What happened

Minneapolis officials on Monday released footage from a city-owned security camera that seemingly contradicted the federal government’s initial account of an ICE agent’s nonfatal shooting of Venezuelan immigrant Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis. The Justice Department dropped its felony charges against Sosa-Celis and his roommate Alfredo Aljorna in mid-February. But the “federal government had access to that video within hours of the shooting,” said The New York Times, which first obtained the footage, raising “questions about why it took weeks for the government’s case to fall apart.”

Who said what

The Department of Homeland Security’s initial statement said Sosa-Celis and Aljorna beat the ICE agent “with a shovel or broom” for about three minutes before the officer “fired a defensive shot to save his life.” But the video initially shows Sosa-Celis tossing the shovel aside as the encounter begins. The video then appears to show the agent tackling Aljorna outside their home, scuffling with him for 12 seconds, then firing through the front door after the migrants escape inside, wounding Sosa-Celis in the thigh.

When U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen moved to drop all charges, DHS said that “sworn testimony” from two officers appeared to contain “untruthful statements.” Federal prosecutors had “felt urgency to file charges” and didn’t watch the video until “almost three weeks” after charging Sosa-Celis and Aljorna, the Times said, citing a Justice Department official. Both spent weeks in jail and their girlfriends were sent to a detention center in Texas.

What next?

ICE said Monday that federal prosecutors are “actively investigating” the “false statements” made by the agents, who “may face termination of employment, as well as potential criminal prosecution.”

What happened

Pope Leo XIV on Sunday celebrated his first Easter as pontiff by urging leaders “who have the power to unleash wars” to instead “choose peace!” President Donald Trump invoked God in obscenity-laced social media posts threatening to bomb all of Iran’s power plants and bridges unless it agreed to open the Strait of Hormuz by Monday evening. Indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets constitutes a war crime.

Who said what

“Time is running out — 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to GOD!” Trump posted over the weekend. “Open the F--kin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH!” the president wrote, adding: “Praise be to Allah.” Trump’s post was “notable” for both its “vulgar language” and “somewhat desperate-sounding tone,” said The New York Times. It “would have stood out on any day, much less on what most Christians consider the holiest day of the year.”

The Vatican has become “alarmed” at the Trump administration’s “invocations of God” to “defend” the Iran war, The Washington Post said. Pope Leo has generally been “careful in his language,” leaving “more overt criticism” to U.S. bishops and “other senior proxies,” but he has “grown blunter in pushing back against suggestions that divine providence supports the use of force or violence.” In his traditional Urbi et Orbi blessing, Leo prayed that “those who have weapons lay them down” and choose a peace not “imposed by force” or the “desire to dominate others,” but through “dialogue.”

Some critics were more direct. Trump “is not a Christian,” former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a former Trump ally, said on social media over a screenshot of his Easter post. “Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshipping the President and intervene in Trump’s madness.”

What next?

Before Trump, no “other recent American president has talked so openly about committing potential war crimes,” the Times said, and his “language and actions could have far-reaching consequences” for the U.S., Iran and the world. A “defiant Iran” responded to Trump’s threats by striking “infrastructure targets in neighboring Gulf Arab countries” and threatening to “restrict another heavily used waterway,” The Associated Press said.

The EU's longest-serving current head of government has turned his country from a liberal democracy into something quite different. Orbán has been variously described as a populist strongman, an authoritarian capitalist, a “soft autocrat” and a “21st century dictator”.

He himself announced in 2014 that he was building an “illiberal state”, parting from “Western European dogmas” and learning from Turkey, Russia and China. By then his Fidesz party had already rewritten Hungary's constitution, modified its electoral system, and packed the courts and other institutions with party loyalists. Orbán's Hungary is seen as an inspiration to the populist Right across Europe and in the US, particularly to Donald Trump.

What is Orbán's background?

Born in 1963, in a village some 35 miles west of Budapest where his father worked on a collective farm, he went on to study law in Budapest, and political philosophy at Oxford, on a scholarship. A former member of the Young Communists, he became a fierce critic of communist rule, co-founding Fidesz – originally a liberal centre-left youth movement – which demanded free elections and the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

In 1998, he led Fidesz to electoral victory, becoming Europe's youngest prime minister. A year later, Hungary joined Nato. By then, Orbán had already set about transforming Fidesz into a conservative nationalist party; but in 2002, he lost his re-election campaign to a Socialist coalition. According to his biographer, he resolved to return to power and change “the rules of the game” so that he'd never lose again.

How did he do that?

Fidesz was elected in 2010 with 53% of the vote, but quirks of seat distribution gave it a two-thirds majority – giving Orbán, as PM, considerable power to reshape the country. Ahead of the 2014 election, Fidesz passed a new electoral law that cut the number of seats from 386 to 199; districts were redrawn behind closed doors to favour Fidesz's rural strongholds. Voting rights were granted to ethnic Hungarians living in neighbouring countries, who voted over 95% for Fidesz.

He quickly muzzled the free press. In 2010, a new law created a media council with the power to levy heavy fines on outlets for “unbalanced” anti-government reporting. The biggest opposition newspaper, Népszabadság, was bought then shuttered in 2016 by a company linked to one of the PM's allies; TV and radio stations and websites also came under the control of friendly oligarchs. It's estimated that today, Fidesz directly or indirectly controls 80% to 90% of the media.

Did Hungarians approve of this?

To a large extent, yes. Elections are free, if not fair, in the sense that opposition politicians are allowed to run, and ballots are counted correctly. And Fidesz has won three more general elections since 2010, never gaining less than 49% of the vote. Orbán has tried to unite the nation against perceived enemies, external and internal: refugees, particularly during the 2015 migrant crisis; the EU, with its “oppressive”, “imperial” system; gay people; “globalists” such as George Soros, the Hungarian-born US financier who has funded liberal causes across the world (and who paid for Orbán's Oxford scholarship); and, more recently, Ukraine.

Orbán portrays Hungary as a “Christian democracy” under continual, existential threat – a canny policy in a country with a long history of foreign domination at the hands of Ottomans, Habsburgs and Soviets. Fidesz ideology is based on the pillars of “God, Nation and Family”: LGBTQ+ rights have been curtailed, and pro-natal tax breaks have been given to incentivise women to have children.

How are his relations with the EU?

Orbán's flouting of democratic norms has meant constant conflict with Brussels. In 2022, the EU parliament passed a symbolic resolution declaring Hungary to be a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy”. Brussels has frozen billions of euros in EU funding, and has launched legal challenges against laws passed by Fidesz; but has so far stopped short of invoking the “nuclear option” of suspending its voting rights in the European Council. Orbán has continually sought to hobble EU action against Russia, a close ally that provides nuclear technology, and low-priced oil and gas to Hungary.

In February, Orbán used veto powers to block a €90 billion EU aid package to Ukraine, which he blames for disrupting oil supplies, and also claims to view as a military threat. He said this month that Hungarians should “fear the EU more than Russia”.

Why is his rule under threat now?

In the elections on 12 April, Orbán faces a challenge from Tisza, the centre-right opposition party led by Péter Magyar, formerly of Fidesz.

The “Orbán model” relied on delivering rising living standards in return for political dominance; but the economy has stagnated and living standards have declined. Magyar's politics are not dissimilar to Orbán's, but he paints the PM's rule as corrupt and “feudalistic” – with some justification. Hungary is often described as a kleptocracy. A circle of oligarchs tied to Orbán dominates the economy and lucrative public contracts. Orbán's son-in-law is one of Hungary's richest men. A recent scandal concerns György Matolcsy, the former national bank chief, who spent €210 million renovating the bank, and had a deluxe bathroom made for himself, complete with a golden toilet brush. The golden toilet brush has become a symbol of Orbán's elite.

Will Orbán lose?

Tisza is leading by at least ten percentage points in independent polls, probably enough to offset Fidesz's structural advantages. However, while Orbán and Fidesz retain control of much of the media and the machinery of state, the outcome, and the PM's willingness to accept defeat, are far from certain.

From his podium at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Donald Trump reminded his base how he differed from past presidents. “It turned out that I was able to stop wars from happening,” he said.

That was in 2024, said Natalie Allison at The Washington Post. A year later, the newly installed president was back at CPAC, boasting about being “a peacemaker, not a conqueror”.

Notable absences

This year, Trump skipped the jamboree for the first time in a decade: he was too busy managing the war with Iran he’d launched a month earlier. And he wasn’t the only high-profile no show, said Katy Balls in The Sunday Times. At the last event, J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio spoke, and Elon Musk ramped up the carnival atmosphere by brandishing a chainsaw on stage; this time, one attendee noted that there were more journalists present than politicians. That the event was rather more subdued than usual was due to several factors – including its relocation from DC to Texas; but the lack of buzz was indicative of the troubled state of the GOP as it gears up for the midterms.

A little over a year into his second term, Trump is discovering that for all his efforts to extend his authority, there are still constraints on what he can do, said Gerard Baker in The Times. Public revulsion has forced him to temper his migrant deportation policy; the Supreme Court has struck out his signature tariffs policy; the markets are squealing about the war in Iran. And even in his own backyard, the voters are restive: in late March, a Florida Democrat seized a red seat that takes in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

Base betrayal

The die-hards remain intensely loyal, said Elaine Godfrey in The Atlantic, but polls show that Trump is losing support among the coalition of younger Americans and Latinos that gave him his victory in 2024. Many already felt betrayed by his attempt to block the Epstein files and by the impact of his Big Beautiful Bill on the deficit. Now, they’re furious that he has taken the US into a war that is costing billions and further driving up the cost of living.

In the manosphere, prominent voices who rallied behind his “anti-woke” rhetoric in 2024 are complaining that Americans were duped. The podcaster Joe Rogan has called the war “insane, based on what [Trump] ran on”. There is dissent within Maga too, some of which has veered into antisemitism: Tucker Carlson and others have been peddling the line that Israel manipulated Trump into the war. Disenchanted Trump fans are unlikely to vote Democrat in November; but they might easily just tune out of the election – and so inadvertently deliver a “blue wave”.

As Donald Trump’s war wears on, it becomes increasingly clear that he has no “overarching strategy” and is now fighting a war of attrition, said The Guardian.

America is still striking at Iranian targets while building up troops in the region. Iran, in turn, keeps attacking Israel and the Gulf states. Last week, it hit a US airbase in Saudi Arabia, injuring 12 US personnel and causing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of damage. Tehran’s allies in Yemen have now entered the fray. The Strait of Hormuz remains shut. And while his officials talk about peace being “weeks, not months” away, Trump is still warning of far worse to come as he “searches for leverage”.

This week, the president said that the US could capture or “obliterate” Iran’s oil export hub, Kharg Island, and possibly even target Iran's energy and water systems – “war crimes by another name”.

Miles apart

Trump threatened to destroy Iran’s energy infrastructure last month, said Andrew Neil in the Daily Mail, only to row back, saying there would be no strikes for ten days to allow time for talks. That deadline elapses on Monday, but all the evidence suggests that he had no plan and was simply “playing for time”. And while he claims that Tehran is “begging for a deal”, the Iranians seem to think they have him “on the run”, and deny talks are even taking place.

Even if meaningful negotiations were on the horizon, the two sides are miles apart, said Richard Spencer in The Times. Iran is demanding not only an end to sanctions, but “an end to all attacks, including Israel’s, on Hamas, Hezbollah and other arms of the ‘resistance’”. It also wants reparations, and “sovereignty” over the Strait of Hormuz – a hint that it plans to charge for access, as Egypt does with the Suez Canal. The US, in turn, insists that Iran end its nuclear programme; give up its enriched uranium; and cut off support to its proxies.

When it comes to Trump’s rhetoric, a pattern is emerging, said Emily Maitlis in The i Paper. He reserves his most bellicose threats for the weekend, when the financial markets are closed, then starts talking up the possibility of peace so that the outlook seems more positive by the time traders are back at their desks. The markets, though, are getting wise to this tactic.

‘Escalate or talk’

As for Tehran, it seems unmoved by Trump’s threats. The fact is, Iran is far more capable than the US of both withstanding and inflicting pain, said The Economist. While the world counts the economic costs of this war, the regime is “making a mint” from sanctions-busting oil sales. Domestically, its hardline Revolutionary Guards remain in control. And overseas, its proxies continue to do its bidding: last Saturday, the Houthis provided a stark reminder of their capacity to ramp up the chaos when they fired missiles at Israel.

Trump, by contrast, is flailing. “Despite operational successes and his nonsensical claim of having already changed the regime in Tehran, he has yet to win any substantive gains from the fighting.” His choice now is to “escalate or talk”.

Given the risks of escalation, Trump will probably seek a deal to reopen Hormuz, said Gideon Rachman in the FT. But any outcome that leaves Iran with practical control over Gulf energy exports would be deeply unpopular with those states. It has even been suggested that the UAE and Saudi Arabia could “join the conflict rather than accept that outcome”.

‘The regime is hurting’

Trump will find the Iranians to be very tough negotiators, said Matthew Gould in The Times. The regime has shown its capacity before to withstand “repeated blows”, and is determined to stay in power no matter how much pain it causes its people. By contrast, Trump will be worrying about popular opinion ahead of the midterms. He is reportedly already “bored” with the conflict. And if it chooses, Tehran can use its trigger-happy proxies to derail the talks at any moment. That said, Iran has a habit of overplaying its hand and, “for all its bravado, the regime is hurting”.

Pakistan, in its role as mediator, has intensified its diplomatic efforts over the past week, said Saeed Shah in The Guardian; but Tehran is so far refusing to engage in face-to-face talks with US officials. Trump began the war confident that it wouldn’t take long to topple the Iranian regime, said Steve Bloomfield in The Observer. Its nuclear programme had been weakened, its allies had been hobbled, so the US and Israel seized the moment. Yet in the past five weeks, the mullahs have actually tightened their grip on power; and it’s the ordinary Iranians, who Trump promised to save, who will pay the price for this war. If it ends soon, other economies will bounce back. Iran could feel the impact for generations to come.

What happened

Environmental Protection Agency chief Lee Zeldin on Thursday said his agency has added microplastics and pharmaceuticals to a draft list of contaminants in drinking water, describing it as a “historic step” for the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a MAHA champion, joined Zeldin at Thursday’s briefing to announce a $144 million initiative to study and measure microplastics in drinking water.

Who said what

“This is a direct response to the concern of millions of Americans, who have long demanded answers about what they and their families are drinking every day,” said Zeldin at the briefing. The EPA is required to update the Contaminant Candidate List every five years under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Adding microplastics and pharmaceuticals to the list “gives local regulators a tool to evaluate risks in their water supply,” NPR said, but it “doesn’t actually guarantee” research or contaminant limits. In fact, the EPA “rarely moves pollutants off the list” and into regulatory action, The Associated Press said. “I think it’s fair to call this theater,” Katherine O’Brien, an attorney with nonprofit Earthjustice, told NPR, especially as “these very same agencies” are doing “real harm” by “undermining actual legal protections” against toxic chemicals in drinking water and food. “This is an important first step,” Gannon University plastic pollution researcher Sherri Mason told NPR, “and I think we should recognize that.”

What next?

The draft Contaminant Candidate List will be open for public comment for 60 days and is expected to be finalized by mid-November.

What happened

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday forced out Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George. A Pentagon spokesperson gave no reason, saying only that George “will be retiring” as the Army’s top uniformed officer, “effective immediately.” Hegseth also reportedly fired Gen. David Hodne, head of the Army’s new Transformation and Training Command, and Maj. Gen. William Green, chief of the Army Chaplain Corps.

Who said what

With George’s dismissal, Hegseth has “removed most of the leaders of the military services,” The Wall Street Journal said. He has “moved quickly” to reshape the Pentagon, Reuters said, but “firing a general during wartime is nearly without precedent.”

“Senior Army officers reacted with anger and frustration” to George’s abrupt removal, The New York Times said. His tensions with Hegseth were “not rooted in substantive differences” over Army policy, but instead reflected Hegseth’s “long-running grievances with the Army,” his “troubled relationship” with Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and a clash over Hegseth’s “highly unusual” decision to block the promotion of four Army officers, two of whom are Black and two women. George had forged a tight partnership with Driscoll, whom Hegseth “has perceived as a threat” due to his close White House ties, CNN said. “Hegseth can’t fire Driscoll,” an administration official told The Washington Post. “So he’s going to make his life hell.”

What next?

Hegseth was expected to replace George with Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the recently installed Army vice chief of staff and Hegseth’s former top military aide.

What happened

President Donald Trump on Thursday fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, saying in a social media post she would be leaving the Justice Department for an unidentified “much needed and important new job in the private sector.” Trump said Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, his former criminal defense lawyer, would serve as acting attorney general.

Who said what

Bondi’s ouster ends a “tumultuous 14-month tenure” that was largely “defined by her unyielding willingness to respond to Trump’s demands and desire to reshape the Justice Department in his image,” The Washington Post said. She “oversaw the hollowing out” of the department by “firing scores of experienced prosecutors deemed insufficiently loyal to the president.” Bondi also “set out to do Trump’s bidding” by “opening investigations into his political foes,” The Associated Press said.

But Trump became increasingly “incensed that she had not successfully prosecuted a number of his political enemies,” The Wall Street Journal said, and “frustrated she didn’t do more to contain fallout” from the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking files. “People are going to say it’s Epstein,” a Trump confidante told Axios. But “this was all about his enemies list, and Pam wasn’t getting the indictments.” Trump had “many good reasons” to fire Bondi, Jeffrey Toobin said in an op-ed for The New York Times. “Her failure to serve his need for revenge against his enemies” is the “single bad one.”

What next?

Bondi is expected to leave in 45 days, Axios said. EPA chief Lee Zeldin and Blanche are widely reported to be in the running to replace her. Bondi “did almost everything Donald Trump asked” and “it wasn’t enough,” Politico said, so whoever succeeds her faces a “crucial” question: “How far will you go to avoid Bondi’s fate?”

Almost from the moment she was elected in 2022, Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s first female prime minister, has seemed “in complete control”, said Hannah Roberts on Politico. The working-class girl who grew up in a down-at-heel Roman suburb, and shot to power as leader of the hard-right Brothers of Italy party, had – until last week – been shrouded in “an aura of political invincibility”.

Her centre-right coalition – dominated by her own party in alliance with Matteo Salvini’s populist party, Lega, and the late Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia – has proved the most stable government Italy has had in years. But that invincible aura has now been shattered by her decision to call a referendum on her proposed judicial reforms, a flagship policy she claimed was needed to end supposed political interference by the courts.

The decision backfired spectacularly: in a vote last week that many considered a plebiscite on her leadership, some 54% of Italians opposed the constitutional amendment, which, among other things, would have separated the career paths of judges and public prosecutors, and reconstituted the bodies that oversaw them.

To Meloni’s critics, this proposal was a threat to judicial independence, and Italy’s three largest cities – Rome, Milan and Naples – all convincingly rejected it. In Naples, where the “No” vote received 71% support, dozens of lawyers and judges revelled in her resounding defeat: at the headquarters of the National Magistrates’ Association they sung the famous anti-fascist song “Bella Ciao” as they quaffed champagne. Her defeat has also given the opposition reason to be cheerful: Italy’s “torpid politics suddenly look competitive again”.

‘Spirit of vengeance’

The PM’s big mistake was to politicise the reforms, said Mario Orfeo in La Repubblica (Rome). Italy’s judicial system is in desperate need of overhaul, not least on account of its routine staff shortages and excessively long trials.

Rather than attempting to make it more efficient, however, Meloni was driven by “the spirit of vengeance”. For decades, the Italian Right has raged about the court’s perceived left-wing bias, a rage stoked by the “Mani pulite” (“Clean Hands”) investigations of the 1990s, in which hundreds of politicians were accused of corruption and had to stand down. The outrage grew under the premiership of media mogul Silvio Berlusconi, who had to face dozens of lawsuits over his business dealings, and who damned the judicial system as “a cancer of democracy”.

It’s in that spirit that Meloni and her allies – enraged by judicial rulings that have blocked plans to send asylum seekers to Albania and to build a $13.5 billion bridge to Sicily – approached this referendum. A “parallel Mafia”, is how the justice minister, Carlo Nordio, depicted prosecutors. Italy will be flooded with illegal immigrants and rapists, warned Meloni, if the “Yes” vote loses.

‘Surprisingly clumsy’

Meloni, who has immense political talents, has prospered by being pragmatic and forming viable alliances, said Luzi Bernet in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Zürich). But on this occasion she was “surprisingly clumsy”, foolishly assuming that her parliamentary majority would guarantee a simple victory.

But it wasn’t just hubris that led to her defeat, said Christian Rocca on Linkiesta. That “heavy blow” should also be put down to her close relationship with the “radioactive” Donald Trump: in Italy, where fears of rising petrol and electricity prices are rife, Trump’s Iran war is deeply unpopular.

This defeat marks a “major political turning point”, said Le Monde (Paris). Meloni is now weakened: the opposition Democratic Party, the Five Star Movement and the Italian Socialist Party, all smell blood. They are hamstrung, though, by a “glaring lack of leadership”. But a defeat like this will expose the PM to internal attacks and “sow doubt in the ranks”, said Federico Capurso in La Stampa (Turin). So ahead of the 2027 general election, Meloni will have to spend a year “in the trenches”. She may claim nothing has changed: the reality is that “everything has already changed”.

The Iran war follows on the heels of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on allies and threats to take Greenland from NATO partner Denmark. Now, the president is demanding that other countries reopen the Strait of Hormuz closed by the war he launched. And critics say he has transformed the U.S. from the so-called leader of the free world into a rogue superpower that threatens global stability.

Trump has driven “deep and perhaps permanent wedges” between the U.S. and its allies in Europe and Asia, said Robert Kagan at The Atlantic. The Iran war was launched with “no public debate, no vote in Congress” and no consultation with “allies other than Israel.” Europeans must now wonder if the war signals that the president is “more or less likely” to “take similarly bold action on Greenland.” American global leadership survived unpopular wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan. But it may not survive this.

Weaker, lonelier and less effective

The fallout from Iran demonstrates the administration “either didn’t understand how its actions would affect other states or simply didn’t care,” said Stephen M. Walt at Foreign Policy. That leaves “every country in the world” trying to determine how to work with an “increasingly rogue” U.S. For now, its ostensible friends have to weigh whether U.S. power “could be used to harm them either intentionally or inadvertently.”

Every post-Cold War administration has taken on actual “rogue” states, said Matthew Kroenig at The Wall Street Journal. U.S. presidents have waged a “de facto campaign of toppling anti-American dictators” such as Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. And Iran is the “biggest prize” on the list. Even if the Islamic regime does not fall under the weight of U.S. attacks, it will be “too weak to pose a serious threat for years to come.” That puts Trump “on the verge of eliminating the world’s rogue states.”

A swaggering superpower “could be a collective asset for the democratic world,” said Hal Brands at Bloomberg. But Trump’s approach could transform the U.S. into an “out-of-control hegemon” at risk of being “weaker, lonelier and less effective than before.” Success in Iran might “create a new Middle East with a U.S.-led coalition at its core,” but failure will serve as a “damaging rebuff of U.S. power.”

Allies look to Beijing

The U.S. “had to do it ourselves” because other countries would not join the “decapitation of Iran,” said Trump in a Wednesday night prime-time address to the nation. The president has threatened to leave NATO over the issue, but there are “few signs that’s happening,” said Politico.

Polling shows residents of Canada, France, Germany and the U.K. now “believe it’s better to depend on China” than the U.S., said Politico. The U.S. “no longer works in partnership” with its old allies, said former Deputy Assistant Secretary Mark Lambert to the outlet, and is “only focused on itself.”

“This is gutter politics,” was Armed Forces Minister Al Carns’ reply when quizzed about the theft. “We’ve got two wars on, one in the Middle East, one in Ukraine, and we’re talking about someone’s phone.”

But like it or not, the theft of Morgan McSweeney’s work phone is a big political issue, said Alex Glover in The Spectator. In October, when he was still Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, McSweeney was walking down a street in Pimlico, phone to his ear, when a man on a bicycle snatched it from his hand and pedalled off with it. Or so McSweeney told the police.

But that phone held text messages to his friend Lord Mandelson, messages that could have cast light on how the latter got to be appointed our US ambassador, and which would now have to be disclosed as part of the inquiry into the Mandelson/Epstein scandal.

Holes in the tale

To many, the theft sounds too convenient to be true. Not to Starmer, though. As he puts it: “The idea that somehow everybody could have seen that some time in the future there would be a request for the phone is, to my mind, a little bit far-fetched.”

I don’t know the exact fate of the “stolen” phone, said Dan Hodges in the Daily Mail, but I know this: “Starmer is lying his posterior off about what happened.” The phone was reported stolen over a month after Mandelson was sacked as ambassador, by which time everyone, Starmer included, knew the huge significance of his chief of staff’s phone messages. Indeed, meetings were held in Downing Street to “game-out” how to proceed should the government be forced, as it now has been, to release documents relating to Mandelson.

Understandable reaction

And there are huge holes in the tale McSweeney told police, said Amy Gibbons in The Daily Telegraph. He did say that it was a “government phone”, but he never mentioned that he worked for Starmer and that it contained sensitive information. He even gave them confusing details about where the theft took place. Amazingly, the stolen phone wasn’t reported to the intelligence services, nor did No. 10 make any attempt to recover it.

I’m confused, said John Crace in The Guardian. For years, right-wing hacks have been going on about London being “a hellscape ... where simply using your phone is an invitation to be mugged”. Yet instead of cutting McSweeney some slack, they’ve convinced themselves that his is “the only phone in London not to have been nicked”.

Not getting details right just after you’ve been mugged is understandable behaviour for anyone in shock, but not in McSweeney’s case it seems. “After all, it’s a well-known fact that men with ginger hair and a beard can’t be trusted.”

The U.S. may soon put proverbial “boots on the ground” in Iran. President Donald Trump is considering an operation to seize Kharg Island, a key oil hub for the Islamic regime, as he tries to bring about the end of the war on terms favorable to the United States.

Kharg could prove an attractive target as Trump seeks to “hobble Iran’s oil industry for leverage in negotiations,” said The Associated Press. But experts say a U.S. attack “would risk American lives” and possibly “still fail to end the war.” Kharg is not far from Iran’s mainland, so the regime “can potentially rain a lot of destruction on the island, if they’re willing to inflict damage on their own infrastructure,” said Michael Eisenstadt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. American forces will find the island “hard to take,” said Danny Citrinowicz of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. “It will be hard to hold.”

Iran will probably respond to a Kharg invasion with “escalating strikes on energy infrastructure across the Middle East,” said Bloomberg. That would create additional turmoil for global oil markets, “where prices have already topped $100 a barrel” because of the war.

What did the commentators say?

Seizing Kharg “could be militarily feasible,” former Gen. Mark Hertling said at The Bulwark. But to what end? The U.S. can “seize terrain, conduct raids” and conduct other military operations with “unmatched precision.” But military campaigns require “alignment between ends, ways and means,” and right now “that alignment is not evident.” If the United States attempts to seize Kharg without a clear understanding of the end goal — regime change, the end of Tehran’s nuclear program or something else — “success will be temporary.” U.S. leaders owe troops a “strategy worthy of the risk we ask of them.”

“There are grounds” to believe that taking Kharg could force Iran’s regime to “capitulate before it implodes,” Marcus Solarz Hendriks said at The Spectator. The country’s economy “cannot limp on without crude oil exports.” A political system should not deflect such economic pain on its people, but the “Islamic Republic is capable.” The regime does not appear amenable to compromise or surrender. Tehran will back down only if “America projects unwavering resolve.” Trump’s path to victory, then, is “through escalation, even if the stakes are immense.”

What next?

Kharg is not the only potential target for U.S. troops. They could also try to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or seize Iran’s nuclear material, said The New York Times. The risks of any of those options “are enormous.” If troops do take the island, they could “be there for a while,” Trump said to the Financial Times.

The Pentagon is preparing for “weeks of ground operations” in Iran, said The Washington Post. That does not mean a final decision has been made. The Defense Department is working to “give the commander-in-chief maximum optionality,” said White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt.

What happened

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon on Tuesday ordered President Donald Trump to stop construction on his massive White House ballroom “unless and until Congress blesses this project.” The U.S. president “is the steward of the White House,” wrote Leon, a George W. Bush appointee. “He is not, however, the owner!”

Who said what

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, which sued Trump in December, is likely to succeed in its challenge because “no statute comes close to giving the president the authority he claims” to radically transform the White House, Leon said in his order. Trump demolished the East Wing last October to build the ballroom.

Leon’s decision, “punctuated by 19 exclamation points,” is the “first meaningful setback to the president’s increasingly audacious efforts to redesign the White House and Washington,” The New York Times said. The $400 million, 89,000-square-foot ballroom is a “passion project” for Trump, Politico said. He “fumed at the ruling,” The Associated Press said, calling Leon “totally wrong” about the need for congressional approval.

What next?

Leon paused his decision for 14 days so the White House could appeal, but warned that “any above-ground construction” in that period “is at risk of being taken down depending on the outcome of this case.”

What happened

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a 2019 Colorado law barring licensed therapists from using “any practice or treatment” to change a child’s “gender expressions” or sexual orientation. The 8-1 ruling, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, found that the “conversion therapy” ban, as applied to talk therapy, was a “presumptively unconstitutional” and “egregious assault” on First Amendment free speech protections.

Who said what

Every justice but Ketanji Brown Jackson rejected Colorado’s position that its never-enforced law “was not regulating free speech but outlawing substandard medical care — something courts have long allowed,” The Washington Post said. The law “censors speech based on viewpoint,” Gorsuch wrote, and tries to “enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech.”

Jackson warned in her dissent that the ruling could be “catastrophic” for the ability of states to “regulate the provision of medical care in any respect.” Because the court’s “majority plays with fire in this case,” she said, reading from the bench, “I fear that the people of this country will get burned.”

What next?

The Supreme Court sent the case back to the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, but “strongly hinted that the ban would fail” the “more stringent standard of review” Gorsuch laid out in his opinion, SCOTUSBlog said. In other words, CNN said, the “death sentence for the law” will “ultimately be carried about in another court.” About two dozen other states also “ban the discredited practice,” The Associated Press said, and Tuesday’s ruling is “expected to eventually make” those laws “unenforceable” as well.

What happened

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Monday signed legislation renaming Palm Beach International Airport as President Donald J. Trump International Airport. Florida Republicans — who recently named the road leading to the airport President Donald J. Trump Blvd. — said they were honoring the first president to claim Florida as his residence.

Who said what

DeSantis “signed the law in private, with little fanfare — an unusual move for the governor,” The New York Times said. But other Florida Republicans “were quick to celebrate” the “massive — and costly — rebranding,” Politico said. Florida Democrats pointed to the estimated $5 million cost to rename the airport, saying Florida taxpayer money was “being misused to celebrate the man who caused gas prices to rise to over $4 a gallon.”

The Palm Beach airport is the “latest in a series of buildings, institutions, government programs, warships and money” affixed with Trump’s name, Reuters said. The Trump Organization filed a trademark application in February for “President Donald J. Trump International Airport,” but later said it wouldn’t claim any money from the rebrand.

What next?

The airport name change goes into effect July 1, subject to administrative changes from the Federal Aviation Administration.

“Angela Rayner is no longer ‘on manoeuvres’,” said Dan Hodges in The Mail on Sunday. The former deputy PM is now targeting Keir Starmer “with live rounds”. In a speech last week to the soft-left Momentum group, she said that Labour was fighting for survival and “running out of time”. She also condemned the PM’s plans to make it harder for migrants to gain settled status, calling them “un-British” and a “breach of trust”.

A leftward change of tack

Rayner is clearly setting herself up to replace Starmer after Labour’s expected hammering in May’s local elections – and she may succeed. She’s popular with the Labour movement, and her fellow MPs are desperate. Prior to Labour’s catastrophic by-election loss in Gorton and Denton a month ago, they were “prepared to tolerate a strategy that focused on neutralising Reform UK”. But they now regard the Greens as an existential threat.

A leftward change of tack – whether under Starmer or Rayner – makes electoral sense for Labour, said Andy Beckett in The Guardian. Analysis shows that its loss of support to the Greens, Lib Dems and other parties is “larger and more reversible” than its loss of support to Reform. With today’s fragmented electorate, fortune will favour parties that get their vote out. Securing as little as 25% of the electorate could win a lot of closely contested seats.

‘Power over process’

But is Britain ready to accept Rayner as PM, asked Jason Cowley in The Sunday Times. There’s no doubt that she’s a deft operator with a great life story and considerable charm. “Watch her when she is with the King,” an MP told me. “Now imagine her in the Oval Office with [Donald] Trump. It would work.” Rayner would lead in a different way to Starmer – “not least because, unlike him, she relishes power over process”. With the row over her tax affairs expected to be settled before May, she is ready to join the fray.

But while her attacks on immigration reform may cheer some Labour MPs, they won’t go down well with many voters. Targeting that policy is a “strange decision”, said John Rentoul in The Independent. If, as Rayner claims, Labour must “show the British people whose side we’re on”, it makes little sense to make “soft on immigration” one’s signature policy.

What happened

A federal judge in California on Thursday temporarily blocked the Pentagon from labeling Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” a designation that effectively blacklisted the AI company from U.S. government contracts. U.S. District Judge Rita Lin said the “broad punitive measures” imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth likely violated Anthropic’s due process and free speech rights.

Who said what

The ruling was a “clear victory” for Anthropic in its “bitter power struggle with the Defense Department over the use of its Claude system by the military,” The Washington Post said. During negotiations for a $200 million contract, Anthropic wanted to keep safeguards against using its AI on autonomous weapons and surveilling Americans, and the Pentagon rejected any limits imposed by a private contractor. When the dispute became public, Hegseth blacklisted Anthropic using an “obscure government-procurement statute aimed at protecting military systems from foreign sabotage,” Reuters said.

“Nothing in the governing statute supports the Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government,” Lin wrote in her 43-page ruling. If the Pentagon had real national security concerns, it “could just stop using Claude.”

What next?

Lin paused her ruling for seven days to give the Pentagon a chance to appeal. The outcome of the case and a similar challenge pending in Washington, D.C., have broad “implications for AI use in war,” The New York Times said. While the Trump administration has said it would “transition away” from Anthropic’s AI, the Post said, Claude is “deeply embedded in the military’s systems” and the Pentagon “has been continuing to use it in support of its bombing campaign in Iran.”

What happened

President Donald Trump on Thursday said he would sign an executive order directing Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to “immediately pay our TSA Agents” in order to “quickly stop” the “Chaos at the Airports.” After Trump’s announcement on social media, the Senate passed a bill early Friday morning to fund the TSA and all other DHS agencies except those responsible for immigration enforcement. Pressure had been building for action as air travelers continually face long lines at some airports amid TSA callouts and resignations.

Who said what

Trump did not say how he would pay the 50,000 TSA agents on the verge of missing their second full paycheck since DHS funding expired Feb. 14. But CNN, citing two people familiar with the plans, said the president would use “funding from the sweeping legislation he signed last year known as the ’One Big, Beautiful Bill.’”

Trump “appeared eager to claim credit” for steering some of his DHS “slush fund” to the TSA, The New York Times said, but “no executive order, emergency or otherwise, would be required to access those funds,” and “it was not clear why he had waited more than five weeks” to pay the agents. “My question is, if he can do it, why didn’t he do it before?” Max Stier, CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, said to CNN.

Republicans had “lobbied Trump” in recent days to “take executive action to pay TSA agents,” The Wall Street Journal said, citing a senior administration official. But the president was “initially opposed to the idea, believing Democrats were getting the blame for chaos at airports.” Democrats had repeatedly pushed to fund just the TSA as negotiations over ICE policies continued. The bill passed Friday by unanimous consent would fund all DHS agencies except ICE and Border Patrol, and did not include any of the reforms sought by Democrats.

What next?

The DHS bill “next goes to the House,” which is “expected to consider it” Friday before Congress leaves for a two-week Easter break, The Associated Press said. Republicans are “now expected to try to pass the immigration-enforcement funding through a process called budget reconciliation,” the Journal said. But “any reconciliation bill,” Axios said, “faces a perilous path in both chambers,” especially if it includes “$200 billion for the Pentagon tied to Iran.”

With oil markets in flux, suspending an early-20th century law might help stabilize energy prices. President Donald Trump certainly hopes so: Last week he signed a 60-day waiver from employing the Jones Act, a law that requires U.S.-flagged vessels be used to carry goods and passengers if they’re traveling between American ports. The law was created to protect the domestic shipping industry, but detractors say it hobbles trade and creates more problems than it solves.

Fewer ships, higher prices

The Jones Act was passed after World War I to “rebuild U.S. shipping after German U-boats decimated America’s merchant fleet” during the war, said The Associated Press. Advocates say the law protects national security and homegrown jobs, but those in opposition say sidelining foreign competition has “driven up the cost of carrying cargo domestically.” Presidents can waive the law during crises, and Trump is using that power for one reason: U.S.-flagged ships are “generally more expensive to operate,” and those added costs fall heavily on places like Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico that rely on overseas shipping.

Trump’s pause will allow foreign tankers to transport oil and gas between ports in the United States. That should “lead to lower transportation costs and increased supply” and eventually lower gasoline prices by 10 cents per gallon, Christopher Niezrecki said at The Conversation. It could be “months, not days or weeks,” before drivers notice the benefits at the pump, however, and that is likely only if Trump extends the waiver’s duration. “Fuel prices would fall more steeply” if the law is fully repealed.

American shipbuilding “has shrunk” despite the law’s best efforts, said Marketplace. The U.S. now has only 55 tankers legally qualified to carry oil and gas between domestic ports. Trump’s interruption of the Jones Act will “dramatically expand the universe of ships available” to do that work, said Cato Institute’s Colin Grabow to the outlet. Places like California, Florida and the Northeast will benefit most from the waiver, said Marketplace, “because those areas rely on ships instead of pipelines.”

Significant costs

The law does have defenders among American shipbuilders and vessel operators. There is “nothing more America First than the Jones Act,” Jennifer Carpenter, the CEO of the American Waterways Operators, said at DC Journal. Repealing it would allow foreign companies to “undercut American companies on labor costs” and hollow out the domestic industry, which raises national security concerns. Without the law, America’s “most sensitive cargo” would be transported between U.S. ports “by foreign mariners, including Chinese shipmen who ultimately answer to the Chinese Communist Party.”

Those against the law hope Trump’s waiver is “the beginning of the end of the Jones Act,” The Washington Post said in an editorial. A South Korean-built tanker costs $170 million less than one made in the United States, and “it costs millions more to operate every year thereafter.” The law has failed to save American shipbuilding but has imposed “significant costs.” Those are “much longer-running issues than anything having to do with the war in Iran.”

What happened

The Justice Department has agreed to pay Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, about $1.2 million to settle Flynn’s claims he was wrongfully prosecuted for his role in the 2016 Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia, according to court papers filed Wednesday, which didn’t disclose the settlement amount, and news organizations. The Justice Department and Flynn both “hailed the agreement in separate statements, hinting at the cooperative nature of the settlement,” The New York Times said.

Who said what

The settlement is the “latest turn in the long-running legal saga involving Flynn,” The Associated Press said. He twice pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia’s U.S. ambassador on Trump’s behalf, but then tried to withdraw his plea. Trump ended that case by pardoning Flynn in November 2020, after losing his reelection bid, and Flynn filed a $50 million malicious prosecution claim in 2023. A federal judge dismissed that suit in 2024, but Trump’s Justice Department revived it and entered settlement talks last summer.

The payout will “likely fuel questions as to whether Flynn received a favorable outcome due to his continued vocal support for President Trump,” ABC News said. It was an “extraordinary example,” the Times said, of how the Trump Justice Department “has sought to use the legal system to punish the president’s enemies and reward his allies and supporters” while trying to “erase the effect of some of the prominent criminal cases” against him and them.

What next?

Trump has demanded that the Justice Department pay him $230 million for the two prosecutions he faced before winning re-election in 2024. His administration has “also taken steps to undo criminal convictions the government had secured against Stephen K. Bannon and Peter Navarro,” The Washington Post said.

“Keir Starmer is no longer really in charge of this government”; we are ruled by Ed Miliband, said Michael Gove in The Spectator. The man who “messed it up” as Labour leader a decade ago now has “real power and popularity” within the cabinet, the unions and the wider party membership, said Will Lloyd in The New Statesman.

The energy security and net zero secretary may be facing huge pressure as the Iran war sends price shocks through the global energy market but he seems to be doing so from an unassailable position in British politics.

‘Ventriloquist’s dummy’

“Almost everything terrible that could be said” about Miliband has been said already, said Lloyd in The New Statesman. Now I hear “the confidence of someone who had been torched so many times” he can no longer feel fire. “His beliefs have deepened, not changed” and they have “influenced his colleagues, too, perhaps without them realising”. If Andy Burnham or Angela Rayner were to become Labour leader, they wouldn’t “deviate from the script Miliband has written”. Nigel Farage has even “told friends privately” that he expects Miliband himself to become prime minister by 2027.

I have news for anyone who fears such a development, said Gove in The Spectator: this is already Miliband’s administration. Starmer’s foreign policy, economic policy, “political positioning” and “very quest for meaning” are “All. Ed. Miliband.” He has his hand up Starmer’s back “where a spine should be, controlling the ventriloquist’s dummy”.

We all know that in last autumn’s reshuffle, Starmer tried to move Miliband from his current brief, but Miliband said no “and that was that”, said Tom Harris in The Telegraph. Starmer “dare not even ask” Miliband about his role in “deciding whether to exploit new oil and gas fields in the North Sea”. Doesn’t he know his job is to lead the government, not to wait for Miliband to tell him what to do?

‘Clown prince of the soft left’

Miliband was the “leader who broke Labour – and in doing so, broke Britain”, said Sarah Ditum in The i Paper. “He entrenched” the party’s “worst habits of self-loathing and internal schism”, lost one general election, and “set the stage for even worse”. His “miserable tenure” promptly ushered in the Eurosceptic Jeremy Corbyn, and Labour put up “only a vague shrug” of opposition to Brexit.

But by appointing him to the cabinet, Starmer has “treated Miliband as an elder statesman, rather than the clown prince of the soft left”. Handing the energy brief “to a man whose history as leader is a catalogue of incompetence” may well ensure a “catastrophic swing back to fossil fuels under a Reform government”.

The departures of Peter Mandelson and Morgan McSweeney mean Miliband has “finally won” the tussle between New Labour/Blue Labour and the soft left, said Daniel Finkelstein in The Times. Starmer is “still quite likely to fall”, and any subsequent leadership battle “can only be held or won from the Ed Miliband position”. What Labour’s “lost leader” stands for is “irresistible within the party”. Miliband “will be its most important political force, whatever his formal job”.

President Donald Trump has worked to steer U.S. energy policy away from wind and solar and back to fossil fuels. But the economic aftershocks from the war against Iran are revealing the limits of his oil-driven energy agenda.

Trump’s efforts at “blocking clean energy” have left Americans “more vulnerable to supply shocks caused by the war,” said The Associated Press. The president has gone “all in on fossil fuels” in his second term, expanding tax breaks for drilling and fast-tracking federal permits while repealing a government finding that climate change “endangers public health and the environment.” He even ended the tax break that subsidized electric vehicle sales. Those decisions are leaving consumers in a lurch as gasoline and oil prices rise. Fossil fuels “have their own supply risks, and the administration has no answers,” said Tyson Slocum, the energy director at consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, to the outlet.

One result of the war will be the “acceleration of the global shift to low-carbon energy,” said the Financial Times. The Middle East crisis is an “opportunity to transition to renewable energy more quickly and at a large scale,” South Korean President Lee Jae-myung said at a cabinet meeting. Environmental advocates have made such arguments “for years,” said the Financial Times, but this time “they have an unusually strong chance of breaking through.”

What did the commentators say?

Americans are looking for ways to save money by “asking for quotes on home solar systems and looking up electric vehicles online,” Bill McKibben said at The New Yorker. The “good news” is that clean energy technologies like solar and wind can be purchased “more cheaply than we can buy oil.” And once in place, Americans who use those technologies will no longer have to depend on the flow of oil through the “indefensible, roughly twenty-one-mile-wide ditch” that is the Strait of Hormuz. They can rely instead on the sun, an “energy source that will last another five billion years.”

The Iraq war cost about $2 trillion. That is about the same amount of money it would take to build enough clean energy capacity in the U.S. to “make fossil fuels and their price swings irrelevant,” Paul Greenberg said at The New Republic. That enormous sum of money would pay for a “truly vast array of turbines and panels” across the country. And it would be more productive than waging war, “which destroys capacity of all kinds.” The question is what taxpayers “truly want our tax dollars to do.”

What next?

Oil executives have warned the White House that the war-driven energy crisis is “likely to get worse,” said The Wall Street Journal. The crisis is “going to cause economic destruction,” said Steven Pruett, the chief executive of Texas-based Elevation Resources, to the Journal.

Trump continues to fight the shift to clean energy sources. His administration on Monday agreed to pay $1 billion to a French company to “abandon its plans to build wind farms off the East Coast,” said The New York Times. In return, TotalEnergies will invest the money in U.S.-based oil and gas projects.

The fallout from The New York Times’ allegations of sexual assault against Cesar Chavez was swift and wide-ranging. Now, some in the industry are hoping the revelations about the late farm labor leader open doors for systemic changes, including reforms aimed at advancing the rights of women farmworkers.

‘It creates an opportunity for those without scruples’

The sexual abuse claims, largely made by Chavez’s co-labor leader, Dolores Huerta, represent a massive fall from grace for a beloved figure in the Latino community, one so cherished that former President Joe Biden even placed a bronze bust of Chavez in the Oval Office in 2021. The allegations “raise a difficult question: How do you reckon with the man without losing the movement?” said KCRA-TV Stockton.

Some are concerned that the focus on Chavez could “leave today’s farmworkers more vulnerable,” farmworker advocate Luis Magaña said to KCRA, since people will be paying less attention to the bigger picture and more on the specifics of Chavez's allegations. The current system, which Magaña says can elicit violence against these workers, “creates an opportunity for those without scruples” to “freely commit some type of abuse, such as not paying them.” Magaña worked alongside Chavez in the early days of the movement but believes the cause must “continue beyond the man.” The time to have a conversation about this issue of sexual abuse among farmworkers documented in the Times exposé is “overdue.”

The farm labor movement itself was “always about the people — the thousands who marched, organized and fought for fair wages and dignity,” Magaña said to KCRA. Many are now trying to reconcile the revelations about Chavez with modern changes. Union organizers, for example, are “trying to push forward the farmworker movement and continue the work that many women, not just Chavez, spearheaded,” said The 19th. This includes “investing resources and support to improve the culture that has protected perpetrators in organizing spaces over victims.”

‘Engage and support our community’

Huerta, now 95, insists that her allegations against Chavez should not downplay the victories made by labor unions. Farmworker labor movements have “always been bigger and far more important than any one individual,” she said in a statement. Chavez’s actions “do not diminish the permanent improvements achieved for farmworkers with the help of thousands of people. We must continue to engage and support our community, which needs advocacy and activism now more than ever.”

And many say that the current advocacy for women’s rights in the fields, regardless of Chavez, doesn’t go far enough. Do women “feel safe at work? It’s not just the labor movement,” said Olga Miranda, the president of SEIU Local 87, a union for San Francisco service workers, to The San Francisco Standard. There are “assholes everywhere.” The floodgates will open because of the allegations, as there are women who will “stand up and speak out and say, ‘I’m not gonna take your shit.’ Watch out for that force.”

The discourse should shift from “one man to the conditions farmworkers still face today, including a reality many say has long gone unheard: sexual violence against women in the fields,” said KCRA. Many women in these environments, Magaña said to KCRA, “stay silent, not for a cause but out of the need to survive.”

What happened

President Donald Trump and White House border czar Tom Homan on Sunday said immigration agents would be deployed at some U.S. airports starting this week to help the Transportation Security Administration move travelers through security lines faster. Homan said his goal was to free up trained TSA agents. Trump on Saturday portrayed the move as a way to pressure Democrats to stop blocking Homeland Security Department funding to force a change in ICE tactics. TSA agents, like most DHS employees, have been working without pay since Feb. 14. ICE agents are being paid through a different DHS account.

Who said what

Until Democrats agree to fund DHS, ICE agents would “do Security like no one has ever seen before, including the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants,” Trump said on social media. His first posts on the deployment “came as a surprise to officials inside ICE and at DHS, who have spent the weekend trying to figure out how it could work,” The Wall Street Journal said, citing three people familiar with the matter. The officials also “expressed frustration with the plan,” saying it would “distract” from mass deportations and reduce “Republicans’ leverage in the funding fight.”

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told ABC News that “Democrats want to see long lines at airports as leverage,” and Trump was “trying to take that leverage away.” Senate Republicans on Saturday “rejected a motion by Democrats to take up legislation to fund TSA,” The Associated Press said. Trump has urged Republicans to reject any DHS funding deal with Democrats unless Congress passes an elections bill with stricter voting registration rules.

What next?

The ICE deployment is “a work in progress,” but “we’ll have a plan by the end of today,” Homan told CNN on Sunday, and “we will be at airports tomorrow, helping TSA.”

Although he's still only 35, Balendra Shah has already lived many different lives, said Hannah Beech et al. in The New York Times. He has been an engineer, a rapper and – until he stepped down this January – mayor of Nepal's capital city, Kathmandu. But Balen (to give him the name by which he's popularly known) now faces his biggest test yet, as Nepal's youngest-ever prime minister.

The “pugnacious” millennial – who has made a habit of ranting against his critics on social media and coming up with startling political observations (he has even praised “the managerial acumen of dictators like Hitler”) – hasn't formally been declared the next leader of the Himalayan nation, but following the sweeping victory on 5 March of his centrist Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), the party he joined in December, he's all but a shoo-in.

Defying the odds

Balen's success didn't come out of the blue. As Kathmandu's mayor, he cultivated the image of a no-nonsense politician keen to slash red tape. But his appeal skyrocketed after he voiced support for the violent youth demonstrations – the so-called Gen Z protests – that toppled the communist-led government of K.P Sharma Oli last September. People between the ages of 16 and 40 make up about 40% of the population – and younger voters turned out en masse for the RSP.

Balen's spectacular victory has “fundamentally changed” Nepali politics, said Biswas Baral in The Diplomat (Washington DC). Defying an electoral system that typically produces coalition governments, he achieved the “almost impossible” by helping the RSP, a party only founded in 2022, to win 182 out of 275 seats. The old political guard suffered a drubbing so severe that the country's two main parties – the centre-left Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist) – were left with just 38 and 25 seats respectively. They paid the price for endemic corruption, chronic political instability and high youth unemployment – issues Balen has promised to address.

If anyone is to blame for the scale of their defeat, it's Oli, said Jiba Raj Pokharel in The Himalayan Times (Kathmandu). It was the 74-year-old communist PM who imposed the social media ban that triggered the Gen Z demonstrations last September, a ban that morphed into a broader movement against state corruption. The security forces opened fire on the crowd and, in the ensuing violence, 76 people died; parliament, the supreme court and other historic buildings were torched. By refusing to take “moral responsibility” for the killings, Oli guaranteed his own “political demise”. Balen stood against him in his seat in Jhapa and, unsurprisingly, beat him by some 50,000 votes.

‘Delicate balance’

This election should be seen as a “youthquake”, said The Kathmandu Post. For decades, Nepalese politics has been dominated by sexagenarians and septuagenarians, in a country where the median age is now just 26. But things are changing fast. In 2022, just 6% of Nepal's politicians were aged under 40. Now 43% of the 165 directly elected MPs are (the rest are selected by parties in a PR list system). Although their election is, of course, a welcome development, this inexperienced new cohort must “transcend the lure of social media populism in favour of substantive, research-driven legislative reform”.

The RSP victory and the trouncing of the old guard is a boon to India and a blow to China, said the Tibetan Review (New Delhi). Nepal is strategically situated between Asia's two largest powers, both of which compete for influence there. India is by far Nepal's biggest trade partner, but under the premiership of Oli, an “unabashedly pro-China figure”, Beijing gained the upper hand. The precarious path Balen will now have to tread is maintaining “a delicate balance” between these regional super powers, said Sanjay Upadhya in the Nepali Times (Kathmandu). “The challenge is to protect Nepal's sovereignty while gaining the economic aid needed for growth.” It will be no easy task.

As the Iran war enters its third week, there is a divergence between how the United States and Israel conduct its operations against Tehran and what each nation hopes to accomplish. While President Donald Trump and his administration struggle to articulate an overarching goal for the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed ahead with expanding the front lines of his army’s assault not only on Iran but across Lebanon and Syria as well. With little end to the fighting in sight, is this still a single war of unified purpose, two separate conflicts being fought concurrently or a bit of both?

What did the commentators say?

The war on Iran may have been launched by Israel and the U.S. “at the same time,” said CNN, but it’s “becoming clear” the two nations have “some differences in how they see the war proceeding.” The pair enjoys a “number of overlapping objectives,” said former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro to the outlet. But there remains “some divergence” between Israel and the U.S., which is only likely to increase “as time passes.”

The longer the conflict lasts, the more likely their “endgames and risk tolerance” may differ, said Axios. Trump, in particular, currently stands “more aligned” with the Israeli government’s “maximalist objectives” than many among his own staff. Israeli and American armed and intelligence services are “moving in concert,” although “their targets vary,” with the U.S. focused “almost exclusively” on military targets, while Israeli assassinations and other operations are “intended to lay the groundwork for regime change.”

Netanyahu may appear to be “flying high” after finding an American president “willing to go all the way” with his long-telegraphed war on Iran, but Israeli analysts are “increasingly aware of where the two countries’ strategies” may bifurcate, said The Economist. Netanyahu has been “blunt” about his nation’s wish for regime change in Tehran, even as Israeli leadership has come to feel that Trump’s goals rest “primarily on controlling the flow of oil from Iran.” Israel is “willing to use the war to inflict deeper damage” on Iranian state infrastructure, while Washington “shows little sign of a clear political endgame,” said Bloomberg. Netanyahu is thus “far more likely to favor a drawn-out campaign” than Trump, given the “growing economic and political pressure” the president faces domestically.

At the onset of this war, both Israel and the U.S. “stated their desire to lay the groundwork for regime change,” The New York Times said. But as the war goes on, Trump has acknowledged that a popular uprising “didn’t seem imminent.” Israel would “prefer” to extend their war “for as long as possible, potentially for weeks, to weaken the Iranians,” said Israeli policy analyst Ahron Bregman to Turkey’s Anadolu Agency. Trump, meanwhile, will “seek a way to end this war, especially as oil prices continue to rise.” His goals “did not include regime change,” said CIA Director John Ratcliffe at a House Intelligence Committee meeting.

It is within this context that Israel’s “related but separate agenda” of concurrent attacks on Hezbollah is taking place, said Shapiro to CNN. Netanyahu is waging an “ulterior campaign to try to do significantly more damage to Hezbollah” in the hopes of spurring a “diplomatic process” with, or within, the Lebanese government. Trump generally supports dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure, yet Israel’s operations in Lebanon are “not of the same level of priority for U.S. interests.”

What next?

For the time being, the Trump administration seems publicly comfortable with the U.S. and Israel’s parallel-and-diverging strategies in Iran. The Trump regime “holds the cards” and has “clear” objectives, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday in a press conference. Israel is “pursuing objectives as well.”

Q: Why are we helping Israel prosecute this war if they're going to pursue their own objectives?HEGSETH: We hold the cards. We have objectives. Those objectives are clear. We have allies pursuing objectives as well.

— @atrupar.com (@atrupar.com.bsky.social) 2026-03-20T19:47:25.485Z

Netanyahu, for now, “appears to be operating on the assumption that Trump shares his goals,” said William Usher, a former CIA Middle East analyst, to Bloomberg. That may be true “regarding the total elimination of [Iran’s] nuclear program, but perhaps not much beyond that.”

What happened

President Donald Trump’s handpicked U.S. Commission on Fine Arts on Thursday approved the final design for a 24-karat gold coin featuring his image, clearing the way for the U.S. Mint to begin production. The other federal commission required to give approval for currency designs, the bipartisan Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, last month refused to consider the Trump coin, citing foundational U.S. traditions and laws against putting living presidents on U.S. currencies.

Who said what

U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach said he was “thrilled to prepare coins that represent the enduring spirit of our country and democracy” as it turns 250, “and there is no profile more emblematic for the front of such coins” than Trump’s. The “unprecedented move marks yet another example of Trump and his allies circumventing conventional past presidential practices — and even the law — to get what he wants,” The Associated Press said.

At Thursday’s meeting, the fine arts commissioners mostly seemed concerned about whether Trump liked the design, based on a stern-faced portrait, and how big to make the gold coin. “His preference” would be “the larger the better,” said Commissioner Chamberlain Harris, Trump’s White House executive assistant. Minting the limited-edition commemorative coin, and a $1 Trump coin for circulation that the administration is also planning, is “legally aggressive,” The New York Times said. The administration appears to be arguing that “a coin is different from currency,” and it’s “not clear whether anyone would have legal standing to challenge the matter in court.”

What next?

“This is what kings and dictators do, and there’s no getting around that,” said Donald Scarinci, chair of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee. “If the Mint makes these coins without the review of the CCAC, the coins are illegal,” but “we still fully expect them ​to plough ahead and mint both coins.”

What happened

President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday defended an upcoming funding request to pay for the ongoing Iran war, as Congress balked at the reported $200 billion price tag. The global cost of the conflict rose again as oil prices surged above $119 a barrel before settling at just under $109 after a chaotic day of trading. Qatar’s state energy company said retaliatory Iranian strikes on its Ras Laffan energy hub had cut its natural gas capacity by 17%, costing an estimated $20 billion in lost annual revenue and affecting deliveries to Europe and Asia.

Who said what

“Obviously, it takes money to kill bad guys,” Hegseth told reporters Thursday. “As far as the $200 billion, I think that number could move.” Trump called the unspecified funding request “a small price to pay to make sure that we stay tippy-top,” pointing to the “vast amounts of ammunition” needed. It “was not immediately clear” how long the $200 billion was intended to last or “what operations it would cover,” The New York Times said. But the “significant sum” suggests that the Pentagon is “preparing for a significant engagement.”

The funding request “met with stiff opposition” in Congress, Reuters said, “as Democrats and even some Republicans questioned the need for the money” after they “approved record funding for the military” over the past year. Republican leaders “do not believe they have the votes to fund the war even in their own party without far more detailed plans from the White House,” CNN said.

While some House Republicans “blanched” at the $200 billion price tag, others are “embracing the eye-popping number to help energize a stalled” effort to pass a second GOP-only reconciliation bill, Axios said. Senate Republicans are “decidedly cooler” on that plan. “The alternative — relying on a handful of Democrats to push it through the Senate — doesn’t look any more likely,” Politico said, as “energy prices rise and more Democratic lawmakers dig in against an unpopular war.”

What next?

The $200 billion funding fight “could turn into a referendum on the war in Congress,” Axios said, which could be harrowing for Republicans given the “unpopularity of the war” and “the Pentagon’s existing $1 trillion budget.” Already, “anxiety is creeping up in the GOP,” CNN said, as the war drags on and energy prices soar ahead of this fall’s “critical election.”

Wales goes to the polls on 7 May but 58% of Welsh voters don’t know how their votes will be counted. In the hugely important Senedd election that could topple Welsh Labour’s 27-year grip on devolved power, there will be a new voting system – but that’s news to all but 7% of the electorate, according to polling by YouGov/Cardiff University.

Labour has “topped” elections in Wales for years, said Politico, but now looks headed for defeat. Some even predict a rout so heavy, the party could be “fighting for a reason to exist”.

How will Senedd voting work now?

The elections to the Welsh parliament – which can raise local taxes and has the power to make laws on healthcare, education, local transport, social services and culture – will be held under a new closed list proportional system.

From 1999 until now, the Senedd was elected using the additional member system that is also used in Scotland. Voters would cast two votes: one for a constituency candidate, and one for a party. The constituency votes were counted on a first-past-the-post basis, and a special formula was applied to the count of party votes to select 20 additional members of the Senedd, each representing one of five regions.

But this year, voters will cast one vote only – and for a party (or an independent), rather than an individual. Each political party will prepare a list of up to eight candidates for each constituency, and MS seats will be allocated on the share of votes that each party (or independent) receives. The number of MSs will increase from 60 to 96, and the number of constituencies will decrease from 40 to 16.

One of the advantages of the new system is the end of by-elections: if an MS seat becomes vacant during a Senedd term, it will be filled by the next candidate on their party’s list. Or, if the departing MS is an independent, it will be left vacant until the next election.

But as well as potentially confusing voters, as the YouGov/Cardiff University polling suggests, the closed list system also “reduces voter choice”, said the Institute for Government think tank. Voters can no longer “express a preference” for a particular candidate, which could be said “to reduce the direct accountability between voters and MSs”.

The new system may also “benefit emergent parties in Wales, to the detriment of more established parties, whose candidates are more likely to have a strong personal profile”. Many think this will help Reform, “who are recognisable at a national level but lack a well-established local party presence or well-known candidates across Wales”.

Who will win and which issues will decide it?

Three key issues will decide the outcome of this election, according to a Savanta poll for the BBC: the cost of living; the performance of health and social care services, and the level of immigration. There is some demographic variation: health and social care is “particularly important” to older voters and women, while immigration is the key issue for those who voted Reform at the 2024 general election. Younger voters also singled out “a fourth issue: housing”.

Reform and Plaid Cymru are currently neck and neck, said Wales Online, and projected to be tied on 28 seats each”, with Labour “just behind on 26”. The Greens and the Conservatives are each projected to get 10% of the vote – meaning the Greens could win MS seats for the first time – with the Liberal Democrats on 7%. The most common prediction is a Plaid minority government propped up by Labour, “blowing a hole in Labour’s status as the default governing party”, said Politico.

What does it all mean for Keir Starmer? 

Nigel Farage said yesterday that the Senedd vote “doubles up as a referendum on Keir Starmer’s premiership”. He claimed Labour’s “dominance in Wales and, in particular, the Valleys” would end on 7 May, and, if we get this right, “we will get rid of the worst prime minister any of us have seen in our lifetime”.

Labour’s Eluned Morgan, First Minister of Wales, has said this is not a time for a protest vote against the prime minister, and voters should “wake up” to the prospect of two pro-independence parties – Plaid Cymru and the Greens – ending up in power when so much is at stake for the economy and public services.

As people up and down the country don red noses for Comic Relief, charities are warning that the culture of giving in the UK is starting to wane.

A new report from the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) found that just 55% of the UK population gave to charity last year, down from 69% a decade ago. So there are now around six million fewer donors supporting charities. Within the figures, there are starker declines in those supporting overseas aid and also among those most affected by the cost-of-living crisis.

The report comes as “consumer spending fell for the first time in five years, while inflation remained stubbornly above the Bank of England’s target”, said The Telegraph. Taken together, these shifts have led CAF to describe Britain’s culture of giving as “increasingly fragile”.

What did the commentators say?

Unquestionably the public “feel less financially secure than they did 10 years ago”, said CAF’s James Moore. But it is also true that “focusing solely on the finances is an overly simple interpretation of the issue”.

After affordability, the second most common reason for not giving is trust. Almost 20% of non-donors say they do not trust charities to use their money wisely and a further 9% say they have not found a cause that sufficiently interests them.

CAF “is right to highlight mounting scepticism and distrust as problems”, said The Guardian in an editorial. The finding that people who don’t trust charities are also less likely to be positive about their neighbourhoods “suggests an overlap with broader issues of low social engagement and morale”.

While stronger oversight would help tackle “the sector’s governance issues” that have contributed to the distrust, “there is no simple administrative fix for charities’ financial woes”. It is possible that “an economic upturn will deliver a boost”, but the sector “also needs to find new ways to appeal to people”.

Young people could show the way as charity shops have thrived, inspired by second-hand fashion websites such as Vinted and Depop. Save the Children’s retail sales rose 3% last year, helped by a surge in December when the charity took 11% more than the same month a year before.

“Platforms like eBay, Vinted and Depop have helped grow interest in second-hand shopping, which is positive for the whole reuse sector,” said Allison Swaine-Hughes, chief commercial officer at British Heart Foundation.

The public’s reluctance to donate to overseas aid causes – in 2016, about 19% of donors supported disaster relief or overseas aid charities; now that figure is 11% – is reflected in the government’s approach to overseas aid itself. Proportionately, the UK’s cuts to core international development spending are now deeper than those in the US, said Ian Mitchell and Sam Hughes on the Center for Global Development.

“The conclusion is uncomfortable: Britain is retreating further and cutting deeper than America,” said Adrian Lovett on Devex. “That matters for our standing in the world.” For two decades, the UK “prided itself on punching above its weight in global health, girls’ education, and humanitarian response”, but instead, today, “we look increasingly weak and isolated”.

What next?

Reviving a broad culture of generosity matters far beyond the future of charities, Mark Greer, chief executive of CAF, told The Guardian. “We need to revive that culture of giving and ensure it remains widespread” as it “matters for the fabric of British society”. “Civil society thriving makes the country a better place to live, to work, and to enjoy our culture.”

Have the Democrats found a new saviour? Some in the party believe so, said Adam Wren in Politico. They're pinning their hopes on James Talarico, a 36-year-old Presbyterian seminarian who, following his recent primary victory, is set to contest a Senate seat in Texas in November's midterm elections.

The Democrats haven't won a statewide race there since 1994, and the last time Texas elected a Democrat to the US Senate was back in 1988. But the strong performance of the “disciplined and studious” Talarico has rekindled Democrat dreams of turning Texas blue.

He's a deft communicator, and his centrist, positive style seems to appeal to a wide variety of voters. In the words of the veteran political adviser Mark McKinnon, Talarico could be the “Moses who leads the Lone Star Democrats out of the desert they've been in for 35 years”. This would also give them a “wider than expected path” to flipping the Republican majority in the Senate in November.

Talarico has “clear gifts as a campaigner”, said Lauren Egan on The Bulwark. He seems popular across the various ideological factions of his party and with Latino voters, an increasingly important demographic. But Democrats shouldn't get their hopes too high. They've been let down by Texas candidates before. Remember Beto O'Rourke? Chances are, Talarico will also crash and burn, said National Review. Sure, he's a polished performer whose overt Christianity marks him out from most Democrats, but voters ultimately care about policies – and Talarico's agenda is just too progressive. He has talked of God being “non-binary”, and argues that the Bible is pro-abortion. He uses the trendy gender-neutral term “Latinx”. That stuff won't fly in Texas.

As a conservative Christian, I disagree with Talarico on many matters of theology and ideology, said David French in The New York Times. But it's inspiring to be reminded that “Christian politicians can actually act like Christians”. Talarico campaigned with genuine compassion, declaring in his primary-night speech that he was “tired of being told to hate my neighbour”, tired of “politics as blood sport, politics as trolling and owning, politics as total war”. Compare that with Maga Christianity, where “cruelty in the name of Trumpism is no vice”. Talarico may not win the Senate seat in November, but he has given a lot of people hope, by showing that “kindness still has a place in the public square”.

President Donald Trump wants to delay his upcoming summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, citing the demands of the Iran war. It’s a sign that the Middle East conflict could upend delicate relations with the United States’ most powerful rival.

The Iran war is “threatening a fragile détente” between the two superpowers, said The New York Times. Trump demanded China send ships to the region to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but Beijing has “reacted coolly.” Meeting Trump’s request would be “tantamount to entering the war,” said Ding Long of Shanghai International Studies University’s Middle East Studies Institute. But China’s reluctance to come to America’s aid “may jeopardize a trade truce” with the U.S., said the Times.

Trump’s call to delay the summit “casts a shadow” over what had been a stable relationship following last year’s trade war, said Reuters. The Iran war “makes U.S.-China interactions this year more difficult,” said Fudan University’s Zhao Minghao. Both sides are prioritizing “keeping relations on an even keel,” however, and China has signaled that it wants to reschedule the summit soon. Face-to-face diplomacy “plays an irreplaceable role in providing strategic guidance ​to China-U.S. relations,” said a Chinese government spokesperson.

What did the commentators say?

Beijing is “not going to bail Trump out” in Iran, Edward Luce said at Financial Times. His request that China send ships to the Strait of Hormuz is a “black swan moment,” when the world’s leading superpower is “inviting its main challenger to help extract it from the world’s most combustible region.” China gets half its imported oil through the strait, but helping the U.S. is a nonstarter. “Why interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake?”

The Iran war “really is about China,” Doug Stokes said at The Spectator. Teheran and Beijing have developed a partnership in recent years, with the bulk of Iranian oil exports flowing to Chinese refineries “operating beyond the reach of American sanctions enforcement.” China also supplied Iran with weapons “specifically designed to kill American sailors and constrain American freedom of maneuver” in a future conflict. Making war on Iran weakens the “infrastructure of Chinese power projection.”

Trump’s war “could play into China’s hands,” Lyle Goldstein said at the Chicago Tribune. Beijing will benefit from the U.S. shifting forces to the Middle East. China’s strategists will also “get yet another chance to closely study U.S. military technologies and doctrines” and adjust their war plans accordingly. Going forward, China may be able to present itself as a defender of the global status quo, contrasting itself against a U.S. government “increasingly viewed as having gone rogue.”

What next?

China sees the summit delay as “less a setback than an opportunity to regroup” and meet when the U.S. president isn’t distracted by Iran, said Bloomberg. But the delay does “underscore the fragility” of both countries’ efforts to maintain trade peace, said Wendy Cutler, the senior vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute, to Bloomberg.

When US Secretary of State Marco Rubio made the case for Donald Trump’s war in Iran, there was an unexpected distraction: his shoes were “at least two sizes too big”, said Séamas O’Reilly in The New Statesman.

The shoes had been given to him by Trump. The president has gifted pairs of the same shoes to several colleagues who are reportedly too scared to not wear them, even if they don’t fit.

Dangling loose

Trump is handing out Florsheim Oxfords, which cost $145 (£109). This new “stylistic choice” has “caught the public’s eye”, said CNN, after Rubio and Vice President J.D. Vance were pictured wearing “black dress shoes with visible gaps between the shoe’s collar and the wearer’s foot”, which leaves the ankle to “dangle loose in the opening like the clapper in a bell”.

The shoes are the “hottest and most exclusive MAGA status symbol”, said The Wall Street Journal. The president ordered the footwear for colleagues after telling them they had “s***ty shoes”, said the paper. According to Vance, he, Rubio and a third politician gave the president their shoe sizes: 13, 11.5 and 7, respectively. (The UK equivalents are 12, 10.5 and 6.)

But Trump has “taken to guessing people’s shoe size in front of them”, asking an aide to “put in an order” and then, a week later, a brown Florsheim box “arrives at the White House”, said the broadsheet. The president “sometimes signs the box or attaches a note of gratitude”, sources told the paper.

“You can tell a lot about a man by his shoe size,” said Trump, but the shoes he gave the men are “clearly too big”, menswear expert Josh Peskowitz told CNN. So perhaps Vance and Rubio “prefer the ideal of the feet they wish they had to the reality rattling around inside their new shoes”, said the broadcaster.

According to reports, the staff are now “reportedly so terrified of offending” Trump, that they “constantly wear these cheap, ill-fitting shoes any time they’re in his presence”, said The New Statesman. For Trump, the arrangement “seems to work out pretty well”, he told Fox News, adding that his colleagues now “look all spiffy and nice”.

Could this be “hazing”, an “expression of affection” or a “loyalty test”, said Robert Armstrong in the Financial Times. The “weird surface” conceals the “irony” that Florsheims are made in Cambodia, India and – mainly – China. The company has hiked prices after Trump’s tariffs.

Hidden lifts

Politicians and footwear have history. Napoleon Bonaparte, who was around 5ft 6in tall, wore shoes with “hidden lifts”, which “added a few extra inches to his stature”, helping him “reinforce his authority both on the battlefield and in political settings”, said Jennen.

If Trump believes you can tell a lot about a man by his shoe size, he might find food for thought in the fact that Abraham Lincoln had the largest feet of any US president, wearing a size 14 shoe, while Rutherford B. Hayes, in office from 1877 to 1881, had the smallest feet of any US president – a size 7.

Theresa May, who was one of the first foreign leaders to visit Trump in his first term in the White House, was the subject of countless column inches about her choices of footwear. “Love them or loathe them”, it can’t be denied that May’s shoes were “something of a phenomenon”, said Woman & Home.

“Never before had a politician’s feet endured such scrutiny.” She “kickstarted a 60% rise” in sales of leopard-print shoes as home secretary, and as prime minister she was credited with “bringing back the kitten heel”.

Rishi Sunak followed in her footsteps by hitting the headlines for his footwear fashion: super-casual slides, pricey Prada loafers and, most famously, Adidas Sambas.

President Donald Trump likes his military campaigns short and victorious. The quick overnight strike that removed Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro from power is his preferred model of warmaking. But the U.S. president may not be able to exit the war against Iran so easily.

Some of Trump’s supporters are concerned the president “no longer controls how, or when, the war ends,” said Politico. Iran’s Islamic regime still has a vote, and it’s voting to keep the conflict alive with its closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The resulting fallout for the global economy means Iran’s leaders “hold the cards now,” said a White House ally.

Trump’s advisers had hoped he could and would “declare victory whenever he saw fit” and end the war quickly, said Politico. But now the conflict appears stickier than they anticipated. The “off-ramps” to de-escalate things “don’t work anymore,” said a second Trump ally.

Trump “expects a quick, clear victory,” said Axios. But the war’s outcome is “beyond unilateral control and quick fixes.” The president could “pull out tomorrow.” Iranian officials, though, have made it clear they “could continue shooting missiles and rockets” unless they get a guarantee that the U.S. will not reengage at a future date. Iran wants more than “just a temporary ceasefire.”

What did the commentators say?

The president’s options to end the war “keep getting fewer and worse,” said Thomas Wright at The Atlantic. Trump is getting closer to a point where he can either pursue a “decisive tactical success” and “prepare the country for a prolonged conflict” or seek a settlement involving “real compromise” with Iran.

The regime has proven “more aggressive and more resilient” than he anticipated, and if the government does collapse, it could “take a long time,” said Wright. Most wars start with hopes of a quick victory. “Few end as expected.” Trump chose to start the war, but the decision to conclude it is “no longer entirely his to control.”

The strait’s closure is “giving the Iranians leverage,” said the National Review. If the strait remains closed for months “rather than a few more weeks,” the global economic damage may become “truly disastrous.” Iran could end the war with its regime still in place and in “de facto control” of the strait. If that happens, Trump’s war will end up “eroding American deterrent power rather than enhancing it.” His administration must have some “urgency about reopening the strait” to ensure that does not happen.

What next?

Military officials are routinely including “off-ramps” in their war plans if Trump wants to end the conflict quickly, said NBC News. “So far, he hasn’t” chosen to. Some administration allies are going public with their push to end the campaign. The U.S. “should try to find the off-ramp,” said David Sacks, Trump’s AI czar.

Trump himself is sending mixed signals. The war in Iran is “just a military operation to me,” he said to reporters on Tuesday. Iran is “something that was essentially largely over in two or three days."

The country has adopted a sweeping new law that orders government agencies, private enterprises and parents to foster a “stronger sense of community among all ethnic groups” in the nation, said Lou Qinjian, a delegate to the National People’s Congress, at multiple outlets. The new “ethnic unity” mandate may sound benign, but critics say it could erase and diminish the cultural identities of Uyghurs, Mongolians and other minority groups in favor of the country’s dominant Han Chinese culture.

Binding minorities to the majority

Beijing wants China’s ethnic minorities to “blend in,” said The New York Times. Xi Jinping has “worked aggressively” during his decade in power to pressure minorities in Tibet and elsewhere to “identify first and foremost as patriotic citizens.” The new law furthers that mission with provisions that “touch on education, housing policy, entertainment and other areas” to create a “single national identity” forged by the Chinese Communist Party.

It orders that the Mandarin Chinese language be used in school instruction and other official business and that different ethnicities should live in mixed communities. The goal is to “bind China’s minorities” to the majority Han Chinese population, said the Times. The law tells non-Han Chinese to “integrate themselves with the Han majority and above all else be loyal to Beijing,” said Allen Carlson, of Cornell University, to Bloomberg.

There are 56 officially recognized ethnic groups in China, and “55 are getting squashed” by the new law, said The Economist. The edict is “born of fear” that minority groups are “proving too hard to control.” Early Communist governments allowed minority groups a “range of privileges” to follow their own religions and educate children in their native languages. But “outbursts of violence” over decades in Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia persuaded leaders that “even relative autonomy had failed.” The question now is whether the mandate might provoke resentments that may “eventually erupt.”

Cracking down

China started its Sinicization of minority groups in the late 2000s, said BBC News. Monks have been arrested in Tibet, Uyghur Muslims have been sent to reeducation camps, and Mongolians have battled authorities to preserve the right to teach children their language. The law is the latest attempt to “cement Xi’s push toward assimilation” of minority groups.

Beijing’s apparent view is that “minority languages and cultures are backward and impediments to advancement,” said Ian Chong, of the National University of Singapore, to the BBC. Xi is trying to build a “great and strong Chinese nation with a northern Han core.”

Chinese officials say the law was drafted after consultation with “representatives from ethnic minority communities,” said Reuters. The rules emphasize the “protection of cultural traditions and lifestyles of all ethnic groups,” said an editorial in China Daily, the state newspaper. Minority groups like the Tibetans, Mongols, Hui, Manchus and Uyghurs comprise less than 10% of China’s population, said Reuters, but they live mostly in “regions that together cover roughly half of the country’s land area, much of it rich in natural resources.”

What happened

A federal judge in Boston on Monday paused most of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s consequential actions on vaccines, as well as the decisions made by the influential vaccine advisory committee he gutted and remade with handpicked members. U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, siding with the American Academy of Pediatrics and five other medical groups, said Kennedy had likely violated legal administrative procedures in appointing his new Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, then illegally sidestepped his handpicked panel in January to shrink the federal schedule for childhood vaccines from 17 routine immunizations to 11.

Who said what

Since 1964, “all U.S. vaccine policy has first run through ACIP, an independent panel of vaccine experts” that guides the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations, CNN said. The committee has historically decided which vaccines are safe and effective through “a method scientific in nature and codified into law through procedural requirements,” Murphy ruled. But under Kennedy, the “government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions.”

The ruling from Murphy, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, is a “severe blow to the Trump administration’s health agenda,” The New York Times said. But the “blow to Kennedy’s efforts to overhaul federal vaccine policy” landed “at a time when the White House is seeking to limit vaccine critics’ influence within the administration,” Axios said. Kennedy wants federal vaccine policy “to more closely reflect” his skepticism of vaccines, Politico said. But the White House is looking to “shift the focus ahead of the midterms away from vaccines, which the public overwhelmingly supports, toward priorities with widespread voter buy-in, like lowering prescription drug costs.”

What next?

Murphy’s order effectively blocks ACIP from meeting Wednesday and Thursday, as planned. But it’s “not the final word,” The Associated Press said. His ruling bars 13 of ACIP’s 15 members from serving on the panel, freezes all the committee’s decisions since June and halts Kennedy’s reduced immunization schedule “pending either a trial or a decision for summary judgment.” The Trump administration is expected to appeal the ruling.

Five key Western allies have “urged Israel not to pursue a ground offensive in Lebanon” after Tel Aviv launched a “significant military operation” in response to Hezbollah missiles, said Politico.

Israeli troops on the ground “could lead to a protracted conflict” with “devastating humanitarian consequences”, said the leaders of the UK, Canada, France, Germany and Italy in a statement. “The humanitarian situation in Lebanon, including ongoing mass displacement, is already deeply alarming.”

Despite a ceasefire agreed in November 2024, tensions between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah have reignited, with reports of up to a million Lebanese citizens already affected by the renewed conflict.

What did the commentators say?

“Just how far the Israeli military intends to push into Lebanese territory – and for how long – remains unclear,” said Tom Ball in The Times. Troops are heading to al-Khiyam, a “strategically valuable” town just over the border and the “apex of several major routes leading deeper into Lebanese territory”. An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson said the operation is designed to establish “forward defence, which includes destroying terrorist infrastructure and eliminating terrorists”.

Israel’s “extended campaign” against Hezbollah is “likely to continue beyond the end of the war against Iran”, said James Shotter in the Financial Times. Israeli officials had said they expect the joint offensive with the US against Iran to last “weeks”, and the expectation is that the operation in Lebanon “would last at least as long”.

We are going to see a “major impact on the population” of Lebanon, Michael Young, from the Carnegie Middle East Center, told Time. Between 850,000 and one million civilians have been displaced in the Hezbollah-controlled south since the latest conflict began. Israel wants to “ensure that that area becomes uninhabitable”.

The conflict in Lebanon is the “price” international communities must pay for their “silence”, said Laure Stephan in Le Monde. Ever since the signing of the “theoretical truce” in late 2024, world leaders have been “implicitly accepting the rule of force over international law”. This “lopsided ceasefire”, which “Israel never respected”, is the “root of today’s war”.

Despite the “unprecedented efforts” of the US-backed Lebanese government to uproot Hezbollah, it has not made any tangible progress. In fact, “Hezbollah’s refusal to disarm has also weakened the authorities”.

Two “terrible experiments” are playing out simultaneously on the streets of Lebanon: “Israel’s theory of total war and Hezbollah’s theory of nihilistic power”, said Thanassis Cambanis, director of think tank Century International, in Foreign Policy. Like Iran against the US, Hezbollah won’t “slink away” from an existential fight. Even if it can’t maintain control of Lebanon, it can still “act as a spoiler”. “No amount of Israeli warfare will be able to eliminate Hezbollah by force.”

What next?

The French government has drafted a proposal to end the war in Lebanon, said Barak Ravid on Axios. The framework could “de-escalate the war, prevent a prolonged Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon” and “increase international pressure to disarm Hezbollah and open the door to a historic peace deal”. The Lebanese government has reportedly “accepted the plan as a basis for peace talks”, which are expected to take place in Paris.

President Emmanuel Macron is “ready to mediate a truce”, said Al Jazeera. Lebanese officials’ offer for direct negotiations with Israel could be seen as a “major concession in a country where ties with Israel, a longtime enemy, are a divisive issue”.

Does Pete Hegseth think “he’s in an action movie”? asked Casey Ryan Kelly in Salon. In his Pentagon news briefings on the war with Iran, the defense secretary has projected none of the solemnity you’d expect from a government official discussing the taking of human life. Instead, Hegseth seems giddy about the horrors of war, rhapsodizing about U.S. bombers and drones raining “death and destruction from the sky all day long.” He’s dismissed concerns about the rules of engagement, explaining “it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down.” And he’s shrugged at news reports on America’s war dead, saying, “Tragic things happen; the press only wants to make the president look bad.”

This is what President Trump thinks a real warrior looks and sounds like, said David Smith in The Guardian. A Christian nationalist with tattoos of the Crusades-era Jerusalem Cross and slogan “Deus Vult” (“God wills it”), Hegseth won Trump’s attention as a Fox News host advocating for U.S. troops accused of war crimes. He’s the perfect figurehead for a White House that “revels in carnage,” and which last week posted a video online that mixed clips from video games and war movies with “real kill-shot footage” of strikes in Iran. This bloodlust may play well in the manosphere, but it doesn’t inspire confidence in the judgment of those leading this “murky new Middle East conflict.”

The “bellicose messaging” of this administration is accompanied by open “hostility to battlefield restraint,” said Missy Ryan in The Atlantic. We still don’t know why a U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile struck an Iranian elementary school on the war’s first day, killing at least 175 people, most of them children. But we do know Trump and Hegseth have spent the past year dismantling the supposedly “woke” systems designed to prevent such tragedies, firing many military lawyers, or “JAGs,” and closing a policy shop focused on reducing civilian casualties. Hegseth says he won’t comment on the school strike, pending an internal investigation, but he was less reticent in savoring the “quiet death” of 87 Iranian sailors killed when a U.S. submarine torpedoed a possibly unarmed Iranian frigate off Sri Lanka. Distastefulness aside, said Charlotte Howard in The Economist, the deeper problem with Hegseth’s “machismo style” is that it’s now also the “substance” of U.S. military policy.

Machismo is part of the story, said Tom Nichols in The Atlantic. But the fetishization of violence for its own sake is also helping fill a “strategic vacuum.” Previous U.S. presidents went to war with a clear goal in mind (however unrealistic), whereas Trump is still deciding if the Iran operation is an air campaign to degrade Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, a full-scale “regime change” war, or something else entirely. The lack of a goal, and a plan for achieving it, leaves the White House with nothing to celebrate except the “rapid destruction of buildings and machines, and the killing of some enemy leaders,” all while praying that the public is “enjoying the fireworks” as much as Hegseth.

The tragedy is that Trump had very good reasons for going to war with Iran, said Gerard Baker in The Wall Street Journal. The vicious Islamist regime in Tehran has waged war on the U.S., and the Iranian people, for almost half a century. “Given an opportunity to inflict massive damage on that enemy, the president boldly seized it.” But rather than make that persuasive case to the public, Trump and Hegseth have leaned on “intemperate, incontinent, infantilizing verbiage” that only weakens support for this just cause at home and overseas, and “corrupts our national culture.”

What happened

A defiant Iran intensified its attacks on Arab states and U.S. assets across the Middle East this week, as President Trump seesawed on America’s war aims and when the joint U.S.-Israeli offensive on Iran might end. Thousands of Iranian missiles and drones have rained down on Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and other Arab nations, smashing into oil refineries, airports, residential buildings, and hotels and killing at least 16 people. At least 11 U.S. military bases have been hit, damaging communications infrastructure and air defense systems and partially collapsing some buildings, according to satellite imagery reviewed by The New York Times. The Pentagon said at least 140 U.S. troops have been wounded, eight seriously, and seven have been killed; in Israel, Iranian strikes have killed at least 13 people. As the damage mounted, Trump judged the operation “very complete, pretty much.” Within hours he backtracked, saying the U.S. was bent on “ultimate victory,” while still asserting it would end “very soon.” Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insisted the assault was at “just the beginning.” Asked which of those things was true, Trump said, “I think you could say both.”

Inside Iran, Mojtaba Khamenei, the 56-year-old son of assassinated
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was selected to replace his father as the nation’s supreme leader. Trump, who insisted he must approve any new leader, said the selection of Khamenei—a hard-line cleric with deep ties to the elite Revolutionary Guard—was “unacceptable,” judging it would “lead to more of the same problems.” The U.S. and Israel continued to pound targets across Iran; more than 1,300 Iranians have died in the strikes, most of them civilians, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society. “They are striking everywhere: homes, schools, mosques, hospitals,” said one Tehran resident.

In Washington, Democrats berated Trump’s failure to articulate a clear plan. After a closed-door briefing, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut called the administration “incoherent.” He said it had backed off the previously stated goals of regime change and destroying Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and that it had “no plan” for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, where shipping has come to a standstill. Meanwhile, defiant Iranian leaders ruled out a ceasefire or mediation. “Iran will determine when the war ends,” said Iranian Revolutionary Guard spokesman Ali Mohammad Naini.

What the columnists said

There’s a growing realization inside the administration that Trump and his team “misjudged” how the Iranian regime would respond to a conflict it views “as an existential threat,” said Mark Mazzetti in The New York Times. They thought the war would follow the same pattern as last year’s U.S.-Israeli strikes, when Iran’s retaliation was fairly muted. That Tehran responded with far more aggression has forced administration officials to “adjust plans on the fly.” Some “are growing pessimistic” about the lack of an exit strategy. But they are “careful not to express that directly” to Trump, who’s called the operation a “complete success.” “It is not too late” for Trump to build a case for the war, said Thérèse Shaheen in National Review. The Iranian regime has been “an active, aggressive foe” of the U.S. for 47 years, and was building “capacity to cause catastrophic damage” with its nuclear program. The public’s not buying it, said Greg Sargent in The New Republic. A poll aggregator found only 38% of Americans approve of the offensive—“the lowest initial support for an American war perhaps ever.”

Among Iranians, faith in the U.S. project is also in short supply, said Najmeh Bozorgmehr in the Financial Times. At the war’s outset, opponents of the brutal regime hoped better days were at hand. But the “terrifying” air campaign “has shattered that belief.” Choking on “toxic black smog” from burning oil depots, many Tehran residents are “shocked” by the destruction of schools, thousands of homes, and historic landmarks, and dismayed by the “resilience of the Islamic regime.” There’s no sign of the “anti-regime unrest” that erupted in January; instead, one sociologist in Tehran, a critic of the regime, sees a rising “sense of nationalism.”

Mojtaba Khamenei’s ascent is a grim sign, said Marc Champion in Bloomberg. Instead of a shift toward a “less confrontational” government, his selection “represents regime consolidation.” And Trump’s “tone-deaf demand” for veto power over Iran’s supreme leader is yet another sign he “profoundly misunderstands his opponents.” He thought they’d crumble at his shock-and-awe campaign. But “Iran has been preparing for this fight since 1988,” and they are “ready for a long war.” Now Trump must “decide if he is too.”

Trump should declare victory and “walk away,” said Jason Willick in The Washington Post. Regime change would be the ideal outcome, but that would require ground troops and take years and many American lives. As it stands, U.S. and Israeli strikes have severely damaged Iran’s military capability, knocking out missile launchers, air defenses, and more than 60 naval craft. Quitting now—as some advisers are reportedly urging—would serve Trump best politically while saving the U.S. from a potential “quagmire.”

Trump is “confounded by the war he started,” said Andrew Egger in The
Bulwark. Pumped with “hubris” after last year’s Iran strikes and the capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, he and his team thought the U.S. “could simply impose its will on smaller countries,” with “little cost.” Now they’re waking up to the fact that they have “plunged into a morass” without the support of the American people. The president and his advisers didn’t anticipate an actual war, “but now they’ve got one, and they don’t have the faintest idea how to end it.”

What happened

President Donald Trump said on social media Sunday he was “so thrilled” that Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr was “looking at the licenses” of some “Highly Unpatriotic ’News’ Organizations.” Responding to complaints from Trump about media coverage of the Iran war, Carr on Saturday threatened the broadcast licenses of any networks “running hoaxes and news distortions — also known as the fake news” — unless they “correct course.”

Who said what

The Trump administration is “turning its fire on reporters and threatening news outlets” as the war becomes mired in “dismal polling and a muddled message,” Axios said. In a “similar vein” to the comments from Trump and Carr, The New York Times said, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday “delivered a lengthy complaint about CNN’s coverage of the war,” especially a report that the administration wasn’t prepared for Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz.

Carr posted his broadcast license threat from Mar-a-Lago, where he was “seen talking with Trump,” said CNN. But Trump’s “attack dog atop the FCC” has “very little power to follow through” on his “crusade” to police the news. The FCC doesn’t regulate cable news or broadcast networks, just their local stations and affiliates. Carr’s threats “violate the First Amendment and will go nowhere,” said Commissioner Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democrat, on X. “Broadcasters should continue covering the news, fiercely and independently.”

What next?

Carr’s “threats are hollow” on revoking broadcast licenses, said public interest lawyer Andrew Jay Schwartzman. But the “implicit threat” of stifling regulatory approvals provides him a “real hammer.” What Carr “is describing is government control of the press,” said Tara Puckey, CEO of the Radio Television Digital News Association. But “journalists aren’t intimidated by a bully with a briefcase.”

Why is America at war with Iran? When will the conflict end? Two weeks after the launch of the joint US-Israel campaign, the answers to these questions remain no clearer, said Lee Siegel in The New Statesman.

Donald Trump's declared goals change all the time: it's to liberate Iranians; to eliminate an imminent nuclear threat; to destroy Iran's ballistic missiles; to avenge the US. As for how long the war could last, Trump declared last Friday that the US wouldn't stop until it secured Iran's “unconditional surrender”.

But in response to rising fuel prices and market turmoil, he softened his language on Monday, saying the war was “very complete, pretty much” and would end soon. His words helped calm markets: the price of a barrel of oil, which had soared to nearly $120, dipped back below $90. However, Trump later reverted to tough rhetoric, insisting that the US was set to press on as “we haven't won enough”.

‘Scorched-earth treatment’

Tehran, for its part, shows no sign of capitulating, said Arash Reisinezhad and Arsham Reisinezhad in Foreign Policy. While the tempo of its missile and drone attacks on neighbouring countries has declined since the opening days of the conflict, the strikes haven't stopped. The regime is aiming to prolong and widen the conflict – Azerbaijan and Turkey are the latest countries to be targeted with Iranian drones – to “generate pressure across multiple domains: energy markets, maritime logistics, regional alliances and domestic politics within the US and its partners”.

Wars between asymmetrical adversaries are rarely decided by the opening exchange of blows. More often, they become “contests of endurance”. Iran is now getting the “scorched-earth treatment”, said Patrick Cockburn in The i Paper. More than 1,000 civilians are thought to have been killed in the bombing so far. But air power alone is unlikely to defeat the Iranian regime. Just look at Gaza, where Hamas remained in control even after cities were razed to the ground.

Iran's ace card is its control over the Strait of Hormuz, said David Patrikarakos in the Daily Mail. About a fifth of the global oil supply normally passes through this narrow stretch of water, which is also a vital conduit for commodities such as nitrogen fertiliser and helium.

Tehran has effectively blockaded the strait by threatening to attack passing vessels, and several commercial ships have already been targeted. While Iran's regular navy has been largely put out of action, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is responsible for the strait, has access to many small, fast-moving craft and remote-control suicide drone boats. It also has missile launchers and drone systems deployed all along the coast.

If the strait remains closed for an extended period, the impact will be catastrophic: Qatar's energy minister, Saad al-Kaabi, has warned that it could “bring down the economies of the world”. Trump has talked of providing naval escorts for vessels in the strait, said James Rothwell in The Daily Telegraph, but that would commit American forces to a complex and expensive logistical operation – one with the potential to become “a kind of maritime Vietnam”.

‘Escalation dominance’

Trump is in a trap of his own making, said Edward Luce in the FT. Two “very risky gambles” are available to him. One would be to launch a commando raid to seize what remains of Iran's 400kg stockpile of enriched uranium. “Success would offer Trump a spectacular off-ramp.” The other gambit would be to seize Kharg Island, the outcrop 15 miles off Iran's coast that serves as the nation's principal crude oil export hub. But that would require more boots on the ground, and there's little tolerance in America for more US casualties.

Trump's best option is to call it quits after degrading Iran's military capabilities, said The Economist. Critics will claim that he has left the job half done, and Iran may seek to rebuild its nuclear programme, obliging the US to launch future strikes. But “better for America to declare victory early than limp out of an unpopular war because of exhaustion”.

The markets are expecting Trump to do just that, before “he is overwhelmed by a supply-chain shock to match Covid”, said Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Daily Telegraph. However, the defiance of Iran's regime will make it harder for him. “It is we who will determine the end of the war,” the IRGC declared on Tuesday. Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Iran would fight on even after a US declaration of victory. The question now is which aspect of Trump's thinking will prevail: “his fear of losing the US midterm elections? Or his injured vanity and his psychological need to command ‘escalation dominance', always and everywhere?”

The British public was “expecting to be surprised” by the first tranche of the Mandelson files, said Ailbhe Rea in The New Statesman. Yet despite hopes for “damning correspondence” to be in the 147-page document, “there was very little I didn’t already know”.

As it turned out “the first drop of the Mandelson files contained neither a smoking gun nor bombshell revelation”, said Beth Rigby on Sky News. Details about Peter Mandelson’s severance payment after being sacked as the UK’s ambassador to the US, and the “rushed” vetting process for his appointment have made the headlines, but the number of documents withheld, redacted or yet to be released mean the picture remains incomplete.

What did the commentators say?

Keir Starmer “must release all the Mandelson files”, said The Telegraph in an editorial. It appears some of the files “may not see the light of day for years” due to ongoing police investigations. The police are “entitled to do their job and proceed with their investigation without undue interference”, but “questions about the prime minister’s judgment on this matter are not going away. The public deserve to know just how credulous Sir Keir really was.”

The comment in the files by Jonathan Powell, Starmer’s national security adviser who was also Tony Blair’s chief of staff, that the appointment of Mandelson was “weirdly rushed”, is a “quietly damning analysis that will haunt Starmer forever”, said Rea. And the decision to give Mandelson a “£75,000 payoff” after his dismissal, when his contract, also included in the release, showed that “he was owed precisely £0”, raises questions, too.

But there is undoubtedly a “missing piece of the puzzle”, such as the correspondence between the former No. 10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and Mandelson. Reportedly, McSweeney asked Mandelson “three questions”, which Mandelson claimed he answered truthfully, a comment the government disputes.

It was clear from the files we have seen so far that due process was not followed in the vetting of Mandelson for the US ambassador role, said The Times in an editorial. The documents show Mandelson was “offered classified briefings” by government officials before he was granted appropriate security clearance: “it is hard to imagine this being granted to other ambassadorial appointments”. The government refuted allegations that the vetting process was “fast-tracked”, yet now it is claiming this was allowed “because Mandelson was a privy councillor, which does suggest due process was not followed”.

The files released in this first tranche “failed to include any interventions, comments or guidance from Starmer himself”, said Anna Gross in the Financial Times. “The prime minister emerges from this admittedly partial picture less as the main character in his own drama than as an oddly disembodied presence,” said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. We are left to wonder whether Mandelson’s appointment was the result of the PM’s readiness to “delegate” high-level decisions to McSweeney, or belief that the risk of having “his own personal Machiavelli” close to Donald Trump “was worth it”. Either way, as he was forced to admit this week, it was “his mistake”.

What next?

It will be several weeks at least before more documents are released, as they must first be examined by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee. Senior government figures told The Guardian that Starmer “could suffer further resignations when ministerial WhatsApp messages are published in the next tranche”.

These files will include informal messages between Mandelson and government figures “for six months before his appointment, and during his time as ambassador”. These “could prove a powder keg for already inflamed tensions between Washington and London”, said Rigby. Only documents that pose “significant security concerns” will be withheld.

President Donald Trump’s consolidation of power across the federal government continues apace. With it, a similar form of conservative capture has been mirrored across the avenues of mass media in the U.S.

From the rolling public turmoil at The Washington Post and CBS to behind-the-scenes machinations at institutions like The New York Times, huge swaths of mainstream American media have begun embracing a decidedly conservative agenda. These are the media players helping fuel America’s rightward media pivot.

Bari Weiss, CBS

Perhaps the single most-watched media executive of the past year, Substack star turned CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss has marked her meteoric rise to the top of a premier television network with moments of controversy, conspicuous high-profile resignations and declining viewership. The network’s evening news under Weiss “is waving the American flag” and “not apologizing" for the network’s “pro-U.S. editorial stance,” Variety said.

Weiss’ claims to be “improving ‘free speech’ in the news” come as she is also “clearly moving CBS in a more conservative direction,” The Nation said. Weiss was “personally recruited by Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison” to lead CBS’s news operations, said The Los Angeles Times, after she founded the “conservative-friendly digital news site The Free Press.”

Larry and David Ellison, Paramount Skydance

Billionaire father and son duo Larry — founder of Oracle — and David — CEO of Paramount Skydance — Ellison control “one of the world’s largest audiovisual and news conglomerates.” This pair has the ability to “shape Hollywood’s rules” with its production studios and “influence the news” through both CBS and CNN, said El País.

The duo also controls “numerous entertainment channels that allow them to project their worldview,” said El País. Both Ellisons have been “repeated” visitors at Trump’s White House, CNN said. During the Ellisons’ ultimately successful bid to purchase Warner Brothers this past winter, David “offered assurances” to the White House that “if he bought Warner, he’d make sweeping changes to CNN, a common target of President Trump’s ire,” The Wall Street Journal said.

Lachlan Murdoch, News Corp.

Scion of the powerful Rupert Murdoch-founded News Corp dynasty, eldest son Lachlan completed his bid to assume control of his father’s empire in September 2025. The move guaranteed the “empire’s various outlets, including Fox News, The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, will remain conservative” after 95-year-old Rupert’s eventual death, The New York Times said.

Lachlan is seen as being the “most likely heir to preserve the conservative identity that defines his father’s portfolio” compared to siblings Prue, Liz and James, NPR News said. Still, Lachlan likely won’t seek the “‘kingmaker’ role in Republican political circles” that his father frequented. He’s “kind of a little bit more hands-off” in that respect, said biographer Paddy Manning to NPR in 2022.

Jeff Bezos, The Washington Post

After ushering in The Washington Post’s era of claiming “Democracy dies in the Darkness” during the first Trump administration, billionaire tech oligarch and Post-owner Jeff Bezos has taken a decidedly less antagonistic stance in the regime’s second turn in office. Over the past year, Bezos has seemed to be “pursuing a policy of appeasement” toward MAGA officials, instructing editorial page writers to focus on the “twin pillars of personal liberties and free markets,” The New Yorker said. Bezos’ shift means that Washington, D.C., a city that Democratic presidential candidates “generally carry with around 90% of the vote,” currently has “three conservative voices and no longer has a single liberal newspaper,” said The New Republic.

Brian Calle, LA Weekly

When the Seminal Media investment group purchased LA Weekly in 2017, it quickly installed Brian Calle, a “conservative-leaning former opinion editor,” to lead its new acquisition, said The Wrap. Calle’s tenure began with a series of deep layoffs, prompting a “furious counterattack” by former staffers who “alleged Calle heads a conservative conspiracy” to transform the “historically progressive” publication into “an alt-right rag,” said Columbia Journalism Review.

Calle, during his prior stint atop the editorial page at the Orange County Register, “pushed the paper’s editorial voice to the right,” while his time as VP at the “notoriously right-wing” Claremont Institute suggested his “conservative aims when it comes to the editorial future of LA Weekly,” said Knock LA. “Downplaying” his rightward inclinations is “exactly the opposite” of what Calle should be doing, said the right-leaning National Review in 2018 after he assumed control of the paper. “Prudent conservatism can save the LA Weekly.”

Patrick Soon-Shiong, Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, after nixing a planned 2024 endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, justified his decision as righting an “unacceptable” wrong at the paper he purchased in 2018. “As you can see,” Soon-Shiong said during a podcast interview with arch MAGA personality Tucker Carlson, it was “because it’s a left lean, they wrote terrible stories about President Trump.”

Soon-Shiong’s appearance with Carlson came as the billionaire physician and investor “tries to attract more conservative readers to his newspaper,” which he says “has become too liberal,” said Politico. After “unsuccessfully angling for a place” in the president’s first administration, Soon-Shiong has “moved ever closer to Trump,” said Politico separately, “appearing in conservative media and accusing his own newspaper of editorial bias and becoming an ‘echo chamber’ for progressive politics.”

What happened

Britain’s House of Lords, the unelected upper chamber of Parliament, will no longer include hereditary peers under a bill that gained final approval Tuesday night. Under the law, the remaining earls, viscounts and dukes who inherited their seats in the chamber along with their aristocratic titles will leave Parliament for good when the current session concludes this spring.

Who said what

The law was a priority for Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Labour Party, and its passage finalizes reforms begun 25 years ago under the Labour government of former Prime Minister Tony Blair. For most of the chamber’s 700-year-history, only “noblemen — almost never women” — and a “smattering of bishops” served in the House of Lords, until they were joined by politically appointed “life peers” in the 1950s, The Associated Press said. In 1999, Blair “evicted most of the 750 hereditary peers, though 92 were allowed to remain temporarily to avoid an aristocrats’ rebellion.”

The ​House of Lords “can amend but not block legislation” from the House of Commons, Reuters said, and under a deal to secure assent, “around 15 Conservative hereditary peers” will be allowed to keep their seats as newly minted life peers. “The Lords plays a vital role” in Parliament, “but nobody should sit in the House by virtue of an inherited title,” Angela Smith, leader of the upper chamber, said in a statement.

What next?

The bill “will become law once King Charles III grants royal assent — a formality,” the AP said. Starmer’s government said the legislation was the “first step in wider reform to the House of Lords,” the “only legislative body that still contains a hereditary element” other than Lesotho’s Senate. With more than 800 members, the House of Lords is also larger than any legislative body except China’s National People’s Congress. Additional changes will involve “members’ retirement and participation requirements,” Smith said.

What happened

The Trump administration on Wednesday said it was opening investigations into alleged unfair trading practices by 16 major U.S. trading partners, including China and the European Union, as President Donald Trump tries to resurrect sweeping global tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court. The investigations, based on Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act, will look at “excess capacity” in manufacturing, said U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in an announcement. Other targets of the investigation include Mexico, Japan, South Korea and India.

Who said what

The new investigations give the administration “an avenue to rebuild a credible tariff threat against trading partners to keep them negotiating and implement trade deals” after Trump’s earlier tariffs were thrown out, Reuters said. “The policy remains the same,” Greer told reporters. “The tools may change depending upon the vagaries of courts.”

Section 301 investigations “typically take several months or even years, but Greer said his team would aim to complete the probes by mid-July,” when Trump’s temporary 10% tariffs — under Section 122 of the 1974 law — expire, The Wall Street Journal said. Greer “didn’t specify how high the new tariffs would be, saying he would not prejudge the investigations.” The Section 301 tariffs are “meant to address specific and legitimate unfair trade practices,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said. “They should not be used to drag the United States back into a cost-raising, broad-based tariff regime.”

What next?

Greer said his office expects to open a second Section 301 investigation today targeting forced labor involving about 60 nations. The Trump administration “is required to carry out an investigation and hold consultations and hearings before it can impose those import taxes,” The New York Times said. But the inquiries “will almost certainly result later this summer in permanent new taxes on U.S. imports,” The Washington Post said.

Tehran said today it will “not allow even a single litre of oil” to pass through the Strait of Hormuz to reach its war enemies. “Any vessel or tanker bound to them will be a legitimate target.” Tellingly, three cargo ships in the strait were earlier damaged by “unknown projectiles”, said UK Maritime Trade Operations.

Donald Trump has already said that he “will not allow a terrorist regime to hold the world hostage and attempt to stop the globe’s oil supply”. And, overnight, US Central Command said it had destroyed 16 Iranian mine-laying ships, in response to intelligence reports that Iran had begun laying explosives in the strait.

Since the conflict began, there have been 13 reports of ships being attacked in the strait. Global insurers are increasingly unwilling to allow oil tankers to pass through, and the world’s oil supply is now “at severe risk”, said Sarah Shamim on Al Jazeera. As prices per barrel spike, Trump has floated the idea of the US Navy escorting tankers through the shipping channel.

What did the commentators say?

Millions of barrels of oil “are now effectively stranded in the Gulf” because regional oil-producing countries, such as Iraq and Kuwait, have “no alternative” shipping channel. This is no small incentive for Trump’s naval escort plan, said Natasha Bertrand on CNN. But the risks are high, with the strait described as a “death valley” for vessels attempting to navigate it.

Escorting tanker convoys in the region has been “effective” in the past, said former Royal Naval officer Tom Sharpe in The Telegraph. Both the EU’s Operation Aspides and the US-UK Operation Prosperity Guardian – which “positioned warships in defensive missile boxes” – had success against Houthi engagements in the Red Sea. Given Iran’s “rapidly diminishing” missile threat, a “similar” approach to protecting tankers on their way through Hormuz “would work”. But the strait is shallow, “has a U-bend shape” and is the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s “home turf”.

Right now, there probably “aren’t enough” US ships “for the task”. Japan, South Korea, Australia and Italy could “help out” with “serious air defence warships”, and France has an aircraft carrier “en route to the Mediterranean” and “a frigate standing off Cyprus”. Britain’s destroyer, HMS Dragon, should arrive in Cyprus next week. But even with these reinforcements, it’s not clear “how long” such an operation “could be kept up”. I think “a short-but-unsustainable effort” is more likely. “Never underestimate what the demand for quick wins can do to political decision makers.”

Despite initial reports to the contrary, even Chinese vessels aren’t getting through the strait, said Harrison Prétat on the Center for Strategic & International Studies’ Commentary. China, an ally of Iran with an “outsized reliance on energy imports”, has “not yet received similar assurances” to those given to by Iran-backed Houthis in 2024. This not only underscores “China’s limited ability to shape the course of the conflict, even to protect its own strategic and commercial interests” but makes it clear how seriously Iran’s leaders are playing for the regime’s survival.

What next?

If the US naval escort plan goes ahead, it “may give Iran juicy American targets”, said The Economist. Despite being “pummelled from the air”, Iran still “enjoys layered defences and forbidding terrain” in the strait. It has “long prepared for such strife”, and its threat “comes in many forms”. In the air, it has missiles and drones; on the water, it has “fast-attack boats” armed with “missiles, explosives or rocket-propelled grenades”, and below the surface it can “deploy thousands of sea mines and unmanned vehicles” and “divers with limpet mines”. All that, and America’s “technological advantages are blunted” in such “confined waters”. Unlike modern oil tankers, “destroyers have single hulls, so are easier to sink”.

The Iranian regime seems “determined to set the terms for how the war ends” and, let’s not forget, “maritime chokepoints favour the defender”.

“We’re winning this fight!” shouts the narrator, as the White House video cuts from clips of “Call of Duty” to footage of US fighter jets and slo-mo missile strikes on Iran. “Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue” clocked up 58 million views in three days. A second video, “Justice the American Way”, soon followed, blending bombing footage with memes and references to “Top Gun”, the “Halo” series and “Dragon Ball Z”.

The US administration’s use of imagery from video games and pop culture is, to some, just a modern way to celebrate “the nation’s war-fighting power”, said Drew Harwell in The Washington Post. But, to others, it’s a “sick and callous joke from the nation’s highest public office”.

What did the commentators say?

Donald Trump’s second presidential campaign was “marked by a rage-baiting style of communications”, and his social media output has “not shifted tone since he took office”, said Emerald Maxwell on France24. When millions took to the streets last October for anti-Trump “No Kings” protests, the president posted a “fake AI video showing himself wearing a crown and flying a fighter jet” that “dumps excrement on crowds of protesters”.

Now ,“the White House is transforming the Iran war effort into a meme campaign”, said Harwell in The Washington Post. By “mixing unclassified missile footage” with the kind of “fictional and fantasy content young people share online for laughs”, Trump’s digital team is attempting to “win political points by running serious policy issues through the irreverent lens of internet culture”.

They are harnessing “some of the most renowned slivers of 21st-century American popular culture” to “promote the freshly launched war with Iran”, said David Bauder and Lou Kesten on The Associated Press. “It’s hard not to see the thinking here: the more cinematic the content, the more people might support the war.”

The “sober charts and briefings” of past conflicts have “largely been replaced by a public relations campaign” with a “video-game vibe”, said Helen Coster and Tim Reid on Reuters. Past administrations used PR campaigns to “explain why the US has gone to war” but, for a Trump White House that has “struggled to articulate a clear case” for its operations in Iran, “it’s about how the US has gone to war” instead.

The “online propaganda campaign” is not about “intimidating Iran or projecting US strength abroad”, said J Oliver Conroy in The Guardian, but about getting support in future elections from “young right-wing American men who spend a lot of time online”. It is, as yet, “unclear” if those Gen Z males “universally appreciate the Trump administration’s narrowly tailored jingoism”.

What next?

Trump’s “precedent-smashing style of politics” has helped him “build a passionate bond with his political base”, said Michael Birnbaum in The Washington Post. But his “lack of visible effort” to expand support for the war to the wider public “carries risks”. While 81% of Republicans “supported Trump’s initial decision to strike Iran”, according to flash polling, “even at that early stage” only 54% of them supported a prolonged engagement. Support among independents and Democrats is even lower and falling. Trump’s “muscular, meme-driven imaging around the war effort” may be building support “within a slice of his existing base” but “it is less clear that it is winning over sceptics on either side of the political aisle”.

What happened

Two Pennsylvania teenagers who threw homemade explosive devices at a far-right anti-Islam rally outside the New York City mayor’s official residence over the weekend told police they were inspired by the Islamic State (ISIS), New York officials and federal prosecutors said Monday. The incident is being investigated as an “act of ISIS-inspired terrorism,” New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a press conference alongside Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, was not at the residence, Gracie Mansion, during the protest or failed attack.

Who said what

Emir Balat, 18, and Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, were charged in federal court Monday with using a weapon of mass destruction, transporting explosives across state lines and other crimes. Balat is accused of throwing two jars filled with screws, bolts and a “dangerous and highly volatile homemade explosive that has been used in IED attacks around the world,” Tisch said. Neither bomb ignited.

Under questioning, Kayumi said he had watched ISIS propaganda “and was partly inspired to carry out his actions that day by ISIS,” according to the criminal complaint, while Balat volunteered that he wanted to “carry out an attack bigger than the Boston Marathon bombing.” The two teens are accused of “committing a heinous act of terrorism and proclaiming their allegiance to ISIS,” Mandami said in a statement, and “they should be held fully accountable for their actions.”

What next?

City officials said there is “no evidence” that the attempted bombing was “linked to the war in Iran,” said NPR. A federal magistrate ordered Balat and Kayumi detained until their next court appearance on April 8.

What happened

Anthropic on Monday sued Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Defense Department and several other federal agencies in federal court, arguing that the administration’s move to blacklist the AI firm as a national security risk was “unprecedented and unlawful.” The Constitution “‌does not allow the government to wield its enormous power to punish a company for its protected speech,” Anthropic said in its filing.

Hegseth last week formally designated the company a “supply chain risk” over Anthropic’s insistence that its AI tool Claude not be used for autonomous lethal weapons or mass surveillance of Americans. President Donald Trump said on social media that all federal agencies must stop using Claude within six months.

Who said what

The supply-chain risk designation “effectively cuts off Anthropic’s work with the Defense Department” and its contractors, The New York Times said, and it “has never been used on an American company.” The label is “usually reserved for Chinese and Russian firms suspected of helping foreign spies,” The Washington Post said. The Pentagon’s “unprecedented step” came “even as Anthropic’s tools were playing a central role” in “Trump’s bombing campaign in Iran.”

“It is absurd for the government to argue that Anthropic is the kind of company meant to be addressed by this statute,” especially when the Pentagon “has repeatedly sought to obtain Anthropic’s services for national defense,” Georgetown University law professor Mark Jia told the Post. It would be “perfectly reasonable” for the Pentagon to cancel its contracts with Anthropic because they don’t believe a private company should set policy or determine when “autonomous lethal weapons are ready for prime time,” Dean Ball, a former Trump White House AI policy adviser, said on “The Ezra Klein Show.” But they don’t have the “statutory power” to “completely destroy the company” in “a kind of political assassination.”

What next?

The White House is “preparing an executive order formally instructing the federal government to rip out Anthropic’s AI from its operations,” Axios said, and it “could be issued as soon as this week.” Anthropic’s “standoff with the Defense Department has cost it Uncle Sam as a customer,” The Wall Street Journal said, but it has also brought a “surge of public goodwill” and a “momentary advantage in the ferocious talent war between rival artificial intelligence labs.”

There are only so many weapons to go around. The United States is waging war on Iran, and some observers are concerned the massive expenditure of munitions will make it more difficult to supply Ukraine in its war against Russia.

Conflict in the Middle East may deprive Ukraine of weapons to “defend itself from Russia’s bombardment,” said The Wall Street Journal. The intensity of the U.S. war on Iran “will affect the amount of air defense we receive,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the “sudden depletion” of air defense munitions will make it more challenging to “credibly project U.S. power against Russia in Ukraine,” said Time magazine. America’s “resources and supplies are limited,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). That has raised concerns in Kyiv, said Time. “Everyone understands that the right weapons are our lifeline,” Zelenskyy said.

The Iran war “could save Vladimir Putin’s failing Ukraine invasion,” said The Atlantic Council. Russia “stands to benefit more than most” from the surge in oil and gasoline prices caused by the war in Iran, which could also “distract the Trump administration” from its efforts to mediate a peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv. Putin “will now likely be able to breathe a little easier” while the U.S. is distracted.

What did the commentators say?

The “obvious truth” is that Ukraine’s struggle is “not a priority for the White House,” Bohdan Nahaylo said at the Kyiv Post. The Iran war also increases pressure on Europe, which now must “deal with instability in two important areas simultaneously.” European energy markets that “had just stabilized after cutting off Russian supplies” have been thrown into renewed turmoil. That will create new challenges for a continent already “stretched thin” by its backing of Ukraine. The newest crisis will be a “test of Europe’s ability to remain focused and united.”

War in the Middle East “offers Russia several opportunities,” Stefan Wolff said at The Conversation. The oil shock gives Moscow a “new lifeline for financing its ongoing war” while the diversion of U.S. arms to Iran gives Putin an advantage in his “relentless campaign of missile and drone strikes” on Ukraine. The war in Iran will not give Russia a victory in Ukraine, “but it has thrown the world into additional turmoil for no good reason.” That will delay a “much-needed restoration of peace” for a war-weary Europe.

What next?

President Donald Trump is “looking to Ukraine to help its operations against Iran,” said Politico. Zelenskyy’s government has extensive experience with the kind of drone warfare at the center of the Iran conflict, making Ukraine a “world leader” in the kind of “anti-drone defenses” that the U.S. needs right now. The Ukrainian leader said the country would help as long as that assistance “didn’t weaken its own defenses.” Doing so may give Ukraine leverage with Trump: Assistance to the U.S. “serves as an investment in our diplomatic capabilities,” Zelenskyy said.