politics

A federal judge on Friday rejected former President Biden’s attempt to block the Trump administration from releasing to a conservative group the recordings that Biden made with a ghostwriter.

U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich found that the public interest in the material outweighed whatever privacy rights Biden had.

The recordings were obtained by special counsel Robert Hur in the course of his investigation into whether Biden improperly retained classified documents while a senator and vice president. Republicans in Congress demanded them after Hur declined to file charges against the then-president.

Biden’s Democratic administration refused to turn over the 2017 recordings and transcripts, leading congressional Republicans to hold his attorney general, Merrick Garland, in contempt.

President Trump’s Department of Justice authorized the release of the materials. That led Biden last month to sue to seek to block the release to a staffer at the conservative Heritage Foundation who had formally requested the records.

Biden objected to the release as an invasion of privacy, saying the recordings included him discussing sensitive personal matters such as the death of his older son, Beau Biden. But Friedrich found that the administration redacted that material.

The judge wrote that the materials “contain no mention of highly sensitive topics like illness or death, nor do they mention any non-public persons, including members of Biden’s family.”

Representatives for Biden did not immediately comment but asked Friedrich to bar release of the material while they appeal her decision. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Friedrich was nominated by Trump, a Republican, in 2017.

Riccardi writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — As Janeese Lewis George paves a path to the mayor’s office in Washington, D.C., she’s told voters they could have it all.

Her unapologetically expansive, left-wing agenda includes subsidized or even free childcare, increased down payment assistance for homebuyers and community resources to reduce crime, plus a promise to aggressively confront President Trump’s attempts to reshape the nation’s capital.

“People are tired of hearing what government can’t do. They want to hear what government can do,” Lewis George said in an interview before the city’s primary, where she defeated her Democratic opponents and positioned herself to win the general election in November in a city dominated by Democrats.

Lewis George’s victory signals a break with a quarter-century of centrist governance in Washington, and it puts her in the vanguard of democratic socialists who have ascended in urban politics over the last year. Zohran Mamdani toppled Andrew Cuomo, the scion of a political dynasty, on his way to becoming New York City mayor. Katie Wilson won an upset victory to lead Seattle last fall. And this month, Nithya Raman clinched a spot in the November runoff against Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.

All of them are members of the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA. The political organization has seen its membership ranks swell from a few thousand to more than 100,000 nationwide over the last decade after an influx of younger Americans joined following the presidential bids of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, also a self-described democratic socialist.

There’s little sign of national coordination among the candidates, and it’s unclear whether voters are gravitating toward their promises of improved government services, their vows to fight the Trump administration or their critiques of capitalism.

But from coast to coast, confrontational progressives are advancing in mayoral races. City leaders can draw outsized attention for their successes and failures, and democratic socialists will be under pressure from residents to deliver on their vows for a new kind of governance. Whether that translates to national politics is a next test for their movement.

“They are all channeling a displeasure with a status quo and a serious desire for economic populism that the establishment Democratic Party hasn’t been preaching,” said Eric Stern, a Democratic strategist with Fight Agency, a political consulting firm that strategized Mamdani’s mayoral campaign.

Stern added that Democratic voters appeared more willing to support the most progressive candidate in mayoral races rather than in contests for the U.S. House. Candidates like Mamdani and Raman, Stern said, are “daring voters to dream and fall in love not just with the individual candidates but also the political process as a whole.”

A rising left navigates America’s urban challenges

The trend of progressives surging in urban areas may have limits for its broader impact on Democratic politics. Democratic mayors in cities including Atlanta, Houston, Miami and San Francisco won on relatively moderate platforms in recent years.

Progressive have also faced noteworthy challenges. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was endorsed by the city’s DSA chapter during his 2023 mayoral run but has since faced criticism from both moderate and liberal local leaders on issues such as immigration, the local budget and public safety. Recalls and public pressure ousted progressives elected to district attorney offices in multiple jurisdictions over the last five years, when criminal justice reform efforts ran into dissatisfaction over public disorder following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump’s hardline immigration and law enforcement tactics have also become a challenge for liberal cities. The president’s agenda poses an especially serious threat to Washington, D.C., because of its status as a federal territory.

“Maybe we take back Washington and run it on a federal basis,” Trump told reporters this month when asked about the potential election of a democratic socialist as the district’s mayor. “We won’t put up with it.”

But progressives hope the current wave of anti-Trump furor in deep blue cities across the country will help buoy the chances of those on the hard left.

“It’s not folks looking for the leftmost option so much as looking for a candidate who’s gonna be on their side,” said Ravi Mangla, speaking for the left-wing Working Families Party. The party often endorses the same candidates as the DSA and is readying to target more mayoral offices in the country’s biggest metropolises this fall and in 2028.

“It’s less about whether you are on the right or on the left so much as whether you are willing to punch up at the powerful,” he added.

Mamdani and Lewis George are both self-described “sewer socialists” who emphasize the need for responsive government services rather than critiques of market economics. The phrase recalls the socialist Gilded Age mayors whom critics derided as too preoccupied with managing public works projects.

The term’s revival is partly a strategic move to align leftist ideas with concerns over affordability and the economy, voters’ top concern in the midterm elections, and shift the public perception of democratic socialists from firebrands who support radical policies to independent-minded public servants.

“This is absolutely a change election and I’m excited to bring the change that people want, which is really putting people first in the city and having the moral clarity and courage to stand up to Trump,” Lewis George said.

For voters the ‘socialist’ label did not seem to matter

While conservatives have used the “socialist” label to attack Democrats as extreme or incompetent, some D.C. voters appeared ambivalent before Tuesday’s primary.

Several lifelong residents said they believed Lewis George was a “fighter” but didn’t think she’d have much of an impact on the local economy, given the city’s status as a federal district.

“I go back and forth on my own labels and whether I am supportive of that movement or not, but I am supportive of making D.C. more affordable,” Owen Fitzgerald, a University of Maryland graduate student, said of his support for democratic socialism.

Fitzgerald voted for Lewis George because she would stand up to Trump and said he’d first learned of her campaign from friends in his neighborhood. But he didn’t know she was a democratic socialist until he saw news reports describing her with the label.

“It sends a cultural message to this administration that the people who are surrounding them in the capital are opposed to their platform, opposed to their political agenda, and I think that it will send a message, both nationally and internationally,” Fitzgerald said.

Brown writes for the Associated Press.

June 19 (UPI) — Cuba’s parliament approved a package of 174 economic reforms in just one week, marking the most significant shift in government policy in at least 15 years. Driven by President Miguel Díaz-Canel in response to the country’s deepening economic crisis and mounting pressure from the United States, the plan approved Thursday opens the door to private capital and reshapes the rules governing the island’s economy.

Economists and analysts, however, warned that the real impact of the measures will depend on their implementation and on broader institutional changes that remain absent from the government’s plans.

Cuban economist Alfie Ulloa, a professor at the University of Chile’s Law School, told UPI the reforms represent a significant change in official rhetoric but questioned whether they will translate into meaningful change.

“They are a profound adjustment in discourse and, if implemented, would represent an important adjustment to the model. But for now they are nothing more than another declaration like many made in the past. I do not believe they will be implemented, nor that they will truly free the private sector,” Ulloa said.

The package includes 23 areas of transformation and more than 170 measures aimed at loosening state control over the economy. Among the most significant are allowing direct foreign investment in small and medium-sized private businesses, reviewing activities currently prohibited to the private sector, authorizing direct imports and exports by both state and non-state actors, granting greater autonomy to enterprises and gradually replacing broad subsidies with targeted assistance for vulnerable populations.

The reforms also eliminate broad price controls, a policy Díaz-Canel acknowledged had failed after years of inflation, shortages and expansion of the informal market.

While presenting the plan, the president admitted that part of the country’s current crisis stems from longstanding internal problems.

“There are obstacles that do not come from abroad or from the embargo. There is bureaucracy, delays, regulations that prevent people from producing and decisions that we have postponed,” Díaz-Canel said.

The proposal amounts to an implicit acknowledgment of economic policy failures that Cuban authorities had largely attributed to the U.S. embargo for decades. Analysts noted that several of the measures had been debated previously and rejected by the country’s communist leadership.

Many of the initiatives mirror reforms introduced decades ago in China and Vietnam, although they arrive as Cuba faces one of its worst economic crises since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Cuban economist Mauricio de Miranda, a professor at the Pontifical Xavierian University in Cali, Colombia, argued in social media posts that the program points toward a transition from bureaucratic socialism to a form of capitalism controlled by political elites.

“It will become the fast track for relatives and close associates of those in power to become shareholders without anyone knowing where their capital came from,” he warned.

De Miranda said Cuba will inevitably need to privatize part of its state-owned assets to attract investment and rebuild its struggling economy. However, he argued that the process lacks the institutional safeguards needed to prevent wealth from being concentrated among groups close to the government.

“Something like this would require a capital market with clear rules, transparency and equal opportunity,” he said.

Questions about legal protections for investors have also emerged as a central criticism.

“None. Cuba is not a state governed by the rule of law. Citizens are completely defenseless before the state,” Ulloa said when asked about protections for potential investors.

He added that investing in Cuba remains highly risky because government power faces few constraints and judicial institutions lack independence.

Cuban economist Pedro Monreal also criticized the process, questioning the secrecy surrounding the package in a lengthy post on X.

“It should not be surprising that the first act of the ‘transformation proposals’ show has reaffirmed public frustration over the secrecy of those proposals,” Monreal wrote.

Monreal also pointed to the failure of the so-called “Monetary Reorganization Task,” a 2021 reform that eliminated the country’s dual-currency system but became associated with surging inflation and declining purchasing power. He argued that experience severely undermines the credibility of the new package.

Despite the skepticism, several specialists acknowledged that some measures could help address urgent problems if fully implemented.

Ulloa said a genuine opening to private investment, particularly from Cubans living abroad, could help revive agriculture, services and food production. He cautioned, however, that critical sectors such as energy, infrastructure, transportation and banking require investment levels that are unlikely to materialize in the near term.

The Cuban government said Thursday that former President Raúl Castro explicitly endorsed the reforms and expressed full support for the package, describing it as what “best serves the Revolution today.”

For critics, that endorsement highlights one of the process’ central contradictions.

The measures acknowledge problems that independent economists have identified for years, yet leave intact the political structure that many blame for creating the crisis.

“The most important point from my perspective is that we are not talking about deep reforms within a new globalized economy. We are simply talking about removing obstacles,” Manuel Cuesta Morúa, vice president of the Council for Democratic Transition in Cuba, told Radio Martí.

He said the reforms arrive too late because Cuba’s economy now operates under extensive U.S. sanctions.

According to Cuesta Morúa, progress will require political and diplomatic negotiations to make the measures viable. He argued that the package merely liberalizes some restrictions but does not yet constitute a genuine economic reform program.

He added that authorities must first address citizens’ immediate needs, create confidence through legal certainty and open Cuban society in broader ways.

Analysts agree that the central question is whether this latest reform effort will produce tangible change or join a long list of initiatives that were announced and later postponed.

Regarding the matter, Vice President JD Vance said, “Right now, we are talking with the Cuban government about how they might change their behavior to achieve that. We’ll see what they do and, obviously, if they do one thing, we’ll do another. If they make smart decisions, we’re going to have a much better relationship with that island.”

Just hours later, details of the measures emerged. For now, however, the White House has remained silent.

WASHINGTON — The relationship between President Trump and Senate Republicans neared a breaking point this week as he upended their efforts to speedily confirm one of his own nominees and said he would not sign the renewal of a key surveillance law unless they agree to new terms.

Trump’s overnight social media post Wednesday that he was delaying Jay Clayton’s nomination to become national intelligence director, just hours before the U.S. attorney’s confirmation hearing, further strained relations between the Senate and White House that have been worsening for weeks. Later that day, some Republican senators who have been hesitant to challenge the president directly on the Iran war were blunt in their criticism of his deal to end it.

“This is the worst foreign policy blunder in decades,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said in a post on X.

The open tensions are an almost complete reversal from a year ago when Senate Republicans worked closely with Trump on a complicated effort to push through his massive package of spending and tax cuts.

At the time, criticism of the president was almost nonexistent among Republicans on Capitol Hill, and they planned to highlight passage of that bill in the midterms. But as the November election draws closer and Republicans are trying to defend their majorities, Trump is instead needling Congress with his demands and reversals, driving several Republican senators to disparage his actions publicly for the first time.

“I think somebody’s not dialing the president into the complexities of what he’s done here,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said Wednesday after Clayton’s confirmation was postponed. “I mean, my God.”

The slow unraveling of what once seemed like an airtight alliance between the executive and legislative branches in a Republican-led Washington extends to their policy priorities.

Trump appears to have lost interest in most of the GOP agenda and has become almost singularly focused on his voting legislation to require proof of citizenship, which has almost no chance of passing. At the same time, he has asked members of Congress to fund parts of his White House ballroom project, allow a temporary intelligence director that none of them likes and cede their powers on the Iran war.

The growing rift has brought much of the Senate’s business to a halt and put Republicans who are up for reelection this year on the defensive. It has also put pressure on Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who has been upfront with Trump about what he can and cannot do in the Senate.

Trump pressures Thune on voting bill

Trump has pressured Thune (R-S.D.) relentlessly to scrap the filibuster and pass the strict proof-of-citizenship legislation, called the SAVE America Act. Thune has told Trump publicly and privately that the votes are not there for either step. Still, Trump has kept up the push.

In a social media post Thursday, Trump said he would be “the last Republican president” if the voting bill does not pass.

“Senate Majority Leader John Thune, and the Republican Senate, must not let this ‘carnage’ happen,” Trump said. “They will go down on the wrong side of History, as will all Republicans who just stood by and watched.”

Nonetheless, Trump has yet to go after the well-liked Republican leader on a personal basis, as he often did with Thune’s predecessor, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Trump once called McConnell a “ dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack.”

Trump and Thune talk frequently, even as Thune is sometimes giving the president news he does not want to hear. As Trump pushed for the voting bill, Thune scheduled weeks of floor time to consider it, an effort to make clear that the Senate was supportive, even if the votes are lacking.

Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt, one of the president’s closest allies in the Senate, said he has never heard Trump say anything negative about Thune.

“It’s a difficult position,” Schmitt said of Thune’s role in the Senate. “I think they have a good working relationship.”

One of Thune’s closest allies, Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, said the even-keeled leader is the “right person at the right time.”

“In the Capitol today, he is the stable force,” Rounds said. “In Washington, D.C., today, he is the stable force.”

No signs of revolt among Senate GOP

There were no signs of a revolt within the GOP conference, for now, despite Trump’s pressure.

Thune “has managed it better than anyone else could manage it,” said Cassidy, who has become a more frequent Trump critic since a primary loss to a Trump-backed challenger.

Criticism of Trump has at times surfaced even among his closest Senate allies, especially with his proposed $1.776-billion settlement fund for his political allies and his pick for acting intelligence director, Bill Pulte, who has no known intelligence experience.

But the rift with Trump has also stoked some new internal tensions.

Several Republican senators criticized Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who has waged an online campaign to eliminate the filibuster and pass the SAVE America Act, in a private conference lunch this week for stoking dissension within the party in an election year.

Unbowed, Lee has kept up his social media campaign, including a post Friday on X in which he said that giving up because Republicans lack the votes is a “recipe for failure.”

Texas Sen. John Cornyn, one of those who spoke out at the meeting, replied that it is Lee’s job to find the votes, “if you can.”

“Can’t just complain about others,” Cornyn posted. “Prove us wrong.”

Trump’s dwindling number of allies

Some Senate Republicans have made clear they have no plans to separate themselves from Trump.

As several of his colleagues criticized Trump’s agreement with Iran this week, first-term Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) aggressively defended it on social media.

“Let’s get the Nobel Peace Prize ready!” Moreno posted on X.

But Trump has far fewer of those Senate allies than he did when they narrowly passed the tax and spending cuts legislation a year ago. That is in part because he has picked off some of the most loyal Republican votes himself.

Cassidy and Cornyn lost in primaries last month after Trump endorsed their opponents. Tillis announced he was not running for reelection last year after Trump repeatedly criticized him on social media.

Now all three have become frequent critics.

Shortly after his election loss, Cornyn posted on social media a fable about a frog and a scorpion. The scorpion asks the frog to carry it across a river, according to the fable, and then stings the frog in the middle of the river, “dooming them both.”

“The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence,” Cornyn’s post read. “To which the scorpion replies: ‘I am sorry, but I couldn’t help myself. It’s my character.’ ”

Jalonick writes for the Associated Press.

June 19 (UPI) — A Boeing 747-200 made its last flight as Air Force One after it brought President Donald Trump home from Europe this week.

“Well done, good and faithful servant,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung posted Thursday on X. “The Last Ride.”

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino also posted a tribute with a video on X.

“I have been fortunate to fly around the world on this iconic plane for 5½ years – of the 35 years it has been serving the U.S. Presidents…THANK YOU… .”

There are two 747-200s working as Air Force One, designated VC-25A by the Air Force. The two have tail numbers 28000 and 29000. The latter is retiring.

The plane has been in operation since 1990, with President George H.W. Bush as its first presidential passenger.

“The VC-25B Bridge aircraft will soon join the active executive airlift fleet alongside the VC-25A and C-32,” an Air Force spokesperson said.

Three 747-800s are being prepared to step in, including the luxury jet donated by the Qatari government. Officials have said it should be ready for use this summer and that the Air Force had finished its modifications and testing of the craft.

Gen. Dale White, the Department of Defense’s direct reporting portfolio manager for critical major weapons systems, said in a May statement that the Qatari plane will “relieve pressure on the aging VC-25A fleet.”

“Ultimately, the Bridge aircraft fulfills a critical short-term requirement, guaranteeing the Air Force continues to execute its no-fail mission for the commander in chief while laying a rock-solid foundation for the future,” the release said.

The new planes will have Trump’s preferred color scheme of red, white, gold and dark blue. He proposed the change while in office for his first term, but President Joe Biden reversed the plan back to the traditional colors. When Trump was re-elected, the new color scheme was once again adopted.

As Colombia comes down from the ecstasy-filled high of its recent win in their 2026 World Cup opener, a sadder, and much darker reality is beginning to set. On June 21^st, 2026, Colombians will vote in a historic runoff election that will not only hurt Colombia but will have serious effects on the future of Venezuela. 

No matter the outcome, Colombia will be worse off, as both Iván Cepeda and Abelardo De la Espriella are a study on how a democracy can offer voters a choice between two particular brands of terrible.

The first-round of the election provides a clear insight into the current state of Colombian civil society. Like many presidential systems, Colombia structures its presidential elections in a two-round system.  If no candidate surpasses 50% of the vote in the first round, as happened on May 31st, a second runoff election is called between the first and second placed candidates. That runoff is this Sunday, June 21^st. Moderate and moderate right-wing candidates Sergio Fajardo and Paloma Valencia achieved historic electoral lows for centrists with 4% and 6% of the vote respectively, whilst the radical extremes of the political scale rejoiced in victory. 

The biggest surprise was undoubtedly Abelardo de la Espriella´s first round victory, with the self-anointed “Tiger” garnering 43.7% of the vote to first round favourite Iván Cepeda´s 40.9%. With a mere 600,000 votes separating the candidates and about 3 million votes being contested, both can win the election. 

Cepeda, who is President Gustavo Petro’s hand-picked heir, initially questioned the results alongside the controversial president, and only accepted them on June 7^th, a week after the election. With his institutional backing, that delay matters. All in all, Colombians ran to the extremes, which provided a clear data-backed picture of just how polarized Colombian civil society is.

Whoever gets sworn in Bogotá on August 7^th2026, will have more operational influence over Venezuelan affairs than any other head of state in the hemisphere, apart from Trump.

Regardless of the result in the June 21^st runoff, the Colombian elections will have a lasting effect on the future of Venezuela and could be the catalyst for very different answers to the question of the country´s political future. 

First and foremost, Colombia is the country that has received the largest number of Venezuelan migrants, with approximately 3 million Venezuelans calling the country home. Since January 2025, Colombia has been hosting the diaspora without US funding and support. Furthermore, part of the the 2,219 kilometre-long border between both countries is controlled by the Colombian Guerrilla ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional), who lost key ally and facilitator Nicolás Maduro on January 3^rd and is currently massing on the Colombian side.

Bogotá’s diplomatic influence and posture is one of the few international players that can have significant effects on whether interim dictator Delcy Rodríguez will eventually push for elections in Venezuela. 

All in all, whoever gets sworn in Bogotá on August 7^th 2026, will have more operational influence over Venezuelan affairs than any other head of state in the hemisphere, apart from the self-proclaimed most popular man in Venezuela, Donald Trump.

Now, it’s time to get down to brass tacks, the who is who. Inside trash can number one we find Iván Cepeda. Cepeda’s personal arc is worryingly similar to that of the Rodríguez siblings in Venezuela. His father was a radical Left politician murdered by far Right paramilitary groups. That fuelled Cepeda’s deep hatred towards the Colombian political system and institutions. A career senator and politician, Cepeda is probably the smartest mind in Colombia’s hard Left. He is also an admirer of Hugo Chávez, and strong critic of former president and kingmaker Álvaro Úribe. Cepeda’s followers will frame him as a left-wing moderate, but he is not. He is Petro without the cocaine, prostitutes and charisma, running on continuing the Total Peace framework that has seen record numbers of cocaine production in the country, and bolstered the rearming of the ELN. His commitment to governmental continuity will no doubt hurt Colombia, starting with the fact that current policies have driven down Foreign Direct Investment in Colombia by 30% from a 2023 peak.

De la Espriella is a one-man band who won the first round through violent speeches, AI anthropomorphic videos of himself as a tiger, and evangelical networks.

Furthermore, his delay in recognizing the electoral results provides an interesting insight on how Cepeda could interact with institutions that he finds inconvenient. A man who questions clean elections certified by international observers has no business rewriting constitutions, a key pillar on his first-round electoral campaign, which he recently dropped in a pathetic attempt to attract centrists and moderates. Cepeda’s rhetoric and language is extremely divisive. He frames every political opponent as an oligarch, every private enterprise as an exploiter, every security operation as state violence whilst analysing the deep social gaps and concerns the country must navigate. Rather than seeking to solve them, Cepeda weaponizes them to further divide the Colombian population.

But Cepeda’s rottenness is not counterbalanced by a knight in shining armour, but by a different but equally foul-smelling individual. We find Abelardo “The Tiger” de la Espriella inside trash can number two. The part-time attorney, part-time rum maker, aspiring opera singer, fashionista with terrible taste is one of the most questionable figures in the Colombian public sphere. A criminal defence attorney, who became famous for being the lawyer and fixer for chavista allies like Alex Saab and paramilitary leaders, has found a new “passion project” in his expanding list of questionable side hustles: becoming the president of Colombia. De la Espriella comes in as a true outsider who has no congressional or political backing. He is a one-man band who won the first round through violent speeches, AI anthropomorphic videos of himself as a tiger, and evangelical networks.

Abelardo’s rhetoric only serves to perpetrate a never-ending cycle of violence. The anti-democratic claims that he will literally “gut leftists,” his active endorsements of states of exception and support for arbitrary concentrations of power within the presidency, his promise to open ten CECOT-style mega prisons, and his constant disregard and attacks against human rights are problematic. 

His “security agenda” is not offering any coherent security policy. On the contrary, he’s seeking to create a permission structure for state-sponsored political violence, dressed as law and order. His policy against the ELN of all-out war has no institutional backing, and risks triggering considerable escalation. Events like the April 25^th bombing can serve as a prelude of what an empowered ELN can look like. 

De la Espriella’s polarization is of a different flavour to Cepeda’s, but equally problematic. Instead of using social and class divides, the Tiger weaponizes the us-versus-them mentality along the lines of patriots and enemies. In a country with such a tragic and saddening history of political violence, that rhetoric has a body count attached to it.

Cepeda’s attitude will likely be lukewarm and soft on Venezuela, dragging his feet on any meaningful action such as Venezuelan migrants in Colombia or elections in our country.

At the end of the day, either candidate will face serious problems to govern, and will bring a myriad of conundrums for Colombia, but how do their stances translate into the Venezuelan question? On one hand, Iván Cepeda has constantly framed the operation to extract Nicolás Maduro as violation of sovereignty, a position which lacks any diplomatic nuance, and at the same time provides strong insights into how Cepeda will behave towards Venezuela and how much pressure he´ll exert on Venezuela to call for elections. The Total Peace Framework will provide the ELN with the political umbrella to consolidate in the border region, stacking an unpredictable situation on top of an already volatile powder-keg in Venezuela. Calling Cepeda a “friend” of Maduro or Delcy is not accurate, but he is the regime’s useful neighbour. His attitude will most likely be lukewarm and soft on Venezuela, dragging his feet on any meaningful action like his predecessor Gustavo Petro such as Venezuelan migrants in Colombia or elections in our country.

On the other hand, analysing Abelardo’s impact on Venezuela must begin with the fact that he was the leading defence attorney for Alex Saab between 2013 and 2018, the same years Saab ran Maduro’s sanction-busting operation. Although his divisive rhetoric claims forceful actions, his personal history and contacts in his rolodex prove that rather than full force, there is a clear entanglement with the chavista operation. De la Espriella also has no real plan for the domestic situation with refugees, and his ultra-nationalist stance could cause serious problems for foreign populations in Colombia. Furthermore, his full force campaign against the guerrillas can drive the ELN back over the Venezuelan border.

A small “silver lining” does exist. On one hand, Cepeda has stated that he will try to push for regularization mechanisms in Colombia. On the other, Abelardo’s ties to the International Right and Donald Trump can transform him into a key figure to push for a decisive presidential election and as a source of pressure on Delcy.

Colombia’s role as a key interlocutor with Venezuela is undeniably at risk regardless of who wins the presidency. Because the region and Venezuela needed a Colombian president that could be a genuine bridge between Washington and Caracas, between the Venezuelan diaspora and integration, between the ELN and disarmament, and for the ever-divided poles of the Colombian population. But rather, on June 21, the country was forced to choose between ideological blindness dressed in progressive language, and maximum pressure dressed over an obvious conflict of interest. Venezuela might again pay the price for someone else’s terrible choices.

The Italian prime minister has accused Trump of making up a story that she ‘begged’ him for a photo at the G7 summit in France.

A diplomatic row between United States President Donald Trump and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has escalated, with Italy’s top diplomat cancelling an upcoming visit to the US.

At issue is Trump’s claim that Meloni “begged” him for a photograph during the Group of Seven (G7) meeting in France earlier in the week.

“She’s probably happy I talked to her. I didn’t have to talk to her,” Trump reportedly told the Italian La7 network. The broadcaster only published a dubbed Italian version of the interview, not the original English version.

“She begged me to take a picture with her. She wanted a picture with me so badly. I wouldn’t have taken it, but I felt sorry for her.”

On Friday, Meloni posted a video answering Trump’s statement, saying that “certain things deserve an immediate response”.

“Donald Trump’s statements are completely fabricated. I am frankly stunned,” she said. “I don’t know why the president of the United States behaves this way toward his own allies. After all, this isn’t the first time this has happened.”

The head of a far-right party who campaigned on an anti-immigrant platform, Meloni had long been seen as one of Trump’s most supportive counterparts in Europe.

She had met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate following his 2024 election victory and attended his inauguration in January 2025.

However, the pair have diverged during Trump’s second term over several issues, including support for Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion, the US-Israeli war with Iran, Trump’s threats to seize the Danish territory of Greenland and his criticism of Pope Leo.

In her video, Meloni said it was a “shame” Trump did not show “the same resolve toward the enemies of the West, toward the enemies of the United States” as he did in his statements against her.

She accused the US president of being “much more accommodating” to foes than allies.

“But there’s one thing he must remember: Italy and I do not beg,” she said.

Shortly after Meloni posted the video, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said he was cancelling a weekend trip to the US, where he was scheduled to attend a business forum in Miami, Florida and meet with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

He called Trump’s reported statements “serious and offensive”. Several other government officials also weighed in.

Justice Minister Carlo Nordio suggested Trump’s remarks besmirched the legacy of the US soldiers who died during World War II.

“The thousands of crosses marking the graves of American soldiers who died to free us from Nazi-Fascist dictatorship did not deserve such a painful blow to our fraternal ties,” Nordio posted on X.

Defence Minister Guido Crosetto said he did not believe Meloni would ever beg for a photo, “not even under threat”.

“Jokes of this kind do no good to anyone: neither to the USA, nor to Italy, nor to the alliance,” he said.

The White House did not immediately respond to Meloni’s comments.

PHILADELPHIA — The Trump administration can replace a slavery exhibit at George Washington’s home in Philadelphia, a federal appeals court panel said Thursday, striking down a lower court’s injunction that required the National Park Service to reinstall the interpretive panels.

The unanimous ruling by the three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a lower court judge wrongly interpreted Philadelphia’s contract claims involving Independence National Historical Park, saying the city merely having standing to sue did not mean its arguments had merit. The panel also praised the plans for the replacement installation, writing that they were “full of historical context,” despite objections from historians and city officials that the content appears whitewashed.

The ruling comes a week after a Massachusetts federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore sites changed under an executive order calling for the nation’s museums, parks and landmarks to not display elements that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.” The federal government has asked for a stay on that ruling while it appeals.

It was unclear how the Massachusetts ruling would affect the restoration or replacement of the panels at the President’s House Site. About half the large panels at the outdoor exhibit had been restored before a February pause in the work.

Messages to spokespeople for the Department of Interior and the National Park Service were not returned.

In a statement on Instagram late Thursday, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker vowed to pursue legal avenues to reverse the decision.

“We cannot and WILL not rest until the full story of American history – including the existence of Slavery at the President’s House here in Philadelphia – is told, for our Nation and the World to see,” she wrote.

Dawn Chavous, a volunteer for Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, one of the advocacy groups that helped develop the site in the 2000s, said they are disappointed with the decision but are speaking to their attorneys and considering options.

“For decades, ATAC has worked to ensure that the stories of the enslaved African descendants who lived and labored at the President’s House are not erased, overlooked, or misrepresented,” the group said in an emailed statement. “That commitment remains unwavering. We believe that historical truth matters, and we will continue to advocate for the protection, preservation, and accurate interpretation of this important chapter of American history.”

The city of Philadelphia sued in January after the National Park Service, in response to President Trump’s executive order, removed the explanatory panels from the President’s House Site, where George and Martha Washington lived with nine of their slaves in the 1790s, when Philadelphia was briefly the nation’s capital.

The city had worked in tandem with the federal government, historians and private partners to create the exhibit in the early 2000s — as part of a longstanding cooperation agreement over the downtown historical park — and contributed $1.5 million toward its creation.

The city argued that the federal government must consult with the city before making changes to the President’s House Site. Justice Department lawyers argued the administration alone can decide what stories are told at National Park Service properties.

In its ruling Thursday, the appeals panel said the maintenance portion of the contract between the city and the federal government could not be interpreted to mean the site would remain as it was when it was completed.

“The duty to ‘maintain’ is better understood as a general management obligation that accompanies ownership, not a promise that the exhibits will forever remain in place regardless of the owner’s wishes,” the opinion said.

Casey and Lauer write for the Associated Press. Casey contributed to this report from Boston.

WASHINGTON — Most Americans continue to disapprove of how President Trump is handling Iran, while his overall presidential approval holds steady, according to a new AP-NORC poll that was conducted as he suggested a deal with Iran had been reached.

The poll points to just how unpopular the war, which began Feb. 28, has been with Americans even as the Republican president turned abruptly from threatening Iran to reopening negotiations. Support for his handling of the war remains lopsidedly partisan. About two-thirds, 65%, of U.S. adults disapprove of how Trump is handling issues with Iran. But while the vast majority of Democrats and independents view Trump’s actions negatively, only 28% of Republicans are unhappy.

Americans’ views on how the president is handling Iran are roughly in line with his overall job approval, which stands at 37%, unchanged from an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in May.

The new survey was conducted June 11-17, just after Trump called off threats to escalate the war with Iran. The poll was fielded as Trump announced a deal with Iran and authorized an end to the U.S. naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, concluding just before the deal was signed Wednesday.

Approval of Trump’s actions on Iran has been low over the past few months. But in interviews, some Republicans also weren’t pleased with the outcome of this week’s agreement, which gives Iran an immediate benefit, allowing it to sell its oil freely again.

The deal also reopens the strait without tolls for two months, restarts talks between the U.S. and Iran over Tehran’s nuclear program and calls for Tehran to dilute its stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

David Farrington, a 79-year-old Republican-leaning independent in Fort Worth, Texas, “doesn’t have any love lost” for Iran, but he’s frustrated the agreement focused on the strait and didn’t deliver more on the country’s nuclear weapons program.

“Any agreement regarding the strait is hardly what I would consider a recognizable concession on the part of Iran,” Farrington said. “So, I consider that some fluff that attempts to make this agreement look better when it’s not.”

Trump’s approval on Iran remains flat

Only about one-third of U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling Iran in the new poll, in line with May.

Donald McBride, a 28-year-old independent in Plano, Texas, is frustrated that Trump has not maintained his campaign promise to keep America out of foreign wars. McBride voted for Trump but he opposed going to war with Iran.

“I would like the war to end,” he said. “The original objective of the war was to end the Iranian regime, and that’s just not possible. I don’t really know why we’d continue fighting.”

The poll suggests most Americans want action in Iran to wrap up. Even with an agreement on the horizon, 53% of U.S. adults said American military action against Iran had “gone too far,” only a slight decline from 59% in March.

About 4 in 10 Republicans, though, said in the latest poll that action has been “about right,” and 37% said it had not gone far enough.

Joan Jones, a 64-year-old independent in northwest Florida, believes the United States’ actions in Iran have been necessary to address the threat Iran posed.

“Those attacks are ultimately to protect us from nuclear attacks,” Jones said. “I think we have to go through that … and eliminate that worry so we don’t have that hovering over us.”

Few approve of Trump’s approach on Israel

About one-third, 34%, of U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling Israel.

Tensions have been rising between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump as the president criticizes recent Israeli attacks in Lebanon, which jeopardized negotiations between Washington and Tehran.

James Huffman, a 69-year-old Republican in Medway, Ohio, thinks Trump is taking the wrong strategy when it comes to Netanyahu.

“Netanyahu is not going to do everything Trump wants. He’s going to do what he wants,” Huffman said. “I just don’t think it’s effective.”

Only about one-third approve on the economy

About one-third of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s approach to the economy. That’s in line with last month, and continues a challenging stretch for Trump on the issue.

Jones, the Florida independent, is more optimistic than most. She said she can hardly leave the house some hours without getting stuck in the traffic of tourists headed to the beach on vacation. She also spots lines around the block for Starbucks, McDonalds and Chick-fil-A in her community — all signs to her that the economy is doing well overall.

“I think President Trump’s policies are contributing to a better economy,” Jones said.

Other Republicans are more skeptical, a troubling sign for a president who prides himself on his business acumen. Only 69% of Republicans approve of how he’s handling the economy, slightly lower than the 78% who approve of how he’s handling the presidency overall.

Patricia Bailey, a 42-year-old Republican in Parkersburg, West Virginia, sees an economy where prices have gotten out of control. “I just said the other night, ordering pizza is for rich people,” she said. Bailey voted for Trump but added, “He’s kind of let me down a little bit.”

Even if high prices preceded Trump, Bailey doesn’t think he’s lived up to his pledge to improve the economy.

“I think he got so distracted with the war that he forgot some old promises,” she said.

Sanders and Thomson-Deveaux write for the Associated Press.

The AP-NORC poll of 3,040 adults was conducted June 11-17 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.

June 19 (UPI) — Maine election officials announced the results of its ranked-choice primary runoffs Friday, confirming Democrat Hannah Pingree and Republican Bobby Charles as the candidates for the gubernatorial election in November.

Democrat Matt Dunlap, Maine’s state auditor and former secretary of state, advanced to the midterm elections, seeking the 2nd District seat held by Democrat Rep. Jared Golden. Republican and former Gov. Paul LePage will be his opponent.

The 2nd District congressional race has been targeted by the Republican Party as one it believes it could flip in November. President Donald Trump had a 10% edge in the district in the 2024 election.

Maine is one of two states in the United States to do ranked-choice voting for statewide elections. The other is Alaska. Ranked-choice voting is also used in municipalities across the country.

Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat who has reached her term limit in the office, endorsed Pingree, the Democratic nominee, to succeed her. Former Vice President Kamala Harris won Maine by 7% in 2024.

Pingree is a former speaker of the House in Maine’s state legislature.

Pingree’s opponent, Charles, is a former naval intelligence officer and was the assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs under President George W. Bush. He also served in the White House under the Reagan administration from 1981 to 1983.

June 19 (UPI) — Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham scored a convincing victory for the ruling Labour Party in a by-election for the parliamentary seat of Makerfield on Friday, winning more seats than all the other parties combined.

The two-time former nominee for the leadership of the party saw off Reform UK in Thursday’s poll with 24,927 votes — 55% of the vote — against Reform’s 15,696, with the official opposition Conservative’s candidate pushed into a distant fourth place with only 997 votes.

Burnham’s return to parliament to mount an anticipated bid to oust Prime Minister Keir Starmer with Burnham’s supporters saying the scale of his win confirmed he was the best person to lead the party — and by extension — the country.

In his victory speech in the early hours in the constituency, 20 miles west of Manchester and on the outskirts of Wigan, Burnham said the win could be a “turning point” for Britain.

“Everyone knows that politics isn’t working. Everyone can feel that the country isn’t where it should be. Tonight could, just could, be the turning point. From here on, I will give everything I have got to make it so. To ensure that the name Makerfield is forever synonymous with bringing about the change this country needs,” said Burnham.

Starmer congratulated Burnham, saying voters had chosen the party’s vision of “hope and optimism over division and hate” but vowed he would not “walk away” from the leadership.

He stressed that there was no contest for the leadership of the party currently and that he didn’t think it was a good idea because it would “plunge the country into chaos — but said that if Burnham initiated a challenge after he returns to Parliament next week, he would fight.

“If there is a contest, then yes. I will run. I will stand. I’m not going to walk away from that.”

Any challenger needs the backing of a quarter of MPs — around 81 — but the incumbent gets a bye and is automatically entered into the contest, should they wish to participate.

Former Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who quit the cabinet on May 14 — the same day the sitting Makerfield MP stood down to make way for Burnham — is also tipped to enter the race.

Other candidates such as former Defense Secretary Jon Healey could also emerge in the interim.

It is understood Burnham will not move against Starmer immediately and his preference, along with others in the party who no longer back Starmer, is that given some breathing space he will stand aside without a fight.

Starmer’s problems began in summer 2025, less than a year into his government’s five-year term following a landslide election victory, after a poor showing in local elections and losing a by-election in the “safe” Labour seat of Runcorn and Helsby.

Rebellions by his own MPs forcing policy U-turns, the Peter Mandelson debacle, and more losses at the ballot box, culminating in a cataclysmic defeat to Reform UK in “mid-term” local elections in May, saw growing numbers of MPs call for him to quit and defections from his cabinet.

First elected as an MP representing the Greater Manchester seat of Leigh in 2001, Burnham unsuccessfully fought two contests for the Labour leadership when the party was in opposition, losing to Ed Miliband in 2010 and Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, before quitting the House of Commons in 2017.

He currently has two years still to run of his four-year term as mayor of Greater Manchester. His resignation to take up his seat in Parliament triggers a mayoral election in Britain’s second largest metro area after London scheduled for July 30.

Brits who find themselves stranded in Europe due to a cancelled flights could soon have new rights to claim back travel replacement costs, amid a shake-up of the EU’s air travel rules

Cancelled flights could soon come with a more costly penalty for airlines, as a landmark air passenger rights agreement was reached between the EU Council and the European Parliament in good news for holidaymakers.

The ruling means that Brits who find themselves stranded in Europe due to their flight being cancelled could soon claim back replacement travel costs worth up to four times the price of their original ticket. It comes amid a raft of changes around airline charges for cabin bags and family seating, which could see Brits getting a fairer deal when they visit destinations such as Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal, or France.

The law states that, after a flight cancellation, “if an airline fails to offer rerouting within three hours, passengers may organise their own rerouting and claim reimbursement of up to 400% of the original ticket price.” According to AirAdvisor, which specialise in claims for disrupted flights and mishandled baggage, this means passengers will no longer need to wait around for the airline to sort out a journey home for them.

AirAdvisor also said in a statement that this rerouting reimbursement will be separate from the standard compensation that some passengers are entitled to for cancelled flights. It explained: “The Council statement confirms that even when a passenger is rerouted, “airlines remain responsible for compensation for delays at arrival.”

This means passengers could potentially reclaim the cost of replacement flights, as well as claiming for standard cancellation compensation, which can be up to £350 per passenger for a UK to Spain flight, and higher for long-haul journeys.

“However, the standard compensation would still depend on the usual qualifying conditions, including whether the disruption was within the airline’s control. If extraordinary circumstances apply, airlines may not be required to pay financial compensation,” the statement continued.

EU rights aren’t based on nationality, but rather the route and the airline operating the flight. So even post-Brexit, Brits are protected on journeys departing from an EU airport to the UK, or any flights from the UK to the EU that are operated by an EU airline. For example, Brits taking a Ryanair flight from Malaga to the EU would be covered by the legislation.

However, flights from the UK to the EU on non-EU airlines wouldn’t be covered. So, the outbound leg of a London to Madrid flight on a carrier such as British Airways would not follow these rules because it is arriving in the EU from a non-EU country on a non-EU airline.

The UK has its own UK261 framework, which includes the Right to Care for journeys delayed over two hours, but it’s not known whether this legislation will be updated in light of the changes in the EU.

Anton Radchenko, aviation lawyer and CEO of AirAdvisor, said: “For the passengers who are genuinely in trouble, the ones standing at a desk in a European airport being told the next available flight is days away, this is the change that actually matters. A reimbursement cap of up to four times the original ticket price could make a real difference to families who suddenly have to buy last-minute flights home, and it is a part of the reform I would want every British holidaymaker to know about.”

He added: “The importance of this rule is that it gives people a clearer point at which they can act. The harder part, as with every passenger right, will be making sure travellers know it exists before they are stuck at the airport, rather than finding out months later.

“My practical advice to any traveller is straightforward. If your covered flight is cancelled, give the airline its three-hour window to offer a suitable reroute, and then keep everything: your original booking, the cancellation notice, proof of what the airline offered or failed to offer, and every receipt for the travel you arrange yourself.

“In my experience, the passengers who successfully recover what they are owed are almost always the ones who documented the situation as it happened, not the ones who tried to piece it back together weeks later. A right is only ever as useful as the evidence you keep to support it.”

Have a story you want to share? Email us at webtravel@reachplc.com

California’s political watchdog commission on Thursday finalized a $31,500 fine against Gov. Gavin Newsom, alleging that the Democratic leader failed to report three dozen behested payments totaling $5.5 million mostly to support wildfire recovery by the deadline under state law.

The Political Reform Act requires elected officials to disclose payments of $5,000 or more that they solicit or direct others to give to a charitable, legislative or governmental purpose within 30 days.

The California Fair Political Practices Commission said 34 of the violations were for failing to report on time that Newsom and his staff directed outreach from companies and foundations that wanted to help after the Los Angeles wildfires to the California Fire Foundation. The nonprofit was started in 1987 by the California Professional Firefighters to support the families of fallen firefighters and communities impacted by fire.

The donations include $1 million from the Chuck Lorre Foundation and $500,000 apiece from Lockheed Martin, the Anthem Blue Cross Foundation and BlackRock, among others gifts.

The governor also failed in 2024 to report on time two behested payments, totaling $100,000 from the Schmidt Family Foundation and Schwab Charitable Funds to the Institute for Local Government, a nonprofit within the League of California Cities.

The commission said the governor reported all of the payments “prior to public discovery” or contact from its enforcement division, which it considered a mitigating factor. Newsom also signed the stipulation and agreed to the fine.

Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for Newsom’s office, said the issue involved late paperwork at a time when the governor’s staff was focused on emergency response and supporting survivors. She also underscored the fact that the reports were filed before he was contact by the FPPC.

Gallegos said the fine is unrelated to an alleged investigation into the governor and his wife by the Department of Justice, which Newsom announced this week.

Newsom alleged Monday that Trump is using the government as political weapon to target him and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Newsom announced the investigation after he learned that the FBI and Internal Revenue Service asked his associates questions about nonprofits and businesses related to the couple.

The governor’s office characterized the investigation as a fishing expedition. The Trump administration declined to comment.

A source familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly, said two federal probes have been going on for about a year, and that they originated not from Washington, D.C., but from conversations between whistleblowers and federal prosecutors based in Sacramento. The probes are linked to Newsom’s former chief-of-staff, Dana Williamson, and Siebel Newsom’s taxes, the source said.

The FPPC violations mark the second time Newsom has reported payments late, which increased his penalty for the new infractions. The commission fined Newsom in 2024 for failing to timely report 18 payments totaling $14.4 million.

Former US President Barack Obama opened his presidential centre in Chicago, using the occasion to call for unity, urging Americans to reject division and invest in the next generation.

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has cruised to victory in a high-stakes by-election in northern England, paving the way for him to challenge Prime Minister Keir Starmer for the leadership of the Labour Party and the United Kingdom.

Burnham handily defeated his closest challenger, Robert Kenyon, the candidate for the anti-immigration Reform UK, in the seat of Makerfield, vote results showed early on Friday, securing the House of Commons seat he needs to mount a bid for the prime ministership.

Burnham won 24,927 votes, beating Kenyon by more than 9,000 votes.

Rebecca Shepherd of Restore Britain was a distant third, trailed by Michael Winstanley of the Conservative Party, Sarah Wakefield of the Green Party, and the Liberal Democrats’ Jake Austin.

“Everyone knows that politics is not working,” Burnham said in his victory speech.

“Everyone can feel that the country isn’t where it should be. Tonight could – just could – be the turning point. From here on, I will give everything that I have got to make it so, to ensure the name Makerfield is forever synonymous with bringing about the change this country needs.”

Burnham’s victory is likely to either precipitate Starmer’s resignation or set off a leadership contest pitting the prime minister against the outgoing mayor and Wes Streeting, the former health secretary.

Under the UK’s political system, MPs can choose a new prime minister without holding a general election.

Burnham is widely considered a strong favourite to become the next prime minister if he challenges Starmer.

In an Ipsos poll published earlier this week, Burnham was chosen by 25 percent of British adults as the preferred prime minister, compared with 12 percent for Starmer.

If he does succeed Starmer, Burnham, who was the early favourite in the 2015 Labour leadership race before coming second to Jeremy Corbyn, would be the UK’s seventh prime minister since the country voted for Brexit in 2016.

After leading Labour to a thumping election victory in 2024, Starmer has been under mounting pressure to step down amid widespread public dissatisfaction with his leadership.

Calls for his resignation within Labour have mounted since the party suffered crushing losses in local and regional elections in May.

Twenty ministers have resigned from Starmer’s government in less than two years, nearly half of whom expressed a loss of confidence in his leadership or clashed with him on policy, including Streeting.

Starmer has rebuffed calls to resign, pledging to fight any challenge to his leadership and insisting that such a contest would be a “bad thing for the country”.

Burnham – dubbed the “king of the north” for his grassroots appeal across northern England and his willingness to challenge Westminster – ran on the promise to “change Labour” to “change politics and change the country”.

As mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham built an avid following across the UK’s less developed northern regions by channelling populist themes about elite apathy and industrial decline.

First elected mayor in 2017, and re-elected in 2021 and 2024, he has criticised the UK’s political system as “too London-centric” and taken aim at neoliberal economic policies and trickle-down economics that did not “trickle down very much at all”.

In his victory speech, Burnham said that Makerfield would be the “touchstone” for his politics.

“A Makerfield test at the heart of British politics will ensure that the places Westminster has neglected will now get fairness,” he said.

Burnham, who served in several ministerial portfolios under former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, had been the narrow favourite in the race, holding a five-point lead over Kenyon in an opinion poll released on Saturday by pollster Opinium.

Labour’s Josh Simons, who previously held the seat of Makerfield, triggered the by-election last month by resigning his seat to allow Burnham to challenge Starmer.

About 75,000 people were entitled to vote in the constituency, which is located about 320km (200 miles) northwest of London.

Turnout was 58.75 percent, up from 52.4 percent at the 2024 general election.

Harare, Zimbabwe – Zimbabwean lawmakers have approved a bill that would replace direct presidential elections with a vote by parliament, a proposal that supporters say would promote policy continuity but that opponents fear could weaken democratic accountability and further entrench the ruling party’s grip on power.

“I just cannot believe that these are the people who want to elect a president on behalf of everyone,” Barnabas Gura, a 38-year-old from Harare’s Glen View suburb, told Al Jazeera.

“Only 210 members of parliament vote on behalf of a population of 15 million. It is preposterous.”

On Thursday, Constitutional Amendment Bill No 3 passed the National Assembly after 216 lawmakers voted in favour and 42 against. The bill now moves to the Senate, where it is also expected to secure the two-thirds majority required for constitutional amendments.

The bill seeks to amend Zimbabwe’s 2013 Constitution by replacing the direct election of the president with election by a joint sitting of the Senate and National Assembly.

Justice Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi, the bill’s sponsor, has rejected criticism that the proposed changes would undermine Zimbabwe’s constitutional order.

Speaking in parliament on June 3, Ziyambi said the bill was “not an abandonment of our constitutional order in any way, shape or form but a continuation of it”.

“It is a product of practical and experience of institutional reflection and of honesty that after more than a decade of implementation of certain provisions of the constitution requires refinement to enhance their functionality, coherence and their service to national progress,” he told lawmakers.

Ziyambi said there was considerable misinformation surrounding the bill, particularly on social media.

“This bill does not give the president a term extension or a third term. It does not take away the right to vote. It does not postpone elections. It does not concentrate power or the running of elections in the hands of the president,” he said.

Opponents, however, dispute that interpretation and argue the proposed changes would strengthen President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s influence over the political system and could pave the way for him to remain in office beyond the end of his constitutional term in 2028.

Bill threatens democracy

Supporters of the bill, including lawmakers from the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC), say the changes would promote long-term policy continuity and give Mnangagwa more time to complete his development agenda.

Gura is unconvinced.

He said two more years would not improve the lives of Zimbabweans struggling with poverty.

“Mnangagwa has failed for the past eight years. Only a few who are close to the ruling class are benefiting. More time will not make any difference,” he said.

ZANU-PF has been in power since Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980. Mnangagwa came to power in November 2017 after former President Robert Mugabe was removed from office following a military intervention.

Under the current constitution, Mnangagwa is due to leave office in 2028.

Pride Mkono, a social justice activist and human rights defender, said the proposed amendment would further entrench ZANU-PF’s dominance.

“Since independence, the ZANU-PF party has dominated politics until 2000, when it was challenged by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. However, the opposition is now comatose and lacks capacity to challenge it,” Mkono told Al Jazeera.

“So, we will effectively enter a one-party state, but one dominated by a cartel of individuals.”

He said the objective of the proposed changes was not to improve the lives of ordinary people.

“It means a continuation of economic and social services collapse and mass impoverishment of the masses,” Mkono said.

Obert Masaraure, a human rights defender and president of the Amalgamated Rural Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe (ARTUZ), said the amendment would severely weaken the country’s fragile democracy.

“Power will be usurped from the people, and the executive acting in concert with the elites will freely loot national resources, exploit workers, destroy the environment and dehumanise our people without any restraint,” Masaraure told Al Jazeera.

Young people such as Gura say they have little reason to believe extending Mnangagwa’s tenure would improve their prospects.

He argues that removing direct presidential elections would strip citizens of one of the few mechanisms available to hold leaders accountable.

“This is a direct attack on accountability and transparency,” he said, adding that ZANU-PF had promised jobs ahead of the 2018 elections but failed to deliver.

Masaraure drew parallels with the colonial era.

“If you can not vote, you can not hold anyone accountable,” he said.

Violence and intimidation

A parliamentary committee report tabled in the National Assembly earlier this month said 99.4 percent of submissions received during nationwide consultations supported the proposed changes.

But the consultation process was marred by allegations of intimidation and violence.

Activists and rights groups say suspected state security agents abducted and tortured several opponents of the bill.

In Chiredzi, suspected ZANU-PF youths assaulted activist Gilbert Mutebuki after preventing him from speaking against the bill during a public hearing in late March.

Gura said he was also denied an opportunity to speak, along with other citizens opposed to the proposal.

Rawlings Magede, senior programme lead at Heal Zimbabwe Trust, disputed the parliamentary committee’s findings.

“It is not true that most people are in support of the bill. Those supporting it are only a few who think that by supporting the bill, they will get some rewards. People are desperate for gifts,” Magede told Al Jazeera.

He said the reported level of support was misleading and did not reflect the views of many Zimbabweans.

ZANU-PF controls parliament

The ruling party controls both the National Assembly and the Senate.

Its parliamentary dominance grew after the 2023 elections, when Senator Sengezo Tshabangu recalled a number of CCC legislators, strengthening ZANU-PF’s position in parliament.

Critics say many opposition lawmakers who remained in parliament are politically vulnerable because of Tshabangu’s influence.

The opposition remains fragmented and has struggled to mount a coordinated challenge to the ruling party.

Mkono said that although ZANU-PF enjoys a two-thirds majority in parliament, passage of the bill was never really in doubt.

To prevent individual lawmakers from voting independently, he said, the party wanted an open vote by show of hands.

“This is subtle intimidation and closes all avenues for genuine expression of MPs’ views. It is as archaic as it is diabolic,” he said.

Wicknell Chivayo, a controversial businessman and ally of Mnangagwa, has faced accusations from critics of attempting to influence lawmakers through gifts of cash and vehicles.

In April, he offered legislators $3.6m if they passed the bill before withdrawing the offer following public criticism, including from some ZANU-PF youths.

During debate on the bill, Chivayo gave vehicles and cash to MPs Remigious Matangira and Samantha Mureyani after they spoke in support of it in the National Assembly. Critics have described such gifts as inducements intended to influence support for the bill.

Tatenda Chikumbu, from Kambuzuma, another densely populated suburb of Harare, said he has little faith in lawmakers.

“If they can be bribed and vote for the bill, how can I trust them to vote for the president once the amendment is done?” Chikumbu asked Al Jazeera.

Susan Matsunga, an opposition MP who received a vehicle from Chivayo, supported the bill during debates last week.

During voting in the National Assembly on Thursday, more than 30 opposition lawmakers voted in favour of the bill.

Courts are the last line of defence

With the bill now headed to the Senate, opponents are increasingly looking to the courts.

Mkono said legal challenges could slow the process, but argued that political mobilisation offered the strongest response.

“Social movements must be launched and all concerned Zimbabweans come together to fight this politically. That is the only viable option,” he said.

Several legal challenges are already before the courts.

Some citizens are suing their MPs for supporting the bill. Others are challenging proposals that could extend Mnangagwa’s tenure. Human rights activist Youngerson Matete has approached the High Court seeking to stop enactment of the bill without a referendum.

Many Zimbabweans, however, have lost confidence in the judiciary, which critics accuse of lacking independence. The Constitutional Court has already started dismissing some of the cases based on technicalities.

For Gura, the stakes extend beyond the next election cycle.

The proposed constitutional changes, he said, would shape the future of the country his children will inherit.

“This is a direct attack on accountability and transparency,” he said.

WASHINGTON — Tom Daschle, the former Democratic senator from South Dakota, remembers the exchange vividly.

The time was September 2002. The place was the White House, at a meeting in which President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney pressed congressional leaders for a quick vote on a resolution authorizing military action against Iraq.

But Daschle, who as Senate majority leader controlled the chamber’s schedule, recalled recently that he asked Bush to delay the vote until after the impending midterm election.

“I asked directly if we could delay this so we could depoliticize it. I said: ‘Mr. President, I know this is urgent, but why the rush? Why do we have to do this now?’ He looked at Cheney and he looked at me, and there was a half-smile on his face. And he said: ‘We just have to do this now.’ ”

Daschle’s account, which White House officials said they could not confirm or deny, highlights a crucial factor that has drawn little attention amid rising controversy over the congressional vote that authorized the war in Iraq. The recent partisan dispute has focused almost entirely on the intelligence information legislators had as they cast their votes. But the debate may have been shaped as much by when Congress voted as by what it knew.

Bush’s father, President George H.W. Bush, did not call for a vote authorizing the Persian Gulf War until after the 1990 midterm election. But the vote paving the way for the second war with Iraq came in mid-October of 2002 — at the height of an election campaign in which Republicans were systematically portraying Democrats as weak on national security.

Few candidates sparred over the war resolution itself. But Republicans in states including Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota and Georgia strafed Democratic senators seeking reelection who had supported military spending cutbacks in the 1990s, accepted money from a liberal arms-control group, opposed Bush’s preferred approach for organizing the new Department of Homeland Security, and voted in 1991 against the Persian Gulf War.

With national security then such a flashpoint in so many campaigns, many Democrats believe, the vote’s timing enormously increased pressure on their party’s wavering senators to back the president, whose approval rating approached 70% at the time.

“There was a sense I had from the very beginning that this was in part politically motivated, and they were going to maximize the timing to affect those who were having some doubt about this right before the election,” Daschle said.

White House counselor Dan Bartlett denied that charge, saying the vote’s timing represented a desire to increase pressure on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, not Democrats.

“The president, during the run-up to the war, went out of his way not to make it political,” Bartlett said.

Whatever the motivation for the vote’s timing, the effect was to produce a clear contrast between the Democratic senators who sought reelection that November and those who did not.

The Democrats not on the ballot split almost evenly, with 19 supporting the war resolution and 17 opposing it. Among those facing the voters, 10 voted for the resolution while only four opposed it. And of those four, only one — Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, who died in a plane crash a few weeks after the resolution vote — was in a seriously competitive race.

“The political currents were extraordinarily strong for everybody involved,” said Jim Jordan, then executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “I’m certainly not implying that Democrats had their finger to the wind and didn’t make votes of conscience, but it was a piece of the puzzle, clearly.”

It is, of course, impossible to say whether more Democrats would have opposed the war resolution — which passed the Senate 77 to 23 on Oct. 11, just hours after the House approved it 296 to 133 — if the vote had occurred after the 2002 election.

Daschle, who voted for the resolution and was not up for reelection that year, said he did not think so, “given the circumstances, the environment, the sense that we were responding to 9/11, and all of the urgency that was created by the rhetoric and cajoling of the administration.”

But Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said recently that a delay might have prompted more Democrats to vote no by increasing the time available to study the evidence for war and by dissipating the political pressures surrounding the decision.

“There was a stampede to vote on this,” Kennedy said. “A lot of our people got caught up in it.”

Bartlett said that if some Democrats felt “like they would have made a different decision before the election or after, that doesn’t speak very well of them, because the facts didn’t change in the course of one month.”

Democrats themselves were divided over the vote’s timing. Kennedy, Wellstone and Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) were among those who passionately urged Daschle to defer the vote until after the election, said several sources who requested anonymity when discussing the party’s internal debate.

The sources said that other Democratic senators supported Bush’s push, in part because the senators believed an early vote might help the party shift attention to domestic issues it wanted to spotlight before election day. Democrats also felt more pressure to act because they recognized that the GOP-controlled House would agree to Bush’s request on the vote’s timing.

Against this backdrop, Republicans across the country were escalating attacks on their Democratic opponents on defense issues.

Starting in mid-September, for instance, then-Rep. John Thune (R-S.D.) issued statements and organized news conferences by veterans to criticize Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson for voting against the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

On Oct. 4, one week before the Senate vote, Thune released an ad that used images of Hussein and terrorist leader Osama bin Laden to criticize Johnson for voting against missile defense systems.

In Minnesota beginning in mid-September, Republican Norm Coleman organized retired military officials to hold news conferences charging that Wellstone “didn’t just vote to devastate our defense; he voted to dismantle it.” In late September, the National Republican Senatorial Committee ran ads attacking Wellstone over votes to reduce military spending.

The committee ran similar ads against Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) one week before the vote.

Although he did not criticize Democrats over Iraq, Bush stoked the overall security debate during a series of appearances between Sept. 23 and Oct. 4. He criticized Senate Democrats who were blocking the administration’s preferred version of legislation to create the Department of Homeland Security because, they said, it gave the president too much freedom to suspend workers’ civil service protections.

“The Senate is more interested in special interests in Washington and not interested in the security of the American people,” Bush said in New Jersey.

Bush’s comments reverberated most powerfully in the Senate race in Georgia, where Saxby Chambliss, then a Republican House member, began criticizing incumbent Democrat Max Cleland over the Homeland Security issue.

Less than a day after the Senate authorized the use of force in Iraq, Chambliss aired what became the most talked-about ad of the 2002 election: a sharply worded jab that used pictures of Hussein and Bin Laden to accuse Cleland of voting “against the president’s vital Homeland Security efforts.”

Cleland, Johnson and Harkin were among the Democrats who voted for the war resolution; Wellstone voted no.

Less than a month later, Johnson and Harkin were reelected, Cleland was defeated and Coleman beat former Vice President Walter F. Mondale for Wellstone’s seat after the senator’s death. Overall, Republicans widened their majority in the House and swept back into control of the Senate.

WASHINGTON — The 101st Congress convened its second session today, facing an agenda suddenly expanded by the emergence of democracy in Eastern Europe and a plan to cut Social Security taxes at home.

Lingering issues also abound, including child care, capital-gains taxes and deficit reduction.

Not waiting for President Bush to send up his own budget and legislative proposals, the Senate almost immediately began debating a far-reaching plan for cleaning up the air–a bill that is more costly and more sweeping than the President wants. Opposition is based more on geography and competing regional interests than on party lines.

The first day of the session was marked by friendly reunions. Rep. Jack Brooks (D-Tex.) told colleagues he’d nearly died of a pancreas ailment during the long break, and he accepted hugs and applause on the House floor.

Outside, a half dozen House members arrived on bicycles after a two-block trip from a congressional office building to call attention to plans for Earth Day in the spring.

On a more substantive matter, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) formally introduced a bill to reduce Social Security taxes–an idea that prompted a full-scale White House attack when he proposed it last month. Moynihan says workers are being deceived because their Social Security taxes are being used to make the federal deficit appear far smaller than it is.

“These are insurance contributions, they are premiums paid,” Moynihan told a news conference. “They do not belong to the government. If we are not going to save them, we should return them.”

His bill, which has drawn widespread interest but few sponsors, would roll back the tax increase that took effect Jan. 1 and reduce another scheduled for next year. That would save a worker with income over $51,300 about $600 and leave the Social Security system with just enough money to pay retirees’ checks, Moynihan said.

The Bush Administration says such cuts would lead to reductions in benefits or to efforts to raise other taxes.

Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.), a member of the Budget Committee, did what is seldom done in Congress these days: He introduced a bill proposing a tax increase. He recommended a 5% national sales tax that would exempt food, health care and housing.

The New York Knicks celebrated their first NBA title in 53 years with a frenzied ticker-tape parade through Manhattan. The Knicks, along with finals MVP Jalen Brunson were awarded keys to the city by Mayor Zohran Mamdani in front of thousands of fans.

WASHINGTON — The White House pushed back Thursday against growing bipartisan criticism of a negotiated settlement to the war with Iran, arguing its concessions to the Islamic Republic were contingent on its conduct and essential to securing peace.

The administration’s defensive posture came as details of the framework agreement, known as a memorandum of understanding, were finally shared with the public, revealing a raft of compromises with Tehran long opposed by Republicans.

Vice President JD Vance, who helped negotiate the deal, told reporters Thursday that the deal was structured to reward Iran for good behavior. But the text of the agreement suggests otherwise.

The Trump administration agreed to release billions of dollars in Iranian assets that were frozen and restricted by the United States “upon the implementation” of the memorandum — before any further actions are taken or additional negotiations begin. The president will issue sanctions waivers on Iranian oil, allowing Tehran to resume trading its most valuable export and breaking with decades of policy. And to facilitate that trade, boosting Tehran’s revenues, Trump agreed to immediately end a U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports.

Still more concessions were offered to the Iranians, including a commitment by the U.S. administration to establish a fund of “at least $300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic” — in effect providing reparations for the war Trump started.

“All required licenses, waivers and permissions needed for the relevant financial transactions will be granted by the United States of America,” the memorandum reads.

Taken together, the document reads as a stunning reversal of U.S. policy toward Iran after decades of concern across administrations in Washington — including throughout Trump’s two terms — that the Islamic Republic represents the nation’s greatest security threats as the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.

Criticism from Republican senators, in particular, has been sharp and swift.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the $300-billion fund “would make Iran’s payoff under President Obama’s 2015 deal look like a pittance by comparison.” And Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) accused the Trump administration of giving Iran money it would use to kill Americans.

“History demonstrates that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is an exceptionally bad idea, and I think, unfortunately, the president is receiving some really bad advice on this deal,” Cruz said. “I don’t want to see us send a penny to the ayatollah. And I hope that we don’t.”

The Obama-era deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, included structured sanctions relief for Iran in exchange for concrete and verifiable steps by Tehran to dismantle much of its nuclear program — a framework that Republicans broadly criticized at the time.

By contrast, Trump’s agreement commits the United States to pursuing economic relief for Iran while providing no clarity about the future of Iran’s nuclear program — the very issue Trump cited as the rationale for launching the war.

The memorandum includes a pledge by Iran to never purchase or construct nuclear weapons — a vow the Islamic Republic has made multiple times before, including by signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, in a religious edict issued by the late supreme leader and in the Obama-era nuclear accord.

Vice President JD Vance speaks to reporters at the White House on June 18, 2026.

(Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press)

Detailed negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program — including whether Tehran could continue domestic uranium enrichment, at what level, and under what monitoring regime — were left for another day.

For more than a decade, the U.S. intelligence community has assessed that Iran sought a threshold nuclear capability, securing the strategic advantages of a nuclear power without incurring the costs of openly pursuing a bomb.

The agreement does include a commitment by Iran to do its “best” to bring commercial shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital international waterway, back to prewar levels. But critics of the president said he had to make deep, historic concessions just to secure a status quo ante upended by the war he started. And in the document, Tehran agreed to refrain from imposing a toll on ships transiting the strait for only a 60-day period.

“Unless you were homeschooled by a day drinker, no one’s confident that Iran is going to do anything,” Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, told reporters this week.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, Kennedy’s Republican counterpart from Louisiana, called the deal “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades” that would have President Reagan “rolling over in his grave.”

“Iran’s nuclear ambitions were not curbed, and they have learned that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works and will undoubtedly leverage it in the future. Now, Iran gets to build brand-new infrastructure under this deal,” Cassidy said.

“Before the war, the strait was open, Iran was being crushed by sanctions, and 13 service members were still alive,” he added. “Now, 13 Americans are dead, families have paid billions at the pump, sanctions will be lifted, and the bombing has stopped.”

Despite mounting criticism, Trump put his signature to the memorandum on Wednesday night while attending a dinner with the French president in Versailles, a palace infamous for hosting a treaty signing that disgraced Germany at the end of the First World War.

He defended the agreement while in Europe and suggested further concessions might be forthcoming, including recognition of Iran’s claimed right to enrich uranium and a new willingness to tolerate its continued ballistic missile development — another program that Trump had vowed to eliminate as a central war aim.

“He took America to war — killing 13 soldiers, thousands of Iranian civilians and costing taxpayers $60 billion — to get rid of Iran’s missile program. And now that he’s lost the war, he pretends like it’s no big deal,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut.

“Just unforgivable,” he added. “What a charlatan.”

United States President Donald Trump has taken to social media to boast about the state of the economy amid a looming peace deal between the US and Iran, which yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to end the US-Israel war on Iran.

In a post on his social media platform Truth Social, the president claimed that “OIL IS FLOWING” and added that “THE STOCK MARKETS ARE ROARING, JOBS ARE AT RECORDS, AND PRICES ARE DROPPING (AFFORDABILITY!)”

While some of his claims are accurate, others are misleading. Al Jazeera takes a look:

‘Stock Market Just Hit A RECORD High’

That is true specifically for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. That index hit a record high of 51,999.67 for its close on Tuesday amid the potential of a ceasefire and a rally for the newly listed SpaceX.

The Dow slipped from that high on Wednesday amid the US Federal Reserve’s announcement that it would maintain the benchmark interest rate in the target range of 3.5-3.75 percent, and closed down on Wednesday at 51,494.99. The Dow has since jumped 0.35 percent in midday trading on Thursday at 51,671.

The Nasdaq Composite Index and S&P 500 both slipped.

However, this may not directly impact the 38 percent of Americans who do not invest in the stock market.

“The idea that the stock market is doing well does not reflect people’s experiences. There’s a saying that the stock market is not the economy, and that’s an important thing to keep in mind,” Michael Klein, professor of international economic affairs at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, told Al Jazeera.

And that lived experience is at the petrol station and at the grocery store.

‘Prices are dropping’

Petrol prices have started to tumble in the last few days. The average price of a gallon of petrol (3.78 litres) on Thursday is at $3.99, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA), which tracks daily gas prices. That’s down from a high of $4.48 in May, but still well above $2.98, where prices were on February 28 when the US and Israel first struck Iran.

Despite the deal, experts believe that a petrol price decline will plateau for general consumers as the US strategic petroleum reserve, which earlier this week reached its lowest level since 1983, is refilled, all while oil extraction and shipping bottlenecks weigh on supply chains.

“The persistence of the price spikes is the key issue. Transportation, rerouting, insurance premiums, and manufacturing costs don’t normalise overnight, so even when oil stabilises, the cost base across the supply chain will stay elevated,” Tammy Kulesa, director of product marketing for supply chain execution at Blue Yonder, a supply chain management firm, said in remarks provided to Al Jazeera.

Mark Jones, professor of political science at Rice University in Houston, Texas, says prices will not return to prewar levels until the last quarter or close of 2027.

“Even once everybody believes the truce is going to hold [and] there’s no danger going through the Strait of Hormuz, those tankers take months to reach their final destination and come back,” Jones told Al Jazeera. “So the ability to replenish the stocks is going to take until, I think, the early fall [third quarter].”

Consumer inflation, which has jumped at the fastest pace in three years and is at 4.2 percent, has driven prices up on several key goods and has weighed on consumers. While energy prices have risen by nearly eight percent in the last two months alone, prices at the supermarket have jumped by 0.1 percent in May from the month prior after a 0.7 percent increase in April, with the highest increases in goods like bakery products, cereals, nonalcoholic beverages, as well as fruit and vegetables.

“There are real problems facing a lot of people. Prices are high, and wages have not kept up with prices. So people’s real purchasing power has fallen,” Klein said.

Supermarket chains have taken notice. Kroger, the largest supermarket chain in the US, said on Thursday that it will cut prices on thousands of products within its roughly 3,000 stores nationwide. This comes amid increased pressure from Costco and Walmart for value shoppers.

“Customers are being more deliberate with their spending and at times, shopping us selectively. We’re getting too many promotional trips and not enough of the full basket,” Kroger CEO Greg Foran said in a statement.

‘Jobs are at records’

Jobs are not at record levels, despite Trump’s assertions.

The US economy added 172,000 jobs in May. The highest during the second Trump term was 214,000, in March. By comparison, on average, 300,000 jobs were added monthly under his predecessor, former US President Joe Biden, a Democrat, with some months much higher – including July 2021, when the economy added 943,000 jobs, albeit that was on the back of the COVID-19 pandemic as businesses rushed to hire after massive layoffs.

Under Trump, there have been several months of limited job growth that have been hyper-focused on specific sectors like healthcare. On average, employers added only 15,000 jobs a month in 2025. Meanwhile, the US economy lost 92,000 jobs this year in February.

Layoffs are also on the upswing. Job cuts jumped 16 percent between April and May, marking the most layoffs since May 2020 during the height of the pandemic, according to Challenger, Gray and Christmas, with artificial intelligence (AI) as a driving force behind the cuts. Slightly more than 97,000 people lost their jobs in May.

‘Oil is flowing’

Overnight, 12.5 million barrels of crude oil travelled through the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil is normally shipped, according to US Vice President JD Vance. However, data from Kpler shows that travel through the strait is still low, with six verified crossings on June 17.

With the strait starting to open, oil prices tumbled to their lowest levels since the early days of the war as the temporary deal to end fighting and pull back sanctions elevated pressure on global supply.

Brent crude futures LCOc1 dropped $0.78 or one percent to $76.51 in midday trading.

Shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG) have also ramped up, and a QatarEnergy LNG vessel has returned to Ras Laffan, where it has loaded more than 209,000 cubic metres, according to Kplr.