President Donald Trump has never been a fan of wind farms, delivering a “haymaker” to the clean energy industry this week by ordering a pause on the construction of five East Coast offshore projects slated to power nearly 2.7 million homes. He thinks wind farms are “ugly” and has frequently invoked potential harms to wildlife, said The New York Times. And administration officials argue that the five wind farms are “national security risks” but offer little evidence.

Trump remains “apoplectic” about his failure to stop construction of one off the coast of his Scottish golf course. Wind farms are “driving the whales crazy, obviously,” he said in January.

The president’s decision marks an “escalation of a yearlong effort to shut down the industry,” said Politico. Electricity customers may soon feel the effects. A New England grid operator warned that Trump’s move “could send power prices soaring,” while a Virginia utility said the pause hurts its ability to “keep up with rising electricity consumption from data centers.” American voters are angry about affordability issues, and Trump’s decision “is running contrary to that in my opinion,” said Tim Ennis, a power market analyst at GridStatus.

What did the commentators say?

The wind pause is a “blow to America’s energy future,” The Washington Post said in an editorial. Halting the projects will particularly “set back the cause of generating enough energy to meet the demands of the AI boom.” The White House cited national security concerns, suggesting wind turbine blades “could interfere with radar,” but those worries “were not significant obstacles during the permitting process.” The permitting process must be reformed to make it more difficult to block “projects the economy desperately needs.”

Trump is making Americans pay more for electricity “because he is angry at windmills,” Dean Baker said in his newsletter. It is true that, as Trump often says, windmills kill birds, which is the “case with any structure.” But “wind energy is cheap” and costs less to produce than coal — about the same as natural gas — all while avoiding greenhouse gases. All this comes while China is building as much wind and solar capacity “as the rest of the world combined.” Americans “will pay a high price for Donald Trump’s irrational hatred of wind energy.”

What next?

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul warned that Trump’s decision will make it difficult for her state to “reduce emissions” while also “fending off grid reliability concerns and spiking utility rates,” said Spectrum News. She was part of a larger group of Democratic governors from northeast states who plotted a “strategy” to save the wind farms from the president’s authority, said The New York Times.

A federal lawsuit challenging the decision is likely, but negotiations with the White House are also possible. The governors, said Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, will be “exercising our rights and doing everything we can to keep these projects going.”

If there is a boundary setter in the GOP, Vice President JD Vance might be it. MAGAdom is feuding over whether antisemitic figures like Nick Fuentes will be allowed in the Republican coalition when President Donald Trump leaves. Observers watched last weekend’s Turning Point USA convention to see if Vance would draw a red line against bigotry in the party.

He did not. Vance ducked a chance to “condemn a streak of antisemitism” that has roiled the GOP in recent months, said The Associated Press. “I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to de-platform,” Vance said during the convention’s closing speech. That came after conservative commentator Ben Shapiro criticized Fuentes, Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson during his own address. Those figures and their allies are “grifters and they do not deserve your time,” Shapiro said. Vance, though, refused to take sides in the feud. MAGA Republicans have “far more important work to do than canceling each other," Vance said.

Vance has repeatedly “refused to pick a side in interparty fights over bigotry,” said The New York Times. The vice president earlier this year dismissed outrage over a Young Republicans chat group that featured racist jokes and memes, and in 2024 “embraced false claims about Haitian Americans.” Antisemitism and ethnic hatred “have no place in the conservative movement,” Vance said in an interview published after his TPUSA speech. But Trump’s America is also a place where “you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore,” he told conventiongoers.

What did the commentators say?

“When presented with the simplest moral test, Vance failed,” said Franklin Foer at The Atlantic. Antisemitism is more than “one more woke fixation.” Trump has “always struggled” to denounce antisemitism, but that seemed mostly a product of a “vanity” that would not let him “speak ill of acolytes” like Kanye West. Vance has “clearly made the calculation that antisemites are part of the Republican Party’s base.” He cannot afford to lose them and be the GOP presidential candidate in 2028. That will give license to right-wing antisemites to “dehumanize Jews with greater abandon.”

Vance’s choice is “clarifying,” said Noah Rothman at the National Review. Rather than condemn antisemitism within the GOP, he chose to suggest that “those who object to the promotion of a bigot” are the party’s real problem. Vance “can read the writing on the wall as well as anyone,” and the signs suggest that young conservatives are increasingly big fans of “Hitlerian Caesarism.” That development “should terrify responsible actors in American public life.”

What next?

Vance has not officially announced a 2028 presidential bid but is already starting to “lock down” support for his campaign, said NBC News. Erika Kirk, CEO of Turning Point USA, endorsed Vance at the convention. That is just one sign the vice president is “finding early success in holding together” the various parts of Trump’s coalition: A straw poll of TPUSA attendees found that 84% want him to be the GOP’s next nominee.

The last federal government shutdown ended just a few weeks ago. The next may start just a few weeks from now. Congress’ deadline to avoid another shutdown “will be here sooner than you think,” said Politico. Despite a month of work to find a deal that can appease both sides, the Senate last week “gave up on passing a spending package” and adjourned for its holiday recess ahead of the Jan. 30 funding deadline. And when they return, the usual dynamics will be at play.

GOP hardliners in the House want to hold tight on spending and “could start making threats” to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) if they do not get their way. “This is people’s political livelihood on the line,” said Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas).

Democrats say they want a deal. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) is setting a “very different posture for his party” than he did before the 43-day shutdown that consumed much of the fall, said Punchbowl News. There will be some Democrats who want to use the deadline as “leverage in the Obamacare fight or something else.”

But Schumer believes there “aren’t enough Democrats willing to plunge into another shutdown,” said Punchbowl News. The party is “trying to work with the Republicans to get it done.” The problem is that “both chambers are far behind schedule” on full-year funding bills for 2026 and “key disagreements remain.”

What did the commentators say?

“Congress has learned nothing,” said The Boston Herald editorial board. Lawmakers should have gleaned from the recent shutdown the “level of pain it inflicted on the American people.” The suspension of SNAP benefits left families “panicked and scrambling.” A “kick-the-can-down-the-road mentality” meant Congress avoided dealing with the issue of health care subsidies for a few years until the issue became “leverage” for the latest round of funding fights. American voters “deserve better than this.”

Government shutdowns are a “relatively recent phenomenon” created by a “broken political environment,” said Scott Minkoff  and Josh Ryan at The Hill. Shutdowns also “disincentivize thoughtful lawmaking” in favor of a “warped” legislative process. The fix may be a two-year budget cycle with “automatic funding when legislators fail to act.” That will not solve all of Congress’ budgeting problems because “deficits, spending priorities and taxation” are always going to spark debate. But the rush of constant deadlines is too easily weaponized. A two-year budget cycle “would restore some sanity.”

What next?

There is “little appetite for another government shutdown,” but Democrats are weighing their demands anyway, said NOTUS. Appropriations bills in the Senate need 60 votes to pass, which means that seven Democratic votes are necessary for any successful bill. That gives those Democrats leverage “in theory,” but they forced the fall shutdown for the fight over Obamacare subsidies and ended up “with very little to show for it.” Some senators are keeping their options open. “We got a long list” of priorities, said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).

The UK must “balance the tension between security and prosperity” in its relationship with China, the parliamentary intelligence watchdog has warned, after the prime minister called for a “more sophisticated” approach to its dealings with Beijing.

At a speech in the City of London, Keir Starmer recognised that China posed “national security threats”, but stressed that it was also “a defining force in technology, trade and global governance”.

The Intelligence and Security Committee’s annual report acknowledged the need for “dexterity” in dealing with Beijing, but found the government has been “reluctant to prioritise security considerations”. This despite renewed scrutiny of Chinese interference following the contentious collapse of a spying case, the ongoing row over the London super-embassy and reports connecting a recent cyberattack on the Foreign Office to Chinese-affiliated hackers.

What did the commentators say?

This was “typical Starmer, pursuing a balancing act amid overwhelming imbalances”, said Simon Tisdall in The Guardian. It is “true Britain’s stagnant economy badly needs foreign investment” but “doing business with this predatory authoritarian regime” for nothing more than the “uncertain hope of future dependency-creating economic, financial and tech benefits” is a price simply ”too high” to pay.

Like previous governments, Labour has “found it difficult to come up with a clear answer” as to whether China “should be regarded as a UK national security threat”, said The Sunday Times.

The Intelligence and Security Committee report accused the government of “dragging its heels” over whether to add China to the “enhanced tier” of its threat regime. Under the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, which came into force in July, only those working for Russia and Iran are required to register and declare their activity in the UK, even though many experts agree China poses a greater threat to national security.

And the threat is “very real”, said Luke de Pulford, co-founder and executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, on UnHerd. It includes industrial espionage, cyberattacks and spying on politicians by Chinese operatives in the UK. It is all “part of a broader effort to shape UK institutions to be less resistant to the aims of the Communist Party, and to help Beijing assert its dominance by all and any means necessary, lawful or illicit”.

Make no mistake, China has “the means, manpower and intent to reshape our way of life” but we have chosen to fight “a house fire with a syringe filled with lighter fluid” – in this instance, “the syringe being the resources available to contain the threat, and the lighter fluid being the UK government’s seemingly irrepressible desire to make things worse”.

What next?

Early next year, Starmer will become the first British prime minister since Theresa May in 2018 to visit China. The aim, said The Independent, is to “strengthen economic and diplomatic relations with the state”. As a show of good faith, the government is expected to give the go-ahead for China’s controversial new “mega embassy” in London, despite concerns from the security services.

If he must go, Starmer should use the China trip to push for the release of Jimmy Lai and the “200-odd political prisoners in Hong Kong”, said Melanie McDonagh in London’s The Standard. Both the decision about the Chinese embassy in London and any future trade deal “should be conditional on Jimmy Lai’s release”. This is about “Britain’s honour, if we can still talk in these terms”.

Yet trying to separate politics and security from business and trade is “a naive approach”, said Tisdall in The Guardian. “In navigating the world, Starmer should follow a simple rule: hug friends close – and know your enemy.”

There is a political storm brewing in the US over the disclosure of the Epstein files and their link to President Donald Trump.

At least 13 files, including a photo containing Trump, were removed by the Department of Justice from the latest release of documents, only to be republished after a review following concerns over victim identification.

The evidence was reinstated without any “alteration or redaction”, said the DoJ, with deputy attorney general Todd Blanche explicitly stating on NBC News that “it has nothing to do with President Trump”.

What did the commentators say?

“The documents produced no major revelations,” said The New York Times. The photos in particular underlined how Jeffrey Epstein, the late convicted sex offender, “attracted a remarkably broad spectrum of famous people into his orbit”, with Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger and Walter Cronkite appearing in the latest batch.

The redactions have caused the most controversy, said The Guardian. Blanche argued that the government “did not have time to review all the files to make redactions needed to protect victims”, with at least one victim claiming that she had been identified in the DoJ dump.

Conversely, in some areas, the redactions were “too aggressive”. For instance, a picture of Clinton, Michael Jackson and Diana Ross was also mistakenly redacted to obscure a child’s face. The child was Jackson’s son, with images “readily available” from commercial photo archives.

There is only one “unequivocal takeaway” from this latest episode, said CNN. The Trump administration’s efforts to “quell the storm have whipped up a new vortex of political energy” that could potentially harm the president.

The most recent release has exposed the “stunning revelation that there are 1,200 people identified as victims or their relatives”, with “materials from dozens of hard drives, old CDs and computers”. Though there is nothing to suggest any direct wrongdoing on Trump’s part, it fuels the “ever-deepening political storm” surrounding him.

There are “several possibilities” explaining the administration’s actions. The “sheer size” of the data could be posing “genuine issues” for officials. The department “may lack the competence” to do such a vast job “comprehensively and quickly”, following “purges of career officials by Trump’s aides”. Lastly, critics of the president “would not be surprised” if the DoJ was trying to brazenly “protect” Trump. Whatever the reason, this will cause a significant “headache” for him.

If Trump has tried to “deflect attention” away from himself, he “may have succeeded”, as the latest tranche of documents “shifted the spotlight” on to former Democrat president Bill Clinton, said the Financial Times. After eventually signing the legislation to release the files, Trump has recognised the “political benefit” of using the files to “tarnish the reputation of a prominent Democrat” and “one of his great ideological foes”.

This speaks to how the files have become a “weapon in America’s escalating ideological war”. On the left, politicians are employing the new information to “discredit” Trump, while the president and his administration are using them to “attack his adversaries”. The conflict continues, as the battles over the files “underscore the claims of Democrats and others that Trump is using the DoJ to pursue his political opponents”: a charge that Trump has “repeatedly levelled at the Biden administration”.

What next?

Representatives Ro Khanna (Democrat) and Thomas Massie (Republican) are seeking to find Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt of Congress, for not releasing more documents related to Epstein. Both were involved in the original drafting of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and Khanna now wants to see the “60-count federal indictment of Epstein from 2007 and the accompanying prosecution memo”, said The Washington Post.

In a statement, the justice department said that materials “will continue being reviewed and redacted” in line with legal requirements, exercising an “abundance of caution as we receive additional information”.

The Republican Party that once gave us the war on drugs and “Just Say No” is getting a little more weed-friendly. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to speed the reclassification of marijuana as a less dangerous drug, potentially moving federal policy closer to the decriminalization stance of many states.

Trump’s order is a “major shift in federal drug policy,” said The Associated Press. Under federal rules, marijuana is classified as a Schedule I drug “alongside heroin and LSD.” The president’s move would make weed a Schedule III drug, similar to anabolic steroids. The change to the marijuana classification “would not make it legal for recreational use,” but it could change how the drug is regulated and “open new avenues for medical research.” Many Americans have been “begging for me to do this” to make it easier to alleviate their pain, said Trump.

More than two dozen House Republicans opposed the move, said Fox News. Marijuana reclassification will “enable drug cartels and make our roads more dangerous,” the group said in a letter to the president. Making federal policy more lenient will promote a “dangerous falsehood” that cannabis use is “acceptable and safe.” Trump’s order “does not legalize recreational marijuana use,” a White House spokesperson said in response.

What did the commentators say?

“What happened to making America healthy again?” said Allysia Finley at The Wall Street Journal. Marijuana use has become more accepted and widespread in recent years, and Americans are “becoming sicker and dumber as a result.” Studies suggest cannabis users are more likely to experience heart attacks and strokes, and the drug’s effects can be “linked to impaired decision-making and psychosis.” A Trump administration that is taking aim at SSRI antidepressants and even Tylenol now finds itself in a contradiction. It’s the “antithesis of MAGA.”

“Legalize it,” said The Washington Post editorial board. Rather than merely loosen marijuana restrictions somewhat, the better approach is to “legalize pot federally and let states decide if they want to restrict it any further.” Schedule III classification would allow cannabis to be used in “approved, highly regulated medical settings” and solve issues for otherwise-legal marijuana businesses that cannot deduct “operating expenses, such as rent, payroll and marketing,” from their taxes. But it does not resolve other “thorny legal questions.” The best option is to get the federal government out of marijuana enforcement and “let the states sort it out.”

What next?

Trump’s order also “authorizes Medicare to fully cover CBD products for patients,” said Axios. That may help older Americans shift away from “potentially lethal” opiates for pain relief, said the president. Other changes may be slow to materialize. Even with Trump's order, the federal drug reclassification process “can take years," said Axios.

“Not much is changing for consumers” unless Congress changes the federal laws prohibiting marijuana possession, said Reuters. Recreational cannabis use is legal in 24 states, but experts say more states “could be motivated” to legalize the drug following Trump’s executive order.

EU leaders have chosen to raise €90 billion in joint debt to fund the Ukrainian war effort for the next two years after German-led proposals for a “reparations loan” secured against frozen Russian assets fell apart in the face of internal dissent.

Notably, Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia will not participate in the joint debt scheme, meaning an “EU of 27 member states turned into a gang of 24” at the summit in Brussels last night, said Politico.

What did the commentators say?

Europe has undoubtedly shown commitment to Ukraine, but the decision “hardly sends an unequivocal message”, said the Financial Times. A “failure to find the cash” at all would have been a “terrible indictment of European weakness” when it “desperately needed to show resolve”.

But the bloc “blinked” when it came to the sterner step of using seized Russian assets to do so. Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz “forcefully advocated” for the “reparations loan”, which he had framed as “the only option”, said Euronews.

But it was Belgian PM Bart De Wever who clearly came out on top. With the majority of the frozen Russian funds held by Belgium-based financial services firm Euroclear, De Wever “played hardball”, refusing to accept a deal that could “leave his country exposed to Russian retaliation”. His demands for unlimited protection from any legal complications arising from the use of the assets made the proposal “unpalatable for the rest” of the EU countries.

The joint debt arrangement means there is no guarantee that the funds will ever be paid back. The loan would be “interest-free” and Kyiv would pay it back with “reparations cash from Moscow”. However, it is “by no means guaranteed Russia will ever pay reparations for its invasion and the loan is likely going to become a grant”.

“Arguably, it didn’t need to be so messy,” said Politico. Ukraine’s European allies “have the resources to beat Putin if they really want to”. The EU’s financial position as an “economic superpower” is already strong compared to Russia, with the bloc’s combined GDP standing at €18 trillion against Russia’s €2 trillion.

What’s concerning “for Ukraine’s allies” is the dwindling support among the public in Europe’s biggest economies for Ukraine and its war effort. French and German respondents to a Politico poll “were even more reluctant to keep financing Ukraine than people in the United States”. By deciding on the €90 billion loan deal, “Europe’s leaders opted for the easiest answer this week. And even that was almost too hard.”

What next?

The defeat of the Merz plan in favour of the joint debt funding arrangement was undoubtedly a “fumble”, but from Ukraine’s perspective “there is little difference in the outcome”, said the Financial Times. The loan and the likelihood of it never being paid back relieves any further pressure on Ukraine’s “already aggravated finances”.

As for the Russian assets, EU leaders emphasised that the frozen funds “will remain immobilised and the union reserves its right to make use of them to repay the loan”. But in the meantime, it seems more likely that “successive EU budgets will absorb the cost”.

President Donald Trump thinks he has found a solution to the skyrocketing price tags for vehicles: building smaller cars. These vehicles are extremely popular in Asia, where they are known as micro cars or kei cars. But many auto industry analysts say translating the success of Asia’s micro car market to the United States is an unrealistic goal.

What did the commentators say?

Trump has mused on social media that the U.S. should start producing these cars, which are “small, fuel-efficient vehicles that are roughly 30% shorter” than a Toyota Camry and the same width as a Smart car, said The Wall Street Journal. Trump’s affinity for the vehicles seemed to arise “after a recent trip to Japan to talk about trade and economic investments.”

These cars are often much cheaper than standard vehicles, and “can cost as little as $8,000 or $10,000,” said CNN, while the “average price of a new car in the United States is currently around $50,000.” Manufacturing cars that are that cheap “would be an answer to affordability issues for many car buyers — and a major political headache for Trump.” But these vehicles “don’t make sense en masse here, from existing regulations to the Trump administration’s own contradictory policies,” said Car and Driver.

Part of the reason is straightforward: these cars “aren’t adapted to U.S. regulations and sold here because the demand simply doesn’t exist,” said Car and Driver. This is partially because Americans “barely buy cars anymore,” and favor larger vehicles like trucks. The incentive for automakers to sell smaller cars has also “gone out the window” with “regulations now set to be relaxed” by the Trump administration on gas-guzzling trucks.

These vehicles also “would have to be redesigned and retested to meet U.S. standards” for safety, said Axios. Current laws say imported micro cars must be at least 25 years old as part of U.S. safety regulations. These standards are different in Asia, and approving them for the U.S. would involve “stronger, heavier chassis and larger crumple zones to withstand crashes.” Manufacturers would also need to install “U.S.-spec safety equipment and lighting systems, among other changes.” This would involve high price tags for automakers that would “defeat the cost and efficiency advantages of micro cars.”

What next?

While these micro cars are exceedingly rare in the U.S., there is another type of these vehicles, kei trucks, which are the “largest class of vehicles being individually imported to the U.S., with around 7,500 arriving last year,” said Fast Company. They are the “size of golf carts” and “can’t go 60 miles an hour,” said Jason Marks, the CEO of electric truck startup Telo, to Fast Company, but they are “still this desirable.”

But while the truck variants of these vehicles are selling well, don’t expect to see micro cars dominating the streets anytime soon. They “would be nearly impossible to sell here” on a mass scale, said Michigan Advance. Despite these concerns, Trump is seemingly pressing ahead with his micro car plan. The president has “cleared them for production and is demanding that automakers manufacture them domestically,” writing on social media that the U.S. should “START BUILDING THEM NOW!”

Within the Trump administration’s maelstrom of camera-ready secretaries, advisers and aides, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is a behind-the-scenes power, eschewing the headlines preferred by her colleagues as she brokers access and authority within the West Wing. But after a candid Vanity Fair interview in which she offered unvarnished opinions on the president (“has an alcoholic’s personality”), Attorney General Pam Bondi (“completely whiffed” the Jeffrey Epstein file release) and other top administration figures, Wiles suddenly finds herself in the spotlight. While the administration has publicly defended Wiles, not everyone in the MAGA-verse is quite so eager to drop it.

What did the commentators say?

Wiles’ comments, which included questioning the government’s handling of immigration enforcement, elicited a “full-throated defense” in public comments by administration officials, said CNN. But that support “masked a stunned White House inner circle left aghast” by what was taken by some insiders as a “significant blunder from a typically low-profile leader many entrusted to clean up messes, not make them.” Many administration figures have been left “scratching their heads” over the interview, said Politico. In particular, officials wonder how Wiles, “lauded for her political acumen and loyalty,” could have “miscalculated so badly.” The interview ultimately “fuels the idea that events are leading” President Donald Trump, “rather than the other way around.” It is “extremely demoralizing,” said one White House insider.

Informed by Trump’s first-term penchant for “constantly rebooting” his staff, her “disclosures” sent the nation’s capital into an “all-too-familiar guessing game of how much longer Wiles would stay in her job or what game she was playing,” said Time. But the president himself, who has repeatedly defended Wiles since the Vanity Fair interview was published, “delights in this sort of drama,” punishing subordinates “not when they dispute his agenda but when they get credited for shaping it.” By that token, many of Wiles’ comments “may have actually bought favor” from the president for painting the administration’s accomplishments as occurring “because Trump ordered them.”

The scandal is contributing to a broader sense of Trump’s return toward something akin to his “chaotic first term for his fellow Republicans,” said Semafor. To be “as blunt as Wiles,” the administration’s insistence that “things are going well” is starting to “come across as willfully ignorant.” However, Trump ultimately “still needs” Wiles. Unlike former advisor Steve Bannon, who was “excommunicated from Trump world — at least for a while,” Wiles’ job “seems safe” for now, said The Atlantic. To many in the White House, the grace being extended to the chief of staff is a “telling reflection of how indispensable she is to the president.” The White House’s all-hands-on-deck pushback to criticism of Wiles was a “show of force” that “underscored Wiles’ importance to Trump.”

Although “virtually the entire Trump Cabinet” has come to Wiles’ defense in some capacity since the interview was published, her comments “repeatedly stray from or contradict the administration’s public line on Trump’s most controversial policies,” said Axios. At the same time, however, they reveal the “key to her success:” eschewing the role of “guardrail installed to influence or restrain Trump” and being a “facilitator” for Trump’s agenda overall. Authoritarian movements are built on the backs of the “Susie Wileses of the world” said Asawin Suebsaeng on The New Republic’s Daily Blast podcast. Such governments need people who are “willing to go along” with a project “despite their own personal, hidden (unless you accidentally blab about it to Vanity Fair) reservations” about how “grotesque and depraved” that effort can be.

What next?

While Wiles’ position appears secure for now, her comments may nevertheless cause headaches for the White House in the future. Her candid acknowledgement of Trump’s appetite for “retribution” against prominent figures like New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey prompted “multiple attorneys working on the legal defenses for different high-profile political targets” to “immediately” start strategizing on how best to leverage her remarks, said Zeteo. The comments are being taken as a “welcome opportunity” by “lawyers for a variety of Trump targets” both currently under indictment and those waiting for further action by the administration.

The MAGA media universe is made up of influencers, podcasters and thought leaders who rally their conservative listeners and viewers behind President Donald Trump. Now, that right-wing ecosystem is “ripping itself to shreds” over conspiracy theories and petty feuds.

MAGA’s most prominent personalities are “attacking each other with a fury normally reserved for the left,” said Axios. Podcaster Candace Owens has attacked Turning Point USA after founder Charlie Kirk’s death. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson is in a feud with Trump ally Laura Loomer over Carlson’s plans to buy a home in Qatar. And YouTube commentator Benny Johnson is threatening to sue over “personal attacks” from longtime provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.

The “chaos” reflects a “wider Republican breakdown” as Trump’s poll numbers continue to drop, said Axios. The feuds are hitting high gear as the MAGA movement considers what happens after Trump. The combatants sense the “future of this political movement is up for grabs,” said Open Measures researcher Jared Holt.

What did the commentators say?

Owens was “MAGA’s favorite conspiracist,” but her “foray into conspiracy theories” about Kirk’s assassination has proven disruptive inside the movement, said The Washington Post. Owens has made a number of unfounded charges about Kirk’s death, including the notion that his murder was an “inside job” undertaken by “French or Israeli government agents.” She is “burning everything down,” said Tim Pool, another right-wing podcaster.

Owens’ antisemitic theories about Kirk’s death are “next-level lunacy,” said Rich Lowry at the National Review. She is “more alluring and sinister” than disgraced conspiracy-monger Alex Jones in working to “turn MAGA in a direction hostile to Israel, Jews, and Judaism.” She might be a “marginal figure” whose influence does not reach into the mainstream discourse the way Tucker Carlson still can. But she is working to “turbocharge” conspiracy thinking on the right, “with a special focus on the Jews.” That is a way of thinking “from which nothing good has ever come.”

MAGA influencers are revealing the “movement’s biggest weakness,” said Amanda Marcotte at Salon. The right-wing media ecosystem is “dominated by hustlers” more interested in a payday than the Trumpist “political project.” Aside from Trump, few GOP politicians hold sway over their party’s base. That leaves the job of shaping conservative opinions to the “social media influencer class” that understands “what gets the MAGA audiences going is lurid conspiracy theories.” Now that dynamic is getting out of control. GOP leaders have “no one to blame but themselves for this failure.”

What next?

Owens and Erika Kirk, Charlie’s widow, met on Monday in an effort to stem the feud. Both emerged from the “lengthy meeting” suggesting “tensions had eased,” said The Hill. “Time to get back to work,” Kirk said on X. “We agreed much more than I had anticipated,” Owens said. It is a sign of Owens’ “share of the media market” that Kirk felt the need to give her the “concession” of a meeting, said Chris Stirewalt at The Hill.

President Donald Trump likes to say that he has ended a number of wars during his term in office, and FIFA just gave him a peace prize for his work. But several of the conflicts he claims to have resolved appear ready to reignite, raising questions about his approach to life-and-death dealmaking.

Some of the peace deals that Trump claims to have struck have “simply unraveled,” said NPR. The president hailed a so-called peace accord between Thailand and Cambodia in October, but the border dispute between the two countries “flared up again” a month later, and then again this month. And there is still “low-level fighting” between Israel and Hamas, despite the ceasefire brokered by Trump. His unorthodox approach can sometimes produce “unexpected results,” said The Atlantic Council’s Matthew Kroenig. In places like Gaza, though, Trump has a habit of “declaring victory before it’s achieved.”

What did the commentators say?

The “crumbling peace deals” show the limits of Trump’s “high-speed” approach, said The Wall Street Journal. The Thailand-Cambodia deal and a faltering June accord between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo both depended on the United States using its “economic and military might” to get the parties to the table. Critics say those deals also “largely failed to resolve key issues” that led to fighting in the first place. That could have “serious consequences for regional stability,” said Kevin Chen at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

There is a difference between “making a deal” and “making peace,” said Peter Beaumont at The Guardian. Trump’s specialty is dealmaking, which is a “fundamentally transactional affair” and quite different from the difficult work of “mediated peace processes.” The president has a “performative” instinct for the “handshake and the signing” of a deal more than a “durable and fair peace” that can leave both sides satisfied. Trump’s “lack of commitment” to an enduring process is “transparently obvious to all involved.”

Trump works for peace “loudly, dramatically and quickly” but without “sustained attention,” said The Economist. The approach “may pause, but cannot end” the globe’s most enduring conflicts. Despite the FIFA honor, the world can take comfort that Trump still wants a Nobel Peace Prize and might be willing to work for it. The Nobel committee should “keep dangling its own prize just beyond his grasp.”

What next?

Trump’s patience is “running thin” while Ukraine and its European backers consider a Trump-backed deal that would largely bow to Russia’s “hardline demands,” said NBC News. The “stop-start diplomacy” on the war since Trump returned to office has “yet to yield any breakthroughs.” The president is ready to move. “Sometimes you have to let people fight it out, and sometimes you don’t,” he said to reporters last week. Trump seems not to want to “get pulled into another round of negotiations,” said Neil Melvin, the director of international security at the Royal United Services Institute. That raises the risk that he will “do a deal over the heads of the Europeans with Russia.”

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has blamed his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese for failing to counter the spread of antisemitism that culminated in Sunday’s deadly mass shooting at Bondi Beach.

At least 15 people were killed and more than 40 injured when two gunmen opened fire at a Hanukkah celebration in the Sydney suburb.

“Your government did nothing to stop the spread of antisemitism in Australia,” Netanyahu said, addressing Albanese, as he claimed the Australian government had “let the disease spread”.

What did the commentators say?

It is “highly contestable” to claim the Australian PM could have prevented this attack, said the Australian Financial Review’s political editor Phillip Coorey. But the government has “spent two years falling short” of recommendations to tackle anti-Jewish hate, even those made by “its own handpicked envoy, Jillian Segal”.

That, along with a “palpable lack of moral clarity” when it came to condemning the 7 October attacks on Israel and a “lack of visible leadership” at a time of growing opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza, has left the government “exposed” to claims it has not done enough to counter antisemitism.

“Elements of the Australian media” have also “made their own contribution to this atmosphere”, said Alexander Downer in The Australian. “Much of the reporting coming out of the Middle East was deeply hostile to Israel”, and the national broadcaster, the ABC, has “frequently taken at face value claims made by Hamas, a terrorist organisation”.

These factors have, according to representatives of the Australian Jewish community, created a “permissive environment, where the warning signs were clear and too often left unchecked”, said the ABC. In recent years there have been “hateful symbols displayed at otherwise peaceful demonstrations and a pattern of targeted attacks on Jewish institutions”, in a nation that is home to the largest proportion of Holocaust survivors outside Israel.

There is also evidence that external agents are exacerbating the hostility. In August, Australia severed diplomatic ties with Iran, whom it accused of paying for arson attacks against a synagogue in Melbourne and a kosher cafe in Sydney.

Danny Citrinowicz, an Iran expert at Israel’s Institute of National Security Studies in Israel, told The Telegraph it was “too early to jump to conclusions” about Tehran’s potential involvement in Sunday’s shooting. “They are definitely suspects and high on the priority list,” he said, adding that “Al-Qaeda and IS have also been active in Australia”.

What next?

Albanese has repeatedly vowed to eradicate the “scourge” of antisemitism, and has already suggested an imminent tightening of existing firearms legislation. “But it all sounds so hollow,” said Coorey in the Australian Financial Review, especially in the aftermath of one of Australia’s worst-ever terror attacks. “The Jewish community and its supporters aren’t listening. They stopped listening long ago. Now, they’re openly hostile.”

Australia must also grapple more broadly with the implications of the Bondi attack, said Downer in The Australian. They have long viewed their country “as a model of liberalism” where discrimination is “anathema”. “This self-image of Australia has now been shattered.”

President Donald Trump’s $12 billion bailout of American farmers will provide at least temporary relief from their struggles. But critics say the underlying problems, including his tariffs, still have not been solved.

Trump’s trade wars have “bludgeoned the already struggling U.S. agricultural sector,” said Axios. Farmers were staggering under the weight of “falling commodity prices and rising production costs,” but the president’s tariffs did not help. China stopped buying American-grown soybeans as retaliation, “crushing the largest export market for American farmers.” Now more than half of U.S. farms are “losing money.” The newly announced bailout “will provide much-needed certainty” to the sector, Trump said. Others are not so sure. A “one-time payment is not a long-term fix,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).

Many farmers see the bailout as a “welcome stopgap,” said Fortune. But they do not believe it will “solve the agricultural industry’s problems.” The payments from the Trump administration are “not the ultimate solution we’re looking for,” said Charlie Radman, who grows corn and soybeans in Minnesota. Many of Radman’s colleagues say they want “trade, not aid.” American farmers “need more demand for our product,” said Iowa corn farmer Dan Keitzer to Fortune.

What did the commentators say?

Aid to farmers is Trump’s solution to a “self-created trade mess,” said The Washington Post editorial board. It is not just that the tariffs have cut off export markets for American-grown foodstuffs. They have also “driven up input costs for farmers,” who now must pay $100-a-ton more for fertilizer than they did a year ago. The president’s aid package will only partly offset the $44 billion that U.S. farmers are expected to suffer this year. Americans get “higher food prices and fewer options” while the farmers who feed them are doing worse than if Trump had “never imposed tariffs.”

The bailout is proof tariffs do not work, “but don’t expect the White House to think too hard about it,” said Eric Boehm at Reason. Farmers need aid because Trump’s trade wars are “creating higher prices for farmers” while also “making American agricultural products less competitive” in worldwide markets. Trump should have “learned this lesson already.” His first-term tariffs ended up forcing a $28 billion bailout of American farmers. History is repeating itself “with the same predictable results.”

What next?

American farmers “aren’t out of the woods yet,” said Foreign Policy. After the bailout was announced, Trump threatened new tariffs on Canadian fertilizer. That would “risk further straining” the finances of American farmers who use the product. And the president shows no signs of abandoning his overall tariff-driven approach to trade. The import fees have “greatly enhanced” U.S. national security, the president said on Truth Social. That will not come as good news to farmers who support Trump, but also who want to sell their products rather than live with uncertainty. They want “export market access, not handouts,” said Cornell University economist Chris Barrett.

The stakes couldn’t be higher this weekend as the UK and the EU attempt to win concessions from the US over a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia.

Depending on how the next few days play out, “in the very best scenario there could eventually be peace in Ukraine”, said The Times. But in the worst-case scenario for the UK and the EU, “President Trump cuts Ukraine and Europe loose and sides with Moscow in his desire to bring the conflict to an end at any price”.

Yesterday, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Trump is “extremely frustrated with both sides of this war”, and he is “sick of meetings just for the sake of meeting”. In essence, “the transatlantic relationship feels very fragile right now,” a senior government source told The Times. “Anything could happen.”

What did the commentators say?

Despite Trump’s frustrations, “signs of a potential compromise are emerging”, said Politico’s London Playbook. The US and Ukraine are now talking about Kyiv withdrawing its troops from the Donbas region in order to create a “free economic zone” which would also be protected from Russian forces. “Ukraine seems willing to engage on this, but says it will only withdraw if it receives meaningful security guarantees.”

But reports of a demilitarised zone (DMZ) such as this “must be taken with a pinch of salt”, said UnHerd’s Wolfgang Munchau. “There are some suggestions that a DMZ would be a dealbreaker for Russia, like Nato Article 5 security guarantees for Ukraine.” Equally, Trump’s tilt toward the Kremlin in the National Security Strategy released by the White House last week has complicated negotiations. The US president “seems to want to stand equidistant between a democratic Europe and an autocratic Russia”, said The Washington Post’s David Ignatius. But “that evenhandedness between friend and foe makes no sense, strategically or morally – and it genuinely worries Europe.”

Trump “still views Ukraine as the weaker, more malleable party in the conflict”, two US government sources told Politico. “The Americans continue to act as though accepting Russia’s demand to hand over territory it has failed to occupy will bring peace,” said The Economist. But “all the evidence suggests Vladimir Putin sees it as a means to achieve Ukraine’s political subjugation”.

Indeed, many countries “remain concerned that a lopsided peace deal could work in Moscow’s favour, and prelude further aggression in Ukraine or against Nato’s long eastern flank”, said the National Security Journal’s Georgia Gillholy. European leaders “see little evidence that the Kremlin”, with more than 700,000 troops and its vast defence industry still geared for conflict, “is preparing for anything resembling a genuine de-escalation”.

What next?

According to officials from two of the countries involved, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff intends to take part in talks with national security officials from the UK and Europe this weekend.

One senior government source told The Times that developments in recent days had been “very significant” and that there was now at least a chance of achieving a unified “Western” set of proposals to present to Moscow.

But whether that means peace before Christmas is very much up in the air. Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said ahead of the discussions this weekend that Moscow has not seen the revised peace plan – and that “when we see them, we may not like a lot of things, that’s how I sense it”.

The fight over the future of Warner Bros. Discovery is really a battle to decide who will control much of the news and entertainment Americans consume. So perhaps it is no surprise that President Donald Trump is wading straight into the middle of the fray between Netflix and Paramount Skydance.

Trump’s assertion this week that he will play a role in deciding the winner of that battle tests the “boundaries of his power,” said The New York Times. “I’ll be involved in that decision,” he said to reporters. Congress gave merger oversight authority to the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said the Times, but the law does not “specify a personal role for presidents” to influence that process “on a whim or for their own benefit.” Trump is thrusting himself into that process, however, forcing executives and shareholders in business sectors far beyond the media industry to “consider the risk” that the president will get involved.

Netflix won the initial bid for Warner Bros., but Paramount this week announced its attempt to bypass Netflix with a $30-a-share hostile takeover effort. A Paramount-Warner merger “could give Trump even more influence over U.S. media,” said The Conversation. The new conglomerate under the helm of mogul (and Trump ally) Larry Ellison and his son, David Ellison, would “control a vast share of U.S. viewership.” Paramount already owns, and has upended, CBS News. Adding Warner-owned CNN to the mix would “concentrate oversight of two of the country’s most prominent newsrooms” under an owner with “strong ties to Trump.”

What did the commentators say?

It is “normal” for the federal government to scrutinize and even attempt to block a “mega-merger deal,” said Brian Stelter at CNN. But it is not normal for a president to “openly opine about it, or to say that he’ll be involved.” It is not just Paramount that understands the changed landscape. So does Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, who reportedly met with Trump ahead of his company’s bid for Warner Bros. Trump’s involvement raises concerns about “favor-trading and corruption” and “could make the most earth-shattering Hollywood merger in years significantly more difficult to move forward.”

“Let Warner’s shareholders decide,” said The Wall Street Journal editorial board. Neither the Paramount nor the Netflix offer “presents major competition concerns” for federal antitrust enforcers, but each bid should be “analyzed without political interference.” Trump’s involvement is not the “way capitalism is supposed to work,” but now businesses and shareholders are “at the mercy of Trump’s mood.”

What next?

The political battlefield over the company’s sale extends beyond the president. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is part of Paramount’s bid, said Axios. Democrats are also weighing in. Reps. Sam Liccardo (D-Calif.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said in a letter that they may “try to block or unravel any acquisition by Paramount,” said Semafor. The company’s offer is backed by sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi. That creates “foreign influence risks,” said the lawmakers.

President Donald Trump’s tariff-driven trade war is not slowing down China’s export economy. Beijing this week reported a record $1 trillion trade surplus with the rest of the world in 2025, raising concerns about “growing imbalances” in the global economy.

The trillion-dollar milestone puts China’s well-known “dominance” of world trade “into even starker relief,” said The Wall Street Journal. While Trump’s tariffs have limited the country’s exports to the United States this year — plunging nearly a third in November compared to last year — China’s exports to Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America have “surged” significantly. The trend has “raised alarms around the world, especially in Europe,” whose automotive and luxury goods sectors find themselves threatened by “nimble Chinese competitors.”

That leaves Europe “squeezed between an ultra-competitive China and a protectionist America,” said Politico. China’s trade surplus “is untenable,” said French President Emmanuel Macron to the Les Echos financial newspaper. European companies were once big investors in China, he said, and now it is time for Chinese businesses to “create value and opportunities for Europe.” Europe could impose Trump-style tariffs on imports, Politico said, but Macron would prefer a “truce” with Beijing.

What did the commentators say?

China’s gigantic trade surplus reveals the difficulty that Trump and others will have “trying to rebalance global trade,” said Amy Hawkins at The Guardian. But it also demonstrates how much Beijing’s economic might is “still overwhelmingly reliant on foreign markets.” And it has raised fears that the country is now flooding non-American markets with “cheap goods that threaten local industry.” It is more likely, though, that those goods will “ultimately end up in the U.S.” after traveling through third countries to avoid Trump’s tariffs.

We could be looking at a “second China shock,” said Alexandra Stevenson at The New York Times. The first shock came two decades ago when American and European companies outsourced manufacturing to China while closing factories at home. The second will come now that China is “redirecting more of its exports to developing countries” that have “less control over how it unfolds.” And there could be “profound” social consequences like unemployment and unrest in countries like Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. “They’re going to need to brace for impact.”

What next?

The next developments may depend on whether the current trade “truce” between the U.S. and China can hold. Some observers believe the relative peace “may not last,” said CNBC. That failure — and a second effort by China to push its exports to other markets — “might compel Europe to impose more restrictive measures to protect its manufacturing sector,” said Jing Wang, a China economist at Nomura, to the outlet.

China’s economy will increasingly “ride on the strength of domestic demand,” said Bloomberg. For now, though, Beijing “faces a worsening economic picture” at home. There has been a slowdown in domestic consumption and investment is also falling. As a result, analysts believe that China will continue to rely on exports and take “only incremental steps” toward relying on its own people to be customers for the goods it makes.

European leaders have agreed to look at how the European Convention on Human Rights is applied, in a way that takes into account the challenges posed by unauthorised migration.

Alain Berset, secretary general of the Council of Europe, said Europe’s leaders had taken an “important first step forward together” to agree a political declaration on migration and the ECHR, and support a new recommendation to deter smuggling of migrants “with full respect for human rights”.

Keir Starmer had earlier called on European leaders to modernise the interpretation of the ECHR. The “current asylum framework was created for another era” and should “evolve to reflect the challenges of the 21st century”, he said in a joint article with Danish PM Mette Frederiksen in The Guardian.

What did the commentators say?

“Human rights campaigners, Labour peers and some MPs” had condemned the government for calling for changes, “arguing they could open the door to countries abandoning some of the world’s most vulnerable people”, said Pippa Crerar and Rajeev Syal in The Guardian. The PM, they said, “should not be diluting protections that pander to the right”.

“Closing our borders to refugees is undoubtedly a crime. But worse than that, it is a mistake,” Jonathan Portes, a professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London, told Strategic Europe. The combination of “dubious deals, pushbacks at sea, and draconian deportation policies may look like success” but “every analysis tells us that Europe’s ageing population and shrinking workforce mean we need new workers” to “help generate the economic dynamism we so desperately lack”.

But there is growing consensus across Europe that something needs to be done. Both critics and supporters of the ECHR, which came into force in 1953, acknowledge that it is “woefully outdated” and “does not reflect today’s reality of people-smuggling gangs and the weaponisation of migrants by rogue states”, said James Rothwell, Joe Barnes and James Crisp in The Telegraph.

“While there is no suggestion that EU leaders will scrap the ECHR”, as some parties on the right, including Reform UK and, latterly, the Conservatives “dream of doing”, a growing number of member states have called “for it to be ‘reinterpreted’ to address current migration challenges”.

What next?

Berset told reporters that the “living instrument” is possible to adapt, and work will begin next year.

The key parts of the ECHR that have been identified as in need of an update are Article 8, the right to family life, and Article 3, the right not to be subjected to torture or inhumane treatment. Both are often cited – some would say abusively – in court by asylum-seekers looking to overturn their deportation orders. And restrictions on the application of Article 8 are crucial to the government’s radical asylum reforms, set out by Shabana Mahmood last month.

There has been some outcry at moves to tighten up interpretation of these articles but, “to put it bluntly”, Europe would not be plunged “into a dark age of injustice”, said Daniel Thym, a professor of European law at Germany’s University of Konstanz, on Verfassungsblog.

It is a sign of how high Starmer sees the stakes on this issue that he sent both Justice Secretary David Lammy and Attorney General Richard Hermer to Strasbourg today to make the case for updating the convention. Starmer’s two closest allies have “one task in mind”, said Andrew McDonald on Politico’s London Playbook: “securing reforms to the ECHR to save his Labour government and the 75-year-old treaty from those on the right who want to ditch both entirely. No pressure!”

Bugs Bunny could soon have a new boss: Netflix has announced an agreement to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming service and studios, potentially creating a new streaming powerhouse and drastically changing the entertainment landscape. But while Netflix and Warner Bros. are moving forward with their deal, another player, Paramount Skydance, has also announced a hostile bid for the company. All the while, President Donald Trump is weighing in on the possible merger, and regulatory questions remain in a deal that could alter Hollywood for good.

What did the commentators say?

Netflix’s potential $83 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery would “reshuffle the entertainment landscape, rounding up classics such ‘Casablanca’ and beloved HBO series ’Game of Thrones’ and ‘The Sopranos’ under the streaming service's umbrella,” said USA Today. Beyond an expanded library of content, combining Netflix with Warner Bros. would also create a massive, consolidated new customer base by “adding HBO Max’s nearly 130 million streaming subscribers to Netflix’s 300 million or so.”

The deal isn’t entirely unexpected; Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos has “long coveted HBO programming,” and as far back as 2010 was “intent on getting some older HBO shows on its nascent streaming service,” said The New York Times. Fifteen years later, the potential deal has “set off concerns about the future of theatrical releases. It also left many questions about the future of the storied HBO brand.”

But even as Netflix claims the purchase is a done deal, Paramount has launched its own $108.4 billion competing bid. Paramount “repeatedly argued to the WBD board of directors that keeping Warner Bros. Discovery whole is in the best interest of its shareholders,” said CNBC. Paramount CEO David Ellison has long expressed interest in buying Warner Bros. The company is “really here to finish what we started,” Ellison, a close ally of Trump, told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” saying they “put the company in play.” Paramount has “accused Warner of ‘never engaging meaningfully’ with its six various proposals,” said NPR.

What next?

The dueling bids have “created a cupboard full of industry stakeholders” who “need to be pondering their next move,” said Forbes. Entertainment players from movie theater operators to various Hollywood unions have weighed in on the issue, as the “expected fallout will be enormous” no matter what company emerges victorious in the bidding war. Beyond the companies themselves, a “new regulatory scramble will ensue.”

The president has claimed the Netflix deal “could be a problem” due to antitrust laws. Trump has seemingly expressed interest in his ally Ellison’s Paramount buying Warner Bros., which currently owns CNN. Affinity Partners, a private equity firm led by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, is also part of Paramount’s bid, according to an SEC filing. Paramount is “telling WBD shareholders that it has a smoother path to regulatory approval than does Netflix,” said Axios, and “Kushner’s involvement only strengthens that case.”

The potential Netflix purchase has also “drawn criticism from bipartisan lawmakers and unions on concerns it could lead to job cuts and higher prices for consumers,” said Reuters. This is underscored by the fact that Trump has pledged to be involved in the transaction, and the “political dynamics may be further complicated by Warner Bros. Discovery’s rejection of Paramount, a studio with Trump connections, in favor of Netflix.”

It is tough for any president to sense what their policies look like in the real world, surrounded as they are by security agents and yes-men. Those protective layers are called a “bubble,” and some observers wonder if President Donald Trump is trapped in his.

Trump has “dramatically scaled back speeches, public events and domestic travel” during the first year of his term, said The Atlantic. He has also cut back on his once-frequent rallies. That gives him limited contact with the American public, creating a “growing fear among Republicans” that the president has become “too isolated” from voter concerns.

Missteps can happen as a result. Americans voted for Trump to “lower prices,” said an anonymous ally of the president to The Atlantic. “They didn’t vote for him to build a damn gilded ballroom.” And Trump is “not hearing them.”

What did the commentators say?

The president’s heavy Twitter use “liberated” him from the "prison of the presidency” during his first term, said Semafor. Now he “scrolls the adulatory Truth Social” and fills more of his time with Trump-friendly Fox News and “new MAGA channels” like Newsmax and OANN. And aides tend to give him a rosier outlook on issues like the economy than what Americans actually experience. But his team pushes back against bubble allegations. Trump has his “finger on the pulse of the American public,” said a spokesman to the outlet.

“Every president wrestles with the White House bubble,” said Lisa Gilbert and Neera Tanden at Talking Points Memo. This one is a problem: Americans are concerned about affordability, but the president is building a ballroom, seeing a $230 million payment from the Justice Department and giving out pardons to the rich and powerful, all while refusing to address the health care crisis. The contrast between the public’s needs and Trump’s actions is “jarring, even grotesque.” It proves that the president’s “gold-plated bubble has cut off any contact with reality.”

The White House recently launched a new website that supposedly tracks anti-Trump media bias, said Margaret Sullivan at The Guardian. But the site is “revealing the bubble Trump increasingly inhabits” by criticizing journalism that does not offer “flattery and sycophancy” to the president. Given the president’s isolation from voters, “harsh reality via the media is a rude intrusion.” Criticizing the media will not help Trump “get out of the trouble — or the bubble — that he’s in.”

What next?

Trump is planning a cross-country “travel blitz” to offset criticism he has “prioritized global issues over pocketbook worries,” said Axios. The president has grown increasingly irritated with that criticism, though, saying that voter concerns about affordability are a "hoax" and "con job” perpetrated by Democrats and the media.

The White House, meanwhile, will continue its plans to expose anti-Trump bias by the media, said The Associated Press. Journalists say that will make it more difficult to get unwelcome news to the public and the president. The country suffers “when we’re not operating from some semblance of a common truth,” said Axios CEO Jim VandeHei.

“Dear American friends, Europe is your closest ally, not your problem,” Polish prime minister Donald Tusk posted on X. “Unless something has changed.”

Tusk was reacting to the new US National Security Strategy, which has landed in European capitals at the weekend “like a bucket of cold water”, said The Wall Street Journal. Hailed by Russia as aligning “in many ways” with “our vision”, the explosive 30-page document criticises the “unrealistic expectations” of “European officials” backing Ukraine. It also castigates the EU for “censorship of free speech”, praises the “growing influence of patriotic” political parties, and warns of the “civilizational erasure” of Europe.

Signalling a more isolationist approach to Donald Trump’s foreign policy, the document declares “the days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over”.

What did the commentators say?

This “grenade” of a policy paper will have stunned European leaders by revealing “the depth of ideological vehemence within the White House”, said Ishaan Tharoor in The Washington Post.

The “pointed criticisms” of Europe, cast as “tough love advice”, stand in marked contrast to the document’s “approach to traditional US rivals”, said Daniel Michaels, David Luhnow and Max Colchester in The Wall Street Journal. Russia “isn’t mentioned a single time as a possible threat to US interests” and China, North Korea and the Middle East receive surprisingly little attention.

European leaders should “assume that the traditional trans-Atlantic relationship is dead,” Katja Bego from the Chatham House think tank told the paper. It’s “the mother of all wake-up calls for Europe”, historian Timothy Garton Ash added. “It essentially declares outright opposition to the European Union. It’s J.D. Vance’s notorious speech in Munich but on steroids and as official US policy.”

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has sought to downplay European concerns, conceding that “some” of the US criticism is “true”. Europe “has been underestimating its own power towards Russia,” she told a panel at the Doha Forum in Qatar this weekend. “We should be more self-confident.”

What next?

Since Trump’s return to the White House, “European leaders have kept up a remarkable performance of remaining calm amid his provocations, so far avoiding an open conflict that would sever transatlantic relations entirely”, said Tim Ross on Politico. But for centrists like Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz, “the new Trump doctrine poses a challenge so existential that they may be forced to confront it head-on”.

But there’s a fundamental contradiction at the heart of Trump’s document. “By underplaying – and refraining from even referencing – the conventional threat Russia poses to transatlantic security”, it does nothing to “empower those nations that are working to take on greater defence responsibilities”, said Torrey Taussig, a director at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, on Atlantic Council.

Instead, this strategy paper “seeks to embolden” Europe’s “nationalist and populist parties”, who would probably “cut defence budgets and downplay the conventional threats”. In this sense, the document is an “own goal that undermines the administration’s stated objectives” of “shifting the burden of defence onto the shoulders of European allies”.

Congressional Republicans do not often love their leaders. They booted former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2023 and replaced him with the then-nearly unknown Mike Johnson. Now Johnson faces a revolt from high-profile women in his ranks.

Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) hold on the speaker’s gavel “appears weaker than ever,” said The New York Times. Public anger has come from GOP figures like Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), a member of Johnson’s leadership team, as well as Reps. Nancy Mace (S.C.) and Anna Paulina Luna (Fla.), who circumvented Johnson to force a vote on a congressional stock trading ban. House Republicans are often fractious, “but it does seem like there is an unusually high level of discontent,” said Rep. Kevin Kiley (Calif.) to the Times. Johnson “wouldn’t have the votes to be speaker if there was a roll-call vote tomorrow,” Stefanik said to The Wall Street Journal.

Female GOP lawmakers have “less representation in leadership” and hold just one committee chairmanship in the lower chamber, said NBC News. The women “feel they have been passed over for opportunities” and believe Johnson has repeatedly undercut them. “We aren’t taken seriously,” said one anonymous female Republican to NBC. Johnson’s team is pushing back. The speaker has “helped recruit and support women running for office,” a spokesman said. It is a conflict Johnson needs to resolve. Republicans have a slim majority in the House, and he cannot afford any defections.

What did the commentators say?

“The GOP women are humiliating Mike Johnson,” said Joe Perticone at The Bulwark. It started when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) backed the petition to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files. It has come to a head with Stefanik, angry with Johnson over her proposal to require the FBI to disclose when it investigates congressional candidates. All of it is a sign that House Republicans are on the verge of “entering into open rebellion” against their leader. The party’s women are “giving Johnson the bird” while GOP men in the House are living with the “indignity of being subservient cogs in the party machinery.”

It is not shocking that a party built on President Donald Trump’s “macho, politically incorrect swagger” is having trouble with women in its ranks, said Matt Lewis at The Hill. Johnson in particular is an evangelical “fond of lecturing about ’distinct roles’ for men and women.” He also makes an easy target for Republicans frustrated by the party’s political challenges, but who will not challenge Trump directly. Is the speaker a “retrograde misogynist” or just a patsy? “Either way, the ending is the same.”

What next?

Johnson is “imploring” his members to “stop venting their frustrations in public,” said The Associated Press. If there are conflicts, “come to me, don’t go to social media,” he said to reporters Thursday. More and more, though, GOP members are “ignoring him,” said the AP. House Democrats are delighted. Republicans are the “gang that can’t legislate straight,” said House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries to the outlet.

The spectre of Donald Trump looms large over the first state visit by Vladimir Putin to India since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began.

Putin was met on arrival with a warm embrace by Narendra Modi and the two leaders are due to discuss deals over oil, arms, working visas and strengthened diplomatic ties between the two countries.

Following an opening press conference, two things “stood out”, said the BBC: first, a “conspicuous display of mutual respect”; and second, an “absence of any blockbuster announcement”.

The “need” for both countries right now is to boost “bilateral trade”, as Russia is “reeling” from Western sanctions and India is “facing 50% tariffs from Washington”.

What did the commentators say?

Modi continues to walk a diplomatic “tightrope” between Russia and the US, said Foreign Policy. Putin’s two-day visit is a stern “test” of how well India can “balance ties” with the two countries.

The summit comes at a “critical juncture” for both Russia and India, mostly due to the looming presence of the US, said The Guardian. Trump’s re-election has “upended years of closely nurtured US-India relations”, causing disruption with “inflammatory rhetoric” and “punishing” import tariffs. As a result, Delhi has been thrown “into a tailspin”.

Putin, too, is not in Trump’s good books. He has rejected the latest US-proposed peace plan for Ukraine, and is looking to bolster Russia’s recent battlefield advances that have “strengthened his hand” with diplomatic gains.

“The question of oil also looms large.” Modi has “insisted that India would continue to buy Russian oil” – Moscow supplies over 35% of India’s crude oil imports, compared to only around 2% before the war in Ukraine began. However, heavy US-imposed sanctions have led to a “notable slowdown” in this supply to appease Trump, not to mention India having “agreed to import more US oil and gas”.

“India is rolling out the red carpet for the Russian president”, undermining global efforts to cast him as an “international pariah”, said Bloomberg. India, though still wanting to maintain economic ties with the US, is looking to diversify and “gain more access to the Russian market”. Most likely, this week could see an agreement reached over the “shipment of marine products and agricultural goods”, both of which would be in India’s favour.

Russia’s interests are clear too. India, with a population of around 1.5 billion and the “fastest growing major economy” in the world, is a “hugely attractive market” for Russian goods and resources, said Steve Rosenberg, the BBC’s Russia editor.

Putin’s enthusiasm is plentiful. One “priority” is weapons sales, with reported deals on exporting “state-of-the-art Russian fighter jets and air defence systems”. Due to the war in Ukraine, Russia has also been hit with a labour shortage, and India presents itself as a “valuable source of skilled workers”. Most importantly, the main benefit is geopolitical: the Kremlin “enjoys demonstrating that Western efforts to isolate it over the war in Ukraine have failed”.

What next?

Any progression towards a peace deal in Ukraine would “give India more breathing room” with the US than it had six months ago. Then, Trump’s “ire” towards Modi “ran high” and he imposed additional 25% tariffs on the country, said The Wall Street Journal.

Putin is expected to offer “Russia’s latest arms” to “bolster the long-standing relationship” between them. Even if this were to fall through, the mere prospect of a summit shows that the relationship is on an “upswing”, according to one expert.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been dogged for years by criminal corruption charges. Now he is asking President Isaac Herzog to short-circuit the legal process by giving him a pardon before the court hands down a verdict.

Netanyahu’s pardon application did not “include an admission of guilt” to allegations of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, said CNN. Instead, the request is part of an effort to “heal the rifts, achieve national unity and restore public trust in the state’s institutions,” the prime minister said in a one-page letter. Opposition leaders have been withering in their response. “Only someone guilty asks for a pardon,” said Yair Golan, the head of Israel’s Democrats party, on X. But right-wing leaders supported Netanyahu’s plea. A pardon is “critical for the security of the state,” said Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir in a statement.

The request “immediately hijacked the Israeli political conversation,” said The New York Times. But some opposition figures suggested they would support a pardon for Netanyahu on one condition. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on X that clemency is possible for his rival if it is conditioned upon Netanyahu’s “respectful retirement from political life.”

What did the commentators say?

Netanyahu has committed a “staggering act of hypocrisy,” said Dan Perry at Forward. The promise to heal Israel’s national divide is “jaw-dropping,” given how Netanyahu launched a “demonization campaign against the courts” following his 2019 indictment. That spawned a fierce nationwide battle over the future of the Israeli Supreme Court. Netanyahu “now plays peacemaker” after poisoning the nation’s trust in its institutions. A pardon should come only with a “full personal admission of guilt — spoken aloud by Netanyahu himself.”

Herzog is facing a “political, national and leadership decision” unlike any other, Shalom Yerushalmi said at The Times of Israel. Israel’s president is unlikely to make a decision that “would tear the public apart rather than unite it” by granting the “most problematic pardon in Israel’s history.” But Herzog is likely to seek a “middle ground,” either by putting conditions on the pardon or by encouraging Netanyahu to return to plea-bargain discussions. There is no chance, though, that Netanyahu will heal the nation. “No one can change this prime minister at the age of 76.”

What next?

Herzog’s office is weighing an “extraordinary step with significant implications,” said The Jerusalem Post. The issue is “shaking many people in the country,” the president said in a statement, adding that he would move only in the “best interests of the State of Israel and Israeli society."

Israeli society is watching. Roughly 400 retired police officers asked Herzog to reject Netanyahu’s request, said The Times of Israel. A pardon might “ignite severe violence in Israeli society,” they said in a petition. Netanyahu is looking outside his country for support. The prime minister asked President Donald Trump to push again for his pardon, said Axios. That may not be forthcoming. Trump has “done all he can do," said a U.S. official to the outlet.

The latest Ukraine peace talks with Vladimir Putin have failed again to make a breakthrough, and Europe has begun to think the unthinkable. In the face of Russia’s increasing cyberattacks, sabotage and violations of its airspace, it’s making plans to be more aggressive – economically and militarily.

The European Commission is moving ahead with plans to further fund Ukraine, either with a loan based on Russia’s frozen assets or a loan based on common borrowing. And, with Russian “drones and agents unleashing attacks across Nato countries”, Europe is “doing what would have seemed outlandish just a few years ago”, said Politico. It’s “planning how to hit back”.

What did the commentators say?

Russian “hybrid attacks” on European countries – GPS jamming, drone-buzzing, election interference, ship or aircraft incursions – have been going on for years “but the sheer scale and frequency” right now is “unprecedented”, said Victor Jack and Laura Kayali on Politico. Such an aggressive testing of Europe’s limits has prompted calls for a step up in response, with ideas ranging from “joint offensive cyber operations” to “surprise Nato-led military exercises”.

Many diplomats – “particularly those from eastern European countries” – have “urged Nato to stop being merely reactive”, said Richard Milne in the Financial Times. We are thinking of “being more aggressive or more proactive”, Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, chair of Nato’s military committee, told Milne. “A pre-emptive strike” could even be considered a “defensive action”. The Russian foreign ministry swiftly called Dragone’s comments “extremely irresponsible” and a sign that Nato is “moving towards escalation”.

Nato has successfully countered hybrid attacks before. Its Baltic Sentry ship and air patrols stopped the cutting of undersea cables in 2023 and 2024 “by vessels linked to Russia’s shadow fleet”, said the FT’s Milne. But there are “still worries in the alliance” about such measures.

Putin “may see the EU and Nato as rivals or even enemies” but Europe “does not want war with a nuclear-armed Russia”, said Jack and Kayali in Politico. “It has to figure out how to respond in a way that deters Moscow but does not cross any Kremlin red lines that could lead to open warfare”.

“The ratcheting up of the Ukraine conflict into what is perceived as a European war is already well underway,” said Laura Tingle on ABC News. Though Putin has called it “laughable” that Russia could attack Europe, it’s “no laughing matter to a host of European political and military leaders”. The discourse “is all getting very alarming (or alarmist, depending on your perspective)”. It’s clear that “something has now been unleashed in Europe which is going to be hard to put back in the bottle”.

What next?

“Europe’s efforts to rearm” have publicly “moved into overdrive” but “behind the headlines lies a more uneven reality”, said Anna Conkling in the Brussels-based The Parliament magazine. Europe is still “split between countries rapidly expanding their militaries and those still constrained by years of underinvestment and fiscal fragility”.

Some states are powering ahead, while “others drag their feet”, risking a “two-speed defence model“ that could leave Europe “dangerously exposed”. This means “the buy-in of the largest countries” is “all the more important for Europe’s defence to reach a critical mass”.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing bipartisan scrutiny after he reportedly ordered U.S. forces to “kill everybody” in a strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug-trafficking boat. If those reports are accurate, critics say, Hegseth and the servicemembers who carried out the attack may be guilty of war crimes.

The initial Sept. 2 attack on a Venezuelan boat left two survivors “clinging to the smoldering wreck,” said The Washington Post. A Special Forces commander ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s order, and those survivors were “blown apart in the water.” Hegseth’s alleged instruction to kill all the occupants of the boat, even if they could no longer fight, would be an “order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer now at Georgetown Law, to the Post. But other officials said Hegseth’s order “did not specifically address” what should happen if there were survivors after the strike, said The New York Times. That could leave the mission commander, Admiral Frank M. Bradley, “exposed” to consequences.

Defending Americans or murder?

Hegseth’s alleged order is a “war crime that endangers every American in uniform,” said former Green Beret Karl K. Schneider at PennLive. Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions mandates that combatants who are “out of the fight due to wounds, surrender, or shipwreck” must be treated humanely. Targeting survivors of an attack is “not combat; it is murder.” That strikes at the “moral authority” of the United States. “America must not commit war crimes.”

“This is a very serious matter,” said Andrew C. McCarthy at the National Review. And Hegseth knows it. After the Sept. 2 attack, Hegseth and his commanders changed protocols to emphasize the rescue of survivors. That is why the survivors of an October strike were “repatriated to their native countries.” The defense secretary “knows he can’t justify killing boat operators who survive attacks.”

“Why is Hegseth being attacked for defending Americans?” asked Nicole Russell at USA Today. President Donald Trump was elected to “take drug cartels, terrorism and illegal immigration seriously.” If Hegseth has committed a war crime, it should be investigated, but we should “trust Hegseth to issue lawful commands.” And polls show that most Republicans believe the benefits of taking on cartels “outweigh the risks.”

A defiant tone

The civilian boat crews were “not at war with the United States,” said Fred Kaplan at Slate. Which means that the real question is not whether Hegseth committed war crimes but “whether he’s a criminal, plain and simple.” While a Fox News host, Hegseth crusaded on behalf of veterans accused of war crimes. As defense secretary, he fired top Pentagon lawyers who provide a buffer against illegal orders. Hegseth is a “thug — and proud of it.”

The Post’s report “sent shock waves throughout Washington,” said The Hill, and top lawmakers from both parties vowed inquiries. But Hegseth “struck a defiant tone” to reporters at a presidential Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, said Axios. The sinking of “narcoterrorists” boats has “only just begun,” he said.

Nigel Farage reportedly expects an electoral pact or even a merger between Reform UK and the Conservatives before the next general election, a shift which would represent a historic realignment of the right.

A Reform donor said Farage told them that an agreement on cooperation between the two parties could help his party’s path to electoral success, according to the Financial Times. Another associate said that Farage described a pact or merger as “inevitable”, although the party leader said he “felt betrayed after the pact he made with the Tories at the 2019 election”.

“They will have to come together,” the donor said. “The Conservatives have been a successful political party forever because the left was always divided…If the right is divided, it can’t win.”

What did the commentators say?

I have long been sceptical of such a pact, said the newspaper’s Stephen Bush in his Inside Politics newsletter. Farage is a “polarising figure” who could unite the left and centre against him. Reform may be the “stronger party” in the polls, but the Tories have far more MPs – any deal would have to involve a lot of Tory losers, with many serving MPs “shunted out of plum seats”. But talk of a pact is “no longer far-fetched”. Kemi Badenoch’s lacklustre leadership has “made the Tory party such a marginal bit-part player that I am no longer so sure”.

Farage dismissed the accounts of his alleged remarks, telling the FT that “sometimes people hear what they want to”. After next May’s devolved elections and local polls, the Conservatives “will no longer be a national party”, he said. “I would never do a deal with a party that I don’t trust. No deals, just a reverse takeover. A deal with them as they are would cost us votes.”

But even if Reform does as well as current polls suggest, those numbers still wouldn’t give the party a Commons majority, said Sky News’ deputy political editor Sam Coates. Farage would need backing from Tory MPs to get into No. 10. While Badenoch has dismissed the idea, YouGov polling of members before conference season found that 64% supported an electoral pact, and 46% supported a full-blown merger. “The appetite’s there.”

Frankly, there is “already a slow merger going on”, said George Eaton in The New Statesman. Over the past year, 21 current or former Conservative MPs have “defected to Reform” – three this week. Reform’s ratings have also fallen in recent polls, and “waves of tactical voting” saw it lose the Hamilton and Caerphilly by-elections. Under a “more confident” Badenoch, the Tories’ standing is improving. “So is a deal inevitable?” One of Farage’s closest aides told the magazine: “Over my dead body.”

What next?

No pacts or deals will be considered while Badenoch is party leader, a Conservative spokesperson told Sky News. “Reform wants higher welfare spending and to cosy up to Putin.”

Anthony Wells, head of politics and elections at YouGov, told the FT that although Reform was “miles ahead in the polls”, tactical voting by left-leaning voters could block Farage from power. There are also a significant number of Conservative voters who wouldn’t back Farage even if the alternative was Keir Starmer’s Labour. “There are some Tories that really don’t like Reform,” said Wells, “so there will be some leakage from right to left.”

And therein lies “the key point to keep in mind: pact or no pact”, said Eaton. What really matters for the election is “whether the right is more divided than the left”. Labour and the Lib Dems have never needed a pact to “demolish” the Conservatives with progressive tactical voting, such as in 2024. Reform and the Tories don’t need a pact to “do the same to Starmer”.

President Donald Trump says he has chosen the next chair of the Federal Reserve, but he is not yet naming names publicly.

Current National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett is widely expected to be the nominee, said Axios. Trump is not saying. “I’m not telling you, we’ll be announcing it,” he said to reporters. The next chair will replace Jerome Powell, who has “faced months of complaints and demands” from Trump to bring interest rates down more quickly, said Axios.

Powell’s term does not end until May, so he may have to spend the final months of his term with a “shadow chair” peering over his shoulder, said Fortune. Trump officials have signaled their desire to undercut Powell even if he remains in his position. With a shadow chair in place, “no one is really going to care what Jerome Powell has to say anymore,” said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to Barron’s last year. The question for Wall Street, then, is “will Powell or his successor hold more sway with the markets?” said Fortune.

What did the commentators say?

The likely choice of Hassett “appears to be about loyalty” to Trump, said John Authers at Bloomberg. Other possible nominees — including Bessent, as well as current Fed governor Christopher Waller and BlackRock executive Rick Rieder — might feel compelled to “establish themselves as independent from the administration.” But being seen as a Trump loyalist could also force Hassett to prove his independence to “win the confidence of markets.” For now, though, “markets aren’t freaking out at the prospect of a Hassett chairmanship.”

“Thank heavens” for Powell, said Brett Arends at MarketWatch. The latest numbers suggest the U.S. economy is “much stronger than people realized” even with the Fed chairman resisting Trump’s demanded rate cuts. If the president had gotten his way, the “likeliest scenario would be that inflation would be rocketing higher again.” Instead, the Federal Reserve has cut rates just twice this year and indicated another rate cut is unlikely in December. Americans should be grateful the current Fed chair has proven his independence and “refused to be intimidated” by Trump.

What next?

Hassett would have “closer ties to the sitting president” than any modern Fed chair, said Axios. That might mean a quick drop in short-term rates, but long-term rates may stay high if Wall Street comes to believe he is “simply doing Trump’s bidding, with little regard for inflation.” That notion “might be difficult for a pick like Hassett to shake.”

The next chair will face an unusually divided Fed board, said The Wall Street Journal. Fed chairs have ordinarily sought the “broadest possible consensus around rate decisions” and split votes have been rare. No longer. There is a “real prospect of three or more dissenting votes” at December’s meeting, whether Powell decides to pause rate cuts or continue them. “It’s not a slam dunk” that Trump’s choice will dictate policy as much as his predecessors, said Krishna Guha, a former New York Fed executive.

Justice Secretary David Lammy has unveiled a watered-down version of his plans to dispense with jury trials for all but the most serious offences.

Under his original plan, offences carrying a sentence of less than five years would have been heard in new judge-only courts. But following “cabinet feedback”, this has been scaled back to offences with a penalty of less than three years.

The current crown court backlog stands at around 80,000 cases, said the Ministry of Justice, and without urgent action could exceed 100,000 by 2028. “We must be bold,” Lammy said today in setting out the government’s plans, to rectify a court system on the “brink of collapse”.

What did the commentators say?

Trial by jury is one of the “central reasons” Britain’s legal system has “garnered such high levels of trust and respect around the world”, said The Times in an editorial. Lammy is correct that the “status quo cannot go on”, but “fundamental changes” towards a system of “secrecy” would face “grave public apprehension”.

Even if Lammy drives through his proposals, “scrapping jury trials alone might not be enough to clear the backlog”. If less serious offences could be overseen by a judge and two magistrates, as recommended in Brian Leveson’s judicial review, trial times could be reduced from “two days to a few hours”.

“Destroying jury trials because everything else is broken is a terrible idea,” said Tristan Kirk in London’s The Standard. Lammy’s proposal is an “act of pure desperation” from the Labour government. There is a “serious risk” that overhauling the system will cost “huge amounts of money and time” for “limited benefit”. Jury trials are “worth nourishing and investing in, instead of being constantly eroded”.

Had this come from a Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage government, Labour would “say we were on a rocky road, with something like fascism at the end of it”, said a Sunday Times editorial. Once gone, it is likely juries will “never come back”. Departing from centuries of tradition exposes the deputy prime minister’s “short-term” thinking, abandoning what many Britons see as a right “in the interests of expediency”. “Trial by jury is sacrosanct. Scrapping it is an affront to justice.”

This is out of character for Labour, said an editorial in The Telegraph. It “beggars belief” that a party “so obsessed with the artificial construct of the ECHR” would abandon such a “long-standing right”. The answer should be to “address the problems of capital and funding” in the criminal justice system, instead of “dispensing with the core principles of English justice”.

But “David Lammy is right to slash the use of juries”, said Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. “Archaic” and “inefficient”, they are “quaint relics of medieval jurisprudence”. We are falling behind many of our European neighbours, where judge-only courts have long been standard. Per 100,000 citizens, England and Wales imprison 145, compared to 71 and 54 in “jury-free” Germany and the Netherlands. “I do not believe that Britons are twice as criminal as Germans, or three times as Dutch.”

Labour’s reforms could be revolutionary for rape cases in particular, said The New Statesman. Currently, “women are being retraumatised for far too long” with delays of up to “half-a-decade” to have their cases heard in a system that “lets them down so badly”. Trying lower-level offences more efficiently will free up crown court time to make sure “the most serious crimes are heard quickly and fairly”. If reform isn’t enacted we risk perpetuating a system that “denies timely justice” and “fails to deter crime”.

What next?

Under the current proposals, magistrates will be allowed to hear cases with potential sentences of up to 18 months – as opposed to the current 12 – and this could still rise to two years, said The Telegraph.

The next stages of proposals aim to “create a new part of the crown court where there are no juries”, for sentences up to three years, said Sky News. This departs from the Leveson review, which proposed a panel of a judge supported by magistrates. Cases involving crimes that carry sentences of five years or more will still be heard in front of a jury.

Republicans are sending mixed signals about extending the Affordable Care Act subsidies due to expire at year’s end. President Donald Trump has suggested both that he would do a deal and that he would “rather not.” At stake is health care for up to 20 million Americans.

Trump said last week he is “open” to extending the subsidies a year to give Congress time to replace Obamacare, said Politico. An extension “may be necessary to get something else done,” Trump said.

But any action will come grudgingly. “I would rather not extend them at all,” he said to reporters. The ambivalence is clear. The White House planned, then canceled, the announcement of a two-year extension of ACA subsidies with “new limitations favored by conservatives,” said Politico.

Republicans are playing tug-of-war. “Pushback from some Republican lawmakers” stalled the White House announcement, said Scripps News. Obamacare “keeps requiring more and more tax dollars to prop it up,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.). But a “small cadre of politically vulnerable Republicans” is pushing for an extension rather than face the wrath of voters who will see their health costs skyrocket, said The New York Times. “We owe it to them to come up with a solution,” said Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.).

What did the commentators say?

“Republicans need to get serious about health care,” said the Bloomberg editorial board. Without a subsidy extension, as many as “4 million people will become uninsured,” while others will see their out-of-pocket premiums double. Lawmakers need to work on long-term plans to rein in “America’s soaring health care costs,” but in the short-term they must “soften the shock of lost subsidies.” Bipartisan agreement that “extends and reforms subsidies would be the right thing for taxpayers and enrollees alike.”

Trump is once again discovering that “health care policy is hard,” said Jonathan Cohn at The Bulwark. The “conflicting signals” coming from the White House and its GOP allies should “sound familiar” to anyone who follows health care politics. Republicans have repeatedly promised a “better alternative” to Obamacare. “But their plans almost never materialize,” and the plans that do emerge are “deeply unpopular” because they would leave “many millions of Americans without insurance.” Now that scenario is “playing out yet again.”

The president’s health care plan is a “mirage,” said Ed Kilgore at New York magazine. Perhaps Trump is “going back to the drawing board” after pushback from Republicans who wanted new abortion restrictions as a condition for extending subsidies. But the canceled announcement could also be a “feint” meant to signal action when none will occur. Either way, “health care costs aren’t going away as an issue.”

What next?

The “real moment of truth” for Trump and his party may come when government funding is due to run out in late January, said Axios. It is “not out of the question” that a bipartisan agreement could emerge before the end of December, but a “major push” from Trump would be needed to make that happen. “That seems far off at the moment.”

As Volodymyr Zelenskyy scrambles to strengthen European support for Ukraine’s position in the peace talks, he finds himself without his long-time chief of staff and lead negotiator. Andriy Yermak, Ukraine’s de facto deputy leader, resigned on Friday after a dramatic anti-corruption raid on his house, and has now announced he is off to the front line.

Yermak was so influential, the political system “had come to be known in Ukraine as Yermakshchina – the era of Yermak”, said Andrew E. Kramer in The New York Times. His departure is a “seismic event”. With him no longer around to oversee domestic policy, “keep a lid on power struggles within the military and oversee peace negotiations,” Zelenskyy’s “political control may weaken” just at the time he is looking to agree an end to the war.

What did the commentators say?

Nicknamed the “green cardinal” for his early adoption of battle fatigues, Yermak was “in every way” the “second-most powerful man in Ukraine”. A close ally of Zelenskyy, he acted more like an “unelected vice-president than a simple chief of staff” and, according to many officials and diplomats, was often “the de facto decision maker”, said Christopher Miller in the Financial Times.

His departure will be “extremely painful” for Zelenskyy – “physically and psychologically”, Ukrainian political scientist Volodymyr Fesenko told The Washington Post’s Siobhan O'Grady. “Yermak was always next to him. But Zelenskyy is adaptive. He learns quickly. I don’t think it’s a catastrophe – but it is a serious challenge.”

Yermak had become a deeply unpopular figure in Ukraine who “somehow aggregated all the dissatisfaction with what” Zelenskyy “does wrong”, Nataliya Gumenyuk of Ukrainian news site Hromadske told Andrew Carey at CNN. So, “a key question will be whether his departure increases the domestic pressure on Zelenskyy himself, or in fact turns the tide”.

What it could do is dilute the concentration of authority in Ukraine. And that could actually “strengthen Zelenskyy both domestically but also internationally”, William Taylor, a former US ambassador to Ukraine told the FT’s Miller. “Zelenskyy has some young, competent people who could step in.”

What next?

The scandal over corruption in the state energy company has weakened Zelenskyy domestically and, this week, Ukrainian MPs will be asked to vote on his budget. Losing that vote would not be terminal but it would be “another blow to Zelenskyy’s credibility as leader”, said Dominic Hauschild in The Times.

On the international front, Zelenskyy has moved quickly to replace Yermak as lead negotiator in the peace talks. With the president facing “a new round of US pressure to reach a deal to end Russia’s war”, and Moscow continuing to “relentlessly bombard his country”, the stage is set for one of Zelenskyy’s “most politically perilous moments yet”, said O’Grady in The Washington Post.

As for Yermak, in an “impassioned text message” to the New York Post, he said was going to the front and was “prepared for any reprisals. I am an honest and decent person.”

Net migration in the UK has fallen to its lowest level since 2021 after the “single largest outflow of people in a century as a proportion of the UK population”.

In the year to June, 693,000 people – 1% of the UK’s population – left the country. This was “the highest proportion of the population to leave the UK since 1923”, said The Times.

Overall, net migration stood at 204,000, down by more than two-thirds on the previous year’s 649,000, according to the Office for National Statistics. The provisional figures show 70,000 more EU nationals left the UK than arrived, while 109,000 more British nationals left than arrived.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood spoke last week of the “unprecedented levels of migration in recent years”. “That will now change,” she said. “In fact, it already has,” said The New York Times, but not in the way Mahmood and the government may want, as the “number of people who claimed asylum in the year to September 2025 reached a record high of 110,051”, said the BBC. That figure is more than half of the net migration total.

What did the commentators say?

The Conservatives are “keen to claim credit” for the “sharp fall” in net migration, said Michael Simmons in The Spectator. They say that stronger visa rules and restrictions on dependents introduced under Rishi Sunak are only now “feeding through” into the data.

Labour, on the other hand, can “claim progress” as these official migration statistics cover almost all of its first year in government. But ministers should “tread carefully”, however. The “underlying picture is far less clear-cut” and there is no evidence yet that the fall in migration can be maintained.

The exodus of young people in particular should “trigger alarm bells about the UK’s demographic conundrum”, said City A.M. Around 91% of British nationals who left the country were of working age, “scuppering” the idea that it was mainly pensioners leaving for Europe. If anything, this suggests that younger people are “ditching the country to boost living standards”.

The numbers themselves aren’t at the forefront of most people’s minds, but the optics of the government’s “handling of illegal migration and related issues” are, said UnHerd. To date, ministers have made “little progress” on delivering tangible results, and “show no sign yet of making any more”.

A mere “promise” to end the use of migrant hotels – such as the Bell Hotel in Epping – will “pay no political dividends” and save no money, if the government resorts to social or privately rented housing. If the government wanted to make a difference, it could change the “state’s legal obligation to house asylum seekers”: no such move has been made.

What next?

We must look at these figures in a wider context, especially if the government is considering applying arbitrary migration targets, said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times.

The influx of people entering the UK is not a standalone issue, but an “outgrowth” based on other decisions. Instead of jumping to “targets” – “the kind of thing that states tend to do badly” – answering the questions over housebuilding, university funding, or economic advantages is the way forward. “Trying to work backwards” by reverse-engineering the problem and starting with migrant controls, “is a fool’s errand”.

Small boats will continue to be a thorn in Labour’s side, especially if the UK remains “incapable” of stringent deportation systems, or an Australian method of “offshore processing”, said UnHerd. That being said, if Mahmood avoids another “Boris-wave” of high net migration, or prevents migrants becoming a “permanent burden on the British taxpayer”, then “she will deserve real credit. But if Labour ministers hope that will be enough to neutralise immigration as an electoral issue, they are surely mistaken.”

Emmanuel Macron has said a new voluntary national service programme in France, announced today, is not about “sending our youth to Ukraine” to fight.

The growing realisation that Russian aggression could “easily spill into Europe” has put “intense pressure” on countries across the continent to “quickly expand the ranks of full-time soldiers and reservists that shrank during the post-Cold War peace”, said The New York Times.

“Yet the question of how to recruit hundreds of thousands of service members is prompting fierce and soul-searching debates.”

What did the commentators say?

France’s new national service plan “stops short” of full conscription, said France 24. Lasting 10 months, with volunteers paid for their service, it is “expected to start modestly”, recruiting 2,000 to 3,000 people in the first year, before “ramping up” with a long-term goal of 50,000 per year.

“Some countries in Europe already have a form of a conscription”, said The Times, notably those “closest to Russian borders” such as Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania. But the war in Ukraine, and the so-called “grey zone” activities carried out by the Kremlin such as drone incursions into Nato airspace, “have reignited the debate across the continent”.

In Poland, “plans are under way for every man to go through military training”, said The New York Times, as the government aims to more than double the size of its army to 500,000. In the hope of also growing its fighting force from 70,000 to 200,000 by 2030, Denmark recently expanded its military conscription programme to include women turning 18 who are entered into a conscription lottery. Croatia has gone further, voting in October to reintroduce compulsory military service, which was suspended in 2008.

Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, this month opted for a “new military service” made up initially of a volunteer force that mirrors a system used in Sweden, where a questionnaire is sent out to all 18-year-olds. Conscription, which ended in 2011, “is not compulsory under the new rules but this model does include the potential for that”, said DW.

It marks the “first unmistakable shift in German security policy for a generation”, said Henry Donovan in The Spectator. Far from being an “overreaction” as some claim, “it is the minimum a serious country does when confronted with the concrete possibility of war on its own continent”.

Britain should also “pay close attention”. Up to now the UK government has ruled out reintroducing conscription (which was abolished in 1960) to boost its number of military personnel, instead favouring a recruitment drive by the Ministry of Defence.

What next?

Security and defence analysts, as well as Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have warned that Russia could be ready to expand its war into Europe within the next five years.

Even with countries vowing to “do a better job of attracting volunteers to fulfil national targets and commitments to Nato”, the “outlook for meeting targets is dim”, said The New York Times. “Retention rates remain low in many countries, reserve schemes are uneven and recruitment has dwindled in ageing societies with low unemployment,” the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a European think tank, concluded in a recent report.

The problem is that less than a third of EU citizens appear willing to fight for their country in a war, according to a 2024 poll by Gallup.

“Even if conscription would help address issues with military recruitment, in many countries it could be socially and politically controversial to the point that it reinforces polarisation, leads to backlash or social/political unrest, and undermines the wider security benefits that could be gained from it,” Linda Slapakova, from research institute RAND Europe, told Euronews.

This view was summed up by France’s chief of the defence staff, General Fabien Mandon, last week. While France has the economic and demographic power to defeat Moscow, it lacked the “spirit” in society to stand up to the threat, he said. “If our country falters because it is not prepared to accept – let’s be honest – to lose its children, to suffer economically because defence production will take precedence, then we are at risk.”

Until now, President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has focused largely on blue states like Illinois and California. Now Border Patrol agents have moved into the swing state of North Carolina, raising alarms about backlash from the state’s elected Republicans.

The move to expand immigration arrests to the Tar Heel State offers the “first test for whether the White House’s strategy can hold up in a purple state,” said Politico. Local GOP officials, though, have expressed alarm about high-profile incidents at a Charlotte shopping center and a local country club. The arrests have also triggered protests and business closures. The raids are leaving a “real sour aftertaste” with voters, said Edwin Peacock III, a Republican who recently ran for Charlotte City Council. “Is the price of doing this worth it?” The bad publicity is “maybe having a negative impact on my party,” said former Republican Gov. Pat McCrory.

Enforcement operations “might sway voters in next year’s elections,” said The New York Times. Independent voters “play an outsize role in the state,” and North Carolina in recent years has seen an influx of new residents from blue states. Memories of the crackdown could prove decisive in next year’s U.S. Senate race between former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and former Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley.

What did the commentators say?

“Why give voters in such a crucial state another reason to dislike Trump and his agenda,” said Paige Masten at The Charlotte Observer. Border Patrol “might be received differently” if it focused on arresting violent criminals, but instead the public has been treated to stories of “aggressively rounding up undocumented people at random or wrongfully targeting U.S. citizens.” Republicans may pay, as “Democrats will almost certainly remind voters next year.”

Trump’s immigration crackdown is “not so popular” now that “parents, neighbors and workers in North Carolina” are being swept up by the feds, said Ned Barnett at Raleigh’s The News Observer. North Carolina Republicans have for years joined the president in “political pandering to citizens’ fears or nativist views” on immigration, and GOP legislators have passed laws requiring state officials to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. But arrests and deportations are “punishing and frightening real people” who deserve better. North Carolina voters do not support that. “Neither should Republican lawmakers.”

While the “flash operation” in Charlotte does not represent the “immigration system North Carolina needs,” it is also wrong to “demonize federal agents” for enforcing the law, Andrew Dunn said, again at The Charlotte Observer. A wise system would welcome migrants as “full participants in our civic life” as long as they “come through the front door” legally. But if undocumented migrants can flout the system without fear of repercussions, “we don’t have an immigration system.”

What next?

A recent poll found the number of North Carolina residents who say the state is on the “wrong track” has risen by 20 points since Trump’s election, said Reuters. Democrats say they will fight back in the coming months by “arguing the Trump administration is overreaching.”

Meta is in talks to shift part of its AI infrastructure to Google-made chips, instead of ones made by Nvidia, in a deal worth billions of dollars that could permanently upend the world of tech.

This has been a “rocky couple of weeks” for Nvidia, said Brent D. Griffiths in Business Insider. Following reports of the Meta deal, Nvidia was trading down by more than 3%, and “lingering doubts” about the company surrounding the AI bubble are beginning to “creep back in”.

What did the commentators say?

Nvidia customers have been crying out for “more competition” in the chip market, and one “may have been hiding in plain sight”, said Dina Bass in Bloomberg. Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs) were first released 10 years ago, and are ideally suited to generating responses to ChatGPT or Claude, said the outlet. They are “less adaptable” and “more specialised” than Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs), but crucially they offer a “less power-hungry” system at a lower cost. Google’s advancements “underscore how major AI names are embracing TPUs as they race to add computing power to cope with runaway demand”.

Google has “pierced Nvidia’s aura of invulnerability”, said The Economist. Until now Nvidia has seemed “unassailable”, as investors bid shares “into the stratosphere” to cement its market dominance. With this move, Google has shifted from one of Nvidia’s biggest customers, to its “fiercest competitor yet”. Though the technology is still catching up to the market-leader, Google’s chips cost between “a half and a tenth” as much as the Nvidia equivalent. That being said, while Nvidia “no longer looks as invulnerable as it once did”, its strength of product, and position in the market, “should not be underestimated”.

Nvidia must be “spooked” by the Google announcements if it is posting online to “defend itself”, said Eva Roytburg in Fortune. Nvidia asserted that it is a “generation ahead of the industry” and “the only platform that runs every AI model and does it everywhere computing is done”, on X. “It’s not hard to read between the lines,” said Fortune: Nvidia wants investors and customers to know that “it still sees itself as unstoppable”.

This may represent one of the “biggest threats” to Nvidia’s market dominance, but there is a long way to go until a “potential crack” materialises, said The Wall Street Journal. To challenge Nvidia, Google must start “selling the chips more widely to external customers”, which is not an easy feat.

What next?

The deal between Meta and Google could be worth “billions of dollars”, though this is not a fait accompli, as ongoing talks “may not result in one”, said The Wall Street Journal. Both Google and Nvidia are “courting potential customers”, offering “financing arrangements” to make the rollout of their chips a more attractive prospect. It is “still up in the air” how Meta would use these chips, either to train AI models or generate responses to queries via inference (which requires a lot less computational power than training).

“No one, including Google, is currently looking to replace Nvidia GPUs entirely”, said Bloomberg. The pace of AI development doesn’t allow it. There is a gap in the market for Google’s products, as companies look to “temper” the “dependence” on Nvidia to mitigate shortages, but ultimately, Nvidia’s GPUs are “better suited to handle a wider range of workloads” and more adaptable to wholescale change. The “best hope” for Google’s TPUs is that they form a part of the “basket of products required to power the growth of AI”.

Crypto is supposedly the currency of the future, but it is not doing so well presently. The sector has lost more than $1 trillion in value over the last few weeks.

The crypto industry is having a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month,” said USA Today. Bitcoin has lost more than 10% of its value for the year, dropping from a high of $126,000 in October to under $90,000 last week. The drop in digital currency values is due to a “whirlwind of factors” that include shaky showings for artificial intelligence and technology stocks amid growing concerns about the overall economy. “No one can say” when the dust might settle.

“It was supposed to be crypto’s year,” said The Wall Street Journal. Since 2025 brought a “crypto-loving White House, Wall Street adoption and friendly legislation,” it seemed poised to erase the industry’s regulatory obstacles. Instead, the “sky-high expectations of a golden age” have foundered. Cryptocurrency’s original reputation was as an “antiestablishment asset” coming out of the Great Recession. Now the sector is trying to “go legit” but having trouble shedding its standing as the “deranged, foul-mouthed little sibling of Wall Street.”

What did the commentators say?

“Brutal” selloffs in the crypto sector happen “every few years, or whenever sentiment snaps,” said Emily Nicolle at Bloomberg. But those previous cycles did not match the “speed and scale” of crypto’s collapse in recent weeks. The difference this time is that crypto is now “woven into the fabric of Wall Street and the broader public markets.” That means its fate is now “tied to AI-fueled market optimism.” Amid growing fears of an AI bubble, though, it does not take much prompting to “spook investors into selling.”

Crypto in recent years has gone from an “object of mockery” to “broadly accepted, even encouraged” by mainstream financial institutions, said The Economist. That victory actually poses a problem. The “wider acceptance” has deepened crypto’s links to the broader financial markets, so that the “pain from a crypto crash will be felt more widely than in the past.” A government intervention seems remote, but “surprises can never be ruled out” in politics and in crypto.

What next?

Crypto believers see it as a “safe store of value against inflation and rising national debt,” said Marketplace. But the current instability comes amid “sticky inflation and a rising national debt.” The sector’s growing acceptance on Wall Street means your 401(k) probably includes some crypto stock. If the downturn lasts, that would produce “some knock-on effects on spending” in the broader economy, said Columbia Law School lecturer Todd Baker to the outlet.

There are now some fears of a “crypto winter,” said MarketWatch. But other observers say the sector is likely still in solid shape for the long term, thanks to its integration with financial markets. Banks like J.P. Morgan now accept crypto assets as collateral. We are not seeing a crypto winter, said Frontier Investments CEO Louis LaValle. “I think we’re watching bitcoin grow up.”

BBC chair Samir Shah appeared in front of a Commons select committee yesterday to answer questions over the departures of director general Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness, as well as allegations of “institutional bias” at the corporation.

The committee chair Caroline Dinenage appeared less than satisfied with Shah’s answers, describing his comments as “wishy-washy”. Conservative MP Dinenage told the BBC that the committee was not “wildly enthused that the board is in safe hands. There are clearly some issues of governance – there is clearly some chaos at the heart of the BBC board.”

What did the commentators say?

If you were expecting a “gladiatorial showdown” at the Culture, Media and Sport committee hearing on Monday, “you'd have been left wondering where the swords were”, said Katie Razzall on the BBC. A “nervous” Shah soon relaxed when “he realised these MPs had not come equipped for mortal combat”.

Both Shah and Michael Prescott – the former journalist and editorial adviser to the BBC who wrote the damning internal memo on bias in its reporting that was leaked to The Telegraph – dismissed claims that the BBC was institutionally biased.

Robbie Gibb, the BBC board member and former communications chief for Tory prime minister Theresa May who himself has been accused of political interference, also played down rumours of a “politically motivated coup” as “ridiculous” and “complete nonsense”. “Whether that is enough to quell the critics is another matter”, said Razzall, and it “certainly didn't make riveting TV”.

Compared to the “seismic outrage” against the BBC in the last month, disappointingly, “there was nothing much to write home about” after the committee hearing, said former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger in The Independent. This “gentle nudging” by MPs “would not have been out of place at a rural Quaker meeting house”, and took us no closer to understanding what the alleged problems at the BBC are.

Shah’s explanations “came tumbling out, but it was not entirely clear what they meant”, and any reasoning for the delays in responding to the Donald Trump “Panorama” video scandal “was not easy to follow”.

In short, “a force 10 typhoon had just ripped through a great national institution. But nobody could quite put their finger on why.”

What next?

On top of appointing a new director general and CEO of news, the BBC must contend with a possible legal battle with Donald Trump over the October 2024 “Panorama” episode that included a misleading edit of a speech he made prior to the 6 January riots in 2021. The US president has threatened to sue the BBC for between $1 billion and $5 billion.

This is “a moment of peril” for the broadcaster, said former BBC chief creative officer Pat Younge in The Guardian. We must not ape the US, where “sycophantic media executives have caved in to politically motivated legal threats”. A strong BBC needs several guarantees: a permanent charter, a “proper funding settlement”, a governance board “appointed by an independent body” and a renewed commitment to ensuring content reflects “the lives of nations and regions throughout the country”.

President Donald Trump wants to be seen as a peacemaker, but until now, he has avoided getting enmeshed in conflicts on the African continent. That is changing, as he eyes a push for peace in war-torn Sudan.

Trump had viewed Sudan’s war as “not a crisis he wanted to get involved with,” said The New York Times. But the recent White House visit from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia may have changed things. “We’re going to start working on it,” Trump said after meeting the prince. That pledge could be a “game changer” in a conflict that has killed as many as 400,000 people and displaced up to 12 million more, said the Times.

The civil war between Sudan’s military and opposition Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is the “world’s most overlooked conflict,” said Foreign Policy. Saudi Arabia, which sits across the Red Sea from Sudan, sees the war as a “threat to its national security,” and the war is fueling broader regional instability. Until the push from bin Salman, though, it was “not on my charts to be involved in that,” Trump said. America’s touch may be needed. A settlement “needs sustained pressure from all parties,” said Charlotte Slente, secretary-general of the Danish Refugee Council.

What did the commentators say?

Sudan is suffering from its war, and America has the “tools to end it,” said The Washington Post editorial board. The conflict is fueled by the United Arab Emirates, which supplies weapons to the RSF, while Egypt backs Sudan’s armed forces. Both countries “would be susceptible” to American pressure. On top of that, it would aid Trump’s quest to be seen as a peacemaker. A deal in Sudan would “significantly strengthen” Trump’s case for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Results from this month’s elections sent the message that Americans are “worried about the economy,” said Lindsey Granger at The Hill. Trump instead is “preparing to jump into a new global conflict.” Sudan has been “crushed by civil war for more than two years,” but one poll shows that Trump’s approval rate is hovering under 40%. Pair that with Trump’s recent defense of visas for foreign workers seeking employment in the U.S., and we may be witnessing a “break in the MAGA dam.” That raises a question for Trump: “How long can you run on ’America First’ while spending so much time everywhere else?”

What next?

Trump’s new focus on Sudan “could draw the ire of several key Republicans,” like outgoing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and strategist Steve Bannon, said Politico. They argue the president “needs to focus less on foreign policy” and more on domestic issues like affordability.

The Saudi prince believes Trump’s “direct pressure” is needed to break the stalemate in Sudan, said Reuters. A ceasefire is necessary to get humanitarian aid flowing. The world needs to see “actionable results” from the peace process, said Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and “they need to happen very quickly.”

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has framed the 28-point US peace plan to end the war in Ukraine as an impossible choice: between losing national dignity or losing the support of its most important ally.

The plan, which has been widely decried as a Kremlin wish list, would allow Russia to keep Crimea, as well as Luhansk and Donetsk and other territory in the Donbas that Ukraine has successfully defended for nearly four years. It would halve the size of Ukraine’s army, ban it from launching long-range missiles and end its hope of joining Nato. In return, Ukraine would receive as yet unspecified security guarantees.

For Zelenskyy, such demands are unpalatable but he may end up having to swallow at least some of them.

What did the commentators say?

Nearly four years on from Russia’s full-scale invasion, the Ukrainian president faces “a triple threat at home and abroad”, said Colin Freeman in The Telegraph. There have been “huge losses on the front lines as winter draws in” and “growing anger” over a scandal in which officials allegedly stole millions from the state nuclear energy provider. Now Donald Trump is pushing a “controversial” peace plan, most of which appears “calculated to be unacceptable to Kyiv”.

“Having Zelenskyy in a bind, though, is one thing,” said Freeman. “Getting him to sell the deal to the Ukrainian public is another, as it tears up red lines that Kyiv has drawn in very thick blood.” Any peace agreement would require constitutional changes voted through by a supermajority in Ukraine’s parliament. This appears unlikely given the reaction of the Ukrainian public and politicians to Trump’s 28-point plan.

The power-company scandal, as well an unsuccessful attempt to curb the independence of two national anti-corruption watchdogs earlier this year, have “delivered a devastating blow to Zelenskyy’s international reputation and to the Ukrainian cause at large”, said Leonid Ragozin on Al Jazeera. He is “emerging out of it as a lame duck who will do what he is told by whoever is pulling the strings”, which, right now, looks to be the US president.

“Yet this very vulnerability” makes Zelenskyy “even less likely to yield to the Trump administration”, said Yaroslav Trofimov in The Wall Street Journal. “No Ukrainian president – and especially not a weakened Zelenskyy – has a mandate to agree to anything like this,” Nico Lange, a former senior German defence official, told the paper. “If he does, he would not be president any more when he comes home.”

What next?

The Trump administration has given Ukraine until Thursday to agree to the deal – or risk losing all US support and “imperilling Ukraine’s troops, who rely deeply on American intelligence sharing” and “US weapons”, said Siobhan O’Grady in The Washington Post.

But, in the rush to exploit Ukraine’s weakness, Trump may have “inadvertently strengthened Zelenskyy at home, at least for the time being”, said Cassandra Vinograd and Andrew E. Kramer in The New York Times. “The 28-point plan has shifted” the nation’s focus away from domestic scandal and allowed the president to “reprise his most successful role: as rally-er in chief”.

As he arrived in Belém, Brazil, this month for Cop30, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband sought to downplay the impression of a fraying international consensus on climate action. The “action and the atmosphere” at the summit “in my view, already demonstrates that the doubters are wrong”, he said.

Although the outcome of the summit remains unclear, with delegates divided on whether to commit to a "road map" for phasing out fossil fuels, Miliband has doubled down on Britain’s commitment to tackling global warming. But the actions behind the government’s words paint a more complicated picture.

What did the commentators say?

Keir Starmer arrived in Brazil “armed with undeniable climate credentials”, said Politico’s Charlie Cooper. His government remains committed to achieving net zero by 2050, opening up clear water with the Conservatives who recently joined Reform in calling for the target to be scrapped. It can point to successes in reducing carbon emissions and promoting renewables, with a target of clean power meeting 95% of Britain’s energy demand by 2030, as well as the promise of hundreds of thousands of new green energy jobs.

At the same time, international aid spending which supports the UK’s global climate objectives has been slashed, ministers are exploring watering down a pledge to ban new licences for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, and the Treasury is looking at easing the tax burden for fossil fuel companies. These contrasting policy positions “neatly capture the Starmer approach to climate action”, said Cooper. “If it suits the domestic economic and political agenda, great. If not, then there is no guarantee of No. 10 and Treasury support.”

The reality is that “far from leading the world on the path of righteousness, the UK is an example of how not to do energy and climate policy”, said Dieter Helm, professor of economic policy at the University of Oxford, in The Times. While UK territorial carbon emissions have been coming down, this “reflects more the transformation of the British economy, and not in a good way”. “Britain is a leader in deindustrialisation in Europe”, and much of its green energy industry relies on imports from China, who burn half the world’s coal.

Rather than inspiring the world to follow Britain’s example on climate, Starmer is “setting an example in nothing except how to ruin your economy and impoverish your people”, said The Sun.

What next?

Reform UK has launched an all-out war on what its deputy leader, Richard Tice, has called “net stupid zero”, pledging to tax solar farms and rip up green energy contracts if it wins power. The “challenge” for Miliband and his allies “will be to show that his mission is a net benefit, not a net cost”, said James Heale in The Spectator. As the economy becomes “less of a dividing line in British politics” energy policy “might take its place”.

The UK’s net-zero consensus has “broken down”, said Helm in The Times. Miliband and Starmer should “stop boasting of world leadership, stop claiming to be creating a ‘clean energy superpower’” and “face up to the facts”. The current net-zero agenda is not convincing the public or mitigating global warming: Miliband must “stop digging an ever-deeper energy policy hole”. What we need is “honesty” that meaningful decarbonisation “really costs”.

The Brazilian government has created 10 new Indigenous territories as the end of Cop30 approaches in Belém. The new legislation enshrines the protection of the environment and culture of Indigenous people living in these areas.

Opening the summit last week, Brazil’s president, Lula da Silva, said Cop30 would be “inspired by Indigenous peoples and traditional communities”, and this year’s edition welcomed the largest Indigenous delegation in the summit’s history. But talks have also been disrupted by Indigenous-led protesters who say much more needs to be done.

What did the commentators say?

The summit in Belém, which is situated at the mouth of the Amazon River system, marks an “unprecedented effort to elevate Indigenous voices”, said Danilo Urzedo, Oliver Tester and Stephen van Leeuwen on The Conversation. Around 1,000 Indigenous representatives were invited to take part in the summit, with a further 2,000 able to access spaces for activists and the public. It represents a recognition of the “unique knowledge” cultivated by Amazonian communities, those most vulnerable to the “direct consequences of climate change”.

But on Tuesday, Indigenous-led protesters clashed with security guards as they attempted to enter the conference venue, “highlighting tensions” around the Brazilian government’s claim that the summit was “open to Indigenous voices”, said Al Jazeera. Three days later, a peaceful protest prevented delegates from entering the venue for several hours.

Of particular concern is Cop30’s “emphasis on climate finance” rather than a total ban on disruptive activities like mining, logging and oil drilling in the Amazon basin. “We can’t eat money,” said one community leader.

Under the “rallying cry ‘Our land is not for sale’”, the demonstrations “brought global attention to injustices that climate politics have long tried to contain”, said The Conversation. With “unresolved land-tenure conflicts” compounded by the “rising violence faced by Indigenous communities on the frontline of climate impacts”, Cop30 and political shifts “reveal that effective environmental actions depend on dismantling power inequalities” in climate decisions.

Despite the palpable discontent, the fact that protests could even take place could be seen as a positive, said Politico. They show that “democratic” Brazil is different to previous “autocratic” hosts – Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan – who have “little tolerance for demonstrations”.

What next?

Last year, President Lula’s government “recognised Indigenous possession of 11 territories”, said the BBC. As well as the 10 new territories, his administration also marked an “institutional milestone” by establishing a Ministry of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, headed by Sônia Guajajara, who “is widely recognised for her leadership and activism in defending Indigenous rights”, said EuroNews.

Officially recognising Indigenous lands, which is known as demarcation, continues to be an “arduous” process, said The New York Times. The process is “filled with logistical and bureaucratic hurdles”, and before Monday’s announcement about the 10 new territories, there were “107 Indigenous land demarcation processes awaiting a final government decision”.

It has been 14 years since Apple CEO Tim Cook replaced company founder Steve Jobs, a legendary figure, and then led the company to even greater financial heights. Now reports say Cook is contemplating retirement next year.

Apple is “stepping up its succession planning efforts” ahead of Cook’s possible retirement, said the Financial Times. Cook turned 65 this month and is looking to “hand over the reins” to a new company leader. The firm behind the iPhone has “very detailed succession plans,” he said in 2023 to singer Dua Lipa on her podcast. The transition comes at a critical time for the tech giant. While Cook has overseen a massive increase in its market valuation, from $350 billion to $4 trillion, the company has more recently “struggled to break into new product categories” and has fallen behind competitors in the artificial intelligence race, said the Financial Times.

Those challenges could prompt Cook to “think about stepping down and letting fresh young blood take over, said Macworld. So could challenges like the massive tariffs that President Donald Trump has levied on countries where Apple produces its products. But Apple is still experiencing “unprecedented success,” recently reporting quarterly earnings of more than $100 billion. That means his replacement “will have very big shoes to fill.”

What did the commentators say?

Cook has “actually been CEO of Apple longer than Steve Jobs ever was,” said M.G. Siegler at Spyglass. Jobs arguably set Cook up for his success. Cook “just needed to execute on the vision Jobs laid out,” but that should not diminish his accomplishments. After all, he was the “person best suited for that task perhaps in the entire world.” Now, though, its failures on AI show Apple is a company “clearly in need of some changes.” That makes it “pretty clear” Cook will retire soon. “It’s just a question of when.”

We are looking at the “twilight of the star CEO,” said Ben Berkowitz at Axios. Cook, along with Disney’s Bob Iger and Walmart’s Doug McMillon, are “stars of the business set” who are “preparing to leave the stage.” Their expected departures come at a “fraught moment for the American economy,” and involve companies that touch every aspect of life. The transitions at the top of these iconic corporations will complicate “what was already certain to be an uncertain 2026.”

What next?

The leak of Cook’s retirement plans looks like a “deliberate test of market reaction,” said 9to5Mac. Apple’s board would likely want to “gauge the response of investors” to Cook’s departure. Cook is probably “eyeing his retirement,” but his loyalty to Apple means he would “only leave at a point when the market is ready for it.”

John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, is the “most commonly mentioned” name to replace Cook, said Fast Company. Cook will likely retain some involvement with Apple, perhaps on its board of directors. “I don’t see being at home doing nothing,” he said in January to the “Table Manners” podcast.

The UK’s unemployment rate hit 5% last week, the highest since the Covid-19 pandemic and higher than most analysts had predicted.

The Office for National Statistics figures, although in some dispute because of concerns over the quality of the data, indicate a weakening jobs market and slowing wage growth. Taking out the “skewed levels” of the pandemic years, the current unemployment rate is “the highest seen since August 2016”, said the BBC.

Two days after the unemployment numbers, it was revealed that GDP grew by only 0.1% in the third quarter of this year. The sluggish growth and rising unemployment rate are ringing alarm bells for economists about the risk that the UK will soon be entering a recession.

What did the commentators say?

To count as a recession, the economy has to have “two consecutive three-month quarters in negative territory”, said The Independent’s chief business commentator James Moore. In the first quarter this year, UK plc grew by 0.7%; in the second, by 0.3%. Now we’re “flatlining”.

And last week’s unemployment stats “caught most economists on the hop” – they “weren’t expecting anything quite as bad”. The jobs market “looks increasingly like a pile of industrial slag dumped in an area of outstanding natural beauty”.

Donald Trump’s state visit in September was accompanied by “a blizzard of announcements” on investment in AI, a “genuine vote of confidence in the UK economy”, said The Telegraph’s assistant editor Jeremy Warner. But outside of tech, there is “gathering gloom”; AI is “unlikely to save the UK” from “the growing drumbeat of an incoming recession”.

In September, a group of chief executives “fired warning shots at the Treasury”, said Christian May, editor-in-chief of City A.M. John Roberts, boss of British retail giant and FTSE-listed AO World, thinks “things are so bad he feels the UK is heading into recession”. The R-word is “a big call”, said May. More people are talking about stagnation – “an equally ugly phrase”. But the fact that we’re talking about recession at all is in itself “telling, and alarming”.

Fears of a recession are growing because all “the signals are lining up at the same time”, said Nigel Green, of the deVere Group, in the Daily Mail. “Weak output, higher unemployment and looming tax increases form a combination that investors cannot ignore.”

Britain’s economy is “in the dog house”, said The Economist. “Inflation is sticky, debts and deficits are high, and productivity growth is low.” Infrastructure and housing projects are “turning out to be a sorry disappointment” rather than drivers of growth.

But “some of the doomsaying is overdone”. Britain is not in a recession – yet. Its strengths, such as its universities, the English language, service sector, and the City of London, are “enduring”. In many ways, Britain “can look to continental Europe and count its blessings”.

What next?

No mainstream economist has “a fully blown UK recession pencilled in” for the coming year, said The Telegraph’s Warner. Recessions “generally require some sort of trigger” – although in this case it may not be necessary, given that the economy “seems instead to be simply dying”.

Office for National Statistics figures published today show the government has “inched a little closer to its 2% inflation target”, as inflation fell to 3.6% in October, down from 3.8% in September, said The Spectator. This “slight improvement offers limited relief” – “the real test” will be whether inflation falls to 2% by mid-2027, in line with Bank of England projections.

A further cause for modest optimism is that a December interest-rate cut is “all but nailed on, which will please mortgage borrowers”, said The Independent’s Moore. But tax increases will “inevitably attach a lead weight to Britain’s economic legs”. There’s “a lot riding” on next week’s Budget – “that R-word could at least be in play”.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) may not have a tight grip on his post. Some Democrats are angry that their party surrendered in the government shutdown fight, and are placing the blame on the caucus elder.

Democrats are “questioning Chuck Schumer’s future” after the shutdown, said CNN. The 75-year-old is “facing more grumbling than he ever has” from fellow Senate Democrats and even his own New York constituents. There are few expectations of a “coup or immediate change” that would move him out of power in the near term. But some analysts say he “could go down in a primary challenge if he tries” to run for another term in 2028. Schumer is in his “last term, and he may be the only one on Earth unaware of it,” said one House Democrat.

What did the commentators say?

“It’s time for the Democratic Party to head in a new direction,” said Sara Pequeño at USA Today. Schumer is “incapable” of being a leader who is “quick on their feet and ready to do things differently” in opposing President Donald Trump. The shutdown is not the only issue. Schumer also “failed” to endorse Zohran Mamdani, the victorious Democratic candidate in the recent New York City mayoral election. The party’s rank-and-file voters are noticing these shortcomings: Just 35% of Democrats approve of the minority leader’s performance. There is a reason Schumer is taking heat from Democrats. “He deserves it,” said Pequeño.

Those poll numbers make Schumer the “most unpopular Senate leader with his own party” on record, said Ross Barkan at New York magazine. The senator is seen by progressives and “restive moderates” as a leader “out of touch with the current mood.” And in his home state, polls show him losing a primary challenge to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) by a substantial margin. Schumer has been a “lock to win reelection” for decades, but he now might be “wise to retire rather than run again.”

Those looking to replace Schumer as minority leader are “missing two critical ingredients,” said Axios. They do not have a “clear path to his ouster,” nor is there a Senate Democrat “who’d want the job.” Some observers say the movement to push Schumer out of leadership is just beginning. The conversation about his future is “legitimized and the conversation is moving forward,” said Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

What next?

Schumer does have defenders, said NBC News. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) has pushed back against critics like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) who have publicly called out the Senate leader. House Democrats “should focus on their own leadership,” Kaine said. But Khanna is pressing the case. Schumer is “out of touch with the grassroots” of the Democratic Party, he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“Schumer isn’t going anywhere” for now, said Time. That is because “no one who wants him gone has the power to make it happen.” That does not mean he will regain popularity. Schumer has “come to personify Democrats’ discontent.”

China and Japan exchanged angry words in recent days after Japan’s new prime minister said her country would regard an attack on Taiwan as an “existential threat” to security in the region. The two countries are in a “furious diplomatic spat” over the comments, said NBC News. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s “unusually explicit" remarks suggested Chinese military action against Taiwan could force an armed response from Tokyo.

Japanese leaders have usually been vague about their commitments to Taiwan, just 70 miles from their country's territory. But China regards the self-ruled island of Taiwan as its possession, and officials responded with angry demands for a Japanese retraction. “The dirty neck that sticks itself in must be cut off,” said Xue Jian, a Chinese diplomatic official, on X. (The post was later deleted.)

Other Chinese leaders were less colorful but still pointed in their comments, said Reuters. Japan would suffer a “crushing defeat” if it intervened in Taiwan, said Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson Jiang Bin. The grievances are rooted in a long and contentious history, said Reuters. There is “ongoing tension” between the two countries lingering from the Japanese invasion of China during World War II.

What did the commentators say?

Some observers see China’s angry response to Takaichi as a return to its “wolf warrior” days of the early 2020s, Jessie Yeung said at CNN. That is when Beijing officials would “hit back directly — and often colorfully” at criticisms of their country. That aggressive approach receded as Communist officials sought to “win back lost goodwill among Western nations.” But there is a “significant streak of anti-Japanese sentiment” in China, and the prime minister’s comments have prompted “state media and other prominent voices” to fan outrage against Tokyo.

The dispute illustrates the “essence of Japan’s strategic dilemma,” said Zheng Zhihua at The Diplomat. Tokyo wants to “signal deterrence” and send a message of solidarity with its U.S. ally. But it must also do so within the “constitutional limits of its pacifist defense policy.” Japan has also attempted to balance its relations with China with “unofficial” contacts with Taiwan, a “dual track” policy that allows it to “avoid direct confrontation with Beijing while supporting Taiwan’s stability.” The question now is whether Japan can maintain its “maneuvering space” or if the spat “hardens public attitudes on both sides.”

What next?

China “escalated its diplomatic feud” on Sunday, said The New York Times. It sent ships to patrol uninhabited islands that “both countries claim” while also warning Chinese students in Japan about unspecified threats to their safety. On Monday, Japan said it scrambled warplanes after detecting a suspected Chinese drone near the island of Yonaguni, said CBS News. “We are trying not to escalate the situation,” said one Japanese official.

The growing tensions have raised fears of a “rupture in Japan-China ties,” said The Japan Times. There may be more escalation to come. Beijing is prepared to “carry out substantial countermeasures against Japan,” a social media account run by state media said on Sunday.

President Donald Trump’s long relationship with deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein roared back into the public eye this week, as Republicans and Democrats jockeyed to capitalize on the tranches of Epstein-related documents released on Wednesday by the House Oversight Committee. While the White House has swatted down the renewed scrutiny on the Trump-Epstein relationship as the Democrats try to deflect from their own intraparty frustrations, growing public furor over Epstein’s high society enablers and Trump’s connection shows no signs of being so easily dismissed. With Democrats and a growing number of Republicans hungry to pursue the case even further, why has this batch of Epstein-related content become so potently dangerous for the Trump administration?

What did the commentators say?

The Epstein saga has a “dastardly quality” wherein the “more anyone drawn into the morass tries to dig themselves out, the deeper they dig themselves in,” said CNN. It’s a feature proven “yet again” by the Trump administration, as questions about Trump's place in the Epstein case are “becoming impossible for the president to suppress.” The renewed focus on Epstein “couldn’t have come at a worse time for the president” and has prompted a “fresh wave of chaos” that has “knocked the administration on its heels,” said Politico. The Epstein case has been like a “bad case of herpes” that “lies dormant for weeks but doesn’t go away for a long time,” said Jonathan Alter at Washington Monthly.

While nothing in the documents offers “specific proof of anything,” their power to generate “endless new rounds of questions” stems in part from the fact that Trump’s “own party has chosen to release them,” said The New Yorker. The administration’s “attempts at damage control” have meanwhile only “fueled the story” for the public. In one notable example, the administration unsuccessfully pressured Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) to drop her support for releasing more documents during a surprise meeting in the White House Situation Room — a place typically used to “discuss urgent national-security matters,” not political sex scandals. “Yikes. Smoke, meet fire.”

The danger is not merely Trump’s alone. By framing the Epstein files as largely under the purview of the GOP-led House Oversight Committee, rather than requiring a full House vote, conservative hopes of “easing political pressure” on themselves and the White House “appear to have had the opposite effect,” said The New York Times. The committee has, “almost in spite of itself,” facilitated a release of material that has “intensified the drumbeat of demands for more transparency” while keeping attention on the Trump-Epstein relationship.

Some conservatives have taken notice. Releasing the full extent of the government’s Epstein material is the “easiest thing in the world,” Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), one of the president’s staunchest MAGA allies in Congress, said to Politico. Spending time and effort to block the materials’ release “just doesn’t make sense to me.” The issue is simply not going to let up for Trump “until it’s addressed and answered to the American people’s satisfaction,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) on CNN.

What next?

Despite the White House effort to scuttle any push for further document releases, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Wednesday announced that he will bring a bipartisan bill to do just that “on the floor for a full vote next week.” It’s a “totally pointless exercise,” he said, and “completely moot now. We might as well just do it.” The expedited push for a vote is a “reflection of the growing sense of agitation” among some in the GOP who are “sick of the months of growing pressure” to release the documents, lest they “risk being accused of protecting pedophiles,” said CNN.

The bill, which would force the Justice Department to release its full Epstein cache, “appears likely to pick up additional Republican votes — potentially dozens or more,” said PBS News. It will then face a “tougher test” in the GOP-controlled Senate, where it will need at least 60 votes to pass. Next week’s House vote is “going to be historic,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), one of the co-sponsors of the Epstein bill, to NPR. If the bill passes the Senate, “within the next six months, the files are released.”

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has abandoned plans to increase income tax in the Budget on 26 November, and will instead focus on a range of smaller tax-raising measures.

The U-turn – leaked mere days after briefings about a plot to challenge Keir Starmer – comes after new Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts decreased the size of the economic “hole” Reeves needs to fill. This means she no longer feels under pressure to break Labour’s manifesto and put up income tax rates.

What did the commentators say?

The OBR told the chancellor that the hole in the public finances is now “closer to £20 billion than the £30 billion originally expected”, said Steven Swinford and Mehreen Khan in The Times. Reeves promptly ripped up the manifesto-busting plan she knew would “aggravate mutinous” Labour MPs and “fuel anger among voters”.

Downing Street officials “insisted” the Budget re-write was not a “response to the leadership crisis that has engulfed Keir Starmer” this week, said George Parker, Anna Gross and Sam Fleming in the Financial Times. But the chancellor’s about-turn has had an immediate effects on the markets, with gilts having their “worst one-day sell off since September” when the news broke.

When Reeves finally delivers the Budget, she will probably favour a “smorgasbord” approach, raising money from multiple avenues, including levies on gambling and taxes on expensive properties. She is also expected to “extend a freeze on personal tax thresholds” for a further two years, pushing more people into higher tax brackets as their wages rise.

“Rachel Reeves is Queen of the U-turn,” said Harvey Jones in the Daily Express. “She was forced to backtrack” on scrapping the winter fuel payment” and “caved on” over proposed cuts to the “ballooning” benefit bill. In fact, she has been made “to correct everything from her CV and childhood chess achievements to claims she didn’t know she needed a licence to rent out her property”.

“It is a mess,” said Matthew Lynn in The Telegraph. The Budget is “turning into a shambles”. In a week of “in-fighting, plotting and leaks”, the chancellor is being “buffeted” by political events, instead of controlling them. The proposed “series of minor tax rises” to try to stay within the fiscal rules shows that her preparation has “descended into a farce”.

What next?

A gap of £20 billion is “still a big number”, said Pippa Crerar in The Guardian. In addition to freezing income tax thresholds, we should expect “taxes on salary sacrifice schemes” and even a “fuel duty equivalent for electric vehicles”.

Talk of a new “exit tax” on entrepreneurs leaving the country has dwindled somewhat, said Swinford in The Times, but, if it is brought in, it could have a “significant impact on investment and growth”, particularly “in the artificial intelligence and broader tech sectors”.

The worldwide effort to mitigate climate change is not going well. Fossil fuels are still burning, temperatures are rising and effects ranging from historic droughts to super-powered hurricanes are becoming the norm. Authorities are now thinking more about how to adapt.

Climate adaptation efforts are “climbing up the agenda” as the world deals with “record-breaking hot years and extreme weather disasters,” said the Financial Times. World leaders gathering this week for the COP30 climate summit in Brazil have an eye on “shoring up economies against climate change. There is a tension between those who believe “governments and businesses are being too slow” to adapt and those who worry adaptation will “distract and divert finances from efforts to reduce” greenhouse gas emissions. Mitigating climate change is necessary, but near-term adaptation is the “first half of our survival,” said COP30 President André Aranha Corrêa do Lago.

The big question is cost. Adaptation efforts would include everything from “funding air conditioners and fans” to “AI mapping of soil conditions to improve crop yields,” said Reuters. A new United Nations report says developing countries will need $310 billion a year to buy those and other tools, but “where that money will come from is unclear.”

What did the commentators say?

The world must “stop burning fossil fuels,” University College London’s Susannah Fisher said at The Conversation. That is the first step to “stop further damage and make it possible to adapt.” In the meantime, nations must also prepare for the “future we are currently heading toward.” That means making big shifts in how people live, work and eat in order to “create new futures where they can thrive” even as the world warms. For now, though, adaptation efforts do “not go far enough to manage these effects of climate change.”

Participants at COP30 “must get serious” about financing adaptation efforts, said Demet Intepe at the World Economic Forum. Many countries are already “deeply affected by floods, heatwaves and wildfires,” which makes adaptation efforts an “essential lifeline for communities threatened by climate-related disasters.” It is unlikely the money will come from the private sector. Adaptation efforts like “coastal flood protection” are expensive but create “minimal opportunities for financial returns.” Without the opportunity to create new profits, there will be no substitute for the “scale and reliability of public finance.”

What next?

Any solutions negotiated at COP30 will happen without the help of the United States, which is still one of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters. America is “not sending any top officials” to the summit, said The New York Times. In President Donald Trump’s second term, his administration has “abandoned” the country’s promise to “curb the burning of fossil fuels at home.”

Other countries are trying to keep up with their own goals and fill the gap left by the U.S. Germany and Spain have pledged $100 million to climate adaptation efforts, said Bloomberg. But more than $300 billion will be needed to help developing countries adapt, and that is a “figure that’s far higher than amounts currently being made available” from richer countries.

France is marking the 10th anniversary of the attack by Islamist gunmen on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris. They opened fire on 1,500 people on a night of co-ordinated terror attacks that also saw explosives detonated at the Stade de France.

The attacks, which left more than 130 people dead, were the “worst assaults” in France’s post-war history, said The New York Times, and they “inflicted lasting damage on the nation”.

What did the commentators say?

The slaughter “forever changed the country and its politics”, said Politico, “tipping the balance of protecting civil liberties versus ensuring public safety in favour of the latter”. A “slew of laws” were passed, including increasing the state’s “surveillance powers” and its “ability to impose restrictive measures” on its population.

The then president François Hollande called the attacks on 13 November 2015 an “act of war” and declared a nationwide state of emergency. But that “legal framework” gave the government “the power to ban protests and deter other forms of activism”, said France 24. For example, several dozen climate activists were placed under house arrest in 2015 for the duration of the Cop21 conference in December that year.

There will be "grief, poignancy and dignity” across France today, said Gavin Mortimer in The Spectator, but there will also be “delusion” among the “political elite” because France "is not united; it is divided”. Since 2015, France’s security service has “thwarted” 80 Islamist terror plots but there have been 50 attacks, 19 of which were “fatal”.

“Arguably,” said Andrew Hussey on UnHerd, “France has yet to fully reckon with the ideology that underpinned” the attacks. It represents a “shockingly direct challenge” to “Western morality and the West’s conception of justice”. France, “for all its secular earnestness”, has “yet to truly level with this fact”.

The nation could have descended into hate, but it has “held firm”, “clinging” to the slogan “you will not have my hatred”, said l’Opinion. A “litany” of subsequent attacks failed to trigger a witch-hunt against Arabs, just as the 13 November jihadists failed to “unite the Muslim community around them”.

What next?

Although Islamist terror remains a threat in the West, “much has changed” since 2015, said the BBC. The “disappearance” of Islamic State as a “major force” in Syria and Iraq means that the “wherewithal to conceive, plan and carry out complex terrorist projects is greatly diminished”.

The intelligence services have “become highly effective in controlling online radicalisation”, said Middle East expert Gilles Kepel, and are able to foil plots that are “often not very sophisticated”.

The American dream feels increasingly out of reach. The average age of first-time home buyers is now 40, and home prices have skyrocketed for years. President Donald Trump is offering a purported solution: the 50-year mortgage.

Trump’s proposal “could meaningfully reshape a housing market where 30 years is the norm,” said CBS News. The extended term is a “potential weapon” for “ensuring the American Dream,” said Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte. Spreading house payments out over a half-century would offer buyers “lower monthly payments” but with the significant downside of a “dramatic increase in the total cost of the loan” thanks to interest payments, said CBS. Homebuyers would also “build equity far more slowly than those with shorter loans.” There are skeptics across the political spectrum. Fifty-year mortgages are “not the best way to solve housing affordability,” said Joel Berner, a senior economist at Realtor.com.

What did the commentators say?

“The idea is ridiculous,” said Michael Tomasky at The New Republic. Thirty-year mortgages let “typical homeowners” pay off their loans “by the time they’re in their mid to late sixties.” That, in turn, lets those owners use the rising value of their homes as a “nest egg” for retirement. Extending those payments by 20 years would erase that advantage. “Could you imagine having to make mortgage payments until age 85?”

A 50-year mortgage “isn’t the worst idea ever,” said Jonathan Lansner at The Orange County Register. “Few borrowers” hold onto 30-year mortgages for their full terms, either refinancing them or paying the loan off early. There is “no reason” to think longer-term loans would behave differently. If that is the case, “why shouldn’t a buyer grab a few years of savings?” Those savings could amount to a “few hundred bucks” monthly for most buyers. “That’s real money to new homeowners.”

One downside is that homeowners who sell before paying off their mortgages “will get less of the home’s value” under a 50-year loan, said Allison Schrager at Bloomberg. That seems to be a likely issue, because most owners “only live in their homes for less than 20 years.” But the tradeoff — lower payments now, lower return later — may be “worthwhile” for “someone who needs or wants a lower monthly payment.”

What next?

The share of first-time home buyers has dropped to a “record low” of 21% of all home purchases, said The National Association of Realtors. That reflects a housing market “starved for affordable inventory,” said NAR’s Jessica Lautz. This means today’s buyers are “building less housing wealth and will likely have fewer moves over a lifetime as a result."

Where Trump’s proposal goes next is unclear. Right-wing Influencers, including Laura Loomer, Mike Cernovich, Christopher Rufo, Sean Davis and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), “blasted the idea” as “bad politics and bad policy” that could “raise housing costs in the long run,” said Politico. The president remains committed to making it “easier and more affordable” to buy a home, said a White House spokesperson.

The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index, considered the benchmark for confidence in economic conditions, fell to 50.3 this month, marking a nearly three-and-a-half-year low. This 29.9% drop from last November could signal that Americans are wary of spending their money.

What did the commentators say?

With the “federal government shutdown dragging on for over a month, consumers are now expressing worries about potential negative consequences for the economy,” Joanne Hsu, the director of surveys of consumers at the University of Michigan, said in a statement. This did not appear unique to any one demographic, as the “decline in sentiment was widespread throughout the population, seen across age, income and political affiliation.”

The consumer sentiment data “confirmed what economists describe as a K-shaped economy, where the higher-income households are doing well and lower-income consumers are struggling,” said Reuters. There are concerns about the “labor market,” as both the University of Michigan and the New York Federal Reserve showed that “respondents expected the jobless rate to increase in the coming year and anticipated a tough time finding work if they were to become unemployed.” The Federal Reserve’s probability that unemployment will be higher in a year rose 1.4 points to 42.5%, the third monthly increase in a row.

But just because consumer sentiment is down doesn’t necessarily mean the economy is in a slump, experts say. Deteriorating sentiment “would suggest weak consumer spending, the economy’s main engine, but the correlation between the two is weak,” said Reuters. And most spending that is occurring is “being driven by higher-income households, as lower-income households are bearing most of the brunt of a sluggish labor market and higher prices from tariffs.”

Some people in these brackets are feeling unsure, though, according to the data. The “higher-income households are also less optimistic than they were at the start of the year,” said The Wall Street Journal. The lone exception seemed to be among people with large stock portfolios, who “posted a notable 11% increase in sentiment, supported by continued strength in stock markets,” Hsu said.

What next?

While the U.S. Senate has passed a controversial bill to end the government shutdown, the bill has yet to be rubber-stamped by the House. Amid the shutdown crisis and plummeting confidence, some analysts still feel it’s too early to ring the warning bells. While “sentiment does matter, over the past few years, we’ve seen consumers spend irrespective of how they’re feeling about things,” Mark Mathews, the chief economist of the National Retail Federation, said to Barron’s. Consumers are “sentimentally weak but fundamentally sound.”

Most people’s balance sheets “are in a good place” for now, and “disposable income and wages have grown at a steady pace, giving households confidence to keep spending,” Mathews said to Barron’s. A “record-breaking bull run and soaring housing prices have also contributed to the resilience in spending, especially for upper-income consumers.”