BRUSSELS — China has dragged the EU’s foreign subsidies rules into its wider trade dispute with Brussels, just as the two sides enter a crucial stretch of negotiations.

Beijing’s Ministry of Justice has ordered Chinese companies not to hand over information to EU officials in investigations under the FSR — the bloc’s tool to ensure that players in the single market don’t receive unfair support from abroad.

The notice explicitly mentioned the European Commission’s in-depth probe into JD.com, the Chinese e-commerce giant that is trying to acquire Germany’s Ceconomy, the parent company of consumer electronics retailer MediaMarkt, in a €2 billion deal.

The move appears aimed at adding pressure on Brussels midway through a renewed trade dialogue between the EU and China, with negotiators engaged in intense closed-door discussions over how to narrow the EU’s €1 billion-a-day trade deficit in goods with China. 

The Commission is expected to hold a videoconference with the Chinese Ministry of Commerce in September that would pave the way for a trip by trade chief Maroš Šefčovič to Beijing in early October. 

The Commission will debrief EU leaders at a summit a few days later. That could be a make-or-break moment for the bloc to decide whether constructive engagement is enough to rebalance the trading relationship — or whether Brussels needs to defend Europe’s trade interests more forcefully.

“China has consistently opposed the EU’s abuse of unilateral tools such as the Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR) to suppress Chinese companies,” a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Commerce told reporters on Thursday. 

“I would like to emphasize that China and the EU have established a Trade and Investment Consultation (TIC) mechanism and reached a consensus on managing differences through dialogue and consultation,” the spokesperson added.

“We hope the EU will work with China to promptly correct its erroneous practices in the FSR investigation and strengthen communication through intergovernmental dialogue. China will closely monitor the EU’s actions and will take necessary measures to resolutely safeguard national security and the legitimate rights and interests of enterprises.”

No discrimination

The Commission maintains that the FSR does not discriminate against companies on the basis of where they’re headquartered. 

“The FSR is completely, fully compliant with WTO rules as it applies to all companies irrespective of their nationality, and its objective is to ensure that all companies doing business in the EU, including Chinese ones, are treated equally and compete on an equal footing,” spokesperson Ricardo Cardoso told reporters in Brussels on Thursday. 

According to Beijing, the EU is requesting too much information as it investigates whether JD.com’s deal is unfairly backed by Chinese state support.

“In the JD.com case, the EU has again arbitrarily and unreasonably demanded a wide range of information from relevant Chinese banks that is irrelevant to the investigation,” the Ministry of Commerce spokesperson said.

The Commission worries that JD.com may be benefiting from unfair advantages in the form of preferential financing, tax incentives and grants provided by the Chinese government that could give it a competitive edge in the EU market once the transaction is finalized.

JD.com offered remedies this week to address the Commission’s concerns, in what is typically a sign that talks are at an advanced stage. The company declined to comment.

Beijing’s intervention could even jeopardize the acquisition, according to Dirk Gotink, a center-right Dutch MEP and a member of the European Parliament’s International Trade Committee who is closely following the case.

“They’re being taken hostage by a political process,” he said, calling Beijing’s move “a unilateral escalation.” 

Camille Gijs contributed reporting. This article has been updated.

MANCHESTER, England — On the day in June that Andy Burnham ended his nine-year term as mayor, Manchester’s authorities sent him off with a parting gift: a wingback chair whose shiny fabric was printed with the city’s trademark worker-bee symbol and its rallying cry “we do things differently here.”

One month later, Burnham moved to 10 Downing Street, the sprawling Georgian terrace in London replete with mice, net curtains, cranky heating and patchy phone signal from which six other prime ministers have struggled to run Britain in the last decade. But the worker-bee chair did not accompany him on the trip south. It moved just a half-mile, through a city that was once the engine of the industrial revolution but for more than a century has struggled for balance against the political, economic and military power consolidated in the capital.

The chair now sits beside a 10-seat conference table in what Burnham calls “No. 10 North,” a refurbished 1980s office block he has chosen as his auxiliary seat of power. What remains of the largest empire the world has known is now governed most Fridays from above a discount cocktail bar, where Burnham has replaced Downing Street’s concentric rooms of gatekeepers with clinically lit floors of open-plan desks. Staffed by several political allies from his time in Greater Manchester and decorated with a gold record of The Queen Is Dead, the 1986 album by Manchester band The Smiths, it is Burnham’s “comfort zone,” a person who has worked with him said — “an homage to his time” as mayor.

No. 10 North is more than Burnham’s own Manc-a-Lago, where he retreats ahead of weekends at his family home nearby. The prime minister, who succeeded Keir Starmer as the benefactor of a Labour Party putsch on July 20, has made it a central aim of his premiership to move power and money out from limestone buildings on Whitehall, the old heart of London’s civil service — by centralizing some of Whitehall’s power further in No. 10 North, and handing other parts of it to local leaders outside government. He is banking Labour’s political future, and that of the British center-left, on being able to reverse a decades-long decline of England’s former industrial heartlands, one that fueled a political polarization and drove the 2016 vote for Brexit.

“What we’re bringing is a different type of energy,” Caroline Simpson, the mayoral authority’s former chief executive whom Burnham has tasked with heading up his new northern outpost as deputy chief of staff, told POLITICO Magazine in her first interview since assuming the role. “That’s really the point about No. 10 North — to connect our places, connect devolution back into the heart of governing.”

Burnham’s political opponents — and, privately, some civil servants, who have seen past prime ministers try to move power out of London — have derided the Manchester office as a gimmick, a soundstage for a politician attuned more to optics than policy detail. (No. 10 North is “absolutely not” a gimmick, insists Simpson.) The office is already up and running, but some of the basic details of how it will geographically redistribute power — such as how funding or boundaries will be configured — have not been worked out. An early test of Burnham’s commitment to redistributing his government’s sparse finances will come on Oct. 28, the day of his first budget, and in a cross-government spending review in 2027.

POLITICO Magazine spoke to 28 current or former civil servants, political officials, regional officials, advisers and politicians to illuminate what life is like inside No. 10 North and the broader policy vision it reflects. Many were granted anonymity to speak frankly about the workings of Burnham’s government. Downing Street declined to comment on the specifics of this article, beyond making Simpson available for interview.

Burnham took office on a pledge to “rewire Britain.” He has to rewire the house first.

Moving to Heron House

The incoming prime minister discussed the idea of setting up No. 10 North with his closest aides ahead of the June special election that sent him back to Westminster, a person with knowledge of the conversations said.

But the idea was kept secret from all but his innermost team until Burnham announced it in late June. He did not even tell Simpson about it in advance. “It all happened very, very quickly,” she said.

After winning the June special election, Burnham scrambled to make No. 10 North a reality. He wanted to put it in Manchester — but where, exactly, wasn’t clear. He told an interviewer in early July that his preferred site was the planned Manchester Digital Campus in the Ancoats area of the city, but the site he named will only open fully in 2032. Burnham’s team looked at options for other government buildings in Manchester during a few frantic weeks of transition talks with the civil service.

A few days before he took power, Burnham and the civil service agreed on a temporary solution: Heron House, a red-brick office block that was renovated in 2019. No. 10 North occupies a floor that had been prepared for use by GCHQ, the U.K.’s intelligence and cyber-security agency. GCHQ was happy to vacate the floor; one senior government official said the agency was “bending over backwards to be helpful,” since it still has senior figures in other parts of the building who will find it useful to be near the PM. Less happy about the arrangement: Greater Manchester Police, which has been under more strain thanks to the burden of protecting the PM and building. It had an initial back-and-forth with London’s Metropolitan Police about when each force should be responsible for Burnham’s security, a person with knowledge of the talks said, and has raised concerns about who will pay the long-term bill. A Greater Manchester Police spokesperson said the force was still working with government departments on security arrangements and “the cost of this is yet to be determined.”

There was a recent model for moving a core government function from Westminster to the north, and Burnham’s team is relying on some of that expertise. Former PM Boris Johnson opened government offices outside London including the Treasury, which launched a campus in the north-eastern railway town of Darlington, conveniently near then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s large family home in North Yorkshire.

Beth Russell, the senior official who leads the Darlington campus, has been advising on the setup of No. 10 North. But the projects are not the same; Darlington has around 350 Treasury civil servants across all ranks (plus more from eight other departments) while No. 10 North currently has only 50 or so, many of them necessarily senior. That means Darlington’s boasts to have recruited 80 percent of its staff locally, including from nearby schools, are unlikely to be repeated in No. 10 North.

Heather Scott, the veteran Conservative who was leader of Darlington Council at the time, argued local recruitment had made the project a success; some young people “never thought that they would have an opportunity to work for a government office.” Local staff may also think (and therefore make policy) differently, because they live outside London. “They’re not in £5 Gail’s coffee world,” said one Labour official, referring to a high-end chain bakery.

Burnham has, though, poached many members of his old mayoral team to No. 10 North — some of them based fully in Manchester and others splitting their time between there and London. Simpson will be a political special adviser while others will be non-partisan civil servants including John Wrathmell, who influenced thinking on “Manchesterism,” Burnham’s vision of putting the needs of a place above political ideology by combining private investment with state intervention. They were joined in recent weeks by Amy Davies, who ran Burnham’s calendar as mayor; she has been given the job of executive assistant to the PM, according to two people with knowledge of the appointment. (No. 10 does not routinely comment on staffing matters.) Other civil servants who join No. 10 North will already have been based outside London or want to return to where they grew up.

But in the meantime, civil servants have descended on Manchester from afar. No. 10 North’s Director General Sam Lister — its most senior civil servant — was only appointed on the Friday before Heron House opened to staff the following Monday, July 20 — the day Burnham took power, two people with knowledge of the process said. Lister declined to comment for this article (civil servants are ordinarily barred from speaking in public). Department heads were asked to suggest staff who might transfer to No. 10 North less than a week before it opened. One senior Whitehall official described the process as a “tap on the shoulder” and said the method for choosing people had been “unclear.”

Many of the 50 or so civil servants currently in No. 10 North are still based outside Manchester — which is 180 miles from London — and living in hotels for part of the week. That includes Lister, whose commute from his north London home was photographed covertly by the Mail on Sunday. After the story broke, officials were advised to stay across a variety of hotels to keep a lower profile, an official with knowledge of the process said.

Civil servants assigned to work at No. 10 North have been turning up before 8 a.m. on Fridays to secure desks that Burnham will walk past. Some ministers hot-desk. Simpson has her own office, there is a suite for ministerial use and officials are “buying the nicer furniture that comes with being the center of government,” the same official with knowledge of the process said.

Cheerleaders for the No. 10 North agenda argue this rush to action shows the team is trying to do something that British governments seldom manage — behave like a start-up. Lister wrote on LinkedIn that the unit “must maintain an agile, scale-up, non-hierarchical mindset” to work, “solving problems in real time rather than waiting for perfect answers.”

Therefore officials are anxious not to appoint too many civil servants; a person with knowledge of the planning said the total number of civil servants in No. 10 North is likely not to exceed 150, a tiny number compared to the thousands who already work in government offices outside London.

Those who do move permanently will each be able to claim up to £14,000 in relocation costs under existing rules, said the same official with knowledge of the process quoted above. They would not be expected to take a pay cut.

And then it may all churn again. Putting No. 10 North in Heron House is still only a medium-term arrangement and is unlikely to last until the nearby digital campus is open in 2032, said the same person with knowledge of the planning quoted earlier. That means Burnham’s team is looking at whether it can move somewhere else — neither Heron House nor the digital campus — in the coming years.

Burnham has pledged to work from the office every week, mostly on Fridays. (Burnham’s advisers say he will have visited five times in the month since becoming prime minister.) Despite his love of casual clothes, some of the trappings of his office follow him around. Downing Street sent its front-of-house staff up north with Burnham during his visits; aides suddenly found themselves being waited on with cups of tea.

In recent weeks the Manchester base has become such a focus of conversation that Burnham insiders have begun referring to London’s most famous street address as “No. 10 South.” Those who work there now find themselves on the receiving end of the north-south insecurity. One Labour official retorted: “No, we are No. 10!”

Downing Street and the surrounding streets still hoard the vast bulk of state power; the old Georgian building is the one with the famous black door and Larry the Cat, the feline who has lived at No. 10 longer than several prime ministers. No. 10 North has no real cat, said Simpson — but it does boast a cardboard cutout of Larry.

“Our building at the moment is tricky,” Simpson explained. Unlike Downing Street, where Larry can come and go as he pleases, Heron House has security keypads that cannot be operated by paws.

All roads lead from London

Burnham is far from the first British PM to try to break London’s hold on Britain — the result of a highly centralized government, based in a city of global finance and tourism that is more than three times the size of its nearest U.K. rival.

London was always the seat of Britain’s establishment, but northern cities — as the seat of the industrial revolution — once held a power of their own. The first steam train ran through Darlington; Manchester has a statue of Abraham Lincoln in honor of mill workers who refused to touch slave-picked cotton. (It is next to the back door of No. 10 North.)

“There was a time during which people in the north had a load of control, agency and power by virtue of being part of the industries that powered this country — by having powerful MPs, councils that were well-funded, community institutions and organizations that were coherent and well-embedded in their in their place,” said Oliver Coppard, the Labour mayor of South Yorkshire, a county west of Manchester that includes Sheffield. “Those things have all gone, or largely gone, and communities are fractured. So people don’t have agency; they don’t know who to reach out to get things to change.”

Thirty years ago the U.K. had ceremonial mayors instead of empowered municipal ones, and no true parliaments for the nations outside England. Since then there has been an endless ratchet of pledges to move power outside Westminster. Labour’s Tony Blair set up democratic bodies for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London, but kept centrally-run agencies for England’s regional development (Simpson worked in one of them). Conservative David Cameron followed with his “northern powerhouse,” which gave some English cities mayors and funding deals. Boris Johnson, who built his profile as London’s mayor, extended the model to rural areas, seizing on the regional divides that drove the 2016 Brexit vote with his promise to “level up” Britain.

Yet England is still “very centralized” compared to the U.S. and its system of federalism, argues Simpson: “We are one of the most centralized countries in the Western Hemisphere. We have very little true devolution.” Henri Murison, director of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, a business lobby group, added: “Our country is basically designed so we only have a federal government, we have no state government.”

And so Burnham, who decided in 2016 in a pub in Westminster that he would quit London, where he was serving in parliament and had previously been in cabinet, and run for mayoral office, now pledges to go further still. His plan is shaped by those nine years as mayor, when he was infuriated by how the system worked in practice — or didn’t.

He has vowed to extend devolution to more areas of England and go beyond the traditional focus on economic investment, looking also at public services such as bus networks. He is planning to tidy up the messy patchwork of boundaries for police, health and fire services that he confronted in the role. He says he will give mayors more true economic freedom; they will be allowed to spend an allotment of national income tax, and commit to more expensive projects without national approval, giving them a predictable income stream rather than forcing them to chase new grants each year. Regional officials will have less frenzied oversight from Whitehall. (One senior Labour figure in a mayoral authority joked that they had to tell the central government how many thumb tacks they had bought.)

“The conversation is completely different from what it was,” said Greg Clark, the Conservative minister for decentralization under Cameron in the early 2010s. In the early 2010s, he explained, “the direction was very much centralization. There was no real debate about devolution from the city deals onwards. These things have now become irreversible.”

Burnham’s policy vision is contained in a rare joint statement of his Cabinet on July 31, less than two weeks after he came to office. Thrashed out over pre-handover “access talks” between Burnham’s top aides and Antonia Romeo, Britain’s most senior civil servant, it said ministers had agreed to “the full shape” of how the government’s structure will shift power away from London before the next election. The seven-page PDF is “what people in No. 10 are excited about,” said Murison. Burnham deliberately imposed his end point without a detailed plan instead of letting Whitehall pore over drafts; one ally said it was to avoid his plans being “sanitized.” Romeo sees it as a foundational document too; she believes she could become the cabinet secretary who presided over the greatest change to the state in decades. Officials are now in what they privately call a 100-day sprint to produce a detailed policy paper in the fall that will set out more about how Burnham intends to actually implement the vision.

In their old jobs in the mayoral authority or elsewhere in Whitehall, No. 10 North aides had already looked to Germany and France for inspiration, including on the countries’ regional approaches to industrial strategy. Senior officials have also asked the BBC for advice after the national broadcaster relocated several operations to Salford — a district of Greater Manchester — in 2011. “The BBC didn’t just land as an island,” said Simpson. “The BBC created a whole creative sector around it.”

They may need the advice. The Cabinet document promises a “major transfer of powers, resources and functions” from central government to mayors and councils; that signals that Burnham intends to shrink Britain’s national civil service, which has billowed by 100,000 people in six years to around 550,000 after the Covid pandemic and Brexit. That will be “uncomfortable,” admitted the person with knowledge of the planning quoted earlier.

Burnham and his team have given no clue of how many civil servants they plan to cut. (“I don’t think they know,” said the official with knowledge of the process quoted earlier in this article.) Simpson said it will mean moving “significant resource from Whitehall” and into local areas, but added: “I am not going to put a figure on what that is going to look like.”

Nervous civil servants will be kept waiting. While Burnham’s October budget will set out much of the detail, the trade-offs may only appear in their starkest form in next year’s Treasury spending review. The small print of that will likely show that money is being held back from some Whitehall departments, especially outside the most politically contentious areas such as defense and health, to spend more on local and regional government. Burnham’s choices are even more difficult because Labour’s last spending review, under Starmer, frontloaded spending early on but tightened it after 2027.

One of the toughest decisions, on where to define the boundaries of police forces, could put Burnham in potential conflict with his home secretary, Shabana Mahmood. Mahmood had already been working on a plan to reduce the number of police forces and consolidate some of their functions. One person with knowledge of her thinking said she is generally skeptical of how well devolution can work in practice, though another said she is not ideologically against it. (The Home Office declined to comment on these specifics.)

There could be tension too with the Treasury, whose responsibility for local economic growth has already been handed to No. 10 North. Clark — who negotiated early city deals alongside Miatta Fahnbulleh, a former civil servant who is now a key Burnham ally in his Cabinet — recalled the finance ministry being “hostile” to his “subversive” push for devolution. “There’s a Whitehall preference for tidiness and for everything to be identical,” he added.

Another tricky and expensive decision will be around what to do with England’s private water firms, which have provoked public outcry by paying dividends while presiding over a creaking Victorian infrastructure. Burnham has promised greater “public control” of utilities but stopped short of promising full nationalization, and aides are still working through multiple options, including a mutual form of ownership and whether debt-ridden Thames Water could be split into two entities, one for London and the other for the surrounding region. On many issues, Burnham has identified problems without yet knowing the solutions.

Thus far there are many quiet skeptics of Burnham’s approach but few vocal critics. The skeptics tend to focus on two separate dilemmas: how do you meaningfully move money out of Whitehall and meet demands to raise spending on healthcare and defense? And after all the devolution promises that came before it, will No. 10 North prompt meaningful change?

One senior trade union figure said devolution in itself — which ties up the government in machinery changes and takes years to have an impact — does not “float the boat” of voters who are more concerned about the cost of living now. They voiced concern that the varying quality of leadership in each area could reinforce inequality, which would be ironic for a PM promising “good growth in every postcode.” Some MPs are already nervous that Burnham is running his devolution agenda from Manchester — a prospering city that has little in common with left-behind towns, or communities in England’s rural south west.

Then there is the existential question hanging over Burnham’s Labour — can empowering left-behind communities persuade voters to desert opposition parties, including Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist Reform UK or the hard-right Restore Britain?

“This is the last bulwark against a fucking Farage-led government,” said one former Conservative government official. “I suspect it will be somewhat of a gimmick. But if it’s a gimmick that people respond to and vote for, is it all that bad?”

Some believe Burnham’s relentless focus on England’s individual regions misses the wider picture. “England as a constitutional and political entity does not figure,” said Jonathan Rutherford, who co-founded the socially conservative Blue Labour movement in the party. “And yet England is the place where the populist revolt is strongest. It’s where it originated. It was the strength behind the Brexit vote. It’s the source of the strongest form of nationalism — English, which is expressed through Reform and Restore.”

Others in Burnham’s own party worry that his plan could be too effective. After a series of strong electoral performances nationwide, Reform now controls many local councils, using its limited powers to scrap climate schemes, take down Pride flags and declare war on financial waste. A Labour government in London returning more authority to those councils would end up just empowering the opposition.

“I do worry about it,” said the senior Labour figure in a mayoral body quoted earlier in this story. They pointed out that mayors will soon have more say over police budgets and priorities. “You are putting quite a lot of power in the hands of people who could be quite malign in their intentions,” the senior Labour figure said.

Opposition parties sense an opportunity from Burnham’s extra funding; Ben Houchen, the Conservative mayor of Tees Valley in the north east, wants to hand money back to voters as a rebate. Burnham shut down the idea but Houchen told POLITICO Magazine he has spoken to Treasury officials and believes it will be possible, unless the government specifically blocks it. Simpson did not completely rule out such rebates, saying: “There’s going to be no ability to sit outside of the tax framework at a local level. That’s not what fiscal devolution is about. But flexibility about how that money is spent in a local area is going to be there.”

None of those concerns are deterring Burnham, whose allies say he can succeed because he will drive the devolution agenda personally from No. 10 North in a way no prime minister has done — and that he genuinely trusts the councils and mayors he’s empowering to serve their areas. “It is already changing things,” said Simpson.

Burnham’s team has met chief executives of mayoral authorities and hosted mayors for a meeting of a revived national economic council, set up by Gordon Brown in response to the 2008 financial crisis. There was potent symbolism in the way Burnham ran the meeting, forcing Cabinet ministers to listen and take note of the mayors rather than the other way round. Those at the table included the prime minister’s business adviser Varun Chandra, who is more used to talking to U.S. trade negotiators than regional leaders.

The prime minister told mayors he wanted to meet every two weeks.

‘It’s like Fort Knox in there’

Burnham has spent the last two weeks on a tour of the country he now leads, focusing on areas where Labour has fallen behind — a trial run for a general election the PM must call no later than 2029 to earn his own mandate for governing. It stands to be a five-way contest for power, pitting Labour against Reform and the Conservatives, Greens and Liberal Democrats, alongside Restore.

Almost no one in the Labour Party believes Burnham will be able to repeat the 172-seat majority that Starmer won at the last general election in 2024, leaving him a narrow window to do something radical while he commands the sway of parliament.

Burnham is already trying to connect his technical reforms to real change on the ground. The PM crisscrossed England this week with stops at the Wolverhampton Bus Terminal, where he announced the local mayoral authority would take control of the bus network, and to a homelessness charity in Newcastle where he asked local leaders to help his pledge to end rough sleeping. Newspaper front pages this summer have splashed repeatedly on a long-running plan to release some prisoners early because England’s Victorian jails don’t have enough room; one interview this week was dominated by questions about messages that Burnham traded with a person impersonating White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

All those issues are already crowding out his focus on reengineering the machinery of government. “I wish people might just engage with the seriousness of the proposition,” Burnham told The Times this week.

The vibes in Burnham’s inner circle remain good. “I’m not saying there aren’t going to be difficulties, but sometimes you’ve just got to get up and do it,” said one current government minister. “That was part of the problem under [Starmer’s] administration. There were always roadblocks; there was always a reason not to do something.”

And if Burnham is seeking to show he is among his people, the building itself does some of the work for him. Unlike Downing Street, imposing and behind iron security gates since 1989, Heron House sits on top of ordinary life in the city.

It faces a busy public square above a Slug & Lettuce chain cocktail bar, a branch of the ubiquitous pie store Greggs and trendy cafes serving Vietnamese drip coffee and matcha from Kyoto. Shoppers sit on a bench next opposite the low metal barriers and police guards on the door. The Ferris wheel at the square’s Christmas market is so tall that last year riders could see down onto the six-storey building’s roof. The local marriage registration office is on the ground floor. “You don’t really notice it,” shrugged a groom, Max Harris-Green, while his bride posed for photos a few meters from the new heart of government.

Put simply, it looks boring. The entrance goes unnoticed by many of those walking past, save for the occasional passer-by taking a selfie by the door.

Getting into the building itself is harder than Downing Street, whose custodians swing open the black front door for guests who have cleared the perimeter. Visitors to No. 10 North go through one of several discreet entrances — one of them next to a Chinese restaurant favored by the former Manchester United footballer Wayne Rooney — and successive doors. A Labour official said: “It’s like Fort Knox in there.” (No. 10 declined to give POLITICO Magazine a tour.)

Recent visitors speak of elevators with unmarked buttons, a bombproof room and special doors for agents who still work on other floors. Nearby during the lunch rush, one man in a shirt was overheard joking to three others: “Is this going on the MI6 credit card?”

But the success or failure of Burnham’s power shift will rest not on the building but the prime minister himself. Ironically for a man preparing to give up authority, Burnham will have to wield it firmly from the center to make his plan work. That even extends to where he sits.

No. 10 North will mean nothing without Burnham being there in person, said the official with knowledge of the process quoted earlier: “In the civil service, power always gravitates to the most senior people. You need the senior decision-making people there in person.” Former Chancellor Rachel Reeves was criticized for spending only five days working from the Treasury’s Darlington campus in almost two years after Labour took power. (Treasury officials insist she visited other places nearby.)

Burnham’s pledge to work from Manchester each week “can’t slip,” said one senior Labour aide, even as he faces more demands to travel abroad. “The whole center of power has to move there at the end of the week.”

Esther Webber contributed reporting from London.

Easier to build, faster to launch and more destructive than ever before, cyberattacks are getting a significant boost from frontier artificial intelligence (AI) models.

That was the message from European Union (EU) digital chief Henna Virkkunen at the early July 2026 launch of the EU’s Action Plan on Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence.

Virkkunen raised concerns that advanced AI models can now build cyber exploits in minutes or hours, posing a direct threat to the security of critical infrastructure and society at large.

While AI is a powerful asset for attackers, it is also a powerful tool for defenders.

There is, thankfully, another side to the story. While AI is a powerful asset for attackers, it is also a powerful tool for defenders. Organizations are leveraging AI to reduce their mean time to detect, respond and recover, and to stay ahead of advanced attacks.

The EU’s Action Plan on Cybersecurity and AI not only outlines a coordinated strategy for responding to AI-driven attacks, but also proposes a blueprint for structured access to advanced AI models for the use of IT security teams working within public authorities and private companies.

Adapt and survive

This is an important step forward but, in today’s AI-fueled threat landscape, there are three areas that EU organizations need to consider if they want to keep hackers in check. In short, they must adapt to survive.

The first is control and sovereignty. This is particularly important in Europe, where technological sovereignty has become an increasingly strategic objective.

Organizations need the ability to understand where their data has been created, moved and stored. This is central to their ability to retain meaningful control over the technologies they depend on. In practice, this means avoiding architectures that lock them into specific providers or limit their ability to integrate new capabilities and retaining the freedom to move data in, between, and out of vendors and service providers as their needs evolve. Vendor lock-in is a procurement concern, and one that many organizations seek to escape from.

Open source can help address this challenge. It enables organizations to reduce dependence on any single supplier, combine multiple technologies, switch providers, maintain systems independently or engage local service providers to do so on their behalf. This contrasts with most closed-source IT security products, where continuity of service is by no means a given, especially as vendors can change their commercial terms or exit the market altogether.

Additional advantages lie in code being publicly available for inspection and modification. Open-source technologies are continuously reviewed, maintained and improved by a global development community of people working together to make updates, address gaps, fix bugs and test security tools. They are built by the community for the community and the benefit of the industry.

The second consideration is economics. Typically, implementing IT security technologies involves a range of structural costs and licensing penalties from vendors that make little sense in a world of rising threats and stagnant or even shrinking budgets.

Some of these costs introduce unnecessary risk, like per-device fees that may force organizations to leave lower-priority endpoints unguarded. Some organizations also pay extra costs associated with add-on technologies for automating security processes to coordinate response workflows. Others are dealing with the considerable financial risks involved in using large language models (LLMs) that don’t adequately explain or keep a record of decisions for auditing purposes. During incident response, there are also the high costs and delays attached to retrieving historical data for analytical purposes.

Fragmented tools and restrictive pricing models force IT security teams into a risky game of balancing protection and cost. The objective should therefore be to make comprehensive security economically sustainable.

To achieve this, many teams are looking toward platforms that consolidate monitoring, alerting and response, where pricing is based on compute power and storage.

Organizations are embedding AI agents across the cyber stack, automating high-volume and repetitive tasks. This is not to replace human analysts, but to free them for the work that demands human judgment.

Technology architecture matters too. Sprawling estates of disconnected security tools create operational and financial costs. Bringing logs, signals and alerts together in a unified platform can give teams a full, real-time picture of all activities and behaviors occurring across an IT architecture. The best of these platforms will incorporate AI capabilities to identify threats and automate analytical and management tasks, including reverse-engineering malware, compiling actionable case summaries and predicting future vulnerabilities.

The third consideration is readiness for innovation: agentic security. AI agents can take the pressure off overwhelmed security operations center (SOC) analysts by automatically handling tasks such as data collection, threat prioritization, alert correlation and response planning.

The transition to an agentic SOC is already underway. Organizations are embedding AI agents across the cyber stack, automating high-volume and repetitive tasks. This is not to replace human analysts, but to free them for the work that demands human judgment.

In an agentic SOC, instead of spending hours manually triaging across multiple consoles just to reconstruct the full picture of a threat, analysts will increasingly delegate it to AI agents. This avoids slower response times and longer exposure windows, reducing cyber risks to the organization. Analysts can focus their time and skills on supervision, governance, context and the high-impact decisions for which human expertize remains essential.

Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), a public research university in Belgium, illustrates the value of getting that foundation right. Academic freedom has resulted in a highly decentralized IT estate supporting thousands of researchers running their own systems, sensitive research and personal data. Just three engineers are able to operate detection and investigation across 64 billion events and more than 300 servers, because VUB has centralized its data, normalized it for analysis, and built detection and investigation capabilities on a foundation it can control.

Clear-eyed assessment

Getting these fundamentals right will be vital as the EU forges ahead on its stated ambition of scaling up Europe’s AI-driven cybersecurity capabilities. In fact, a clear-eyed assessment of how an organization stands on these issues today is a prerequisite to that organization getting the best from AI-based cybersecurity in the future.

Multi-cloud architectures, expanding volumes of data and increasingly complex digital estates have revealed serious gaps in tried-and-tested ways of protecting digital systems.

There is also a compliance dimension. The EU Action Plan explicitly connects its ambitions with Europe’s existing cybersecurity and technology framework, including the AI Act, the NIS2 Directive and the Cyber Resilience Act.

Yet, the environment these rules are designed to protect is itself changing. Multi-cloud architectures, expanding volumes of data and increasingly complex digital estates have revealed serious gaps in tried-and-tested ways of protecting digital systems. Now, a growing onslaught of AI-enabled attacks adds another dimension, as adversaries can discover vulnerabilities, develop exploits and operate at a speed and scale that human-only security processes will struggle to match.

The answer to this cannot be to leave AI in the hands of attackers.

Europe is right to explore how advanced AI can be put to work for defenders too. But access to powerful models will only deliver results if organizations have first established the control, data foundations and operating models needed to use them effectively.

Attackers are moving toward machine-scale cybersecurity. Defenders need to be ready to do the same.

It’s time to fight fire with fire.

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The Iran war is giving fresh life to Somali pirates who prey on commercial ships laden with fuel and goods – a threat that had lain dormant for years.

Earlier this week, a group of pirates seized a cargo ship off the coast of Somalia – at least the fifth such attack since April, according to Windward, a global maritime intelligence firm. Windward concluded that the pirates are likely resurgent in part because nations have shifted naval resources to the Middle East because of the war.

In addition to the hit this week, Somali pirates have seized at least three tankers carrying oil and fertilizer – two commodities that have seen the highest price spikes due to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. In July, pirates seized a ship carrying chemicals off the coast of Yemen. The seized tankers are now being held off the coast of Somalia and dozens of crew members are hostages.

Though Somali pirates so far have seized relatively few ships by sheer numbers, it represents another threat to shipping companies already severely strained by recent attacks on vessels around the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb Strait on the Red Sea, said Brett Erickson, managing principal of the consultancy Obsidian Risk Advisors.

“We’re now looking at multiple vectors that are increasing pricing for maritime companies, forcing companies to de-risk entirely, and posing a huge threat to the global economy,” he said. “The threat from Somali pirates doesn’t need to be significant on its own, but because it compounds with all the other factors, it makes a fairly large difference at this point every time they take action.”

A White House official said the U.S. is the largest contributor to Somalia’s security and suggested it is “false” to “blame localized piracy attacks on recent regional conflicts with Iran.”

“The United States maintains robust, highly capable maritime security forces in the region that are fully equipped to protect critical shipping lanes, including oil transport, while simultaneously addressing broader regional threats,” the official said.

Regardless of what is driving the uptick in attacks, the pirates are also now active again in an area that has served as a relief valve for global oil shipping routes as an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.

According to Windward, “Somali piracy is back as an active operational threat to commercial shipping in the Western Indian Ocean and southern Gulf of Aden.”

Somali pirates attacked hundreds of ships between 2005 and 2011, causing an estimated $18 billion in damages annually. However, the threat was largely neutralized after sustained efforts by NATO and the Combined Maritime Forces, a 47-nation naval partnership that includes the United States. Now, American ships are protecting tankers crossing the Strait of Hormuz.

If the situation worsens, it could pose increasingly severe risk to the global economy, said Erickson. In the short term, fewer ships will be willing to take the risk of traveling in the region. It also means greater shipping costs, higher insurance prices and increased spending on private security. For now, the increased cost of a barrel of oil and tightness in the market means it’s a more attractive target for the Somali pirates.

“This is obviously a very, very lucrative business for them, and right now they have a far lower risk of American reaction to it because so many resources are tied up in the Middle East in general,” he said. “They’re profiteers, and this is an opportunity to profit.”

President Donald Trump’s Tuesday backpedal from threats to impose 50 percent tariffs on Canada sparked a round of cries of TACO — that “Trump always chickens out.”

But even the administration’s adversaries concede Trump’s latest maximalist menace accomplished something important: unsticking more than a year-and-a-half of stalled trade talks between the two nations and pushing them into serious negotiations.

After months of fitful talks, Canadian and U.S. officials have in the weeks since Trump made his threat made significant headway toward resolving disputes over aluminum, dairy, alcohol and other key trade issues, potentially with some significant concessions from the administration.

That wouldn’t have happened without the president’s July threat to slap new and massive tariffs on items like beer, furs and hockey equipment, Canadian officials, former Democratic administration officials, business representatives and others told POLITICO.

“This was seen as, ‘Well, this is kind of outrageous, so we better pay more attention to it,’” said Canadian Sen. Peter Boehm, chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. “There was always a sense that there have to be talks, but invoking [the tariffs] did provide the leverage to do that, at 50 percent.”

And Véronique Proulx, the president and CEO of the Quebec Chambers of Commerce Federation, said that the threat “put pressure on the Canadian government to come to the table.”

“Very little had been happening over the past year,” Proulx said.

The prospect of punishing new levies, which could have hobbled the Canadian economy, is the latest example of a uniquely Trumpian negotiating ploy that relies on an ultimatum to gain leverage. The president touted the tactic for decades including in his book “Art of the Deal” and he’s used it repeatedly in his second term — and not just on trade.

To push NATO countries to increase their defense spending, he threatened to withdraw from the alliance and upend eight decades of global world order. When Trump wanted Panama to lower fees on U.S. ships passing through its canal, he threatened to retake the waterway. That threat was withdrawn only after the country approved a deal that allowed U.S. firms – instead of Chinese companies — to control ports on opposite ends of the canal.

And when Trump wanted Canada to drop a digital services tax targeting U.S. tech companies in 2025, he threatened to terminate all trade discussions with Canada, a move that scuttled the tax push.

“This is one case where his maximalist demand worked,” said one person close to the White House. “I don’t think this was [a TACO] actually. I think this is going to end up being an example of a successful negotiation.”

The tactic hasn’t always been successful, though. France still has a digital services tax despite Trump’s threat to impose a 100 percent tariff on wine. And threats to bomb Iran to the “Stone Ages” have not forced Tehran to capitulate to his demands.

Still, the latest threat on Canada appears to have produced some movement between the two countries. While it remains to be seen if Trump officially signs off on a deal, the two sides are negotiating. Canadian and American officials met once again on Wednesday to hash out a formal deal before Friday at midnight, the new deadline to reach an agreement.

Among the proposals are lower U.S. tariffs on metals, which risk backlash from protectionist circles in Washington, according to three people close to the process. On the Canada side, concessions on programs to protect their dairy and lumber industries and a commitment to back off streaming taxes — as an expected rollback remains in flux — are under consideration, while negotiators remain in talks over other long-standing irritants including tariff on automobiles.

And three days is a lifetime in trade negotiations.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai said that Trump has “consistently proven skeptics wrong” and “leveraged the power and might of the U.S. economy – the world’s biggest and best consumer market – to secure nearly 20 trade deals with historic market-access concessions from Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, and the EU.”

Trump’s trade threats are existential for Canada, which sends roughly 72 percent of its exports to the United States.

While the U.S. tariff threat was targeted toward specific industries and only hit about 5 percent of U.S. imports from Canada, Wilbur Ross, Trump’s first-term Commerce secretary, said he believes it will force Canadian concessions.

“The 50 percent would have been a real burden because 50 percent is more than the exporter can absorb. It’s more than the importer can absorb, so it would have been a real penalty for them,” Ross said.

Canadian negotiators made repeated trips to Washington ahead of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreements July renewal deadline. But they have largely been kept on the sidelines so far regarding the USMCA update, as U.S. officials insisted that they would not negotiate unless Canada dropped its retaliation on U.S. liquor and automobiles.

When Ottawa offered what it saw as concessions — like peeling back a digital services law that would have raked in billions from U.S. tech giants — the Trump administration dismissed them as irrelevant to the negotiations. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Canada doesn’t “really get credit for doing something bad and then undoing it.”

“What [the Americans] are telling me — and they’ve been telling me for the last 18 months — is first of all, ‘Canada, get over it. You’re not special. I know you think you are. We are now including tariffs on everyone. There’s no exemptions for anybody,’” said one Canadian business official, also granted anonymity to discuss sensitive dynamics around the trade talks.

Productive talks between the U.S. and Canada could also pave the way to begin trilateral discussions with Mexico on the future of the trade agreement.

“They have struggled for a while to get the same attention as Mexico. A deal this week would in a way present the opportunity to move ahead bilaterally,” said Kate Kalutkiewicz, who served as a top trade adviser during Trump’s first administration.

Even as Trump has regularly reached for tariffs as a way to bully countries, the threat against Canada marked a new frontier. The president relied on Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a Great Depression-era law that had never been used to impose tariffs, to threaten about $20 billion worth of Canadian goods.

A Democrat working as a lobbyist for Canadian interests, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the political dynamics of the trade talks, added that there is “no question” the tariffs “got Canada to the table.”

“Canada was so reluctant to put a deal on the table because they felt that they would be put on the clock to make more concessions above and beyond what they already did.”

That’s why Trump’s threat was needed to push Ottawa to the table, said Kelly Ann Shaw, who served as deputy assistant for international economic affairs during Trump’s first term.

“The two sides appear to have accomplished more in three weeks than in a year of discussion,” she said.

The fact that the threat spurred Canada to the table may encourage the Trump administration to use it again, particularly because these tariffs never went into effect and therefore won’t face legal challenges.

“To me, the 338s, are in some ways, the new IEEPA tariffs,” said one trade lobbyist, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the negotiations, referring to a law Trump used to impose global tariffs, which were struck down by the Supreme Court in February.

Some U.S. businesses are already growing more comfortable with the reality that tariff threats are here to stay — particularly as they’ve watched other countries make concessions that would have been unlikely under previous administrations.

One business official, granted anonymity to speak candidly about private discussions with industry colleagues, said that the administration’s threats are bringing trading partners to the table and opening discussions on longstanding issues.

“Depending on the sector, you’re certainly seeing more understanding of how this is working and how this is being implemented, and you are seeing some of those historic logjam issues being broken,” the official said. “As industry gets more understanding of how this America First trade policy can create those opportunities, I think that there is more acceptance for being able to move forward in this way.”

Oliver Ward, Michael Blanchfield, Zi-Ann Lum and Mickey Djuric contributed to this report.

Have we tried turning off society and turning it back on again?

The Treasury Department on Wednesday announced that it will buy back more of its own bonds, a move that partially reversed a selloff in longer-term U.S. debt that is threatening to drive up politically important interest rates on mortgages and other consumer loans.

A number of factors have been pushing up yields on longer-term debt to their highest levels since 2007, such as concern that the conflict with Iran is showing little sign of resolution, growing competition for financing with borrowers that are building out artificial intelligence infrastructure and widening U.S. government deficits.

Treasury said it would “at least double” the size of its buybacks, in which the department reabsorbs older debt securities with a maturity of at least 10 years. The previous ceiling was $2 billion per operation, and that number will be at least $4 billion, effective Sept. 9 and through Nov. 4.

The move is the latest by Secretary Scott Bessent to affect U.S. Treasury yields. Earlier this month, the department conducted a joint intervention with Japan to boost the yen, which had been trading in July at its weakest level against the dollar in roughly four decades. Bessent warned in January that turmoil in Japanese government bonds was spilling into the Treasury market.

Treasury also recently signaled the possibility that it could decide to issue less longer-term debt in coming quarters.

BRUSSELS — EU countries will be able to fund small local media without asking Brussels for permission, according to a draft of the bloc’s revised state aid rulebook obtained by POLITICO.

Government subsidies to businesses are strictly disciplined by Brussels under state aid rules, but there are exceptions. These are spelled out in frameworks, with the master one, the General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER), up for revision at the end of the year. 

The European Commission put out an initial draft for public consultation in February with a view to finalizing it by year’s end. The updated, 200-page draft gives a leg-up to local and independent journalism by allowing governments to fund small- and medium-sized outlets without formal vetting by Brussels.

“SMEs active in the press sector play an essential role in safeguarding media pluralism, cultural and linguistic diversity, democratic participation and citizens’ access to reliable information, particularly at local and regional level,” the Commission writes, highlighting structural challenges arising from the digital transformation of media markets.

To qualify for assistance, beneficiaries would need to fulfil at least one item in a Commission checklist that includes preserving media pluralism and diversity of opinion, transitioning to digital content while also preserving print editions. 

“The exemption covers aid pursuing cultural objectives — including linguistic diversity, the digitalization of press publications or the promotion of printed publications,” said Carole Maczkovics, of Counsel at Covington & Burling, of the press measures. 

Many European media outlets are struggling to stay viable, with print readership declining and publishers complaining that online platforms, such as search giant Google, are reducing referral traffic to their websites.

Broad scope

The GBER covers most sectors of the economy, from agriculture to transport, and is the target of intense lobbying from EU capitals, traditionally torn between big government spenders led by Germany and smaller member states, including the pro-free-trade Nordics, which complain that national subsidies distort the EU single market.

Countering the stereotype, Denmark was a leading advocate to extend GBER exemptions to the media. In a consultation response last year, the Danes said the state aid framework should be broadened to include private and public media providers “to promote harmonisation and simplify the general management of state aid in the media sector.”

The latest GBER draft focuses strongly on SMEs and innovation, as well as on the social dimension of state aid — as it expands on conditions for money that governments can put in training programs and the inclusion of disadvantaged workers. 

But it may not necessarily make things easier.

“Although the revision aims to simplify the State aid framework, it may ultimately make it more detailed and prescriptive,” warned Maczkovics. She added that the Commission’s gradual shift from broad aid categories to narrowly defined exemptions may sway EU countries to design measures that don’t quite fit the real needs of companies — for the sake of avoiding a notification.

Industry, for its part, is keeping a close eye on state aid exemptions, with airport lobby ACI Europe quick to react to the latest leak. 

“The revised GBER remains too restrictive for Europe’s smaller regional airports,” said Philippe Sacré, the association’s secretary general. He was referring to aid exemptions that would be restricted to airports handling over 500,000 passengers a year, according to the Commission’s draft. 

The Commission’s latest State aid Scoreboard shows that EU countries spent €168.2 billion in state aid in 2024, with Germany, France and Italy the top spenders. Capitals are increasingly taking advantage of block exemptions, with GBER representing close to 70 percent of all active exemption measures.

Tommaso Lecca contributed reporting.

A full three decades ago, as Bill Clinton turned 50 in the midst of his successful 1996 reelection campaign, he was sounding even then in an autumnal mood.

“I have more yesterdays than tomorrows” he used to say often that year, a wistfulness that caused those of us who covered him to puzzle. What’s with this misty nostalgia? It was literally true, unless he expected to live 100, that he probably had more yesterdays than tomorrows. But fifty is typically the point when people realize they are no longer exactly young. It is hardly an age that merits a self-conception as old. Clinton’s perspective, however, doubtless left him with an appreciation of the fragility of life. He never met his biological father — a traveling salesman who married five times and died at age 28 in a car accident, three months before the future president was born.

Yet Clinton himself has proved reasonably durable, especially for a man who had serious heart surgery at age 58. The 42nd president turns 80 today — at last at an age that amply justifies a more searching look back on life.

Rest assured that no one in 1996 was contemplating the possibility that the president 30 years later would be a man who is actually two months older than Clinton — much less that this man would be President Donald Trump, who at that time had already been famous as a real estate magnate and professional self-promoter for 15 years or so.

Above all, I think few people then were imagining that the country in 2026 would itself be feeling so old — or, at a minimum, so surly and so bereft of a unifying vision of the future. The very essence of the most powerful and divisive political movement since former President Ronald Reagan’s is expressly backward-looking — Make America Great Again.

Many of the habits that today infuse American politics — the ones that make it so remorseless and infused with indignation and disdain — were present in nascent form in Clinton’s presidency. At the time, those developments seemed exotic — there was scant notion that they represented a shabby new norm.

In the early days, this brand of contempt-driven politics often revolved around arguments about Bill Clinton’s public and private character. This was a theme of his 1992 election against George H.W. Bush, his 1996 election against Bob Dole, and it even shadowed the 2004 dedication of his presidential library in Little Rock, Ark.

I am hardly a Clinton intimate. I haven’t been in his company in a decade. At one time, however, I probably knew as much about his presidency — its animating ideas, its decisive moments, its distinctive personalities — as anyone who had not actually served in it. This came from six years covering his White House for the Washington Post, and another two working on a book that aimed to synthesize his years in office and take a preliminary cut at assessing their historical weight. In both journalistic and historical terms, much of this time was devoted to thinking about competing appraisals of Clinton’s character.

It is an argument without end in part because the positive and negative elements of Clinton’s character, the light and the shadows, seemingly flow from the same source: an intense need to win, to matter, to seduce, to prove himself in the world. Imagine if people around Bill Clinton in 1974, the year he ran unsuccessfully for Congress — Hillary Rodham, then a girlfriend but not yet a spouse, showed up in Arkansas to help — had been given a crystal ball to peer into the future. These people would not be surprised to learn that a future president was in their midst; His talent, ambition, and idealism were that obvious. Nor would they be surprised to learn how his campaigns and presidency would at various turns be nearly derailed. As early biographer David Maraniss documented, even then Clinton had a reputation for sexual vagrancy, and the patterns of heedlessness, deception, and hypocrisy such a lifestyle inevitably requires.

He’s been out of political office for more than a quarter-century — as long as he was ever in it, beginning with his first victory as Arkansas attorney general in 1976. By my lights, the years since he yielded the Oval Office to George W. Bush (who turned 80 last month) in January 2001 have abundantly ratified the proposition that the country could do worse — at key junctures plainly has done worse–than Clinton’s character or his record, the strengths and infirmities alike.

As he turns 80, and the country contemplates a post-Trump future two years from now, it seems to me there are at least four ways in which Clinton has prevailed in the great character argument woven throughout his life.

Responsibility

This is a place where my views have not changed much from what I thought at the time and what I think now. A paradox of Clinton’s presidency is that, however reckless he was in his personal life — culminating in the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal and Republicans’ unsuccessful attempt to evict him from office through impeachment — he was supremely responsible in his use of power and his willingness to take sober risks for what he thought was right. Yes, he would over-agonize on hard choices — on issues from trade to welfare to war in the Balkans. But at the end of the day — sometimes it could be a very long day — on big subjects there was rarely much variance between what Clinton genuinely thought was the right decision and what he did.

A good many of his policies are out of favor now within his own party. But the political and policy landscape he was navigating was much different than today. Clinton was a thoroughly political creature, but he was not an unduly cynical one — he was willing frequently to risk his political self-interest on behalf of what he conceived of as the public interest.

Persuasion

One reason Bill Clinton and his brand of centrist politics can seem antiquated is that the past generation has been defined by a whole different emphasis: the politics of mobilization. Under this later school of politics, elections are won principally by sharpening divisions and elevating the moral stakes. The aim is not to win over skeptics through the power of reasoned argument. It is to convince your own side that the other side is so repugnant in its character and aims that they should rally behind you and turn out in the biggest possible numbers.

Clinton would in most of his campaigns give a nod to trying to explain what the other side believed, and why he believed his approach is better. “I think one of the ways you win elections is by talking straight with people and giving them permission to vote against you,” Clinton said a few years ago on a podcast. What he meant was that effective arguments don’t hector audiences or assert moral superiority, or the other side’s moral iniquity. They invite or even inspire people to think about an issue differently.

In short, the politics of mobilization harnesses the power of contempt; the politics of persuasion employs the language of respect. Mobilization politics tends to deal in ideological and cultural abstractions like free markets versus socialism, or “traditional values” versus sexual freedom — the kind of debates that are especially potent at pushing people to decide “which side are you on?” Persuasion politics is more likely to center on the concrete human dimensions of policy choices — here’s what an expansion of childcare tax credits might mean for you.

You could argue which brand of politics is more effective, and for the most part advocates of mobilization politics in recent years on left and right have been prevailing. But it’s hard to see how the politics of persuasion is not a more inspiring expression of American character, and also more likely to resolve serious long-term debates.

The fight for power

When Clinton opened his presidential library in Little Rock in 2004, the late Peter Jennings of ABC News in an interview baited Clinton about a recent survey of historians that rated his presidency reasonably well overall, but second to last (ahead only of Richard Nixon) in “moral authority.” Clinton said curtly that the historians were wrong, adding, “I don’t really care what they think.” Jennings replied: “Excuse me, Mr. President. I can feel it across the room. You care very deeply.”

Clinton then snapped: “You don’t want to go here, Peter. You don’t want to go here. Not after what you people did. And the way you — your network — what you did with [Whitewater prosecutor] Kenneth Starr. The way your people repeated every little sleazy thing he leaked. No one has any idea of what that’s like.”

The new library had an alcove about Clinton’s 1998 impeachment and subsequent acquittal called, “The Fight for Power.” The scandal, the exhibit argued, was simply the Republicans’ effort to overturn an election they lost.

At the time, I believed this was mostly Clinton’s tortured rationalization for his own mistakes. Events since then, however, have swung the historical argument irrefutably in his favor. In the 1990s we spent months and even years covering such inane issues as whether the newly elected Clinton acted properly to fire long-term employees of the office that booked White House charter flights and hotels for the media. Now, Trump asserts the right to eliminate cabinet departments and agencies without congressional approval — and the stories often get lost in the rush of other news. There is not a credible argument that says Bill and Hillary Clinton’s Whitewater land investments in the 1970s were a worthy subject for ethics inquiries and criminal probes but the Trump family’s crypto investments and overseas deals while the company founder is in the Oval Office are no big deal.

Clinton was right that the attacks on his character were often simply not on the level—but a proxy for other agendas.

Perseverance

In 2000, as Bill Clinton’s presidency was winding down and Hillary Clinton was waging a successful campaign for New York Senate, there was a political skull session at the White House involving a trusted roster of aides and strategists. As one of them described it to me later, Bill Clinton brought up the elephant in the room. Female voters in particular, he noted, wanted to understand why Hillary had stayed with Bill during the sex scandal. The mood was briefly awkward until Hillary Clinton said good-naturedly that she wanted to know the answer too.

“Because you’re a sticker!” the president replied, jabbing the air for emphasis.

Actually, it seems to me, both Clintons are. Across many decades, they have stayed married, and stayed in the fight over the issues they care about—amid plenty of victories and setbacks alike. That is a kind of character, too.

These days, Bill Clinton’s public appearances are fewer. At times he looks frail. His skeptics include many people in his own party. Yet, on his 80th birthday, the main question seems to be less about his character than the country’s: Is there a pathway to a destination in which more people believed with him that politics can illuminate the best and most generous and inspiring parts of national identity? Clinton may be getting old, but that idea should be made young again.

President Donald Trump is waiting for Iran to cave to his economic pressure. Tehran may be willing to wait even longer.

Even as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent promises a level of economic isolation “never seen before,” former Trump administration officials, U.S. ambassadors and other Middle East experts are skeptical that tightening the economic vise will force Iran to relinquish its desire to toll ships passing through the State of Hormuz and make the other concessions Trump is demanding to bring an end to the war.

“It’s an attrition campaign, and I am sure Treasury tweaks this or that to fill gaps or expand coverage of sanctions,” said James Jeffrey, a former ambassador who served in the Middle East during three presidential administrations, including Trump’s first term. “But, it’s hard to believe [there will be] something decisive after 20 years of U.S. sanctions and Iranian experience of going around them.”

It’s an acknowledgement that underscores the asymmetry of the situation. The Trump administration is staring down a consequential midterm election amid an unpopular war that has sent oil prices back up to roughly $90 a barrel and helped push long-term borrowing costs to their highest level in nearly two decades as hope dims that a peace deal is near.

Iran’s leaders, meanwhile, see the conflict as existential, giving Tehran reason to absorb the extraordinary economic pain rather than accept terms it believes could imperil the regime — especially as U.S. inflation remains elevated and treasuries sell off.

The yield on 30-year U.S. government bonds, a figure Trump has in the past been attuned to, jumped on Tuesday to its highest level since just before the global financial crisis.

The increase in the yield to its highest level in nearly two decades isn’t solely because of the six-month war; global fuel shortages and broader instability have kept energy prices higher for longer, increasing the threat of persistent inflation. And that’s heaped even more risk on global bond markets that have repeatedly blanched at Trump-related shocks.

“We are in a situation where we’re spending more and more to finance more and more,” said Julia Coronado, founder of MacroPolicy Perspectives. And the war has created “a riskier world full of more frictions, full of more supply shocks.”

Iran’s outsized incentive to muscle through the pain is partly why some former administration officials doubt that the naval blockade, while unprecedented in its scale in the modern era or whatever new strategies Bessent may unveil, will change Iran’s calculus.

“I think the economic pressure would need to hit them in new ways we haven’t seen so far to change the mindset of the regime,” said one former Trump administration official, granted anonymity to candidly assess the impact of the U.S.’s economic pressure campaign.

The administration has yet to indicate what further action it plans to take, but options include going after major Chinese banks that facilitate Iran’s oil trade, expand secondary sanctions on countries doing business with Iran and confiscating Iranian assets under U.S. jurisdiction instead of just freezing them.

Iranian leaders publicly mocked U.S. efforts to sanction them into submission.

“Americans think squeezing Iran harder will win concessions that were never part of the agreement,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, posted on X Tuesday.

“Bessent and [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth are way out of their league,” he wrote. “Stop waiting for the clown crew to pull a rabbit out of their hat and clean up the mess you made.”

White House aides, however, continue to contend that the leverage is on its side.

“The crushing sanctions and one of the most successful blockades that have crippled Iran’s economy and has left Iran completely broke,” said one administration official, granted anonymity to share the U.S.’s thinking. “There are many levers the president can crank harder in the weeks and months ahead.”

In the half-year since the Iran war began, the president has deployed an array of pressure tactics to choke Iran economically, including physically preventing the country from selling its most important export — oil — as part of an ongoing naval blockade of Iranian ports. The administration has also sanctioned foreign buyers of Iranian oil, targeted the country’s shadow fleet of ships that ferries it and sought to cut the country off from the financial networks it uses to move money.

That economic pressure has sent Iran’s economy, which was already troubled before the war, into a deeper tailspin. Now, Iran is grappling with year-over-year inflation of 88 percent, long lines and rationing at gas pumps and food prices that have more than doubled.

But those who have worked on previous Iran negotiations say that’s far from enough to get the regime to cave, especially after six months of U.S. bombing that has killed, by Tehran’s own measure, more than 3,000 Iranians.

“It’s undeniable that there is economic pressure. The question is whether there is a breaking point, and I would say for a regime that is fighting for its life and has never hesitated to transfer economic pain to its population, there is no breaking point,” said Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s Iran project director, who helped work to bridge differences between Iran and world powers during negotiations over the 2015 nuclear agreement.

Yet Trump continued to project patience on Tuesday, signaling that he was prepared to let the pressure campaign play out.

“There are no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled, with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Naval Blockade remains in full force and effect. The Hormuz Strait is open and operating. All water mines have been removed or detonated. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

A senior White House official, granted anonymity to discuss the situation in Iran, insisted that Iran will cave long before the pain in the U.S. or world markets become intolerable.

“Ultimately we want a deal, but in the interim, the Iranian economy is tanking … people are lining up for gas, just for a half gallon of gas. And there’s a lot of civil unrest going on in Iran, that’s not being played on the news for whatever reason,” the official said late last week. “We’re fine if that’s the route they want to take.”

Still, there are signs inside the White House that the economic impacts are a growing concern. Vice President JD Vance last week said on Fox News that the administration’s first goal in the Iran war was to “keep oil and gas cheap for Americans all over the country.” The president, meanwhile, has repeatedly insisted voters will bear the pain of higher gas prices for an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The voters have a more dyspeptic view. A Reuters/Ipsos survey released this week showed Trump’s approval rating at 33 percent, the lowest level of his presidency. Roughly 80 percent of Americans — 87 percent of Democrats and 71 percent of Republicans — think U.S. involvement in Iran “will go on for an extended period of time,” the poll found.

But some former Trump administration officials, however, are holding out hope that patience will be rewarded and that the administration’s economic pressure campaign will work, in part because they see the other options on the table, including putting U.S. boots on the ground in Iran, as politically untenable.

Fred Fleitz, Trump’s former National Security Council chief of staff and vice chair of the American First Policy Institute’s American Security, predicted that the U.S. could be “dealing with a different Iran” in 30 to 60 days.

“I think patience is the best approach,” Fleitz said. “I don’t believe that a large-scale military attack right now is going to make a difference in changing the regime’s position, and I strongly oppose the idea of seizing Kharg Island or sending in American troops. The American people don’t want that. That would really bog us down in a quagmire.”

ROME — In the barns where the milk for Italy’s most famous cheese is produced, the fans have barely stopped whirring for two months. As temperatures across northern Italy push close to 40 degrees Celsius, cows stand almost motionless, tongues lolling, while automated sprinklers soak their backs.

Italy is now enduring its fourth major heat wave of an exceptionally brutal summer. The prolonged heat is piling costs on the €4 billion industry behind Parmigiano Reggiano, forcing farmers to spend heavily on cooling their animals while drought and dwindling water supplies make it harder and more expensive to grow the forage needed to feed them.

Farmers have received support from regional authorities, the EU and a producers’ consortium to help them adapt to the heat, but they say the funding falls short of the investment increasingly required.

For producers of the protected cheese, there is no possibility of escaping somewhere cooler. Under the strict rules governing Parmigiano Reggiano’s EU Protected Designation of Origin — that secures its added value on the market — the cows, their milk and the cheese must remain tied to a defined area of northern Italy. At least 75 percent of their forage must also be grown locally.

Dairy cows can begin suffering from heat stress at around 25C, depending on humidity, according to Giovanni Buonaiuto, a vet with the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium, which defends producers’ interests. Their digestive system generates considerable heat as they break down food, while cows have relatively few sweat glands with which to disperse it. “It’s as if the cow has a radiator inside her,” Buonaiuto told POLITICO.

As temperatures rise, cows eat less and stand for longer to expose themselves to moving air. They rest and ruminate less, milk production falls and prolonged heat can also affect fertility.

Buonaiuto said milk production has fallen by about 10 percent on average during the summer, although the impact varies sharply between farms depending on their cooling systems.

Overheating herds

Federica Dall’Aglio, who raises 400 cattle on the plains near the city of Parma, said each cow was producing five to six kilograms less milk a day, a fall of roughly 20 percent, despite fans and water sprays installed to protect her herd.

The cows now spend much of their time beneath the fans and water sprays, she added, as they’re reluctant to move away from the cooling systems.

Outside the barns, farmers are reorganizing their working days around the heat too. Some now cut and collect hay at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m., Buonaiuto said, before the morning heat causes the hay to crumble. By 8 a.m. or 9 a.m., it can already be too hot.

Keeping the cows cool comes at a high cost.

Luca Cotti, a sixth-generation dairy farmer and president of farmers’ association Coldiretti in the northern Emilia-Romagna region, said electricity consumption in barns can double or even triple during extreme heat as cooling systems run almost continuously.

He recalled worrying about winter 20 years ago, with the weather freezing drinking water and other systems in the barn. Now investment is directed toward surviving summer.

The new normal

Extreme summer heat was once exceptional and might last a week before temperatures eased, Cotti said. Now, he said, “it’s normal.” This year, “since June, it has never let up.”

For some smaller producers with older facilities, the question is whether the investment is still worthwhile.

Dall’Aglio’s family has been investing in cooling systems for around 15 years, recently adding solar panels to help offset their growing electricity needs.

Across the Parmigiano Reggiano supply chain, such technology is becoming commonplace. Around half of its dairy farms, responsible for 70 percent of its milk, have invested in advanced cooling systems, including fans, motion-sensitive water sprays and automated temperature monitoring, according to the consortium president, Nicola Bertinelli.

The remaining 30 percent of milk comes largely from farms in the cooler hills and mountains, he said.

With persistently high temperatures, insufficient rainfall and water levels in major Alpine lakes approaching historic lows, authorities in the Po River basin, which supports agriculture across northern Italy through a network of tributaries and canals, have declared a high level of drought severity.

Alfalfa, an important source of forage for the cows, is relatively resistant to drought because of its deep roots. But Dall’Aglio said her family had already been irrigating heavily to ensure a good hay crop this year.

When rivers run too low for irrigation, some farmers have to pump groundwater instead, which can make irrigation around five times more expensive because of the energy required to extract it, according to Lorenzo Catellani of farmers’ association CIA Agricoltori Emilia-Romagna.

Coldiretti is calling on politicians to treat water storage as infrastructure rather than emergency relief.

Cotti said regional and national authorities need to invest in reservoirs and other water-storage infrastructure, arguing that individual farms cannot solve the growing problem of water scarcity alone.

Paradoxically, Parmesan producers normally worry about producing too much, not too little — and had sought to curb output this year. “We always have the brake on,” Cotti said, adding that high prices mean farmers have little difficulty increasing production when needed.

Despite the strain, producers insist there is no danger of Italy running short of Parmesan.

The cheese’s strong global market gives farmers greater scope to invest than producers in more fragile agricultural sectors.

For now, those investments are keeping Parmigiano production stable, although smaller farmers with aging barns may eventually choose to close rather than spend the money needed to adapt. For now, there is little to do but wait for the temperatures to fall. “We keep going like this,” Cotti said. “We hope it ends as soon as possible.”

The Trump administration has granted preliminary approval for a cryptocurrency venture backed by President Donald Trump’s family to operate a federally chartered trust bank, over the protests of Democrats who decried the decision as riddled with conflicts of interest.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the bank regulatory arm of the Treasury Department, said in a letter on Friday that it was conditionally approving World Liberty Trust Co.’s application for a trust bank charter. The company must still meet additional requirements before it receives final approval, the regulator said.

The decision stands to give new powers and federal credibility to a venture in which Trump and his family retain a substantial financial interest. It’s also among the most direct official actions that the administration has taken involving the president’s private finances.

World Liberty Trust Co. President and Chairman Zach Witkoff said the charter will allow the company to manage its USD1 stablecoin, a crypto token whose value is pegged to $1, under the OCC’s watch.

“USD1 grew because institutions trust how it operates, and confidence at enterprise scale deserves the backing of federal supervision,” Witkoff, the son of Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said in a statement. “We welcome continuous scrutiny from Federal regulators for many years to come.”

While Washington has been in knots over the steady drumbeat of news that Trump-linked businesses are expanding during his second term, the World Liberty application stood out to many.

Some Democrats and ethics watchdogs argued that the bid was one of the clearest examples of the conflicts of interest that administration officials face as they weigh the wishes of Trump family-backed companies. And they were quick to bash the OCC’s approval.

“This is the most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen — and Congress cannot allow it to stand,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee.

Warren and other Democrats unveiled legislation on Friday that would prohibit regulators from approving banks that are owned or controlled by the president or the president’s family, vice president, members of Congress or other top government officials.

A Democratic Senate aide said the Banking Committee would likely probe the OCC’s approval of the World Liberty bank charter next year if Democrats regain control of Congress.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington CEO Donald Sherman called the OCC’s approval “the most egregious example to date of the President’s businesses profiting from his government job.”

“The President continues to boost the crypto market at the expense of everyday Americans who are wondering what happened to the money in their own bank accounts,” he said.

World Liberty, in advance of the approval, had rejected the conflict allegations — saying Trump is not involved in managing the company and that none of its leaders or employees work for the federal government. The White House has similarly said Trump has no involvement in business deals that would implicate his official responsibilities.

Trump and his family nevertheless retain a substantial financial stake in World Liberty Financial. DT Marks DEFI LLC, an entity affiliated with Trump and members of his family, owns about 38 percent of the holding company that controls World Liberty Financial, according to the company’s website. The entity and Trump family members also hold 22.5 billion of World Liberty’s governance tokens.

Trump disclosed nearly $600 million in income from World Liberty token and equity sales in 2025, a major piece of the $1.4 billion of crypto-related earnings he raked in. He has said he does not manage his financial interests, which are overseen by his children.

The approval doesn’t allow World Liberty to open a traditional bank, but rather a national trust bank — a limited-purpose institution that would not make loans or accept federally insured deposits. It’s the latest in a string of such approvals for crypto firms under Trump’s OCC. Others who have received similar green lights include Circle, Ripple and Coinbase.

The charter still provides significant legal and financial advantages. It’ll allow World Liberty to issue and redeem its USD1 stablecoin directly, manage the reserves backing it and offer digital asset custody services without relying on an intermediary. The company could also operate across state lines more easily without having to answer to individual state regulators.

Federal supervision could also bolster World Liberty’s credibility with customers and investors and help expand the use of USD1.

“This is not World Liberty trying to become Chase or Bank of America. This is World Liberty trying to become like Circle,” the crypto giant, said Austin Campbell, a crypto adviser and professor at New York University. The newly acquired charter, Campbell added, “is a regulatory wrapper to be able to hold these things in the way required under U.S. law to do business with both retail and the big boys.”

The decision to approve World Liberty Trust Co. had put Comptroller Jonathan Gould, a Trump appointee, in the extraordinary position of deciding whether to grant federal banking privileges to a business tied to the president’s family.

Gould had rejected calls to pause the review or recuse himself. And he declined a request by Democrats to share the full, unredacted application submitted by World Liberty. “We process applications in a fair and evenhanded manner,” he told lawmakers in February.

Stephen Lybarger, the top OCC official overseeing bank chartering and a longtime career official of the agency, wrote in the approval letter on Friday that the agency followed “established policies and procedures” in evaluating World Liberty’s application.

“The Comptroller and staff acted consistently with their statutory duties and ethical obligations with respect to the Application,” Lybarger wrote. “Career OCC staff reviewed the application for consistency with the statutory, regulatory, and policy requirements and factors for approval of a de novo application.”

The OCC declined to comment further. The agency consulted with career government ethics officials as it evaluated the World Liberty application, according to a person familiar with the process.

The U.S. on Friday threatened action against the EU unless Brussels reins in its environmental and human rights rules, which Washington says unfairly burden American companies.

Acknowledging Brussels had made “some positive reforms,” Washington said the EU had “failed to fully address U.S. concerns,” and that it “will take any actions necessary to address unreasonable burdens on U.S. commerce.”

U.S. Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder piled on the pressure Friday, writing on X that “now it’s time for the EU to deliver.” He pointed to commitments made under last year’s Turnberry trade deal to ensure U.S. businesses do not face “undue restrictions” on transatlantic trade due to Brussels’ green regulations.

The dispute centers on two pillars of the EU’s corporate sustainability rulebook: the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which requires large companies to address human rights and environmental harms linked to their operations and supply chains, and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which requires companies to disclose sustainability-related information.

Brussels has scaled back both laws in its drive to cut red tape, but has stopped short of Washington’s demand to shield U.S. companies from their reach.

Last week, Puzder similarly attacked the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism as a tariff on U.S. exporters. On Thursday, the White House also accused the EU and more than 40 countries of enabling Chinese goods to skirt U.S. tariffs by rerouting them through their markets.

A European Commission spokesperson told POLITICO that Brussels had made “considerable efforts” to explain its rules and highlight “its willingness to cooperate with the US to increase trade where possible,” but drew a line at changing its regulatory regime in response to U.S. pressure.

“We have been very clear and consistent on the fact that neither our rules framework nor our regulatory autonomy are up for negotiation,” said the spokesperson.

This story has been updated.

Koen Verhelst contributed reporting.

A news organization and free speech nonprofit sued President Donald Trump over his social media platform’s program that offers paid early access to his posts after the scheme went live at the beginning of August.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by the left-leaning nonprofit newsroom The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation, alleges the practice “is extraordinary, corrupt, and unconstitutional.”

The plaintiffs also say the controversial $100,000-a-month program violates their First Amendment rights to access presidential statements “on equal terms with other members of the press and public.”

In announcing plans to introduce the program, Truth Social — whose parent company Trump founded in 2021 after being kicked off social media platforms and owns a plurality stake in — described the initiative as valuable for “organizations that place a premium on immediate, verified access to information.” But critics allege it amounts to insider trading on advanced access to the president’s market-moving words.

The service gives traders and other entities high-speed access to the president’s Truth Social account in addition to the nine other most-popular accounts on the platform, including Vice President JD Vance, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

A spokesperson for Truth Social, which isn’t named as a defendant in the complaint but is referenced throughout it, said in a statement that “information from President Trump is disseminated by countless platforms and news outlets, many of which offer subscription APIs.”

“One of those channels is Truth Social, which was founded as an uncancellable haven for free speech after the President was unjustly deplatformed,” the statement continued. “Now, left-wing activists are trying to wrongfully weaponize the courts to censor him again and harm our shareholders.”

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

The Intercept’s chief legal officer, David Bralow, in a statement said “nothing could be more antithetical to the free, independent press than the president charging for early access to his public announcement.”

Natalie Harp, an executive assistant to Trump who media reports suggest is responsible for authoring many of the president’s social media posts, is named as a defendant in the suit alongside deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, the Executive Office of the President and the White House Office.

The subjects of the president’s Truth Social posts can range from squabbles with federal judges to hiring and firings within his administration and threats against foreign adversaries. They also provide a glimpse at the issues of the day that occupy Trump’s attention.

Such announcements have had the ability to sway markets, like when oil prices plunged after Trump posted that he was calling off an attack on Iran in April. He has also occasionally touted specific companies on the platform, causing their stock prices to rise.

The plaintiffs also express concerns that the program would give outlets willing to pay for the service an unfair advantage over other newsrooms and hinder efforts to catalog the president’s posts by scraping Truth Social.

The company said in an August earnings report that despite a $238 million loss in the second quarter of 2026, 10 customers had already registered for the service.

The program has caught the eyes of Democratic lawmakers on the Hill. Sens. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) introduced a bill Tuesday seeking to ban social media companies from selling early access to government employees’ accounts and specifically invoked the Truth Social program.

We went late into the evening waiting for absentee ballots in Milwaukee County last night. But Milwaukee County executive David Crowley will become the Democratic nominee for governor in Wisconsin, despite it seeming like a certainty that Francesca Hong would be the winner. As of yesterday, every recent poll had shown Hong at least 20 points ahead. The two most recent public polls had her 22 and 25 points ahead. (The most recent poll from Crowley’s own camp showed Hong 19 points ahead!) We’ll come back to the question of why these polls have been so wildly off. But there was a different casualty from the night’s results that I personally enjoyed witnessing because it’s a hobbyhorse or pet peeve of mine — and it seems to be as well of the numbers crunchers/data nerds whose Twitter feeds I watch on elections night. I’m talking here about the “prediction markets.”

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski on Wednesday threatened to reconsider Warsaw’s $50 million-a-year spending on Elon Musk’s Starlink network, joining a growing government backlash over new roaming restrictions set to hit Polish customers later this month.

“Hey, @elonmusk, big man, stop discriminating Polish users of Starlink or we might re-think paying you $50 million p.a. for your services,” wrote Sikorski on X.

The foreign minister’s anger follows Starlink’s decision to exclude Poland from a shared European roaming zone that covers more than 30 countries, including Germany, Czechia, Slovakia and Lithuania. Customers within the zone can take their terminals across borders without triggering international-use restrictions. But Polish users will now face extra requirements when traveling.

“Note: Poland is not included in the Europe region above. Accounts registered in Poland are treated as Poland-only for home-country use,” reads Starlink’s current guidance.

Polish Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski also went after Musk, accusing Starlink’s parent company SpaceX of treating Poles as second-class customers and demanding it spell out the regulatory basis for the change.

“Poland is not a second-tier market. Polish customers are not second-tier customers,” Gawkowski wrote on X. If SpaceX blames “local regulatory requirements,” Warsaw expects it to point to the specific rules rather than offer “general explanations,” he added.

The new rules have applied to new customers signing up for Starlink since July 14, 2026 and will extend to existing Polish users on Aug. 17.

This isn’t the first time Sikorski and Musk have fought over Starlink. Last year, Musk told the Polish minister to “be quiet, small man,” after Sikorski warned that Warsaw could seek alternative providers for the satellite service it’s financing for Ukraine.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.

MIRROR, ALBERTA — Nestled within a sleepy community campground and roadside cafe, hundreds of Canadians are gathered to imagine a new country of their own.

It’s July 1, and they’re hosting a family-friendly event that looks like a typical Canada Day celebration. Live music, a farmers’ market, hamburgers on the grill. Except there isn’t a Maple Leaf in sight.

Instead, people have wrapped themselves in Alberta’s flag, wave “we’re done” banners and wear “Trump 2024” and MAGA — Make Alberta Great Again — ball caps. This is an “Albertans’ Day” gathering at the Whistle Stop Cafe, which gained notoriety for bucking pandemic-era rules and which former Alberta premier Jason Kenney calls “ground zero” for the province’s fast-growing separatist movement.

Instead, people have wrapped themselves in Alberta’s flag, wave “we’re done” banners and wear “Trump 2024” and MAGA — Make Alberta Great Again — ball caps. This is an “Albertans’ Day” gathering at the Whistle Stop Cafe, which gained notoriety for bucking pandemic-era rules and which former Alberta premier Jason Kenney calls “ground zero” for the province’s fast-growing separatist movement.

And until Alberta separates, Moore places her faith not in Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney — whom she views as part of a Davos “cabal” — but in U.S. President Donald Trump.

“I kept thinking this: Trump is the only one that can save us.”

Moore’s affinity for conspiracy theories is shared by many, though certainly not all, of the separatists. Resentment toward the federal government in Ottawa is longstanding in Alberta. But a surprising new ingredient has turbocharged the separatist push: Trump and the increasingly toxic U.S.-Canada relationship. The separatists are furious about Carney’s friction with Trump and the fraying ties to their southern neighbor. Some even hope the Trump administration might help their cause.

Many separatists believe Trump’s presidency makes Alberta’s independence possible, with the United States a ready customer for its oil and gas should they split from Canada. One group, the Alberta Prosperity Project, is trying to seek a C$500-billion U.S. government loan to fund the province’s “seamless departure” from Canada.

“This isn’t your grandfather’s independence movement,” says Jeffrey Rath, a co-founder of the Alberta Prosperity Project and a longtime separatist activist who has sought to court the Trump administration.

Many separatists see a cultural kinship with the United States. They proudly share fake newspaper clippings that highlight the province’s history of early American settlers allegedly helping to shape a self-reliant, frontier culture that remains in Alberta today. They argue the Eastern provinces are more associated with European traditions than American ones.

While some object to Trump’s idea of making Canada the 51st American state, others embrace the idea.

“I like freedom and less taxes,” says Casey Phillips from Edmonton, Alberta.

Carney and his government are now working hard to convince skeptical Albertans their best prospects lie with a united Canada. He and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who called the Oct. 19 vote, are touting a new pipeline agreement to send western oil abroad. The effort may work with some swing voters, but the hard-core separatists aren’t likely to buy it.

“It will never happen because Canada’s a communist country and there will be 24 years of paperwork,” Phillips says of the pipeline project. “It’s all lies.”

The separatists have good reason to think the Trump administration could be an ally. In January, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called Alberta a “natural partner for the U.S.” while referencing the province’s “great resources.”

“People are talking,” Bessent told conservative podcaster Jack Posobiec, nodding to the separatist movement. “People want sovereignty. They want what the U.S. has got.”

Rath says he has requested introductions to the U.S. Treasury Department and major financial institutions like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs to build a day one feasibility plan for Albertan independence, though it’s unclear if he has had any such conversations.

The Alberta Prosperity Project, however, has taken three trips to Washington, D.C., and Rath insists the group has met with “very senior level” officials, who he says have taken their information directly to the White House.

A State Department spokesperson said the department “regularly meets with a wide range of representatives. We do not anticipate any future meetings, and all department engagements are at our sole discretion.”

“As Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra has said, the vote is a decision for the people of Alberta,” the spokesperson added.

Bessent made his comments amid heightened U.S.-Canada tensions; days earlier Carney had argued at Davos that middle powers needed to form new coalitions after the Trump-fueled “rupture” in the global order.

That episode inflamed the pro-America separatists, as did Carney’s subsequent use of the phrase “new world order” during a January trip to China to sign new energy and trade agreements. That phrase is catnip to those who fear the creation of a global government, and more conspiracy theories quickly seeped into Alberta’s separatist movement through Facebook groups and YouTube videos claiming Carney is steering the country toward communism and against the U.S.

But it’s also true that Alberta’s grievances with Ottawa began long before Carney jostled with Trump. They have been passed down for generations, rooted in a belief that the federal government has ignored, exploited or misunderstood the province since its founding.

Today, that resentment has become deeply personal. Separatists point to what they see as federal overreach and clean energy policies that have made life more expensive and undermined their economy.

Federalists, meanwhile, are alarmed that neighbors, friends, family, and sometimes even spouses, are “willing to betray their country,” in Kenney’s words.

Former Conservative MP Damien Kurek cautions against dismissing separatists as traitors. Instead, he argues, politicians should ask why so many Albertans feel abandoned by the federation.

For Kurek, one of the defining moments of Albertan anger came in 2021, when U.S. President Joe Biden cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office by revoking its cross-border permit.

The ripple effects spread throughout Kurek’s riding. He says mechanics had fewer oilfield trucks to repair and restaurants served fewer meals, while roadside motels sat empty and young families put off buying homes.

But what many Albertans remember most isn’t Biden’s decision. It’s the belief that Ottawa, under then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, failed to fight it.

“I was very frustrated with the Liberals, including many Liberals that told me that I just needed to accept it, that are still on the Liberal Cabinet benches today,” says Kurek, whose riding included Hardisty, Canada’s largest oil pipeline hub.

That moment reinforced a deeper belief among many of his constituents, he says: If our national leader won’t stand up for us when we need him most, the very “promise of Canada” was in question.

Many in rural Alberta feel like their communities live or die by decisions made thousands of miles away in Ottawa. But this was just another chapter in a much longer story.

Kenney, the former Alberta premier, traces Western alienation back to the province’s creation in 1905. He says Ottawa initially treated Alberta more like a colony than an equal partner, including delaying provincial control over its natural resources.

The modern separatist movement then took shape in the 1980s after former Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau introduced the National Energy Program, which raised taxes on oil companies and oil exports and shifted more of the industry’s profits from Alberta to Ottawa. The unpopular program was dismantled five years later, but Albertans didn’t forget.

When Trudeau’s son, Justin, became prime minister in 2015, his government introduced environmental policies that Alberta’s oil industry argued made it more difficult and expensive to build pipelines, expand production and attract investment.

Albertans’ sense of alienation also extends beyond energy policy. Many feel their votes carry less weight than those cast in vote-rich Ontario and Quebec, since that’s where federal elections are often decided. After repeatedly electing Conservative MPs only to see Liberal governments take power in Ottawa, some have concluded federal elections have little effect on Alberta’s fortunes.

That frustration is compounded by Canada’s equalization program, enshrined in the Constitution, which redistributes federal tax revenue to help less wealthy provinces fund public services. Because Alberta’s oil-rich economy is one of the country’s wealthiest, it has never qualified for those payments. At the same time, Ottawa collects more in federal taxes from Albertans than it spends in the province, which reinforces a decades-old belief that Alberta bankrolls the rest of the country while getting too little in return.

“It’s very scary to see what they’re trying to take from us, what they’re trying to control,” says Trina, a Red Deer resident who volunteers with a separatist group and who did not give her last name. “It leaves us with a lot of uncertainty. Nothing feels secure.”

Carney is aware of the challenge ahead. Even as he has warned Alberta against stumbling into its own Brexit disaster, he has sought to address the province’s most tangible concerns.

Last November, Carney signed an agreement with Alberta to work toward a new oil pipeline and soon after, delivered a sobering wake-up call to his Liberal caucus behind closed doors.

To the surprise of MPs in the room, Carney opened his remarks by addressing the specter of Alberta separatism, framing the pipeline deal not just as an economic win, but as a strategic necessity to keep the country together.

“He was emotional,” a Liberal MP, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal party matters, told POLITICO at the time. “You could hear a pin drop.”

It was a clear sign from the prime minister that the separatist movement was shaping his thinking — and federal policy.

“This was a no-BS kind of thing,” the Liberal lawmaker said. “This was coming from someone who grew up in that province, who understands that province, and who was very worried about the feelings of alienation.”

The speech also marked Carney’s first step in persuading Liberal supporters — many of whom had embraced Justin Trudeau’s aggressive climate agenda — that pipelines, increased oil production and energy exports were essential to Canada’s economic and geopolitical future.

Carney has made a similar pitch to the broader public.

“In Canada, we are strongest when we are united — when we look out for each other and ensure that no child, no family, no one is left behind,” Carney said in a speech to Canadians and his Cabinet in January. “This spirit of solidarity and generosity helps define us as a nation.”

Nine months later, Carney has backed up that message with action. Since taking office, he has rolled back several Trudeau-era environmental policies despite pushback from some Liberal MPs, including former environment minister Steven Guilbeault, who is leaving politics after accusing his party of “backsliding” on climate action. Last month, the West Coast oil pipeline got closer to fruition, after Carney’s government announced its partnership with Alberta would amount to a C$35 billion project in a bid to boost the province’s energy sector.

The policy shift is part of Ottawa’s effort to encourage federalists to send a strong message on Oct. 19, that they want to remain in Canada. In July, Carney made three trips to Alberta, two of which included photo-ops with Smith, Alberta’s premier. Both have been framing their pipeline pact as proof that Canada still works, for all its people, even as many separatists argue it comes a decade too late.

Federalists say the biggest risk in the vote isn’t necessarily that Alberta endorses moving toward separation; polls show about 30 percent of Albertans want independence. It’s that federalists don’t show up to vote since they assume victory. If turnout is low, a highly motivated separatist base could post an unexpectedly strong result, giving the movement new legitimacy and driving away private investment in the province.

“We can all think that the worst isn’t going to happen. We could put signs on our lawn and write poetry about Canadian unity. But honestly, unless people show up at the polls on Oct. 19, we could lose this referendum question,” says Eleanor Olszewski, a federal Liberal cabinet minister from Alberta.

Back outside the Whistle Stop Cafe, the conversations at Albertans’ Day drift from claims Carney wasn’t democratically elected, to beliefs the pandemic was orchestrated by global elites, to how a federal ban on assault-style firearms is meant to stop Canadians from rising up against the federal government.

One vendor sells knives, stun batons, tactical shovels, night-vision glasses and body shields, encouraging Albertans to protect themselves. Pickup trucks and SUVs are modified to look like sheriff’s vehicles with “Republic of Alberta” decals. Some separatists show off homemade T-shirts that read “skid mark Carney” or “pure-blood warriors” showcasing a white baby in the paws of a lion.

The antipathy toward Carney and enthusiasm for Trump even has some separatists ready to defend Trump’s wave of tariffs against Canadian goods.

Keith Walker, who is from a small farming community in southern Alberta, believes the only thing preventing Canada from becoming a communist country under Carney is Trump’s trade war.

Canada, in his view, is part of a group of governments that Trump is trying to dismantle alongside Venezuela, Cuba and Iran. “That’s why that’s happening,” Walker says of Trump’s tariffs; he and a friend are both wearing Trump 2024 hats.

The separatists’ longstanding grievances with Ottawa aren’t occurring in a vacuum. Populist forces have reshaped the globe over the last decade, amid Brexit and Trump and the pandemic, and they are now converging in Alberta.

Separatism has become a right-wing uni-cause.

“It is a perfect umbrella,” Kenney says, “for every obsession, paranoia and anxiety on the right.”

BERLIN — Europe’s reserves of natural gas are running dangerously low, risking fresh energy woes if the Iran war rages on and cold spells drive up heating demand over winter.

But the continent’s top energy user doesn’t seem too bothered.

Germany is the EU’s biggest vulnerability because its sheer size means gas shortfalls there could be felt in neighboring countries, driving up prices across the bloc if it fails to restore its reserves.

That’s prompted growing calls for Berlin to do the unthinkable: intervene outright to direct its state-controlled energy giants to buy gas at any price, abandoning years of free-market doctrine on energy policy.

So far, the government has refused to budge, even as it falls short of EU targets and faces the risk of physical supply shortages as early as November. It’s a gamble that the markets will figure everything out, even as war and hot weather distort traditional incentives and upend global supply chains.

“Storage levels are not only exceptionally low for this time of year, but historically low,” said Sebastian Heinermann, the managing director of Germany’s top gas storage association, INES.

But Germany, he warned, is still relying on an outdated, market-oriented approach to refill its reserves, even when there are “hardly any market-economic incentives left.”

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, EU countries have been required to hit gas storage targets of 90 percent of national capacity by winter to prevent serious supply shortfalls. The EU lowered that target to 80 percent following the outbreak of the Iran war to prevent panic buying.

Typically, refilling is the responsibility of traders and utilities, which buy gas cheap in the summer to store and then sell in the winter for a profit. But buyers say higher summer prices as a result of the Iran war and climate change have upended that dynamic, leaving gas reserves across the bloc at around 58 percent of national capacity, 16 percentage points below the five-year historical average and the lowest level since 2011. 

The low reserves have already added to the increased pressure on gas prices linked to renewed tensions around the Strait of Hormuz, with the European natural gas benchmark now consistently higher than it was for the first four months of the Iran war.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has said the bloc faces no winter supply risks. But a report by energy analytics firm Rapidan projects that reserves will rise to only 65 percent of total storage capacity by November, arguing that hitting the EU’s target by winter won’t be possible without “materially higher prices.” 

That risk has been exacerbated, analysts say, by the bloc’s move in recent years to replace its long-term supply deals with Russia with short-term purchases of globally traded liquefied natural gas. These seaborne cargoes are highly mobile and go to the highest bidder — leaving buyers more exposed to volatility on international markets, especially in the wake of the loss of key supplies from Qatar and rising demand in Asia.

Germany, the bloc’s largest gas consumer, has seen its reserves fill up even more slowly than others, in part thanks to its more hands-off, market-led approach to restocking than many of its neighbors. As a result, reserves stood at only 47 percent of national capacity in August, according to the latest data — the lowest fill level since records began. That’s especially worrying as the country’s reserves are important for the bloc as a whole, representing over 20 percent of the EU’s storage capacity. 

Nevertheless, Berlin is staying the course. While its energy ministry has acknowledged the country’s historically low reserves, it has refused to intervene to direct its main state-controlled gas buyers, SEFE and Uniper, to buy gas at current prices to ensure its targets are met, instead of waiting for market conditions to improve.

“It is the responsibility of companies and traders to fill the storage facilities for the winter,” a spokesperson for the German energy ministry told POLITICO. “Government-led filling of the storage facilities would further constrain the gas market and drive prices even higher. The supply situation over the coming months would actually deteriorate.”

Whether this is the right approach will become clearer by winter, said Laurent Ruseckas, a senior gas analyst at S&P Global. If temperatures are unseasonably low, traders may be forced to buy additional supplies at late notice, driving up prices, especially if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. On the other hand, intervening could raise prices prematurely if winter turns out to be mild.

“If you start buying now to get storage to some politically predetermined level you’re making prices higher now to get insurance that you won’t get higher prices in the winter when it’s cold,” said Ruseckas.

Germany’s reluctance to move quickly also highlights the difficulty the EU’s fragmented energy sector has in competing with more centralized Asian economies that have acted more quickly to secure supplies, consistently outbidding European countries even as their reserves run low.

Others warn that physical supply strains are also possible. Heinermann, of INES, warned that even filling the country’s reserves to 76 percent of capacity — which SEFE says is achievable — would not necessarily meet its supply needs if winter is “exceptionally cold.” That could ripple out to neighboring countries to which Germany is treaty-bound to provide emergency gas assistance, including Austria, Switzerland, Italy and Denmark.

Heinermann called on the German government to encourage faster restocking by lowering network charges at storage facilities or abolishing the conversion levy, fees imposed for the conversion of gas on national grids. Berlin has already unveiled plans for a new emergency gas stockpile, but that will only cover 10 percent of the country’s gas capacity and kick off officially next summer.

It’s no surprise that other major gas consumers have already waded into the private sector. The Netherlands, another free-market champion suffering from low gas reserves, earlier this summer allocated €1.2 billion for its state energy company, EBN, to more swiftly top up its reserves. 

But Berlin’s energy giants are sticking to their guns — for now.

A spokesperson for SEFE told POLITICO that even though “international conflicts” could weigh on European storage levels, the 70 percent target “remains achievable” without intervention. He pointed out that 78 percent of German storage capacity has already been booked, though acknowledged that doesn’t necessarily translate to actual volumes of gas stored. 

Regulatory measures could be useful if “necessary” but could distort markets and increase costs, he added, without specifying what.

A Uniper spokesperson was less confident, warning it would be “increasingly challenging to reach the target storage levels before the winter season starts” at the current rate of filling. But she too stopped short of calling for intervention, arguing instead for better incentives for refilling — mirroring growing calls from gas lobbyists in Brussels to scrap the rules outright.

A new survey quantifies the financial and emotional toll of flight disruptions, pointing to a widening gap between passenger rights on paper and passenger experience in practice.

Nearly eight in 10 travelers experienced a flight disruption in the past year, and for most the damage went well beyond the inconvenience itself. A new survey from AirHelp, a company dedicated to supporting travelers throughout their journey, puts a number on what disruption actually costs passengers: an average of €514 out of pocket, plus a real toll on their time, plans and well-being.

These figures reflect an industry operating under sustained pressure, with disruption continuing to shape the everyday experience of millions of travelers.

Air travel has largely recovered from its pandemic-era lows, but disruption remains a persistent feature of modern flying, driven by everything from air traffic control constraints to weather, staffing and aging infrastructure. Globally, 79 percent of respondents had a flight canceled, delayed by more than two hours or otherwise disrupted in the past 12 months. Of those disruptions, 50 percent were delays over two hours, 15 percent were cancellations, and 14 percent involved delayed, lost or damaged luggage. These figures reflect an industry operating under sustained pressure, with disruption continuing to shape the everyday experience of millions of travelers.

The financial toll

Globally, nearly three-quarters of passengers (73 percent) incurred additional expenses due to disruptions, with costs averaging €514 per person, although that figure masks wide differences. It also marks a clear increase from previous surveys, which found average costs of just €362.50 per passenger.

UK and German travelers report the highest average costs, at roughly €708 and €619 respectively. Portuguese and Spanish travelers report the lowest, at approximately €277 and €340. The United States and Brazil sit in the mid-to-high range, at around €577 and €529. The spread likely reflects differing living and wage levels, but it also means the highest-cost markets can see disrupted trips cost nearly three times what they would in the cheapest.

Money isn’t the only thing that weighs on passengers during disruptions.

Fifty-seven percent of passengers had to spend extra out of pocket during a disruption. Another 20 percent lost money that couldn’t be recovered, a non-refundable hotel stay, for instance, while 5 percent lost income they’d expected to earn. Just over a quarter, 27 percent, said the disruption cost them nothing.

Emotional toll

Money isn’t the only thing that weighs on passengers during disruptions. Sixty-eight percent of all respondents globally cited stress or frustration as a consequence of their disruption. That finding holds up when you look at what passengers rated as a major problem. Globally, waiting around for long periods ranked as the most common major complaint, cited by 50 percent of passengers, followed closely by stress itself at 43 percent.

The knock-on effects extended well beyond the airport. Thirty percent said the disruption derailed specific plans during their trip, such as sightseeing or connecting activities. Twenty-nine percent reported negative health or well-being effects like fatigue, missed sleep or illness. Twenty-two percent missed work or professional obligations, and 20 percent missed personal events like family gatherings or celebrations. Only 8 percent said they experienced no impacts beyond the disruption itself.

A pattern of inconsistent support

Much of the toll passengers describe traces back to communication. Many report not knowing what support or compensation they were entitled to during a disruption.
Globally, in-the-moment support was inconsistent: 47 percent of passengers said they never received vouchers, air miles or future discounts, and 44 percent said they never received cash compensation or money back for their costs. Basic support fared a little better but was still patchy- 38 percent never received food and drink, while adequate information about the disruption was more reliably provided, with just 25 percent saying they never got it.

These findings vary by market. On cash compensation, American passengers were the least likely to receive money back, with 52 percent receiving none, while German passengers were the most likely, with only 34 percent reporting none.

The regulatory question

Over a third of travelers (35 percent) said they didn’t know that regulations protecting passenger rights exist when flying in Europe. Among those who might have been eligible for compensation, 31 percent globally never filed a claim simply because they didn’t know they could, while another 22 percent held back because the process seemed too complicated.

Travellers are paying a very high price for flight disruptions, and the damage goes well beyond the bank balance.

Tomasz Pawliszyn, CEO of AirHelp

These findings come from a global survey commissioned by AirHelp and launched in February, polling 1,996 passengers across the UK, Europe, the United States and Brazil about their experiences with flight disruptions over the past 12 months.

“Travellers are paying a very high price for flight disruptions, and the damage goes well beyond the bank balance,” says Tomasz Pawliszyn, CEO of AirHelp. He points to the gap between the protections that exist on paper, air passenger rights laws and what passengers actually experience.

“Passengers are entitled to care and, in many cases, compensation when their flight is disrupted,” Pawliszyn said. “But when the majority of travelers remain uninformed, that protection isn’t reaching the people it’s meant for.”

The findings point to a narrower and more tractable question than airline performance itself: whether existing consumer-protection rules are being communicated clearly enough to function as intended. As aviation authorities in the UK, EU and elsewhere continue reviewing passenger rights frameworks, this data suggests the more urgent gap may not be the rules themselves, but how well travelers understand them.

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