What happened

Progressive Los Angeles city council member Nithya Raman placed second in the city’s mayoral primary race and will face Mayor Karen Bass in a runoff election, The Associated Press projected Monday. Republican reality TV personality Spencer Pratt was initially in second place after last week’s election but lost ground with every vote update, and Raman overtook him over the weekend. Pratt’s slide to third place is “not possible,” President Donald Trump claimed on social media. “Rigged Elections!”

Who said what

In California’s “notoriously slow vote-counting process,” Republicans typically vote in person and Democrats mail in their ballots, which get counted later, the AP said. These “fleeting Republican leads are common enough to have a name — the ‘red mirage,’” The New York Times said. And this year, with the Democratic gubernatorial field in flux until the end, the election was “primed to create even more of a red mirage” than normal.

“There has been no evidence of impropriety” in Los Angeles, a “deep-blue city” that “hasn’t had a Republican mayor in more than two decades,” The Wall Street Journal said. But by “escalating allegations of election fraud in California,” Trump and his allies are “turning to a playbook they have used previously to sow doubt about election results,” including his 2020 loss.

What next?

Trump’s baseless “Democratic scam” claims “gave an unusually clear preview of how he could greet any disappointing results for his party in November, when control of Congress is at stake,” the Times said.

Henry Nowak would “still be alive today” if Britain and Europe had “stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants”, said J.D. Vance on X. The “proper response – the only response – is righteous anger”.

The “most outspoken member” of an “evangelistic” administration, Vance’s ire does seem to have a “particular focus on the UK”, said The Times. He has commented on protests around abortion clinics, and told Keir Starmer that there have been “infringements on free speech” in Britain.

Vance is now using the Nowak murder to “bolster” his narrative of Britain as a “once powerful nation” “pandering to liberalism”. This could just be a reminder for American voters that the Republican Party retains an “uncompromising approach to wokeism, borders and policing” in the upcoming mid-terms. But if Vance is anointed successor to the Maga movement, comments such as these could be a sign of things to come.

What did the commentators say?

“J.D. Vance is wrong to intervene in the controversy around the murder of Henry Nowak,” said The Telegraph in an editorial. That said, “there is a good deal of hypocrisy on show”: Labour Remainers had no issue with Barack Obama “intervening” in the Brexit debate, and have had “no compunction about condemning Donald Trump over domestic US policy. “Inevitably, politicians welcome foreign interference only if it suits their arguments”, when “it would be far better if each stayed out of the other’s business”.

Vance was “surely right” to call out the “politics of self-hatred” in the British justice system, said Ameer Kotecha in The Spectator. It is “perfectly legitimate” for the US to comment publicly on what is happening in the UK. The government’s reaction, arguing he has “crossed a red line of diplomatic protocol”, has been hypocritical and “frankly pathetic”.

Britain is just as guilty. For instance, the Labour Party sent 100 activists to campaign for Kamala Harris in 2024. “Rather than engage in shameless pearl-clutching, Starmer’s government should listen to what our closest ally is telling us.”

Interventions like Vance’s are “deepening the split between the Trump administration and Britain’s Labour government”, said Dominic Green in The Wall Street Journal. The division is inherent. Where Vance sees a mission to “stabilise values and societies after decades of self-inflicted confusion”, Britain sees “Bible-bashing and race-baiting”, and hears “only atavistic calls to the wrong kind of identity politics”.

This “political opportunism” against Britain goes far deeper than the vice president, said James Schneider in The New Statesman. “The exploitation of Nowak’s death is of a piece with a clear US state strategy, one which turns Europe into a source for American rhetoric.” Vance talks about Britain “not as an equal, but as a provincial outpost of the imperial system, nominally independent and permanently available for correction”.

What next?

Vance’s stance could have implications for the next election on this side of the Atlantic, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. If Vance remains in the White House as vice president, “or even as Trump’s successor” after the US elections in 2028, it’s hard to imagine him “standing idly by” when the UK goes to the polls, likely in 2029.

At best, the reaction to the Nowak intervention shows us that “plenty of Britons still reflexively dislike being lectured by Americans”. Yet, it has also warned us “not to take our political sovereignty for granted. Sooner or later, we may need to defend it.”

What happened

President Donald Trump abruptly ended an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” broadcast Sunday after Kristen Welker challenged his assertions that last week’s California primaries and the 2020 election were “dirty” and “rigged.” During the interview, taped at a farm in Wisconsin, Trump “made a series of false, misleading or exaggerated comments,” NBC News said, including that he “didn’t promise” no new conflicts or “guarantee no war.”

Who said what

Trump “repeatedly pledged not to involve the United States in war,” The New York Times said, including in his 2024 victory speech, when he said, “I’m not going to start a war.” During Welker’s interview, Trump “appeared to become agitated” when she asked about the purportedly defunct $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, The Washington Post said. And when she pressed Trump for evidence that there was cheating in California’s notoriously slow election count, he raised his voice, called Welker “either stupid or crooked” and said the “fake, dirty press” knows about the “rigged” elections. “Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough,” Trump said. “Thank you, darling. Have a good time.”

What next?

Welker said that Trump later agreed that heavy rain on the metal barn roof had caused audio complications and agreed to sit down for another interview at an undisclosed time.

How Kemal Atatürk – founder of modern Turkey, the man who transformed the decrepit Ottoman monarchy into a modern secular republic – must be “turning in his grave”, said Jonas Roth in Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Zurich).

Last week, Turkish riot police stormed the headquarters of the CHP, the social democratic party Atatürk set up in 1923, to flush out the party’s current leader, Özgür Özel. For three days, Özel and a group of party officials had barricaded themselves inside the building in protest at a highly controversial court ruling that had just ordered Özel to stand down, claiming there had been voting irregularities at the CHP party congress that elected him leader in 2023.

Using batons, tear gas and rubber bullets, the police rushed in to evict him; Özel emerged to address the cheering crowd outside and then led a march to the parliament building.

‘No longer unbeatable’

It isn’t hard to detect the hand of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan behind all this. For 13 years, from 2010 to 2023, the CHP under its former leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroglu, had proved an ineffectual opposition, losing every single election, local and national, to Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP). But under Özel, the CHP has been transformed into a political force capable of ending Erdogan’s 23-year rule.

So the fact that the judiciary, which Erdogan has made his tool, should now have ordered Özel to be replaced by the perennial loser Kılıçdaroglu, speaks for itself. The crackdown on the CHP began in earnest after it inflicted a “historic defeat” on the AKP in local elections in 2024, said Ecehan Balta in Xekinima (Athens). Holding Erdogan responsible for the economic crisis that had seen inflation rise above 80%, voters turned en masse to Özel’s party, which won 35 provinces to the AKP’s 24. This was a huge blow to the president, a sign that his political machine, for all its grip on state institutions and the media, was “no longer unbeatable”.

And, since then, hundreds of CHP officials have been arrested, notably Ekrem Imamoglu, the popular mayor of Istanbul, who was detained last March on the same day that he was chosen as his party’s next presidential candidate.

Hope not lost

What happened to Imamoglu was a travesty, said Raphael Geiger in Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich): he faces up to 2,352 years in jail, if convicted of corruption and espionage. But the dethroning of Özel is even worse. It “eliminates everything that remains of Turkish democracy”, effectively snuffing out “the faint hope” of a different government being elected.

Indeed Turkey, now lacking a genuine opposition, is closer than ever to “one-man rule”, said The Economist. Özel could try and found a new party, but without the “powerful brand” of the CHP behind him, he is unlikely to succeed. In any case, Erdogan is expected to call a snap election before the next scheduled vote in May 2028. In doing so, he would be exploiting a loophole which allows him to stand again if he doesn’t fully complete his current presidential term, which the constitution mandates should otherwise be his last.

All hope is not lost, though, said Dogan Ertugrul on Turkish Minute. Imprisoning your main challenger and sowing chaos in the ranks of their party is a sign not of strength, but of insecurity.

And these risky political steps could well backfire. Look at the Gen Z-led protests that have erupted across the country since Imamoglu’s arrest. They are still going strong and have Erdogan worried, said Giorgio Brizio in La Repubblica (Rome). On the same day police raided the CHP’s offices in Ankara, thousands of students and staff staged a demonstration at Bilgi University in Istanbul, a bastion of liberal thought that the president had just closed down. In scenes “unthinkable” until a few years ago, police burst onto the campus, targeting protesters with batons and pepper spray. Many of the students were arrested; but they stood firm, and soon after Erdogan issued a decree to reopen the university. The students’ victory is clear proof that Erdogan is not invincible.

Donald Trump just keeps winning, said The Washington Post – at least when it comes to Republican primaries. Last week, Texas’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, became the latest in a series of candidates to triumph in a GOP run-off on the strength of the president’s endorsement. He beat four-term incumbent John Cornyn to secure the nomination for the Senate seat in Texas that is up for grabs in the midterms.

Courting controversy

But this win could cost Trump dear. Republicans are now saddled with a “scandal-plagued” nominee, in Paxton, whose flaws may force the GOP to lavish campaign funds in what would, otherwise, have been a safe seat. And the party could even so lose Texas to the Democrats, which could in turn cost them control of the Senate, and thus bring Trump’s agenda “to a standstill during his final two years in power”.

Paxton is a menace, said Nicole Russell in USA Today. A serial adulterer who has been impeached by his own party over bribery and corruption charges, he “seems to court controversy everywhere he goes”. However, he appeals to some voters as “a culture-war Maga fighter”, and he’s up against a Democrat candidate, James Talarico, who, for all his “polished rhetoric” and mild manner, is equally polarising. Talarico's past comments – which include saying that “God is nonbinary”, and that the US-Mexico border should have a “giant welcome mat” as well as a “lock on the door” – won't sit well with many Texans.

Buyers’ remorse

“Texas has a long history of slipping out of Democrats’ grasp,” said Amanda Marcotte on Salon. The party hasn’t won a statewide election there since 1994. But even if Talarico falls short, Trump will regret endorsing Paxton. Cornyn now joins the ranks of outgoing, alienated Republican senators who have nothing to lose by criticising the president and frustrating his plans. Other GOP senators, meanwhile, are wondering whether it’s still worth sucking up to Trump. Cornyn, after all, had mostly been a loyal footsoldier – his only sin was being a bit slow to endorse Trump’s third White House run.

Republicans are in a tight spot, said David French in The New York Times. Defy Trump, and they risk losing their jobs; back him, and they court “electoral disaster” for their party. Serves them right for not doing their duty in 2021 and convicting Trump in his impeachment trial. “May history treat their failure with the contempt it deserves.”

Young people in Britain today risk becoming a “lost generation” owing to job opportunities shrinking, “not growing”, a landmark report warned last week.

Compiled by the former Labour minister Alan Milburn, the report said that almost a million 16- to 24-year-olds (equivalent to one in eight young people) are now “Neets” – not in education, employment or training.

He called this a “catastrophic failure” and said that, without urgent action, the proportion would reach one in six within five years.

‘Getting stickier’

In his 232-page report, Milburn said the rise in Neets could be attributed to factors including rising employment costs (such as increases to the minimum wage); a decline in Saturday jobs; and a 70% increase over a decade in those who are Neet because of ill health, nearly half of whom cite mental health conditions. Ministers said the review had laid bare “the scale of the challenge [...] we need to confront”.

Keir Starmer is often criticised for commissioning “endless reports”, rather than “forging ahead with policies”, said the Financial Times. But Milburn’s review serves a vital purpose, and “deserves to be heeded”.

Britain’s “Neets problem” isn’t new: the proportion has been at 10% or above for 25 years. But it’s “getting stickier”. The UK has three times as many Neets per capita than the Netherlands, and more than any EU country except Romania. Six in ten Neets today have never had a job, up from four in ten in 2005, and 15% have degrees. With data showing that nearly half of young Neets on benefits will not be working 15 years later, this is more than an economic problem; it’s a “moral” issue.

‘Transformative’ implications

“Milburn’s charge list is long,” said The Daily Telegraph. He criticises an education system that fails to prepare students for work, and a welfare system that spends £25 on benefits for the young for every £1 spent on getting them into work. Young people themselves, however, are rightly absolved of blame, said The Independent. Milburn stresses that 84% want to work, but are being let down by a failing system.

Milburn’s report provides “an excoriating overview” of this failing system, said Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. It identifies huge structural problems – from the 1.6 million “first-rung jobs” that have vanished in the past 20 years, to a more than 40% fall in the number of young people starting apprenticeships since 2016. It gives a voice to those who spend their days firing off job applications to firms that use faceless AI systems to screen CVs, and that don’t even bother to notify rejected candidates. And it outlines how the pandemic led to a surge in truancy levels (which are closely linked to youngsters becoming Neets), and left a generation utterly ill-equipped for the jobs market.

Crucially, it also details how the welfare boom is exacerbating this crisis, said Fraser Nelson in The Times. With the right political will, the report could trigger a total rewiring of the benefits system – continuing the “transformative” tradition of reviews such as the 1942 Beveridge Report, which laid the foundations for the welfare state.

‘Moral crusade’

Milburn deserves credit for dragging welfare back onto the agenda, said Lana Hempsall in The Spectator. But much-needed reform hasn’t been stymied by a prior lack of analysis, but rather by the unwillingness of MPs to grasp the nettle. It’s only a year since the government proposed some “relatively minor” tweaks to the welfare system, only to be forced into a climbdown by its own backbenchers.

Milburn’s “mammoth” report gives the government cover to have another crack at overhauling the system, said Josh Glancy in The Sunday Times. Rooted in data and humanised by the voices of real people, it cleverly frames welfare reform as a “moral crusade” through which Labour can create a better future for the young. Admittedly, it will still be hard to persuade Labour MPs to make cuts, and the Treasury to fund the cost of moving from one system to another. But if Labour doesn’t seize this opportunity to mend a broken system, the party will “deserve to watch as Nigel Farage or the Tories” cut the welfare bill “their way”.

Milburn is due to publish his recommendations in the autumn. As part of a radical restructuring, he is said to be considering the case for an “entirely separate welfare system for young people who have never worked”, reports the FT, with a focus on getting them into jobs. Pat McFadden, the Work and Pensions Secretary, is due to join Milburn on a fact-finding trip to the Netherlands next week. The country has similar levels of mental ill health in young people as Britain does, but has much more success at keeping them in work or education.

What happened

President Donald Trump on Thursday said his administration was pouring more than $700 million into reviving the struggling coal industry. The funds will reopen one coal-fired power plant, extend the life of 13 others, subsidize coal mining and export operations and build the first two new coal-burning plants since 2013. Trump said he was invoking the 1950 Defense Production Act to intercede in the market. The money for the new coal-fired plants had been allocated by Congress for clean energy technologies.

Who said what

This is the “latest in a series of extraordinary efforts” Trump has taken to “improve the fortunes of coal, the most polluting of the fossil fuels and a favored industry” in his White House, The New York Times said. Energy experts “quickly attacked the subsidies as irrational” since “burning coal is one of the least economic methods of producing power,” The Washington Post said. The half-dozen coal plants Trump has kept open through emergency orders have cost “ratepayers tens of millions of dollars.” He has concurrently “clamped down on renewable energy,” said The Associated Press, blocking wind and solar projects and “ending clean energy tax credits.”

What next?

Analysts said Trump’s investments “could run into trouble if a future president cracked down on the coal sector,” the Times said.

What happened

Lawyers at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Thursday ordered President Donald Trump’s name stripped from the building by June 12 and “immediately” removed from marketing materials, staff signatures and other documents. The order follows a federal judge’s ruling last week that Trump had unlawfully appended his name to the storied arts institution, designated by Congress as a living memorial to the assassinated 35th president.

Who said what

The Trump-picked board “acted beyond its authority” when it added his name to the institution, the Kennedy Center general counsel’s office said in a memo to staff. “Expunging Trump’s name throughout the center would be the most tangible setback” in his quest to “take over” the venue, The Washington Post said, and the memo was the “first indication that the Kennedy Center plans to comply with the judge’s order.” Trump was “incensed” by last week’s ruling, The New York Times said, and Kennedy Center leaders had quickly “indicated that they planned to appeal.”

What next?

The general counsel’s memo said the center was “considering its options” regarding the judge’s temporary halting of plans to shut the arts venue down for two years for renovations and “will provide further guidance shortly.”

What happened

The House on Thursday voted 226 to 195 to provide Ukraine with $1.3 billion in security aid and $8 billion in direct loans while imposing stiff new sanctions on Russia. It was the “most robust aid package to advance in Congress in more than a year,” The Washington Post said, and 18 Republicans joined all but one Democrat to pass the bill “over the objections of the chamber’s GOP leadership” and the White House.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday issued an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin proposing a face-to-face meeting outside of the stalled peace process involving President Donald Trump’s envoys. But “woven into the offer for peace talks were needling remarks” in which he “taunted the Russian leader over wartime setbacks, inflation” and “Putin’s advancing age,” The New York Times said.

Who said what

The House’s “strong show of support for Kyiv” was also a “fresh bipartisan blow” to Trump’s foreign policy, Politico said. Republican leaders had “warned the bill would undermine negotiations” on a peace deal, The Associated Press said. But combined with the House’s Iran war rebuke earlier this week, the Ukraine vote signaled bipartisan “impatience” with Trump’s approach to war and peace.

What next?

Trump told reporters he was “glad” Zelenskyy had suggested direct talks with Putin and it “would be great” if they met. But it wasn’t clear if Zelenskyy’s letter was “meant to jump-start talks or to denigrate” Putin, the Times said. It “appeared to be at least in part a publicity move” to highlight Kyiv's drone strike outside St. Petersburg and “recent shifts in Ukraine’s favor on the battlefield.”

What happened

Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar on Wednesday announced a deal with Ukraine that should clear the way for Kyiv to begin the process to join the European Union. Magyar’s predecessor, Viktor Orbán, had “fiercely opposed Ukraine’s EU accession,” Politico said, and had used Hungary’s veto in the 27-member bloc to thwart Ukraine and Moldova’s “twinned” membership bids in a decision “ostensibly over minority rights for Hungarians living in Ukraine.”

Who said what

Hungary’s “shift in position unfolded suddenly” on Wednesday during a meeting of EU ambassadors in Brussels, Euronews said, and after weeks of negotiations between Hungary and Ukraine. Magyar later said on social media that Kyiv had agreed to expand the “linguistic, educational, cultural and political rights of the 100,000-strong Hungarian minority” in Ukraine’s western Transcarpathia region.

What next?

With Hungary’s objections lifted, accession negotiations are expected to “officially move to the next stage” at a June 15 meeting between the EU, Moldova and Ukraine, Politico said. However, Magyar “reiterated his opposition to fast-track Ukraine’s accession,” Euronews said. “If Ukraine manages to close all 33 accession chapters within 10 or 15 years,” he said, Hungary “will hold a legally binding referendum on the issue.”

What happened

The House of Representatives on Wednesday voted 215-208 to force President Donald Trump to stop military operations in the Iran war unless he gets authorization from Congress. Four Republicans joined all Democrats in passing the war powers resolution, which a bipartisan coalition pushed to the floor over the objections of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). It’s the first legislation to end the war approved in either chamber, though the GOP-led Senate advanced a similar measure in a procedural vote two weeks ago.

Who said what

The resolution’s adoption is a “remarkable rebuke” to Trump and his “handling of the conflict” from a GOP-led Congress that has “largely ceded its prerogatives” to curb his power, The New York Times said. Republicans who initially backed him on the war “have started to waver,” The Wall Street Journal said, as the conflict has “dragged on with no clear resolution in sight” and gas prices “continue to climb” while Trump’s poll numbers continue “sagging.” Later Wednesday, the House “bucked” Trump and Johnson on a “second foreign policy issue,” said The Washington Post, voting 218-204 to advance funding for Ukraine and “impose additional sanctions on Russia’s finance and energy sectors.”

What next?

The Iran war vote was “largely symbolic,” as the resolution is unlikely to gain the force of law, Politico said. But it “further stymies the White House’s political priorities” after Republicans recently “scuttled several Trump goals,” including funding his White House ballroom and paying off supporters with his $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund.

Parties contesting the Makerfield by-election are “locked in a war of words” over how much support there is for insurgent “far-right” party Restore Britain, said Kitty Donaldson in The i Paper.

An early poll by Survation puts support for Rupert Lowe’s Restore at 7%, with Labour at 43% and Reform UK at 40%. Labour supporters hope that Restore could split the right-wing vote and usher in Andy Burnham, who is expected to mount a leadership challenge to Keir Starmer should he win the by-election.

For Nigel Farage, Reform’s leader and long the champion of the right, this situation is “ironic”, said Melanie Phillips in The Times. “The axiom that the revolution eats its own” is “generally associated with the left. Now it has arrived on the right.”

What did the commentators say?

A Farage pivot has already begun, said The Economist. To date, his “vision of ‘colour blind’ politics” has been a “success”. But following the recent reaction to the murder of Henry Nowak – Farage called for the public to respond “with pure, cold rage” and declared that “white lives matter too” – it is clear that the Reform leader has “embraced a new, uglier way of thinking”.

This “dark turn” seems to have been prompted by the “threat” posed by Lowe. The Restore leader said “the killer should be executed and his family deported” following his life sentence. “Targeting the angry, and making them angrier, could be a winning formula” for Reform in the new fragmented political landscape.

It is clear that Farage and his allies are “visibly rattled” by Restore, said Robert Shrimsley in the Financial Times. Though Farage may not fear being “superseded” by Lowe, a split on the right could “cost him seats”. A “confident” Farage would “have to hold his nerve” and tackle Lowe at the next general election.

Restore could even be a blessing in disguise for Farage. Lowe and Co. could serve as a “decontamination chamber” to rid his own party of more extreme voices, in turn making Reform more palatable and within the “admittedly shifting” boundaries of “political decency”. All of this, of course, hinges on “how frightened Farage feels. But the last thing an already polarised nation needs is a new bidding war on the anti-immigrant right.”

Restore’s “march into culture warzones” like climate change and social integration is “profoundly depressing”, said Rosa Prince in Bloomberg. The party is “heavily backed” by “racially fixated billionaire” Elon Musk, who “regularly shares” its posts on his platform, X. Indeed, it may have been Musk’s endorsement of Lowe to lead Reform that led to the birth of Restore. Clips from a YouTube interview with Maga figure Tucker Carlson have also been “viewed millions of times”, adding to Lowe’s more than 1.3 million Facebook followers. Digital “ubiquity” and a “splintering” political system have fuelled the rise of both Reform and Restore. “We’re all poorer as a result.”

“Then there is Lowe himself,” said James Heale in The Spectator. Though undoubtedly on the charge, he is not infallible. At 68, Lowe must now “do in a decade what Farage managed in three”. Farage has “withstood 30 years of muckraking and press sleuthing. Is Lowe ready for the same?”

Lowe is already under investigation by the parliamentary watchdog after a complaint was made against him, and there is a perceived discord between his “clubbable” character in person and his online persona. As his party’s prominence grows, Lowe will also face pressure to “disavow comments his activists have made”. With the belief that Reform’s immigration policies are “insufficiently robust” as one of the party’s founding principles, Restore will also “inevitably struggle to keep its base onside”.

What next?

“Restore hopes to provide more than just a distraction” in the Makerfield by-election, said Nick Gutteridge in The Telegraph. Though the official, albeit small-sample, poll put Restore at around 7%, data collected by 300 Restore activists and released by Lowe claimed that “almost a quarter of households” said they would vote for Restore. “The claims were met with incredulity online and dismissed by political opponents.”

“You don’t need to be John Curtice to see what this means,” said Brendan O’Neill on Spiked. “The 7% being hoovered up by Restore’s oddball door-knockers is thwarting a potential Reform win.” It may be a “two-horse” race between those who believe Andy Burnham can “resuscitate the corpse of Labour” and those who are “taking a punt on the populists of Reform”. Restore is, in fact, “shaving support from Reform, is giving the listless, dull-eyed horse of technocracy its best shot of winning”.

Support for Restore could make a “critical difference” to the result in Makerfield, said Phillips in The Times. Regardless, “whoever occupies No. 10 after this by-election”, and perhaps the general election, “will be presiding over a country that has become an explosive tinderbox”.

What happened

President Donald Trump on Tuesday named Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, as acting director of national intelligence, replacing retiring DNI Tulsi Gabbard. A “real estate scion with no clear national security credentials,” Pulte will “continue in his post at FHFA” as well as coordinating the 18 U.S. intelligence agencies, The Associated Press said.

Who said what

The 2004 law that created the nonpartisan DNI position says any nominee “shall have extensive national security expertise.” Trump said on social media that Pulte has “deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America, the safety and soundness of the Markets.”

Democrats “offered wall-to-wall condemnation of the appointment,” Politico said, and Republicans “were cautious, if not downright skeptical.” Pulte’s only qualification is that “he has shown that he is willing to do anything that President Trump wants, legal or otherwise,” said Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee. “We don’t need a weaponized DNI,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said. “We need professionals there.”

What next?

Warner said putting a Trump loyalist with a history of weaponizing financial records in charge of so much sensitive information would make it harder to reauthorize the Section 702 surveillance program before its June 12 expiration. Making Pulte the permanent DNI would require Senate confirmation.

What happened

Voters in New Jersey, Iowa and California on Tuesday picked their candidates for some of the most competitive congressional races in this year’s upcoming midterms. New Mexico Democrats nominated former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland for governor, putting her in reach of becoming the first Native American woman to lead any state, and Iowa Republicans snubbed President Donald Trump’s pick for governor, Rep. Randy Feenstra, in favor of first-time candidate Zach Lahn.

In California’s gubernatorial primary, Trump-backed Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Xavier Becerra were leading the crowded pack as vote counting continued Wednesday morning. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) will face either conservative reality TV personality Spencer Pratt or progressive City Council member Nithya Raman in a runoff.

Who said what

In a New Jersey U.S. House race “that could decide control of the chamber,” The Associated Press said, Democrats picked former Navy pilot Rebecca Bennett to face Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R), whose “extended and unexplained medical absence” has given Democrats hope of flipping the seat. Iowa Democrats chose establishment-backed Josh Turek, a Paralympic gold medalist, to face Republican Ashley Hinson in the race to replace Sen. Joni Ernst (R). “Multiple race raters” last night shifted that race “from ‘likely’ to ‘lean Republican,’” Politico said.

What next?

With more than half the votes counted in California, Hilton had a slight lead and Pratt was in second place, but it’s “far too early to draw conclusions,” The New York Times said. The “‘red mirage’ is likely to shift significantly as mail-in votes expected to tilt heavily Democratic are counted over days, if not weeks.”

What happened

The Trump administration on Monday signaled a retreat from its $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund after Senate Republicans reiterated that it jeopardized President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda and a pair of court orders imperiled its prospects. The Justice Department said it “disagrees strongly” with U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema’s decision to temporarily freeze the fund but “will abide by the court’s ruling.”

The fund, which bipartisan critics characterize as a scheme to funnel taxpayer money to Jan. 6 Capitol rioters, is “dead for now,” a senior administration official told Axios. “How dead it is is what’s being worked on,” an official told CNN.

Who said what

Senators returned to Washington on Monday, 10 days after Republicans scuttled a vote on a $72 billion filibuster-proof ICE-Border Patrol bill due to discomfort with the fund. Some administration officials “privately expressed relief” that Brinkema’s ruling offered a “way out of what most had seen as a mess of the Trump team’s own making,” The New York Times said.

But Republicans “cast serious doubt on whether the president would ultimately be willing to kill off the fund” and suggested they needed “firmer assurances that he would follow through,” said the Times. The “best way to handle it is if the administration decides to shut it down themselves,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters, and killing the fund permanently “would be the ideal outcome.”

What next?

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told colleagues that “no matter what Republicans do, we will force them to vote” on shutting down the “slush fund before one cent goes out the door.”

Two controversial US political commentators accused of spreading anti-Israeli rhetoric have been barred from entering the UK.

Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker had been due to appear at the SXSW London culture and tech festival this week, but had their visas revoked by the Home Office on the grounds that their presence “may not be conducive to the public good”.

Who are they?

Turkish-American Cenk Uygur hosts the left-wing “The Young Turks” political talk show. Launched in 2002 as a satellite radio programme, since 2005 it has been hosted on YouTube, with episodes livestreamed every weekday to an audience of more than six million followers.

Uygur has repeatedly framed Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide”, “barbaric” and “savage” and accused Israel of using Jews as “human shields”. In 2024, he briefly campaigned to become the Democrat nominee in the 2024 US presidential election.

His nephew, Hasan Piker, runs his own stream, watched by more than 30,000 people each day. SXSW organisers described the 34-year-old as “redefining what political commentary looks like in the digital age”, but he has “faced a backlash over some of his comments”, said The Guardian, including reportedly saying in 2019 that “America deserved 9/11”.

He has stood by his characterisation of Hamas as “1,000 times better” than Israel, and his claim that he “would vote for Hamas over Israel every single time”, arguing he is not antisemitic but anti-Israel.

Why have they been banned?

According to The Times, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood decided to ban the pair “due to fears they could fuel antisemitism”.

Home Office decisions to refuse or cancel an electronic travel authorisation, which allows foreign nationals visa-free travel to the UK for up to six months, are “based on an assessment of the potential risk an individual may pose to UK society”.

In April, Mahmood launched a taskforce to identify extremists who were planning to come to the UK, so she could ban them before they travel. In May, 11 “far-right agitators” were barred from entering the UK to join Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom rally in London. Islamist hate preachers have also been prohibited from entering the country, as has US rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, due to his history of antisemitic remarks.

In the case of Uygur it was judged his presence would risk exacerbating antisemitism due to his rhetoric since the 7 October Hamas attacks in 2023, which “has included repeating classic antisemitic tropes”, such as the claim that Israel controls America, said The Times.

What has their reaction been?

In a series of posts on X, Uygur said he has been banned from the UK “for criticising Israel”, related in part to his claim that “Israel controls the American government through donations to 94% of Congress”.

“Are we free any more? This is oppression of Western citizens by our own governments on behalf of a different country!” he added.

Replying to Uygur, Piker said the UK has revoked his visa “all at the behest of Israel”. “The West is betraying ‘liberal values’ for a genocidal fascist foreign government. Soon we will all become Israel.”

Was a ban the right move?

Left-wing outlet Novara Media’s Ash Sarkar, who was due to chair a discussion with Piker at SXSW, said that the decision was evidence of an “authoritarian turn motivated by Labour’s fear of being called antisemitic, and fear of being called out for their position on the genocidal war on Gaza”.

“You don’t foster community cohesion by having the government ban people from speaking,” she said.

“We can argue about who should be allowed into the United Kingdom, and where the line between offensive opinion and public danger should fall,” said broadcaster Jonathan Sacerdoti in The Spectator. But while “we can disagree on individual cases”, there “must be a distinction between protecting open argument and importing those whose public role is to turn conspiracy into cash”.

Spencer Pratt is the latest entrant in the reality-TV-to-politics pipeline. Pratt made his name as the villain on “The Hills” during the late aughts. Now he is a contender to be the next mayor of Los Angeles.

Polls show Pratt “within striking distance” of incumbent mayor Karen Bass in Tuesday’s primary election, said CNN. AI-produced viral videos have powered his campaign, which is focused on “frustration with the city’s leadership” amid “overlapping crises” — wildfires, Hollywood’s decline, homelessness — that have left L.A. with “deep uncertainty about its future.” Pratt, who waded into politics after losing his home in last year’s Palisades fire, betrays little such uncertainty about his chances. “I’m for sure going to be mayor,” he said to Vanity Fair. The message and the messenger both remind observers of President Donald Trump, who last week endorsed Pratt’s campaign.

‘Shining a light’ on city failures

The novice candidate has “captivated a frustrated Los Angeles,” Susan Shelley said at The Orange County Register. Rather than running a vacuous vanity campaign, Pratt has been “shining a light on the visible failures of Los Angeles government.” Those failures have left the city residents mired in “crushing utility bills, unaffordable insurance, dangerous parks, unsafe sidewalks, homeless encampments” and other challenges. Pratt could be a mayor “who solves problems instead of preserving them to justify more funding.”

The reality star is “betting that infamy can be political currency,” Louis Staples said at The Atlantic. On “The Hills,” Pratt established himself as an “agitator” who found celebrity by “fighting with the other cast members and even with his own family.” That turned the show into “addictive viewing” plus taught Pratt a lesson about “narrative control.” TV stars and politicians both use tabloid leaks, social media and podcast appearances as part of a wide-ranging strategy to “influence how they’re perceived.” Pratt is a political newcomer, “but he’s been playing this game for years.”

Pratt is part of a line of mostly Republican stars who have “leveraged their reality TV fame into political careers,” Lorraine Ali said at The Los Angeles Times. Pratt and Trump can “push conflict, drama and personality” so far in the social media era that “no one will ask what exactly it is that you do beyond posting.” Pratt has accomplished that much. “But what about his ability to govern?”

‘Almost certainly toast’

Pratt’s strong polling probably “represents a consolidation of the small but very real conservative minority” of Los Angeles voters who see him as a MAGA candidate, Ed Kilgore said at New York. The city’s broader left-leaning electorate puts a “pretty firm ceiling on Pratt’s vote” that will make it difficult for him to win the mayor’s office in November. Instead, his candidacy “may be the best thing that could have happened to Karen Bass.” Pratt may well survive Tuesday’s nonpartisan primary election, but “he’s almost certainly toast against a Democrat in a general election.”

What happened

President Donald Trump will headline the “Great American State Fair,” a 16-day event on the National Mall to celebrate America’s 250th birthday, event organizers said Saturday. Freedom 250 — the public-private group he created to run semiquincentennial activities — said that Trump “will personally kick off this historic celebration,” hours after he suggested he replace the “highly paid, Third Rate ‘Artists’” who dropped out due to the event’s partisan overtones.

Who said what

Trump early Saturday said on social media he wanted to hold “an AMERICA IS BACK Rally” where he — the “Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime” and “THE GOAT!” — would give a “major speech” to rally the country. He then posted that Freedom 250 should hold a “giant MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN RALLY, for 250, instead of having overpriced singers, who nobody wants to hear, whose music is boring, and yet who do nothing but complain.”

What next?

After Martina McBride, Young MC, Morris Day and the Time, the Commodores and Poison’s Bret Michaels pulled out, the only confirmed acts are Vanilla Ice, Flo Rida and Milli Vanilli’s Fab Morvan. A senior administration official told The New York Times that someone will likely be fired over the concert rollout “mess.”

Investigators have raided the headquarters of Spain’s governing party as part of a probe into the alleged misuse of party funds, the latest in a “blizzard of corruption scandals” to hit the reign of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, said Politico.

“Scandal after scandal” involving political allies and relatives of Sánchez have left him “on the ropes”, said the outlet.

What are the scandals? 

An investigating judge has accused the former PM, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, of leading a criminal network that used his influence to arrange a €53 million Covid-era government bailout for the Spanish Plus Ultra airline. He is accused of receiving a total of €2.6 million from the network, and has been charged with criminal organisation, influence peddling and falsifying documents.

Zapatero, who denies the charges, is a close ally of Sánchez, who was in government when the airline was bailed out, so the scandal has embroiled the current PM.

Sánchez’s number three, Santos Cerdán, and another party figure, José Luis Ábalos, have been caught up in a public contract kickback scheme. To make it worse, evidence also emerged that Ábalos paid prostitutes. Both men deny involvement in the kickback scheme.

In a separate case last autumn, the attorney general, Álvaro García Ortiz, a government selection, was found guilty of revealing secrets.

And a party operative, Leire Díez, has been accused of being paid to “carry out a campaign of misinformation” with the intention of “impeding” the legal cases connected to the party, said the BBC. She has also denied any wrongdoing.

What about his family?

Last month, Sánchez’s wife Begoña Gómez was charged with embezzlement, influence peddling, corruption in business dealings and misappropriation of funds. She denies the charges and Sánchez has described this case as an “obscene farce”.

His brother, David, is on trial along with 10 other defendants, in an unrelated case, on charges of influence-peddling in his appointment to a musical director post in 2017. He denies the charges.

What does this mean for Spain?

Sánchez originally came to power on an anti-corruption ticket in 2018, after a corruption scandal brought down the conservative government of Mariano Rajoy. Although Sánchez has not been directly implicated in any of the investigations, questions over whether he knew about, tolerated, or benefited politically from the alleged actions of those around him are particularly damaging to his standing.

The tensions between the government and opposition parties on the matter are creating even deeper polarisation. With allegations that party operatives tried to undermine police officers or judicial investigations, broader questions are being raised about institutional independence and public trust in the courts, police and political parties.

Crucially, it is “increasingly awkward” for Sánchez’s allies to “stick with him” as the “scale” of the alleged corruption “comes into focus”, said Politico. Although officially Spain does not have to hold elections until next August, the prime minister “may be forced to move earlier”.

Meanwhile, he has dismissed the allegations as a right-wing plot to undermine his coalition, but the opposition conservative People’s Party said the government “stinks” of corruption.

It is a familiar refrain of divorcing couples, that there were “three of us” in the marriage, said Gavin Madeley in the Daily Mail. Yet in Peter Murrell and Nicola Sturgeon’s, the third party was one they both loved: the SNP was their shared, all-consuming passion. She was the party’s leader; he was its chief executive. And yet we now know that Murrell was betraying everything they held dear – with the party’s credit card.

Over 12 years from 2010, he stole £400,000 from the SNP, and used the money to buy hundreds of items, from DVD box sets to a £4,000 fountain pen and a brand-new Jaguar.

In court this week, Murrell, 61, admitted embezzlement, and was led away in handcuffs. Sturgeon said she’d known nothing of her estranged husband’s actions, and said that she felt “angry, hurt, sad”.

Disappearing funds

The seeds of his downfall were laid in 2017, said The Scotsman, when Sturgeon asked SNP members to donate to a campaign fund for a second referendum. It raised £667,000, yet in late 2020, an activist spotted that the SNP had only £97,000 on its books.

In March 2021, Sturgeon assured the party’s ruling body that its finances were in order, but three party officials then complained that they’d been denied sight of the accounts, and a prominent indyref2 supporter reported the disappearance of the supposedly ring-fenced funds to the police.

They launched Operation Branchform in July. Sturgeon abruptly resigned in February 2023, citing burnout. Murrell stepped down weeks later, in a row about the SNP’s declining membership. A little more than two weeks after that, the police raided their home.

Questions for Sturgeon

What most of us want to know, said Euan McColm in The Spectator, is how Sturgeon failed to spot what was going on under her nose. When goods including a £2,500 salt and pepper grinder and a £3,000 tea set appeared in her home, was she not curious to know where they’d come from? Did she not find it odd that her bald spouse had bought two £350 Dyson hairdryers?

Well, the pair had a joint income of £250,000 and lived modestly, said Alex Massie in The Times. He could have had a large chunk of spare cash. The £124,000 motorhome stands out as a clue even Inspector Clouseau would have spotted, but she insists she never saw it.

Sturgeon will hope the story now blows over, as will her party, said James Walker in The National. First Minister John Swinney – an old friend of Murrell’s – said he had been “gutted” by the case, and noted that the SNP was its victim. But while some voters will see the theft as the work of a bad apple and move on, for others the damage runs deeper; and questions remain as to how it ever happened.

Donald Trump has been much preoccupied by his place in history of late, said Noah Shachtman in The New York Times. It’s one of the reasons he’s ignoring his terrible approval ratings and focusing on his architectural legacy instead.

The way things are going, though, he won’t be remembered for his triumphal arch in Washington DC, or for his Maga philosophy – but for his “greed”.

The extent to which he and his family have enriched themselves since he returned to office is shocking enough: his wealth has more than doubled in 18 months, to about $6.1 billion (£4.5 billion), largely due to cryptodeals. Now, he has crossed a new line by misappropriating money directly from US taxpayers.

Last week, his administration set up a fund of $1.776 billion (£1.31 billion) – a nod to the year of America’s founding – to compensate supposed victims of Biden-era “lawfare”.

The money is expected to be doled out to Trump’s allies – and officials have refused to rule out payments to the rioters convicted of assaulting police in the 6 January attacks on the US Capitol: Enrique Tarrio, former head of the Proud Boys, says he is going to ask for $2 million to $5 million (£1.5 million to £3.7 million) from the fund. A legal watchdog has rightly called this fund deal “one of the single most corrupt acts in American history”.

‘Slush-fund boondoggle’

The creation of this “slush-fund boondoggle” stems from a $10 billion (£7.4 billion) lawsuit that Trump brought against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in January over the leak of his tax returns during his first presidency, said National Review.

That leak did violate Trump’s rights (the culprit, a former IRS contractor, was jailed), but there was something deeply wrong about a case in which Trump (as head of an agency – the IRS – that ultimately reports to him) was effectively both plaintiff and defendant. But as the presiding judge seemed poised to throw out the case over this conflict of interest, the administration announced that Trump’s lawyers and the Department of Justice had agreed an out-of-court settlement. This involved an apology for Trump, and the establishment of the vast “anti-weaponisation” fund – which expires in December 2028, so all the money in it will be handed out by the current administration.

It's frankly “obscene”, said Andrew Egger on The Bulwark. Decisions about who receives money from the fund will be made by a five-member panel largely appointed by the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer. The president will retain the power to remove its members at will. And there’ll be no transparency: the panel isn’t obliged to disclose “how they’re making disbursement decisions”, or even “who’s getting paid”.

‘Brazen corruption’

But all this is only one half of the scandal, said Matt Ford in The New Republic. As part of the settlement, the US government is now permanently precluded from examining the past tax arrangements of Trump, his sons, and his Trump Organization. So the IRS will have to drop all its many live and pending investigations into the Trump family’s affairs.

Such “brazen corruption” makes the Watergate scandal look “almost quaint”. Even some Republicans have expressed anger about this deal, said Politico, and some of the police officers attacked on 6 June have filed a lawsuit to stop the fund.

This marks a new low in the corrupt practices of Trump’s “pecuniary presidency”, said Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times. It’s stealing from the Treasury, and using your authority, with the support of your allies in the judiciary, to make yourself unaccountable. It goes way beyond Tammany Hall-style graft. “It’s government as protection racket and the president as mob boss” – a role that Trump has now clearly embraced.

What happened

A $9.7 billion Pentagon contract with Dell Technologies announced this week sent the company’s stock soaring, likely boosting President Donald Trump’s more than $1 million investment in the company, The New York Times and The Washington Post reported Thursday. “Government ethics watchdogs are sounding the alarm” not only because Trump “potentially stands to gain financially” from the Dell deal, the Post said, but also because he “has repeatedly praised the company at public events” since acquiring the shares earlier this year.

Who said what

The Dell investments were among more than 3,600 trades executed in Trump’s investment portfolio from January through March, according to a mandatory filing released this month. The Trump family has “argued that the president does not personally control the trading,” but the president’s financial accounts “are not in a traditional ‘blind trust,’” the Times said. And his Dell purchase “draws new attention to the inherent problems” with the family’s “widespread investments” in military drones, cryptocurrency, mining and prediction markets while Trump “oversees policy and government purchase decisions for those same sectors.”

What next?

Presidents are exempt from an ethics law that prohibits official self-enrichment. Congress should “revisit the arrangement whereby we rely on the president’s own sense of integrity rather than law to avoid conflicts of interest,” Greg Williams from the Project on Government Oversight told the Post.

What happened

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday his department has been working to create a $250 bill bearing President Donald Trump’s portrait, and he showed off a mockup ordered by U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach. “At present, no living person can be on U.S. currency,” under a 1866 law, Bessent said during a press conference. “We will stick to the law” but “have prepared in advance” in case Congress passes “proposed legislation” authorizing the Trump banknote.

Who said what

The Treasury Department is “moving proactively” and doing “due diligence” in response to legislation introduced by Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), a spokesperson said. That “Donald J. Trump $250 Bill Act” has “since stalled out, with no actions” since February 2025, CBS News said. Trump has “also pushed for the creation of a $1 coin bearing his image,” The New York Times said, and is “having his signature added to U.S. currency this year,” as he endeavors to “honor himself while commemorating the nation’s 250th birthday.”

What next?

New banknotes can take “more than a decade to design and produce,” The Washington Post said, and typically require “extensive coordination” with the Federal Reserve and Secret Service to add “dozens of embedded security features” to prevent counterfeiting.

“Who is the real Andy Burnham?” said Stephen Pollard in The Spectator. He has been branded a “Blairite, a Brownite, a Milibandite, a Starmerite”, and there have been “few more transparent examples of political shape-shifters” than the mayor of Greater Manchester.

What does Burnham stand for?

As “King of the North”, Burnham has based his latest pitch for the Labour leadership – and therefore for Downing Street – around what he calls “Manchesterism”. This involves “devolving power from Westminster, reducing Treasury control over public spending and promoting growth by increasing public spending on infrastructure”, said The Times’ policy editor Oliver Wright. He has also been “explicit about his desire to take key public services such as energy, water and rail back into public ownership”.

Burnham’s overriding “theme” is that the nation has been “on the wrong path since the 1980s”, and it is this “four-decade slide into decline that he is vowing to overturn”, said The Telegraph’s Ben Riley-Smith. His solution may lie in “an expensive wish list of economic interventions – re-nationalisation, re-industrialisation, lower rents and more council homes”. But there is “a telling silence so far on how, exactly, all of this would be funded”.

How did he get into politics?

Burnham was born on 7 January 1970, in Aintree, Liverpool, and, one of three brothers, he grew up in Culcheth, near Warrington, between Manchester and Liverpool (he is a lifelong Everton supporter). His father, Kenneth, was a telephone engineer; his mother, Eileen, was a receptionist. A sporty child, he went to St Aelred’s, a Catholic secondary school in Newton-le-Willows, before studying English at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he met his Dutch-born wife, Marie-France van Heel, with whom he has three children.

After a spell working for trade magazines including Tank World, in 1994 he took a job as a researcher for the MP Tessa Jowell, later the culture secretary. In 2001, he was elected as the MP for Leigh, Greater Manchester. He served as a junior minister in the Blair government, and as culture secretary and health secretary under Gordon Brown.

After being heckled at the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, he became a campaigner for the victims’ families. In 2010, he stood for the Labour leadership but was beaten into fourth place by Ed Miliband; and in 2015, he came second to Jeremy Corbyn. Having spent nine years away from Westminster, a place he has often publicly derided, he seems determined to return there.

What might his premiership look like?

Under a Burnham premiership “big spending cuts seem unlikely”, said the Financial Times. But “that leaves tax rises”. He has already floated the idea of putting up taxes on the rich and hiking levies on assets and wealth.

Even compared to metropolitan mayors, a PM runs “a much bigger machine, and there is nobody to beg for money (instead others beg you for it)”, said The Economist. They must also “convincingly argue” for “policies that make some people worse off” against “fierce opposition”. While “less wooden, more charming” than Keir Starmer, like him Burnham “has sometimes shied away from contentious measures”. In truth, he “has not really been tested for the top job”.

Could Manchesterism translate into a national policy?

Some argue that the term is so loosely defined as almost to be meaningless: that it is mostly about “vibes”, and falls far short of a policy agenda that could be translated to the national stage. Burnham is politically something of a shape-shifter; there is, allies admit, “a lot of thinking still to be done”.

We don’t know exactly what it would mean to bring transport, energy and water into “public control”, but nationalisation would certainly be vastly expensive. Burnham’s team have studied revenue-raising options, including the equalisation of capital gains tax with income tax, and higher taxes on landlords. He has also previously called for sweeping constitutional reforms, including the abolition of the House of Lords and the introduction of a more proportional voting system.

Would Burnham spook investors?

Many investors have marked his card, owing to his remark that “we’ve got to get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond markets” (critics note that Manchester City Council’s debt reached £1.6 billion last year).

In recent weeks, however, he has sought to calm jitters by letting it be known that he would stick to the Treasury’s existing fiscal rules if he became PM, and that he “understands the cost of borrowing is a huge constraint on government”. His team have also suggested that he’d stick to Labour’s commitment not to raise the “big three” taxes: income tax, VAT or employee national insurance.

What happened

The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the magazine columnist who won $88.3 million in civil judgments against President Donald Trump after federal juries found he sexually abused her and defamed her by lying about the assault, CNN and other news organizations reported Wednesday. The investigation reportedly centers on whether Carroll committed perjury in a 2022 deposition when she said her lawsuit received no outside funding.

Who said what

Two weeks before the 2023 trial, Carroll’s lawyers informed the judge and Trump’s lawyers that billionaire Reid Hoffman’s nonprofit had paid some of her legal expenses. The judge “permitted Trump’s attorneys to question Carroll again in a deposition,” but “said he saw no issue with Carroll’s credibility,” CNN said. In 2024, a three-judge federal panel handling Trump’s appeals “dismissed the claim that Carroll had lied in her deposition,” The Guardian said.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who “has approved a growing number of inquiries into the president’s enemies,” is “said to have recused himself” from this matter because he represented Trump in the case, The New York Times said. Instead, senior Justice Department leaders “referred the investigation to federal prosecutors in Chicago,” where Hoffman’s nonprofit is based, said CNN.

What next?

The probe “may not necessarily result in charges being brought against Carroll,” Reuters said. But if it does, said ABC News, a number of the DOJ’s investigations “into foes of Trump” have “faced significant obstacles in the courts and grand juries.”

Tony Blair has made “his most dramatic intervention yet”, said The Independent. In a 5,700-word analysis of Labour’s woes, the former prime minister decried the lack of a “coherent plan for the country in a fast-changing world”. Instead of changing leader, he argued, the party should “start with a policy debate” – from tax to net zero – to reoccupy the centre ground and revive the economy.

Many ‘will likely agree’

Blair may have left Downing Street nearly 20 years ago, but “as ever, he is worth listening to”, said the paper. His argument effectively boils down to “putting policy success – ‘delivery’ – above all else”. He is right that any discussion about the future “should first be about the ‘what’ rather than the ‘who’”.

Many members of the public “will likely agree with Blair’s overarching analysis that now is not the time to turn inward”, said Megan Kenyon in The New Statesman. But that doesn’t mean the party he led to three successive election landslides is likely to “welcome this intervention with whoops and cheers of gratitude”.

‘Maximum annoyance’

Maybe that’s because it “almost feels designed to inflict maximum annoyance on his party”, in terms of the content and the timing, said The Guardian’s Peter Walker. The Makerfield by-election is in just three weeks, and it “could shape Labour’s destiny for years to come”. Both Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham have accused Blair of failing to focus on inequality.

Many in the party agree with Blair’s assessment that this is a Labour administration “that has governed largely from its comfort zone and without a coherent plan”, said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times. Yet it is still likely to “decide swiftly that its problems are best solved by replacing Starmer with a more charismatic and natural politician” rather than having a “serious intellectual debate about what has gone wrong and why”.

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The UK government has rejected a call from Scotland’s devolved parliament for a new Scottish independence referendum. MSPs voted 72-55 in favour of being able to call another ballot, 12 years after the last one failed, but Downing Street said there was no UK-wide consensus for another vote.

Back in 2014, “there was agreement across all parties, across civic society in Scotland and across the Scottish and UK parliaments, that there should be a referendum”, said a No. 10 spokesperson. In the absence of that now, we do not support another referendum; neither does the UK government support independence.

Not a ‘potent issue’

Scottish voters rejected independence in 2014 by 55% to 45%. Over a decade on, the nation is almost evenly divided “on the question of its constitutional future”, said The Institute for Government. Support for independence has “fluctuated” in opinion poll data, “without either yes or no ever establishing a decisive lead”.

When BBC Scotland sampled opinion in a Savanta online survey earlier this year, 47% of the 2,136 Scots surveyed said they would vote yes to independence, and 44% said they would vote no, with 8% undecided. While just a “snapshot”, this is “in line with the polling trend”, said Glenn Campbell, the BBC’s Scotland political editor. But there’s “another consideration” here: only 13% of those polled ranked independence as a “top three priority” for Scotland. Way higher came the cost of living (62%), the NHS (50%) and the economy (31%).

Independence remains an “important motivator for some voters” but “it does not feel as potent an issue” as it has in the past. That said, “independence is significantly more popular” than the SNP, the main nationalist party, itself.

‘The SNP fights for Scotland’

“As if Scotland hasn’t suffered enough at the hands of the SNP, the luxury campervan party and its Green accomplices” now want a second independence referendum, said The Spectator. Thankfully, Keir Starmer “is in no mood to indulge Scottish First Minister John Swinney’s fantasies by granting a Section 30 order” and allowing that to happen.

While this week’s Holyrood vote was “largely symbolic”, said Bloomberg, “it highlights how Scotland’s constitutional future has returned to the core of British politics”. The SNP may have fallen short of an overall majority in the recent elections to the Scottish Parliament but, with the Greens, they have still “secured their largest ever pro-independence majority”.

That the SNP secured a fifth consecutive election victory, despite its “patchy record on public service delivery”, “its bouts of internal warfare”, and the scandal of Peter Murrell’s embezzling of party funds, reflects “the independence aspirations among half the population and the sense that the SNP fights for Scotland”, said Simeon Kerr, the Financial Times’ Scotland correspondent.

“The SNP don’t have to be good; they just have to be Scottish,” Andy Maciver of PR consultancy Message Matters told the FT. But to build support for independence above 50%, the party will need to restore faith in its competence. The prospect of Reform UK’s Nigel Farage in No. 10 could certainly help. “They need people to run away from the rain in Westminster and towards the sun in Holyrood”.

Any path President Donald Trump takes to end the war with Iran is bound to generate a lot of dissatisfaction among his GOP supporters and advisers. Hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) continue to “press for more aggressive U.S. military action,” Daniel R. DePetris said at the Los Angeles Times, and Republicans “consider anything short of Iran’s total surrender a failure.” But Trump’s in-house political strategists want a quick end to the unpopular war to “minimize political repercussions against the Republican Party” in November’s midterm elections. Trump clearly wants the deal that he keeps promising to the U.S. public, yet accomplishing that may put him at odds with Republicans who “would consider anything short of Iran’s total surrender a failure.”

‘A bad option and a worse one’

The president “seems conflicted,” said DePetris. He’s “fed up with the current situation” but also “afraid of escalation,” said Danny Citrinowicz, of The Atlantic Council, to The New Yorker. The president is “fed up with the current situation,” but he is also “afraid of escalation,” the Atlantic Council’s Danny Citrinowicz said in an interview with The New Yorker. Escalation probably will not work “because the Iranians are not going to capitulate.” The other option to end the war, then, is a deal that provides both money and sanctions relief to the Islamic regime in exchange for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s choices are “between a bad option and a worse one.”

“Will Trump bail out Iran’s regime?” The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial. Inflation pressures at home are likely behind the president’s desire to “reopen the Strait even on Iran’s terms.” But a “bad deal would leave him worse off politically” even if domestic prices recede. Iran’s regime was beset by domestic crises that the war has exacerbated. A “half victory” by Iran now “would hurt America’s standing — and Mr. Trump’s.”

The issue is not Trump “terminating the conflict too soon,” Jacob Heilbrunn said at The Spectator. It is “that he began it in the first place.” The war is undermining both his presidency and U.S. military power, and the idea that escalation would result in Iran’s surrender “defies credulity.” The ugly truth illustrated by the Hormuz closure is that Trump “does not hold the cards.”

‘Leaving core issues unsolved’

Trump is looking to get a ceasefire deal now and “deal with the toughest problems later,” said The New York Times. He took the same approach in Gaza, where he brokered a truce last year. That effort ended the fighting but left issues of Hamas’ future and the rebuilding of Gaza to be figured out at a later date. So far that has not happened. Such an approach can be a way for Trump to “claim victory while leaving the core issues unsolved.”

“Doubling down” on the war remains a possibility, Ravi Agrawal said at Foreign Policy. But that would come with “uncertain benefits” and “much more potential pain.” We may soon find out one way or another, as the U.S. on Monday conducted strikes on Iranian positions, a sign the temporary truce is faltering.

What happened

President Donald Trump on Tuesday spent more than three hours at Walter Reed Medical Center for his fourth publicly disclosed medical exam since returning to office last year. The White House did not release any details of the exam, but “everything checked out PERFECTLY,” Trump, who turns 80 next month, said on social media.

Who said what

Trump’s unusually frequent exams have put his health “under renewed public scrutiny after he has worked to dismiss concerns over his age and stamina,” The Associated Press said. He “frequently casts himself as more energetic and fitter than Joe Biden,” who left office at age 82 after “facing questions about his fitness for the job,” Reuters said.

Trump’s “health and fitness have been central to his political identity,” but as an “aging president, he now receives some of the same questions that dogged Biden — namely, whether he is mentally and physically fit” enough, The Washington Post said. “Independent doctors” have called the White House’s explanations for Trump’s bruised hands, neck rash, swollen legs and “occasional sleepiness” at meetings “insufficient.”

What next?

It was “not immediately clear whether the White House would release details” from Trump’s clinical exam to “support his claim” of good health, The New York Times said.

What happened

Republican redistricting efforts in Alabama and South Carolina were blocked Tuesday, stalling President Donald Trump’s mid-decade gerrymandering campaign. South Carolina’s GOP-led state Senate thwarted a plan to cancel an ongoing primary and swap in a new map that would erase the state’s lone Democratic and majority Black district. In Alabama, a panel of federal judges temporarily blocked the state GOP’s proposed map, saying it was “tainted by intentional race-based discrimination.”

Who said what

The 12 South Carolina GOP senators who “effectively killed” the Trump-backed gerrymander cited “numerous” concerns, from practical and political to procedural, said The Post and Courier. “Neither my conscience nor my common sense is going to let me stop an election that’s already underway,” state Sen. Richard Cash (R) said before the vote. The “rebuke from fellow Republicans came as a shock to Trump’s political operation,” Politico said. But “even without the extra seat” or two, Republicans “have an overall edge in the redistricting war.”

What next?

In Alabama, the three-judge panel, which includes two Trump appointees, said the state had to use a court-ordered 2024 map that includes two substantially Black districts. Alabama said it would immediately appeal to the Supreme Court.

What happened

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary, unseating Sen. John Cornyn despite being outspent by about $80 million. Boosted by an “eleventh-hour endorsement” from President Donald Trump, Paxton’s 64% to 36% defeat of “one of the most successful politicians in Texas GOP history” was a “political earthquake” that “will reverberate nationally,” The Texas Tribune said. Senate Republicans and political analysts believe Paxton’s victory gives the Democratic candidate, state Rep. James Talarico, a fighting chance to win in November.

In notable Texas Democratic primaries Tuesday, former Rep. Colin Allred unseated Rep. Julie Johnson, newly elected Rep. Christian Menefee beat 11-term Rep. Al Green in a newly combined Houston-area district, and former sheriff’s deputy Johnny Garcia defeated sex therapist Maureen Galindo, a controversial candidate funded by a mysterious GOP-backed super PAC.

Who said what

Republicans just nominated “the most corrupt politician in America,” Talarico said Tuesday night, in his first ad of the general election. Paxton is “known for his polarizing style, ethical travails and lousy political judgment,” but his “fealty and bombast” won over Trump, The Wall Street Journal said in an op-ed. Republicans can now “spend $100 million or more trying to salvage the seat and keep their Senate majority.” Minutes after the race was called, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report shifted its Texas Senate forecast from “likely” to “lean” Republican.

What next?

Paxton has faced “allegations of corruption, financial malfeasance and infidelity,” The Washington Post said, but he “still stands a decent chance of winning” in solidly red Texas.

What started as online satire has spiralled into a mass movement for India’s disaffected youth.

The parody Cockroach Janta Party launched earlier this month and quickly amassed more than 22 million followers on Instagram – more than twice that of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the world’s largest political party.

Rotten places

The Cockroach Janta Party, or CJP, was created by Abhijeet Dipke, a public relations student at Boston University in the US. The 30-year-old launched the CJP via social media accounts and a website, inspired by comments from India’s Chief Justice Surya Kant, in which he compared unemployed young people to cockroaches.

While Kant later clarified his remarks, saying they only referred to some people acquiring fraudulent degrees, his comments drew “considerable ire”, said Al Jazeera, “mainly from Gen Z internet users, as they battle large-scale unemployment, inflation and bitter religious divides” following 12 years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government.

“Those in power think citizens are cockroaches and parasites,” Dipke told the news site. “They should know that cockroaches breed in rotten places. That’s what India is today.”

With a cockroach as its symbol, the CJP has exploded across social media fed by “memes and short videos mocking corruption, joblessness and political dysfunction” that turned “absurdist humour into protest”, said The Associated Press. One million people have signed up to join the movement in the past week with “its tongue-in-cheek membership criteria” including “being unemployed, lazy, chronically online and capable of ranting professionally”.

“I don’t expect CJP to become a functioning political party, but its rapid growth sends a message to the ruling party that many, especially the youth, are unhappy with corruption and the economy”, 29-year-old digital marketer Oindrila Mohinta told The Telegraph India.

Neither side listening

After the CJP’s X account was blocked as a result of a “legal demand”, supporters flooded social media with claims the Indian government was behind the suspension, suggesting the movement had “rattled” the “establishment”, said The Times of India. Dipke has accused the government of trying to take down the movement’s official website, and claimed his personal Instagram account had also been hacked.

However, “the opposition should be careful before celebrating the CJP as a ready-made, anti-BJP youth wave”, said Rasheed Kidwai for NDTV. “Gen Z’s irritation with the ruling establishment is real” but “it does not automatically convert into faith in the opposition”.

“The viral success of the Cockroach Janata Party should not be seen only as a dissent against the ruling party but also a mirror to the opposition,” poll strategist Naresh Arora wrote on X. “India’s Gen Z youth feel neither side is listening to them.”

The CJP as an entity “may disappear within months”, said Vivek Surendran in The Indian Express. “Internet movements often burn intensely and collapse without consequence”. However, the message to the political establishment is that “inspirational” messaging is no longer cutting through with cynical younger voters: “what large sections of young Indians want is recognition of their exhaustion”.

What happened

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) and other lawmakers on Monday joined a protest outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, where detainees are on hunger strike amid complaints of rotten food and inadequate medical care. The Trump administration’s denial of a request for access to the facility raised “serious questions about what they are trying to hide from public view,” Sherrill said in a statement. Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.), who did gain access, was caught in a cloud of tear gas and pepper spray fired by ICE agents in an armored vehicle outside the facility.

Who said what

Protesters have gathered outside the privately run detention center since last week to support the hunger strike. Tensions escalated after ICE moved strike leader Martin Soto to a different facility, allegedly to punish him. Lawmakers granted access criticized the conditions as inhumane and reiterated their calls for Delaney Hall’s closure. The Department of Homeland Security said the visits were “nothing more than a political stunt by New Jersey sanctuary politicians” and claimed “there is NO hunger strike at Delaney Hall.”

What next?

The 1,000-bed facility “has emerged as a focal point” in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, The New York Times said. Nationally, nearly “50 ICE detainees have died since Trump’s return to office,” CNN said.

What happened

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) on Thursday abruptly adjourned the Senate for a weeklong break, scuttling plans to get a $72 billion filibuster-proof ICE–Border Patrol funding bill to President Donald Trump’s desk by a self-imposed June 1 deadline. The “most urgent reason for the delay” was the Senate GOP’s “boiling anger” over Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, Semafor said. In another “striking setback that exposed fractures within the GOP,” The New York Times said, House GOP leaders canceled a vote to compel the end of the Iran war after it became clear it would pass.

Who said what

The GOP “retreats on both the budget bill and the war powers resolution reflected a pivot” away from “unquestioningly” deferring to Trump, the Times said. The opaque $1.8 billion fund is a “Trump priority,” but it faces “widespread opposition” from Senate Republicans, The Wall Street Journal said, alongside near-universal condemnation from Democrats, so the must-pass reconciliation bill “gave senators leverage to dig in their heels.”

The special budget process Republicans are using to pass the bill “allows a long series of amendment votes,” The Associated Press said, and “as it became clear” that Democratic amendments to kill or curtail the fund would pass with bipartisan support, Thune called a timeout. The fund “is in real trouble — and it should be,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told the Times on Thursday.

What next?

“By leaving Washington,” Republicans left the “anti-weaponization” fund “intact and without any of the guardrails they might want to impose,” the Journal said. Thune said his party “will pick up where we left off” when they return from vacation.

After decades of maintaining steady numbers of American service members at sites across Eastern Europe, the United States has begun quietly shifting where and how it deploys troops along Russia’s doorstep. This month, the Pentagon “abruptly” halted an already underway deployment of some 4,000 soldiers to Poland as “part of a larger troop reduction,” fueled in part by President Donald Trump’s “anger over Europe’s refusal to aid in the war with Iran,” said The Washington Post. Similar reductions and withdrawals have been ordered for other American military assets in the region, and White House figures are defending the moves as part of Trump’s America First ethos.

‘Growing rift’

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “last-minute decision” to pause the planned Poland deployment took Pentagon officials and European allies “by surprise,” said Politico. It is the latest instance of an “abrupt personnel move” that has “blindsided both sides of the Atlantic.”

The Pentagon has largely employed the easier process of canceling deployments “as opposed to yanking forces already stationed there,” The Associated Press said. In addition to nixing the planned Polish deployment, Hegseth’s orders also “led to the cancellation of an upcoming deployment to Germany of a battalion trained in firing long-range rockets and missiles.” Hegseth “scrapping plans” for a “long-range fires battalion to be stationed in Europe,” marks a “significant loss for the continent,” said the Post.

The change in troop levels comes as Trump has “repeatedly criticized NATO countries for not participating in the Iran war,” said CNN. Trump has also lashed out at German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has said the U.S. is “being ‘humiliated’ by Iran.” The move “reflects a growing rift between the administration and traditional European allies” that has been exacerbated by a “lack of support for the Iran conflict,” the AP said.

‘Overreacting’

Changing the Poland deployment was “not an unexpected, last-minute decision,” said the Pentagon to the Post. However, the military declined to “provide clarification on when the process started and when the order to depart was given,” the outlet said. Pressed on the changes, Vice President JD Vance also downplayed their significance. “We're not talking about pulling every single American troop out ⁠of Europe,” said Vance on ABC News Tuesday. The move merely shifts “some resources around in a way that maximizes ​American security,” and “frankly, a lot of the European media is overreacting to this.”

Polish lawmakers visiting Washington this week “welcomed U.S. statements clarifying” that the troop drawdown was a “temporary measure,” said the Post. Warsaw has also “lobbied to host some of the U.S. troops set to be withdrawn from Germany,” using the argument that “Poland already has the infrastructure needed to accommodate additional American forces,” said Polish broadcaster TVP World.

For now, the White House’s “broader strategy remains unclear,” said Politico. The upcoming German withdrawal is “still in the planning stages.” While it would be a “relatively minor drawdown of the 38,000 U.S. troops in the country,” it also signals to European allies that “they could pay a price for publicly disagreeing with the White House. “

What happened

The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday voted 141-8, with 28 abstentions, to endorse a 2025 International Court of Justice opinion that countries are legally obligated to take steps to fight climate change. That opinion, while “not legally binding,” is “expected to be cited in ‌climate-related ⁠legal cases worldwide,” Reuters said.

Who said what

“The world’s highest court has spoken,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said, and the General Assembly “has answered” with a “powerful affirmation of international law, climate justice, science, and the responsibility of states to protect people from the escalating climate crisis.” The U.S. had engaged in “diplomatic efforts” to derail the resolution, The Associated Press said, and joined other big “oil-producing nations and major greenhouse gas emitters” in voting against it. The “highly problematic” text “includes inappropriate political demands relating to fossil fuels,” U.S. Deputy Ambassador to the U.N. Tammy Bruce said before the vote.

What next?

While the resolution called for limiting global temperature rise to below 1.5 degrees Celsius, there is “no chance” of meeting that “1.5 to stay alive” goal anymore, the AP said, citing new scientific estimates. But thanks to “increasing use of green energies,” the “worst case scenario” is “no longer plausible,” either.

What happened

Two police officers who helped defend the U.S. Capitol from a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, sued in federal court Wednesday to block anyone, including the rioters who beat them, from receiving payouts from his $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund. House Democrats separately proposed legislation challenging the fund and promised a robust investigation if they win control in November.

Who said what

Using Trump’s “taxpayer-funded slush fund to finance the insurrectionists and paramilitary groups that commit violence in his name” would be “the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century,” former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges said in their lawsuit. “No statute authorizes” this “corrupt sham, and its design violates the Constitution and federal law.”

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress that anybody could apply for compensation, including Jan. 6 rioters. “It’s abhorrent” to harm law enforcement, he told CNN, but “people that hurt police get money all the time” from suing the government.

What next?

Opponents of the fund “face high hurdles” to blocking the payouts if “Congress, controlled by Trump’s fellow Republicans, stays silent,” Reuters said. But if Hodges and Dunn can “demonstrate they have been harmed in some way,” they have several viable legal paths.

The UK’s net migration dropped sharply to 171,000 in the year to December 2025, the lowest outside the pandemic since 2012. But nobody seems to care.

A survey commissioned by the think tank British Future found only 16% of people believed net migration had fallen in 2025 compared with the previous year, while 49% thought it had increased. The poll of 3,003 adults in the UK “also suggests public concern is being shaped more by asylum and small boat crossings”, said the BBC Verify’s Rob England.

While net immigration figures have been falling (the number to December 2024 was 331,000), Labour and Conservative MPs “are speaking in a more hostile way about immigration than at almost any other time in the last century”, said The Guardian. The number of far-right and anti-immigration protests “has increased 15-fold since Labour took power in July 2024”, said The Telegraph.

What did the commentators say?

“It’s little wonder voters think net migration is going up when the only debate we have is about how to bring it down,” British Future’s director Sunder Katwala said. “We should be having a conversation about how to manage the pressures and gains of migration to Britain.”

“The difference in tone towards issues relating to asylum, immigration and human rights under this Labour administration compared to previous ones is stark,” said Alexander Horne in The Spectator. “These issues are now portrayed as problems to be solved.” New polling from YouGov also showed that Labour Party members have backed Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s tougher immigration policies by a two-to-one majority.

The net migration figures came as Andy Burnham’s allies signalled he would back Mahmood’s controversial immigration policies should he become Labour leader. “For Andy, migration is a moral issue as much as anything, showing people who’ve lost faith in politics that we do have control and we can do good,” one source told The Guardian. “We need to tell a positive story about the contribution of migration to our country, but we cannot do that unless people trust that the people they vote for have control over our borders.”

Mahmood’s closeness to Keir Starmer has led many to believe that she and her reforms will be jettisoned if the PM leaves Downing Street. “This is a pity for the country,” said Andrew Tettenborn in The Critic. Mahmood has thought deeply about immigration and she “overtly embraces the idea that settlement in the UK must be a privilege and not something there almost for the taking”. Despite criticism from within her own party, the voters Labour needs to woo – “the just-about-managing, the fed-up and those from the Red Wall” – care a “great deal for immigration control and a great deal for removing obstacles to it”.

But politicians should be wary of swinging too harshly one way or the other on immigration, said Sarah O’Connor in the Financial Times. “After the 2016 Brexit referendum, public concern about immigration fell”. Then it surged again “when the Conservative government liberalised visa routes for students and care workers between 2019 and 2022”. Now Mahmood has taken a restrictive turn.

What is happening is that successive governments are over-interpreting and over-reacting to a change in public opinion, “which reacts in turn, prompting a sudden swing the other way”. These frequent changes in immigration policy are bad for employers, migrants and the economy but also corrosive of trust between politicians and the public.

And yet “the tragedy of all this is that it’s not happening because politicians ‘aren’t listening’ to the public on immigration”. Rather, “it’s because they are listening too much”.

What next?

Mahmood’s proposed reforms “have caused a slow-bubbling revolt on the backbenches”, said Ethan Croft in The New Statesman, so whether they will survive a Commons vote remains to be seen.

What happened

The Senate on Tuesday voted 50-47 to advance legislation that would halt the Iran war unless President Donald Trump obtained authorization from Congress. A trickle of Republicans began supporting the war powers resolutions over seven previous votes, and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) joined them Tuesday, providing the crucial 50th vote.

Who said what

The vote “showed how Republicans are increasingly uneasy with a conflict” that’s “stuck in a fragile ceasefire” while “causing rising gas prices in the U.S.,” The Associated Press said. The “sliver of GOP skepticism” about Trump’s handling of the war “widened last week,” The New York Times said, a shift “fueled in part” by his “ignoring” of a 60-day legal deadline to seek congressional authorization.

Even Trump supporters are “concerned about this war,” and Congress is “in the dark,” Cassidy, who lost his primary campaign after Trump endorsed his opponent, said on social media. “Until the administration provides clarity, no congressional authorization or extension can be justified.”

What next?

This was “only the first step” toward passing the bill, and GOP leaders believe it would have failed if three Republican Senators hadn’t been absent, Politico said. The House is “expected to vote on a similar war powers resolution” Wednesday, the AP said, and “Democrats are bullish” on passing it.

What happened

President Donald Trump’s controversial agreement with the Justice Department to set up a $1.8 billion fund for alleged “weaponization” victims was quietly expanded Tuesday to permanently bar the IRS from auditing Trump or his businesses. The one-page addendum, signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, says the federal government is “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing” claims against Trump or “related or affiliated individuals.”

Who said what

Trump “received no direct financial payout” from the new fund, The Wall Street Journal said, but Tuesday’s “unprecedented blending of personal and governmental interests” between “Trump as a taxpayer and the Trump administration” could “bring a significant financial benefit to the billionaire president and his family.” The agreement “most likely wiped away” a long-running audit that could have cost Trump “more than $100 million,” The New York Times said, and “also puts an end to any other audit” pertaining to tax returns already filed. Trump set up a “slush fund to enrich his own friends,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said during a hearing with Blanche, and now he’s also “looting from the Treasury for his own gain.”

What next?

It’s uncertain “whether anyone would have standing to challenge the agreement in court,” the Journal said. “Congress could step in, but such a move likely would require Republican votes over Trump’s objections.”

What happened

Republican candidates endorsed by President Donald Trump won or advanced in primaries Tuesday night in Georgia, Alabama and Kentucky, and unseated Trump’s top target of the night, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). A seven-term libertarian-leaning lawmaker, Massie had angered Trump by opposing his Iran war and spending bills and leading the charge to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. He lost to Navy veteran Ed Gallrein by 10 percentage points in the most expensive House primary in history.

Who said what

Trump “notched several other wins” Tuesday night, Politico said, including engineering Rep. Andy Barr’s (R-Ky.) primary victory for the Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R). Trump’s “revenge campaign” also blocked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger from advancing to the GOP’s gubernatorial runoff.

The winner of the Georgia runoff — Trump-endorsed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones or healthcare executive Rick Jackson — will face former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) in “what is expected to be another hard-fought race for the state’s top office,” The New York Times said. In Alabama, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R) and former Sen. Doug Jones (D) won their respective primaries and will face each other in the state’s gubernatorial race.

What next?

Trump’s next chance to “flex his influence” and “reshape” the GOP “looms in Texas,” said CNN. His recent endorsement of the “controversial” and scandal-plagued Attorney General Ken Paxton could crush Sen. John Cornyn (R) in next week’s runoff vote.

What happened

A federal jury in California on Monday rejected Elon Musk’s high-profile lawsuit against OpenAI and its leaders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, because he had not filed it within the statute of limitations. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers agreed and quickly dismissed the suit. Musk, an estranged OpenAI cofounder, had wanted his former partners forced out of their leadership roles, an unwinding of the company’s conversion to a for-profit endeavor and roughly $150 billion in damages.

Who said what

The quick verdict capped a three-week trial that “fixated the tech world on the grievances and drama” of the world’s most powerful AI moguls, The Wall Street Journal said. Musk accused Altman of “betraying a shared vision” of creating OpenAI as a “nonprofit dedicated to guiding artificial intelligence’s development for the good of humanity,” The Associated Press said.

What next?

The verdict “preserves the status quo” in Silicon Valley’s AI race and “removes one of the final roadblocks” to OpenAI’s expected $1 trillion initial public offering, The New York Times said. But Altman now has to “address the challenges to his reputation from some extremely personal testimony,” Reuters said, including “multiple witnesses describing him as a liar.”

What happened

The Justice Department on Monday announced a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” for “victims of lawfare and weaponization,” potentially including those who participated in the U.S. Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021. The fund is part of a settlement President Donald Trump reached with his Justice Department to drop his $10 billion claim over an IRS leak of his tax records. The money will be doled out by five people appointed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, though Trump can fire them. Shortly after the announcement, Treasury Department General Counsel Brian Morrissey resigned, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Who said what

The Justice Department said Trump and his family will receive apologies but no payments from the fund. But the “highly unusual” settlement forges a “pipeline to funnel taxpayer money” to Trump’s allies, The New York Times said, and is an “apparent effort to skirt oversight by a judge” who “expressed concern” that Trump’s lawsuit “represented self-dealing between the president and a department run by his former defense lawyer.”

“This is one of the single most corrupt acts in American history,” Donald Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said in a statement. “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American,” Blanche said in a statement. This “slush fund” is “nothing but a racket” for Trump to hand taxpayer money “to his private militia of insurrectionists, rioters and white supremacists,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.).

What next?

Blanche is “expected to be pressed on the fund when he testifies” on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, The Associated Press said.

Just days after he waved goodbye to Donald Trump, Xi Jinping is hosting another world leader, a man the famously opaque Chinese leader has described as his “best friend”.

Vladimir Putin arrives in Beijing today for the two-day summit, their second in less than a year and their 40th, at least, overall. Their “carefully cultivated friendship” is defined by “highly personal rituals” involving vodka, lakeside tea, sports events and even making pancakes, said the South China Morning Post.

It’s obvious what a war-fatigued and internationally isolated Russia seeks from China, on whom it relies for drones and economic support. But it’s less obvious what the now far more powerful China wants from its unstable neighbour.

What did the commentators say?

The timing of Putin’s visit, days after Trump’s, “sends an unmistakable signal”, said The Economist. Xi is emphasising that even if he can “stabilise relations” with the US, it won’t “come at the expense of his ‘no limits’ partnership” with Putin. Those ties could “grow deeper yet” because of the US war in the Middle East. Xi and Putin could share intelligence about Trump’s military action against Venezuela and Iran, whom both count as allies.

Xi could “exploit his newfound leverage” – the balance of power has “shifted dramatically” since Russia’s full-scale invasion – to “secure more sensitive military technology and know-how”. China now produces most of its own weapons, many based on Russian designs; it could now seek “more high-end assistance” in nuclear and ballistic missile areas. Russia is “thought to have been sharing” drone data and expertise garnered from its experience in Ukraine.

A “key aim” for China is “more reliable and sustainable energy supplies”, said Deutsche Welle. China is concerned about dependence on seaborne imports, which account for about 90% of its oil. The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and the global disruption to supplies make Russian oil a “more attractive” prospect, and Western sanctions on Russian exports mean China can “secure Russian energy at a discount”.

“China and Russia are like a couple in the same bed with different dreams,” said Claus Soong of the Mercator Institute for China Studies. A weakened Russia, or even the collapse of Putin’s regime, would “pose immediate strategic risks for Beijing”. There are signs of cooling since the unlimited friendship they proclaimed in 2022, before Russia invaded Ukraine, but “Russia still has more to offer” than Europe.

Any deals will likely be on Chinese terms, Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center think tank, told the BBC. “Russia is fully in China’s pocket, and China can dictate the terms.”

But despite the asymmetry of power, the pair share vital interests – security along their 2,670-mile (4,300km) border, and China’s market for Russia’s oil, gas and other materials, said Ankur Shah, BBC Global China Unit editor. Russia’s war in Ukraine is also an “asset to Beijing as it considers its options for a potential invasion of Taiwan”. Russia still has some niche military technologies it can sell. But Moscow’s “big advantage” is “its ability to stand its ground”. Russia “may be the junior partner, but it’s also a proud one”.

What next?

Xi’s meeting with Trump, the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and cooperation across energy, trade and security are all expected to be part of the discussions tomorrow, said CNN’s senior China reporter, Simone McCarthy.

Both Beijing and Moscow are “weighing up whether to play any role in helping to end a US-Iran conflict”. This could “potentially win each goodwill” with the US, but both also want to use Trump’s actions to “advance their own vision of a world that’s not dominated by American power”.

Any concrete agreements, however, are “unlikely to be made public”, said The Economist. “As during previous visits, announcements are likely to be broad in scope but thin on detail.”

Wes Streeting has dropped the “bombshell” that he’d like Britain to “one day” rejoin the European Union, said The Times.

The former health secretary and Labour leadership hopeful has “put the Europe question firmly back on the political agenda”. However, the process of reversing Brexit and rejoining the EU would be far from straightforward.

Is it possible?

Yes. Although no country has ever left the EU and then rejoined, it is possible. If the UK decided to seek membership again, it would need to apply through the framework set out in Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union.

However, the UK would need the support of all member states to “open and conclude accession talks”, and the UK’s “historical reluctance to integrate fully with the EU” could remain a “concern to the bloc”, according to the Institute for Government.

What would the process be? 

First, the UK would submit an application to the Council of the European Union. All existing EU member states would then need to agree unanimously to begin accession talks with London. At this stage, member states could decide to impose stricter eligibility criteria.

If the UK cleared that hurdle, it would enter negotiations over alignment with the EU’s legal and regulatory framework across a wide range of policy areas, including trade, fisheries, immigration and borders, environmental standards, and competition law.

Britain’s application would ultimately need unanimous approval from the Council of the EU, as well as the backing of a majority in the European Parliament. Realistically, the entire process would likely take several years at a minimum. Even relatively straightforward accessions can take close to a decade.

What would the UK have to agree to?

Although the UK previously enjoyed favourable terms within the EU, those concessions might not be available if it sought to rejoin. For example, the opt-out that kept Britain outside the Schengen border-free travel zone would probably not apply a second time.

Rejoining could also involve a commitment to adopt the euro. In addition, Britain would return without the 1984 rebate negotiated by Margaret Thatcher, which refunded roughly 66% of the UK’s net contribution to the EU budget. In 2020, the UK’s net contribution stood at £12.6 billion; any future contribution would likely be significantly higher.

Knut Abraham, a senior MP from Germany’s ruling Christian Democratic Union party, told The Times that, from a regulatory standpoint, the UK should have a relatively straightforward path back into the bloc because its laws remain largely aligned with Brussels. “I don’t foresee that many complications,” he said.

However, a senior European foreign ministry official predicted a less straightforward process: “I think we would welcome the UK with open arms – just not on their terms.”

White spots on the moon. Black dots on an infrared sensor. A collection of eyewitness statements. “Congratulations,” said Newsweek in an editorial, “you’re pretty much caught up on the first batch of UFO files released by the Pentagon.” For months, President Trump has been teasing that the Defense Department holds “very interesting documents” on UFOs that would be released “very, very soon.” And two weeks ago, the Pentagon made good on that pledge, declassifying 162 documents, videos, and photos from “unresolved cases” in which the government couldn’t “make a definitive determination on the nature of the observed phenomena.” Those files, which date from 1947 to 2023, include dozens of testimonials from astronauts, federal agents, and civilians who claim to have seen strange objects in the sky— Gemini VII astronaut Frank Borman said he saw a “bogey” containing “hundreds of little particles” after reaching orbit in 1965. There’s also low-resolution images of flying blobs that could be balloons, drones, or other non-extraterrestrial objects. So does any of this prove aliens have been visiting Earth? “As things stand, the files say implicitly what officials won’t explicitly: No.”

This was always going to be anticlimactic, said astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson in The New York Times. For decades, we’ve had to listen to supposed whistleblowers tell us about “the crashed flying saucers, extraterrestrial bodies, and alien technology in our possession”—but always “hidden in undisclosed places.” And after a succession of ex-military pilots and government officials testified about their close encounters to Congress in 2023, 2024, and 2025, “what’s left to learn?” At this point, I just want one of these “alien insiders” to show me “an actual alien. Alive or dead or undead. Preferably alive. Is that too much to ask for?” The Pentagon has promised new document dumps on a rolling basis, and perhaps those releases will confirm “we are not alone,” said Will Rahn in The Free Press. But for now, we’re where we’ve always been: “guessing and groping for answers in the dark of the cosmos.”

Maybe we’re looking for answers in the wrong places, said astrophysicist Adam Frank in The Atlantic. Instead of hoping for great revelations from the government, we should consult the astrobiologists who right now are using powerful telescopes to search “for alien life where it lives, on alien worlds.” One day, “perhaps long after the current UFO-disclosure frenzy is over,” astronomers might present us with “hard evidence that life is either common or rare in the galaxy. That will be the only disclosure day history remembers.”

Ukraine in recent months has slowed Russia’s invasion to a near-halt and forced Moscow to ramp up its own security measures. Kyiv’s homegrown drone technology and techniques are now in demand around the world. These accomplishments have come despite diminished U.S. support for Ukraine’s warfighting efforts.

What did the commentators say?

The fight against Russia is “going better than you think,” said Vox. Kyiv still relies on the “fickle U.S. government” for Patriot missiles and battlefield intelligence, but Ukrainian leaders have “more confidence” in their ability to withstand the invasion than they did a few months ago. The “Ukraine line is not really in danger of breaking” even though Russia has “sustained enormous casualties” in attempts to advance, military analyst Franz-Stefan Gady said to the outlet. Ukraine might not be winning the war at this point, said Vox, but it “doesn’t appear to be losing.” Its leaders now believe Ukraine “no longer needs the United States as much” as it did early in the war, said The New York Times.

Ukraine “has finally given up” on President Donald Trump, Phillips Payson O’Brien said at The Atlantic. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is “aggressively seeking new diplomatic and military partners” and has sent drones to strike Russian oil facilities despite U.S. warnings against doing so. American leaders have “reduced what little weaponry” they were sending to Ukraine and pressured Zelenskyy to cede territory in exchange for peace. But Ukraine’s ability to adapt with reduced American support “has been startling.”

It is “significant” that Ukraine is “reversing the trend” of Russia’s progress in the war, The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial. One sign: Russian leader Vladimir Putin scaled back his country’s usual Victory Day parade in early May out of apparent fears of a Ukrainian drone strike. It is clear the “tide may be turning against Russia” after four years of war. That is an opportunity for the U.S. to “increase support for Ukraine so it can keep the pressure on Russia” and bring the struggle to an end.

The war will not end unless Ukraine inflicts a “decisive defeat” on Russia that poses a “direct threat to Putin’s regime,” Andrew A. Michta said at 19FortyFive. Putin’s military is “well positioned to continue” thanks to the backing of China’s industrial might and money flowing in from oil sales. Trump’s pressure on Zelenskyy to negotiate is a “signal to Moscow that its strategy is working.”

What next?

The U.S. is now looking to Ukraine for help in the war against Iran. The two sides this month signed an agreement to potentially “export military technology to the U.S.” and manufacture Ukranian-designed drones in the United States, said CBS News. Kyiv has “sent drone interceptors and pilots to the Middle East” to defend Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates against Iranian attacks. Ukraine is a “hub for drone innovation,” said the Financial Times. That is expertise the U.S. now needs.

Is Britain ungovernable? That is the question many are asking after a dramatic week in Westminster that potentially fired the starting gun on a Labour leadership race that could give the UK its seventh prime minister in a decade.

This latest political “merry-go-round has prompted soul-searching”, said Charlie Cooper on Politico. A G7 economy and “former global hegemon”, Britain is “increasingly a picture of political instability and economic stagnation”.

What did the commentators say?

After securing his election win, Keir Starmer promised to be honest with voters about “how tough this will be. And frankly, things will get worse before they get better.” But less than two years on, said Cooper, it is the parties on the extremes “offering quick and direct solutions” – such as Reform’s pledge to slash immigration or the Greens with promises of wealth taxes – “that now win a hearing with voters”.

With few in parliament able to “combine policy nous, real-world experience and the ability to sell a vision and convey hard truths”, the “constant churn” among PMs is “an indictment of leadership in the country”, said Tej Parikh in the Financial Times. “In a democracy, politics and policies are a reflection of the public too”, but “Britons struggle” to accept some necessary “trade-offs”.

Ending the pension “triple lock” is just one example of this. Throw in rising “expectations of government”, the electorate’s lack of patience and the declining “calibre of public discourse” and “it is little surprise Britain gets cakeist and myopic leaders, who are low on reform and high on easy answers”.

The electorate is “furiously disillusioned and disappointed” but the hard truth is that this “omnicrisis” of low productivity, a housing shortage, social care strain, welfare reform and ballooning national debt is not “easy to answer”, said Isabel Hardman in The i Paper.

“Failing to answer” these questions “leaves Britain hobbled in the long-term” and leaves voters feeling “let down by the politicians who they elect and pay to be honest and take the difficult decisions on their behalf”. Doing something about this would require “a leader who doesn’t care about social media storms or polling fluctuations or the complaints of focus groups” and is able to “switch off all that noise and fixate on the real problems”.

What next?

For too many people, the change they voted for in 2024 and repeatedly tell pollsters and focus groups they want “hasn't come fast enough”, said TUC general secretary Paul Nowak in The Mirror. It “hasn’t been all doom and gloom” but “the good work the government has done” – renationalising the railways, ending the two-child benefit cap and upgrading workers’ rights – “has been overshadowed by too many self-inflicted mistakes and a failure to shout proudly about those achievements”.

“Anyone who wants to replace Starmer has to start by accepting that he has done good things – just not enough and not at scale”, said Aditya Chakrabortty in The Guardian. Then they must “turn and face the country and tell us what they would do better”.

A “deep and justified pessimism” is gripping the UK. The feeling is that “tomorrow will be worse than today, that our children will not enjoy the same standards of living that we have done. That is what any Labour leadership contest must address.”

Many voters have a “palpable sense that the system is rigged against them”, said Nowak. Whoever is in No. 10 “today, tomorrow, in five years or in 10”, they “will have to fix the broken social contract”.

Bruising brushes with financial markets have been the fate of Labour “down the ages”, said William Keegan in The Observer. Back in the 1960s, Harold Wilson complained about “the gnomes of Zürich” – a derogatory reference to international bankers then going “short on the pound”. This time, the threat is closer to home – in London’s febrile government bond markets.

‘The risk of some kind of accident is real’

Before this week’s escalation of the leadership fight, economists were playing down the political angle. “For all the noise, politics isn’t what’s driving yields higher right now,” James Smith of ING told The Times. “The overwhelming driver is still the energy crisis, oil prices and the impact on BoE interest rates.” But as a dramatic sell-off got under way, it became harder to discount the sense that debt markets are indeed badly rattled by Labour’s leadership woes. The 30-year gilt yield, which hit 5.81% on Tuesday, is at the highest this century. Yields on 10-year gilts (the benchmark for mortgage rates), at 5.13%, are at their highest since 2008.

It’s “a rubbish time” to be having a political crisis, said Daire MacFadden in the Financial Times. “Sadly, that’s precisely what we have.” Any leadership challenge is “all but certain to herald a move to the left and potentially an increase in government borrowing”. To some extent, the gilt market had already priced this in, but “the risk of some kind of accident here is real”.

It doesn’t help that Andy Burnham – who last year observed that government shouldn’t be “in hock” to the bond market – “keeps talking about bond markets as if they are some sort of entity he can bamboozle with jargon”, said John Stepek on Bloomberg. The view from his camp seems to be that renationalising various sectors of the economy will inherently make them more productive – so gilt markets “will be happy to fund the borrowing”. That’s a somewhat “courageous” assumption.

‘Bond vigilantes’ on the rise

“It seems like the only supporters that Keir Starmer has left are the so-called bond vigilantes,” said Robin Wigglesworth in the FT. As they point out, higher borrowing costs are already chipping away at the chancellor’s £24 billion of fiscal headroom, which forecasts suggest could halve. But for how long “can the gilt market act as the UK’s political police”?

Among Starmer’s rivals, Burnham is perceived by traders as the biggest threat and Wes Streeting as the least risky. We must hope he prevails and persuades investors to lend at “a lower premium” to Britain, said Adam Smith in The Telegraph.

The “intriguing paradox” of Labour politics is that the leader most distrusted by the Left may ultimately be the “most capable of financing the expansive social-democratic state that they all crave”.

Since it swept to power in 2014, little has stood in the way of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

But West Bengal – India's fourth-most populous state – was a rare exception, said Nadim Asrar in Al Jazeera (Doha). Well over 25% of its some 105 million population is Muslim, and for the past 15 years its voters have spurned the Hindu nationalist BJP in favour of the centrist Trinamool Congress (TMC), whose leader, Mamata Banerjee, has sought to appeal to Muslims and Hindus alike.

But all that changed last week, when the BJP won a “stunning” majority of 207 seats in the state's 294-member assembly.

Dislodging ‘Didi’

It's hard to exaggerate just how stunning this victory is, said Sadanand Dhume in The Wall Street Journal. It's a bit like the Democrats winning the governorship of Texas for the first time in a landslide.

The 71-year-old Banerjee is India's fiercest female politician and one of Modi's toughest critics. Her supporters refer to her as “Didi” (older sister), and love her for her disdain of luxury – she wears “simple” saris and flip-flops. But her detractors regard her as a petty despot who has “pandered to fundamentalist Muslims”.

And the BJP was determined to dislodge her, said Robin Jeffrey on Inside Story (Melbourne). West Bengal is a prize they've hungered for. Its capital, Kolkata, was once “the intellectual centre of India” and home to many of the heroic events and figures revered by the BJP. So Modi's people “threw a kitchen full of sinks at Banerjee and her party”.

‘Ferrari and a bicycle’

That they did, said the Deccan Herald (Bengaluru). In the run-up to last month's vote, the election commission – a supposedly independent body often accused of doing the BJP's bidding – stripped more than nine million names, nearly 12% of the total, from the state's electoral register under a process called Special Intensive Revision. The ostensible aim was to remove alleged illegal migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh from the rolls. And at least 2.7 million people, mostly Muslims, were thus excluded from voting.

In dozens of constituencies, the BJP's margin of victory was smaller than the number of voters removed, said Aparna Bhattacharya on The Wire (New Delhi). But, in fairness, the BJP would probably have prevailed in any case. “Didi” had been in power too long: her TMC had grown increasingly unpopular over issues such as high unemployment.

With “Didi” gone, Modi is close to “his dream of an opposition-free India”, said Alex Travelli in The New York Times. The BJP now controls 20 of the 28 state governments, a dominance not seen since Congress Party rule in the 1960s. And as the BJP's income is six times that of its nearest rival, it will be hard for other parties to compete, said Nadim Asrar.

It's “a race between a Ferrari and a bicycle”, as the writer Arundhati Roy once put it. Good for Modi, maybe, but perhaps not so good for India.