What happened

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Monday overturned a federal judge’s block of President Donald Trump’s executive order to restrict mail-in voting and make other election changes. The 6-3 emergency ruling was on procedural grounds and did not address the constitutionality of Trump’s order, much of which is still blocked through a different injunction from the same federal judge in Boston, Indira Talwani. The U.S. Postal Service issued a final rule late last week confirming that, if the courts allow, it would refuse to deliver mail ballots in states that did not comply with Trump’s order.

Who said what

The Supreme Court ruling “means the administration can move ahead with planning for restricting the use of mail ballots,” The New York Times said. But it “does not mean that any measure taken by the government to implement the order will necessarily be lawful,” the court’s unsigned majority opinion said. “On that score, time will tell.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a dissent that the ruling “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty” into the upcoming midterms and furthers the court’s “Kafkaesque nightmare” regarding “election-related challenges.” Monday’s ruling “may not lead to a single election procedure changing” before November, The Associated Press said, “but it has already thrown into uncertainty the method that nearly one-third of the country uses to vote,” including Trump himself.

What next?

“Time is running out” for Trump’s voting changes, the AP said. After the first mail ballots are sent from North Carolina on Sept. 4, it “would be virtually impossible for all states” to fully comply.

The city of Dakhla, on a “peninsula where the Sahara meets the Atlantic”, is advertised to holidaymakers as “Morocco’s hidden gem”, said the BBC. But tourists flying to this part of Western Sahara might not know they’ll “be landing in one of the world’s longest ongoing territorial disputes”.

A former Spanish colony, Western Sahara was annexed by Morocco in 1975. Since then, it has been the subject of a dispute between Morocco and its indigenous Sahrawi people, led by the Polisario Front and its government-in-exile in Algeria. Now classified by the United Nations as a “non-self-governing territory”, around 80% of the country is occupied and administered by Morocco, with an earthen strip separating that area from a Sahrawi-controlled portion in the east. Numerous UN-brokered talks to resolve Western Sahara’s future have failed.

‘Tomorrow’s Dubai’

Morocco has been pouring considerable resources into Western Sahara. Since 2015, it has spent £7 billion trying to “level it up”, said The Spectator. There are now water desalination plants, 620 miles of motorways, and plans for eight “green hydrogen plants” and a “centrepiece” £1 billion Dakhla Atlantic Port. This “massive undertaking” is still under construction but, when finished, “35 million tons of goods are expected to pass through every year”.

King Mohammed VI’s “development plan” for the country he refers to as Morocco’s “Southern Provinces” includes “metamorphosing” Western Sahara’s coastline into a hub for business and tourism. Christopher Nolan filmed several scenes for “The Odyssey” on the “otherworldly” White Dune, just outside Dakhla, and it’s hoped many will want “to follow Odysseus’ footsteps and flock” to this city on the up: “think of it as tomorrow’s Dubai”.

Western Sahara also has plenty of natural resources that Morocco could exploit. Surveys have pointed to “promising deposits for gold, silver and iron” in the region, said Bloomberg.

‘International consensus’ shift

Nolan’s decision to film in Western Sahara was bound to “revive debate” over this “half-century-old territorial dispute”, said Bloomberg. Morocco’s annexation has created “one of the world’s most enduring yet overlooked refugee crises”, said Metro. For the past 50 years, the indigenous Sahrawi people have been “forced to live under occupation or go into exile”: 173,000 Sahrawi refugees live in camps in Algeria, in the “harshest part of the desert”. Each camp is named after a city in Western Sahara, but “many have never set foot” in these places “where their parents or grandparents were born”.

In recent years, international consensus has shifted and consolidated in favour of Morocco’s “autonomy plan” for Western Sahara. Spain has endorsed the plan and both France and the US have recognised Morocco’s sovereignty over the region. In October, the UN Security Council approved a resolution that gave the “strongest backing yet” to Moroccan control, “while making no mention of the independence referendum” sought by the Polisaro Front, said Bloomberg.

Last month, Donald Trump thanked Moroccan authorities for naming a highway after him, said Al Jazeera. The gesture has not been confirmed by Rabat but “would be far from surprising”, since the US has provided “crucial support” in bringing Morocco “closer to securing greater control” over the Western Sahara. In recent weeks, the US Department of Commerce announced it would fund “the early stages of an ammonium project” in the region, adding “a new economic dimension” to the long-running, “competing claims over the territory”.

U.S. allies in Asia have long depended on the American military for their defense. But President Donald Trump in recent days has curtailed U.S. participation in joint exercises with South Korea and at the same time ordered the lone American aircraft carrier to depart for the Middle East. The question now is whether the United States remains dedicated to Asian security.

No more ‘pivot to Asia’

The Trump administration “promised a pivot from the Middle East to East Asia,” Matthew Petti said at Reason. The opposite is now happening, with the U.S. commitment in the Pacific “taking a back seat to the U.S. presence in the Middle East.” The war with Iran is “dominating both the long-term planning and day-to-day execution” of foreign policy in the Trump White House. This is not new: Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden also promised to redirect attention away from the Middle East and toward China but failed to do so. “The problem is deeper than the hubris of one president.”

Trump’s sudden decision to pull back from the South Korean drills “does not mean the U.S. alliance system in Asia is collapsing,” Retired Lt. Gen. Chun In-bum said in The Korea Times. The abruptness of Trump’s decision — and his linking it to his friendly relationship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un — does however mean that Asian allies will “inevitably begin asking how much they can rely on U.S. commitments during a future crisis.” The answer to that question is vital as China becomes “increasingly assertive” and North Korea begins “cooperating more closely” with Russia. South Korea’s “survival and security are at stake.”

Asia’s ‘indispensable military power’

The stakes of Trump’s apparent pullback are high “not only for U.S. allies, but for the United States, too,” Sheila A. Smith said at the Council on Foreign Relations. A reduction in American fidelity to the Pacific could cause South Korea and Japan to seek nuclear weapons, while also ceding ground to U.S. rivals such as China and Russia. Another factor: Reported shortages of U.S. munitions in Iran have raised questions about whether the U.S. is even capable of “offering protection to its allies in Asia.” But the apparent trend of “deliberately weakening” longstanding American alliances will be “cause for celebration” in Beijing, Moscow and Pyongyang.

The United States is Asia’s “indispensable military power,” Craig Singleton said at The Washington Post. The American president’s unpredictability has already forced U.S. allies to begin “assuming greater responsibility for their own security.” Japan has begun its “largest postwar defense buildup” by signing agreements with Australia and the Philippines, India is expanding its military commitments and Taiwan is spending heavily to “harden its military, civil defense and critical infrastructure” against a Chinese invasion. That should fit Trump’s “American First” agenda, but the region still depends on “predictable American commitments and clear crisis planning.”

What happened

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) on Thursday vowed to halt all of President Donald Trump’s nominees until his administration eases a wetlands conservation policy aimed at protecting the breeding grounds of ducks and other waterfowl. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last weekend said it would at least temporarily retain the Biden-era program, which bars farmers from draining land near protected federal conservation easements.

Who said what

“My farmers are furious and so am I,” Cramer said in a statement to The Hill. The Trump administration’s “blind defense of a Biden rule favored by environmental extremists” just “confounds me,” particularly when farmers are “hurting so badly” amid “rising fuel and fertilizer costs resulting from limited traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.” But “other Republicans and hunters staunchly oppose any changes that would allow farmers to drain wetlands” and potentially “cause steep declines in duck populations,” said E&E News. The Upper Midwest’s Prairie Pothole region “supports more than half of North America’s ducks,” said the Washington Examiner.

What next?

“There will be no pause in my aggression” on the issue, Cramer told E&E News. “I have put a hold on all nominees, period, of all agencies. So I hope Clarence Thomas stays healthy.” Such holds “don’t necessarily prevent confirmation” of a president’s picks, said The Hill, but “they can cause a significant setback.”

What happened

The United Arab Emirates said Wednesday it had halted “all trade, commercial exchanges and financial transactions” with Iran “until future notice” due to “escalations that undermine regional and international peace and security.” Hours earlier, the UAE had accused Tehran of firing two missiles into its territory. Iran’s Foreign Ministry called that accusation “baseless” and possibly a “false flag operation.”

Iranian Gen. Ali Abdollahi later warned “countries on the southern shores of the Persian Gulf” that “any assistance” given to the U.S. military “amounts to participation” in its war. President Donald Trump on Wednesday night threatened that “ANY country that allows its financial institutions” or other entities to “provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences.”

Who said what

The UAE is one of Tehran’s “biggest economic lifelines,” The Wall Street Journal said, and Trump’s “effort to squeeze Iran into submission will depend heavily” on Dubai. It’s unclear if the U.S. “played a role in the embargo decision,” The New York Times said, but it was announced “hours after a call” from Trump to the Emirati leader.

What next?

If “implemented broadly,” the UAE’s trade severance could significantly harm Iran’s economy, the Journal said. But “severing those links will be difficult” and “could hurt Dubai’s role as a freewheeling global hub for commerce.”

What happened

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

Who said what

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

What next?

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

What happened

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

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

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

Who said what

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

What next?

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

What happened

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

Who said what

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

What next?

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

What happened

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

Who said what

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

Who are the main contenders?

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

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

What is the likely outcome?

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

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

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

What is Trump up to?

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

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

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

What happened

President Donald Trump said on social media Sunday night he had instructed the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” America’s annual joint military exercises with South Korea, citing their cost, his own “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Seoul’s disinclination to join the U.S. in the Iran war. The defensive drills, which began this week, are “totally inappropriate and hostile,” he said, as North Korea “has been unthreatening and respectful” while he is president.

Who said what

This is the “latest example” of Trump “appearing to turn against an ally in favor of a leader that previous administrations have cast as an adversary,” The Associated Press said. North Korea has been “pushing hard to enlarge its nuclear and missile arsenals since Kim’s high-stakes diplomacy with Trump collapsed in 2019.” Trump may intend this as “part of a larger effort to create a diplomatic opportunity” with Kim, Jenny Town at the Stimson Center think tank told Reuters, but the “haphazard nature of this move is unlikely to make much of an impression in Pyongyang.”

The Pentagon was “taken aback” by Trump’s “convoluted social media post,” The New York Times said, citing a senior U.S. military official. “We need South Korea as an ally more than ever to maintain deterrence on the Korean Peninsula and to reinforce our industrial base in critical sectors like shipbuilding and semiconductors,” Hudson Institute Asian security expert Patrick Cronin told The Wall Street Journal. “We should not punish Seoul for our lack of a strategy in the Middle East.”

What next?

The annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises are scheduled to last until Aug. 27.

Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to scale back annual joint military exercises with South Korea after the country stayed out of the war with Iran.

Writing on Truth Social, the US president said the exercises “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea, which “has been unthreatening and respectful” during his second term. He also noted that South Korea had recently declined to join the US in the “denuclearisation” of Iran.

What did the commentators say?

The US is losing the Iran conflict, so Trump has “taken the logical next step” of “punishing” a “loyal American friend”, said Tom Nichols on The Atlantic.

In fact, “scaling back the exercise” is an “insane” decision but in “Trump’s world, every loss, every defeat, is a personal insult”, and “when things go wrong, someone must be held responsible” and, of course, “that someone is never Donald Trump”.

So the world is “witnessing a public exhibition of narcissistic rage” because Trump “embarked on a war for personal glory”, but “what he got instead was ongoing humiliation”.

The Chinese, Russians and North Koreans will “draw the appropriate lessons from this deranged policy”, and notice that “when Trump fails, he hurts those he feels safe hurting”.

It is the “latest example” of Trump “appearing to turn against an ally in favour of a leader that previous administrations have cast as an adversary”, wrote Konstantin Toropin and Alanna Durkin Richer on The Associated Press. It’s a particularly “sharp turnaround” from how his administration has viewed South Korea recently.

The announcement could be “part of an effort to divert attention” from the war in Iran, which has “left energy costs high”. This has become a “sensitive economic issue” ahead of the US midterm elections, said The Korea Times.

It could “trigger a debate over whether the scaling down of joint exercises could affect the allies’ deterrence” against North Korea as the “recalcitrant regime has been doubling down on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs”.

The “sudden” announcement “risks renewing concerns” that “US forces are too stretched to support crucial Western allies or maintain deterrence against autocracies that threaten them”, said Brad Lendon on CNN. It’s also a “gift” to Kim Jong Un at a time when he has “ramped up his own nation’s threat to global stability and offered no concessions in return”.

What next?

Experts told the BBC that the “walking back” of these joint military exercises could “carry a high cost with relatively little benefit”.

They are “essential for military forces to be ready and capable of doing their jobs”, Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, told the broadcaster.

“Scaling them back” could “damage alliance coordination”, as well as “slow the process of South Korea taking on greater responsibility for its own defence, and weaken deterrence against possible conflicts in Asia”.

In a statement, South Korea’s presidential Blue House said it was reviewing Trump’s comments and added that it hoped a favourable relationship between Washington and Pyongyang could lead to meaningful talks.

What happened

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

Who said what

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

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

What next?

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

“It will work out. It always works out. It’s like a chess game,” said Donald Trump at the weekend, as an impasse over diplomatic discussions and disruption in the Strait of Hormuz continue. By letting economic pressure mount, we are “low-keying it” with Iran, Trump told Axios, and “only semi-negotiating with them”.

In response, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said that whether “lights out or lights on, Iranians showed they are professional chess players”.

With no end to the war in sight, inflation on the rise, fuel rationing and continued threats of strikes, the vast majority of the Iranian population appear not to be players, but pawns.

‘Extensive’ damage

Speaking openly about politics in Iran still “carries obvious risks”, said Nawal Al-Maghafi in The Guardian. Within Iran there is “no single narrative of the war”, with some believing it has “strengthened national unity”, and others saying it has only “deepened repression”. Nonetheless, the country has been “transformed” by the war and, as the conflict carries on, “so does the struggle to shape the legacy it will leave behind”.

Iran is facing “extensive” damage from US attacks, estimated to be “running in the hundreds of billions of dollars”, said Maziar Motamedi in Al Jazeera. But this plays into “decades-old economic structural issues” and being continually “strained by years of Western sanctions and local mismanagement”. During both world wars, the US and Israel “systematically bombed” ports, bridges, roads and other civilian infrastructure, and the country has a long history of internet shutdowns and a “cash-strapped” government.

Now, inflation has risen to “nearly 90%” in the last month, with food inflation “hitting 134%”, compared to a year earlier. Following two wars in less than a year, conflict with the US is “showing no signs of abating”.

Many Iranians feel “abandoned” by the West, said Roxana Saberi and Fatemeh Jamalpour in The Times. They believe the US and others have “largely stood by during the recent executions and the January massacre”. The crackdown since January has left Iranians with “widespread trauma” that “spans generations and classes”. The “greatest source of trauma” is the “inaction” of the international community, said head of a survivor charity Azadeh Afsahi. “If these Western countries have democracy, how come they don’t care to see that the Iranian people are suffering?”

Opinion is ‘far from uniform’

There is still a “fervour” among those who support the regime, said Krishnan Guru-Murthy on Channel 4. In June, the “streets were full” of people for national celebrations, and children fired foam darts at “targets bearing the faces of Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump was by far the most popular face to fire at.” Many are still eager to “express their love of country and their hatred of the enemy”. In many ways, ironically, it “reminds you of the most fired-up Maga supporters in America”.

Yet for others, the “greatest fear” is that “the war will end with the Islamic Republic still in power”, said Kelly J. Shannon on the Atlantic Council. However the conflict ends, the “remnants of the regime” will likely become “further entrenched and even more oppressive”. The massacres after protests in January, and an April order to “speed up executions of political prisoners”, support state television warnings that “any dissidents will be killed”. In the eyes of the Islamic Republic, the Iranian population is the “enemy, and it is willing to use any and all measures to keep them in line”.

Ultimately, “Iranian society is diverse, politically complex, and far from uniform,” said Mahmoud Rasouli on the European Consortium for Political Research. “Citizens hold differing views about domestic reform, foreign relations, economic priorities, and the country’s future.”

Yet this does not translate to political influence. Both Washington and Tehran invoke the interests of the Iranian people, but never do they allow such interests to “directly determine the direction of the conflict”. This creates a “paradox”: the Iranian people are “central” to the language used around the war, but “peripheral” in the “decision-making processes that shape their future”. They are neither “invisible spectators nor the main architects of the conflict”, but the “primary stakeholders in a confrontation largely shaped by others”.

A growing feud between the United States and Brazil has put both nations’ diplomatic corps on high alert, as South America’s largest economy finds itself on the receiving end of a Trumpian diplomatic spat. This month, Washington revoked the visa of Brazilian Ambassador Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti after Brasilia refused visas for several Trump administration officials whom authorities claimed were planning to denounce the country’s leftist government.

Brazil has said it will not formally accept Trump’s Senate-approved ambassador pick, Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez, until after its October election. The country also complained that the United States had named Perez before completing certain diplomatic obligations.

‘Protocol can double as a weapon’

The visa cancellation is the “latest split” between “two governments that have spent the past year oscillating between confrontation and detente,” said The New York Times. But this episode is “very, very unique and severe,” said Brazilian political science professor Carlos Poggio to the outlet. Visa revocations are typically reserved for diplomatic foes, but “Brazil is not a U.S. adversary. It’s actually a major ally.”

“On the surface,” the diplomatic kerfuffle “may seem like tit-for-tat pettiness,” said Puck. “True practitioners of statecraft” understand that “protocol can double as a weapon.” Countries whose diplomatic corps “undergo some of the most rigorous training in the world” are “not naive about the message Washington is sending.”

Voiding Viotti’s visa “is not an isolated incident,” said the office of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a statement to NBC. Rather, it is part of a “deliberate escalation of hostile measures” fueled by “ideological motives that are incompatible with a bilateral partnership that has always been guided by mutual respect.”

Questioning Trump’s ‘confrontational approach’

Some in the Brazilian diplomatic corps have questioned why Trump is “rushing to have an ambassador in Brasilia only months before October’s election,” said The Associated Press — particularly given that the post has been “vacant since Trump returned to the White House” last year. The deepening rift comes as da Silva, a leftist, runs for a fourth term.

His opponent this time is Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, himself a “close Trump ally on the political right” who was convicted of “trying to overturn the results of the last election,” said The Washington Post. Speaking on condition of anonymity, one State Department official decried Washington’s “confrontational approach” to the outlet. “Each time Brasilia portrays itself as standing up to Trump,” said the official, the leftist government’s “standing in the polls only improves.”

“This isn’t just about Brazil,” said Orna Blum, a former senior State Department official who focused on Brazil, to Puck. “It’s part of a pattern.” The Trump administration has aligned itself with “far-right political movements from Germany’s AfD to Marine Le Pen in France, and now with Jair Bolsonaro and his son Flávio in Brazil.” Being seen as “picking sides in another democracy’s elections” under Trump has “cost America credibility with allies around the world.”

What happened

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

Who said what

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

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

What next?

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

What happened

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

Who said what

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

What next?

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

What happened

A federal judge in Boston on Tuesday issued a second preliminary injunction, this one nationwide, barring the U.S. Postal Service from carrying out President Donald Trump’s executive order to limit mail-in voting before the November midterms. The president “has no authority to regulate elections,” U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled, and protecting voters from “chaos” and confusion “heavily outweighs the executive’s attempt to unconstitutionally insert itself into the domain of election regulation.”

Who said what

Under Trump’s order, USPS is “supposed to compile lists of eligible voters from states and deliver absentee ballots only to people on those lists,” NPR said. Talwani initially blocked the order in the 23 Democratic states that had sued, and Trump appealed that ruling last month. Her expanded injunction “creates another legal hurdle”, should Trump “get the initial injunction lifted by the U.S. Supreme Court,” The Associated Press said.

What next?

Trump has pushed Congress to limit mail-in ballots and other voting rules, but the Senate “bowed to political reality” early Saturday and adjourned for five weeks “without any concrete steps toward passing the voting restriction bill,” The New York Times said. Right-wing broadcaster Wayne Allyn Root urged Trump to enact his voting limits by declaring a “national security emergency for elections.” Trump, calling in for an interview, replied that “stranger things have happened.”

What happened

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

Who said what

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

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

What next?

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

What happened

President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order proposing a reduction in routine childhood immunizations to 11 from 17, and pushing for the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to be split into three separate single-disease shots administered over several doctor visits. This is Trump’s third attempt to “promote his long-held but discredited theory that childhood shots should be spaced out,” The Associated Press said, and a continuation of his fixation on “connecting autism to vaccines,” even though “scientific consensus and decades of studies have firmly concluded there is no link.”

Who said what

“Nothing bad can happen from what we’re doing,” Trump said before signing the order. But pediatricians and public health experts have “long warned” that spreading out vaccinations “will reduce immunization rates and leave children more susceptible to disease,” CNN said.

Trump’s “renewed focus on vaccines marks a departure” from his administration’s “recent efforts to emphasize less controversial health policies” ahead of November elections, the AP said. Trump’s “own pollsters have warned” that the issue is “unpopular” with voters, Politico said. But the president’s “personal interest” in changing vaccine policy has been “thrown into high gear by his allegiance with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” a longtime vaccine skeptic.

What next?

It’s unclear whether Trump’s order “has any legal power,” The New York Times said. Federal immunization recommendations come from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its outside experts, and “only states can require vaccinations for children to enter school or day care.”

What happened

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

Who said what

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

What next?

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

Well, is it on or is it off? No one’s quite sure, said Al Jazeera (Doha). Two weeks ago, the United States and Saudi Arabia signed a multibillion-dollar deal allowing US companies to build and operate nuclear power plants on Saudi soil over the next 30 years.

But a day later, President Trump added a new condition, via social media: Saudi Arabia must fall in line with the UAE and other Arab nations that have signed the Abraham Accords, and recognise the state of Israel.

‘Reckless’ agreement

And that may prove a deal breaker, said David Frum in The Atlantic. Riyadh had been working towards this landmark pact for almost two decades. Thanks to the savvy of its de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), who ensured the private equity firm of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, would get its share of the billion-dollar nuclear licensing deals at stake, he almost got it over the line.

But now it must surely be in doubt, said Mohamad Elmasry on Middle East Eye. Riyadh has vowed it won’t normalise relations until Israel guarantees Palestinian statehood. And MbS has reportedly told US officials that hostility towards Israel is so great among Saudis in the wake of Israel’s devastating war in Gaza, that to sign a normalisation treaty would probably get him assassinated.

It’s obvious why the Saudis still badly want this nuclear deal, said Joseph Cirincione on MS Now (New York). It’s not, as they claim, to diversify their energy profile: that makes no sense for a nation sitting on an ocean of oil and blessed with the ideal wind and solar conditions for generating renewable energy – a far cheaper option.

No, the real reason is to gain atomic weapons to protect itself against its main foe: Iran. MbS has made no secret of his desire to build a bomb, and the deal would be a concrete step in that direction. Despite Trump’s claims to the contrary, it appears to permit nuclear enrichment on Saudi soil, thus enabling Riyadh to follow the likes of India, Israel and Pakistan in covertly enriching uranium to weapons-grade levels.

‘Guiding hand’

Who knows what’ll happen if this “reckless” deal goes ahead, said Mitchell Plitnick on Mondoweiss (New York). The “gold standard” nuclear-power pact that the US signed with the United Arab Emirates in 2009 required the UAE to forego the ability to enrich uranium, and obliged it to submit to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections: this Saudi deal has no such restrictions.

Which is why it would inevitably trigger a Middle East arms race, said Azriel Bermant in Foreign Policy. If the deal proceeds, Iran would openly seek its own nuclear deterrent, something it has so far officially forsworn. “It beggars belief that the US went to war against Iran to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon yet now acts in a way that is an open invitation for Tehran to weaponise.” And in a way that would also pour “proliferation kerosene” on Turkey and Egypt’s “smouldering nuclear ambitions”, said Matthew Kroenig and Henry Sokolski in The Wall Street Journal. Trump’s deal invites disaster.

Actually, the US is doing the right thing, said the Washington Examiner. The hard truth is that the “era of non-proliferation is coming to an end”: Pakistan and North Korea are both testing nuclear weapons. Given that sobering reality, better the US offer “a guiding hand” to the Saudis and oversee their nuclear agenda than let China or Russia fill the void.

Good or bad, the deal matters a lot to the US president, said Sharon Squassoni in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Chicago), so rumours of its death “are premature”. After all, it’s not some “spur-of-the-moment fantasy” cooked up by Trump. The same deal was also being considered under Joe Biden, and then too enrichment was a quid pro quo for recognising Israel.

The Saudis won’t do so, of course, given recent history, but they won’t have to. Although Congress can disapprove the deal once it’s submitted, the present Congress – due to adjourn on 18 December – is much less likely to do so than any freshly elected one. So the Saudis can “call Trump’s bluff by simply sitting back” and waiting for him to succumb to the pressure of the December deadline.

While the Trump administration has become known for its policy of anti-globalization, recent reports that the White House plans to shutter five overseas embassies and consulates have some worried about the implications. Several of the planned closures will occur in nations with close diplomatic ties to the United States, including Canada and Japan. The rare moves, which often happen only during times of conflict, could create new foreign affairs headaches, even as Republicans laud the plans.

What did the commentators say?

The U.S. State Department has reportedly informed Congress that it is planning to close the embassy on the Caribbean island of Grenada; the consulates in Nagoya, Japan, and Medan, Indonesia; the diplomatic post in Winnipeg, Canada; and the embassy in Douala, Cameroon. The closures are “expected to save the government roughly $4.4 million per year,” but the affected buildings also “employ very few people compared with others,” said The Associated Press.

The buildings in Grenada and Nagoya “have only one American staffer and five local employees each,” said the AP, and the Medan consulate has only 47 local employees; the Douala embassy has only 14 and the Winnipeg post has just two. The closure effort is “part of a broader push by the Republican president to transform the U.S. bureaucracy so that it is fully aligned with his ‘America First’ agenda,” said Reuters. People seem split on the closures. Supporters have “portrayed cost-cutting measures as necessary to right-size ​an organization many conservatives see as bloated and overly bureaucratic.”

But Democrats “argue that cuts to the U.S. diplomatic footprint — coupled with the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, ‌which ⁠provided billions of dollars worth of aid globally — risks undermining American leadership,” said Reuters. While “on paper, the move is about efficiency,” in practice it “goes far beyond the fate of five buildings,” said Newsweek. The consular slashing “suggests the Trump administration sees America’s overseas presence as a dollar figure to be managed on a balance sheet, not as a strategic asset to be maintained.”

Some of the buildings planning for closure are far less consequential than full embassies; the diplomatic post in Winnipeg does “not provide full consular services, only emergency assistance to Americans in distress,” said the National Post. But the closures also mark a “rare reduction of America’s diplomatic footprint outside a specific geopolitical crisis,” said Newsweek, even though the shutterings themselves are “modest in isolation.”

What next?

The State Department hasn’t specifically confirmed or denied the closures but said its officials were “​focused on ensuring that the ⁠nation’s diplomatic footprint was efficient and effective,” the agency told Reuters in a statement. The department also said it was “committed to following congressional notification procedures.” No exact timeline for the shutterings has been announced.

The decision follows a recent pattern of closures. Earlier this year the Trump administration announced it would “permanently close the U.S. consulate in Peshawar, Pakistan, which was the closest diplomatic mission to Afghanistan,” said the AP. At the same time, the U.S. is also “investing millions of dollars into reopening the U.S. embassies in Caracas, Venezuela; Damascus, Syria; and Tripoli, Libya,” to “restore America’s formal diplomatic presence following the ouster of long-ruling autocrats in those countries.”

What happened

The Trump administration has refunded about $100 billion of the roughly $166 billion collected through President Donald Trump’s 2025 “liberation day” tariffs, according to a court-ordered progress report filed Tuesday with the U.S. Court of International Trade. The Supreme Court ruled in February that those import taxes had been collected illegally using an authority the president did not have, and a judge subsequently ordered their return to the importers.

Who said what

Trump has “placed heavy-handed tariffs at the center of his economic and foreign policy agendas,” CNBC said, and he has “vented his rage over the court rulings.” The “speed at which the money has been refunded has surprised trade lawyers and analysts” alike, the Financial Times said. White House officials had “warned that the refunds would depend on further litigation.”

What next?

Trump’s administration has “recently taken a series of steps to effectively re-create” his initial sweeping tariffs “using other legal authorities,” said CNBC. On Monday, 25 states sued the administration over the new tariffs, “calling them a pretext for replacing” the axed “liberation day” levies, The Associated Press said.

What happened

President Donald Trump’s National Guard deployment to Washington, D.C., will cost the federal government another $1.4 billion through the end of his term in 2029, according to a Defense Department estimate for Congress obtained by news organizations Tuesday. The estimate “offers a glimpse of how much taxpayer money will be spent” on a deployment local officials call an “infringement of their city’s autonomy,” said The Associated Press.

Who said what

The White House “has not disclosed the full cost of the mission so far,” The Washington Post said, so the Pentagon’s new figure represents the “most comprehensive accounting yet” of Trump’s “unprecedented use of the military.” In January, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the deployment was costing about $55 million per month, or more than $700 million to date. “The National Guard are not pawns and taxpayer dollars are not a piggy bank for Trump’s political stunts,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement.

What next?

About 4,600 military personnel were stationed in D.C. as of last week, and the new estimate assumes that an average of 2,500 National Guard members will be there for the remainder of Trump’s term. But it’s unclear if governors will “extend their state units for more than two years,” said the AP.

What happened

President Donald Trump on Monday accused U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro of having “choked” over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool case. Trump told reporters that Pirro “folded like an umbrella” in moving to drop vandalism charges against four people, including former Olympic canoeist David Hearn. Announcing the decision last week, the Justice Department said Trump’s $14 million renovations of the Washington landmark were “hasty and botched.” It also criticized the Interior Department for withholding key information about the project.

Who said what

The president has reportedly considered firing former Fox News host Pirro, a longtime Trump loyalist, for contradicting his assertion that bad actors are to blame for the pool’s peeling paint. “To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM,” Trump wrote on Truth Social over the weekend. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said on social media that “the evidence is clear, vandals have repeatedly caused damage” to the pool.

Waterproofing experts concluded the peeling paint was “probably caused by application errors,” The Washington Post said. The president is miffed because “Pirro did not give the White House a heads-up about dropping the charges,” a White House official told the outlet. Pirro met with Trump in the Oval Office, but she was not fired and did not offer her resignation, two sources told The New York Times.

What next?

Hearn’s lawyers are expected to respond this week to Pirro’s request to dismiss the case against him. He has “legal options that could unearth more embarrassing details on how his case was handled,” CNN said.

What happened

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Sunday formally rescinded the controversial plan for a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” that would have compensated President Donald Trump’s allies. Blanche also agreed to limit the scope of Trump’s tax audit immunity, which, along with the fund, was agreed as part of a settlement with the Justice Department after Trump sued the IRS for leaking his tax returns. Blanche’s announcement follows negotiations with two key Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee who were threatening to block his bid to become permanent head of the DOJ.

Who said what

Blanche had repeatedly sworn during Senate hearings that the fund was dead. But Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) “wanted to see the promise in writing,” NPR said, “especially as Trump continued to express support for the idea.”

“My team and I have met with committee members and Senators over the past several weeks and addressed any concerns or outstanding questions," Blanche said on X. In a statement, he also clarified that tax immunity for Trump and his family “applies only retroactively,” so it “does not protect the president from examination of future tax filings,” The Associated Press said.

What next?

A Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Blanche’s nomination is scheduled for Tuesday. His announcement “appears to clear the way” for his confirmation, Politico said, and GOP leaders hope to confirm his appointment “before the end of the week.”

What happened

President Donald Trump claimed Thursday on Truth Social that Hamas had agreed to “COMPLETE DISARMAMENT” in Gaza and that “Israeli forces will withdraw” from the war-torn region. Details on the deal remain limited, but Trump said it was brokered by the international Board of Peace, which he established earlier this year to oversee the Gaza peace plan.

Who said what

The breakthrough is a “critical step” toward Gaza being “governed by a new Palestinian government” and Israel having “the security it deserves,” Trump said. He added that the International Stabilization Force would collaborate with “a new Palestinian police force to take responsibility for Gaza being safe.”

But “we didn’t say disarmament,” Hamas negotiator Ghazi Hamad told The Wall Street Journal. Instead the group simply “agreed to place its weapons in a storage facility.” Israel has yet to make a public statement on the reports. Trump would be “very, very” disappointed if Israel rebuffed the plan, a senior Trump adviser told reporters.

Hamas has “long regarded giving up all its weapons as tantamount to surrender,” The New York Times said, so “disarmament would be a monumental undertaking.”

What next?

Board of Peace officials expected details of the deal would have to be “refined” over the coming weeks and months, Bloomberg said, and the timeline for Israeli withdrawal has yet to be finalized.

Three British superhero actors have spoken out against the proposed merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery and urged the culture secretary to block the deal.

Benedict Cumberbatch and Benedict Wong, both of whom appear in Marvel’s “Doctor Strange” films, and Alan Cumming, who played Nightcrawler in the “X-Men series”, have written in The Guardian warning the Paramount-Warner Bros. tie-up “threatens to inflict immense harm on the British public”.

The $110 billion (£83 billion) deal is being led by Paramount CEO David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, the Oracle founder and close ally of Donald Trump. It would create one of the world’s most powerful media empires, bringing together HBO, CNN, TNT Sports, Channel 5, Paramount+, as well as the DC Universe, Harry Potter, “Game of Thrones” and “The Lord of the Rings” franchises.

‘Minded to intervene’

Among a host of issues, Cumberbatch, Cumming and Wong cite concerns over the livelihoods of British film and TV crews, independent film financing, and the consolidation of news publications. “The UK is being threatened by a media merger that would harm our workers, our culture and the public – but we can stop it,” they say.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has said she is “minded to intervene” in the deal on public interest grounds. “I am conscious that the proposed acquisition is global in nature. In reaching this decision, my focus has been, and will remain, on the UK public interest and the range of services available to UK audiences,” she said in a letter to the current and proposed owners of Warner Bros. Discovery.

While Paramount has said it remains “confident that our proposed transaction does not pose any media plurality issues”, were the UK government to issue a public interest intervention notice it would trigger further scrutiny from media regulator Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority.

Depending on her decision, Nandy “could end up upsetting or possibly ingratiating virtually all the major US studios, streamers and tech giants”, not to mention the Trump administration, which is strongly backing the deal, said Deadline. This makes her “one of the most consequential culture secretaries in recent memory… in America that is.”

‘Bad for everyone’ except billionaires

The call for the British government to intervene comes after 12 American states, led by California, sued to try to block the merger, warning it would raise prices, shrink the number of films made and fall foul of strict anti-trust laws.

Last week a US district judge temporarily paused the merger to consider the lawsuit. This prompted Paramount to agree not to close the deal until June 2027 or five days after the court issues a ruling on the case, whichever is earlier.

For Paramount, the delay “may prove costly”, said The Hollywood Reporter. The merger agreement says Warner’s shareholders are owed roughly $650 million per quarter, or $6.9 million per day, if the deal is not completed by 30 September.

More than 1,000 leading industry professionals from US film and TV signed an open letter in April warning of the impact of “media consolidation” that prioritises “the interests of a small group of powerful stakeholders over the broader public good”.

Mark Ruffalo, one of the actors leading the campaign against the merger, said it “will mean less films, less TV, less creativity, less of everything from the people who make the decisions. This merger is bad for everyone except the billionaire class.”

What happened

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Tuesday it will end a Medicare subsidy program aimed at lowering prescription costs for some seniors at the end of 2026, one year ahead of schedule. The Medicare prescription drug benefit, which is expected to cost the government some $3.6 billion in subsidies this year, was introduced by former President Joe Biden in 2024. It shields some 25 million people with “Part D” Medicare plans from steep insurance premium hikes.

Who said what

Characterizing the government subsidies as a “bailout” that “gave BILLIONS of taxpayer money DIRECTLY to Big Insurance Companies,” CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz said on social media that the administration is “stabilizing the market.” All but a quarter of Part D enrollees are likely to see their premiums rise next year as a result of the change, some by $20 a month, an anonymous Trump administration official told The Wall Street Journal.

The change could “inflame the debate” about healthcare costs at a time when “voters’ concerns about the cost of living are a top campaign issue,” Bloomberg said. Republicans could find this “politically damaging” ahead of the November midterm elections, The New York Times said.

What next?

CMS will release the new monthly Part D premiums in September, which means Medicare users could be in for some “sticker shock while shopping for next year’s drug plan,” the Times said.

After a World Cup dominated by hydration “ad” breaks, political interference and match-rigging conspiracies, football’s biggest prize really is, “it seems, for sale”, said Alyson Rudd in The Times.

Under plans drawn up by Fifa President Gianni Infantino, football’s world governing body would retain majority control of the tournaments it runs, including the men’s and women’s World Cup and Club World Cup, under a new company, the Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE).

But a minority stake would be offered to each of Fifa’s 211 member associations and, controversially, to private investors. Infantino would be installed as “commissioner” when his term as Fifa president ends in 2031, a role that “could potentially earn him tens of millions of pounds”, sources have told The Times, which broke the story.

“This crosses a line that football’s governing institutions should never cross,” European football’s governing body Uefa said in a statement. “The soul and governance of football are not assets to trade – especially with zero transparency as to who gains financially.”

What did the commentators say?

For once, public outrage at the proposals is entirely justified and understandable “because it ties together so many of the extremes that have been pushing, pulling and twisting football, let alone the world, for so long”, said Miguel Delaney in The Independent.

To muddy the waters further, the Financial Times has reported that Joshua Kushner, the brother of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, is being lined up to lead the $20 billion commercial part of the deal through his Thrive Eternal investment fund.

Infantino “understands political and commercial power”, said the FT. And “in the latest battle for football’s soul and spoils”, the 56-year-old Swiss “has a key ally in Trump and, many suspect, the support of Fifa members around the world”.

Purists may decry the commercialisation of the beautiful game, but this has been happening for decades. Football’s “owners and exploiters have long seen the matches themselves as mere 90-minute sections of legacy content”, said Marina Hyde in The Guardian. These “would be far better relegated to the second, third or even fourth tier behind such always-on output as branded content, shareable clips, behind-the-scenes footage, lifestyle and commerce”.

Others will say that what Fifa is proposing is “no different to the commercial entities that the likes of the French and Spanish leagues have created and sold stakes in to private-equity funds”, said Matt Slater on The Athletic. The German and Italian leagues have debated “the same move for several years” too, and the strategy has been tried in other sports such as Formula 1 and golf’s PGA Tour.

What next?

Fifa insists the plans are still in the consultation phase, but “if this escapade succeeds, the trickle-down effect would be unpalatable”, said Rudd in The Times. It would, for example, “reinvigorate those who wanted a breakaway European Super League so feared by the fans and then so valiantly protested against”.

Selling off a slice of the World Cup “should be the cue for outright rebellion”, said Oliver Brown in The Telegraph. Given European teams made up six of the eight men’s World Cup quarter-finalists this year and three of the four semi-finalists, Uefa “should have the courage of its convictions and issue a warning to secede”.

That “will almost certainly never happen”, though. “These scandals follow a time-honoured pattern: politicians fulminate, a few federations speak out, and then Infantino ploughs ahead regardless.”

US Senator Lindsey Graham “relished his role as an informal envoy” between Donald Trump and foreign leaders, said The Economist. So it’s fitting that the Republican’s funeral today “will provide one final round of diplomacy”.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Benjamin Netanyahu will both attend the service for Graham, a “defence hawk” who “forcibly lobbied Washington” to back Ukraine against Russia, and Israel against Iran, said Reuters. Tonight, the Senate prepares to vote on a bipartisan package imposing sanctions on both countries that Graham “spent his final days trying to push across the line”.

Both leaders are also scheduled to meet the US president “with the goal of winning the ear of Donald Trump” at a time when US policy towards both wars is “in a state of flux”, said Robert Tait in The Guardian.

What did the commentators say?

Netanyahu will probably pressure Trump to further “escalate” the war in Iran, while Zelenksyy will “look to shore up American support” after the loss of Graham, “one of Ukraine’s staunchest backers”, said The Economist.

The two wars, taking place 1,550 miles apart, have “converged in recent days”, said Chris Hamill-Stewart on Al Jazeera. On Saturday, Ukraine attacked an Iranian tanker said to be carrying military technology and drones from Iran to Russia. Kyiv’s actions “will please” America, former US ambassador to Kazakhstan and Georgia, William Courtney, told the news site. But Zelenskyy is “unlikely to want to be too closely associated with the ‘unpopular’ US war on Iran”.

There are signs of “a dramatic change” in the US posture on Ukraine, said The Guardian’s Tait. Washington seems “more supportive” of Kyiv than at any other time in Trump’s second presidency. Last week, right-wing influencer Laura Loomer gave the latest “signal of a sea change” when she met Zelenskyy in Kyiv, before “recanting her previous support for Russia”. Trump and Zelenskyy’s “cordial” meeting at the Nato summit in Ankara was also “starkly” different to “last year’s bitter confrontation in the White House”.

By contrast, Trump’s relationship with the Israeli prime minister has grown “visibly strained” since they last met in February, said Tal Shalev on CNN. “Close cooperation and effusive praise” at the start of the Iran war has “given way to Trump’s expletive-laden outbursts”. Trump has said he lashed out at Netanyahu, calling him “crazy”, for continuing to bombard Hezbollah in Lebanon and endangering peace talks with Iran. He has been “resistant” to this meeting, having “little interest in resuming a full fight” against Iran before the US midterms in November, according to one Israeli source.

What next?

Ukraine and the US are moving closer towards a deal on joint drone production, which “could help the US catch up with Ukraine in this crucial military technology”, said Al Jazeera. And Trump and Zelenskyy agreed this month to allow Ukraine to jointly produce Patriot air defence interceptors, “a crucial component for the country’s defence against Russian aerial attacks”.

For Netanyahu, there’s the sticking point of Lebanon: he told his security cabinet on Sunday that the Trump administration “wants to pull Israeli forces back from positions in Lebanon, as well as in Gaza and Syria”. But, as Israel has already refused to withdraw its forces completely before Hezbollah disarms, Netanyahu “intends to oppose the idea”, said CNN’s Shalev. The Israeli PM is under political pressure ahead of elections in October: in recent polls, “he falls far short of the majority he needs to secure another term”. He knows Trump’s support “could be critical”. The stakes “are as high as ever”.

What happened

The United States has “pressed pause” on airstrikes against Iran after President Donald Trump’s advisers told him their military was “running out of targets” and “expressed worries” about dwindling munitions, Reuters reported Sunday. Sources also told Axios that Adm. Brad Cooper, the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, and other advisers “recommended stopping the bombing campaign” because it had “reached the limit of its effectiveness.” There have been no U.S. strikes in the region since last week, and Iran has halted its retaliatory attacks. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed.

Who said what

The president is giving “some space” for diplomatic talks to take place while still keeping “all options on the table,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” The U.S. has “far more munitions than anyone in the world,” Trump insisted in a statement to The Wall Street Journal.

Recent polling shows the MAGA base is “losing patience” with the conflict, Politico said. Trump seems “trapped” by a “war he cannot find his way out of,” said The New York Times. “There is more skepticism than optimism” that the pause in fighting will continue, a senior Iranian source told Reuters.

What next?

Oil prices tumbled Monday morning as the pause held, but “analysts cautioned against pricing in further falls,” the Financial Times said. Fed officials will meet this week to discuss a possible interest rate hike as prices remain high.

“The most important Oval Office address since the Cuban Missile Crisis.” That’s how one Republican senator who had been given a preview of President Trump’s speech last week described it in advance, said Kyle Cheney on Politico.

Needless to say, the televised address failed to live up to the hype. Trump sought to give the impression that newly declassified intelligence had revealed “shocking vulnerabilities” in America’s election system and proof of Chinese interference in the 2020 election. But he offered no evidence for this, or for his claim that the “deep state” was working to actively suppress information about Beijing’s “sinister election meddling”.

Overblown panic

What makes Trump’s overwrought rhetoric about “election security” more ridiculous, said Steve Benen on MS Now, is that he has just fired all the remaining board members of the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission (EAC), a federal body created to help states fairly administer elections. How is that meant to improve matters?

Democrats are freaking out about the gutting of the EAC, said The Wall Street Journal. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called it “a brazen attempt to seize control of our elections before a single vote is cast”. This panic is overblown. The EAC only has a modest role, and its staffers can still perform its basic duties. Yes, Trump “is probably willing to do whatever he can to help the Republicans keep Congress” in November’s midterm elections, but the “comforting reality is that the ballots are controlled by thousands of different state and local officials” – not by the federal government.

Pushing the envelope

On the contrary, Trump’s opponents have every reason to be worried, said The Philadelphia Inquirer. For the past year, the president has been escalating his “election-tampering efforts”. He has called for the federal government to seize control of elections. He has pushed GOP lawmakers to redraw election maps in the party’s favour, while at the same time seeking to change rules to suppress the Democrat vote, demanding an end to postal votes, and signing an executive order that would require voters to show proof of citizenship. He has “rewarded election deniers” and worked continuously to sow distrust in elections. Who knows what else he’ll try. His attempt to overturn the 2020 election results showed he’s willing to “cross any line”. Let’s state the obvious: he’s “out to rig” the midterms.

Since the US and Israel first attacked Iran on 28 February, President Trump “has claimed more than 30 times that Operation Epic Fury has been successful, is over, or almost is”, said Robin Wright in The New Yorker. None of these predictions have been borne out; “some have bordered on delusional”.

Tehran on the attack

The latest ceasefire, agreed in June, has “functionally collapsed”. In the past fortnight, the US has launched nightly air strikes, renewed the blockade of Iranian ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz, and reimposed sanctions. Iran has attacked US and other targets in Jordan, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman. Three US service personnel were killed last week by a strike on an airbase in Jordan; nearly 100 more have been injured in the latest attacks.

Trump has tried three strategies so far: regime change, a longer campaign of relentless bombardment, and diplomacy. None have worked. In Washington, “there is a growing sense of despair” about the direction of the war.

Iran’s leaders feared that the Memorandum of Understanding agreed in June was just a temporary retreat, said Vali Nasr in the FT – to relieve pressure on the world economy and allow US forces to rearm. There was, in fact, “plenty of evidence to support their suspicions”. More US military assets began to arrive in the area, and the deal’s provisions – on coordinating the passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz with Iran, on the need for a ceasefire in Lebanon – were ignored. Tehran’s aim now, in going on the attack, is to show that the US cannot dictate events, and that Iran can withstand whatever military and economic pain is inflicted on it.

Deep trouble

Some strategists think the new US plan could work, said Mark Urban in The Sunday Times. Its forces are battering Iran’s coast – military installations, bridges, airports, port facilities – to neutralise the Iranian military’s hold on the strait. At the same time, choking off oil exports will plunge the country into deep economic crisis – albeit in months, not weeks.

In the meantime, the collateral damage to the region is escalating, said Ahmed Al Omran in the FT. Kuwait, which is bearing the brunt of Iran’s current attacks, has endured 1,400 missile and drone strikes. Its airport and its oil infrastructure have been attacked, along with the energy grid and the desalination plants that supply 90% of Kuwait’s water. Oil exports have dropped to 20% of pre-war levels.

The US is in deep trouble, and there’s no easy way out, said Will Walldorf in Foreign Policy – short of accepting Iran’s authority over the Strait of Hormuz and its right to enrich uranium. “But that’s the unfortunate consequence of losing a war that should never have [been] started in the first place.”

When President Donald Trump announced he was gifted a new luxury Boeing 747-8 from Qatar to use as an interim Air Force One, many national security analysts were worried about risks potentially inherent to the plane. Now that Trump has started using the vehicle, it seems some of those concerns have been borne out, with even Trump himself insinuating that the plane may have security lapses.

What makes Trump’s new plane different?

The plane was designed to be used only during Trump’s presidency. It is built on the body of a Boeing jumbo jet, but there are some significant differences from prior Air Force Ones. The biggest change is that it appears to almost uniquely suit Trump’s taste, complete with a new color scheme after the plane was “repainted in dark navy blue, deep red and gold,” said CBS News.

In keeping with Trump’s affinity for gold and luxury, the plane’s interior features “cognac leather seats” with lie-flat capabilities alongside tray tables made of “mahogany with silver trim,” CNN reported. To communicate with the outside world, the plane serves as an “airborne command post equipped with a new communications system that enables resilient, secure connectivity to respond to global events without disruption,” said L3 Harris Technologies, the contractor used by the U.S. Air Force to upgrade the plane.

What are the security issues?

For all the talk of the gilded plane, there is no shortage of worries about how secure it is. The new model “lacks the same defensive countermeasures that were security features of the old model, including its advanced antimissile capabilities,” sources told The New York Times. At least two Air Force officials were “surprised to see Trump fly on the new jet overseas, where there are greater security risks.”

The plane was gifted by Qatar, a nation that Trump “used to accuse of supporting terrorism,” said MS NOW. But since receiving the jet, the White House has “cozied up to Qatar to a remarkable degree, even unilaterally extending a NATO-like security guarantee to the nation.” That has not changed the fact that the plane “may ​not be as ⁠secure as the baby blue Air Force One that preceded it,” said Reuters.

The White House originally shot back at these insinuations, sending subpoenas to the reporters at The New York Times who wrote about the plane; these were later withdrawn. Trump has since “acknowledged that the Boeing jet given to him by Qatar cannot match the defensive armor of a true presidential aircraft,” said The Guardian, telling reporters he will go back to using the original plane while the new one is “grounded and ‘maxed out’ with the protections it was never built with.” Republicans in Congress have blocked efforts to halt further work on the vehicle.

During a recent overseas trip to Turkey, Trump initially flew aboard the plane but “switched to an older, more heavily defended aircraft for the return leg amid rising tensions with Iran, reportedly on the advice of the Secret Service,” said The Guardian. Despite the security concerns, as well as ethics controversies over accepting the $400 million jet, it is “perfectly safe for the president’s travels but will receive additional upgrades and enhancements in the fall, which will take approximately one month to complete,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

What happened

The US-Saudi nuclear cooperation agreement signed this week was thrown into uncertainty on Thursday after President Donald Trump said the deal would depend on Saudi Arabia establishing diplomatic ties with Israel. In a post on Truth Social, Trump warned that the agreement allowing Riyadh to pursue civilian nuclear power using U.S. technology was “totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords,” the initiative that normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states during his first term. The condition was not specified when the deal was announced.

Who said what

Trump’s White House “had faced down considerable political opposition to push forward with the Saudi deal,” said The Washington Post. By highlighting caveats to the agreement, Trump is “responding to two of the bigger criticisms: that it could open the door to nuclear enrichment and that Washington gave up leverage to push a peace deal with Israel,” said Axios.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the new condition as a “historic leap for peace.” Saudi officials have previously resisted linking nuclear cooperation to recognition of Israel.

What next?

“It is unclear,” said CNN, what “impact Trump’s social media missive will have on the signed agreement,” which is expected to be submitted to Congress for review.

What happened

Undeterred by Supreme Court rulings rejecting his tariff regime, President Donald Trump on Thursday launched a new workaround to continue taxing foreign imports. Under the new scheme, which replaces an expiring near-blanket 10% duty, the United States will introduce new tariffs of 12.5% on goods from trading partners, including China and Japan, that have allegedly failed to impose or enforce bans on goods produced with forced labor. Those deemed to have taken steps against forced labor, such as the United Kingdom and the European Union, qualify for a lower 10% rate. Goods from the 60 affected trading partners make up 99.4% of U.S. imports.

Who said what

“The real message here that everyone needs to take away is the president is going to always use the tools at his disposal to achieve his trade policy objectives,” a White House official told CNN. But “Trump’s new tariffs are angering voters,” said Politico. This latest move will only serve to “aggravate Americans who were already blaming the tariffs for stubborn inflation ahead of a midterm election dominated by economic issues.”

Trump has also “once again inspired anger and confusion in U.S. allies and trading partners,” said The Guardian. Many officials argued that the “rationale was hard to swallow.”

What next?

The tariffs are expected to face fresh legal challenges and risk in-kind retaliation. “Everything is on the table,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said after meeting with his provincial and territorial counterparts on Thursday to discuss a response.

In politics, first impressions can mean a great deal and Donald Trump has heaped praise on Andy Burnham for his plans to fast-track oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.

Writing on his Truth Social platform, the president said “the People of Aberdeen” are “dancing in the streets” because Burnham said “he will be opening up, all the way, the invaluable North Sea Oil!” As ever with Trump, this was playing fast and loose with the truth, as Burnham is yet to commit to any new drilling in the North Sea.

But after Trump gave Burnham an initial thumbs-up, “talk in DC turned to Ed Miliband’s role as the most contentious figure”, said The Times’ Katy Balls. Miliband has been an outspoken critic of Trump in the past, which is “likely to put him on the back foot with an increasingly hostile US administration”, said Bloomberg.

What did the commentators say?

There’s an “opening” for a new prime minister who is “liberal, centre-left, internationalist” and who “recognises the world has changed”, said Steve Bloomfield on The New Statesman.

Burnham must “find a way to deal” with the “fracturing” of the special relationship, and having “seen how others have fared”, with Trump, he “should find it easier”.

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani calls Trump a “fascist” but still works with him on “areas where they agree”, while Mark Carney and Anthony Albanese “took the risk of standing up to Trump” and “subsequently won elections they were predicted to lose”. So “standing up to Trump is not only morally right”, it’s “electorally effective”.

Economic, intelligence and defence ties “run deep”, so many believe it’s “better to stay on the right side of Trump – however tempting it might sometimes be to give him a (metaphorical) kick”, but you don’t want to be a “total toady”, said Anushka Asthana on Channel 4 News.

On energy, Burnham “seems prepared to move the rhetoric” with the suggestion he will green-light two oil and gas drilling projects in the North Sea. He’s promised “help on the Strait of Hormuz” but what if Trump breaches international humanitarian law? Diplomats and advisers know “full well” that the unpredictable president could “change his mind, at any moment”.

Keir Starmer’s relationship with Trump “turned from warm to cold”, said Andrew Buncombe on The i Paper. Burnham will “run into the same problems” on “issues that have created friction”, including Britain’s decision to cede control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, its refusal to get involved in the war against Iran, and “how far to proceed with drilling for oil in the North Sea”.

The PM “only has a limited way to try and influence how Washington acts” and he should remember that his first call with Trump was “just that – the first talk”. If the “rest are positive”, then Burnham “will turn out to be a very lucky man”.

What next?

Starmer was a former prosecutor seen as a “cool-headed technocrat, unruffled by the insults as long as he was making his case”, said Steve Hendrix in The Washington Post. But Burnham has “honed a warmer, plain-spoken touch” which “could be an asset” with a president who “responds to personal chemistry in ways he doesn’t respond to formal diplomacy”.

The new PM has “made clear that his instincts, and his mandate, are relentlessly domestic”, so the new No. 10 will “have its eyes fixed inward”, not “across the Atlantic”. Trump and the rest of the “foreign policy inbox” is “expected to be substantially subcontracted” to the foreign secretary.

What happened

President Donald Trump has approved a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia that could open the door to uranium enrichment inside the kingdom, The Wall Street Journal first reported Tuesday night. The 30-year agreement is “designed to give American companies a central role” in developing Saudi Arabia’s civilian nuclear infrastructure, the Journal said. But it’s “certain to prove controversial” among U.S. allies and lawmakers opposed to the “spread of nuclear technology in the volatile Middle East.”

Who said what

The nuclear cooperation agreement “has been under discussion for years,” The New York Times said. Trump dropped a Biden administration stipulation that the Saudis first normalize relations with Israel, and to “get the deal done with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman,” he “had to agree to terms that may limit international inspectors” from visiting sites “they think could be a pathway to diverting fuel to weapons projects.” Bin Salman has vowed to build nuclear weapons if Iran does.

The White House argues that the U.S. role “would ensure enrichment remains peaceful,” the Journal said. But if the Saudis can enrich uranium, so “goes the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Egypt,” Henry Sokolski of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center told the Journal. “The idea that this will have a happy ending is delusional.”

What next?

U.S. and Saudi officials are expected to sign the accord on Wednesday.

Nicaragua will stop holding elections in a bid to prevent foreign-backed interference, the country’s long-standing president Daniel Ortega has announced.

In a speech to commemorate the Sandinista revolution, which overthrew the US-backed Anastasio ⁠Somoza dictatorship in 1979, the 80-year-old strongman leader declared “the days when parties backed by the Yankees and the Somocistas would return to power are over – never again”.

Who is Daniel Ortega?

A key figure in the revolution, Ortega has held office continuously since 2007, having also served as president in the 1980s.

During his nearly two decades in power, his government has transformed Nicaragua into an “authoritarian state”, according to the UN Human Rights Council.

He has cemented control over virtually all branches of government, including the army and judiciary, and crushed political opposition, with hundreds killed and even more imprisoned following mass anti-government protests in 2018. Last year, further constitutional reforms extended presidential terms to six years, made his wife, Rosario Murillo, co-president, and effectively established a one-party system.

Why has he cancelled elections?

The last elections in 2021 were “widely disputed” after Ortega “detained opponents and business leaders and criminalised dissent”, said Reuters. Hundreds of opposition figures were imprisoned in the run-up to the vote, including a number of presidential hopefuls, before being stripped of their citizenship and expelled to the US and Guatemala.

Nicaraguans had been due to go to the polls again next year before Ortega’s recent announcement that “there won’t be any more elections here for them to try to seize the government and seize power”.

But analysts and opposition figures say the move has highlighted the Ortegas’ fear of a growing opposition movement taking root.

“Ortega and Murillo are evidently afraid at the idea that the slightest political opening could create the conditions for dissent to manifest and threaten their grip on power,” said Tiziano Breda, a senior analyst at Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, a non-profit organisation that tracks political violence. “Instead of staging a rigged election, they have opted to eliminate electoral competition altogether.”

What will the international reaction be?

In the wake of the US military raid in January to capture Venezuela’s then-President Nicolás Maduro, the Nicaraguan government announced it would release more political prisoners, “apparently an effort to stave off pressure on itself”, said AP News. “But there has been no follow-up and little transparency on the issue.”

Despite proscribing the Ortega government as a dictatorship, and imposing sanctions on more than 2,350 Nicaraguan officials and their relatives, the Trump administration has remained remarkably quiet on Ortega and the potential for regime change.

There are a “range of explanations” for this, said Politico’s Nahal Toosi, “including that the regime is making smart moves on battling drug trafficking, that it’s benefiting from a lack of natural resources for Trump to covet and that it doesn’t have a slew of migrants in the US”.

“The lesson from Nicaragua is: don’t matter too much, don’t embarrass Washington and don’t become a domestic political issue,” said Juan Gonzalez, a former Latin America aide to Joe Biden. “For an administration that doesn’t care about democracy or human rights, that’s an effective survival strategy for authoritarians.”

What happened

President Donald Trump on Monday signed proclamations imposing 50% tariffs on a wide range of Canadian imports, claiming that America’s second-largest trading partner has unfairly discriminated against U.S. cars, alcohol and dairy products. The tariffs, set to take effect in 30 days, rely on Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which has never been used to levy import duties and is untested in court. Some products, like energy, would be exempt, but the new tax will apply to goods that comply with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement, the White House said in a fact sheet.

Who said what

The new tariffs “could unleash a new wave of economic chaos, with risks of higher inflation and further fraying of relations” with Canada, The Associated Press said. A senior administration official “said that Canada was one of the only nations other than China that retaliated against Trump’s previous tariffs and must be held accountable.” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said that “Canada, as is its right,” had “merely matched” Trump’s tariffs, but his country “stands ready to engage intensively” to address a “trade dispute” that “has raised costs for families, particularly in the U.S.”

What next?

The new tariffs would apply to nearly $20 billion of Canadian goods, the White House said, or roughly 5.2% of Canadian imports last year. But Trump’s “invocation of 338 is the nuclear option,” threatening all U.S. trading partners and injecting “massive uncertainty” into the global economy, Cato Institute economist Scott Lincicome said to the AP. “We crossed the Rubicon.”

What happened

The U.S. military early Monday morning completed a ninth consecutive night of airstrikes on Iranian targets, and Iran again fired missiles and drones at Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan. The Pentagon said a U.S. service member was killed in Iraq on Saturday during the “controlled detonation” of a downed Iranian drone, and human remains were found at a military base in Jordan hit by Iranian strikes last week. That attack killed two U.S. troops, and if the remains are confirmed to be a soldier missing since the strikes, the U.S. death toll from the Iran war will be 18. Iran said U.S. strikes had killed at least 50 people since a ceasefire collapsed this month.

Who said what

The U.S. hit Iran “very hard again” throughout the night “in honor of” the “great patriots” killed, Trump told reporters. “We feel very badly,” but “those great people” were “fighting that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.” Iran has been “stepping up” its strikes on Jordan “as it seeks to produce American casualties and deter Washington from escalating its test of wills with Tehran,” The Wall Street Journal said.

What next?

“Even larger American attacks may be coming” as “more U.S. warplanes head to the Middle East,” the Journal said. “The U.S. is planning for a wider war,” a U.S. official told The Washington Post, but with dwindling munitions stockpiles and growing battle damage, “we do not have enough to safely sustain operations, and I don’t think the White House is aware of that.”

Things are very difficult in Cuba. Since February, the country’s power grid has suffered three nationwide blackouts: there is currently electricity for two hours a day at most in Havana, and less in rural areas. Mains water works roughly every other day. The average monthly wage, in real terms, is under US$20. Food production has fallen drastically; shortages are common. Petrol is prohibitively expensive. Cuba’s once-impressive healthcare and education systems are in tatters.

Tourism – the island’s main economic lifeline – was down 58% in the first five months of 2026 compared with the year before. Long-haul flights there have stopped because they can’t refuel. Mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever and chikungunya have staged a comeback, and the UN reported last month that child mortality has risen sharply. An estimated fifth of the population has left since 2021.

Why is this happening?

Cubans have endured decades of mismanagement from their own communist government, along with economic warfare from the US – but the past few years have been particularly harsh. Cuba invested heavily in tourism and underinvested in healthcare during the 2010s, only to see both sectors heavily impacted by the Covid pandemic. Miguel Díaz-Canel, who in 2021 became the nation’s first leader not from the Castro family since 1959, ordered a crackdown that year on the largest wave of protests seen for decades.

But the main cause of the present trouble is a US oil blockade, which began in January – the biggest such action since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Trump at the same time issued an executive order designating Cuba a national security threat – and called on Cuba’s leaders to “make a deal before it is too late”.

Why does the US think Cuba is a national security threat?

It didn’t offer specific reasons beyond Cuba’s alliances with Russia and China, along with claims that it “destabilises the region through migration and violence”. Cuba’s communist regime has historically been a bugbear for the US, particularly for Republicans. And Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, a son of Cuban immigrants, favours regime change.

But the timing suggests that the decision to tighten the screws was inspired by the successful US action against Venezuela on 3 January – and, more broadly, by Trump’s desire to assert US primacy in the western hemisphere. In March, the president told reporters he believed he’d have “the honour of taking Cuba... I think I can do anything I want with it.”

What’s Venezuela’s role in this?

Venezuela became Cuba’s main regional ally in 1999, when Hugo Chávez’s left-wing government began supplying Fidel Castro with cheap oil. The alliance continued under Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, and until this year, 75% of its oil imports came from Venezuela and Mexico. But after seizing Maduro in January, killing 32 Cuban security personnel in the process, the US made Venezuela cut off Cuban oil supplies; Mexico did the same under the threat of tariffs. The island requires around 100,000 barrels of oil per day for its power stations and infrastructure to function; since January, episodic shipments have only given short-term relief.

It now seems that the Trump administration is looking for a similar outcome to Venezuela: sources told The Wall Street Journal they were aiming for regime change by the end of 2026.

What are the US demands?

They haven’t shared them in public, though the Cuban government confirmed in March that talks were taking place. Trump’s previous actions suggest that his definition of regime change is flexible. In Venezuela, the US left Maduro’s government in place under the control of his deputy, Delcy Rodríguez; the country was forced to open up its oil and mining to US investors, but not to democratise. In the case of Iran, similarly, Trump has shown himself willing to treat a change of personnel at the top as regime change. The Cuban leadership may feel they have some wiggle room; in June it announced a package of 176 free-market reforms in an effort to placate the US. But there are big obstacles to a political settlement on both sides.

Why might a deal be difficult?

A law from 1996 prohibits the US from recognising any Cuban government that includes Raúl Castro, Fidel’s brother, who is still, aged 95, a major figure in Cuban politics. Florida’s Cuban-American community, a key part of Trump’s voter coalition, would also object to any deal that did not mean the end of the regime. The US might settle for custody of Castro, who was indicted this May by a Florida grand jury for his part in shooting down two planes belonging to a Cuban exile group in 1996.

But the Cubans are unlikely to agree to that, and there is no plausible opposition party or Delcy Rodríguez-like figure to deal with – though Raúl Castro’s grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, a reputed playboy who’s close to the Cuban military’s wealthy holding company, is said to have been auditioning for the role.

What if there’s no deal?

An American invasion looks unlikely: Trump is clearly wary of that level of commitment, and has his hands full trying to extricate himself from his “excursion” in Iran. Cuba’s military isn’t the fighting force it used to be, but the country has been resisting US pressure since 1962, and it’s difficult to see the Cuban elite colluding – as some of Venezuela’s did – with a theatrical special-forces raid on Raúl Castro or Díaz-Canel. Castro’s age may be the best hope for a solution, but Cuba has been a one-party state for generations, and with the Trump administration on the opposite side, any transition is likely to be messy.

From the point of view of ordinary Cubans, however, something has to give. “Living like this is agony,” Meyboll Font, a 51-year-old Havana resident, told Agence France-Presse last week.

What happened

President Donald Trump repeated his longstanding grievances about the security of the American voting system in a primetime speech Thursday. The president claimed, without evidence, that mail-in ballots are “inherently corrupt”; voting machines are “easily compromised”; China interfered with the 2020 elections; and 278,000 non-citizens registered to vote. He called on Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a bill that would severely tighten ID rules for voters.

Who said what

These “unsubstantiated claims” are based on “incomplete” data with “no underlying evidence,” Bloomberg said. “All we got is more rehashed, debunked conspiracy theories,” David Becker of The Center for Election Innovation & Research told CBS News. The speech comes as Republicans are “facing the prospect of losing one or both chambers of Congress in ​November,” Reuters said.

What next?

The SAVE America Act “lacks the necessary support” to clear the Senate, NBC News said, but House Republicans want to “force the bill through” without Democratic support by weaving parts of it into a new reconciliation bill. It’s “far from clear” this legislation “will have enough support to pass,” The New York Times said.

Donald Trump used a prime-time address to the nation to allege Chinese interference in US elections in a move that looks to undermine voter confidence ahead of November’s midterms.

The White House released documents alleging that “over a period of years, starting during the 2020 election cycle” the Chinese government carried out “what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China’s illicit acquisition of 220 million US voter files”. Trump did not make clear, though, how the alleged Chinese activity could have helped Joe Biden win the 2020 presidential election.

“Raw intelligence obtained by the FBI in 2020, yet buried by rogue bureaucrats, stated that China's activities even included an attempt to manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden,” Trump said.

While China has denied the allegations, “none of the declassified information supports the claim that any previous election results – including the 2020 presidential contest that Trump lost – were manipulated by foreign interference or fraud in a way that would’ve changed the outcome”, said Marshall Cohen and Kevin Liptak on CNN.

What did the commentators say?

The speech “marked a striking effort by Trump to marshal the resources of the intelligence community to support his claims about election meddling and legislative agenda to tighten voter registration rules”, said Lauren Fedor in the Financial Times.

It’s true that “foreign powers do, in fact, try to influence American elections”, said Tom Nichols in The Atlantic. But that “was about all that the president – who seems shocked that other nations have preferences about who wins elected office in the United States – got right”.

The classified revelations, despite what Trump tried to claim, in fact “show that the intelligence community didn’t even agree” that China was fully engaged even in a more limited campaign of influence.

In his address Trump was plainly looking “to soothe his wounded ego over the 2020 election”. But he also might have “a darker motive”. In “attacking the integrity of American elections”, Trump could be seeking to delegitimise the upcoming midterms “and perhaps even create the predicate for interfering in them”.

In his address, Trump has “destroyed any confidence in the integrity of US elections for Americans inclined to believe him”, said Ed Kilgore in New York Magazine. In doing so he has set up “a certain challenge to any midterm results adverse to his party”. When Republicans “desperately needed him to make concrete proposals for improvements in living costs”, Trump instead “dragged the GOP down the election denial rabbit hole farther than ever”.

What next?

Republican politicians who would like the president to focus on the cost of living “have been wary of Trump’s unrelenting claims about flaws in the electoral system”, said the FT.

Senate majority leader John Thune “has resisted pressure from the White House to scrap Senate rules” in an effort by Trump to push through the Save America Act. This would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, among other measures.

The accusations Trump made could also “complicate a fragile trade truce between the US and China”, said CNBC, while also “casting a shadow over Chinese President Xi Jinping upcoming visit to Washington” in late September.

Polls matter, but the stock market might be President Donald Trump’s favorite barometer of success. “Everybody’s profiting” when the markets rise, he said to reporters recently. But that’s not quite true. Rising stock prices are nonetheless a consolation for the president, and shaky market responses to controversial policies have spurred him to shift course on tariffs and war with Iran.

‘Economic pressure’

The president “considers market reaction a key measure of success,” said The Washington Post. The metric helped launch the now scuppered attempts to end fighting with Iran. Markets have reacted badly to surges in fighting — the S&P plunged Monday after the U.S. reimposed a blockade on the Strait of Hormuz — but “every time we talked about the possibility of peace, the stock market shot up like a rocket ship,” Trump said to reporters last month as he explained his attempts to reach a deal.

Most presidents “play down the idea that they are susceptible to economic pressure” when making foreign policy, the Post said. But Iranians decided that Trump’s devotion to Wall Street and its negative reaction to the Strait of Hormuz closure “gave them leverage” to take a harder line and extract concessions, Brookings Institution’s Suzanne Maloney said to the outlet.

Trump’s close attention to stock indexes “risks conflating the fortunes of ‌financial markets with the broader experience of U.S. households,” said Reuters. Roughly 40% of Americans “do not have money in the markets.” And the markets do not measure the health of private firms or small businesses that serve as the “backbone of the U.S. labor market.”

The stock market has grown by $15 trillion since the president began his second term, though that is mostly held by the richest 1% of the country. A poor response to Trump policies seems to matter mainly “when corporate or financial interests are at stake,” Groundwork Collaborative’s Alex Jacquez said to Reuters.

‘Not the litmus test’

The president’s new “Trump accounts” for newborns are expected to draw more young Americans into “long-term wealth-building” through stock markets, said Yahoo Finance. But the markets are “not the litmus test the American public wants” from the presidency, Ali Vitali said at MS NOW. Trump’s recent financial disclosures revealed “billions in wealth growth for the president and his sons,” but the voters “standing at gas stations” and paying higher prices at the pump probably find it “unfair.”

Stock investors have figured out to “pounce” when Trump shows signs of “buckling” on unpopular decisions, Katie Martin said at the Financial Times. Still, the bond markets that buy and sell federal debt are telling a different story about Trump’s policymaking. U.S. bonds have “never recovered from the drop in price” they experienced at the start of the Iran war. And there are signs that “large, conservative investors” are “reducing their exposure to risks around U.S. institutional credibility” and moving to Canadian and European bonds instead. That means American officials “will have to work a little harder” to keep attracting the bond investors they need to “balance the books.”

With President Donald Trump’s refusal to either sign or veto a landmark bipartisan housing bill, the legislation automatically became law last week, and political analysts are hopeful the bill will help ease the pain of America’s nationwide housing crisis. But while experts laud Congress’ joint efforts to address the problem, the average American may not feel relief for years.

What did the commentators say?

The bill has a number of provisions that seek to “remove barriers to building homes, lower housing costs and shift greater control over housing to the local level,” said Time. One of the main goals is to increase the overall availability of houses, largely by mandating that the government “offer guidance on how communities could best reform zoning and land-use policies to reduce barriers to housing development.” Environmental reviews of housing construction will also be streamlined.

It also widens the definition of manufactured houses, which are “built entirely in factories before being transported to their sites,” said Time. The expanded definition will “‘unlock’ a segment of the housing market by making it cheaper and easier to mass-produce such homes,” Francis Torres, the housing and infrastructure director at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told Time. The current supply is “really not matching the growing and changing demand,” said Geoff Smith, the executive director of the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University, to WTTW.

The bipartisan nature of the bill, which easily passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate, “reflects both parties’ concerns with rising housing costs nationwide and shows that political compromise is still possible in Washington,” said The Dallas Morning News editorial board. If properly implemented, it has the potential to “modernize federal housing programs, streamline regulations and encourage innovation.”

But the effects of the bill may not be so profound for those in the worst financial situations. It will likely have a “fairly limited impact on affordability for the lowest-income folks in the country,” said Shamus Roller, CEO of the National Housing Law Project, to PBS News. The provisions “aren’t the kinds of sweeping policy changes many affordable housing advocates say will help dramatically reduce housing costs,” like major tax reforms and government-subsidized housing investments.

What next?

The legislation may take time to be effective because “many pieces of the legislation will require implementation from the now-diminished” Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), said PBS. About 32% of HUD’s workforce has left the agency since September 2024, according to the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, which could make it hard to bring some of the bill’s provisions to life. As of 2024, no states in the U.S. had an adequate supply of affordable housing for low-income renters, said the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

So even as many are hopeful about the new promises, some “immediate relief may not come just yet for homeowners and renters,” said Yonah Freemark, a housing research associate at the Urban Institute, to CNN. The bill creates a “situation where not only will the federal government have to make changes, but then state and local governments also will have to make changes and then businesses, developers and the like will have to make investments, which itself takes time.”

What happened

The Trump administration on Tuesday ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to suspend most vehicle stops after two fatal shootings by federal officers in the past week. The deaths of Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero in Maine and Lorenzo Salgado ⁠Araujo in Texas “brought to at least seven the number of people shot dead” during ICE enforcement operations since January 2025, Reuters said. An unnamed 28-year-old Mexican national also died Tuesday in Florida after being struck by a tractor-trailer while reportedly fleeing ICE agents.

Who said what

“In the United States, in 2026, whether someone runs or complies with ICE, death is a very real possible outcome,” Florida Immigrant Coalition spokesperson Adriana Rivera said. Pausing vehicle stops “could hamper the agency’s ability to increase arrests,” said The New York Times, at a time when ICE faces “increasing pressure to deliver on the president’s promise of mass deportations.” The pause applies solely to ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations and “not Homeland Security Investigations, which primarily handles criminal investigations,” CBS News said.

What next?

The stoppage is expected to be temporary while ERO officers “receive additional training on vehicle-stop tactics,” CBS News said. President Donald Trump also contradicted the stoppage, saying the stops should continue. “We CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” he wrote on social media.

There have been few global figures in the modern era as consequential as Donald Trump. Powerful as he may be, though, Trump does not exist in isolation.

Instead, he is part of an elite echelon of elected officials with whom he is obliged to interact in the course of global business. After a decade of cutting deals, upending relations and generally maneuvering himself to the center of the world stage, here are some of the ways Trump has talked about — and to — his international peers.

Former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

“President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad.” — April 2018

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney

“The future governor of Canada.” — March 2026

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi

“My favorite dictator.” — September 2019

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

“Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool!” — October 2019

“He’s a hell of a leader.” — October 2019

“Sometimes you get along with the toughest people, like him.” — July 2026

Chinese President Xi Jinping

“We’ve become friends.” — June 2019

“I don’t want to say friend — I don’t want to act foolish, ‘he was my friend’ — but I got along with him great.” — October 2024

“He’s a brilliant guy, whether you like it or not.” — October 2024

“A friend.” — May 2026

Former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei

“One of the most evil people in history.” — February 2026

Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni

“A very successful, very successful politician.” — October 2025

“Do people like her? I can’t imagine. I’m shocked by her. I thought she was brave, but I was wrong.” — April 2026

“It’s her who’s unacceptable.” — April 2026

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel

“Stupid.” — Unknown 2020

“That bitch, Merkel.” — Unknown 2020

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Israel’s “Warrior Prime Minister.” — June 2026

“Crazy.” — June 2026

“He has no f**king judgement.” — June 2026

Former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador

“Juan Trump.” — July 2019

Russian President Vladimir Putin

A “competitor” who is “not an enemy.” — July 2018

“Great guy” and a “terrific person.” — June 2019

A “genius” who is “pretty savvy.” — February 2022

“Absolutely CRAZY!” — May 2025

“I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin.” — May 2025

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte

A “great leader.” — July 2026

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer

“This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.” — March 2026

Former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

“He’s two-faced.” — December 2019

“It was a pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada.” — December 2024

North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un

“This maniac sitting here.” — September 2015

“Rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.” — September 2017

“Obviously a madman.” — September 2017

“I think you will have a tremendous future with your country, a great leader.” — February 2019

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

“His reputation is absolutely sterling.” — September 2019

“Dictator without elections” who “better move fast or he is not going to have a country left.” — February 2025

“I’ve empowered you to be a tough guy, and I don’t think you’d be a tough guy without the United States.” — February 2025

A “difficult character.” — July 2026

“President Putin.” — July 2026