Power

Addressing reporters on a recent flight to Algeria, Pope Leo XIV invoked the Gospel, called himself a peacemaker and pledged to keep speaking out on behalf of the downtrodden.

“Too many people are suffering in the world today,” he said. “Too many innocent people are being killed, and I think someone has to stand up.”

Pontiffs have a tradition of weighing in on global strife, and Leo’s words were in keeping with long-standing church teaching. Appearing in front of reporters in this fashion was also not new: Pope John Paul II began taking questions from journalists on the papal plane in the 1970s.

But the first American pope was in fact wading into an unprecedented political tempest — responding to a series of broadsides from President Trump that drew Leo into debates over the war with Iran, immigration policies and more, all while Catholics in the U.S. and around the world looked on.

Missionaries from Austin, Texas, gather for prayer in St. Peter’s Square on May 11, 2025.

(Marco Di Lauro / Getty Images)

With no permanent peace deal in sight to end the war, two of Trump’s top lieutenants — Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, both Catholics and potential 2028 presidential candidates — have also been pulled into the fray. On Thursday, Rubio met Pope Leo at the Vatican in what he said was a long-planned diplomatic visit. Next month, Vance will release a memoir, “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” detailing his 2019 conversion to Catholicism.

Trump’s invective has not abated, even in the week his chief diplomat met the pontiff. Ahead of Rubio’s visit, Trump repeated his claim that Leo was “just fine” with Iran developing a nuclear weapon. In response, Leo said that his critics should go after him “truthfully,” noting that the Catholic Church has spoken out against all nuclear weapons.

Against the backdrop of this sparring, Rubio sought to downplay the drama after his official visit to the Holy See, which lasted about two hours. On X, he said the meeting with Leo focused on their “shared commitment to promoting peace and human dignity.”

The episode has revealed the unique power Leo holds on the U.S. stage, with his inherent understanding of the country’s politics and an ability to deliver his message in an accent that at times reveals his Chicago roots.

“He’s speaking in English and he’s American,” said Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author, most recently of the memoir “Work in Progress.” “People can’t dismiss him as not understanding the United States.”

For weeks, Leo has been asked to respond to a cascade of insults from Trump, including accusations that he is “weak on crime,” that he was chosen as pope because of Trump, and that the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics should “get his act together.”

In measured tones, Leo has repeatedly said he does not want to fight with the president. He counters that he is merely preaching the Gospel. On that flight in April, the pope told journalists: “I do not look at my role as being political, a politician. I don’t want to get into a debate with him.”

He added: “I will continue to speak out loudly, looking to promote peace, promoting dialogue and multilateral relationships.”

He may not be a politician, but Leo’s preaching, ranging from Iran to immigration and global warming, has touched a nerve with Trump. In the U.S., Catholics often serve as a powerful swing vote and hold a wide range of views on those issues. But even in a time of deep division and political malaise, enthusiasm for the pontiff, born and raised in the Chicago area, is hard to dismiss.

Leo’s ascendancy comes as engagement with the Catholic Church appears to be growing in the United States. Though comprehensive data are hard to come by, parishes are reporting renewed interest.

Mark Gray, a senior research associate at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, said there was evidence of an increase in baptisms, a trend that appeared to predate Leo’s election as pope last May.

Some of the new American converts lean more conservative, experts said, part of a broader rise in traditionalism. Amid tensions over whether the church should focus more on traditional issues of morality, such as abortion and marriage, or global concerns like war and migration, Leo has stressed that all are welcome and that he wants the church to function as a big tent.

Making history

U.S. presidents have long sought to court the pope, mindful of the country’s sizable Catholic population and its potential as a swing vote in elections. Woodrow Wilson was the first president to meet with the pope, in 1919, during talks after the end of World War I. Since Dwight Eisenhower made a trip to Rome in 1959, every president has traveled to meet the pope, some more than once.

That includes Trump, who traveled to see Pope Francis in 2017, accompanied by First Lady Melania Trump and his daughter Ivanka Trump. He also attended Francis’ funeral in 2025.

Asked if there was any precedent for Trump’s clash with the pope, Steven Millies, a professor of public theology at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, invoked an English king who changed the course of church history: “Henry VIII invites a comparison,” he said. Henry rejected Catholicism in the 1500s and founded a new church in order to ratify a divorce rejected by the pope.

Though Trump — who is not Catholic — has not suggested any such schism, he certainly appears to have discarded most niceties. The president has not apologized for any of his comments, though he did, after widespread backlash, take down a social media post that appeared to depict him as Christ.

Trump is constitutionally blocked from seeking another term, so picking a fight with Pope Leo may not have lasting political implications for him. But it’s a different story for Vance and Rubio, both of whom may need to appeal to the country’s Catholic voters to further their ambitions.

In the 2024 election, the Catholic vote tilted more decisively to the right, with 55% supporting Trump compared with 43% for Kamala Harris, according to the Pew Research Center. Four years earlier, Catholics were evenly divided, with 50% supporting Joe Biden, a practicing Catholic, and 49% backing Trump.

Rubio noted as he headed to Rome that “obviously we had some stuff that happened” between the White House and the Vatican. Vance, who has frequently expressed his support for the pope but is also known for his often-punchy defense of the president’s positions, drew some derision in April when he was asked at a conference about Trump’s comments and suggested that Leo should “be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”

Pope Leo XIV exchanges gifts with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the pope’s private library at the Vatican on Thursday.

(Vatican Media via Associated Press)

He later modified his tone, posting on X: “Pope Leo preaches the gospel, as he should, and that will inevitably mean he offers his opinions on the moral issues of the day. The President — and the entire administration — work to apply those moral principles in a messy world. He will be in our prayers, and I hope that we’ll be in his.”

Still, the rift could cloud the upcoming release of Vance’s memoir, overshadowing a book meant to burnish a potential 2028 bid with questions about Trump’s antagonism toward the pontiff.

Two Catholics have served as president — Biden and John F. Kennedy. During an era of stronger anti-Catholic sentiment, Kennedy famously gave a speech as a candidate emphasizing the separation of church and state. Biden was more openly devout, attending Mass every weekend and quoting Catholic hymns in his speeches. Vance is the second Catholic vice president, following Biden’s two terms as President Obama’s deputy.

In a statement, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said Trump’s social policies were a boon for U.S. Catholics and alluded to electoral politics without mentioning the pope. “President Trump has great respect for the more than one billion Catholics around the world, especially the Catholic Americans who helped power his landslide election victory in 2024,” she said.

The Midwestern pontiff

It’s been a year since the man born Robert Prevost in 1955 stepped out onto the Vatican balcony as pope, a role that predates the United States by nearly 2,000 years. The first American pope’s compatriots quickly seized on his Midwestern upbringing (he’s a White Sox fan) and relatable family dynamics (one of his two brothers supports Trump). In a nod to his Chicago roots, an Iowa-based clothing store, Raygun, began selling a T-shirt bearing the slogan “Da Pope.”

Leo also served for years as Bishop of Chiclayo in Peru, building a global profile that helped propel him to the papacy. It hasn’t stopped Chicagoans from claiming him as one of their own — even showing up at the Vatican with Chicago-style deep-dish pizza.

Known as “Bob” before becoming Pope Leo, the new pontiff chose a name that clearly signaled his intentions as a leader, invoking memories of Leo XIII, an intellectual considered a pioneer of modern Catholic social teaching and an advocate for workers. Millies said the choice signaled that Leo wants to refocus on justice and care for others as well as the rising threats around the globe. Leo has cited artificial intelligence as one of those challenges.

With a more low-key presence than his predecessor, Pope Francis, some observers have labeled Leo as quiet. But as his tug of war with Trump shows, his messages are frequently not subtle. In fact, his reserved style may be a reflection of his Midwestern roots.

Pope Leo XIV presides over the Prayer Vigil for Peace at St. Peter’s Basilica, on April 11.

(Antonio Masiello / Getty Images)

This mild manner comes across in public statements that nonetheless make a lasting impact.

Last fall, Leo questioned Trump’s decision to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War. “Let us hope it is just a way of speaking,” he said. More recently, he took aim at the president’s preferred method of communication, his social media site Truth Social. Asked about Trump’s vitriol on the platform, Leo said: “It’s ironic — the name of the site itself. Say no more.”

Perhaps no message has been clearer than the pope’s decision on how to spend the Fourth of July this year. For the nation’s 250th birthday, as Trump hosts a giant celebration, the pope will be an ocean away. His plans? Visiting Lampedusa, an Italian island that serves as a stop for migrants traveling to Europe.

Lucey writes for Bloomberg.

Who won the 2020 election?

Was the Capitol attacked on Jan. 6, 2021?

Can Donald Trump be elected to a third term as president?

No brainers, right?

The answers are, of course, “Joe Biden,” “yes” and “no.” Any fact- and reality-based American would say so. But that humongous class of people pointedly doesn’t include the president of the United States. And apparently for that reason, his nominees for federal judgeships — the very jobs in which you’d most want fact-based individuals — hem, haw, stammer and ultimately decline to give direct answers when Democratic senators test them with such easy-peasy questions at confirmation hearings.

One after another, month after month, Trump nominees for district and appeals courts across the land say that the answers to the questions are matters of debate, of “significant political dispute.” Well, they’re in dispute only because Trump says they are, as does every ambitious officeholder and office-seeker desperate to remain in the retributive ruler’s good graces — including, alas, would-be judges.

To watch them squirm and then squirt out the same rehearsed reply, the same legalistic word salad, just like the dozens of nominees before them would be hilarious (see below) if it weren’t so ominous for the rule of law in the nation.

Trump nominees for other high-ranking jobs, likewise prepped for Senate Democrats’ questions by their Trump handlers, give the same rote response. But the fact that candidates for lifetime seats on the federal bench, making decisions of life-changing consequences for millions of Americans, would choose to dodge the truth is most sickening.

In their truth-trolling to keep Trump happy, lest he yank their chance at new black robes, these candidates fail the test of judicial independence. As one Democrat, Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, told four district judge nominees last week at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, their humiliating hedging “on an issue of fact” — Biden won in 2020 — “reflects not only on your honesty but really on your fitness to be a federal judge.”

Indeed. That judicial nominees would curry Trump’s favor bodes ill for future federal jurisprudence in the one branch of government that’s stood up for the rule of law against Trump, repeatedly, when Congress and the Supreme Court have not. To be fair, a number of judges confirmed in Trump’s first term have been among the many who’ve ruled against his and his administration’s second-term abuses of power. Yet just as Trump has populated his Cabinet and executive branch with sycophants, unlike in Trump 1.0, he’s obviously applying new litmus tests to potential judges. One of them, clearly, is playing along with his election lies.

His nominees’ failure to speak truth to Trump’s power should be disqualifying. But they’re not disqualified, because the Senate is run by Republicans who share their fear of him.

That fact is a big reason to hope that Democrats capture the majority in November’s midterm elections and that, under new management, the Senate will finally take seriously its constitutional “advice and consent” responsibility to act as a check on Trump nominees for the final two years of his term — including, perhaps, one for the Supreme Court.

And, yes, this is Trump’s final term, for all of his teasing about “Trump 2028.” The Constitution’s 22nd Amendment says as much in its opening line: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”

Yet the four wannabe district judges at last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing — Michael J. Hendershot of Ohio; Arthur Roberts Jones and John G.E. Marck, both of Texas; and Jeffrey T. Kuntz of Florida — struggled over that clear language.

All four hesitated when Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, asked them to describe the amendment. He even read its initial words before querying Marck, “Is President Trump eligible to run for president again in 2028?”

Marck paused, then sputtered: “Senator, with ah, without considering all the facts and looking at everything, depending on what the situation is, this to me strikes as more of a hypothetical of something that could be raised.”

“It’s not a hypothetical,” Coons countered, then asked again whether Trump is “eligible to run for a third term under our Constitution.”

“Um, I would have to, to review the, the actual wording of it,” Marck blabbered.

Coons turned to the others: “Anybody else brave enough to say that the Constitution of the United States prevents President Trump from seeking a third term?” Silence.

“Anybody willing to apply the Constitution by its plain language in the 22nd Amendment?” Coons persisted. Crickets.

His Democratic colleague, Blumenthal, inquired of the foursome, “Who won the 2020 election?” All agreed in turn that Biden “was certified” the winner. None would say he “won” because — as we and they know —Trump insists to this day that he won; he’s turned the power of his “Justice” Department to trying to prove that obvious falsehood. Far be it from these future judges to contradict the president who nominated them.

Here’s Hendershot’s gibberish to Blumenthal’s simple query: “Senator, I want to be mindful of the canons here. I know this question has come up many times in these hearings and it’s become an issue of significant political dispute and debate. So, with, with that, I would say that, that President Biden was certified the winner of the 2020 election.”

After the others replied similarly, Blumenthal turned justifiably scathing: “It’s pretty irrefutable that Joe Biden won the election. But you’re unwilling to use that word because you are afraid. You are afraid. Of what? President Trump? That is exactly what we do not need on the federal bench today. We need jurists who are fearless and strong, not weak and pathetic.”

Apparently unshamed, each similarly demurred when he asked if the Capitol had been attacked. “You’ve seen the videos, have you not?” Blumenthal blurted.

No matter, Senator. These would-be triers of fact apparently won’t believe their eyes. Not when their patron, the president, insists on lies.

Bluesky: @jackiecalmes
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Although he lost his bid to become Speaker of the California Assembly, Charles Calderon (D-Alhambra) said he will persist in efforts to curb the powers of that office and to reform the legislative system even if it means working for passage of a Republican-sponsored initiative.

Assemblyman Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) won an unprecedented fifth term as Speaker on Monday, turning back the challenge of a coalition of Republicans and five dissident Democrats, including Calderon. Brown got 40 votes in the 80-member Assembly while Calderon received 34.

Calderon, a 38-year-old attorney, shook hands with Brown after losing the election but said that act did not signal an end to his challenge to Brown’s leadership. All it meant, he said, is that “I’m not a bad loser.”

It was nearly a year ago that Calderon and four other Assembly Democrats rebelled against Brown and formed what the press dubbed “The Gang of Five.” They began working with Republicans to pass legislation Brown opposed and called for reforms to weaken the Speaker’s power.

Gained Support

Brown not only survived the challenge but picked up additional allies in November’s elections.

Nevertheless, Calderon said he considers the Gang of Five effort successful because it has brought legislative reform to the forefront.

He noted that even Brown has said he will support changes in the way the Assembly is run and has appointed a committee headed by Assemblyman John Burton (D-San Francisco) to make recommendations. Calderon said he is skeptical about Brown’s support for reform and in a letter to Burton termed the committee’s preliminary proposals “a clever and skilled rubber-stamping procedure that in reality further concentrates power in the Speaker and his friends.”

Calderon said he is optimistic about the prospects for legislative reform, however, because Democrats apart from the Gang of Five are demanding it.

If the Legislature does not produce meaningful reform, he said, he will support Assembly Minority Leader Ross Johnson’s proposal to reform the Legislature through the initiative process.

In an interview in his Montebello office last month, Calderon said that by putting legislative reform at the top of his agenda, he is responding to the desires of voters in his district.

‘Don’t Give Up’

“Everyone says, ‘Don’t give up. Keep fighting.’ That’s what people want. They don’t want to elect people to go up to Sacramento to lay down for an office. They want people to go up and raise hell for the right reasons.”

Calderon compared the way the Assembly works now to what he saw of the Communist Party when he visited the Soviet Union in a cultural exchange program in 1985.

“The way the Speaker runs the Assembly has many similarities to how the Communist Party works,” Calderon said.

“In the Soviet Union, the only means of upward mobility is through participation and advancement in the Communist Party,” he said. Those who are loyal, do as they are told and don’t challenge those above them move up, he said.

“That’s exactly the way the Assembly works. If you don’t challenge the Speaker, don’t vote against him, don’t embarrass him and do as you’re told, why, then you’ll move up in the Assembly hierarchy.”

Susan Jetton, Speaker Brown’s press secretary, dismissed Calderon’s assertion that the Assembly operates like Soviet politics. Brown, she said, “has never, never said that people have to agree with him.” But Jetton added, Brown has told lawmakers that if they want to chair committees they should support his direction “on procedural matters.”

For example, she said, in the last legislative session Brown appointed Republican Assemblyman Larry Stirling of San Diego as chairman of the Public Safety Committee, even though the liberal Brown often disagreed with the conservative Stirling.

When told that Calderon is continuing to assail Brown’s policies, she said: “I’m sorry Chuck is doing this. The Speaker began the day after the election and has continued . . . to bury the hatchet and say ‘let’s work together.’ ”

Calderon rose to the post of majority whip under Brown and was a member of the powerful Ways and Means Committee. He authored major bills opening California to interstate banking, requiring environmental testing near landfills, and regulating firms that help consumers obtain credit.

Calderon said that even before he joined the Gang of Five, Brown “perceived me as a threat to him and constantly attempted to co-opt me by handing me more titles and assignments, more public praise and that kind of thing. When he realized he wasn’t making any difference, he took the opposite tack and tried to take everything away.”

Fall From Power

Calderon’s allies in the Gang of Five, Gerald Eaves of Rialto, Rusty Areieas of Los Banos, Steve Peace of Chula Vista and Gary Condit of Ceres, all held leadership positions or seats on influential committees before they began challenging Brown’s leadership. Last spring Brown referred to them as “just the most outrageous collection of ungrateful people I’ve ever met.”

All five lost their leadership positions and choice committee assignments.

In addition, Brown dismissed six members of Calderon’s staff and moved him to a smaller office earlier this year. Calderon no longer has any committee assignments, and said he sometimes has been denied the customary legislative per diem of $87 for attending legislative hearings and reimbursement for travel to Sacramento.

Calderon said Brown “arbitrarily approves or denies legislative per diem depending on the way he feels.” A spokeswoman for Brown said he rejects claims that fail to comply with Assembly rules, but does not act arbitrarily.

Speaks as Moderate

Calderon said Brown and other Democratic leaders have increasingly focused on a liberal agenda that excludes moderates such as himself.

“If ‘60s liberalism continues to dominate the leadership of the Democratic Party, then I think the party is doomed,” Calderon said.

“It used to be there was room for everybody in the Democratic Party. The reality is that there is no room for you if you are a moderate or a middle-of-the-road Democrat.”

However Calderon said he does not intend to leave the party. “I have been a Democrat all my life,” he said. “I will always be a Democrat. My mother was a Democrat . . . my father . . . my grandparents, and I will die a Democrat but I won’t sit back and be a silent Democrat.”

Some critics have questioned whether Calderon is moderate and a reformer, or is just maneuvering for power.

Critical Memo

Before Monday’s vote on the speakership, Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd (D-Hawthorne), a Brown loyalist, circulated a 28-page memo titled “The Two Faces of Charles Calderon.” The memo accused Calderon of ducking issues, saying he has one of the highest rates of not voting in the Assembly. The memo also accused Calderon of hypocrisy in advocating a ban on transfer of campaign funds, and then transferring thousands of dollars to political allies. It also noted that he has urged a limit on the number of bills a legislator can introduce but has introduced more than most of his colleagues, although he has had a low percentage enacted.

Calderon said he does not know whether the charge that he votes on fewer bills than other members is true, but he sometimes abstains when he approves the general thrust of a bill but dislikes specific provisions. As to his position on transfer of funds, Calderon said he has supported reform of campaign financing, including Prop. 68 last June, but until reforms take effect he will operate within existing rules, helping allies when that is permitted.

The assemblyman said he does not regard the number of bills introduced and passed to be a measure of effectiveness.

Diffusing Power

Calderon has called for a number of reforms in the Assembly, many of them aimed at sharing power now concentrated with the Speaker. For example, in place of the present system in which the Speaker controls committee assignments, Calderon would have the entire Assembly elect the Rules Committee, which would make other committee assignments. He also would give each member a budget allotment, outside the control of the Speaker.

“We’ve got to diffuse the power of the Speaker by setting up a checks and balances system in the House and by taking away the Speaker’s power to punish members in a personal and political way.

“We need to do away with this punishment and reward system,” he said. “As long as there is this punishment and reward system, members are going to be either seduced or intimidated from representing their own districts.”

One Brown ally, Assemblyman Burt Margolin (D-Los Angeles) said he hopes Calderon will make peace with the Democratic leadership.

GOP Links

“I’m hopeful he’ll return as a fully functioning member of the Democratic caucus and leave behind the alliance with Republicans,” he said.

Margolin said he has repeatedly stressed the following point in conversations with Calderon during the past year:

“Whatever our internal differences, they are best resolved within the Democratic caucus and when you invite Republicans into the discussion what follows is not in the best interest of the Democratic Party . . . because they (the Republicans) clearly have a focused self-interest.”

In an interview on Tuesday, Assemblyman Richard Mountjoy (R-Monrovia) said that Calderon’s future remains bright, despite Monday’s vote.

“I think he’s got a good future here,” Mountjoy said. “I just don’t believe Willie will be around here a long time. I’m not sure if he will become Speaker. That’s not out of the realm of possibility. But even if he’s not Speaker, certainly he will have a key position in the house once Willie moves on and I don’t think Willie will be here forever.”

Calderon, who lives in Whittier, was reelected to his fourth term in November without Republican opposition. He represents a district that contains Alhambra, Montebello, Monterey Park, Pico Rivera, South El Monte and part of Whittier.

Times staff writer Mark Gladstone in Sacramento contributed to this story.

Five months ago, President Trump was stinging from one of the first political defeats of his second term as Republican state senators defied him on redistricting in Indiana. Now he has proved he can still punish wayward party members after he endorsed a slate of challengers who defeated almost every one of those lawmakers he wanted to dislodge.

The results will likely bolster Trump’s confidence heading into upcoming Republican primaries where he wants to help oust more incumbents, including U.S Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

Indiana’s primary also ratchets up the pressure on Republican lawmakers in other states to move aggressively to redraw congressional district boundaries before the November elections. Alabama and Tennessee have already begun special sessions that could limit Black voters’ strength in Democratic-leaning districts, and some of Trump’s allies in South Carolina want to follow suit.

State Sen. Linda Rogers, one of the Indiana lawmakers who voted against redistricting and lost her seat Tuesday, said the outcome “will probably discourage others in other states.”

“If someone is going to ask you to take a tough vote, you may think twice about your conscience and what’s best for your community and instead what’s best for you and your career,” she said.

Redistricting efforts began last year, when Trump saw an opportunity to give Republicans an additional edge, but they were supercharged last week when the U.S. Supreme Court gutted a provision of the Voting Rights Act that influenced how political lines are drawn.

Trump’s success in Indiana, aided by more than $8.3 million in campaign cash in races that usually see very little spending, reaffirmed the president’s continued strength within a Republican Party that he has dominated for a decade, despite his inevitable slide toward lame-duck status and his sagging poll numbers.

“Historic night for Indiana as Republicans stood with me and President Trump to nominate some great America First conservatives,” Gov. Mike Braun, R-Ind., posted on social media. “I look forward to winning big in November and serving Hoosiers with this team in the statehouse!”

Trump backed primary challenges against seven Republican state senators who rejected his redistricting plan in December. Five of the president’s candidates won, and another race remained too close to call.

Trump was relatively restrained on social media about the voting. He shared a series of photos celebrating the victories of candidates he endorsed in Indiana and Ohio, which also held primaries Tuesday. But he otherwise passed on boasting or renewing his attacks on Massie or Cassidy.

Massie has been among the members of Congress who frustrated the president by pressing for release of the Jeffrey Epstein case files. Cassidy was among the Republican senators who voted to convict Trump on 2021 impeachment charges after the Jan. 6 riot.

James Blair, one of Trump’s top political advisers, was more direct, posting an image from the movie “Gladiator” depicting Russell Crowe’s ancient Roman character Maximus exulting after a combat victory.

Rogers, the Indiana state senator, faced almost $670,000 in television advertising against her, funded by political action committees associated with Braun and U.S. Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind.

She said she did not regret her vote against redistricting.

“It would have been easy for me to hit that ‘yes’ button,” she said. “To hear the number of people who asked me not to, then the number of people who thanked me, would mean I wasn’t representing them.”

Louisiana’s primary, in which Trump has endorsed U.S. Rep. Julie Letlow over Cassidy, is set for May 16. Kentucky, where Trump has endorsed Massie’s challenger, retired Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, will hold its primary May 19.

Beaumont and Barrow write for the Associated Press.

New Delhi, India – Seema Das, a househelp in New Delhi, took on a two-day journey to reach her village in India’s West Bengal state, changing trains to make sure she got home in time to vote in provincial elections.

Das had previously always voted for the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) party under Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, a centrist political force that has been in power in the eastern Indian state since 2011. But this time, she said, her mother-in-law had convinced her that “Didi” – a nickname for Banerjee, which translates to elder sister in Bangla  – “favours Muslims”.

Das, a Hindu, added: “Didi has lost the track and only appeases Muslims to stay in power.”

That’s an accusation that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party has long levelled against the TMC, which emphasises religious pluralism and the protection of minority rights. But for 15 years, Banerjee and her party have ruled the state of more than 90 million people, even as the BJP gained ground in a state where it had traditionally been a marginal player.

On Monday, that changed. Modi’s party won West Bengal. Early results from elections to the state’s legislature – which were held in April, but votes were counted on May 4 – show that Modi’s well-oiled election machinery is poised to deliver a thumping majority for the BJP in a state that its ideological founder was from, but that it has never won before. By 4:30pm India time, the BJP had won or was leading in 200 out of the state’s 294 seats, where its previous best performance was 77 seats in 2021. Banerjee’s TMC, meanwhile, was leading or had won just 87 seats.

The West Bengal elections were among five whose results were declared on Monday. In the southern state of Tamil Nadu, actor C Joseph Vijay threw up a surprise, defeating dominant parties to win with his upstart TVK party; in its neighbouring state of Kerala, the Congress party – the largest national opposition party – beat a coalition of left parties. A BJP-led alliance won the self-administered territory of Puducherry, once a French colony. And in the northeastern state of Assam, Modi’s party returned to power with a sweeping majority.

Yet it is the outcome in West Bengal that analysts say is by far the most consequential of the results that were declared on Monday, with the BJP walking the trails of religious polarisation and leveraging underlying anti-incumbency to win, experts told Al Jazeera.

Inside Banerjee’s bastion in East

Banerjee founded the TMC in 1998, breaking with the Congress party, disillusioned with its refusal to frontally take on a coalition of communist parties that had ruled West Bengal since 1977.

Rising from a humble background, the lawyer-turned-student-activist-turned-politician finally defeated the communists to win the state in 2011. Since Modi became prime minister of India in 2014, she emerged as a key challenger to the BJP – framing her politics, especially her defence of Bengal’s Muslims, as an act of opposition to Hindu majoritarianism.

She also launched a series of women-centric welfare schemes and pushed back against controversial land acquisition projects sought by big industry.

“There is visible support for Mamta and she remains popular, but there is anti-incumbency against the TMC machinery, and people were not happy with their interference in everyday life,” said Rahul Verma, an election observer who teaches politics at the Shiv Nadar University in Chennai.

He added that the BJP also ran a better-managed campaign this time, noting that he is not “shocked” by the results. “It was a difficult election for the BJP, but not impossible.”

To Verma, “there was a corridor available to them [in West Bengal], and one can now say everything aligned in a way to produce this outcome for them.”

Verma emphasised that “without serious anti-incumbency, West Bengal would not have gotten this kind of result.”

Nearly 68.2 million people voted in the election, or about 92.93 percent, a record high for the state.

Banerjee’s party failed to “offer anything new to the voters and to beat strong anti-incumbency sentiments against it”, said Praveen Rai, a political analyst at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, in New Delhi.

“The party system had turned hostile towards the people who did not subscribe to their ideology,” he argued, adding that “the TMC failed to read the growing resentment against economic deprivation and aspirational needs of the common people.”

Rai added that the loss in West Bengal also weakens Banerjee’s hopes of emerging as a national challenger for Modi’s job.

But the implications of the result extend beyond Banerjee, he said. The BJP’s win, and the TMC’s dramatic defeat, would “decrease the political capital of [all] the parties opposed to [Modi]”.

That’s a major shift from two years ago. In the 2024 national elections, Modi’s party had fallen short of a majority, leaving it reliant on allies’ support for survival. The election wins on Monday “offset the electoral setback” suffered in the national vote, Rai said.

“It substantially increases the national standing of Modi’s leadership and extends the hegemonic power of the party [BJP] to govern India,” Rai told Al Jazeera.

‘BJP ran on Hindu-Muslim polarisation’

Neelanjan Sircar, a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, who travelled across West Bengal before the polls, told Al Jazeera that his team identified “a big urban-rural gap among voters’ preferences”.

“We found urban men are very polarised,” he added. “In Bengal, the Muslim population is disproportionately rural, and given the levels of polarisation, the result ended up in a big difference for the BJP.”

Historically, election analysts have argued that due to the BJP’s Hindu majoritarian politics, the party did not stand a chance of winning West Bengal. More than a quarter of the state’s population is Muslim. “That has, of course, not turned out to be true, something we did pick during our research,” Sircar said.

The BJP has not shied from projecting itself as the party of Hindu voters.

Suvendu Adhikari, leader of the BJP in the state and potential chief minister candidate, said, “There has been a Hindu consolidation [of votes].”

He claimed, however, that many Muslims also did not vote for Banerjee’s TMC like earlier, and got swayed towards the BJP. It is impossible to verify the claim until the Election Commission of India (ECI) has released details of the vote count, expected in the next few days.

“I want to thank every Hindu Sanatani who cast their votes in favour of the BJP,” Adhikari said, referring to Banerjee’s TMC as a “pro-Muslim party”. Sanatan Dharma is an endonym for Hinduism.

For the BJP, the win in West Bengal is also deeply symbolic: Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, who founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh – the forerunner of the BJP – in 1951, was from the state.

Al Jazeera reached out to TMC spokespersons but has not received any response.

Pre-poll voter revision in spotlight

Before the polling in West Bengal, the ECI carried out a so-called revision of its electoral rolls through a Special Intensive Revision (SIR), which authorities have conducted in more than a dozen states so far.

The exercise in West Bengal controversially removed more than nine million people – nearly 12 percent of the state’s 76 million voters – from the voting list, snatching their right to cast a ballot in the elections.

Nearly six million of them were declared absentee or deceased, while the remaining three million were unable to vote because no special tribunals could hear their cases in the short timeframe available before the elections.

Banerjee’s TMC and other opposition parties in several states have called out the discrepancies in the revision of the voter list, accusing the ECI of siding with Modi’s BJP. Right activists and observers believe that the exercise disproportionately disenfranchised Muslims before the election.

Banerjee also appeared before India’s Supreme Court, challenging the “opaque, hasty, and unconstitutional” revision process. The top court did not restore the voting rights of millions affected but directed the ECI to publish a list of affected voters.

“Once the question of whether ‘I should be on the voter list’ became the dominant question for vulnerable populations, it’s not politics as usual,” said Sircar. “The level of polarisation that the voter revision caused is something that people outside the state do not really grasp.”

The Modi government also deployed 2,400 companies of paramilitary troops to West Bengal for the elections – a record for such provincial votes. The federal government claimed this was to assist election officials in carrying out the exercise without fear of political violence.

But the TMC and other opposition parties argued that the forces served to intimidate – or influence – voters.

“The heavy presence of security forces could have also created a favourable situation for the BJP,” argued Verma, of Shiv Nadar University. “Those who might be fence sitters and might have been afraid of TMC’s machinery on the ground were moved by this.

“There is no doubt that the trust level between opposition parties in India and the Election Commission of India is very low,” added Verma.

However, the analysts who spoke with Al Jazeera, including Sircar and Verma, agreed that the voter revision exercise alone could not have delivered such a decisive victory for the BJP – and that it reflects several other factors, including anti-incumbency and religious polarisation.

Still, analysts said, Banerjee will likely not go out without a fight.

In her first reaction to the vote counting, Banerjee addressed her party workers in a video statement, calling all workers and leaders not to leave vote-counting booths until the last ballots are counted.

“It’s a total forceful use of central forces to oppress the Trinamool Congress everywhere, breaking offices, and forcibly occupying them,” she said. “We are with you. Don’t be afraid. We will fight like the cubs of a tiger.”

Those aren’t empty warnings, Sircar said. “We are definitely in for drama.”

When a federal judge shot down a Trump administration policy of holding immigrants without bond last December, it seemed like a serious blow to the president’s mass deportation effort.

Instead, a top Justice Department official insisted the ruling wasn’t binding, and the administration continued denying detainees around the country a chance for release.

By February, the district court judge, Sunshine Sykes, was fed up. Sykes, a nominee of President Biden, accused Trump officials in a ruling that month of seeking “to erode any semblance of separation of powers,” adding that they could “only do so in a world where the Constitution does not exist.”

Hardly isolated, the case illustrates a broader pattern of defiance of lower court decisions in President Trump’s second term.

The failure of Trump officials to follow court orders has been highlighted most notably in individual immigration cases. But a review of hundreds of pages of court records by the Associated Press also shows an extraordinary record of violations in lawsuits over policy changes and other moves.

In the administration’s first 15 months in office, district court judges ruled it was violating an order in at least 31 lawsuits over a wide range of issues, including mass layoffs, deportations, spending cuts and immigration practices, the AP’s review of court records found. That’s about 1 out of every 8 lawsuits in which courts have at least temporarily blocked the administration’s actions.

The Trump administration’s power struggle with federal courts — which is testing basic tenets of U.S. democracy — reflects an expansive view of executive authority that has also challenged the independence of federal agencies, a president’s ethical obligations and the U.S. role in the international order.

Widespread noncompliance found

The Trump administration violations in the 31 lawsuits are in addition to more than 250 instances of noncompliance that judges have recently highlighted in individual immigration petitions — including failing to return property and keeping immigrants locked up past court-ordered release dates.

Legal scholars and former federal judges said they could recall at most a few violations of court rulings over the full four-year terms of other recent presidential administrations, including Trump’s first time in office. They also noted previous administrations were generally apologetic when confronted by judges; the Trump administration’s Justice Department has been combative in some cases.

“What the court system is experiencing in the last year and a half is just qualitatively completely different from anything that’s preceded it,” said Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University who studies federal courts and is tracking litigation against the Trump administration.

Though Trump officials eventually backed down in about a third of the 31 lawsuits, legal experts say their treatment of court orders poses serious dangers.

“The federal government should be the institution most devoted to the rule of law in this country,” said David Super, a constitutional law scholar at Georgetown University. “When it ceases to feel itself bound, respect for the rule of law is likely to break down across the country.”

The White House’s aggressive policy moves have prompted a barrage of lawsuits — more than 700 and counting.

Higher courts boost Trump efforts

The AP’s review also found that higher courts, including the Supreme Court, overruled the district courts and sided with the White House in nearly half of the 31 cases. Critics say those decisions are emboldening the administration to ignore judges’ orders.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said the higher courts had overturned “unlawful district court rulings.” The administration will “continue to comply with lawful court rulings,” she added in a written statement.

“President Trump’s entire Administration is lawfully implementing the America First agenda he was elected to enact,” the statement said.

Among other instances of noncompliance, judges found the White House defied rulings when it deported scores of accused gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador, withheld billions of dollars in foreign aid and failed to restore programming at the Voice of America. The three cases date to the first few months of the new administration, but judges have continued to find violations since then, including in two cases in April.

“The danger is that this gets normalized,” said JoAnna Suriani, counsel at the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy, which is tracking noncompliance cases. The group is also involved in litigation against the administration.

‘Ham-handed,’ ‘hallucinating’

In October, U.S. District Judge William Smith took little time to conclude Homeland Security officials were flouting one of his orders. Smith, a nominee of President George W. Bush, had blocked them from making billions of dollars in disaster relief funding to states contingent on cooperation with the president’s immigration priorities.

The Department of Homeland Security responded by keeping the immigration requirement on some grants, but making it contingent on a higher court overriding Smith’s injunction. The judge called the move “ham-handed” and said the agency was trying to “bully the states.”

In a case over the suspension of refugee admissions, U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead, a Biden nominee, accused the Justice Department last May of “hallucinating new text” in an appellate court order and “rewriting” it to achieve the government’s preferred outcome.

In four additional cases the AP reviewed, judges stopped short of a clear written finding of noncompliance but still criticized the administration’s response to their orders.

Of the judges who have confirmed violations, 22 were appointed by Democratic presidents and seven by Republican presidents.

Former federal judges Jeremy Fogel and Liam O’Grady said jurists are losing trust in the integrity of the Department of Justice.

That’s making them “more aggressive in accusing the government of bad faith,” said O’Grady, who along with Fogel is part of the nonpartisan democracy group Keep Our Republic.

Fogel said judges are also getting frustrated.

“They make orders and the orders don’t get complied with, and then they have to inquire why the orders are not being complied with, and that’s where it gets very mushy and very political,” he said.

Education case raises alarms

In Eureka, Calif., school administrator Lisa Claussen is worried about the impact on her students’ mental health if a judge does not find the Education Department in violation of a court order on federal grants.

Grant money allowed the school district in the poor coastal community in Northern California to hire more than a dozen psychologists and social workers to help students struggling with drug use and suicidal thoughts.

Education officials in the Trump administration told schools in California and other states last year that it was discontinuing the grants; the administration opposed diversity considerations in the grant process.

U.S. District Judge Kymberly Evanson blocked the move permanently in December, but California and 15 other states now say the administration is making an end run around her injunction by imposing new rules, including an initial limit of six months of funding.

Attorneys for the Education Department said they wanted to see whether schools were making progress on performance goals before releasing additional funds. The judge’s order did not block the six-month limit, they added in a court filing.

Evanson, a Biden nominee, has yet to rule.

In the absence of a one-year funding guarantee, Eureka City Schools and other districts say they have already issued layoff notices to mental health providers or eliminated positions.

“We have many kids who don’t trust adults for very good reason, and to be able to just swipe this grant like they’re doing … ,” Claussen said in a phone interview, her voice trailing off. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”

Justice Department response

In court filings, Justice Department attorneys have generally disputed accusations that the government was not complying. They have argued over the meaning of words, cited favorable appellate court rulings and said they were acting outside the scope of the court’s order, among other legal maneuvering.

Outside of court, Trump and White House officials have railed against federal judges. Vice President JD Vance has even suggested the president could ignore court orders.

Will Chamberlain, senior counsel with the conservative legal advocacy group the Article III Project, said many of the judges who have found violations are ignoring laws that clearly prohibit their rulings.

Trump officials are “generally complying, appealing and winning,” he said. “If they were defying orders left and right, they’d be losing them.”

A justice’s rebuke

In March, a federal appeals court ruled Sykes, the judge in California, had probably exceeded her authority in requiring bond hearings nationwide and blocked her February decision.

The outcome was not unusual.

In 15 of the 31 lawsuits the AP reviewed, an appellate court or the Supreme Court either allowed the administration’s underlying policy, limited the district court’s efforts to correct or punish the noncompliance, or both.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized her fellow justices after one such ruling.

“This is not the first time the Court closes its eyes to noncompliance, nor, I fear, will it be the last,” she wrote in June in a dissent joined by the court’s two other liberal justices. “Yet each time this Court rewards noncompliance with discretionary relief, it further erodes respect for courts and for the rule of law.”

Thanawala writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Michael Casey in Boston contributed to this report.

In August 2026, Kazakhstan will hold an unusual election. The newly established unicameral parliament—the “Kurultai”—will, for the first time, be formed entirely through party lists. Independent candidates and regional representatives will no longer enter the core of state power. As a representative institution of so-called “steppe democracy,” the Kurultai has undergone multiple transformations throughout history, both in its functions and in the composition of its participants. According to recent constitutional arrangements, this mechanism has been elevated to an unprecedented level. This raises a key question: what direction does this transformation reveal in the current round of political modernization?

Historically, the Kurultai functioned as an important mechanism of consultation in steppe society, not as a system of mass participation, but as a platform composed of multiple layers of elite actors. Its participants included khans and sultans who held political authority, biys who were responsible for adjudication and governance, military leaders who organized mobilization in times of war, as well as tribal elders and influential akyns and zhyrau who shaped public discourse. In addressing critical issues such as succession, warfare, and internal conflict, the Kurultai did not rely on formalized procedures or fixed institutional rules. Instead, decisions were reached through authority, negotiation, and consensus. Although ordinary people did not possess direct institutional channels of participation, their interests and attitudes indirectly constrained decision-making through tribal structures, public opinion, and their willingness to comply with and implement decisions.

During the Soviet period and the early years of Kazakhstan’s independence, the Kurultai gradually lost its function as an operative political institution and became a symbol of historical memory and cultural identity. It was not until 2022, amid a serious crisis of political trust, that this traditional symbol was revived and institutionalized as the “National Kurultai,” reintroduced as a new format of public dialogue within the framework of state governance. Its declared purpose is to strengthen interaction between the government and society. In terms of composition, the National Kurultai formally continues the tradition of “broad participation,” including regional representatives, members of parliament, professionals from various sectors, and leaders of social organizations with a degree of public influence. However, this diversity is largely structural rather than functional. It reflects broad inclusion, but does not necessarily translate into a substantive mechanism for reconciling competing interests. The institution lacks the capacity to independently coordinate diverse social demands.

Moreover, the agenda-setting process and operational logic of the National Kurultai remain distinctly top-down. Key issues are primarily defined by the state, while participants tend to act as interpreters and endorsers of pre-established policy directions. In this sense, “consultation” often takes the form of explaining and legitimizing the state agenda. Through the participation and symbolic endorsement of elite actors, the state is able to construct an image of “broad public dialogue,” thereby reinforcing the legitimacy of its reform agenda. In this respect, the National Kurultai should not be seen as a simple continuation of a traditional consultative institution, but rather as an institutionalized platform for political communication and discursive integration. Its core function lies not in generating genuinely competitive policy alternatives, but in organizing a process of “consensus production” aimed at shaping values, mobilizing society, and reproducing the legitimacy of ongoing reforms.

In 2026, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev announced a major reform of Kazakhstan’s parliamentary system, proposing the transition to a unicameral “Kurultai Parliament.” Its members will be elected entirely through proportional representation based on party lists. The reform abolishes both the presidential quota and the special quota previously allocated to the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan. At the same time, quota guarantees for women, youth, and persons with disabilities will be retained, but incorporated into party list mechanisms rather than being directly allocated by the state.

From the perspective of institutional design, this reform strengthens the role of political parties as key intermediaries within the political system, positioning them as the primary channel through which social demands are transmitted to the state. In the context of electoral competition, parties are expected to secure support by more effectively representing public interests, while also integrating fragmented social demands. Compared with the previous mixed model of representation, which included multiple categories of actors, a party-centered system enhances the coherence of political positions: social demands are systematically aggregated and restructured before entering the political arena, thereby improving, to some extent, the efficiency of policy articulation and decision-making.

Building on this, if meaningful and substantive competition among political parties can be established, this model has the potential not only to integrate social interests but also to more fully reflect the diversity of social groups. Political parties could function not merely as instruments of organization and coordination, but also as a crucial link between diverse societal demands and the process of state decision-making—balancing efficiency in representation with breadth and inclusiveness.Under such conditions, the consultative model of the Kurultai may gradually evolve from an elite-driven mechanism of integration into an institutionalized system of interest articulation grounded in party competition, thereby enhancing, to a certain extent, its capacity for bottom-up representation.

Seoul – Shekinah Yawra had no other option but to spend the night at a South Korean jjimjilbang, a 24-hour bathhouse, after every hotel near central Seoul sold out in late March.

But sleep was secondary for the 32-year-old Filipino who had made her way to Seoul’s Gwanghwamun Square at 7am to secure a spot in a crowd that city officials estimated would grow to hundreds of thousands.

All this was for a glimpse at the seven-member K-pop supergroup BTS, who returned to the stage on March 21 after almost four years away from the limelight for their staggered, mandatory military service.

Though she failed to secure one of 22,000 free tickets for BTS’s first return concert in the square, Yawra was still ecstatic to stand on the sidelines and watch the concert live on a big screen set up for the occasion.

“We all came just for this,” she told Al Jazeera, recounting how friends had flown in from the Philippines for a single night to catch the concert.

Worldwide, more than 18.4 million viewers tuned in for the Netflix livestream of the concert.

With an estimated 30 million fans worldwide – who refer to themselves as the BTS ARMY – the K-pop group is the most visible symbol of “Hallyu”, or the “Korean Wave”, and the global surge of interest in South Korean popular culture and the financial revenues being generated as a result.

In late March, BTS’s 10th studio album, Arirang, topped the charts in the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom, the world’s three largest music markets. The group’s upcoming world tour is expected to generate more than $1.4bn in revenue across more than 80 shows in 23 countries.

Domestically, inbound tourist numbers for the first 18 days of March rose 32.7 percent from the previous month, according to Ministry of Justice data, as the return concert approached and hotel prices surged across central Seoul amid the demand for rooms.

In the week leading up to the concert, sales of BTS merchandise – from BTS glow sticks to blankets – surged 430 percent at the Shinsegae Duty Free retail outlet in central Seoul, the company said.

Over the concert weekend, revenues also rose 30 percent at the city’s Lotte Department Store and 48 percent at Shinsegae overall, compared with the same March weekend a year earlier, in 2025.

As far back as 2022, the Korea Culture and Tourism Institute (KCTI) – a government-sponsored think tank and research organisation – estimated that a single BTS concert in Seoul could generate up to 1.2 trillion won ($798m) in overall economic impact.

KCTI researcher Yang Ji-hoon told Al Jazeera that a sample study of the crowd at the BTS comeback event at Gwanghwamun Square highlighted the uniqueness of fandom-driven tourism. More than half of those at the concert were foreign visitors and many required long-haul travel to attend.

“In Europe and the United States, travel tends to be concentrated within its own regions,” Yang said.

“So, for people to overcome such travel barriers and come to South Korea, it usually requires more than just ordinary motivation or typical spending – it’s not something that happens easily,” he said.

K-pop’s transition to the global mainstream

The scale of BTS’s return to the entertainment world reflects a broader state-backed strategy.

When music promoter Hybe requested Seoul city support for the Gwanghwamun square comeback concert, authorities approved it on public-interest grounds, treating the event as a showcase of national cultural influence.

Almost befitting an official event, more than 10,000 state personnel were deployed for security, logistics and crowd control.

According to data retrieved by South Korean publication Sisain, through a public information disclosure request to the Seoul government, close to 130 million won ($87,400) of city funds were spent as part of logistics for the comeback concert.

South Korean government support for BTS has a precedent.

As members of the boyband approached South Korea’s mandatory military service age, policymakers debated special exemptions for members of BTS, which was estimated to have generated $4.65bn annually to the country’s economy.

After BTS’s forthcoming concerts in Mexico City sold out in just 37 minutes, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum urged South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung to “bring the acclaimed K-pop artists more often”, noting nearly one million fans in Mexico had attempted to secure 150,000 tickets.

South Korea’s cultural influence is also extending beyond music.

South Korea’s cosmetics exports surpassed $11bn last year, according to global accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), overtaking France in cosmetics shipments to the US, while South Korean food and agricultural exports reached a record $13.6bn, according to data from the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.

KCTI researcher Yang described the growing interest as a phase of “transition to the global mainstream”, where South Korean products are internationally recognised and content output is measured against worldwide benchmarks such as the Billboard charts and the Academy Awards.

He also warned that structural reform is now essential to keep pace with the wave of interest in South Korea.

“As the industries expand in scale, they must also evolve in its underlying systems, infrastructure, and workforce,” he said.

“Rather than focusing solely on direct financial support, future governmental policies should move toward strengthening foundational conditions – such as improving labour environments, addressing unfair practices, building relevant infrastructure, and establishing more robust statistical and data systems,” he said.

Politicians appear to be paying attention.

During his election campaign last year, President Lee framed the next phase of cultural expansion as “Hallyu (Korean Wave) 4.0”, with promises to grow the sector into a 300 trillion won ($203bn) industry with 50 trillion won ($34bn) in exports.

In line with this vision, the government set the budget to bolster “K-content”, support the “pure” arts sector and strengthen the overall culture-related fields at a record 9.6 trillion won ($6.5bn) — reflecting the president’s view of the cultural sector as a strategic national industry rather than merely a consumer market.

South Korea’s strategy appears to be paying off.

South Korea now ranks 11th globally in “soft power”, according to Brand Finance’s Global Soft Power Index, placing the country as both “influential in arts and entertainment” and “products and brands the world loves”, just behind the US, France, the United Kingdom and Japan.

The darker side of K-pop: Pressure to become a perfect idol

Amid its global success, the darker side of the K-culture industry has received more scrutiny.

Mega-promoter Hybe has been embroiled in a prolonged dispute with K-pop’s New Jeans, a band considered to be a potential heir to BTS and their all-female colleagues Blackpink. The highly public legal dispute that started in 2024 highlights industry tensions over creative control and artist autonomy.

Since the early 2000s, K-pop has also grappled with the legacy of “slave contracts”, or highly restrictive agreements limiting artists’ freedom. Although reforms by the Fair Trade Commission have improved protections for performers, contractual obligations in the K-pop industry are exacting on new performers and their strict work routines have long been documented.

From their trainee years, aspiring idols endure gruelling schedules that involve long workdays and little sleep.

Many top stars often face contractual restrictions on socialising, using their phones or dating. They are also typically limited in what they can say publicly, relying on agency-managed messaging to communicate with fans and the media.

While the rise of social media and other online platforms has opened new avenues for more direct expression and interaction in recent years, concerns over burnout and depression have continued to shadow the industry, with several high-profile stars taking their own lives.

Beauty standards associated with the K-culture genre have also become another flashpoint for controversy.

A 2024 report by South Korean economy news site Uppity found 98 percent of 1,283 respondents born between 1980 and 2000 viewed physical appearance as among the most desirable “social capital” an individual can possess.

Nearly 40 percent of respondents in the survey had undergone cosmetic procedures, while more than 90 percent held neutral or positive attitudes regarding undergoing medical procedures to enhance beauty.

According to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, South Korea has the world’s highest rate of procedures, with 8.9 per 1,000 people compared with 5.91 per 1,000 people in the US and just 2.13 per 1,000 in neighbouring Japan.

Yoo Seung-chul, a professor of media studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said that K-culture has reinforced the normalising of beauty as a significant metric of personal and social value.

“K-culture has reinforced systems and structures around self-expression,” Yoo told Al Jazeera.

“With the rise of webtoons that incorporate themes like plastic surgery, there has been a noticeable reduction in the stigma towards going under the knife among younger audiences in their teens and early twenties,” Yoo said, explaining that popular plastic surgery platforms such as Unni have further normalised the trend by connecting people to clinics and reviews of these clinics and their surgeons.

At the same time, globalisation has reshaped the K-culture industry itself. Many new K-pop acts now include international members to broaden appeal.

Hybe has expanded this strategy through its US subsidiary, Hybe America, producing globally oriented groups like Katseye, which only has one South Korean member in its six-member girl group.

The shift has prompted debate.

Even BTS’s latest album Arirang – a nod to South Korea’s most iconic folk song – has divided fans over its use of English lyrics and foreign producers.

“K-content is being designed with global audiences in mind from the outset. In film, there has been a noticeable rise in genres like horror and science fiction, which are easier to export internationally,” Yoo said.

“This global orientation is also reflected in K-pop agencies recruiting foreign members for idol groups,” he said.

But international audiences do not always prefer highly globalised versions of Korean content, Yoo said, adding, in fact, that many are drawn to K-pop’s “sense of locality”.

As audiences increasingly seek authenticity, Yoo argues the industry faces a defining challenge.

“Industries and companies need to figure out how to preserve a sense of local identity while effectively marketing to global audiences,” Yoo added.

“Striking that balance will be crucial in shaping the next phase of Korea’s cultural exports.”

Ukraine used its latest technology to deepen strikes against Russian oil storage, ports and refineries in the past week, bombing targets in the Urals 1,600 kilometres (990 miles) from its borders and prompting protests about “terrorist attacks” from the Kremlin spokesman.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday announced “a new stage in the use of Ukrainian weapons to limit the potential of Russia’s war”.

The Ukraine Security Service (SBU) later clarified it had struck Transneft’s oil pumping and distribution facility in the city of Perm that day, from where oil was pumped to the Perm refinery and via pipeline in four directions across Russia.

The facility is “a strategically important hub of the main oil transportation system”, said the SBU, and preliminary information suggested that “almost all oil storage tanks are on fire”.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence confirmed the strike and said it had downed 98 Ukrainian UAVs across various regions.

“The Urals are now within reach, be vigilant,” wrote Russia’s presidential envoy to the region, Artem Zhoga.

Ukraine’s campaign has begun to elicit reactions from the Russian government.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the attacks on oil facilities “terrorist attacks”.

A Russian Defence Ministry announcement – that military cadets and a column of equipment would not take part in this year’s Victory Day parade commemorating the end of World War II “due to the current operational situation” – was also widely interpreted as a precaution against potential Ukrainian drone strikes.

Ukraine’s strikes are part of a strategy of depriving Russia of windfall profits from soaring oil prices due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Zelenskyy said Russian internal documents seen by his foreign intelligence service admitted that Ukraine had deprived oil offloading ports of much of their capacity.

Primorsk and Ust-Luga on the Baltic Sea had lost 13 percent and 43 percent of capacity, respectively, and the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk 38 percent.

“We believe that such internal Russian data may be underestimated,” Zelenskyy said.

The internal figures roughly agree with a Reuters March estimate that Russia had lost approximately 40 percent of its export capacity.

That translated into revenue losses of $2.3bn in March, Zelenskyy estimated.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said that Ukraine had likely conducted at least 18 strikes against Russian oil infrastructure in April.

Kyiv’s attacks have been “steadily increasing the range, volume, and intensity” with “outsized impacts on Russian oil exports”.

Ukraine struck other oil and military targets during the past week.

On April 23, it damaged three storage tanks at the Gorky oil pumping station in Nizhny Novgorod and struck the Novokuibyshevsk petrochemical plant in Samara.

The next day, it destroyed two production facilities at the Atlant-Aero factory in Taganrog, Rostov, which builds the Molniya drones used to attack Ukrainian cities.

On Sunday, Ukraine struck the Yaroslavl oil refinery, and on Tuesday, they struck the Tuapse oil refinery on the Black Sea for the third time this month. Even before this latest strike, at least 24 oil storage tanks at the site had been destroyed, said Ukraine’s head of the Center for Countering Disinformation, Andriy Kovalenko.

Russian President Vladimir Putin dispatched his Civil Defence, Emergencies, and Disaster Relief minister, Alexander Kurenkov, to oversee the response personally.

An emerging air power

Ukraine has been developing its own long-range strike capabilities and devotes 20 percent of its defence resources to new technologies, said Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov.

One of its leading drone manufacturers, Wild Hornets, recently said a drone operator had used its remote piloting system to fly a Sting interceptor drone at a distance of 2,000km (1,240 miles).

On April 23, Fedorov said Ukraine had successfully tested remote control technology that enabled pilots to operate from the relative safety of Kyiv or Lviv, “at distances of hundreds and thousands of kilometres”.

Ukraine is now touting its battlefield innovations in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in the wake of Iran’s attack on the Gulf nations.

Zelenskyy met Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in Riyadh on April 24 to discuss “the export of our Ukrainian security expertise and capabilities in air defence”.

Days later, he said Kyiv produces as many as twice the number of certain types of weapons as the military needed, and that “Ukrainian companies will get a real opportunity to enter the markets of partner countries, provided that our military have the right to take the necessary amount of weapons first”.

The burgeoning relationship with the Gulf, he said, had invoked Moscow’s concern.

“Russia is particularly irritated by our contacts in the Middle East and the Gulf region,” he told Ukrainians on Wednesday.

More surprisingly, he said some allies, too, were irritated by the competition.

“We are also aware of the complex attitude of some of our other partners towards this – partners who would prefer to limit our state’s independence,” Zelenskyy said in an evening video address. “We consider this their mistake.

The trial’s outcome could sway the balance of power in AI, and jury selection starts on Monday.

Technology tycoons Elon Musk and Sam Altman are poised to face off in a high-stakes trial revolving around the alleged betrayal, deceit and unbridled ambition that blurred the bickering billionaires’ once-shared vision for the development of artificial intelligence.

The trial, which is scheduled to begin on Monday with jury selection, centres on the 2015 birth of ChatGPT maker OpenAI as a nonprofit start-up primarily funded by Musk before evolving into a capitalistic venture now valued at $852bn.

The trial’s outcome could sway the balance of power in AI, breakthrough technology that is increasingly being feared as a potential job killer and an existential threat to humanity’s survival.

Those perceived risks are among the reasons that Musk, the world’s richest person, has cited for filing a lawsuit in August 2024 that will now be decided by a jury and US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California.

The civil lawsuit accuses Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, and his top lieutenant and a cofounder, Greg Brockman, of double-crossing Musk by straying from the San Francisco company’s founding mission to be an altruistic steward of a revolutionary technology. The lawsuit alleges they shifted OpenAI into moneymaking mode behind his back.

The bitter legal fight may come down to a few pages in one executive’s personal diary.

“This is the only chance we have to get out from Elon,” wrote Brockman in the autumn of 2017. “Is he the ‘glorious leader’ that I would pick?”

Brockman’s diary entry is part of the thousands of pages of internal documents revealed in court.

Musk said the defendants kept him in the dark about their plans, exploited his name and financial support to create a “wealth machine” for themselves, and owe damages for having conned him and the public.

He also wants OpenAI to revert to a nonprofit, for Altman and Brockman to be removed as officers and for Altman to be removed from its board.

OpenAI has brushed off Musk’s allegations as an unfounded case of sour grapes that’s aimed at undercutting its rapid growth and bolstering Musk’s own xAI, which he launched in 2023 as a competitor.

The trial also carries risks for Musk, who last month was held liable by another jury for defrauding investors during his $44bn takeover of Twitter in 2022. Any damaging details about Musk and his business tactics could be particularly hurtful now because his rocket ship maker, SpaceX, plans to go public this summer in an initial public offering that could make him the world’s first trillionaire.

This week Tucker Carlson apologized for unintentionally “misleading” voters into supporting President Trump’s return to the White House. The apology came days after the president called Carlson dumb and overrated on social media. We’ve seen this plot before: It’s a different name but the same story.

Recall the president’s first term was closely shadowed by high-profile breakups from loyalists who disagreed with him on matters of substance. For example, the split with his first Defense secretary, James Mattis, began in 2017 when Mattis, a man who spent more than four decades in uniform, defended the importance of NATO. His successor, Mark Esper, found himself at odds with the president for refusing to use the military on citizens. On his way out the door, Esper told the country that if his replacement was “a real ‘yes man’ … then God help us.”

Some of the highlights from Trump’s second term include squabbles with his biggest donor, Elon Musk, who was upset the president wasn’t lowering the national debt enough; with former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene because millions of Americans faced losing health insurance; and with Rep. Thomas Massie for having the audacity to seek justice for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex-trafficking operation.

Now it appears it’s Carlson’s turn. He, like Pope Leo XIV and many of our allies and nearly 70% of Americans, disapproves of the president’s handling of the war in Iran. On a recent episode of the Carlson podcast, the former Fox News host invited his brother Buckley, himself a former Trump speechwriter, on the show to discuss their buyer’s remorse.

Everyone has that line they won’t cross for the president.

Omarosa Manigault Newman left reality TV to advise Trump. She followed him to the White House, found out there was a lot of racism over in MAGA land, and ended up back on reality TV. For Mattis, it was abandoning our allies. For Esper, it was shooting protesters.

For Carlson, it’s Iran. Candidate Trump campaigned on ending endless wars. This week, Trump said there’s no timeline for when the war he started with Iran will end.

“I do think it’s like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences,” Carlson told his brother. “We’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be. And I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people.”

Now before Tucker’s apology, Buckley defended his initial support of Trump’s candidacy in 2015 — despite “all of his obvious foibles and his disgusting elements of his personality” — in part because “he built things.” Buckley also said that after the election of President Obama, white Americans in Washington were subjugated by a version of Jim Crow in education and society, and that progressives “would look blank or angry” whenever he asked what Obama was doing to strengthen the nation.

In other words, being red in the face over Trump did not turn the Tucker boys blue. In fact, the episode ended with the two calling the left a bunch of “lunatics,” even after listing the ways the Trump administration was holding back release of the Epstein files and hurting the country.

“Demonic influences concentrate on those who have power. Beware of power,” Tucker warned listeners halfway through the show before his brother chimed in: “And those who seek power.”

Of course, Trump’s ascension to the White House wasn’t solely based on the contributions of media folks. The president entered 2015 having been a public figure for more than 30 years. He’s had the luxury of criticizing elected officials and legislation on camera without the burden of governing for much of that time. When he entered the political arena, he didn’t have a record to defend. He likes being quotable, not being held accountable. That’s why it’s doubtful he would have been elected a second time if not for the support from unscrupulous podcasters masquerading as political journalists such as Joe Rogan, Theo Von and Andrew Schulz, who less than a year ago said everything Trump “campaigned on, I believed he wanted to do. And now he’s doing the exact opposite thing.… I voted for none of this.”

As if “this” had not been clearly spelled out in the pages of Project 2025 for all to see before deciding whether to vote for Trump and that agenda.

Schulz, the comedian and podcaster, might not have read that outline, but Tucker Carlson probably did. That’s why his apology to listeners — like the mea culpas from the discarded loyalists of the past — ultimately won’t mean anything to mainstream Republicans or MAGA. Those who identify with the latter listen only to Trump. As for the former — they have always known that people like Carlson don’t regret supporting Trump. They regret falling out of favor.

YouTube: @LZGrandersonShow

Iran displayed its strengthened control over the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday by releasing video footage of its commandos boarding a large cargo ship. The video, aired on state television, showed masked troops storming the MSC Francesca and included scenes of another captured ship, the Epaminondas, which Iran accused of trying to cross the strait without proper permits.

As tensions remain high, the U. S. announced that it boarded another tanker, the Majestic, in the Indian Ocean. This was likely a reference to the supertanker, the Phonix, which was carrying 2 million barrels of crude oil off Sri Lanka. Since the start of conflict in February, Iran has effectively restricted access to the strait, asserting control after peace talks between the U. S. and Iran were halted shortly before a ceasefire expired.

Iran’s willingness to re-engage in talks depended on the U. S. lifting its blockade and releasing Iranian ships. In a post on Truth Social, U. S. President Donald Trump indicated that he ordered the Navy to “shoot and kill” Iranian boats that were laying mines in the strait, escalating military actions without addressing other Iranian tactics like speedboats and drones.

Iran’s judiciary chief stated that the merchant vessels attacked by Iran’s forces had faced legal consequences, while Iran’s vice speaker announced that the first toll revenue collected from ships using the strait had been transferred to the central bank, but provided no specifics on payments or amounts.

Tehran proclaimed it would not reopen the strait, which typically handles a significant portion of global oil and gas shipments, until the U. S. lifted the blockade considered a breach of the ceasefire. Although Trump refrained from escalating attacks in the ceasefire’s final hours, he remained firm on not lifting the blockade. There was no formal extension of the ceasefire nor plans for new negotiations.

Iranian citizens faced uncertainty and anxiety in what they termed a state of “neither peace nor war,” fearing potential attacks from the U. S. or Israel. Pakistan, previously facilitating talks, remained in contact with both countries about reviving discussions, but Iranian officials hesitated to commit due to the U. S. blockade.

On the U. S. side, another round of discussions was set for Thursday, focused on Israel and Lebanon, where Lebanon sought an extension of a recent ceasefire amidst continued Israeli airstrikes that resulted in casualties, marking a significant day since the ceasefire began.

In a significant personnel change, U. S. Navy Secretary John Phelan was dismissed amid conflicts over shipbuilding decisions and tensions with high-ranking officials.

The ongoing situation in the Strait of Hormuz has caused volatility in markets, pushing oil prices upward, while stock prices in the U. S. reached record highs despite uncertainty about energy supply. Washington has thus far failed to achieve its stated war goals of limiting Iran’s military capabilities, ending its nuclear efforts, and fostering regime change. Iran maintains its missile and drone capabilities and stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, while its government remains resilient against internal dissent. Despite threats from Trump, Iran’s control over the strait appears to strengthen its position in the conflict.

With information from Reuters

Gregg Foreman, the founder of the influential blues-punk band the Delta 72 and a longtime collaborator with Cat Power and other acts, has died. He was 53.

News of Foreman’s death on Tuesday was confirmed by Cat Power’s label, Matador Records. No cause of death was given.

Foreman, born in Philadelphia, formed the Delta 72 in Washington, D.C., in the mid-’90s, putting a soulfully-scuzzy blues twist on the city’s post-hardcore sound of the era. Foreman was a distinctly charismatic frontman, pairing the flamboyant stage presence of his beloved ‘60s and ‘70s R&B acts with the live-wire tension of punk. The band released three albums before dissolving in 2001.

For two decades, he played in Cat Power’s backing ensemble, the Dirty Delta Blues band, and became the project’s musical director. He also collaborated with Pink Mountaintops, Suicide’s Alan Vega and Martin Rev, the Gossip, Lydia Lunch and Death Valley Girls, along with singer-songwriters Lucinda Williams and Linda Perry.

Outside of his live-band career, Foreman was a prolific DJ and a deeply knowledgeable music journalist. He most recently played on Cat Power’s “Redux,” January’s three-song EP celebrating the 20th anniversary of the band’s beloved LP “The Greatest.”

Music and cultural figures like director Jim Jarmusch, Kid Congo Powers, and Cold Cave’s Wesley Eisold mourned Foreman’s death on social media. Eisold wrote on Instagram that “Like others, he bounced in and out of our lives and changed each one he visited. For better or for worse, he lived a life that others only claim to have lived and he was one of one. His love for music was as genuine as the pain he harbored.”

Steve Hilton is a former Fox News host who has unexpectedly emerged as a leading candidate in the race for governor with a message that California is a failed state in need of radical reform.

But his sudden rise in California politics comes a decade and a half after he pitched the U.K. Conservative Party with a very different idea: Britain could learn a lot from the Golden State.

Back in 2010, when Hilton was a top strategist during David Cameron’s rise to power as Conservative prime minister, he looked to Silicon Valley’s high-charged ethos of techno-optimism and green innovation for inspiration as he sought to revitalize the ailing Conservative Party and the U.K.

Splitting his time between London and the Bay Area — his wife worked for Google — Hilton was instrumental in getting California companies to invest in the U.K. and persuading Google to open its first wholly owned and designed building outside the U.S. in London. So infatuated was he with California that one British political commentator dubbed the Cameron administration’s philosophy ”Thatcherism on a surfboard.”

But Hilton is now utterly unsparing in his criticism of California.

After moving to the Bay Area full time, teaching at Stanford University and hosting Fox News’ “The Next Revolution,” Hilton is running as a Republican on a platform of “Making California Golden Again.”

To the dismay of many Democrats, the 56-year-old British immigrant, a supporter of President Trump who dubs California “America’s worst-run state,” is ahead in multiple polls in a crowded race with no front-runner.

Even after former Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out April 12 after multiple women accused him of sexual assault, Democrats are struggling to unite around one candidate. And Trump’s endorsement of Hilton this month almost seems to guarantee Hilton will secure enough Republican votes to make it past the June primary.

Hilton accuses Democratic leaders of turning the state into the “Wuhan lab of modern leftism.” As Democrats amassed power in Sacramento, seizing control of statewide offices and the Legislature, he argues, California government has become “a massive, bloated, bureaucratic nanny state,” so overregulated and poorly run, it is failing its people.

“We have the highest poverty rate in the country in California, tied with Louisiana, which is shameful, really, for a state that prides itself on being the home of innovation and opportunity,” he told The Times. “We’re ranked by U.S. News and World Report 50 out of 50 for opportunity. The performance of California, when measured against the rest of the country, is really dire.”

Most California voters rank affordability and cost of living as important as they weigh whom to elect as governor. But whether Hilton can persuade them that Democrats are responsible for the state’s problems, or make inroads as a Republican aligned with Trump on immigration and abortion, is unlikely in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly two to one.

Many Californians who do not watch Fox News know little about Hilton. Even some of Britain’s political observers who followed Hilton for years admit it’s been a struggle at times to make sense of his political odyssey.

Dubbed a “barefoot revolutionary” for his habit of striding around Downing Street without shoes, Hilton was credited with pulling the Conservatives into the 21st century and ushering in a more green, socially liberal strain of British conservatism. He helped turn around their image by highlighting climate change and supporting gay marriage.

Fraser Nelson, a columnist for the Times in London, said Hilton had been seen in Britain as a figure closer to Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom than to Trump.

“When he popped up on Fox, it was like somebody reborn,” Nelson said. “Somebody who seemed to be on the left of politics was somehow on the Trumpish right. We thought it was like a joke. I’m not saying he is not sincere, just … the political journey of Steve Hilton … to being Newsom’s nemesis is something to behold.”

Born in London to Hungarian refugees who fled their homeland during the 1956 revolution, Hilton grew up in a household without much money.

After studying at Oxford University, a life-changing experience for a son of immigrants, Hilton worked at Conservative Party headquarters and as an ad executive on the Conservatives’ 1997 election campaign. When Labour’s Tony Blair won in a landslide, Hilton co-founded a consulting firm, Good Business, advising corporations on how to make money by investing in social and environmental causes.

In 2001, Hilton voted Green. But he returned to the Conservative fold in 2005 to try to detoxify the Tory brand. As an author of the party’s 2010 manifesto, he came up with Cameron’s “Big Society” agenda, which sought to scale back the state and hand more power to local communities. Critics, however, argued that the focus on local control was a fig leaf for austerity and dismantling the welfare state.

When Cameron won in 2010, Hilton infuriated colleagues in the coalition government, the British press reported, proposing a stream of wacky ideas: scrapping maternity leave, abolishing job centers, even buying cloud-bursting technology so Britain would have more sunshine.

Hilton ultimately became disillusioned with Westminster, deciding U.K. politics was stymied by excessive bureaucracy. In 2012, he moved full time to the Bay Area.

Hilton says he was drawn to California because of its “rebel spirit.”

But what he liked about California was the specific Silicon Valley ethos of disruption that emphasized meritocracy and risk-taking, not the state’s ascendant liberal identity politics.

Hilton settled in California precisely when Democrats were consolidating their political and cultural power. Just months after his move, Democrats gained full control of the Legislature with a two-thirds supermajority.

Meanwhile, populism was rising across the U.S. and Britain.

On the 2016 Brexit referendum on whether the U.K. should leave the European Union, Hilton was firmly pro Leave.

Hilton also disagreed with many fellow conservatives on Trump. In November 2016, George Osborne, chancellor of the exchequer under Cameron, watched the U.S. election on Hilton’s couch in Atherton, Calif. “Steve was the only person in the room who said, ‘I think Donald Trump’s going to win,’” Osborne said. “I think he identifies with Trump, although they’re obviously very different. … The outsider challenging the system.”

After the election, Hilton joined Fox News as a contributor and in 2017 was given his own Sunday night show, “The Next Revolution.” Produced out of Los Angeles, it explored populism in the U.S. and globally.

Like many conservatives, Hilton became agitated in 2020 by the COVID-19 lockdowns and Black Lives Matter protests that swept U.S. cities.

Early in the pandemic, Hilton invited Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of health policy at Stanford, to discuss COVID-19 after his study in Santa Clara County indicated the virus was more widespread and less deadly than initially thought. Bhattacharya argued the best path forward was not a general lockdown, but focused protection of the vulnerable. California leaders went on to impose some of the nation’s most stringent lockdowns.

After Joe Biden defeated Trump in November 2020, Hilton repeated Trump’s false allegations of voter fraud on air and called for an investigation.

Hilton became a U.S. citizen in 2021. Asked how his worldview changed in 2020, Hilton said: “I don’t think it changed. I think it actually enhanced my skepticism of centralized bureaucracy and it made me even more determined to dismantle it in California, because you saw all the worst features of it in California.”

In 2023, Hilton left Fox to launch a supposedly nonpartisan policy group, Golden Together, to develop “common sense” solutions to California’s problems. Two years later, he published “Califailure: Reversing the Ruin of America’s Worst-Run State,” a screed against Democrats. He accused them of spending “their time — and taxpayers’ money — pushing increasingly fringe race, gender, and ‘climate’ extremism instead of attending to the basics of good governance.”

A month later, Hilton announced he was running for governor “to make this beautiful state, that we love so much, truly golden again.”

On the campaign trail, Hilton has pledged to slash taxes, make housing more affordable and bring the cost of gas down to $3 a gallon. But how he plans to achieve some of these goals is controversial.

Hilton advocates scaling back environmental regulations. State agencies such as the California Coastal Commission and the California Air Resources Board, he argues, are a “massive roadblock” to housing development.

To lower gasoline prices, Hilton would ramp up California domestic production of oil and natural gas and reduce regulations on refineries.

Hilton would likely struggle to persuade a majority of voters to roll back environmental protections. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, about 55% of Californians think stricter state environmental regulations are worth the cost, while 43% believe they hurt the economy and jobs market.

Hilton is also at odds with most Californians on major issues from immigration to abortion.

If elected, he would foster more local cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and rescind state healthcare to undocumented immigrants. He would work with states such as Louisiana to extradite California doctors accused of prescribing and mailing abortion pills to women in states where abortion is illegal. He would also establish a Covid Accountability Commission to examine officials’ decisions during the pandemic.

Asked if Newsom and other Democrats could face prosecution, Hilton said: “They need to be held accountable for these crimes.”

With Trump in the White House, 2026 is a difficult year to mount a right-wing populist campaign for California governor, said Christian Grose, a professor of political science and public policy at USC.

“That message of ‘Newsom and the Democrats have been a disaster for California,’ that’s like, if you’re running in South Carolina,” Grose said. “It’s a caricature of California. While many California voters think there have been problems and the state is not doing as well, a Fox News presentation for East Coast viewers … that’s not going to win 50%.”

To make inroads past the primary, Grose said, Hilton would need to focus on governance and affordability and ditch the anti-Democratic red meat: “He has to massively soft pedal the kind of Fox News conservative stuff.”

Hilton’s Republican rival in the race, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, has questioned Hilton’s MAGA credentials, raising his green advocacy in the U.K. to cast him as an unprincipled opportunist.

Hilton, however, said he considers himself a “very strong environmentalist.” The problem, he argued, is the movement has become too narrowly focused on climate change and CO2 reduction. As crude oil production within California has fallen in recent decades and refineries have closed, he questioned California importing the bulk of its oil from as far away as Iraq and Ecuador.

“We are shipping oil halfway across the world in giant supertankers that run on bunker fuel, the most polluting form of transportation you can think of, rather than producing in Kern County and sending it in a nice, clean pipeline to the refineries in Long Beach,” Hilton said. “It’s total insanity. We are increasing carbon emissions in the name of climate change.”

Some political observers in the U.K. argue that Hilton’s questioning of California’s policy isn’t necessarily intellectually inconsistent.

“Perhaps in 2010 we needed more environmental policies,” Nelson said. “Perhaps in 2026 they’re doing more harm than good.”

Nor is it so odd, he argued, that Hilton now views California with a more critical eye.

“Even from a distance, when you look at California, there’s so much going fundamentally wrong,” Nelson said, citing its energy policy, homelessness and the exodus of residents to other states. “I’m not surprised by that, and I think it’s entirely consistent with Steve Hilton in 2010.”

Times staff writer Stephen Battaglio contributed to this report

WASHINGTON — Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer is out of President Trump’s Cabinet, the White House said Monday, after multiple allegations of abusing her position’s power, including having an affair with a subordinate and drinking alcohol on the job.

Chavez-DeRemer is the third Trump Cabinet member to leave her post after Trump fired his embattled Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in March and ousted Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi earlier this month.

Unlike other recent Cabinet departures, Chavez-DeRemer’s exit was announced by a White House aide, not by the president on his social media account.

“Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer will be leaving the Administration to take a position in the private sector,” White House communications director Steven Cheung said on the social media site X. “She has done a phenomenal job in her role by protecting American workers, enacting fair labor practices, and helping Americans gain additional skills to improve their lives.”

He said Keith Sonderling, the current deputy labor secretary, would become acting labor secretary in her place. The news outlet NOTUS was the first to report Chavez-DeRemer’s resignation.

Labor chief, family members faced multiple allegations

Chavez-DeRamer’s departure follows reports that began surfacing in January that she was under a series of investigations.

A New York Times report last Wednesday revealed that the Labor Department’s inspector general was reviewing material showing Chavez-DeRemer and her top aides and family members routinely sent personal messages and requests to young staff members.

Chavez-DeRemer’s husband and father exchanged text messages with young female staff members, according to the newspaper. Some of the staffers were instructed by the secretary and her former deputy chief of staff to “pay attention” to her family, people familiar with the investigation told the Times.

Those messages were uncovered as part of a broader investigation of Chavez-DeRamer’s leadership that began after the New York Post reported in January that a complaint filed with the Labor Department’s inspector general accused Chavez-DeRemer of a relationship with the subordinate.

She also faced allegations that she drank alcohol on the job, and that she tasked aides to plan official trips for primarily personal reasons.

Both the White House and the Labor Department initially said the reports of wrongdoing were baseless. But the official denials became less full-throated as more allegations emerged — and when Chavez-DeRemer might be out of a job became something of an open question in Washington.

At least four Labor Department officials have already been forced from their jobs as the investigation progressed, including Chavez-DeRemer’s former chief of staff and deputy chief of staff, as well as a member of her security detail, with whom she was accused of having the affair, the New York Times reported.

She enjoyed union support — rare for a Republican

Confirmed to Trump’s Cabinet in a 67-32 vote in March 2025, Chavez-DeRemer is a former House GOP lawmaker who had represented a swing district in Oregon. She enjoyed unusual support from unions as a Republican but lost reelection in November 2024.

In her single term in Congress, Chavez-DeRemer backed legislation that would make it easier to unionize on a federal level, as well as a separate bill aimed at protecting Social Security benefits for public-sector employees.

Some prominent labor unions, including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, backed Chavez-DeRemer, who is a daughter of a Teamster, for Labor secretary. Trump’s decision to pick her was viewed by some political observers as a way to appeal to voters who are members of or affiliated with labor organizations.

But other powerful labor leaders were skeptical when she was tapped for the job, unconvinced that Chavez-DeRemer would pursue a union-friendly agenda as a part of the incoming GOP administration. In her Senate confirmation hearing, some senators questioned whether she would be able to uphold that reputation in an administration that fired thousands of federal employees.

She was a key figure in Trump’s deregulatory push

Aside from reports of wrongdoing in recent months, Chavez-DeRemer had been one of Trump’s more lower-profile Cabinet picks but took key steps to advance the administration’s deregulatory agenda during her tenure.

For instance, the Labor Department last year moved to rewrite or repeal more than 60 workplace regulations it saw as obsolete. The rollbacks included minimum wage requirements for home healthcare workers and people with disabilities, and rules governing exposure to harmful substances and safety procedures at mines. The effort drew condemnation from union leaders and workplace safety experts.

The proposed changes also included eliminating a requirement that employers provide adequate lighting for construction sites and seat belts for agriculture workers in most employer-provided transportation.

During Chavez-DeRemer’s tenure, the Trump administration canceled millions of dollars in international grants that a Labor Department division administered to combat child labor and slave labor around the world, ending their work that had helped reduce the number of child laborers worldwide by 78 million over the last two decades.

The Labor Department has a broad mandate as it relates to the U.S. workforce, including reporting the U.S. unemployment rate, regulating workplace health and safety standards, investigating minimum wage, child labor and overtime pay disputes, and applying laws on union organizing and unlawful terminations.

Kim writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Cathy Bussewitz in New York and Will Weissert in Washington contributed to this report.

April 20 (UPI) — Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, said her government is talking with two major companies to address the country’s power crisis, citing recent diplomatic engagement with the United States.

“Thanks to that diplomatic dialogue, I can say we are now in direct contact with Siemens and General Electric to resolve the electricity problem in Zulia state,” Rodríguez said Sunday during a public event broadcast by state television.

She said the government decided to “open a new chapter in national political life” and in Venezuela’s international relations following a Jan. 3 U>S> military operation that captured President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

Analysts say Zulia, a key oil-producing region in western Venezuela, is critical to the country’s hydrocarbons industry. Persistent electricity shortages have limited efforts to boost crude production, making restoration of the power system a strategic priority for economic recovery.

Situated at the western edge of the national grid, Zulia is the last region to receive electricity transmitted from the south. Failures in the transmission network often leave it disconnected. The system in the region operates at less than 40% of installed capacity.

According to local outlet El Tequeño, both companies conducted technical missions in March to assess Venezuela’s electrical infrastructure and present rehabilitation proposals.

The inspections included hydroelectric facilities in the Bajo Caroní complex in Bolívar state, following a February visit to Caracas by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

Rodríguez made the remarks at the launch of a 13-day pilgrimage she called to demand the full lifting of economic sanctions imposed on Venezuela.

“Enough sanctions against the noble Venezuelan people,” she said, addressing the governments of the United States and Europe, according to Globovisión. She added that economic freedom is a sovereign right, not a concession from foreign powers.

The mobilizations began in Zulia, Amazonas and Táchira states and were led by Rodríguez, National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez and ruling party leader Diosdado Cabello.

International sanctions have worsened Venezuela’s electricity crisis by limiting access to financing and technology needed to maintain and upgrade infrastructure.

A partial easing of U.S. sanctions on the oil and mining sectors has opened the door to talks with companies such as Siemens and General Electric to address those gaps.

There is another way to read the ongoing Middle East crisis, one that makes legible what standard analysis consistently struggles to explain. It begins not with capability but with the geometry of the system through which capability must travel to produce effects. The United States and its partners possess overwhelming military superiority over Iran, and that superiority is not in question, yet the conflict has produced a pattern that defies its logic. A superpower coalition has been unable to impose coherent strategic outcomes against an adversary operating through proxies, low-cost disruption, and the systematic exploitation of global commercial vulnerabilities.

Over the past two years, we have seen multiple instances of this kind of disruption with consequential effects on the global system. Houthi drones force the rerouting of global shipping, with Red Sea cargo volumes falling by roughly 50% through early 2024 as major carriers diverted around the Cape of Good Hope, adding up to two weeks to transit times, driving freight costs sharply higher across European markets, and costing Egypt nearly $800 million per month at peak in lost Suez Canal revenue. A non-state network spanning Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Gaza has absorbed sustained air campaigns, targeted eliminations of senior commanders, and repeated ground operations without losing its capacity to generate coordinated pressure across multiple theaters simultaneously. The asymmetry seems to follow a deliberate strategic logic that raw power analysis struggles to read, precisely because the conflict operates on a surface that capability assessments were never designed to map. What this suggests is that the decisive variable is not what actors possess but whether the relationships connecting them can transmit coordinated action when the system is under strain.

When that system cannot coordinate, something important breaks down. An alliance that formally exists but faces operational friction at every decision point ceases to be an alliance in any meaningful strategic sense. A security guarantee that cannot be transmitted rapidly to the partner it is meant to protect has, in effect, already failed its primary function. It follows that the gap between what a system formally is and what it can actually do under pressure is not a secondary consideration but the surface on which this conflict is being decided. Conventional analysis, calibrated to count warheads and assess intentions, consistently leaves this gap unmapped.

Analysts know that Saudi Arabia’s OPEC production decisions have repeatedly positioned Riyadh against Washington’s economic preferences, they know that European energy dependency complicates transatlantic alignment, and they know that Iran’s proxy network extends across five countries and absorbs military pressure without fracturing. Yet what the available frameworks cannot do is convert that knowledge into a structural reading of the system. They show that these conditions exist. What they cannot show is how those conditions interact, where they compound, and what the aggregate geometry of their interaction means for whether coordinated action is possible at all.

Power analysis was built to read capability differentials between states, and it does that well. Alliance theory was built to read the conditions under which formal commitments hold or fail, and it does that too. Neither, however, was built to read the operational weight of the ties through which capability and commitment must travel to produce effects.

The instruments available are calibrated to answer questions different from those the current situation poses. Deploying them on a problem they were not designed to read produces the consistent failure to explain what is actually happening that has marked analysis of this conflict from the start.

Adjacency mapping is an instrument designed to read that gap by mapping connectivity, by which I mean their operational weight, specifically their capacity to carry coordinated action under strain. What distinguishes it from standard approaches is its unit of analysis. Rather than the actors themselves, it treats the weight of the relationships as primary. The question it asks is not who holds power but whether the ties connecting power-holders can transmit that power when the system needs them to. Two states can be formally allied, operationally integrated in name, and structurally disconnected at the same time, and nothing in standard analysis will tell you which of those conditions is actually operative until the moment of crisis reveals it.

The instrument assigns each significant relationship in the system a weight between 0 and 1, reflecting how frequently the two actors interact operationally, how reliably information moves between them, how the tie has behaved under recent stress, and how quickly it transmits pressure when the system is under strain. At the higher end of the scale, a weight at or above 0.6 indicates that coordination approaches automaticity, and the tie carries load without constant investment to maintain it. Around 0.3, friction accumulates. In this setting, decisions require deliberate effort at every juncture, slowing the system and making it susceptible to gradual degradation that never triggers a visible rupture. At or below 0.2, the tie has effectively ceased to function as a transmission pathway, leaving the actors operationally disconnected regardless of what their formal relationship nominally says.

These weights are analytical judgements calibrated against observable evidence. In other words, their value lies in making visible what experienced analysts already carry as intuition and in giving that intuition a structure precise enough to argue about. The numbers are therefore analytical judgements, not measurements. A more rigorous application would derive them from quantifiable indicators across each dimension, including military interoperability, intelligence exchange depth, crisis responsiveness, economic interdependence, and signaling consistency, averaged and weighted systematically. That work lies beyond the scope of this piece, but the architecture is designed to accommodate it.

There is a risk management dimension to this reading that is worth making explicit. Standard geopolitical risk assessment focuses on actor-level variables such as regime stability, military capability, and leadership intentions. What adjacency mapping adds is a structural layer that those assessments typically miss. A coalition whose load-bearing relationships operate in the friction zone is exposed to a category of risk that capability assessments do not capture and that becomes visible only when the system is read structurally.

What the matrix adds is the ability to see how compound weakness across multiple relationships produces cascading effects that bilateral assessment alone would struggle to predict. A system whose dominant actor holds several weak partnerships faces more than friction. As a consequence, the geometry of those weaknesses determines whether any concerted response is structurally possible at all. Aggregate capability becomes, in that light, secondary to that question.

If we apply this to the Middle East security complex, the instrument produces one possible reading. This reading differs considerably from the picture conventional analysis generates. Its value is not in the precision of the numbers but in making the system’s geometry visible enough to argue about.

The matrix below maps operational connectivity across the system’s key actors. The numbers are analytical judgements, not measurements.

The geometry they make visible is what matters here.

The matrix is intentionally non-symmetric. Where operational influence flows asymmetrically between two actors, the weights reflect that directionality.

The matrix reveals, in this light, a system whose dominant actors are connected at fundamentally different weights. And more significantly, its most important bilateral relationship is operating in the friction zone. It’s formally excluded adversary has constructed the only alternative connectivity architecture in the system. What this implies is that the geometry of the conflict runs considerably deeper than standard alliance analysis tends to suggest.

On the coalition side, the US has high adjacency with Qatar, Bahrain, Israel, and Kuwait, ties that enable rapid coordination and require little maintenance, constituting the operational backbone of what Washington can actually activate quickly.

Its relationship with Saudi Arabia, however, sits at 0.4. That number is analytically more significant than almost anything else in the matrix. Saudi Arabia remains, on most readings, the relationship on which Gulf order coherence formally depends, the anchor of the security architecture since the 1970s, and it is operating in the friction zone where every significant decision requires renegotiation from scratch rather than flowing through an established channel. Saudi Arabia’s invitation to join BRICS in August 2023, yuan-denominated oil transactions with China, and its participation in the Chinese-brokered rapprochement with Iran in March 2023 all point in the same direction. Riyadh is hedging structurally toward China and the broader non-Western order, a posture that sits uneasily alongside its formal security alignment with Washington. Taken together, these are not isolated political episodes but evidence of a tie that has been operating below the coordination threshold for years and whose weakness is, on this reading, the system’s most consequential structural vulnerability.

Through the normalization architecture, the UAE has arguably become the system’s most structurally reliable node at 0.6 with both the US and Israel, its operational integration exceeding Saudi Arabia’s despite Saudi Arabia’s formal primacy. The Abraham Accords of September 2020 established the formal foundation for that integration. The operational depth it has since generated, across intelligence sharing, defence cooperation, and coordinated positioning on Iran, has made the UAE the coalition’s most functionally connected Gulf partner. Oman holds what is perhaps the system’s most anomalous position, meaningful adjacency with both the US coalition and Iran simultaneously, a profile no other state actor in the matrix replicates. That structural position gave Oman the back-channel role it played through the early phases of the conflict, with documented precedent in the secret US-Iran nuclear negotiations that began in Muscat in 2012 and ran through 2013. As the conflict has intensified, Pakistan has assumed the primary mediation function, but Oman’s position as a quiet facilitator has not disappeared; it has simply been supplemented by a node with more direct access to both capitals at this particular moment.

Pakistan has emerged as the conflict’s primary mediation node, hosting the highest-level direct negotiations between Washington and Tehran since 1979 and brokering the April 2026 ceasefire. That role reflects a structural position the matrix makes legible: high Saudi adjacency, a functioning Iran tie, and a rehabilitated relationship with Washington that no other regional actor currently combines. China’s influence over both Pakistani and Iranian decision-making operates as an exogenous pressure that the matrix only partially captures, and Pakistan’s own domestic constraints, including its difficulty developing direct channels with the IRGC, limit how far that mediation role can ultimately reach.

Iran’s position is where the matrix becomes most analytically revealing. Across the state actors in the system, Iran’s adjacency sits at or near fragmentation, built up through sanctions, absent operational channels, and decades of adversarial signalling that have left Tehran formally isolated from the coordination architecture the United States and its partners have constructed.

And yet the only high-weight tie Iran holds is with its proxy network at 0.7. That single number may go further toward explaining the architecture of the entire campaign than any other figure in the matrix.

It is an asymmetric relationship in which Tehran’s capacity to activate and direct exceeds the reverse influence those actors exert over Iranian strategic decisions. What that single structural condition implies goes further toward explaining the architecture of Iranian pressure operations than most analyses of Iranian intentions or capabilities tend to reach. Iran is geographically central and formally excluded. It is precisely that combination, positioned to apply pressure across every theatre while bearing none of the coordination costs that formal inclusion imposes. That, from this vantage point, is what makes legible a strategy that standard analysis, focused on actors and their capabilities, cannot see.

Seen through this lens, what Iran is doing across the region is something more structurally ambitious than a military campaign. It is attempting to restructure the matrix itself. The goal appears to be less about battlefield victory than about the gradual degradation of the ties connecting the United States to its regional partners, below the threshold at which coordinated response becomes automatic, eroding the will to keep paying the price of alignment while simultaneously building alternative adjacency in the nodes where US-aligned connectivity is weakest.

The Houthi campaign against Red Sea shipping is calibrated to stay below the threshold that would compel a unified military response. It introduces friction into the economic relationships connecting European states to the Gulf system, raising the cost of alignment with Washington’s regional posture without forcing the kind of direct confrontation that would unite the coalition. Strikes on Gulf infrastructure follow the same calibration, persistent enough to signal that the US security guarantee cannot insulate its partners from costs, yet restrained enough to avoid crossing the point at which coalition fragmentation becomes irrelevant because a unified response becomes compulsory. Across Iraq and Syria, simultaneous pressure from affiliated militias prevents the concentration of attention that sustained coalition coordination requires. In each case, the instrument targets a relationship rather than a capability, specifically the weight of the ties whose degradation would restructure the system’s geometry without requiring Iran to displace the existing order directly.

The US-Saudi tie at 0.4 is the primary focus of that degradation effort. Should that threshold be breached, Saudi Arabia hedges. As hedging reduces operational interactivity the tie weakens further. The process risks becoming self-reinforcing. Iranian military superiority over any individual partner is not required to sustain it.

The same logic extends across European actors, though not uniformly. Germany’s industrial exposure to energy price volatility, France’s residual strategic autonomy instinct, and the EU’s institutional preference for de-escalation all produce different thresholds for continued alignment with Washington. Their shared energy dependency gives them asymmetric stakes in the Gulf system’s stability, but their appetite for risk diverges from Washington’s in ways that are not identical across capitals, and each time Iran forces a decision about the cost of continued alignment, that divergence fragments the coalition’s coordination surface further.

By sustaining operational ties with non-state actors across the region, Iran is constructing alternative adjacency in precisely the nodes where US-aligned connectivity is weakest. These are populations and factions that the existing regional order has excluded from the dominant coalition’s coordination architecture. Deliberately so — Iran is building in the structural gaps the system leaves open. Displacing the existing order appears unnecessary. Becoming the more reliable pole of alignment for the actors that order has failed to integrate may be sufficient. All that is required is that the order fragment sufficiently at its margins for that offer to appear credible, and the current trajectory of US-Saudi friction and European hedging is steadily moving in that direction.

The coalition’s instruments are calibrated to military threats. The system, however, is failing along a different surface entirely, or so this reading suggests. The formal architecture remains largely intact, security guarantees have not been withdrawn, Gulf states remain formally aligned, and normalisation agreements hold. And yet the operational adjacency that gives that architecture its functional weight is under sustained pressure from an actor that has correctly identified the gap between formal commitment and operational tie as the system’s primary vulnerability. That identification is outpacing the coalition’s capacity to respond.

On this reading, the surface on which the conflict appears to be decided is not the one the coalition is defending.

What adjacency mapping reveals is a story about geometry. The system’s dominant actor holds formal commitments at weights the system cannot sustain under the pressure being applied to it. Its adversary, in turn, has built the only alternative coordination architecture in the space that those weakening ties leave open. The conflict is likely to be determined by which ties the system can no longer afford to lose under sustained and calibrated pressure. The question is whether the actors currently holding those ties in the friction zone can rebuild them to the coordination threshold before the process of degradation becomes irreversible. That is a question that capability assessments are not well-positioned to answer, and one that a structural reading of the system’s connectivity at least helps to make visible.

The measure has long been criticised for allowing US intelligence agencies to collect citizen data without a warrant.

The United States Congress has temporarily extended a controversial surveillance law which allows federal intelligence agencies to collect the data of foreigners, including their contacts with US citizens.

The move allows a provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to continue until April 30. The short-term extension was passed by the House of Representatives and approved by the Senate on Friday.

The patch comes after President Donald Trump’s efforts to secure a more lasting extension broke down.

Section 702 of FISA allows the National Security Agency (NSA) and other intelligence services to collect data from foreigners outside of the country.

That could include their interactions with US citizens, a prospect that has alarmed rights advocates.

Collecting such data, which can include correspondence on email and telecommunications platforms, typically requires a warrant approved by a court.

The process has been described by critics as a “backdoor search” that circumvents existing privacy laws.

Speaking after Friday’s vote, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said there was still some openness to reforming the law.

“We’ve got to pivot and figure out what can pass, and we’re in the process ⁠of figuring out how to do that here,” he told reporters.

Supporters of reform, who stretch across party lines, have long sought to repeal or amend Section 702.

While FISA was initially passed in 1978, Section 702 was added as an amendment in 2008.

The addition came amid the US’s “global war on terror”. But during its approval, revelations emerged that the administration of former US President George W Bush had already used the tactics Section 702 legalised.

Supporters, including Trump, maintain that reforming the provision would lead to a lapse in national security.

“I have spoken with many in our Military who say FISA is necessary in order to protect our Troops overseas, as well as our people here at home, from the threat of Foreign Terror Attacks,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Wednesday.

He has pushed for the law to be extended for 18 months without changes. That effort initially appeared on track in the House but was ultimately scuttled by pushback from within Trump’s own Republican Party.

Among the detractors was Republican Congressman Thomas Massie, who has been a regular critic of Trump.

“I will be voting NO on final passage of the FISA 702 Reauthorization Bill if it does not include a warrant provision and other reforms to protect US citizens’ right to privacy,” he wrote ahead of the House vote.

Until recently, President Trump always found a way to fail forward, through a combination of spin, threats, payoffs and bluster.

OK, that’s the simplistic interpretation. The fine print tells a less-glamorous story: a man born on third base who spent decades insisting he’d hit a triple.

Still, it’s hard to argue with success. When Trump entered politics, he redefined the rules of the game. Rivals who tried to outflank him on policy detail, ideological consistency and institutional norms found themselves either vanquished or assimilated by the Borg.

By my lights, only once during Trump’s admittedly chaotic first term did he run into something that his playbook couldn’t at least mitigate or parry: the COVID-19 pandemic. For the final year of his presidency, reality refused to negotiate, and political gravity reasserted itself. It turns out, viruses aren’t susceptible to the Art of The Deal.

But then, miraculously, Trump wriggled through legal jeopardy, bulldozed his way past more conventional Republicans and Democrats, and re-emerged victorious in 2024.

If anything, that comeback reinforced the idea that Trump could survive anything by virtue of his playbook.

By the start of his second term, he’d made impressive headway in co-opting not only individuals but also major institutions within big tech, the media and academia.

Even in foreign affairs, Trump’s sense that any problem could be solved via force, intimidation or money was confirmed when he captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and installed Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, as a sort of puppet leader. Everyone has a price, right?

Unfortunately for Trump, no. Not everyone does.

Lately, the president has encountered a different kind of resistance — adversaries motivated by something bigger and more transcendent than money, power or the avoidance of pain.

In dealing with Iran, for instance, Trump has confronted people operating under a wholly different set of incentives. It’s a regime guided by a mix of ideology, radical religious doctrine and long-term strategic interests that don’t always align with short-term material gain.

(Now perhaps, having punished Trump enough already, Iran will finally come to the negotiating table. But even if that happens, it will have occurred after exacting a steep price — so steep, in fact, that it may already be too late for Trump to plausibly claim a win.)

It turns out, you can’t easily intimidate or pay off a true believer who isn’t afraid to die and believes they have God on their side.

A similar (though obviously not morally equivalent) dynamic is now also on display in the form of Trump’s skirmish with Pope Leo XIV, a man who commands moral authority. He opposes the war in Iran (“Blessed are the peacemakers”) and has demonstrated a stubborn refusal to back down to Trump’s attempts at bullying.

“Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth,” Leo said during a tour of Africa. It’s a remark that the American pope seemed to implicitly be aiming at the American president.

Here’s what Trump doesn’t understand: There are still pockets of the world where concepts like faith and national identity outweigh tangible incentives. Where sacrifice and suffering are an accepted part of the plan.

When facing these sorts of foes, Trump’s usual operating system starts to look less like a cheat code and more like a category error.

But he can’t see this because Trump is always prone to a sort of cynical projection — of assuming everyone views the world in the same base, carnal, corrupt way he sees it.

Whether it was his incredulity that Denmark wouldn’t sell Greenland, rhetoric that seemed to discount the motivations of those who serve and sacrifice in the military, or his affinity for nakedly transactional gulf states, the pattern is familiar: a tendency to view decisions through a cost-benefit lens that not everyone shares.

To be fair, that lens has often served him well. In arenas where power, money and leverage dominate, Trump’s approach is eerily effective.

But after years of taming secular, “rational” opponents, he is fighting a two-front war against people who see their struggles as moral and spiritual.

They aren’t stronger in a conventional sense. But they are, in a very real sense, less susceptible to Trump’s methods.

For perhaps the first time in his life, Donald Trump finds himself facing adversaries who aren’t just immune to his usual Trumpian playbook but are playing a different game altogether.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

Secretary of State Bill Jones, lagging in the polls for the Republican gubernatorial primary, on Monday asked the U.S. attorney’s office in Sacramento to investigate possible conflicts of interest between energy companies and the administration of Gov. Gray Davis.

For months, Jones has criticized Davis for hiring consultants during last year’s energy crisis who owned stock in companies that the governor alleged were gouging the state. Davis’ spokesman held $12,000 of stock in Calpine, a firm that won state contracts.

On Monday, Jones said the state Fair Political Practices Commission and the attorney general’s office, both controlled by Democrats, were not investigating aggressively enough.

Seizing upon recent reports that Davis met with then-Enron Chairman Kenneth L. Lay during the crisis, Jones called for a federal investigation.

“It is now time that the U.S. attorney’s office actively engage in this scandal and open an investigation into the conflicts of interest and insider dealings of Gov. Gray Davis and his administration,” Jones said at a Sacramento news conference. “Because we cannot get to the truth and we cannot get the entities entrusted by the people to do their jobs, we must now go to a higher authority.”

A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office declined comment.

Roger Salazar, a spokesman for the Davis campaign, said the governor had taken appropriate action against consultants who had conflicts, dismissing four last summer.

The chairwoman of the FPPC responded coolly to Jones’ allegations. “We do not comment on complaints or any investigative actions taken in response to those complaints,” Karen Getman said. “Nor do we allow the timing of our activities to be influenced by upcoming elections.”

Though Jones called for more disclosure into Davis’ contacts with the energy industry, he has different standards for the Bush administration.

Spokeswoman Beth Pendexter said Jones believes Vice President Dick Cheney does not have to disclose whom he met with while forming the national energy policy last year.

In a record turnout at the polls, Hungarians have voted out their long-serving, far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orban, handing victory to the Tisza party’s Peter Magyar who ran a pro-EU campaign.