Power

President Trump might not look smaller, but he is.

At home and abroad, among a significant majority of Americans that includes increasing numbers of Republicans, as well as in the eyes of foreign leaders, the president of the United States is shrinking by the day into a hapless peacock, a cartoon figure posting comic word balloons at all hours on the falsely labeled Truth Social network or bloviating for the (fewer and fewer) cameras by day.

Consider Trump’s losses and humiliations just over the past week:

But for the U.S. and Israeli delegations, formerly deferential diplomats at the United Nations mostly sat on their hands for Trump’s boastful and bullying annual address on Tuesday; at one apparent applause line, he seemed to pause for claps that didn’t come. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates over his objections (its hand forced by the inflation Trump’s tariffs and war have caused). The usually compliant Supreme Court killed his rule against mail ballots for the midterm elections. A federal judge blocked Trump (again) from putting his name on the Kennedy Center. Daily it seems, news stories quote once-supportive truckers and farmers breaking with him over the cost of fuel.

There’s more: A long-loyal Florida Republican, Rep. María Elvira Salazar, aired a campaign ad telling Trump that his immigration policies have gone too far and Latino supporters “feel betrayed.” Republican Senate candidates in Iowa and Michigan demanded that Trump end his stalemated war against Iran. The Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee berated Trump on the Senate floor for kowtowing to China’s President Xi Jinping with this week’s state visit. And a Republican senator from Nebraska urged an investigation of Donald Trump Jr. over his business dealings and his recent wedding that a Russian oligarch bankrolled.

Sure, Trump still has unprecedented control over his party; he only recently ended several Republican officeholders’ careers by endorsing their foes in party primaries. But the primaries are over. More Republicans by the day are trying to distance themselves from a president who’s setting records for unpopularity with just about each new poll. CNN’s latest, conducted last week, found that two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Trump’s job performance and believe, contrary to Trump’s claims, that the United States is losing the war against Iran. In another poll, from Fox News, two-thirds of voters said Trump had made the economy worse.

On the foreign stage, as evidenced by Trump’s failed applause lines at the U.N., leaders no longer compete for ways to play to his vanity. Instead, some are forming workarounds to achieve their policy ends without the conspicuously absent United States — on defense, trade, climate change and more. They’ve learned to discount his empty hyperbole, which is why there wasn’t a collective eruption at the U.N. on Tuesday when Trump suggested he might “annihilate” Iran.

To be sure, many don’t doubt he’s capable of that war crime. In fact, in the same address, Trump included among a number of false boasts one that’s all too real: about U.S. military strikes against small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that have killed numerous people — 234 to date — whom the administration claims, without evidence, to be drug-runners. These are illegal extrajudicial killings — actual war crimes.

Alas, as president, Trump might be a smaller man, but he retains a “crazy” amount of power, as he gushed himself last Thursday to an audience in the Mar-a-Lago’d Rose Garden. Why, he could even ban fishing and put Bass Pro Shops out of business, he told the billionaire founder of the chain.

That’s not true, but the wannabe autocrat has done plenty that the Constitution and federal law don’t allow a president to do, besides the Caribbean killings — like starting a war without Congress, wiping out entire federal programs authorized by law, demolishing a whole wing of the White House and banning specific news organizations because he doesn’t like their coverage.

Also, any inclination to relish Trump’s self-diminishment should be offset by the fact that he’s simultaneously diminishing the country’s stature and leadership in the world, in ways that could well outlast him. Longtime allies in Canada, Europe, Australia and Asia, in a break from the 80-year-old postwar order that the United States built, are forging new ties among themselves, separate from the newly unreliable United States and a president who is often hostile to allied leaders and openly enamored of dictators in China, Russia and elsewhere.

“To the victor belong the spoils,” Trump crowed to the U.N., in bragging about the United States’ confiscation of Venezuela’s oil and oil revenue since taking over the country in January. The U.S. president thus embraced, before a global audience, the very approach that his country and its postwar allies had rejected in building a new world order that included the U.N.

This week in celebrating China, which along with Russia provides assistance to Iran against the United States, Trump continues his abasement of himself and the nation.

After he’d visited Beijing in May, Trump actually declared China a co-superpower with the United States. “It’s the two great countries. I call it the G-2,” he told Sean Hannity on Fox News. Imagine Hannity’s conniption, and Republicans’, had Presidents Biden or Obama so forfeited America’s singular standing as the world’s superpower. And now, Trump is giddy about hosting Xi for a state visit with all the trappings. Rather than wait for Xi at the White House, as he typically greets visiting leaders, on Wednesday the eager Trump insisted on meeting Xi’s plane at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland for a red-carpet welcome.

In May, China’s Communist Party-controlled newspaper said Trump arrived in China as a “giant with a limp,” crippled by an Iran war then in its third, indecisive month.

Four months later, that war drags on, depleting U.S. stockpiles and defenses, including against an expansionist China. And Xi meets a man who’s no longer looking like a giant.

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Did California come out a winner when Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta settled a multi-state lawsuit against Paramount Skydance on Monday, allowing its $111-billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery to move forward?

That’s the question everyone is trying to figure out, as the 32-page agreement is parsed, with pundits pouring over minutiae of cable streaming and tax credits. I’ll leave that to the business experts, but I’m here to give you a big picture of politics, power and possibilities — and one short but unsatisfying answer about whether this deal is good for the Golden State: Yes and no.

I’ll start with this: Did California win is the wrong question. There was always something bigger at play here that was lost behind the fear of further decimation to an industry so central and crucial to the state. The question the lawsuit asked is, “Do we live in an America where government institutions are so broken that power makes its own rules?”

The settlement might not give the entertainment industry all it hoped for but it was “a fight worth fighting,” said George Hay, a professor at Cornell Law School and a former attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, because it sought to answer that question in favor of consumers, and showed that states like California can and will step up to fill a dangerous void.

Under the Trump administration, the U.S. Department of Justice hasn’t so much abdicated its responsibility to enforce antitrust laws — it has embraced an oligarchic ethos that seems happy to feed the American economy into the mouths of behemoths, allowing companies such as Paramount free reign to gobble up whatever lies in their paths like an old-school Pac-Man.

Our president personally invests in industries he’s supposed to regulate (I’m looking at you, Silicon Valley). Corporations dump money into elections that average people can never hope to match. The free press is under increasing attack with multiple outlets banned from the White House — including CNN, which Paramount hopes to own along with CBS and whose editorial independence is at least addressed in this settlement, albeit weakly.

States, even powerful states such as New York and California, don’t have the muscle or money of the federal apparatus, and were never meant to play the role of national enforcer on issues such as these.

The fact that Bonta and the 11 other states involved in the antitrust litigation pulled together not just a credible, but effective team is a victory for all American consumers, and a message to other Pac-Man companies out there that even if federal regulation is on life support, there are still rules.

The states “showed that they could quickly and effectively put together a formidable litigation team, and achieve significant initial success. That’s a big deal. That that changes the role of the states for a long time into the future,” said William Kovacic. He’s a law professor at George Washington University and a former chair of the Federal Trade Commission, so like Hay, he knows a bit about antitrust enforcement.

“This has a ripple effect that goes through the entire federal enforcement system because they showed they could do something that was very difficult,” Kovacic said. “That’s a big institutional win for the states.”

To hear Bonta describe it, California is absolutely a winner in its own right, though, and this will be “very good” for the state. Which to be fair, is exactly what any decent politician would say.

“It will be good for consumers, good for prices, good for jobs, good for choice, quality, competition,” Bonta told me Monday afternoon.

Kovacic is a bit more measured, calling it a “modest win.”

The deal has many parts, but it covers a five-year period in which the new Paramount mega-studio must release between 30 to 32 films each year, many in theaters and some independent. It also has to keep open and running both the Paramount and Warner Bros. lots, a not-insignificant source of L.A. jobs — and maybe one of the most visible wins for the city.

The new company also must spend at least $1.5 billion over the five years on production in the U.S., and increase that figure if there are certain, uncapped federal or state tax credits available to them.

In California, where the budget deficit is in the billions, creating uncapped credits may be a hard sell, but Bonta told me he’s making it a priority in the next legislative session and will push the next governor — likely Xavier Becerra, who once held his job — to back them.

“I think we’re going to get it in California,” he said. It’s somewhat important because the settlement doesn’t specifically address production in California — and tax credits from other states have been drawing production away for years.

We’ll see how successful Bonta is on that endeavor — he hasn’t always gotten what he wants from governors.

Much has been made about the recent threats from Paramount Skydance Chief Executive David Ellison to move business operations out of California. That pressure has been cited as one of the factors pushing the state to settle, and it probably was — but not just because of Ellison.

Gov. Gavin Newsom made it clear that he preferred a settlement to a drawn-out court case, especially after that threat.

You may recall our governor has presidential aspirations, and is in a long-running battle with Trump over whether California is a wasteland for business beset by fraud and regulation, or a utopia of economic activity fueling the world’s fourth largest economy. Paramount reupping its threat to leave, or even worse, decamping for someplace such as Nashville, is not a great look.

So this case, which was never going to be a slam-dunk to win in court and which could easily have run into 2028 if it proceeded, was never a winning issue for Newsom.

Newsom Monday called the deal “a practical path forward,” which it definitely is — for him.

Hay, of Cornell, said it was a “big blow” when the governor failed to back Bonta and go all-in on litigation.

“Once [Newsom] once came out on the other side, it made things really, really difficult,” Hay said.

So there was pressure on Bonta to make a deal even from his friends, though Bonta told me that “what you call pressure was just noise to me. I never felt pressured in this process.”

But of course, nearly everything that happens in politics and litigation is about pressure — who has the power to apply it and who has the power to withstand it. Bonta, to his credit, applied pressure where Paramount never expected it.

“If I were in California, I’d be proud of the attorney general. At the end of the day, he got the best he could,” Hay said. “I’m glad they were there when the government bailed out because it made Paramount tow the line, and maybe that’s all that we could hope for.”

The Paramount settlement is more about possible than perfect, but it proved that states — and consumers — are not powerless, and every brawl that proves that is, as Hay said, a fight worth fighting.

The outage marks at least the sixth one this year after a United States-imposed energy blockade went into effect.

Cuba has worked to restore power after suffering a significant blackout that left many parts of the country in the dark.

The state-run company in charge of operating the country’s electrical system, Union Electrica (UNE), said nearly half of its customers in the capital of Havana had regained power on Saturday.

“The re-establishing is being done gradually, as conditions permit,” UNE posted on social media.

The latest blackout, at least the 12th since late 2024, first affected five of Cuba’s eastern provinces, including Havana, before spreading across the whole island. It is at least the sixth this year alone.

Cuban authorities told the Reuters news agency on Friday the collapse was the result of a failure in high-voltage transmission lines in the central part of the country. UNE said “unstable weather conditions” also played a role.

For years, Cuba’s ageing infrastructure and fuel shortages have led to sporadic blackouts. But power outages have become more frequent after the United States, in a bid to put political and economic pressure on the country’s government, imposed an energy blockade in January.

United Nations human rights experts have condemned the US oil blockade, calling it a violation of international law and warning ‌that ‌Cuba risks becoming a “silent Gaza” as shortages and blackouts grow ever more critical.

Some of the island’s residents said they were already out of power when Friday’s blackout happened.

“Yesterday, I’d gone without power for 24 hours. They turned the lights on for an hour, and then the grid collapsed,” Havana resident Frank Lorenzo, 23, told Reuters.

Others, like Lidia Fernandez, told the news agency AFP that a lack of fuel makes it difficult to power backup generators, which run on imported diesel.

“It’s one thing after another: no water, no gas for cooking, no electricity,” the 36-year-old teacher said.

Fernandez added, “Honestly, I don’t know how we haven’t gone crazy.”

ABU DHABI: Of all the memories Jujhar Singh carried home from Abu Dhabi last year, one has stayed with him more vividly than the others: the final slap he took on a night when he made history for India.

On Oct. 24, 2025, Singh became the first Indian striker to win at a Power Slap event in the UAE’s capital. Almost a year later, he is preparing to compete there again, this time against Louis Robinson and with the prospect of strong Indian support at Space42 Arena.

“I remember the last slap I took that night the most,” Singh said. “Returning to Abu Dhabi means a lot to me because the people of India want to see me compete again.”

Singh (1-0) competes at Power Slap 25 Presented by Monster Energy on Friday, Oct. 23, where he will face British heavyweight Louis Robinson (2-0, 2 KOs), currently ranked No. 8 in the division.

Singh added: “India versus England is going to be a huge match.”

Robinson has won both of his Power Slap appearances by knockout, setting up another significant test for Singh in Abu Dhabi.

Singh said: “This time, I’m facing an undefeated competitor, but I want to create more history in Power Slap and give him his first taste of defeat.”

For Singh, another victory is only part of what makes his return to Abu Dhabi significant.

“The Power Slap stage is a huge stage for me personally, and representing my country is like a dream come true,” he said.

That connection to India could be particularly evident inside Space42 Arena. Abu Dhabi is home to a large Indian community, and Singh expects plenty of support when he steps on the stage against Robinson.

Singh added: “This time the atmosphere in Abu Dhabi will be special as my Indian community is coming there in large numbers.”

Indian fans traveling from further afield also have an added opportunity to make the journey in October. A tourism initiative running until Oct. 31 covers UAE entry visa costs for eligible Indian passport holders traveling from India when they book an Abu Dhabi holiday of at least three consecutive nights through participating travel partners or online travel agencies.

With Power Slap 25 taking place on Oct. 23, the event falls within the initiative’s travel period, offering Indian fans the opportunity to combine a visit to Abu Dhabi with the chance to support Singh at Space42 Arena.

Power Slap 25 will mark the third consecutive year that the promotion has staged a live marquee event in Abu Dhabi, strengthening the UAE capital’s role in the sport’s international calendar. That continued presence could also play an important role in Power Slap’s future in India.

Singh said: “The events in Abu Dhabi are very important in increasing the popularity of Power Slap in India as it will give more Indian competitors a chance to compete.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom does not like being on Donald Trump’s side on any issue.

But when it comes to transgender girls and women in sports, particularly at the school level, the Democrat said he largely agrees with the Republican president. Newsom, one of his party’s leading White House prospects, believes it’s “deeply unfair” for people who are assigned male at birth to compete against girls.

“I don’t want to be on that side of it, but I’m being honest — I’d be lying to you if I said differently,” Newsom told the Associated Press as he was campaigning recently in South Carolina. “I haven’t been able to figure out how to make it fair from my perspective.”

Newsom is not alone.

While most Democratic officials remain steadfast supporters of the transgender community, an increasing number in red and blue states are distancing themselves from their party’s unflinching support for the transgender community’s policy priorities, such as allowing athletes to compete on teams that match their gender identity. The shift follows years of conservative attacks against Democrats on the divisive issue, which affects a relatively small number of transgender people and their families, but has emerged as one of Republicans’ most potent political weapons in the Trump era.

Soul searching over transgender issues is one facet of a sprawling identity crisis that Democrats are confronting during the midterms and before the next presidential election. Although they risk a backlash from their progressive base, there is also a sense in some corners that the party must evolve on an issue where the overwhelming majority of voters — even many Democrats — agree with Trump.

The issue was a central theme for Trump and his Republican allies on the main stage at their midterm convention in Dallas last week, where the president said he hoped Democrats would continue to stand up for transgender girls and women who want to compete in girls’ and women’s sports.

“I’m petrified that they’ll change,” he said. “That will really hurt us.”

Republicans are already replaying some of the same political attacks that they used against Kamala Harris in the presidential campaign two years ago, when they said she’s “for they/them, not you.” On Friday, they released a new advertisement targeting James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, with the same phrase.

Democrats confront difficult political terrain

A political group backed by billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk has begun running digital ads targeting Democrats in key Senate races in Texas, Ohio and Alaska, accusing them of allowing men to compete in women’s sports.

In Texas’ pivotal Senate contest, the new ad from Musk’s America PAC opens with a video clip of Talarico saying that “God is nonbinary.”

Talarico began to distance himself from those positions months ago. He went further in a Fox News interview last week, saying he would vote in favor of a national ban for gender-affirming surgeries for transgender minors, which are rare.

“I’ve missed the mark on some of my past statements. I will be the first to admit it,” Talarico said in an interview near the Republican convention site. “I think the reason that politicians in that convention center across the street want to talk about six sexes is because they don’t want to talk about $6 diesel.”

In Iowa, State Auditor Rob Sand, the Democratic Party’s nominee for governor, has spoken out against transgender athletes competing in women’s sports as a matter of fairness. Ohio Democratic gubernatorial nominee Amy Acton has taken a similar position, although she has drawn criticism from the left for adopting Trump’s language after saying she opposed “boys playing in girls’ sports.”

And in deep-blue Massachusetts, transgender rights became a defining campaign issue during the state’s recent Democratic U.S. Senate primary, illustrating the potential backlash that party members can face.

Sen. Ed Markey, 80, secured the nomination and later credited his win to not shying away from advocating for transgender rights. He used the issue to attack his Democratic opponent, Rep. Seth Moulton, who had said he wouldn’t want his daughters to play against transgender athletes.

Moulton apologized for his comments, which drew outrage from some progressives, but the damage was done.

While Moulton lost his primary, his position — not Markey’s — is in line with the majority of voters nationally.

A June poll from Quinnipiac University found that about 7 in 10 registered voters think that transgender women and girls should not be allowed to play on women’s and girls’ sports teams. About one-quarter think they should. Democrats are divided, with about half saying transgender women and girls should be allowed and about half saying they should not.

A Pew Research Center poll conducted last year found that just over half, 55%, of Democrats would be “not too” or “not at all” comfortable with athletes playing on teams that don’t match their sex at birth, while 21% said they were “somewhat” comfortable and only 23% said they were “extremely” or “very” comfortable with this.

There’s division among activists

Markey’s public commitment to transgender rights stood out because Democratic politicians are increasingly running away from the issue, said Tyler Hack, executive director of the Christopher Street Project, which is dedicated to electing supporters of transgender rights to federal office.

“The reality of being a transgender person in America in 2026 is that on election nights, while other folks are talking about who had a good night and who had a bad night, sometimes you are quietly wondering, ‘Am I going to be OK?’” Hack said.

At the same time, even transgender activists are divided over supporting Democrats who have positions that are unfriendly to transgender people.

Erin Reed, an advocate and independent journalist covering transgender issues, this month put out a guide flagging Democratic candidates who she accused of taking anti-transgender positions. She highlighted 15 states that have such Democrats, saying that she would not vote for the “worst offenders” even if it means a Republican wins.

She doesn’t want Democrats to see that “throwing transgender people under the bus is a winning strategy.”

“One seat can be won back,” Reed wrote. “A party cannot.”

Meanwhile, Hack would probably vote for a Democrat even if that candidate supports some policies the Christopher Street Project opposes, in hopes that the party can take control of Congress. However, those candidates shouldn’t expect the organization’s endorsement.

“While I hope many of them win, I think they can do it without our resources and without our support,” Hack said.

Laws are changing around the country

The political debate is evolving as transgender people increasingly become the target of conservative backlash through state laws and the Trump administration.

Sports participation has become one of the main fronts in a political battle over transgender rights, although most Republican-controlled states have also implemented policies that affect a bigger slice of the population. There are bans on some gender-affirming health care for transgender young people and rules against transgender people from using the bathrooms that match their gender identity in schools and occasionally other public places.

At least 25 states are now enforcing laws or policies banning transgender women and girls from competing in at least some women’s and girls’ sports and three others have adopted laws but have enforcement blocked by the courts.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld state laws barring transgender girls from school teams.

Transgender athletes make up a small portion of team rosters. NCAA president Charlie Baker testified in 2024 that he knew of fewer than 10 transgender college student-athletes out of more than 500,000 total.

The debate is a preview for 2028

The debate within the Democratic Party heading into the 2026 midterms offers a preview for those Democrats contemplating presidential bids in 2028.

Newsom, who is considered a frontrunner in the shadow primary, highlighted his long record of supporting LGBTQ+ priorities, including sanctioning same-sex marriage as the San Francisco mayor decades ago and later appointing the first trans judge in California history.

But in sports, he thinks it’s unfair to allow people assigned as males at birth to compete against girls.

“It’s a hard issue. I struggle with it,” Newsom said. “I think people know where my heart is, my soul is. I have a trans godson.”

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, another likely Democratic presidential contender, has taken the opposite position.

He has consistently criticized state-level bans and restrictions on transgender athletes, calling them “bullying” and a “setback for equality.” Following the recent Supreme Court ruling that upheld state bans on transgender athletes, Pritzker, whose cousin is transgender, reaffirmed his position on social media.

“There’s a place for you in Illinois,” he wrote.

In Pennsylvania, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro opposes bans on transgender athletes in school sports, which he’s called cruel and designed to discriminate. He argues that athletic participation and eligibility should not be dictated by politicians, but rather handled by local athletic organizations — a stance in line with several LGBTQ+ groups.

He’s also raised questions of fairness, however.

“Look, I think it’s a tough deal being born into the wrong body. And I don’t think these kids deserve to be persecuted and bullied by the president of the United States,” Shapiro told The Atlantic last year. “I also don’t think they deserve an unfair advantage on the playing field.” Research has been mixed on whether transgender women have advantages in sports, and it depends partly on whether they went through puberty as boys.

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is gay and a potential presidential contender, said on Fox earlier in the year that he takes people seriously on both sides of the debate “whether you’re talking about parents who are wondering what this means for fairness for their kids competing, or parents who want to make sure that their kids aren’t being discriminated against and get a chance to participate.”

“But I also have to tell you,” he added, “I would be surprised if this is a top three or even a top 10 voter issue in the midterms this year.” ___

Peoples and Mulvihill write for the Associated Press. AP writers Kimberlee Kruesi in Providence, R.I., and Amelia Thomson DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report.

The race for California’s next superintendent of public instruction is meant to be nonpartisan. Still, the two candidates — both school board presidents — are pushing decidedly political campaigns, one aligning with liberal Democrats and the other with pro-Trump Republicans as they present dueling visions for how the state’s children should be taught.

Democrat Richard Barrera, the favorite, beat out six other Democrats with his background in union organizing and liberal politics — and with more than $5 million from the California Teachers Assn. Republican Sonja Shaw rode a wave of support from a conservative education movement she helped build alongside MAGA organizations, Christian nationalists and anti-LGBTQ+ groups, while also consolidating mainstream Republicans behind her.

Although Democratic state lawmakers recently stripped many of the powers from the superintendent, the race remains a bellwether for how Californians feel about the public education of about 5.7 million children — as the Trump administration aggressively targets the state over its progressive policies.

Candidates’ disparate visions

Taking the California Democratic Party convention stage in February, Barrera, president of the San Diego Unified Board of Education, gave a quick shout-out to the California Teachers Assn. for backing his bid.

He then promoted his work in San Diego to improve student performance, raise teacher salaries and construct “environmentally sustainable schools built by union workers.” He blasted “downtown Republican business interests” for trying to privatize schools, and President Trump’s immigration policies, which he said terrify many California students who fear losing their undocumented parents.

“It’s time for us to organize, stand up to Trump, abolish ICE and create the schools our students are worthy of,” Barrera said.

Two months later, Shaw, president of the Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Education, introduced herself at an event as a mom and a “fighter” who isn’t afraid to “look the enemy in the eye” because God protects her.

She described her opponents as California liberals who pushed school closures and mask policies during the COVID-19 pandemic and now advocate for the rights of transgender students at the expense of other students.

Shaw said she entered politics inspired by the MAGA-aligned group Moms for Liberty, which campaigns against teaching about ongoing systemic racism, opposes diversity programs as discriminatory and has fought against classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Shaw also described being called a year prior and encouraged to run for superintendent by then-state Assemblymember Bill Essayli, who is now the lead federal prosecutor in Los Angeles and one of Trump’s strongest local allies.

“And I kind of laughed,” she said. “Ha ha. Me? The soccer mom? Really?” She said she told Essayli that she had to talk to God and her family. Essayli urged her to decide quickly.

Despite her humble, “who, me?” persona on the campaign trail, Shaw argues that her message resonates with parents in both parties. Shaw said she would use the superintendent position as a bully pulpit to expand that base beyond party lines and fight what she sees as the state’s failed liberal schooling policies from within. She also would challenge in court the new state law that transferred most of the post’s authority to an appointee of the governor.

Morgan Polikoff, a USC education professor, said that to win, Shaw would have to “dramatically broaden her base, inviting people who aren’t animated primarily by anti-LGBTQ animus to vote for her.”

Barrera, meanwhile, a senior aide to current state Supt. Tony Thurmond, represented the California Department of Education at a recent event held by the statewide LGBTQ+ group Equality California, where school districts were rated on their LGBTQ+ policies and resources. San Diego Unified received a high rating, while Chino Valley did not participate in the voluntary analysis.

Tony Hoang, executive director of Equality California, has described Shaw as a threat to LGBTQ+ students and endorsed Barrera as a candidate who has spent his career “advancing policies that make schools safer and more inclusive.”

Lance Christensen, of the conservative California Policy Center, disagreed. He said Barrera “will continue to be the servant and mouthpiece of the CTA,” while Shaw “represents a return to common sense, or better yet, good sense — because she’s speaking to basic issues of education policy that have been ignored for far too long.”

Barrera acknowledged his primary win over the other Democratic challengers was largely thanks to the CTA, which he said “made all the difference.” But he also credited a “long partnership” with San Diego educators and a record of believing in public education.

Shaw consolidated conservative Republican support in the primary, in which she finished first, with her campaign raising $399,000.

Barrera’s campaign collected $274,000 in primary contributions. Since the primary, Barrera’s campaign has raised at least $340,000, compared with $104,000 for Shaw.

However, it is in independent expenditures — spending by outside groups on behalf of political candidates — that Barrera has the financial leg up on Shaw. Already considered the likely fall winner because he no longer will be splitting the state’s sizable liberal vote with other Democratic candidates, Barrera also has benefited from the CTA’s massive spending covering the cost of mailers, text message campaigns and TV, radio, newspaper and digital ads, among other things.

Shaw: Soccer mom to MAGA warrior

Shaw, a 44-year-old Chino native and mother who has worked in fitness training and photography, said pandemic school closures and mask and vaccine mandates she opposed prompted her to show up to school board meetings, confront officials and challenge school policies in court. “I’m relentless. I don’t let go,” she said.

In November 2022, she was elected to the Chino Valley Unified school board, part of a small wave of evangelical Christians and far-right candidates to win seats across the state that cycle, and quickly became a go-to conservative voice on education issues.

Shaw has sidestepped concerns about immigration agents targeting schools as an issue outside of a school district’s jurisdiction. She also has derided the influence of unions in the education sector. And she lambasted efforts by California Democrats to oppose “school choice,” calling charter schools, homeschooling and other “alternative learning models” critical “lifelines” for families.

Shaw also became laser-focused on LGBTQ+ issues, challenging state laws that allow transgender students to participate in athletics and use school facilities in line with their gender identity. She also fought a state privacy policy that dissuaded school administrators from informing the parents of children who change their gender presentation or pronouns at school, and backed bans on library books with passages deemed sexually obscene. Critics have said the policy targets LGBTQ+ books, which Shaw denied.

Separately, Shaw has rallied her followers online to protest transgender teen athletes, including Jurupa Valley High School track star AB Hernandez. Shaw has showed up at track meets to protest Hernandez’s participation — which Hernandez’s mother has called threatening.

Shaw also has filed federal civil rights complaints on behalf of and helped draft complaints for cisgender high school athletes — including some of Hernandez’s teammates — who, she said, told her they were unhappy with sharing races, podiums and athletic facilities with transgender peers.

Shaw said she did not consult with Essayli on his recent unsuccessful lawsuit challenging the state’s transgender sports policies, which was based on the participation of some of the same high school athletes Shaw has protested. However, she said she would be in touch with federal authorities about such issues were she to win.

“You don’t think I’ll be calling, in my position, to the federal government?” she said. Essayli did not respond to a request for comment.

Barrera: Built by labor

Barrera, a 59-year-old father of grown children and member of the San Diego Unified school board since 2008, has been a union organizer for decades.

He never has been a teacher — nor has Shaw — but said his organizing experience makes him a natural fit as the chosen candidate of the teachers union and other labor groups, where he said he believes “the educator voice comes out most powerfully.”

“For me, the unions are a partner and will always be a core … voice in influencing the way that I make decisions,” he said.

In the 2000s, Barrera served as a regional organizer for the United Domestic Workers and United Healthcare Workers, then helped start the Chula Vista chapter of ACORN, a liberal pro-labor group.

Barrera rejects the assertion that California’s public schools are failing and wants to help “create a different narrative,” that students are “capable of anything” and educators are “capable of bringing out the best in our young people.”

Barrera helped turn the San Diego school board from a conservative-dominated body to a liberal, union-allied one. He once joined a five-day hunger strike in support of hotel workers.

Barrera has long subsidized his school board pay — a stipend of about $20,000 a year plus health benefits — with outside union work. In 2013, he was appointed secretary-treasurer of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, earning about $110,000 per year. The council includes the San Diego Unified employee unions, which critics considered a clear conflict of interest because as a school board member, Barrera was on the opposite side of the negotiation table from unions that were helping pay his Labor Council salary.

In 2016, Barrera switched to a lower-profile role as secretary-treasurer of UFCW Local 135, holding the No. 2 position in the San Diego area’s largest private-sector union representing grocery, pharmacy, casino and factory workers but not school employees.

During that period, Barrera’s direct supervisor, Mickey Kasparian, was accused of sexual harassment, which Kasparian denied. Three accusers were paid settlements with no admission of wrongdoing. Barrera was not accused of sexual misconduct but was swept out of office alongside Kasparian in 2018.

The subsequent union leadership, which is still in place, opposes Barrera for superintendent, arguing that he should have taken a stand against Kasparian. Barrera dismissed these criticisms as part of a “decade-old internal union leadership fight.”

In 2021, as officials debated when and how to reopen campuses closed during the pandemic, Barrera was aligned with the local teachers union, and his school board approved a vaccine mandate for all district employees and conditioned the return to in-person instruction on educators having the opportunity to be fully vaccinated.

Today, Barrera is in near lock-step with the CTA when it comes to policy. His only critique is that CTA lobbying in Sacramento should be better connected to ground-level demands, a goal that CTA leadership has been working toward, he said.

SEOUL: North Korea said Monday it conducted a joint live-fire drill involving missiles, artillery and drones that it claimed demonstrated “huge destructive power.”

The test included firing different types of weapons simultaneously, likely aiming at developing the ability to overwhelm South Korean and U.S. air defenses.

Experts say North Korea is not slowing its testing activities even after U.S. President Donald Trump recently scaled back a military exercise with South Korea in an apparent effort to revive diplomacy with leader Kim Jong Un.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said Saturday’s drill was meant to practice the operations of an integrated weapons control system. South Korea’s military earlier said it detected short-range ballistic missile launches from North Korea’s eastern coastal Wonsan area on Saturday morning.

After observing the firing drill, North Korean Marshal Pak Jong Chon said the drill would “improve the level of specialization to bring down the enemy’s armed forces organizationally and structurally once an order is issued.” He added that the weapons systems mobilized demonstrated “the huge destructive power of concentrated fire,” according to KCNA.

It’s extremely difficult to independently verify North Korean claims on its weapons tests. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said several missiles fired Saturday each flew about 250 kilometers (155 miles) toward North Korea’s eastern waters. The flight distances signal that the weapons are designed to strike targets in South Korea including U.S. military bases.

The firing drill, which included North Korea’s first public ballistic missile launches in about three weeks, came a day after the United States, South Korea and Japan wrapped up a trilateral military exercise that North Korea views as a provocation.

In August, Trump ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” a major bilateral military exercise with South Korea, citing what he called a good relationship with Kim. But North Korea rebuffed Trump’s overture, saying that shortening the drill didn’t change its “provocative, aggressive nature.” The Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise eventually ended six days earlier than originally scheduled.

Buoyed by his advancing nuclear arsenal and deepened ties with Russia and China, experts say Kim likely thinks he has greater leverage in possible diplomacy with the U.S. than when he first met Trump in 2018-2019.

Kim said earlier this year that he could return to talks if the U.S. drops its “hostile policy” against his country and respects what he calls the North’s status as a nuclear state.

SEOUL: North Korea said Monday it conducted a joint live-fire drill involving missiles, artillery and drones that it claimed demonstrated “huge destructive power.”

The test included firing different types of weapons simultaneously, likely aiming at developing the ability to overwhelm South Korean and U.S. air defenses.

Experts say North Korea is not slowing its testing activities even after U.S. President Donald Trump recently scaled back a military exercise with South Korea in an apparent effort to revive diplomacy with leader Kim Jong Un.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said Saturday’s drill was meant to practice the operations of an integrated weapons control system. South Korea’s military earlier said it detected short-range ballistic missile launches from North Korea’s eastern coastal Wonsan area on Saturday morning.

After observing the firing drill, North Korean Marshal Pak Jong Chon said the drill would “improve the level of specialization to bring down the enemy’s armed forces organizationally and structurally once an order is issued.” He added that the weapons systems mobilized demonstrated “the huge destructive power of concentrated fire,” according to KCNA.

It’s extremely difficult to independently verify North Korean claims on its weapons tests. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said several missiles fired Saturday each flew about 250 kilometers (155 miles) toward North Korea’s eastern waters. The flight distances signal that the weapons are designed to strike targets in South Korea including U.S. military bases.

The firing drill, which included North Korea’s first public ballistic missile launches in about three weeks, came a day after the United States, South Korea and Japan wrapped up a trilateral military exercise that North Korea views as a provocation.

In August, Trump ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” a major bilateral military exercise with South Korea, citing what he called a good relationship with Kim. But North Korea rebuffed Trump’s overture, saying that shortening the drill didn’t change its “provocative, aggressive nature.” The Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise eventually ended six days earlier than originally scheduled.

Buoyed by his advancing nuclear arsenal and deepened ties with Russia and China, experts say Kim likely thinks he has greater leverage in possible diplomacy with the U.S. than when he first met Trump in 2018-2019.

Kim said earlier this year that he could return to talks if the U.S. drops its “hostile policy” against his country and respects what he calls the North’s status as a nuclear state.

The Category 1 hurricane misses Kauai but causes widespread destruction, power outages and evacuations.

Catastrophic winds and torrential rains from Hurricane Lowell have pelted Hawaii’s western island of Kauai, knocking out power to at least 30,000 residents and ripping up tracts of beachside roads.

Vicious winds knocked down trees and left nearly 92 percent of Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC) residents without power by early Tuesday as the storm moved north into the open sea.

While the now-weakened Category 1 hurricane did not make landfall on Kauai, it blew down trees, power poles and lines, causing massive destruction from about 128 kilometres (80 miles) west of the island, according to the Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency.

With approximately 85mph (137km/h) wind gusts, the storm brought a deluge that flooded coastal roads and forced roughly 300 residents to evacuate.

The centre of the storm passed west of the islands in the overnight hours on Tuesday and receded further throughout the day, but dangerous surf from the remnants of the hurricane will impact the Southern California coast for several days given the intensity of the winds, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said.

Emergency officials are asking residents to conserve water and stay off the roads.

Hawaiian mayor Derek Kawakami said that there was “extensive damage” being reported on Tuesday.

“Everyone’s participation has gone from preparation to sheltering to staying off roads …. to now gathering data and information,” the mayor stated.

The Kauai County government urged locals to shelter in place to allow crews to assess damage, clear debris, and restore power and services safely.

Flooding and mudslides will continue to be a risk through the day, said Eric Blake of the National Hurricane Center.

The force of the sustained winds had decreased overall by early Tuesday, and the centre forecasts gradual weakening over the next few days.

In its latest advisory late Tuesday morning local time, the hurricane centre said Lowell had maximum sustained winds near 65mph with higher gusts and was moving north at 14mph.

Hurricane warnings for Kauai and the tiny island of Niihau, which has fewer than 100 permanent residents, were no longer in place by Tuesday morning local time. But high surf and deadly rip currents from the waning storm will continue to affect Hawaii’s exposed coasts for the next day or two.

A tropical storm warning was also lifted for Oahu, the state’s most populated island.

Authors: Janvi Singhi and Kanav Sharma*

BRICS is moving into a more meaningful phase in its evolution. Its larger membership, considerable resources, population, and markets position it as a voice for the global south. Nevertheless, the fact that the BRICS is economically big does not guarantee that it will turn into a powerful organization. The difficult question is whether BRICS will be able to use the potential of its diversified members to create the institutions and means of collaboration that will meet the needs and interests of different countries, businesses, and banks.

This is where the next chapter of BRICS collaboration will be decided. It is definitely not in need of aspiration. The main question is not whether BRICS will develop a common geopolitical approach but whether BRICS will be able to simplify the issues of cooperation for countries with divergent economic interests and institutional capabilities.

The enlargement of BRICS has brought about both a chance and an enigma. An increased number of members boosts the economic and diplomatic power of the group, but it also entails the presence of more currencies, regulations, economic systems, and foreign policy priorities. States such as India and China may share a desire to amplify the role of developing economies while being in competition with regard to trade, technology, and geopolitics. Resource-rich countries may have their priorities with respect to the manufacturing countries. Financial centers may deal with payment integration differently from countries interested in getting more monetary independence.

The key challenge before BRICS is not about making all the members agree about everything; rather, it is about creating means for cooperation between different countries in the areas where their interests coincide.

This differentiation is essential because BRICS is frequently assessed based on scale indicators, including population, economic output, energy resource reserves, and trade. While these parameters demonstrate the affiliation, the affiliation is not the key to institutional power. BRICS is still functioning as an informal coordinating mechanism and not as a supranational institution due to the absence of an establishing treaty, budget, and secretariat. The conversion of its total economic capabilities into total actions should rely substantially on its members’ coordination. BRICS needs to change its approach, so instead of pursuing expansion, it should focus on implementation.

The issue of cross-border payments can serve as an example. The necessity to improve payment processes within BRICS may be easily explained. International transactions require correspondent banks, multiple currencies, currency exchange, and several commissions. Using local currencies and interoperable payment systems may help reduce some of these expenses and create additional ways of settlements for countries.

However, establishing a new financial structure is much more difficult than just talking about it. The real barriers are technical and institutional: interoperability between national payment systems, regulatory compatibility, foreign exchange liquidity, cybersecurity, anti-money laundering and know-your-customer norms, settlement systems, and trust among the entities participating in the payment system. A domestic payment system cannot simply be hooked up to a foreign payment system without addressing these problems. This leads us to a more practical goal for BRICS countries. Instead of concentrating on the joint BRICS currency, they should work on interoperability among national payment systems.

The example of India’s UPI-PayNow linkage to Singapore shows how this principle works. Two entirely different payment systems can be interlinked without destroying their own systems. The same gap can be figured out at the level of BRICS if all necessary regulations, settlements, and risk management conditions are fulfilled. In order to understand how this can be achieved, BRICS can refer to the examples of other countries that have already applied the same logic.

The same issue of coordination can be observed in trade and supply chains as well. BRICS countries have complementary assets such as resources in energy, agriculture, manufacturing, minerals, technology, and large markets for consumer goods. However, having complementary resources does not automatically result in integrated supply chains.

Businesses need predictable customs, standards that will fit one another, reliable logistics, availability of finance, and clarity of regulation. If countries have different certification systems, digital documents, and technical standards, the theoretical advantages of a large BRICS market will not be fully realized. Therefore, standards will probably prevail over declarations in the end.

So far BRICS has spoken about cooperation of national standard organizations and overcoming technical barriers between trade. Further work is getting cooperation of national standard organizations transferred into standards that will be in demand in real business. Common standards for digital trade documents, selected product certification, customs data, payment systems, and technical standards can connect BRICS economies without full harmonization of their economies.

This method would make it easier to justify politically. There would not be a need for members to give up their power when it comes to buying a wider range of economic policies. The only thing left is for countries with technology to agree on their particular rules where technology will help provide measurable benefits.

The same goes for agricultural projects, as the BRICS countries share similar problems in the fields of food supply, climate, water conservation, and productivity. The BRICS has started pushing for agricultural research and cooperation. So, the question is not whether the BRICS countries have recognized these areas; they already have. The larger question is whether anything can be implemented across borders.

In a situation where one country has effective technology to grow crops and another one has a good way of bringing the crops to a field, BRICS has to find a way to transfer that knowledge or have an organization that can help in that transfer. There should be a value on the moves made regardless of whether formal treaties have been produced or not. This points towards a different institutional model for BRICS: modular cooperation.

BRICS needs to develop a model that allows all members to be part of the major framework and subgroups of interested members cooperating with each other in specific areas that require deep integration. Countries interested in making payments and settlements between them could organize a coalition in charge of finding and implementing technical solutions for that. Those ready to work jointly in the field of agriculture can proceed with agricultural cooperation, while others can focus on critical minerals, logistics, AI technologies, energy, and development finance.

This model recognizes one uncomfortable truth: diversity is BRICS’ asset, but it also acts as an obstacle in its functioning. In a highly heterogeneous grouping, it is impossible to expect rapid integration in view of the differences among its members. Compliance with the needs of all BRICS states only produces long negotiations and ambitious statements that do not work. Modular cooperation, in its turn, enables countries to pursue their own policy while being part of the larger framework.

Moreover, it could also establish a more trustworthy framework for testing. A limited number of members would be given the opportunity to run an initial test of payment or trading procedures, determine any legal or technological obstacles, and welcome other participants once the system is successful. The outcome would be a lowering of the chances of running into challenges that would be involved in the launch of a full project for all members simultaneously. BRICS should also reconsider its parameters of success.

Rather than concentrating on the number of members or the quantity of agreements accepted, BRICS should focus on the outcomes of its activities. There are political benefits to this strategy as well. BRICS will find it difficult to forge sustainable alternatives simply by selling them as counters in the geopolitical confrontation with the West. Governments and businesses respond not just to geopolitical signals but also to incentives. If the BRICS mechanism is cheaper, quicker, safer, and more efficient, then the chances of adoption increase.

This point is especially important for the discussion of de-dollarization. The reduction of dependence on dollar-based systems may in itself be a rational objective for some members; however, viewing de-dollarization as a success in and of itself can overshadow the distinction between geopolitics and economic efficiency. A payment mechanism can only gain credibility if banks and companies use it to solve a problem at hand.

India’s BRICS presidency in 2026 is an excellent opportunity to work on the practical implementation of the above approach. New Delhi can focus on enhancing cooperation based on interoperability and standards, collaboration of sectors, and measurable results. Instead of trying to create a homogenous group, India can create a framework where willing participants will devise their solutions for implementation by others.

Instead of striving to make BRICS like other supranational bodies, we should acknowledge the fact that, given its diversity of membership composition and structure, it is not realistic nor necessary. BRICS differentials provide a comparative advantage of allowing a mix of countries with both different political and economic systems that nevertheless share aspirations for greater policy autonomy and a voice in international affairs.

BRICS does not need to reach consensus on every issue to become successful. What it requires is to be able to determine areas where cooperation can be beneficial economically and create institutions able to do that.

Thus, the biggest problem is not the absence of power. The problem is how to convert power into capacity and capacity into institutions. If BRICS succeeds in this task, its economic capacity will transform from empty statistics into collective power. If it does not, then enlargement might improve visibility of the group, but its effectiveness would stay at the same level.

*Kanav Sharma is a Public Policy Researcher from Jammu & Kashmir with a postgraduate degree in English Literature from the University of Jammu. His interests include public policy, governance, parliamentary and strategic affairs.

Political analysts believe that the latest Houthi attacks open a new phase in Saudi Arabia’s approach to the Iran-backed group, marked by a shift from managing and containing escalation to firmly deterring it. They said that Riyadh will not accept the targeting of its citizens and residents on its territory, or attacks on its vital facilities.

The analysts told Asharq Al-Awsat that this phase is witnessing an advanced level of political, military, and security coordination between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s legitimate government, strengthening the latter’s ability to confront sources of threat and reshape the balance of power on the ground.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said on Tuesday that his country would not hesitate to defend itself against attacks by the terrorist Houthi militia and would use all available means to protect its interests.

Speaking at a press conference with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, in Moscow, the Saudi foreign minister said the Kingdom is putting forward diplomatic solutions to avoid further suffering for Yemen and its people, and will not hesitate to support what serves the interests of Yemen and the region. He highlighted that the path of diplomacy for dealing with the Houthis remains open.

Prince Faisal added that the Houthis prefer to put their narrow personal interests ahead of Yemen’s interests, while the country’s legitimate government has provided an opportunity to negotiate with them responsibly. He described their latest escalation as part of their pattern of provocation.

The limits of Saudi Arabia’s patience

Dr. Abdulaziz Sager, chairman of the Jeddah-based Gulf Research Center, said Yemen’s legitimate government is fulfilling its responsibilities in confronting Houthi attacks targeting civilians and vital infrastructure across the country. He added that the government has worked to mobilize its capabilities and resources, and consolidate its ranks, particularly at the military level.

“The Kingdom will not tolerate any attacks against citizens, residents or vital facilities on its territory, and that its patience has limits,” Sager said. He expects Riyadh to respond “firmly and decisively against the sources of fire, in a manner proportionate to the scale and intensity of the attacks,” citing recent developments in Iraq.

He added that the Houthis had misread Saudi patience, saying that “they do not adhere to reason or logic and continue to receive instructions.” He said that the group had been given several opportunities over the past years but failed to make use of them.

A more decisive phase

Yemeni writer Saleh Al-Baidani said the latest developments point to “a shift from managing and containing escalation toward a more decisive approach focused on deterrence.”

He told Asharq Al-Awsat: “The Kingdom has provided ample opportunities for de-escalation and a political settlement, but the Houthis misread this restraint, treating it as a permanent limitation on Saudi action rather than a calculated political choice that could be reassessed as circumstances evolve.”

He added that the recent attacks on Saudi territory and vital facilities have elevated the threat to a level that makes the previous approach increasingly difficult to sustain. Al-Baidani said: “When the Houthis evolve from a party to the Yemeni crisis into a regional pressure tool more directly linked to Iran’s calculations and its wider confrontation in the region, the approach to dealing with them inevitably changes.”

According to Al-Baidani, the escalation is no longer linked solely to the Yemeni file, but has come to affect Saudi national security, the security of the Red Sea, energy supplies and the safety of international maritime corridors.

Saudi-Yemeni coordination

The Yemeni writer highlighted that coordination between Saudi Arabia and the legitimate government has entered a different phase compared to previous years, whether at the political, military or security levels.

He added: “The Kingdom appears more aware of the importance of having a Yemeni partner capable of managing the confrontation on the ground, while the Yemeni government realizes that any serious move against the Houthis requires a regional umbrella and political, military and economic support.”

Al-Baidani concluded that the success of the next phase remains contingent on the ability of the Yemeni side to unify military and political decision-making, and to transform multiple forces and fronts from a point of weakness into a source of pressure on the Houthis.

He added: “If that is achieved, we may not be facing a fleeting military round, but rather an attempt to reshape the balance of power that has settled over the past years.”

On Tuesday, Yemeni government forces expanded the scope of their field advance on a number of fronts, managing to liberate the Al-Yatama area in the Khabb wa ash-Sha’af district of Al-Jawf Governorate, northeast of Sanaa, a day after recapturing the Al-Labanat area in the same governorate. This came in parallel with the launch of a large-scale military operation in Al-Bayda Governorate, southeast of Sanaa, and the continuation of clashes on the western coast and west of Taiz, on the sixth day since the start of the Houthi escalation.

The advance comes at a time when government forces have begun, over the past few days, to shift from containing Houthi ground attacks to regaining the initiative on several axes, capitalizing on the group’s retreat from some positions, while army units, resistance forces and the Giants Brigades continue their operations on more than one front.

It was 1963 and up-and-coming freelance journalist Gloria Steinem had been a working writer in New York City for roughly three years when Show magazine sent her on an undercover assignment that she was uniquely qualified for: to infiltrate Manhattan’s “greatest new showbiz gimmick,” the Playboy Club. She already had the beauty and brains, all she’d need was an alias, a leotard and a notebook. The assignment would change the course of her career, but not in the way that she’d hoped.

“GIRLS:

Do Playboy Club Bunnies Really

Have Glamorous Jobs,

Meet Celebrities, And

Make Top Money?

Yes, it’s true! Attractive young girls can now earn $200-$300 a week at the fabulous New York Playboy Club, enjoy the glamorous and exciting aura of show business, and have the opportunity to travel to other Playboy Clubs throughout the world.”

Armed with the above ad and welcomed by a grinning private guard calling, “Here bunny, bunny, bunny!” Steinem set out to expose the working conditions and interior lives of the bunnies slinging booze to the playboys who patronized the club. She subjected herself to the wardrobe fittings, which included getting her bunny suit stuffed to boost her breast size; she was poked and prodded during an invasive physical exam; she strutted through the club near-naked with sore feet and a suit so tight, she had to wrap gauze around her midsection where her skin had been rubbed raw; and various other indignities she underwent for the sake of journalism.

Documenting a lunch shift at the club, Steinem wrote, “Somehow, the usual tail pullings and propositions and pinching and ogling seemed all the more depressing when, outside this windowless room of perpetual night, the sun was shining.”

Steinem’s article accomplished what it set out to do, and not only were the working conditions at the club exposed, but some were subsequently improved because of her work. In her essay collection “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions,” Steinem wrote that in response to the story, Hugh Hefner wrote her a letter saying that her “beef about the physical given [to] the girls before they start work at the club prompted my eliminating it.”

Also as a result of her piece, she was slapped with a $1-million libel suit, subpoenaed as a witness in a liquor laws case against the Playboy Club, and received “obscene and threatening” calls.

Most notable, of the short-term results of the story, was the immediate impact it had on her career. Sure, in a lot of ways it had put her on the map, but she struggled to land serious journalistic assignments because, as she put it, “I had now become a Bunny — and it didn’t matter why.”

Steinem, a feminist icon and one of the most widely recognized leaders of the second-wave women’s movement, died on Wednesday at 92. Since she shed the bunny suit after her 11-day stint on the job at the Playboy Club, she went on to cofound New York Magazine and Ms. Magazine, which changed the course of the abortion rights movement with its “We Have Had Abortions” petition in which high-profile women admitted to having illegal abortions, Steinem among them. She played a pivotal role in spearheading some of the most influential and successful women’s rights efforts. And in 2013, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her lifetime of work as a journalist and activist.

Still, with all the aforementioned accomplishments, and decades later, Steinem said that her naysayers used her bunny work in an attempt to discredit her. For decades she considered the story a “professional error of gigantic proportions.” But later, she changed her tune.

“I’m not sorry I did it,” she told Ronan Farrow in 2020, when she was 86 years old. “But it is true that as old as I am, when anybody wants to put me down, they say, ‘Well, she was once a bunny.’ ”

In Steinem’s “Famous Last Words” interview, released on Netflix following her death, she closed the segment by addressing the audience. “Please tell your own story,” she said. “This is the most important thing we can do for each other: is to know each other through stories.”

I was hesitant to tell this story, and stewed over the potential risks I would be taking by telling it, but then I thought of the risk Steinem took. She dealt with fallout and she grappled with the ways the article may have hurt her career more than helped. But of the ample wisdom she imparted, its the power of women’s stories to shift culture, change policy and empower other women that feels most resonant.

I didn’t discover Steinem’s “I Was a Playboy Bunny” exposé until I was in college. I was in my late twenties at the time because I’d taken a few detours after I left high school, most of them dead ends.

One such detour led me through the massive hedge-lined gates of the Playboy Mansion. I was 18, and the E! reality series “The Girls Next Door” sparked renewed interest in Playboy bunnies. I wish I could say that I’d arrived at the mansion on an undercover magazine assignment, but the reality was different. I’d been watching a rerun of the E! show from a bedbug-ridden townhome in downtown Los Angeles, and earlier that day I grappled with whether I should pay my parking debt or buy a burrito.

I watched as the girls bounced around the mansion, appearing carefree, bedbug-free and parking ticket-free. Their lives, produced and edited as they were, appeared to be stable and glamorous, and I thought, “Hmm, maybe I should do that.” If Hefner was good at anything, it was creating a facade.

Like Steinem found, applying to be a Playboy bunny was surprisingly simple. I emailed a photo of myself in a swimsuit and shortly afterward, an invitation to a casting call at the mansion arrived.

At the casting call, I was handed a satin robe and pointed toward a small tent where I could change and a large tent with the photo crew inside. Steinem had likened wearing the bunny suit to feeling like meat on a hook. I, too, couldn’t shake the thought of a meat factory and almost instantly, realized I wanted off the conveyor belt.

My trip to the mansion and endeavor to become a bunny was short-lived. I’d driven there feeling like a femme fatale, and left feeling naive and out of my depth. Worse, it was just another humiliating misadventure that I’d carry around for years with shame.

That is until I came across her story in her essay collection “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.”

Steinem said that she was pigeonholed because of the story. She struggled afterward to be taken seriously and that may be true, but I’d argue an opposite point. Because Steinem was ultimately held in such high regard as a journalist and activist, and because she was an undercover bunny along the way, she helped the bunnies of the world to take themselves a little more seriously, to see that beyond the bunny suit, there is a world of possibilities waiting for them.

In the collection, originally published in 1983 and reprinted several times, Steinem wrote that after a town-hall meeting in New Bedford, Mass., a little girl of 6 or 7 gave her a crayon drawing of her in the bunny costume copied from a photo that had circulated online. “ ‘Even if a girl looks silly,’ she said, ‘boys should know that’s she’s smart.’ ”

“This story may outlast me,” she wrote. “but it’s not going to outlast or outsmart that little girl.”

In the book, Steinem wrote that one longer-term result of the article was “realizing that all women are Bunnies. After feminism arrived in my life, I stopped regretting that I had written the article.”

The line “All women are Bunnies” stands out. But what I imagine she meant is, bunnies are just women.

OMDURMAN: For almost a year, Randa al-Mansour, a 31-year-old Sudanese housewife, has relied on solar energy panels installed on the rooftop of her building to survive the recurrent blackouts triggered by the war-torn country’s deteriorating electricity grid.

“We are suffering big time,” said al-Mansour, who lives with her three children in Omdurman, just outside the capital of Khartoum.

“When kids arrive at school in the morning, they find no electricity there, so they are forced to head back home, where there is none either. It is very hard for them to study under such a high temperature.”

The Sudanese military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have been fighting since April 2023, killing at least 59,000 people, though aid groups say the number could be higher, and displacing some 13 million.

The conflict also has strained an already weak power infrastructure, forcing many Sudanese to seek alternative energy sources, especially during scorching summer heat. The United Nations Development Program has estimated the damage inflicted on the electricity grid at $3 billion.

“We resorted to solar energy as a way of adapting to this situation. However, not everyone in Sudan can afford this solution,” said al-Mansour, who supports her family with remittances from her husband working in Saudi Arabia.

In recent months, billboards advertising solar panels, batteries, and inverters have expanded in the capital as more Sudanese consider transitioning to solar energy.

“For a low-income family, installing a solar panel system is a huge sacrifice but an inevitable choice,” said Mohey Eddin Abu-Bark, owner of a solar systems business in Khartoum, adding that a typical household 10-kilowatt solar system costs nearly $5,000.

Manahel Madany, a 43-year-old diabetic civil servant, cannot afford the transition, despite needing steady electricity for her fridge for her insulin.

“Every three to four days, I am forced to throw away all my insulin stock after it goes bad due to heat and power outages,” said Madany.

She lives in a two-bedroom house with her mother and sister in Omdurman, and like many Sudanese, the three are forced to sleep in their house courtyard to escape the searing heat indoors.

“Not all pharmacies can afford to install solar panels for medical storage, and that’s why most medications have become unavailable,” Madany said.

The Sudan Doctors’ Network, which tracks violence across the country, warned that the continued electricity cuts could impact patients in hospitals, especially kidney patients who need constant care.

At least 30% of Sudan’s population has no access to electricity, with rural areas bearing the brunt, according to the World Bank. Conditions in grid-connected urban centers have also deteriorated, with power outages reaching up to 16 hours in many parts of the country in recent months, according to two electricity department officials who spoke to The Associated Press.

Electricity production has dropped from 4,400 megawatts before the war to 1,100 megawatts as many power plants were hit by drones launched by the RSF, while nearly half of Sudan’s best electricity engineers and technicians have also left the country since 2023, the officials said, citing a survey by a local labor union.

The two spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

Sudan has limitless potential to generate solar energy given the long hours of sunshine that often exceed 4,000 hours per year, according to the U.N. However, the high upfront cost of imported solar energy systems and a depreciating local currency derail the transition to clean energy.

BERLIN  — Leaders of an extremist, far-right party in Germany have quietly borrowed pages from President Trump’s playbook to cast doubt on the integrity of absentee voting — alleging without evidence that residents of nursing homes have had their ballots manipulated and calling for an end to postal voting.

The attack on mail ballots comes as Germany approaches a potentially historic state election that could shatter one of the taboos of its postwar political order by opening the door to a far-right government.

Politicians across the ideological spectrum, mindful that polls show Trump to be widely unpopular, don’t invoke his name.

But the specter of the American president nevertheless hangs over the election that could have reverberations across Europe if the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party — tacitly echoing Trump’s attacks on migrants, the media and the integrity of elections — pulls off an unprecedented political shock in postwar Germany.

In a country where the guilt of its Nazi past is never far from the surface, the AfD has unapologetically campaigned against what it portrays as the shackles of Germany’s history and won over many new supporters, in part by adopting Trump’s hard-line stance on migrants and his drumbeat of attacks on mainstream news outlets.

The AfD leader, Tino Chrupalla, surprised Germans recently with warnings of voter fraud in the Sunday election in Saxony-Anhalt state, telling a national television audience that some senior citizens in nursing homes had had their absentee ballots cast and signed for them without their knowledge.

This week, in neighboring Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state, the AfD candidate for governor, Leif-Erik Holm, declared, “Postal voting is more vulnerable to potential attempts of manipulation.”

Election officials and organizations representing nursing home caregivers have rejected the allegations and say there is no evidence of voter fraud.

The AfD, considered one of the most extreme far-right parties in Europe, has surged so far ahead in opinion polls that it could emerge as the dominant political force in Saxony-Anhalt and potentially lead a German state government for the first time, either with an absolute majority or with a junior coalition partner.

Trump has spent years attacking mail-in voting as vulnerable to fraud, despite scant evidence of widespread abuse. Trump himself has voted by mail in recent elections. His administration continues to fight court battles to limit voting by mail.

“Sowing distrust in political institutions is part of the strategy of right-wing populist parties,” said Marcel Lewandowsky, a political scientist at Martin Luther University in Halle, Germany.

“The ‘rigged election’ lie is a powerful narrative within the MAGA movement,” he added, “and serves as a crucial element that fosters a shared identity” with far-right parties in Europe. (Such messaging has also been employed by many rightist politicians in Latin America.)

An AfD victory in one of Germany’s 16 federal states would in one fell swoop obliterate a central tenet of the postwar order: that the far right must never return to power in the country responsible for the Holocaust and the devastation of Europe in World War II.

Many fear that taking power there could serve as a springboard for the ostracized party at the national level, where it is leading opinion polls with about 29% support, putting it far ahead of the other four parties with seats in the federal Parliament.

“Trumpism and the MAGA movement have undoubtedly been an inspiration and model for many European radical right parties,” said Lars Rensmann, a political scientist at the University of Passau who has studied the far right. “In many ways, Trump has been the successful model many European radical right parties try to follow while adopting it to European conditions.”

The AfD’s ascent has parallels across Europe, from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party to Britain’s Nigel Farage, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Herbert Kickl in Austria. In France, the far-right Rassemblement National is looking to the 2027 presidential race with its candidate, Marine Le Pen, having perhaps her strongest chance yet of winning after reaching the runoff in 2017 and 2022.

Meloni`s relationship with Trump has cooled during her nearly four years in power, due in part to the war in Iran, tariffs and security policies that have strained U.S. relations with Italy and all of Europe.

President Trump greets Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at a summit Egypt in 2025. Their once warm relationship has since cooled.

(Evan Vucci / Pool via Associated Press)

Yet there is no pan-European alliance of the far right, in part because these parties champion their own national interests.

“Some components of Trumpism can be shared and exported, such as hostility towards migration and ‘wokeism,’ but it is very clear that national interests that the far-right champion cannot be defended the same way as the American national interests,” said Giovanni Orsina, head of the political science department at LUISS University in Rome.

“If you put your nation first and do so aggressively, you have diverging national interests and so it’s not possible to have an international network of nationalists,” Orsina added.

But many far-right leaders are united in one sense. They admire not just Trump’s tactics, but the “boldness of his transgressions, dismantling liberal and civil norms by repeating things that were once deemed unacceptable for someone seeking public office,” said Rensmann.

“Trump is unpopular in Germany, even across the political right,” Lewandowsky said. “It would be risky for the AfD to embrace him openly, especially because he failed to keep his promise not to start any further wars and large segments of the public feel threatened by the United States under Trump.”

The AfD was created in 2013 as a small anti-euro party before morphing into an anti-migrant force that tapped into voter frustration over immigration and the strains many Germans perceive on housing, jobs and public services.

Despite being ostracized by mainstream parties and kept out of coalition cooperation, it has survived and thrived as a disruptive force.

In the last decade Germany has sheltered millions of refugees, mainly from Syria and other troubled countries in the Middle East. It provides housing, medical care and generous financial support to refugees that AfD politicians say serve as a magnet. Trump once accused former German Chancellor Angela Merkel of “ruining” her country by allowing in so many refugees.

“I think this could be a watershed moment for Europe,” Orsina said of the upcoming election.

An election poster touts the far-right Alternative for Germany party, AfD, right, in Berlin in 2025. It reads “Now AfD.”

(Michael Sohn / Associated Press)

He said the election in 2022 of Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party, which traces its origins to Italy’s postwar neo-fascist movement, sparked fears across Europe that, in hindsight, may have been exaggerated. But Germany is a different story when it comes to the far right.

“Some said she is a neo-fascist and a danger to democracy, but most people in Italy didn’t believe that,” he said. “Italy isn’t a better democracy after four years of Meloni but it isn’t any worse either. But Germany isn’t Italy. And Germany’s relationship with its past is a lot different.”

David Bebnowski, an author who has written books on far-right populism and who is a history instructor at the Free University in Berlin, said there is another important connection among far-right voters across Europe that the AfD is tapping into — a yearning for change in countries where establishment parties have struggled to respond to voter frustration.

Trump’s success as a force for disruption, he said, has provided a powerful example.

“You can’t really trace a grand MAGA strategy adopted by the far right, but you can see that they are, in part, very much in line with the ‘spirit of Trumpism,’” Bebnowski said. “What aligns them is a sense of disruption and optimism that they will be able to change the way politics are done in a way the other parties can’t.”

Kirschbaum is a special correspondent.

Sept. 1 (UPI) — Police in Brandenburg, Germany, said they found several improvised explosive devices at a coal-fired power plant in Tunow-Preilack, some of which hadn’t been detonated.

Bomb disposal experts from the State Criminal Police Office were able to diffuse the IEDs.

There were no injuries, police said.

Power company 50Hertz said there was a “brief interruption of service” but that all power lines were back in operation at the substation. It distributes electricity from the Jänschwalde, Germany, plant.

Brandenburg Police in Potsdam asked the public for information or witnesses who may have seen something on Tuesday morning.

Also on Tuesday, Germany accused Russia of responsibility for a drone attack at Leipzig’s airport last month and announced new measures against Moscow.

While it’s not yet known who placed the IEDs at the power substation, the German interior minister said Germany is, “a daily target of hybrid attacks.”

Tunis, Tunisia – More than 15 years after Tunisians rose up to topple longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, familiar grievances are again being heard on the streets from north to south.

A slogan from the 2011 revolution is being heard again: “employment, freedom and national dignity”.

This time, those demands are being fuelled by water cuts, electricity outages, rising prices, medicine shortages and a struggle to make ends meet, problems increasingly affecting Tunisians across social and economic divides.

But the anger is unfolding in a very different political environment.

The discontent comes as Tunisia marks five years since President Kais Saied suspended parliament, dismissed the government and began ruling by decree, moves he described as necessary to end years of political paralysis and corruption.

Many Tunisians welcomed the move at the time, frustrated with a political system that had failed to address the country’s economic problems after the 2011 revolution.

Five years later, many of those grievances remain while the political space for challenging those in power has narrowed sharply.

Old demands, new anger

The decade that followed Ben Ali’s ouster brought competitive elections and greater space for political parties and civil society, but it also brought frequent government changes, political disputes and little improvement in the lives of many Tunisians.

Unemployment remained high, particularly among young people and in the country’s interior. Public services remained weak while rising prices continued to put pressure on household incomes. By the end of 2020, unemployment stood at 17.4 percent, according to the World Bank.

Tunisia also faced serious security threats, including attacks and political assassinations, adding to economic pressures and hitting sectors such as tourism.

Those frustrations helped Saied build support as an outsider promising to break with the traditional political establishment and what many Tunisians saw as a dysfunctional system.

On July 25, 2021, Saied suspended the Assembly of the Representatives of the People, dismissed Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi and lifted parliamentary immunity. He said he was acting to address a national crisis.

His opponents described the move as a coup.

Saied later dissolved parliament and oversaw the adoption of a new constitution in 2022 that significantly strengthened presidential powers.

Since then, opposition figures, journalists, lawyers and activists have been jailed or prosecuted in cases that rights groups describe as politically motivated. Civil society has faced increasing restrictions while critics have said institutional checks on presidential power have been weakened. Human Rights Watch, for example, has described the “conspiracy case” as part of a broader crackdown on dissent.

What is the “conspiracy case”?

The case centres on allegations by Tunisian authorities that opposition politicians, lawyers, activists and other public figures were involved in a conspiracy against state security and sought to destabilise the country and undermine the government. The defendants included figures from different parts of the political spectrum.

In April 2025, a Tunis court sentenced 37 defendants to prison terms ranging from four to 66 years. Human Rights Watch described the case as politically motivated and criticised the trial for failing to provide adequate due-process protections.

On November 27, 2025, a Tunis appeals court upheld convictions against 34 of the 37 defendants, sentencing them to between five and 45 years in prison, and acquitted three.

Human Rights Watch and other rights groups continued to criticise the proceedings and describe the case as part of a wider crackdown on dissent.

The authorities reject those accusations and maintain that the defendants were prosecuted for serious offences against state security.

But the political transformation has yet to produce the economic turnaround Saied promised.

Unfulfilled promises

Many of Tunisia’s economic problems predate Saied. Years of underinvestment, financial pressures and ageing infrastructure have left public utilities and other state services struggling to meet demand.

But those failures have become harder to separate from Saied’s record because he came to power promising that a stronger state could overcome the weaknesses of the old political system.

This summer, temperatures approached 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in parts of Tunisia, pushing electricity demand to record levels. Kairouan reached 49.8C (121.6F) on Thursday, according to the Tunisian Observatory for Weather and Climate. The Tunisian Company of Electricity and Gas introduced rotating power cuts in several regions, and the outages affected water-pumping stations in some areas.

Some people reported going days without running water. Bottled water shortages added to the pressure. Long queues formed outside shops and water trucks delivering supplies to some areas.

For Rebh, a 40-year-old cleaner from Tunis, the demands are not about luxuries but about being able to afford and access the basics of everyday life.

“People are tired. They are choosing to cross the sea and die [trying to reach Europe] instead. I hope we can stand together and find a solution now,” she told Al Jazeera. “We are not asking for the impossible. This is about water and electricity. We want to live as humans. We are feeling dead while we’re still alive.”

For many Tunisians, the shortages are part of a broader squeeze on purchasing power that has made it increasingly difficult to afford basic necessities.

The extreme heat has also put pressure on an already strained health system as doctors warned of increased pressure on emergency departments.

The point, however, is not that Saied created Tunisia’s economic problems. He did not.

The question is whether the more centralised system he built has delivered the more effective government he promised.

A shrinking space for dissent

For journalist Manel Derbali, the change has been visible not only in the media but in the wider public space.

After the 2011 revolution, she said, Tunisians gained a new ability to speak openly and access information. Despite the protests and political turmoil of the period, journalists felt they were not alone in challenging those in power.

“After years of censorship and police repression, everything opened up. The journalist felt that the street was with you in one way or another,” Derbali said.

She said journalists also had channels to raise concerns about their working conditions and make proposals to officials, including through parliament and ministries, while access to decision-makers remained possible.

“After July 25, all of these spaces became closed,” she said.

Derbali said journalists now struggle to obtain even basic responses from government institutions with official bodies sometimes leaving requests unanswered for months.

“Unfortunately, history is repeating itself, and we have returned to relying on citizens’ videos to investigate and verify information,” she said.

Her account reflects a broader concern among critics of Saied that the institutions and public spaces that emerged after the revolution have been steadily weakened.

Could economic anger become political?

The current protests are not limited to Tunisia’s traditional opposition.

The Nafas movement, which has organised recent demonstrations in Tunis, seeks to bring together political parties and independent figures beyond the country’s established opposition to Saied. Its protests have also attracted citizens who had not previously taken part in political demonstrations.

Rabii Qassem, a member of the Nafas collective, said comparisons between the past five years and the decade after the revolution should not be reduced to whether Tunisia was simply better or worse before Saied.

“I’m not saying that Tunisia between 2011 and 2021 was paradise,” he said. “There were very serious crises: unemployment, corruption, economic fragility, political conflicts and a failure to achieve a large part of the revolution’s goals.”

But according to Qassem, that period also brought gains, including greater freedom of expression and protest, a stronger civil society, a more diverse media and elections that allowed for peaceful transfers of power.

“After July 25, the economic and social problems that already existed were not solved,” he said. “They were joined by a decline in political checks and balances, freedoms and the space for civil society.”

For Qassem, many of the demands raised in 2011 remain unresolved.

“Where is employment? Where is the water? Where are the public services? Where is the dignity?” he asked.

He said economic hardship and political repression have been increasingly feeding into each other as people struggling with rising prices and deteriorating services have also found fewer avenues to express their frustration.

That does not mean Tunisia is experiencing another 2011.

Many Tunisians remain wary of the political parties and politicians who dominated the decade after Ben Ali while Saied continues to have supporters who blame that period for years of economic stagnation and political instability.

Nor does every person angry about a water cut, electricity outage or rising price necessarily oppose the president.

But the protests show how economic and political grievances can increasingly overlap.

Before 2021, Tunisians could blame a democratic political system they saw as ineffective for failing to improve their lives.

After 2021, Saied dismantled much of that system and promised that a stronger presidency would deliver better government.

Five years later, many of the same grievances remain.

The difference is that the avenues for challenging them have become narrower.

“Employment, freedom and national dignity” was a demand of the revolution that ended Ben Ali’s rule.

Fifteen years later, Tunisians are again asking for jobs, basic services and greater freedoms – but now from a president who came to power promising to address the failures of the system that followed the revolution.