, he claimed, give America majority control over 65 billion barrels of oil found at 17 sites in Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt and Lake Maracaibo.

Trump has been demanding this as a prize ever since US forces seized Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in a dawn raid on Caracas in early January, said Joseph Zeballos-Roig on MS Now (New York). “To the victor belong the spoils, right?” he told a rally in Nevada back in August, boasting how, with Caracas, he wanted to do things “the old-fashioned way”.

By strong-arming interim president Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s former deputy, into agreeing the deal, he has made Venezuela America’s “51st state in all but name”.

‘Smells pretty unconstitutional’

Venezuelans are horrified, said Luis Manuel Aguana in La Patilla (Caracas). We are a “culturally patriotic and anti-imperialist” people who, like other Latin Americans, loathe “external oppression”. And Rodríguez’s flimsy promise that the deal will generate $209 billion in taxes over the next 25 years hardly makes this bitter pill any easier to swallow. But it is a deal that’s unlikely to hold, said Caracas Chronicles. It “looks, sounds and smells pretty unconstitutional”; any future government is more than likely to abrogate its terms.

Legally speaking, the accord is a “complete monstrosity”, agreed Rafael Quiroz Serrano in Tal Cual (Caracas). A leader with no electoral mandate, Rodríguez lacks the legitimacy to sign away our oil deposits; and under Venezuelan law the state oil company, PDVSA, must have a controlling stake in any oil production projects. Be that as it may, Caracas has been persuaded under the deal to appoint a private company – North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP) – to control the 17 oil fields, on the understanding that the Pentagon is given a 35% stake in the business and receives 20% of all output at cost price.

And that’s a real cause for alarm, said Caracas Chronicles. NABEP’s Venezuelan owner, Alejandro Betancourt, is a byword for corruption. He made his fortune building power plants for Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chávez, and “became synonymous with the vanishing of hundreds of millions of dollars” that Chávez had allocated to fixing Venezuela’s power grid. And he is now being investigated in Spain (where he lives) for alleged money laundering.

‘Wildly optimistic’

Betancourt would anyway have to work miracles for the deal to work out, said Catherine Bosley in Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Only 1% of global crude oil is currently produced in Venezuela, despite it having 17% of the world’s reserves. And given the dilapidated state of its oil infrastructure after decades of socialist misrule, that won’t change any time soon. Vast sums of investment are needed. True, Chevron, which already operates in Venezuela, promised to invest $7 billion over the next five years in a separate deal last week. But none of the other oil giants, some of whom lost billions when Chávez booted them out in 2007, are keen to engage.

With good reason, said Keith Johnson in Foreign Policy. Trump’s numbers are “wildly optimistic”. Venezuela’s oil is very heavy and hard to process: only 20 billion barrels are likely to be recoverable from the 17 oil fields. And even that will take years to retrieve, a fact Trump conveniently overlooked when claiming the deal would drive down US energy prices that have spiked as a result of his war in Iran.

The deal’s economic prospects may be in doubt, said The Daily Beast (New York), but the political consequences are already being felt. By shoring up Rodríguez’s undemocratic regime, it has dashed any immediate hope of Venezuela turning to democracy. And it has given the green light to countries such as Russia to “attack and steal from weaker neighbours”.

Tom Homan is owed an apology, said Rich Lowry in National Review. When President Trump put his border czar in charge of unwinding Operation Metro Surge – the immigration enforcement drive that caused such controversy in Minneapolis earlier this year – critics on the Right took it as a sign of a climbdown.

Trump, they said, had clearly lost his nerve on his signature issue and was retreating from the ambition to carry out mass deportations. Yet while things have been quieter since Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) ended its Minneapolis crackdown, there has been no lull in efforts to deport illegal immigrants.

Homan has avoided militarised raids, relying instead on picking up illegal aliens at routine traffic stops, immigration check-ins and airports. His low-key approach has been highly effective: in August, for the third month in a row, Ice achieved a new record for arrests, detaining almost 51,000 illegal aliens.

Campaign promise

Nobody can accuse Trump of failing to deliver on his campaign promises on immigration, said Daniel J. Flynn in The American Spectator. He pledged to stop “the invasion at our southern border” – and he did. Net migration in 2025 fell to its lowest level since the Great Depression. There are 2.3 million fewer illegal immigrants in the US today than when Trump began his second term.

Given that, as recently as 2024, Americans told pollsters that immigration was their number-one concern, you’d think voters might credit Trump “for more or less solving this vexatious problem”. No such luck. As is often the case in politics, “success engenders not gratitude but complacency”.

Shrinking workforce

Trump’s immigration restrictions may have been successful on his terms, said Stuart Anderson and Mark Regets in The Washington Post, but they’ll cost America in the long run. They’re largely responsible for the fact that Trump is set to be possibly the first ever US president to preside over a reduction in the labour force.

The labour force grew by 6.7 million during Reagan’s first term, and by 8.7 million in his second. Falling birth rates later slowed growth, but thanks to migration, Obama’s terms still added 1.6 and 3.9 million workers, respectively.

In Trump’s second term, by contrast, the workforce has fallen by 1.6 million. Economic growth is hard without a growing supply of workers. “A declining labour supply is new territory for America” – and it will leave everyone worse off.

What happened

Joseph diGenova, a former federal prosecutor and ally of President Donald Trump, resigned Thursday from the Justice Department, where he was leading a wide-ranging conspiracy investigation into Trump’s perceived political foes. DiGenova was hired in April, weeks after Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi amid his “repeated expressed frustration” with her “pace — and limited success — in overseeing efforts to target his rivals,” The Washington Post said. He’s departing “amid mounting frustration from the Justice Department and White House over the pace and management of the probe,” The Associated Press said.

Who said what

The Florida-based investigation, which Trump’s allies call the “grand conspiracy,” is the “most fevered of the many revenge investigations” Trump has “demanded” from the Justice Department, The New York Times said. It “hinges on an unusual and untested legal theory,” the Post said: “that previous administrations conspired for years to violate Trump’s rights through a series of investigations.”

“If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem,” deGenova told the New York Post Thursday. He later told the AP there was “plenty of evidence,” but “it just takes time to get there, and some people want to get there a little faster than others.”

What next?

The “investigation has always been something of a tall order,” the AP said. So far, “no charges have been brought and it remains unclear whether any will be.”

Twenty-five years on from the most deadly terrorist attack in history, and almost 25 years into the War on Terror, “the world is a less safe place despite our actions”, said Iraq veteran Joslin Joseph on The Hill.

According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, the military interventions after 9/11 led to the deaths of over 900,000 people and cost the United States more than $8 trillion (£5.9 trillion). “Afghanistan and Iraq ended in failure”, said The American Conservative’s David Brady, while “most Americans believe that the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East were a mistake”. Indeed, this was a major part of Donald Trump’s initial appeal: “They lied,” he said of the War on Terror architects in 2016.

But while “there is much to criticise in the war on terrorism,” said Douglas J. Feith in The Washington Post, on its main objective “the success has been remarkable”. There has been no second 9/11. “Terrorists have not exploded skyscrapers, stadiums and power plants across the country” and “they have not transformed America into a police state.”

What did the commentators say?

“Hasn’t Osama Bin Laden gotten everything he wished for?” asked The American Conservative’s Brady. The financial costs “have taken an undeniable economic toll, fuelling unprecedented levels of debt” while the “human costs have soured many Americans, not just on Mideast wars, but on the elites who got us into them”. Syria is even “run by a former member of al-Qaida, who has been welcomed to the White House”.

But the “most costly single event to the US would have been another successful major attack”, said The Guardian’s Jason Burke. The fact that this never came is an “unarguable success of US policymaking since 9/11 and a major failure for al-Qaida”. And despite the obvious economic problems in the US, “no one could argue that the country has suffered a similar fate to the USSR”.

The terrorist group that Bin Laden headed up, meanwhile, faces the question of whether it can replace its ageing fighters. Although this is conceivable, al-Qaida as a brand is “visibly fading”, terrorism expert Behnam Heidenreuter-Said, head of the research centre for Strategic Police Research at Hamburg Police Academy, told Deutsche Welle. In Europe in particular, militant jihadism has become less attractive.

Some analysts “add together the presumed strength of groups in Somalia or Mali that have very loose, historic links to al-Qaida, and warn that their total membership is higher than those loyal to Bin Laden in 2001”, said The Guardian’s Burke. However, “these few thousand young men with AK-47s have little in common with the organisation Bin Laden led 25 years ago, both in aims and capabilities”. The fact that al-Qaida “still exists is an achievement of sorts for the group and, posthumously, for its founder”. But “it should not be described as any victory”.

What next?

A key lesson of 9/11 is that “perils grow when enemies conclude that America lacks the will, capability or staying power to defend itself”, said The Washington Post’s Feith.

But America and the West are again under attack, this time “from a Cold War enemy” in Russia “that watched the US and its allies waste lakes of blood and trillions in treasure enfeebling themselves after 9/11”, said The Independent’s world affairs editor Sam Kiley.

The West is now “spiritually and politically impoverished, deeply indebted and unable to meet new defence needs, and therefore vulnerable”. Vladimir Putin “has Bin Laden to thank for that”.

What happened

President Donald Trump capped off the first night of an unusual Republican midterm convention on Wednesday with a movie-length speech in which he defended his Iran war and tariffs while also saying he would send all U.S. adults a $5,000 “Trump dividend” if Republicans retain both houses of Congress in the November elections. “Please pretend that I am running,” he told the partially full arena in Dallas. Trump was preceded by a string of Republican candidates and Cabinet members, many of whom attacked Democrats as “communists,” and a surprise video appearance by Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.).

Who said what

Trump “reveled in making the upcoming elections all about himself,” The Associated Press said. But his “financially and politically implausible” dividend pledge reflects his “apparent calculation that he needs bold moves to revive Republicans’ chances” amid “his low approval ratings.” The payouts would cost about $1.2 trillion, Politico said, which “would dwarf the amount distributed during the Covid pandemic and likely explode the deficit” and “worsen inflation.”

Trump’s “DOGE divided” and tariff rebate checks “never panned out,” The New York Times said. And “there’s reason to think that Republicans in Congress, like they did with his two previous promises of quick cash, could shrug off the president’s suggestion.” The “Trump dividend” is a “last-ditch bid to prevent an electoral shellacking,” The Wall Street Journal said. But the GOP’s “all-Trump-all-the-time strategy” could also “drive away independent voters.”

What next?

Vice President JD Vance is scheduled to give Thursday’s keynote address, but Trump is closing out the convention’s second and final night.

What happened

Lonnie Bunch III on Tuesday announced he will retire as secretary of the Smithsonian Institution at the end of the year, with “very mixed emotions and heartfelt gratitude.” The founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Bunch became the first Black person and first historian to lead the Smithsonian in 2019. His seven-year tenure as secretary was “marked most recently by attacks from the Trump administration” over “how the Smithsonian presents American history and values,” The New York Times said.

Who said what

Bunch told The Wall Street Journal his decision to retire had “nothing” to do with President Donald Trump or the White House. “It was really just saying, ‘now’s the time,’” he told the Times. Still, “it has been stressful,” and “I’d like to wake up in the morning and not look at my cellphone.” Bunch has “defended the organization’s independence” from Trump’s “efforts to assert control" over its content, CNN said, but he “also tread a fine political line.”

What next?

“Unlike the Kennedy Center, Trump does not have the power to select or remove the Smithsonian leadership at will,” Politico said. But “he can have tremendous influence in the process” through selecting new members of the Board of Regents. The 17 regents, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, will appoint Bunch’s successor.

“Now is the twilight of Donald Trump’s supremacy,” said Rafael Behr in The Guardian. The US is “still the richest and most heavily armed nation on Earth”, and the president – indulged by a “supine” Congress – still has far-reaching powers. Nevertheless, with more than two years of his second term still to run, Trump looks “thwarted and impotent”.

‘Deranged demands’

History will record that the disastrous war against Iran was a “turning point”. But evidence of his policy failures can be seen all around the world. Canada, citing unreasonable last-minute demands from US negotiators, has promised all-out trade war. The Ukraine conflict is as bloody as ever, despite Trump’s promise to end it. Europe, horrified by his indulgence of Vladimir Putin and his “deranged demands” for Greenland, has turned away. In the Middle East, America’s allies are furious that they’re bearing the brunt of Iran’s attacks. And at home, fuel prices are rising, and electoral disaster is looming: November’s midterms are set to flip the House of Representatives, and maybe the Senate too, against the Republicans.

In a matter of months, Trump has “burned through decades of accumulated goodwill” across the democratic world, said Daniel Hannan in The Sunday Telegraph. “He has created a sense that it is better to be America’s enemy than its friend, for it buys its enemies and sells its friends.” Never once has Trump spoken about Putin in the way he talks about Canadians, Danes, South Koreans and other partners.

‘Erratic behaviour’

A couple of years ago, it would have seemed impossible, said The Spectator. Now it’s quite normal for Washington, in its dealings with its allies, to threaten economic coercion, the withdrawal of military support, and even outright annexation. When Russia behaves like this, it is sanctioned. But in the case of the US, we sit back and do nothing.

There are still some who believe that “Trump’s erratic behaviour is part of a cunning plan to discombobulate opponents and get his way”, said Sam Freedman on Substack. The truth, as his lack of success makes clear, is simpler: “this guy is in obvious cognitive decline, ill-informed, and doesn’t know what he’s doing”.

Worse may be to come, said The Economist. Many would be delighted if “a fuming, friendless Mr Trump, so weakened by his own blunders and by plunging approval ratings” were to retreat to the White House to “tinker with plans for his ballroom”. Alas, that is not in his character. He’ll be less a “lame duck”, and more an ageing “silverback gorilla” – lashing out ever more viciously at anyone within his reach. “Now that his dominance is threatened, the world will find him more disruptive than ever.”

America’s midterm elections are looming, and are expected to turn on voters’ frustration with the rising cost of living. Hardly the moment, then, for a damaging trade war with Canada, said Rex Huppke in USA Today.

Yet following an acrimonious breakdown of trade talks between the two nations, Donald Trump last week slapped 50% tariffs on a range of Canadian goods, including down jackets, wine, dairy products and hockey sticks. He later threatened to double tariffs on vehicles and car parts, posting on social media: “WE DON’T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!” Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, who accused US negotiators of effectively declaring war on his country by introducing a raft of unacceptable last-minute demands, promised to retaliate with dollar-for-dollar counter-tariffs, starting on 8 September.

Economic pain

Carney isn’t bluffing, said Zeeshan Aleem on MS Now. Canada relies more on exporting goods to the US than the other way round, so its economy is set to lose most from any trade war, but Carney has staked his reputation on standing up to Trump. He reckons Canadians will have more tolerance for economic pain resulting from a trade war they’ll blame on Trump “than Americans will have for rising prices”.

The polls certainly suggest as much, said Andrew Day in The American Conservative. Only a third of Canadians have a favourable view of the US today, down from 54% in 2024; 76% back Carney’s stance. For someone so adept at promoting nationalism at home, Trump has a “curious blindspot” about the impact of stirring such passions abroad.

‘Personal fixation’

He can’t help himself, said Zack Beauchamp on Vox. After all his “jokes” about absorbing Canada as the 51st state, Trump has now signed an order to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America” to spite the Canadians. The US and Canada have a long history of trade disagreements over issues such as dairy and lumber, but these rows have never blown up into a trade war, “for the simple reason that they simply aren’t that large as a percentage of GDP”.

There don’t appear to be any political, ideological or business interests egging on Trump to get into a fight with Canada. The desire to “vassalise” and control America’s northern neighbour is just the president’s “personal fixation” – one so important to him that he’s apparently willing to pursue it, even at the cost of jeopardising his party’s Senate majority.

What happened

Fox News on Thursday said it had parted ways with financial journalist Maria Bartiromo, effective immediately, thanking her for “her work over the last 12 1/2 years.” She last appeared on air Aug. 9. Asked about reports that Bartiromo was fired for leaking confidential news coverage plans to the White House, a Fox News spokesperson told reporters only that the move was a “business decision.”

Who said what

After joining Fox Business in 2014, following a long career at CNBC, Bartiromo became “one of President Donald Trump’s closest allies at the network,” CNN said. She was fired, Status reported, because she “effectively betrayed” Fox by telling the White House that network bosses had instructed staff to “steer clear of giving credence to Trump’s delusional claims” in an “unhinged” July primetime speech on election security. Bartiromo “wanted to pursue a story related to China and 2020 election voting conspiracies,” Puck’s Dylan Byers reported, and when executives told her no, she “took a screenshot of the guidance and sent it to senior White House officials.”

What next?

Fox Business rebranded Bartiromo’s namesake programs and took down her contributor pages. “Her fans, of which there are many, will not be happy,” Trump said in an online post. “Social media lit up with speculation that Bartiromo might be in line to become White House press secretary,” CNN said. But asked about that possibility yesterday, Vice President JD Vance said, “No, I don’t think so.”

“We hate the French! We fight wars against the French! Did all those men die in vain on the fields of Agincourt?” What would Edmund Blackadder think to see Emmanuel Macron and King Charles cosying up in front of the Bayeux Tapestry?

The tapestry, as Andy Burnham said at its unveiling at the British Museum this week “shows a new leader emerging from a northern territory, travelling to the south of England in search of the crown. Something clearly that couldn’t happen today.”

Macron has now become the first EU leader to visit Burnham at No. 10. This week of renewed bonhomie between the British and the French comes as Donald Trump’s America “is threatening to leave Europe to fend for itself”, said The Economist. So that might be one reason why France is “being so nice to Britain”.

What did the commentators say?

Another reason for this French “love-bombing”, as The Economist put it, is that “it costs France very little and buys it so much”, said the UK’s former Brexit negotiator David Frost in The Telegraph.

Much of the British establishment loves this kind of thing and it does so “because it sees diplomacy primarily as a matter of personal relationships and symbolism”. But that belief “generates the besetting sin of British diplomacy: the wish to be liked rather than respected” and sadly “nowhere is that truer than with France”.

But “in these fractured times, the enduring appeal of this 11th-century artefact speaks of a need for a national story”, said The Guardian. The Bayeux Tapestry is a “devastatingly human saga” and, with war raging in Europe, “this medieval masterpiece is a reminder of conflict’s brutality, human suffering and the importance of collaboration between countries”.

Indeed Macron himself “played an instrumental role over nearly a decade in pushing for the tapestry loan”, said France24, and it “is viewed as another step towards healing the rancour of the Brexit years”.

On a political level there is “no shortage of common ground” between Burnham and Macron, said Le Monde, “particularly regarding their policies on the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East”. The French president praised Burnham's recent trip to Kyiv, but also highlighted that, while Paris and London “collaborate in vital areas such as defence, nuclear energy, space or artificial intelligence”, they “do not always agree on everything”.

What Macron “seems to be saying is that despite Brexit, despite Donald Trump, or perhaps because of both, France and Britain need to stick together now”, said The Economist.

A new Charles De Gaulle biopic “not only evokes nostalgia for an age of unimaginable bravery” but “also speaks to modern worries about national sovereignty, dependence and democratic values”. The film “carries another message too”: that “the dark forces of nationalism can be beaten”. With Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage on the rise, the new-found affection from Macron could signify that “this battle is yet another that Britain and France are in together”.

But “what did the love-in between Andy Burnham and Emmanuel Macron actually achieve?” said The Sun. “For a start, don’t expect the small boats to stop any time soon” as it remains in “France’s interest to let migrants set sail and wait for British border forces to rescue them – especially as we pay £1 billion for the privilege”. And Burnham was “gushing over France’s role in another terrible idea: helping him achieve closer ties to the EU”.

What next?

“To move forward on all these issues and put the entente amicale to the test,” said Le Monde. A French-British summit is due to take place later this year, Burnham confirmed, but he did not give a date.