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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

What happened

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

Who said what

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

How has Trump helped resettle white South Africans?

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

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

Why are critics concerned?

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

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

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

What else has Trump done for white South Africans?

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

What happened

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

Who said what

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

What next?

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

What happened

The Trump administration on Tuesday said it had kicked 760,000 enrollees off the Affordable Care Act insurance marketplace. Vice President JD Vance told a press conference that the canceled enrollees were a mix of “phantom people” and “real people who just don’t meet the eligibility requirements,” didn’t submit the proper documents or weren’t even aware they were enrolled in an ACA health plan.

Who said what

Tuesday’s announcement by the Vance-led anti-fraud task force “represents one of the largest administrative purges targeting individual insurance exchanges” since the administration’s “crackdown on fraud began last year,” The Wall Street Journal said. There’s “widespread agreement that unauthorized enrollments should be canceled,” ACA expert Cynthia Cox at KFF said to The New York Times, but it’s not clear that “these were all indeed unauthorized enrollments,” and Vance’s panel didn’t appear to use the “appropriate process” to determine which to cancel.

What next?

Vance said his anti-fraud effort, including further scrutiny of up to 450,000 more enrollees and bans on about 600 ACA brokers, would save $2.2 billion. The “price of ACA insurance has skyrocketed” during Trump’s second term, prompting “millions to downgrade their plans or exit the program entirely,” The Associated Press said. “Early filings from insurers suggest that prices will increase substantially again next year,” the Times said.

“What is the point of the Liberal Democrats?” asked Joanna Williams in The Times. Even those at the party conference weren’t sure: a Lib Dem council leader said the party was “lacking ambition”, while MP Roz Savage wondered why they were “struggling for relevance at precisely the moment when so many people feel powerless”.

During his headlining speech, leader Ed Davey campaigned for an anti-Reform firewall, income tax cuts and a closer proximity to the EU. Yet despite achieving a record number of MPs at the last election, the party is sliding in the polls and its blueprint to Westminster, for many members, is blank.

What did the commentators say?

“Younger readers may not believe me, but we used to take the Lib Dems seriously,” said Gareth Roberts in The Spectator. “Or at least more seriously.” We are surrounded by swathes of “repulsive or infuriating politicians”, but even so Davey is “merely laughable”. There have been calls from within for him to step down, but such is the predicament of the party, these outbursts “hardly seemed to register”.

Davey’s campaign to rejoin the single market in his closing speech underlines how the party’s strategy is “built on sand”, said columnist Sherelle Jacobs in The Telegraph. Traditionally, yes, the issue of Brexit proved the “ultimate gift” for the Lib Dems, allowing them to move to the left economically, while profiting as the “right tore itself apart”.

But now, the subject ranks “as a fifth-order issue” electorally, and placing it at the core of the party’s agenda “just seems odd”. In practical terms, Davey’s claim that his personal allowance reforms would be offset by “growth from a new EU partnership” would take “years to negotiate”, and also just “doesn’t seem credible”. The Lib Dem leader, aptly, is using the nostalgia of “exhuming the corpse of remainerism” to mask the problem that his party’s present “relevance is too terrifying to face”.

Given the current political climate, it “ought to be a boom time for Britain’s traditional third party”, said The Times. Labour is “tilting left”, the Conservatives are also “struggling for national relevance”, and Reform UK is embroiled in funding controversies. But Davey is leading them “towards irrelevance”. At the conference, all he could offer was a “grab-bag of woke talking points”, and he strayed from the popular issue of social care to pursue economic growth, “the standard fallback for the fiscally challenged (see Reeves 2024)”. Davey’s vision is “neither liberal nor democratic. Nor, for that matter, is it ­especially inspiring.”

Unlike other parties, the Lib Dems don’t crave the “sugar rush of going for temporary poll bounces”, said Ailbhe Rea, political editor of The New Statesman. Davey has a “seat-first, not vote-first, strategy”, a source told the outlet. His strategy is founded on local initiatives, building support “typically from councils up”, said Rea, and efficiently targeting only seats it can win. The party had 11 MPs when Davey took over in 2019, and rose to 72 after the 2024 general election, and made gains in “eight consecutive sets of local council elections”. This approach may grind out “unimpressive poll numbers”, but produces “sustainable gains”: “many of the party’s MPs are fully behind both it and him”.

The strange thing is, if a general election were to be called tomorrow, the Lib Dems would “probably repeat their record-breaking performance of 2024, or get very close”, said Hugo Gye in The Economist. They have “firmly dug in to their core areas”, such as Richmond-upon-Thames, where the Lib Dems won all 54 positions in recent council elections.

More pressingly, the party thrives most by riding a certain “brand of eccentricity”, appealing to a concoction of “wealthy, woke and weird” constituents who advocate for “cultural leftism” but hold “centrist views on the economy”. It may have strength in this demographic, but it’s difficult to see where the party will go next. “Not everywhere can be Richmond.”

What next?

Davey has a “balance to strike”, said Rafael Behr in The Guardian. He must hammer home his “progressive credentials” by showing his “anti-Farage firewall will be suitably robust”, and consolidate support among former Tory voters in “blue wall” seats that his economic policies will hold.

Local elections next year will test whether Davey’s method is working and a by-election win “may settle Lib Dem nerves”. Currently, while it is difficult to pinpoint the purpose of the party, if its firewall tactic works its “utility to British democracy won’t be in doubt”. Then again, you can only find out if it holds water “when you need it most, and then you don’t get a second chance”.

“If a left-wing candidate can win in New York, then there’s no reason it can’t happen in Berlin.” A year on from her comments after Zohran Mamdani’s victory, Elif Eralp looks likely to be elected as the mayor of Berlin. She would be the first Turkish-origin person in the role, and the first candidate from left-wing party Die Linke to become mayor since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Victory for Die Linke does not guarantee Eralp will become mayor, said The Berliner. The new parliament has to elect the governing mayor and, with 47 seats out of 158 in the state parliament, Die Linke will need to form a coalition. The centre-right CDU refuses to engage with them, but a joint government with the Greens and the Social Democratic Party would be a “realistic” outcome.

‘Generational shift’

Eralp has become the “new face of radical left-wing parties asserting themselves in major cities around the world”, said Le Monde. Her “historic win” is all the more impressive considering she inherited a party “marred by internal divisions”. Now, it is “one of the most dynamic forces in German politics.

Die Linke, which emerged from the communist Socialist Unity Party that ruled East Germany until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, has undergone a “striking generational shift” in the last three years, said the Financial Times. A recent overhaul has seen the party “draw a tidal wave of new supporters, doubling its membership in the space of a year, reaching 123,000 at the end of 2025”.

A younger, predominantly female cohort has emerged at the top of the party leadership, who have not been afraid to take on AfD and have become “social media stars on the German left”. Eralp and others have “cultivated a recognisable style: sharp fringes, tattoos, hoop earrings and red lipstick”, which she is often seen sporting alongside “jeans and trainers with a bomber jacket”. She also regularly wears a gold necklace which displays the word “Mietendeckel” (“rent cap”).

On ‘borrowed time’

Berlin’s housing crisis was “at the heart of Eralp's campaign” said Euro News. She called for rent caps, an increase in social housing, and has floated the idea of expropriating properties from large housing portfolios to come under government control. And this fits the issues facing Berliners, said Novara Media. In Berlin, 84% of the population rent, and “more than half from private landlords”, while “10% of Berliners live in housing poverty”. A 2021 referendum saw Berliners support the city government’s seizing of privately-owned flats from large corporate landlords.

Pressure had already been “mounting” on Chancellor Friedrich Merz following the success of the AfD in regional elections, and his “struggles to push through promised economic and social welfare reforms”, said Al Jazeera. Less than 18 months into power, his approval ratings have tanked to around 14%, “raising doubts among fellow party members about whether he can continue to lead”.

The “cumulative effect” of the losses to both the right and the left “can hardly be exaggerated”, said The Guardian. Merz cancelled a planned trip to speak to the UN in New York, “already anticipating he would need to be in Berlin to grapple” with the aftermath of the state election. For now, he has vowed to remain in post, but for many, the German leader is “on borrowed time”.

As a result of nearly 300,000 U.S.-based Haitians having their Temporary Protected Status (TPS) revoked by the Trump administration in August, many are heading north of the border. But while they look to join a country that has a vibrant Haitian diaspora, fleeing to Canada presents its own challenges.

‘It’s difficult to predict how many Haitians may try crossing’

Canada’s “asylum rules allow migrants with close family members to enter the country and seek protection,” said The Atlantic, and many have roots in the nation. There are about 100,000 people of Haitian descent living in Canada, according to the country’s 2021 census, a number that likely increased during the last five years. Even before the TPS revocation, Haitians were the largest group of asylum seekers in Canada; in Montreal alone, there are about 80,000 Haitians, “making them Montreal’s largest immigrant group.”

But Haitians “without close family members in Canada who arrive at the land border are generally ineligible to seek asylum,” so it is “difficult to predict how many Haitians may try crossing into Canada,” said The Atlantic. There have also been changes since the first Trump administration, when a “road from upstate New York to Montreal became a well-known crossing point,” said CNN. Since then, Canadian immigration rules have “changed significantly, and it’s much harder to make asylum claims at Canada’s border.”

This hasn’t stopped numerous people from trying. Haitians “who do apply for asylum are more than likely to be rejected than approved,” but officials say that “U.S. work experience, along with English and French proficiency, could provide qualified applicants with a major advantage in the Canadian job market,” said WLRN. The “transition is facilitated by the cultural similarities between the two North American employment sectors, making employer-supported immigration a feasible path for those losing their status,” Cassandra Fultz, a Canadian immigration consultant, told the outlet.

‘Canada may be part of the answer’

Canada has an “extensive immigration system separate from its refugee protection system,” so for some Haitians, the better question may be not “‘can I claim asylum in Canada?’ but ‘could I qualify to immigrate to Canada?’” said The Haitian Times, an online newspaper for the Haitian diaspora. Canada “may be part of the answer,” but “that doesn’t necessarily mean claiming asylum.”

For many “Haitians fleeing ICE, the only route into Canada is a path through the woods,” said The Atlantic. It can be a risky venture, as Haitians who are denied entry by Canadian border officials are usually “turned over to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and typically transferred to ICE.” Many Haitians are still “willing to risk a dangerous and illegal journey into Canada to avoid returning to their home country,” said USA Today. Notably, the U.S. government says that Haiti is “so dangerous that Americans should not visit,” as it “lacks an effective central government, and criminal gangs largely control the streets.”

Some immigrant rights activists are wary of an influx of Haitians to Canada. “We are not encouraging folks to go to Canada if they know they might be in danger,” Viles Dorsainvil, the executive director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, Ohio, said to the CBC, because Canadian immigration might return them to ICE. “I know that Canada has been promoting human rights, human dignity, or whatever, but I know for sure that Canadian immigration has been very hard” for Haitians.

What happened

A Venezuelan DoorDash driver shot in the back of the neck by an ICE officer in Austin over the weekend told reporters Monday that the bullet was still lodged near his spine and he hadn’t “received the medical attention that I require” while being held at a detention center in South Texas. Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, speaking in Spanish by phone, said an unmarked ICE SUV had turned on its police lights only after sideswiping his car twice, and the agent shot him after he asked about pulling over somewhere safer.

Who said what

The Department of Homeland Security said Perez had “illegally entered our country” and “had a final order of removal.” ICE agents started chasing Perez after they found his deportation order while checking license plates and he “was not the target of a federal investigation before the encounter,” The New York Times said, citing two people familiar with the shooting. His immigration lawyer Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch said Perez had entered the U.S. legally in 2024 and had a valid work permit. The deportation order, which Perez had not known about before Sunday, was issued when he missed an immigration court hearing after the notice was sent to an old address, Lincoln-Goldfinch said. “Not that being out of status would justify any of this at all,” she said on social media.

What next?

ICE last week erased detainees with final removal orders from its online tracking database, an “unannounced move that has made it far more difficult for lawyers and relatives to find them” and challenge their deportation, The Associated Press said yesterday. Perez’s immigration lawyers Monday filed requests in federal court in San Antonio to compel his release and block his deportation on the grounds he was now a witness in a criminal investigation.

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

What happened

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

Who said what

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

What next?

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

What happened

An ICE agent on Sunday shot and wounded a Venezuelan man in Austin as he was delivering for DoorDash, according to Texas officials and the 28-year-old man’s wife. The man, identified as Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, was in serious but stable condition after being shot in the torso, officials said at a press conference. More than 100 protesters amassed at the shooting scene.

Perez’s wife said he’d told her on the phone he was shot inside the car. Photos show two apparent bullet holes in the blue Toyota Corolla’s back passenger window, plus a big dent in the front passenger door. The Department of Homeland Security, along with the FBI, is “leading the investigation” into the shooting, DHS said in a statement late Sunday. The agency described Perez as an “illegal alien from Venezuela, who illegally entered our country under the Biden administration.”

Who said what

Videos taken by bystanders show an ICE agent “circling around to the back passenger side” of the Corolla, where he remains as the car “rolls forward slightly” and “three gunshots ring out,” The New York Times said. Perez “appears to be bleeding from a wound to his upper left back” when he’s removed and handcuffed, and “the footage does not show any of the officers providing medical care.”

“I’m very angry about this,” Austin Mayor Kirk Watson said, but “I’m not surprised at all,” given “the way ICE is doing its business these days.” More than 20 people have been shot by federal immigration agents, mostly in their vehicles and some fatally, during President Donald Trump’s second term.

What next?

Watson and other Austin officials said they expect local police and Texas Rangers to be part of the investigation. Perez’s wife, a legal resident, hasn’t “been permitted to see him” and doesn’t know where he is, her lawyer said.

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

Currently, in much of England outside major cities, county councils provide one set of services, and district and borough councils another. County councils cover education, transport and roads, town planning, fire and public safety, social care, and services such as libraries; while district and borough councils, covering smaller geographical areas within the counties, look after more locally focused services such as rubbish collection and recycling, council tax collections, council housing and planning.

The government’s plan, known as local government reorganisation (LGR), was to replace this two-tier system with “unitary authorities”, bringing all responsibilities together into one body, by early 2028.

In five authorities – Surrey, Essex, Hampshire, Norfolk and Suffolk – this process was launched in 2025. In one of the last announcements of Keir Starmer’s government, Steve Reed, the then-secretary of state for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), said 14 other councils would also be reorganised.

Why were they being merged?

The two-tier system, which dates back to the 1970s, was brought in to ensure a balance of central services designed to cover a large geographical area, and local responsiveness on smaller-scale matters. But according to Reed, setting out these plans in December 2024, the system leads to “outdated and misaligned structures that slow down delivery, fragmenting public services, hampering housebuilding and slowing down important decision making”.

Unitary authorities already cover much of England. In 1986, 32 London boroughs and 36 other metropolitan districts became unitary authorities. Since the mid-1990s, 62 other unitary authorities have been created, most recently North Yorkshire, Somerset and Cumbria; over 65% of England’s population already lives in one. The hope was that consolidation would produce major savings, reducing management, back-office operations and other kinds of duplication – and that it would help give more efficient services to residents.

So what happened?

LGR has triggered fierce resistance across England. Essex County Council, now led by Reform UK, challenged the government’s proposals in court; Norfolk, Suffolk and Hampshire were following suit. There were objections from Devon to Rutland. Last Monday, the new MHCLG minister, Angela Rayner, officially announced the withdrawal of all LGR proposals for Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Hampshire. A further 14 council reorganisations were paused pending a “rapid review”. The only LGR process now going ahead is Surrey.

Why were the plans opposed?

Many council leaders were furious that central government was choosing to “rearrange the deckchairs”, when they are already facing so many challenges: debt, social care, special educational needs, housebuilding.

The proposed reorganisations were often highly complex. For Essex, the plan was to turn one county council, 12 low-tier councils and two existing unitary councils into five streamlined unitaries by 2028. This would have greatly reduced the number of councillors (from about 700 to perhaps 430), a deliberate policy to reduce costs. The plans, complained Peter Harris, Reform leader of Essex County Council, are “ill-thought, expensive, purely ideological in nature and seek to create further democratic distance between the people of Essex and their elected local politicians”.

What other objections were there?

In some cases, the issue was whether the new authority would be financially viable: the proposed East Norfolk Council would have been one of Britain’s poorest. In Devon, the plan was to merge eight existing second-tier authorities and one county council into four unitary authorities: three based on Plymouth, Exeter and Torbay, and one covering the very large, impoverished “rural rump”, with a vast road network.

The residents of Rutland, England’s smallest county, home to 41,000 East Midlanders, objected that their small unitary authority was to be subsumed into a bigger unitary in neighbouring Leicestershire. The county’s MP, Tory Alicia Kearns, said Rutlanders would “have our identity stripped from us”. Several historic UK cities were also cited as being at risk of being legally demoted to “towns”: Canterbury City Council was to be absorbed into East Kent Authority, perhaps losing its city status.

Is there still a case for going through with LGR?

Yes. North Yorkshire Council, for instance, is an advocate for the process. It has achieved £68 million in recurring annual savings, since it merged seven district councils and one county council into one in 2023 – by removing duplicated senior executives, using smarter central procurement, pruning unneeded offices, and so on.

But the overall financial benefits and costs of LGR are disputed. A PwC report commissioned by the County Councils Network found, in 2020, that savings of £2.9 billion could be made. But this is contested: the BBC found that the government had failed to do “its own analysis of the costs”. The transition itself would be costly: the PwC report found that it could cost £850 million. Norfolk County Council said it would cost it £96 million.

What’s happening now?

It’s unclear whether this is just a pause, or the end of the LGR process. Rayner said: “In light of legal advice, I want to satisfy myself firstly that the right process is in place, that it is robust, and of course complies with the law.” She added that she wanted to be sure it met “the priorities of a new administration”. There was satisfaction in local authorities, but also anger. “The most ambitious change to local government in a generation now looks in danger of becoming a colossal white elephant – a huge drain on time, resources and goodwill,” said the Local Government Intelligence Unit, a think-tank.

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

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

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

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

An ‘incredibly risky’ bet

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

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

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

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

Another Trump ‘con’

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

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

‘The cruel politics that pit struggling Americans against each other’

LZ Granderson at the Los Angeles Times

“American capitalism requires abundance to truly thrive, and yet capitalists prefer the illusion of exclusivity and scarcity to control the market,” says LZ Granderson. “What has long kept the power out of the hands of the people has not been a lack of resources” but a “lack of compassion, particularly among the poor themselves.” This “calculus is cruelly effective. Instead of uniting people, turn one group of poor people against another so that politicians don’t have to help either group.”

Read more

‘There will be blood: Threats against “NAZA’ directors are real and dangerous.’

Haaretz editorial board

Israelis’ “extreme responses” to the new documentary “NAZA,” which “almost no one has seen,” have now “turned into explicit threats and dangerous violence against the filmmakers and their families,” says the Haaretz editorial board. “The work of making the filmmakers fair game” began when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he “plans to advance legislation revoking the citizenship of anyone who ‘defames IDF soldiers.’” The government is “marking Israelis as traitors, and the unbridled mob is starting to hunt them.”

Read more

‘Congress is trying to rip away college athletes’ hard-earned money’

Matt Ford at The New Republic

The Protect College Sports Act bill “would ‘protect college sports’ from the athletes who play them,” says Matt Ford. The PCSA is a “life raft” for the NCAA after “illegally suppressing college athletes’ earning potential for decades.” College players were “finally able to pursue fair-market compensation for their services thanks to a series of major court rulings,” but now the NCAA and its “allies are trying to keep as much of the money that college athletes generate as possible.”

Read more

‘Why the US urgently needs more platelet donors’

Robert Glatter and Peter Papadakos at Time

The American Red Cross’ “latest appeal” deserves “national attention,” say Robert Glatter and Peter Papadakos. The organization “urged Americans to schedule blood and platelet donations, warning that the blood supply ‘remains vulnerable’ after recovering from critically low levels during a summer shortage. It called on donors of all blood types to make appointments now.” The Red Cross “estimates that nearly half of donated platelets go to patients receiving cancer treatment.”

Read more

What happened

United Nations investigators Thursday reported they had found “reasonable grounds” to believe the U.S. committed war crimes in Iran with its “indiscriminate” attacks on an elementary school and sports center, killing at least 178 civilians, mostly children.

The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran also determined that the Iranian government had “committed crimes against humanity” by murdering, imprisoning and torturing protestors.

Who said what

U.S. officials “have ascribed the school strike to a targeting error,” The New York Times said, though the Pentagon “has not published the results of its investigation” into the bombing. The U.N. investigators said the “clearly identifiable” elementary school was the “intended point of impact,” and the U.S. military’s use of outdated targeting data “went beyond mere negligence.” The White House said Iran is the “only party in this conflict that has committed war crimes,” and the U.N. Human Rights Council, which created the mission in 2022, has been “spouting unserious nonsense for decades.”

What next?

The investigators are set to present their findings to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday. U.N. fact-finding missions are “investigative, not judicial bodies,” and can’t “initiate any criminal cases,” Reuters said. But this report “adds to international evidence gathered about crimes in the war in Iran,” The Associated Press said, and “could eventually be used in efforts to reach justice in international courts.”

“Wouldn’t it be lovely if Canada was the 28th state of the European Union rather than the 51st state of the United States?” asked Finnish President Alexander Stubb recently. That fanciful notion now appears to have taken a step closer to reality. In a speech to the European Parliament, the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney welcomed the European Union’s ambition for Canada to become its first “associate member”, calling for closer cooperation on defence, critical minerals and energy security.

His comments came a day after President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen proposed “opening the door” to Canada’s associate membership – “a status that does not currently exist”, said the BBC.

What did the commentators say?

The “not entirely straightforward case for CanadEU predates Trump”, said The Economist last year. “Canada is vast and blessed with natural resources but relatively few people, while the EU is small, cramped and mineral-poor.” Its Arctic border with Russia presents shared strategic interests with Brussels, while, culturally, Canada’s social-welfare state and social-democratic foundations align with the values of European democracies.

These arguments have only grown stronger since the start of Trump’s “combustive, combative second term”, said Ishaan Tharoor in The New Yorker. So much so that “a conversation once consigned to academic circles and the parlour rooms of Brussels and Ottawa has entered the mainstream”.

In the face of a hostile Trump administration waging an all-out tariff war with its biggest trading partner to the north, the thinking in Ottawa is simple, political scientist Bruno Maçães told The New Yorker. “If you cannot change your neighbour geographically, change it institutionally.”

Carney has ruled out Canada becoming a full EU member or joining the single market, even if such a thing were possible. But associate membership could, in theory, allow Canada to tap into Europe’s strategic supply chains in key sectors such as energy, AI, critical minerals needed for batteries or semiconductors and, crucially, defence. Underwater cables could be laid under the Atlantic linking data centres and cloud storage, and new pipelines could redirect Canadian gas to meet Europe’s ever-growing needs.

What next?

One Canadian official involved in the talks said in The Wall Street Journal this is a “tectonic change” that would be brought about by “working groups and bureaucracy”. “It’s terribly unsexy but terribly consequential nonetheless.”

Canada is already the first non-EU nation to join the bloc’s defence procurement programme, said Anand Sundar, from the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank. But if European leaders really “want to shift the relationship into a new gear”, they will have to rethink their arms-length attitudes towards third countries, “particularly in defence and security, where both sides’ dependence on the US runs deepest”.

And while Canada’s economy is “increasingly interested in the European market, diversification away from the US will not come overnight”, said Peggy Corlin for Euronews. “Geography, after all, matters.”

‘Colin Kaepernick set an example. Nobody wants to follow it.’

Will Leitch at The Washington Post

Colin Kaepernick, the quarterback who knelt during the national anthem, desperately “wanted to play,” says Will Leitch. But as the “maelstrom he set off exploded, every NFL team chose not to roster him.” Kaepernick “wouldn’t retreat from his fundamental protest against police violence and oppression of Black people,” even if it meant losing his job. It “turned out the main lesson of it was the high cost of standing firm on belief, particularly against an organization as powerful as the NFL.”

Read more

‘Dear Ed Sheeran, fence-sitting is so last century: Musicians can no longer opt out of politics.’

Zoe Williams at The Guardian

Since the rapper Macklemore was dropped as a support act on Ed Sheeran’s ‘Loop Tour,’ “every other opening act has pulled out,” says Zoe Williams. Sheeran, “seeking to stay out of politics, has become, in this moment, the most political artist in the world.” The “concern” of many of the involved artists was that “they were facing not just censorship but censorship by billionaires: specifically Robert Kraft, who demanded Macklemore’s removal with the threat of axing the whole show from his Gillette Stadium.”

Read more

‘Trust in America’s food safety system is crumbling — Congress can restore it’

April McClain Delaney at The Hill

The agencies that “keep our food safe have been hollowed out,” says April McClain Delaney. As evidenced by this summer’s cyclosporiasis crisis, tainted lettuce is increasingly common, but the Trump administration “cannot tell us why these outbreaks happen or, in many cases, where they came from,” and “there is no clear plan to prevent” the next one. The “former director of the FDA’s food safety center” says the “people whose job” it was to “warn Americans” about outbreaks were “eliminated in last year’s cuts.”

Read more

‘China cares more about AI victory than safety’

Seth Center at The Washington Post

As the former State Department envoy who “co-led the first U.S.-China AI dialogue, I fear the coming talks will not save us,” says Seth Center. “I expect China to again downplay safety risks” and “portray itself as an altruistic savior dedicated to ensuring that the developing world gains AI access.” Meanwhile, it will “keep doing everything it can to get ahead.” Chinese “models do not currently match U.S. models in safety performance that matters — thwarting access to the most dangerous capabilities.”

Read more

Russian voters joke that, if there’s a “special military operation” in Ukraine, there’s now a “special electoral operation” for their parliament, said The Economist. Polls open for the Duma ballot on 18 September – the first parliamentary election since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine – and, despite ever greater public opposition to the war, Vladimir Putin’s grasp on power is unlikely to be shaken.

But battlefield “bodies are piling up” and “smoke is billowing” from oil refineries across Russia hit by Ukrainian drone strikes. The failing Russian economy and continuing fuel shortages are weighing more heavily on the population and, although this election’s outcome is all but certain, the people’s “tacit consent is crumbling”. The educated and politically conscious, who always voted in the past “no longer see much point in the charade”.

What did the commentators say?

“The system of power in Russia is often referred to as ‘managed democracy’”, where “the Kremlin does the managing”, said the BBC’s Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg. Critics dismiss the elections as “neither free nor fair” but, frankly, the Kremlin “doesn’t care what the critics say”. Does this mean there will be “no surprises”? “Far from it.” We’ve already seen a TV debate with “six empty lecterns”.

The election of 450 deputies to Russia’s lower legislative house “gives the impression of some diversity”, with communists, nationalists and “even some self-described liberals” on the ballot, said Brawley Benson on Foreign Policy. “In reality, scope for disagreement is vanishingly small.” United Russia – Putin’s party – holds 70% of the seats and there’s “little tolerance for genuine opposition”. The other Duma deputies are seen as “systemic opposition”, or parties that partially differ in their priorities, but “broadly support” Putin.

“United Russia’s popularity has been hovering around 32% in public opinion polls,” said political science professor Regina Smyth on The Conversation. That’s the lowest percentage since the invasion of Ukraine, and “even then, the number is likely inflated by respondents’ fear of revealing their opposition”. But the Kremlin has long deployed an “arsenal of tools” to retain its grip on power. Gerrymandering, “significant” levels of electoral fraud and, this time round, the banning of eight out of 19 political parties have, in effect, “eliminated non-partisan organised opposition”. The election is not about who wins but what could be telling is seeing how heavily the Kremlin needs to place “its thumb on the scale to maintain its party’s two-thirds majority”.

“Engineering” the outcome too tightly is “not without a risk for the ruling regime”, said The Guardian’s editorial board. “Too blatant” an election steal can be “a sign of weakness”. Already last month, Russia’s supreme court blocked the “old and marginal liberal party”, Yabloko, from participating in the vote. It does not “pose a serious challenge to the regime” but it is opposed to the war in Ukraine. The case for banning it was “spurious to the point of absurdity”. Putin wants to look as if he is well supported but “the harder the Kremlin is seen to work at constructing electoral proof of that support, the less confident it looks”.

What next?

While there may be “little reason to care” about this “snoozefest” election and its “foregone conclusion”, many Russians “are worried” about what might follow, said The New York Times’ Moscow-based correspondent, Valerie Hopkins.

“Rumours of a large, forced mobilisation are rampant”, as the military “burns through” troops in Ukraine. And, for a country that is a major oil producer, it “has found itself in the unusual position of running short of fuel”. Nearly 60% of Russians think the “people around them are experiencing anxiety”, according to a July poll from the state-affiliated Public Opinion Foundation. That’s “a four-year high”. And the state-owned Sberbank reported Russians withdrawing more money from banks this summer “than in the previous six years”.

Most significantly, the Kremlin public relations machine has been forced to switch tack. Picking up on the fact that many people are “struggling and scared”, it has abandoned its old “business as usual” message for a call “to rally around President Vladimir V. Putin and his war”.

A “polite, posh revolt” has broken out in an Oxfordshire village over plans to turn an old army site into new housing for more than 1,000 asylum seekers, wrote Ella Whelan in The iPaper.

Residents of Piddington voted to become independent from the UK in a symbolic referendum and now the parish has been “approached by hundreds of other villages and towns for advice on replicating their campaign”, said Leaf Arbuthnot in The Telegraph.

Grumbling Piddington

It’s “such a quiet, tranquil village” that the most you could ordinarily expect at 7am would be a cyclist “setting off for an early shift, or a milkman on his round”, said Arbuthnot. But when the referendum result was delivered, the atmosphere in Piddington was “nothing short of electric”.

The village’s 350 residents had been invited to cast their ballot in a small box outside the village hall and out of 312 votes cast, 285 voted to leave, there were 26 no votes, and one spoiled ballot paper.

As the landslide result was announced, residents were “palpably delighted”. The village’s “eccentric and deeply English decision to gun for a figurative ‘split’ from the UK has won it extensive coverage, even from media outlets overseas”.

Piddington had actually been “quietly grumbling for a while” about the plans, wrote Whelan, but now those grumbles are “headline news”, and residents are posing with home-made signs boasting their neighbourhood is “the village that roars”.

“The case of Piddington is fascinating” because residents voted in Calum Miller, a Liberal Democrat candidate, in 2024 and “you don’t vote in a Lib Dem if you’re agnostic on the issue of immigration”. Miller had previously backed calls to make Oxfordshire “a place of sanctuary for those fleeing torture and death”, but he has since written a letter to the government, opposing the new plans.

Piddington is about the “much bigger question of what is at stake with the issue of immigration”. Ten years ago, “even using the I word” could have you labelled racist, but “concerns about cultural tensions, NHS waiting lists and even crime rates are now pretty commonplace across the political spectrum”.

Backlog burden

The government has defended its migration policy after the symbolic referendum. “What I would just gently say to the people of Piddington is we inherited a massive asylum backlog,” Lisa Nandy, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, told Sky News. The government is “getting that backlog down” but “in the meantime”, it doesn’t think it’s “acceptable for all of the burden” to fall on poorer communities.

But Labour MPs “would do well to study what has happened in Piddington”, said Arbuthnot, because “the anger that has been stirred in even this conspicuously well-to-do and liberal corner of Oxfordshire could augur a broader mood taking hold across the country”.

Andy Burnham has “sold himself as the ‘I hear you’ prime minister", said Whelan, so “will he listen to the Piddington Poll”?

‘The American age is over’

Phillips Payson O’Brien at The Atlantic

“In the past six months, America’s power, long exemplified by the world’s best warfighting equipment and most highly trained military personnel,” has “proved insufficient to defeat Iran, an economically stagnant regime armed with cheap missiles,” says Phillips Payson O’Brien. For years, “virtually everyone thought that, in a crisis, Washington could draw on deeper reserves.” This “assumption about America’s fundamental strength reassured allies and deterred foes,” but it also “promoted a complacency.” Trump’s war with Iran has “revealed” just how much “American might has decayed.”

Read more

‘We found the most galling argument of the upcoming Supreme Court term’

Jacob D. Charles at Slate

“This fall, the Supreme Court will entertain a Second Amendment challenge to the prohibition of assault weapons in Viramontes v. Cook County,” says Jacob D. Charles. “The challengers — a few individuals who want to own such weapons, along with some gun-rights advocacy organizations,” argue that the Constitution “prohibits” them from “protecting themselves.” But their “precise argument depends upon judges second-guessing — indeed, overruling — the decision that millions of American people made about these weapons.”

Read more

‘Dementia cases are set to triple by 2050. Here’s how we can improve early detection.’

Anna Chodos at the San Francisco Chronicle

About “one in three” people “85 and older” have dementia, says Anna Chodos, and it’s “estimated that half” of those living with it “do not get a diagnosis.” But patients would “live longer and experience better brain function if they were given the chance.” Earlier evaluation can include “identifying and addressing sleep disorders, diabetes, obesity, hearing and vision loss, and poorly controlled vascular risk factors.” It also means “helping people find ways to be as physically, socially and cognitively active as possible.”

Read more

‘Oura will struggle to justify pulse-racing $16bn valuation’

Jennifer Hughes at the Financial Times

The Oura smart rings maker’s “upcoming initial public offering” is a “sign of investor interest” in “preventive healthcare,” says Jennifer Hughes. Still, it will “need endorsements of a more scientific kind.” As “care costs soar, the health-related uses become more valuable.” The device’s “continuous monitoring might flag a problem sooner than a patient’s next routine medical visit,” and clinical studies are using Oura data. But for it to be “more than a lifestyle gadget,” the brand must “overcome doctors’ concerns.”

Read more

Does money matter in an election?

In the US, where billions of dollars are spent each election cycle, the answer has long been a definitive yes. But in the UK, in part because of strict campaign spending limits, the jury is still out.

Now, two record-breaking donations to Reform UK totalling £72 million look set to test the theory to its limits.

Despite calls to strengthen legislation going through Parliament to include a cap on individual domestic donations, government sources insist last week’s mega-donations by two crypto-billionaires are “not being viewed inside Downing Street as a game-changing moment in this debate”, said Jack Fenwick on the BBC.

“But people across the political spectrum are now asking whether this massive injection of money will be remembered as a key moment when politics in this country changed.”

What did the commentators say?

“For all the failings of modern British politics, one virtue has largely remained,” said Lee David Evans on UnHerd: “big money plays little role in deciding our elections.”

In total £94.5 million was spent across the entire 2024 UK general election campaign, according to the Electoral Commission. By contrast, $11.6 billion is reportedly going to be spent in advertising alone for this year’s US mid-terms, said Reuters.

It would be “too defeatist (or triumphalist, depending on your perspective) to conclude that these [Reform] donations mean the next election is already over”, said Evans. But they are likely to “leave the ordinary party member feeling more irrelevant”. And if it means Britain’s political parties and politicians have to spend more time fundraising, “then our politics will have become a lot more American – and will be worse for it”.

The focus up to now has been on foreign influence, and “for good reason; it is for UK voters to choose their government”, said The Guardian. But now “ministers must look beyond the narrow question of outside interference” and find ways to limit mega-rich donors paying for “years of polling, advertising, data and staff, before election-period limits apply”.

But this is just “frothing at the mouth and gnashing of teeth”, said Ameer Kotecha, chief executive of the Centre for Government Reform, in The Spectator. There has been a “collective amnesia” from the mainstream parties, who have long received multimillion-pound donations from wealthy individuals and trade unions.

Arguments about how such donations help level the playing field for upstart parties such as Reform aside, these are “huge and potentially transformative sums for British politics”, said Ian Birrell in The i Paper. Yet Labour and the Tories have “only themselves to blame for this toxic situation after their failure to clear the stench of corruption that hangs over Westminster, despite a string of funding and lobbying scandals”.

The two parties have “tinkered at the edges of real funding and lobbying reforms” and now Reform “threatens to wash them both away with a tide of cash from a couple of billionaire crypto kings”.

People also naturally “assume that the donors are driving a bargain – that for a large donation, they expect something in return”, said former Conservative parliamentary candidate Iain Dale on LBC. “In my experience, that is not true, and most donors act philanthropically.”

The only alternative “is for the taxpayer to fund political parties through a regime set up by the state”. I do “wonder how many taxpayers would think this was a wise use of their taxes”.

What next?

Labour’s Angela Rayner has said the law to stop foreign and crypto donations will be used “retrospectively” and “backdated to 25 March” when it was announced.

But surely the “real question here is whether Labour is trying to save British democracy or itself”, said David Maddox on The Independent.

It’s a dangerous game they’re playing. “They may celebrate forcing Reform to hand back £72 million”, but if Reform were to win power “they could easily point to Labour’s actions to justify their own attempt to stop other parties receiving funding”.

Andy Burnham and his ministers “need to beware of creating a tit-for-tat scenario, which could be far worse for British politics in the long run”.

What happened

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

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

Who said what

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

What next?

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

‘When a return to the office is a return to sex discrimination’

Gleb Tsipursky at The Hill

A recent Organization Science study analyzed “everyday gender discrimination” and found that women experience “far fewer gendered offenses when working remotely,” says Gleb Tsipursky. As employers “roll out return-to-office rules, the risk is clear: Mandates are not neutral. They can recreate the exact conditions that drive women out of roles, teams and entire fields.” The “core takeaway is not that remote work is perfect.” It’s that “location changes exposure to bias.”

Read more

‘There’s a reason Europe is so obsessed with immigration’

Anton Jager at The New York Times

Immigration worries in Europe “outstrip objective reality,” says Anton Jager. The topic has “become a prism through which all the continent’s ills are viewed.” The continued flow of “outsiders” into European capitals is “held responsible for a gamut of problems, from poor social services to wage stagnation to crime.” But while migration is “assailed as a threat to Europe’s identity,” that identity is hazy. It “falls to migration to fill the void at the center of Europe’s self-image.”

Read more

‘We are ignoring the cause of homelessness and how to solve it’

Michele Steeb at USA Today

What if Americans “judged success not by whether people had housing but by whether they discovered or rediscovered who they were created to become”? says Michele Steeb. The federal government’s “Housing First approach” made “housing placement the primary intervention and measure of success while removing expectations for treatment, sobriety, employment, or progress toward self-sufficiency. In doing so, it too often treated the symptom of homelessness” while “leaving the deeper human crises that frequently accompany and perpetuate it unaddressed.”

Read more

‘Can a party be leftist and Zionist?’

Tamam Abusalama at Al Jazeera

Can a “party or an individual be both leftist and Zionist”? says Tamam Abusalama. The “short answer” is “no.” Touted in “Israel and beyond as a legitimate ideological belief,” being both is a “political technology designed to shield Zionism from any critique while preserving the structures of oppression.” Whatever “position early Zionists staked out on the political spectrum, what the movement ultimately produced — the state of Israel — was in direct contradiction with the anti-colonial, anti-racist politics the left was supposed to stand for.”

Read more

“There is only one reason that young people come into the city wearing balaclavas, and that is to conceal their identity to commit crime and intimidate members of the public,” said Nottinghamshire Police superintendent Chris Pearson earlier this month. “Not any longer. Your time is up.”

The city has become one of the first in the country to enact a ban on balaclavas, as part of a wider initiative, dubbed “Operation Reclaim”, to tackle youth anti-social behaviour across Nottingham.

Following masked anti-migrant protests on the south coast, other areas of the UK are looking to follow Nottingham’s lead, although opinion is divided on the extent and effectiveness of bans on face coverings.

Why is the balaclava so controversial?

Popularised by US drill rappers “wearing head coverings and ski-masks in videos”, the balaclava has become something of a transatlantic “urban fashion trend”, said The Telegraph. Ironically, the garment “is now marketed by British leisurewear outlets on the very high streets blighted by ‘ballie’ crime”.

The balaclava has traditionally been used by both “far-right” and “left-wing agitators” to conceal identities during protests, said James Hanson on LBC. But it is also a common accessory for street crime and anti-social behaviour, such as shoplifting sprees by “groups of balaclava-wearing youths”. “If you’re popping into Sainsbury’s in a balaclava, you’re hardly there to top up your Nectar points”.

The controversy over face coverings resurfaced following anti-migrant protests in Dover and Portsmouth earlier this month, in which balaclava-clad men blocked roads to try to prevent the movement of newly arrived migrants.

How will the ban work?

From today, Nottinghamshire police and council officers will be permitted to ask people to remove face coverings if they “reasonably believe” they are worn to conceal their identity, or to commit crime or anti-social behaviour. Those who refuse can be given a £70 on-the-spot fine and face referral to the Immediate Justice Programme, a scheme requiring community work including “litter picking or graffiti removal in the city centre”, said Nottinghamshire Police. If the individual is prosecuted, courts are able to impose a maximum fine of £1,000. Repeat offenders may also be issued with a criminal behaviour order, “which could ban them from the city centre indefinitely”.

Those wearing face coverings for religious, health, medical or work reasons or another legitimate purpose will not be affected by the ban.

The ban has been introduced following a public consultation in which more than 90% of 2,200 respondents supported police action. Authorities had identified around 180 city centre incidents involving face coverings or balaclavas between June 2025 and June 2026.

Are bans likely to spread?

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has told police chiefs in a private meeting that she expects them to “make full use of their powers to stop protesters wearing face coverings”, said The Independent. Current legislation already allows senior police officers to “declare a protest area where concealing one’s identity would be an offence”, but this power was not used during the Dover protests.

Other councils in the UK will be “carefully watching Nottingham’s progress”, said The Telegraph. A few areas have already adopted similar measures. In 2024, Wolverhampton City Council introduced powers allowing police to request the removal of face coverings worn with no reasonable purpose. The London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham introduced a similar policy in February this year, joined by Woking in July. “Even in leafy Cambridge”, an e-petition is calling for a Nottingham-style ban on balaclavas.

‘Vance’s childcare plan pits parents against each other’

Mary Ellen Klas at Bloomberg

“Should the federal government give subsidies to parents who stay home to care for their young kids? Absolutely,” says Mary Ellen Klas. “Should it also subsidize childcare for working parents? For sure. This shouldn’t be an either-or question, but the Trump administration’s new childcare subsidy plan” would “force working parents” to “compete with married, at-home parents for the same pool of funds.” In order to “meet parents’ affordability needs,” the government must “recognize that families have diverse childcare needs.”

Read more

‘The US right still paints Muslims as the “enemy.” But they are fighting for a brighter future for Americans.’

Nesrine Malik at The Guardian

“Members of a diaspora of Muslim background are breaking through and accumulating, as New York magazine says, ‘clout,’” says Nesrine Malik. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is “both the expression of that cohort and the catalyst of its recognition as an emerging force. They care deeply for their local communities but also for those in Gaza and beyond.” At the same time, the “Islamophobia that began in 2001 has only further burrowed into the fabric of American society.”

Read more

‘Elon Musk is reusing Trump’s anti-trans strategy. It’s unlikely to work.’

Paul Waldman at MS NOW

Musk is “spending at least $100 million on the midterm elections to support the Republican Party,” says Paul Waldman, employing a “barrage of ads targeting Democrats for not being sufficiently supportive of discrimination against transgender Americans.” But these efforts “will probably fail.” As for how Democrats should respond? “Frightened hedging won’t work. When Democrats say, ‘I support trans rights but I also have concerns,’” it only reinforces the “idea that they’re weak and unprincipled.”

Read more

‘Yes, children really are getting dumber’

Allysia Finley at The Wall Street Journal

“Rapid advances in artificial intelligence have been matched by an astonishing decline in student learning,” says Allysia Finley. “Covid school shutdowns” don’t “appear to be the primary culprit, given that scores fell in countries that kept schools mostly open.” Instead, the “two common denominators across most countries” where reading and math scores have fallen are “increasing classroom distractions and reliance on artificial intelligence.” Kids now “spend much of class playing games and watching videos on devices.”

Read more

What happened

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

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

Who said what

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

‘It’s small potatoes for us’

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

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

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

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

‘Just playing to his base’

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

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

Preliminary results from Sweden’s general election suggest a narrow three-seat lead for the centre-left opposition over the right-wing ruling bloc that had promised ministerial seats to the far-right.

The election is being fought on multiple fronts. Current prime minister and leader of the centre-right Moderate party, Ulf Kristersson, has been fighting for re-election on a platform of cutting asylum numbers and reducing gang shootings, while Magdalena Andersson, leader of the centre-left Social Democrats, has been focusing on the economy, the welfare state and suppressing the country’s growing far-right faction.

Like many nations across Europe, Sweden “has been subject to increased fragmentation” in its politics, said the Financial Times. The closeness of the votes so far herald “weeks of uncertainty” and protracted coalition talks. And the final result, and the fate of the far-right, will be closely watched elsewhere in Europe, where similar nationalist movements are gaining ground.

How does the Swedish electoral system work?

There are currently eight political parties in Sweden, and they are fighting this election in two major blocs: the Moderates, the Sweden Democrats, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals on the right, and the Social Democrats, the Left Party, the Centre Party, and the Green Party on the left.

Sweden uses a “mandate distribution” voting system, a type of proportional representation. To get “mandates”, or seats, in the Riksdag, the Swedish parliament, a party must pass the minimum threshold of 4% of the vote. After that, roughly speaking, a party that gets, say, 20% of the vote will get 20% of the seats.

This means that “coalitions are the norm”, said Politico. And in those coalition-building efforts, “Sweden’s smaller parties often have outsized influence”. With the “razor-thin victory margin” currently projected for the left, “that will be true again this time”.

Why has this election been so tight?

Party campaigns this year were “unusually heated and polarised”, said The Guardian. There have been months of “personal attacks between leaders, accusations of misinformation and Maga-inspired ads”.

The friction between the two main blocs has been growing since the right-wing coalition “broke a long-standing taboo” by partnering with the Sweden Democrats, an anti-immigration party with “neo-Nazi roots”. Kristersson has promised members of the party cabinet positions, should the right-wing bloc be re-elected.

With a campaign slogan of “Make Sweden Sweden again” – clearly aligning itself with Donald Trump’s Maga movement – the Sweden Democrats’ policies include banning headscarves and expanding a “repatriation grant” worth SKr350,000 (£27,000) to immigrants who have already become Swedish citizens. They have run bus advertisements, saying “Do you miss Mogadishu? The repatriation grant will help you get ​home”. One of their MPs “recently called for Muslims to simply ‘stop being Muslims’”, said The Economist, and their leader, Jimmie Åkesson, casting his vote in an immigrant neighbourhood in northern Stockholm announced that “Sweden shouldn’t look like this”.

Why does it matter?

The shifts in the balance of power triggered by this election will not only affect government decisions on taxation, welfare, health, education and crime but also “shape decisions affecting communities with limited influence over Stockholm politics” said The European Times. These include disputes over industrial development on Indigenous land, most prominently near Kiruna, which could impact the remaining Sámi reindeer-migration corridor.

This election has broader implications across the continent, too. If European centrists were hoping to take lessons from Sweden on how to beat the populist right, these “confusing” results make things “far from clear”, said The Economist. Although Sweden Democrats have suffered their first decline in support since their founding, they won’t be “too unhappy”. The party that was previously ostracised has now “attained mainstream acceptance that was once unthinkable”.

What will happen next?

It’s unlikely a final election result will be announced until Wednesday or Thursday. “Hundreds of thousands of overseas votes and late ballots” are still to be counted, said the Financial Times. Overseas votes in particular “typically skew conservative, so the final result is still considered too close to call” by some experts.

Once all the votes are in, “there is likely to be intense wooing of the smaller parties in the middle of the political spectrum”. And these talks are “likely to be protracted”. Both Kristersson and Andersson have “hinted that they might try to form centrist coalitions”.

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

Former cricket star and Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan now lives in a 6ft-by-8ft prison cell in the Adiala prison in Rawalpindi, Pakistan’s fourth-largest city. According to his family, his conditions are dire: Khan, 73, prime minister from 2018 to 2022, has been placed in indefinite solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, and is given dirty water to drink. He has lost 85% of his eyesight and his health is failing.

In a recent interview, his sons Kasim and Sulaiman, who are British citizens, accused Pakistan’s authorities of “trying to kill” their father. Pakistani officials reacted with fury; it briefly appeared that they might order a Test match against England to be abandoned. Pakistan’s government issued a statement claiming, against all the evidence, that Khan is actually being held in a seven-cell compound with home-cooked food, a TV and regular visits.

Why is the case so sensitive?

Because Khan is, to many, a national hero, and probably Pakistan’s most popular politician. Born to an affluent Pashtun family in Lahore, Khan graduated from Keble College, Oxford, in 1975, and captained Pakistan’s cricket team to World Cup victory in 1992; in Britain, he is still best known as a sportsman and a playboy, who later married Jemima Goldsmith.

But in Pakistan he became a prominent philanthropist, and then a very successful – and very divisive – populist politician. In 1996, he founded the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Pakistan Movement for Justice, or PTI) party, railing against the corruption he views as endemic among the two political dynasties that have dominated Pakistani politics, the Bhutto and Sharif families. His supporters cast him as a brave challenger to a venal establishment, who fought for years to fix a broken system; his critics say he is irresponsible and has polarised Pakistani politics, by casting all opponents as crooks.

What did he do in office?

Khan became PM by a slim majority, after winning the backing of Pakistan’s military – which has intermittently ruled the country and still wields great power – in a contest marred by allegations of vote-rigging and intimidation. In power, Khan proved erratic, and his record was at best mixed. He promised to end corruption within 90 days; but according to Transparency International, it actually worsened.

Pakistan’s economic woes continued on his watch: in 2019, he was forced to negotiate a $6 billion bailout from the IMF. Although he expanded the provision of healthcare, pledges to build an “Islamic welfare state” went unfulfilled. And his independent foreign policy (he was seen as pro-Taliban, and had close links to China and Russia) was criticised in the West. Meanwhile, he worked with Pakistan’s generals to control the media and crack down on opponents, some of whom were jailed.

How did he lose power?

In April 2022, having apparently fallen out with key figures in the military, he became the first Pakistani PM to be ousted in a parliamentary confidence vote. Khan claimed that the US and Pakistan’s military had conspired to remove him, and launched street protests. Within days, news outlets in Pakistan began following an army diktat to stop referring to him by name (instead calling him “the founding chairman of the PTI”).

In November 2022, he was shot in the leg at a rally, which he also blamed on the military. The new government, meanwhile, sought to bury Khan in dozens of legal cases; in May 2023, he was arrested by paramilitaries who smashed through the windows of Islamabad’s high court, where he was appearing on corruption charges. Fresh protests erupted. Although initially bailed, Khan has been in jail since that August.

What is he accused of?

Khan has faced charges in more than 100 cases, including bribery, corruption and the leaking of state secrets. He is now serving a 14-year sentence following a corruption conviction in which prosecutors alleged that he and his third wife, Bushra Bibi received land worth up to $25 million through a charitable trust, as a bribe from a real-estate tycoon. All Khan’s other convictions have been overturned or suspended; few were of exceptional gravity by the standards of Pakistani politics.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Federation for Human Rights have criticised Khan’s incarceration; and, in July 2024, a UN working group said that his detention had “no legal basis” and was part of a “campaign of repression” against him and the PTI.

How has Khan responded?

In October 2022, Pakistan’s Election Commission disqualified him from running for political office for five years. The PTI has also been prevented from using its cricket bat symbol on ballot papers – a setback in a country with low literacy rates. But Khan has been undeterred. He continues to protest his innocence from jail, attracting widespread support. Using AI-generated audio clips and images, he held virtual online rallies in the run-up to the February 2024 general election, in which candidates backed by his PTI party won an unexpected victory. However, it fell short of an outright majority, and has sat in opposition since; Shehbaz Sharif of the PML(N) took over as PM, at the helm of an eight-party coalition.

Could he be released?

For the moment, his prospects appear bleak. Pakistan’s supreme court ruled in August that Khan should be transferred to hospital to undergo medical checks; instead, he was taken to a government facility for cursory checks, and was then sent straight back to 23-hour isolation. Given that some 48 Pakistani political leaders have been assassinated or executed, some observers fear the government plans to keep Khan in prison until he dies. Western governments, meanwhile, have remained largely silent about his treatment – apparently wary of angering a strategically important nuclear power.

“Sadly, we’ve become used to far-right protests in recent years,” said Joe Mulhall in The Guardian. There have been angry crowds outside hotels housing asylum seekers across Britain, and Tommy Robinson has led vast “Unite the Kingdom” rallies in central London.

But what we saw in Dover and Portsmouth last weekend “feels different”. At around 7am on Saturday, “hundreds of balaclava-clad men, dressed all in black, began piling out of the backs of vans and blocked roads around Dover port”. Chanting “Stop the boats” and “Whose streets? Our streets!”, they shut down the UK’s biggest ferry port for hours. Then, on Sunday evening, a group of men gathered near a Portsmouth beach to try to prevent lifeboat crews from bringing ashore 140 asylum seekers.

‘Blackshirts reimagined’

“You can see them in the videos,” said Imogen West-Knights in The Independent: arms crossed, hoodies up, “like Oswald Mosley’s Cable Street blackshirts reimagined”. Some waded into the sea to film migrants arriving, before clashing with police. This is Britain today, where thugs can play out their “darkest fantasies of vigilante justice”.

It was unprecedented, said Brendan O’Neill in The Spectator, but it wasn’t surprising. The British state has abdicated responsibility for policing our borders: it appears either incapable or unwilling to stop the boats, or to swiftly deport these “intruders” from “heaven knows where”. It was only a matter of time before “ordinary people”, acting as volunteer “border wardens”, took matters into their own hands.

These weren’t ordinary citizens, said Kevin Rawlinson in The Guardian. Both protests last weekend were organised by Patriot Platform, a collective of far-right groups led by Daniel Thomas, aka “Danny Tommo”. They’re well-organised and disciplined, and able to mobilise at short notice. Patriot Platform claims to be “devoted to protecting British women and children, and to Christian values” (“Christ is King” is a favoured chant). In reality, many of its members are domestic abusers and violent criminals. “That includes Thomas”, who served time for a botched kidnapping.

‘Chilling and unacceptable’

“Concerns about illegal immigration are widespread, understandable and legitimate,” said The Telegraph. And people have every right to protest. But masked men closing roads and blockading ports is “chilling and unacceptable”. Disturbingly, it seems that anti-migrant protesters are copying the tactics of green radicals such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, targeting infrastructure and “bringing public highways to a standstill”.

It’s a sign that radicals on both Right and Left have given up on democratic politics, said Rachel Cunliffe in The New Statesman. Actually, politicians are listening on this issue: small boat crossings are down by more than 40% this year; yet anti-migrant agitation has only increased. To a growing minority, facts and arguments are no match for “the seductive power of being cast as a fearless crusader for the most important cause of our age”.

What happened

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

Who said what

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

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

What next?

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

What happened

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday blocked Missouri Republicans from using a 2025 congressional map designed to net the GOP one House seat. Justice Brett Kavanaugh earlier this week rejected a request from state officials to overrule a Missouri Supreme Court ruling that the 2025 map was void until approved by voters, and Thursday, the full court paused a subsequent order from U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark requiring Missouri to use only that new gerrymander.

Who said what

The Supreme Court’s decision to overrule Clark, issued “without any noted dissent,” was an apparent “signal that federal courts should stay out of the dispute,” Politico said. Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (R) said in a statement after the ruling that his office was “directing local election authorities to use the 2022 congressional map.” The Missouri Supreme Court also held Hoskins in civil contempt for ordering local officials to use the 2025 map after Clark’s ruling. But Hoskins “purged himself of said contempt” with his reversal, the justices said.

The rulings “marked a defining moment in a pitched legal battle that has lasted nearly a year,” The Associated Press said. But they also set up an “extremely rare situation” where Missouri is “poised to hold its November election” with “different U.S. House districts than were used in the August primary.”

What next?

It “seems likeliest” that Missouri’s primary winners will run in their “same-numbered districts on the old map,” The New York Times said. “If no additional courts” add to the “dizzying volley” of rulings, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D) is “favored to retain a Kansas City-area House seat that Republicans had hoped to flip.”

What happened

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

Who said what

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

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

What next?

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

“Zia Yusuf is a brilliant man, and he’s a genius actually, and he’s an incredible communicator,” Tory defector and Reform member Nadine Dorries told Times Radio recently. But, she added: “I wish he closed down his Twitter account.”

The interview followed a tweet by Reform’s self-styled “shadow home secretary” in response to reports that Somali-born Sagal Abdi-Wali, the leader of Camden Council, was the favourite to be Labour’s candidate to replace Keir Starmer in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election. Yusuf asked his followers: “Do you understand what’s happening?”, a remark that drew condemnation from across the political spectrum for its apparent racial undertones.

‘Remarkable and rare gifts’

“Even in these polarised times”, it is hard to imagine another politician as “unlikeable”, “rebarbative” and downright “sneery” as Yusuf, said Sean O’Grady in The Independent. I can’t help feeling that “every time he appears in the media or tweets a controversial opinion, he shaves another slice off Reform UK’s increasingly fragile poll ratings”.

Take, for example, his decision to call former defence secretary Ben Wallace, a former Scots Guards officer who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, a “traitor”. Just for good measure, he then added a poll asking if Wallace should be prosecuted for treason.

That episode earned Yusuf a “ticking off” from Nigel Farage, but “the more one sees and hears from Yusuf, the more obvious it becomes that he is a liability for Reform”, said Stephen Pollard in The Spectator.

The son of Sri Lankan immigrants, Yusuf built a hugely successful business career and is clearly “a man of remarkable and rare gifts”. But he is also “the latest example of the truism that business success is no indicator of political acumen, let alone political success”.

‘Ticking timebomb’

Whether Yusuf is or is not a nice person, “behaving as he does is entirely politically rational”, said Daniel Finkelstein in The Times. In labelling former Army officers traitors or arguing those not born in Britain shouldn’t be able to stand for Parliament, Yusuf is signalling “an assault on established institutions” and conventions. “The very fact that this alienates people unnecessarily makes his signal – that with him there is no compromise or messing about – more reliable.”

This has also endeared Yusuf to rank-and-file Reform members. A poll conducted in June found that 22% of those asked would opt for him as leader in a contest to replace Farage, ahead of current deputy Richard Tice, party chairman Lee Anderson and Reform’s “shadow chancellor” Robert Jenrick, said the Daily Express.

Politically this makes sense, said UnHerd. Having seemingly failed to absorb and replace the Conservative Party, Reform is “reasserting itself as an unambiguously populist party. All it needs now is an unambiguously populist leader.”

Senior figures within the party are forming what they call an “Anyone but Zia” group to try to prevent him from succeeding Farage, should he step down, said The Observer . “They all know [Yusuf’s] a problem, but he is popular among the grassroots,” one critic told the newspaper. “He’s a slowly ticking timebomb.”

A non-league footballer who “revs up teammates with F-bombs in a thick London accent” has become the “unlikely successor to the throne of a traditional kingdom in Uganda”, said The Times.

George Desmond Kamurasi, captain and goalkeeper of SE Dons in Bexleyheath, southeast London, is a first cousin of the Tooro region’s late king and a grandson of King George David Matthew Kamurasi Rukidi III, who ruled between 1928 and 1965.

Prison breakthrough

The royal succession committee of the Tooro kingdom selected Kamurasi following the death of King Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru Rukidi IV, who had occupied the Tooro throne since 1995 after succeeding his father at the age of three.

Oyo’s death prompted an “outpouring of grief” across Tooro and Uganda, said UG Diplomat. The nation’s president, Yoweri Museveni, described him as a “good person and a good leader,” whose death was “a great loss to the people of Tooro and Uganda”.

In contrast to Oyo, Kamurasi has spent most of his adulthood in Britain, “building a life largely outside Uganda’s royal spotlight”, said Pulse.

He has spoken of a “difficult adolescence” – his mother died when he was 14, leaving him “vulnerable to bad influences”, and he has remembered being “angry” and making poor decisions. “I got into the wrong circle and ended up in jail.”

But then “I realised that everything I had done was my fault” and “I took responsibility”.

After serving his jail sentence, football “became his route to rebuilding his life”. Kamurasi once played in Barcelona, where he was watched by Pep Guardiola, and in England he played lower-league and grassroots football for clubs including Ashford United.

Videos from his coaching sessions “portray an intense and motivational figure” who speaks about “discipline, responsibility and the need to recover from failure”.

Strong mobiliser

The royal succession committee selected Kamurasi last week, with 15 of the 18 members present voting for him, and a formal proclamation is expected after Oyo’s burial this weekend.

He’s “said to be reluctant to swap his goalkeeping gloves for the crown”, said The Times. The Spy in Uganda quoted unnamed sources “close to the unfolding succession process” claiming that Kamurasi doesn’t wish to leave London and inherit the kingdom.

But if the succession committee’s decision is officially confirmed and he accepts the role, the “qualities” he preached on the football pitch, such as “discipline, resilience, accountability and hunger for success” will then be “tested on a much bigger stage”, said Pulse.

Opinion on social media is divided over the prospect of the 6ft 6in footballer returning as monarch. He “looks like a strong mobiliser, no nonsense, aggressive”, said Ugandan author Cynthia Natkoto on X. “For the people of Tooro, that’s a good thing.”

But another X user described the prospect as “a crazy turn of events” and some have wondered how the kingdom would take to a king who is married to a “mzungu”, in his case a white British woman.

What happened

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

Who said what

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

What next?

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

“The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank – perpetrated by settler terrorists.”

With these words, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband has delivered the “biggest reset in UK relations with Israel for decades”, said The New Statesman political editor Ailbhe Rea.

His decision to introduce a ban on imports from illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank is not without “political risk”, but it marks a determination to “inject values and politics into British foreign policy” that many at home and abroad feel has been lacking for years.

What did the commentators say?

“Ethnic cleansing” and “forced displacement” are often seen as acts of genocide, a word Miliband was careful not to use, said The Independent’s world affairs editor Sam Kiley. In this context, sanctions against settlers seem “disproportionately low and leave the State of Israel off the hook”, but the “effects of the new British legislation will be felt far more widely”.

Israel has reacted strongly and swiftly by announcing four “counter-measures” against the UK, including the closure of the British Consulate in Jerusalem, and the denial of entry to Israel to 12 “British elected representatives and other British nationals involved in antisemitic and anti-Israel activity”. Among these are former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, also hit back on X with: “The Brits have lost it. The Jew hate of their government knows no boundaries and knows no facts”.

With this announcement, Britain “risks moving from being a country capable of connecting Israel, the Gulf, Washington and Europe to one whose positions are increasingly predictable but whose involvement is decreasingly necessary”, said Labour peer Jon Mendelsohn in The Spectator. This could result in a “remarkable loss of influence in pursuit of policies which have yet to demonstrate that they have made peace, Palestinian statehood, regional security, the safety of British Jews or Britain’s national interests more attainable”.

Miliband will hope his Jewish heritage – his mother was a Holocaust survivor who fled to Israel – and “staunch support of Israel’s right to exist will reassure the Americans”, and he “emphasises the difference” between targeted West Bank sanctions and the full boycott of all Israeli goods which Miliband himself opposes, said Rea.

What next?

Aside from the heavily signposted but underreported impact that West Bank sanctions will have on Palestinians living there “there are other potential prices to pay for this muddled gesture,” said The Times View. Not least, in next month’s crucial Israeli general election where a “siege mentality could rear its head, propelling more hardliners into power”. Were this to happen, the current feel-good mood created by joint UK, French and Canadian sanctions could prove “hugely counterproductive”.

Still, Miliband shows no signs of backing down, and intends to use the UN General Assembly later this month to shine the “clearest and harshest spotlight on what is happening and what must change” in Gaza, he told the Commons.

Those who have long claimed the UK has no influence on the world stage are “missing what’s happening”, said former foreign office special advisor Ben Judah on X. By pulling together CANZUK countries (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK) with EU members and their associates into these “issue coalitions of non-US led Westerners”, the UK has “found a role and an influential one, partially as a consequence of America abandoning hers”.

“This move against the Israeli settlement project to attempt to protect the possibility of a two-state solution from an extremist Israeli government is a continuation of this geopolitics.”

What happened

A man armed with two handguns and a Taser charged toward Ohio Democratic gubernatorial nominee Dr. Amy Acton on Sunday as she addressed a crowd at the Canfield Fair, the Ohio State Highway Patrol said. The man, Patrick Havas, knocked down at least two elderly people but was stopped before he reached Acton and did not draw his weapons, police said.

Who said what

The apparent attack attempt came as the “unofficial start of the campaign sprint” kicked off on Labor Day weekend, Reuters said, and President Donald Trump’s “deep unpopularity is imperiling Republican chances” of keeping control of Congress and state offices. Acton’s “closer-than-expected race” against Republican Vivek Ramaswamy “has become extraordinarily toxic,” The Washington Post said. Ohio politicians from both parties condemned Sunday’s political violence, which a Ramaswamy spokesperson called “completely unacceptable.”

What next?

Havas, 38, was booked in the Mahoning County ​Jail for disorderly conduct and two counts of assault. Even before the Labor Day kickoff, this year’s “campaigns already have been combative, busy and expensive,” The Associated Press said, and “they are expected to get even more so” as “voters tune in ahead of the Nov. 3 general election.”

Two seemingly unrelated incidents more than a year apart have sparked some of the biggest youth protests in Vietnam in a generation.

‘Tree of Justice’

Eighteen-year-old student Do Ngoc Phuong Thuy, known as Mina, was killed in Hanoi in May last year when the motorbike she was travelling on with her father was hit by a car. Tragic as the incident was, few expected it to lead to “an eruption of Gen Z outrage and creativity” that thrust Memorial Tree 55 on Nguyen Huy Tu Street “into the local zeitgeist”, said The New York Times.

The subsequent investigation yielded little information except that the driver had the initials N.S.C. and was born in 1961. This led to social media speculation that former National Assembly deputy Nguyen Sy Cuong was the car driver responsible. Some felt “the incident had been swept under the rug due to the influence of powerful figures”, said the BBC.

But by August 2026 the car crash and Mina’s death had “almost faded from public memory” and “may have stayed that way if hadn’t been for the heavy-handed decision of Vietnam’s minister for culture, Lam Thi Phuong Than, to all but ban a new album by rap artist ‘MCK’”, said academic Nils Mallock on The Conversation. “This censorship against the most popular rap singer among Gen Z drew scrutiny to the culture minister – and from there attention moved to her husband, Nguyen Sy Cuong.”

Within days, millions of young people voiced their outrage online and Tree 55, renamed the “Tree of Justice”, had become ground zero in a growing campaign against a perceived government cover-up.

Government reaction

“Pressurised by more than a year’s worth of growing suspicion and a rush of online attention, the issue had become too big to ignore,” said the BBC.

On the evening of 17 August, state broadcaster Vietnam Television (VTV) aired an official statement from authorities confirming Nguyen Sy Cuong’s involvement in the incident, adding that because he had “sincerely confessed and actively and fully remedied the consequences of his actions”, the victim’s family had submitted a petition to exempt him from prosecution.

In the one-party state, the official acknowledgment of responsibility was “an extraordinary concession to public pressure”, said The New York Times. Warning against “opportunists exploiting the incident on social media”, the TV report “reflected the government’s deep concerns about an unexpected youth movement pushing for accountability at a time when officials are focused on economic growth”.

The Vietnamese authorities are also mindful of the wave of Gen Z protests that “toppled leaders in Nepal, challenged authorities in Indonesia, and continue to rattle the power structure in India”.

Mina’s father Do Viet Hung, who survived the crash, appeared in the VTV broadcast, saying the “family was satisfied with the investigation’s findings”, said the BBC, and asked people “not to be drawn into the influence of reactionary elements”.

A senior police official also said in the report that some people were “leveraging the incident to stoke dissent”. The Ministry of Public Security had “uncovered highly dangerous plots and intentions by hostile forces, reactionaries and bad actors to incite unrest and cause disorder”.

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

‘Deranged demands’

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

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

‘Erratic behaviour’

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

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

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

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

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

Economic pain

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

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

‘Personal fixation’

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

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

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been deporting thousands of people to their home countries, but many are also being sent to “third countries,” nations the deportee is not originally from. This often leaves the deported person stranded in a place where they do not speak the language or understand the customs.

Mexico

While thousands of Mexican migrants have been deported to Mexico, the country has also been far and away the one with the greatest number of third-country deportations. About 20,000 people without Mexican heritage have been deported to Mexico during the second Trump administration, according to Refugees International’s Third Country Deportation Watch (TCDW).

These deported people are also racing against the clock, as the Mexican government “gives third-country citizens just 10 days to remain in the country, with its overstretched asylum system the only option for most,” said the Washington Office on Latin America. As it stands, at least “1,100 deported people per month in Mexico are citizens of other Latin American nations.”

Guatemala

Though the third country agreement between the U.S. and Guatemala wasn’t renegotiated until July 2025, ICE has been ramping up deportations significantly since then. Several thousand people have since been sent to Guatemala, including 2,284 Mexicans deported to the country from the U.S. between April and August 2026, according to the TCDW.

This marked a notable change for Mexican deportees, given that before the deal with Guatemala, most Mexicans deported from the U.S. were “sent almost exclusively back to their country by air and land,” said The Associated Press. But these migrants are “part of a ‘transit stopover’ before being taken to Mexico as part of an ‘arrangement’ with the Mexican government,” said Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo.

Panama

About 360 non-Panamanians have been deported from the U.S. to Panama, according to the TCDW. The nation has been a third-country destination during almost all of the second Trump administration. In one instance, a group of refugees “were put on U.S. military planes,” said Human Rights Watch. They didn’t know their destination and “realized they were in Panama only after landing.”

Another notable story came just one month after President Donald Trump returned to power, when “hundreds of asylum-seekers were sent to Panama instead of being allowed to present claims in the United States,” said the American Immigration Council. They were eventually “released by the Panamanian government and told they had 30 days to leave the country.”

Costa Rica

Costa Rica is another large Central American third-country destination where about 331 people have been deported from the United States, the TCDW said. Costa Rica agreed to take on these people because the country “seeks a closer alliance with Donald Trump’s government, which has been securing cooperation from other Central American countries in accepting deportees from other nations who have been detained by U.S. immigration agents,” said The Guardian.

Human rights observers are concerned that “some of the people being deported to Costa Rica may be asylum-seekers who were never given a fair chance to present their cases in the United States,” said Refugees International.

El Salvador

About 250 people without El Salvadorian heritage have been sent to the country from the U.S., according to the TCDW. Flights to El Salvador are relatively new, as ICE transfers to the nation only began in July 2026.

This number may seem minimal, and it is generally true that third-country deportations only “represent a small share of U.S. removals,” said the Migration Policy Institute. When it comes to the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, though, “fear may be their main function.”

Honduras

While Mexican immigrants are being sent to Guatemala, many others are also being sent to Honduras; about 170 non-Hondurans have been deported to the country, according to the TCDW. A transfer deal between the U.S. and Honduras has been in place since October 2025.

Officials have said that “one of the objectives of the deportations, which have not been formally announced by the U.S. government, is to deter illegal immigration from Mexico by sending some of its citizens further south and farther away from the U.S.-Mexico border,” said CBS News in a report on deportations to Honduras and Guatemala. This comes as Mexico has “voiced its opposition to the deportation of Mexican citizens to other countries.”

Uzbekistan

While most countries in this list are in Central America, one nation thousands of miles away also makes a surprising appearance: Uzbekistan. Over 130 people have been deported to the Central Asian nation as a third country, according to the TCDW.

Many of the deportees to Uzbekistan are from neighboring Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. There have been concerns about how these deportees are being treated in Uzbekistan, particularly “given that human rights organizations have documented a consistent pattern of harassment, restrictions and reprisals against activists and rights defenders” in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, said the Global Detention Project, which could create “risks for those being returned.”

Ghana

Over 100 people living in the U.S. without Ghanaian heritage have been deported to Ghana, according to the TCDW. But unlike some other nations on this list, legal action has actually been taken against Ghana, with an “international coalition of human rights lawyers and advocates” suing the country, said The Associated Press.

The lawsuit accuses Ghana of not allowing these people to stay in the country, instead “forcing deportees from the U.S. back to the home countries they had fled in violation of their rights,” said the AP. Many of these people were allegedly “flown from Ghana to their home countries within hours or days of arriving.”

What happened

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Thursday canceled all House business for the final two weeks of September, leaving just four days for voting and other legislative activity before the Nov. 3 midterms. That’s a reversal from just days ago. “Republicans are here to work,” Johnson told reporters on Tuesday. “We are going to work all the way through September.”

Who said what

Johnson’s decision to shrink the calendar “comes as candidates agitate to get back on the campaign trail,” Politico said. It also “severely” curtails “what had been a full legislative calendar for September,” though “GOP leaders continue to struggle to maintain control of the House floor.”

The government is now funded through December. But among other consequences, the canceled workdays are “threatening to delay a bipartisan push to crack down on sexual misconduct in Congress,” Axios said. The reforms are “something that everybody wants,” Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (N.M.), the top Democrat on a task force set up to address the issue, told Axios.

What next?

After the House wraps up its next four-day workweek on Sept. 17, lawmakers “will return again for a lame duck session on Nov. 9,” kicking off five final weeks of scheduled “legislative business before the end of the 119th Congress,” said ABC News.

What happened

The Missouri Supreme Court on Thursday ruled unanimously that congressional maps redrawn by the Republican-led state legislature can’t be used in the November elections, likely thwarting a GOP effort to unseat Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D). Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (R) “incorrectly” dismissed a “legal, sufficient and timely” referendum petition on the redistricting submitted in December, the court said in its opinion, so the new districts “did not go into effect and will not go into effect unless and until approved by the voters” in November.

In another “notable victory for Democrats,” The Associated Press said, the Maryland Supreme Court also agreed to let voters decide whether the Democratic-controlled state legislature can redraw congressional districts for the 2028 election, in a bid to defenestrate Rep. Andy Harris (R).

Who said what

President Donald Trump’s “quest for a midterm election advantage triggered an unusual mid-decade redistricting battle,” the AP said. Thursday’s rulings were among “only a few nationally to go against Republicans.”

The Missouri Supreme Court’s “surprising decision creates an unprecedented set of electoral circumstances,” because last month’s primaries “took place under the new lines,” Politico said. For “months, Missouri Republicans had signaled their intention” to stall “as long as possible while implementing the new maps,” and Hoskins waited until the day of the primaries to “declare the referendum insufficient.” The court’s “unprecedented decision” thrusts Missouri “into a full‑fledged constitutional crisis,” Attorney General Catherine Hanaway (R) said in a statement. She vowed to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

What next?

The Missouri court “did not specify how candidates would be determined for a general election,” The New York Times said. “Redistricting opponents had suggested that candidates who won their primaries” could “remain the nominees in the same-numbered districts.”

A senior aide to Nigel Farage and Reform UK’s head of policy have both stood down after they were filmed appearing to plot ways to avoid electoral laws on foreign donations.

Undercover investigative journalists posed as a potential Reform supporter and his wealthy American father, who paid for £32,500 of polling commissioned by Reform and which benefited the party. The polling “was not attributed to Reform, and was reported in The Telegraph and The Times without those newspapers knowing that it was commissioned by the party and paid for by the US donor”, said The Guardian. The benefit in kind was then also not reported to the Electoral Commission.

But Farage told LBC the polls in question were commissioned by an independent third party. He added: “Whilst the poll benefited Reform, it wasn’t commissioned by Reform. It had nothing to do with Reform. It was an independent third party that did it. So that’s nothing. That’s nothing. Polls are funded by overseas people every single week. Every single week.”

What was revealed?

In a meeting over oysters and wine in his Clacton constituency, Farage “met with the undercover team in late July after the three polls had been published and paid for”, said Channel 4 News, who aired the investigation by a group of journalists called Verbatim. The Reform leader believed them to be “William” and his father. Farage said the polling was “amazing” and provided “bang for buck,” adding: “It worked. Boom.”

The Channel 4 report also showed Dan Jukes, a senior adviser to Farage, suggesting a way to get around electoral law to secure a foreign donation of £500,000 for the party. Channel 4 said James Orr, Reform’s head of policy, also suggested to the undercover reporter that perhaps his father could pay for opinion polling to aid Reform’s campaigning.

Farage told LBC a “couple of our contractors have said things that shouldn’t have been said” and had been “removed this morning”. But added: “The party has broken no laws, the party has not taken any dodgy money or anything like that whatsoever.”

Is it illegal?

Electoral law says that to be a permissible donor to a UK political party you must be a UK registered voter, or a company registered in the UK. Not disclosing funding such as the ones for the polls would be illegal and accepting this kind of foreign funding would also be illegal.

An Electoral Commission spokesperson said: “The law requires political parties to report all permissible donations they accept with a value over £11,180 and all impermissible donations over £500. Information about any potential attempt to evade the controls on donations is for the police to consider.”

Labour and the Liberal Democrats have reported Reform to the Metropolitan Police and the force said it would assess the matter and any information provided to it.

Reform has denied any wrongdoing and said it had “been the target of a hoax perpetuated by foreign funded climate change activists”. Verbatim was founded by journalists from the Centre for Climate Reporting.

What could the fallout be?

Farage “appears to be trying to distance himself [from] Jukes and Orr, with his comments to LBC”, said the BBC. But Jukes “is widely seen as Farage’s closest aide, who is often at his side, and is judged to have an innate sense of his boss’ instincts”. Equally “Orr, a Cambridge academic who has stepped down [as] the party’s head of policy, could also be considered to be in Farage’s inner circle”.

Reform UK chairman Lee Anderson told Sky News there was “no chance” of Jukes and Orr returning to the party. But this “appeared to be contradicted”, said the BBC, by Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice, who told Radio 4’s “Today” programme minutes later that “it’s not actually, in the nicest possible way, for any individual to make that determination” as the investigation continues.

President Donald Trump last week announced the United States is obtaining rights to 65 million barrels of Venezuelan oil reserves. The agreement was made under the auspices of unelected President Delcy Rodríguez, who owes her position to the January U.S. military operation that snatched her predecessor out of the country. It is the “biggest oil deal in world history,” Trump said in a statement. Critics say the pact is illegal and exploitative.

‘Almost certainly unconstitutional’

Venezuela is “becoming the 51st state in all but name,” Joseph Zeballos-Roig said at MS NOW. Trump’s deal would give the U.S. “privileged access” to the country’s oil production and allow the United States to replenish its “dwindling stockpiles” of petroleum depleted by the war with Iran. The agreement will also “temporarily shore up” Rodríguez’s government thanks to an influx of tax revenues. But it looks like “gilded imperialism” and will likely “deepen a disconnect between Venezuelans and hopes for a new government” after the downfall of dictator Nicolás Maduro.

The agreement is “almost certainly unconstitutional” under Venezuelan codes, Elliott Abrams said at The Washington Post. The country’s laws say petroleum resources “are the property of the Republic” and “not transferable” to outside entities. Trump’s deal “hardly meets that criteria.” The scheme also relies on a private company led by Alejandro Betancourt, who has been accused of money laundering and made his fortune “under the corrupt Hugo Chávez and Maduro regimes.” What seems certain: “The deal will fail if democracy ever returns to Venezuela.”

The Venezuela deal has given the U.S. a “strategic victory” over its rivals, Arturo McFields said at The Hill. The country’s oil fields were previously controlled by Russian and Chinese companies, and revenues flowed also to Maduro’s allies in Cuba and Iran. No more. The U.S. is obtaining “energy security” and lower gas prices, while the government in Caracas gets an agreement that “revitalizes its oil industry, creates jobs and fosters prosperity.”

‘Old-school colonialism’

The agreement could be remembered as the “moment Venezuela shut the door on communism,” Yuri Perez said at Fox News. Critics who say the government “lacks legitimacy for long contracts” are right that legitimacy “must be completed at the ballot box.” But the alternative should not be “idle oil fields and an open door to Cuba, China and Russia.” A “future democratic congress” can and should ratify the deal on behalf of Venezuelans.

“The deal smacks of old-school colonialism,” Liam Denning at Bloomberg. And it is unlikely to draw major oil companies back to Venezuela. (Chevron, the only outside oil company that remained, said this week it will double its production there.) The “opaque settlement” possibly puts new elections “further out of reach” and will thus be “inherently brittle.” Rebuilding Venezuela’s oil production and its democracy will be the “work of many years of intense effort.” Trump has instead opted for a “shortcut” that relies on “raw U.S. power.”