Over the weekend, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) announced on Instagram that she had joined the thousands of American women who freeze their eggs every year, a number that has been steadily growing for the past decade.

“This is a choice that I am making to feel more in control of my life,” Ocasio-Cortez said in her Instagram story sharing her decision. 

As politicians in the public eye often do, Ocasio-Cortez turned her personal choice into a statement:

Usually I keep my private life quite private, but I have made the decision to start freezing my eggs, and I want to share this because I was weighing it for a very long time. I was saving for it for a very long time, and there just isn’t a ton out there, I feel, and sometimes it can feel very daunting. As women in general, we are not taught about our own bodies. We are not prepared for our own lives. … We need to show more depictions of women having full lives.

At the same time, she acknowledged being “in a very privileged position” to be able to take advantage of egg freezing. The process still typically costs $10,000 or more — and most insurance still doesn’t cover it. Not even AOC’s federal health plan. Egg freezing is a luxury afforded only to the people who can pay for it and take on the significant burden of the treatment and all of the uncertainty that comes with it.

Ocasio-Cortez’s announcement underscores the awkward place that egg freezing still occupies in the landscape of fertility access — at a moment when Republicans in power are lamenting falling birth rates and searching for ways to encourage more people to start families. In theory, egg freezing gives women the flexibility to take more control of their decisions about having kids and preserve that possibility for themselves in the future. But in reality, the promises of this important procedure have often been unfulfilled. 

Beyond the intimidating price tag, as AOC alluded to, many young women don’t know some of the basics about age-related fertility decline and how to maximize their chances that egg freezing will lead to an actual pregnancy. There are some “significant gaps in fertility knowledge amongst Gen Z women in particular,” said Danielle Melfi, CEO of Resolve, a fertility treatment advocacy group. 

“That points to why someone like AOC who has such broad awareness and broad reach across her channels,” Melfi told me, “specifically younger people who aren’t tuned into any politician but would be tuned into her. Her sharing her story and journey matters.”

Egg freezing is not a panacea, and it never will be. But it can give individuals options and a sense of empowerment. And right now, as AOC acknowledged in her video, those are privileges reserved for the people who are in the know and have the means to take advantage of it. For everyone else, significant barriers still remain.

Freezing time doesn’t come cheap — or easily

On average, the cost of egg freezing averages between $10,000 and $20,000. And, for most people, including AOC, who makes $174,000 a year on her congressional salary alone, health insurance coverage is not an option. According to a 2024 KFF employer survey, just 12 percent of large employers who offer health insurance provide egg or sperm freezing.

That’s not for lack of trying.

As of now, 21 states have mandates requiring health insurers to provide some level of coverage for “fertility preservation” when it is deemed medically necessary — for a younger cancer patient who is about to undergo chemotherapy, for example, a more and more common scenario these days. But coverage for what is viewed as elective freezing, as AOC is doing, is still generally not included in those requirements.

But even the state-level mandates come with a huge carveout. Under America’s Frankenstein healthcare system, there is a very important type of health insurance plan that is exempt from such state laws: self-funded employer plans, meaning those that fully cover their workers’ medical expenses without relying on an outside insurance company. They are governed only by a federal law known as the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, and that law provides no guarantees for egg freezing or other reproductive care. 

About half of Americans get their insurance through their work, and of those employer plans, more than 60 percent are self-funded. That is a lot of people who have no guarantees for this kind of service, even when a serious medical reason is motivating them to freeze their eggs. The select few who can get egg freezing covered are typically higher-income, too, adding to the disparity between the US healthcare system’s haves and have-nots.

Support for IVF among the American public has been rising, with 70 percent saying in 2024 that access to IVF was a good thing. And fertility coverage is having a political moment, too: the HOPE With Fertility Services Act, which would require insurers to cover some basic fertility treatment when it is deemed medically necessary, was introduced this year with a bipartisan slate of more than 20 sponsors, though it remains stuck at the committee level for now. The Trump administration has fixated on dropping fertility rates, but, beyond a limited IVF executive order, they have not seriously pursued plans to expand access to egg freezing. A national mandate to cover egg freezing, even only when medically necessary, could end up being opposed by both health insurers (which have fought all kinds of benefit requirements in the past) and the religious right (which has specifically challenged mandates for reproductive healthcare, like the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate).

It will likely take a variety of policy changes to give people more financial support for this important but expensive service. So what now? Unfortunately, I think we are stuck with patchy coverage and can expect only incremental improvements for the foreseeable future. On the plus side, Melfi said, more employers may increasingly offer these benefits as a competitive advantage.

But access isn’t the only problem.

Egg freezing works best when people actually know how to take advantage of it

Even if a person is able to access egg freezing, it doesn’t always pay off. 

A study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology in February found that fewer than 6 percent of people who froze their eggs electively had come back to thaw them within five to seven years. Of those people, 79 percent had a usable embryo after warming and 29 percent had a pregnancy that resulted in a live birth.

Of course, just because some people haven’t warmed their eggs within seven years doesn’t mean they won’t come back in nine: The point of this service is you could freeze your eggs at 30 even if you’re not ready for kids until you are 40. Those numbers will likely grow with time. And some of those people might end up successfully getting pregnant on their own the old-fashioned way, which means they won’t need their frozen eggs at all. 

“Typically, people who are coming in to freeze their eggs haven’t actually tried to conceive yet. When they are ready to start conceiving, a lot of people may not have any issues conceiving,” said Dr. Mabel Lee, a reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist at HRC Fertility in Pasadena, California who led the published study. 

What is true is that getting pregnant is difficult no matter how you go about it — even conceiving through intercourse only results in a 20 to 25 percent success rate on a given try, Lee said — and success with frozen eggs depends on how young the person was when their eggs were preserved: The younger they are, the higher the chances of success. That makes it all the more important that people — particularly younger people — know about the realities of egg freezing and how to make the most of it, whether they are spending thousands of dollars of their own money or whether they are using insurance to pay for it. Awareness among young people of the basic relationship between age and fertility remains discouragingly low. Lee said she has patients come in all the time who say they wish they had known more about egg freezing sooner.

The likelihood of a live birth may go up if the eggs were younger, but is that enough to convince someone in their mid-20s to pay out of pocket to freeze their eggs? In the midst of an affordability crisis, is that even an option? It might not be; in the meantime, Lee said women could get a blood test to measure their ovarian reserves, which estimates a person’s egg count, and use that to make an informed decision about egg freezing in consultation with their doctor.

Once you have decided to freeze your eggs, using a high-quality clinic is a must: That’s the other major variable in success, Lee told me. The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology maintains a national database covering clinics across the country and tracking birth success rates and other metrics. It’s like a report card of sorts, so you can hopefully choose the best provider for you.

There are still no guarantees. Fertility is too fickle. But by improving access and raising awareness, there are clear steps we can take to try to maximize egg freezing’s potential.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is aiming to spend up to $20 million on equipping officers and agents with specialized gloves that deliver painful electric shocks. These plans were outlined in a notice published by the Department of Homeland Security on Monday, with an unspecified quantity of the devices set to be delivered by March 2027.

The electrified handwear outlined in the contract is the CTG 5 GLOVE (Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter), which manufacturer Compliant Technologies refers to as a CD3 (Conductive Distraction and De-escalation) device. Compliant Technologies describes it as "a great, humane, low-optics, de-esc …

Read the full story at The Verge.

President Donald Trump already holds a Republican majority in the agency tasked with regulating America's communications systems. But with a new nomination to the Federal Communications Commission, he could move to shut out opposing voices altogether - albeit at a legal risk.

The FCC is currently composed of two Republicans and one Democrat - Republican Chair Brendan Carr and Commissioner Olivia Trusty, and Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez. This mixed group gives the agency a three-member quorum that allows it to vote on major actions, though it still falls short of the five members (no more than three from a single party) the FCC is mean …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Pauline von Pezold und Frederik Schindler widmen sich in dieser Folge gemeinsam mit Jacob Ross, Research Fellow bei der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik , der Außenpolitik der AfD. Sie analysieren gemeinsam mit ihm, wie sich die Partei von einer reinen Protestbewegung zu einer gestaltenden Kraft mit einem eigenen Gegenentwurf zur Außenpolitik der Bundesregierung entwickeln will.

Im Zentrum steht das Konzept der „Multipolarität“. Einer Weltordnung, die in regionale Einflusssphären unterteilt ist, wie sie von Russland und China propagiert und von Teilen der AfD angestrebt wird. Schindler, Ross und von Pezold diskutieren, ob der Versuch der AfD, gleichzeitig die Nähe zu Putins Russland und zum Amerika unter Donald Trump zu suchen, ein Widerspruch ist oder vielmehr Teil einer kohärenten Strategie ist, um sich als neue Kraft in einer veränderten Welt zu positionieren.

Außerdem gehen sie der Frage nach, wie realistisch ein solcher außenpolitischer Kurswechsel für Deutschland wäre.

„Inside AfD“ ist der POLITICO-Podcast über die umstrittenste Partei des Landes. Trotz Radikalisierung und Beobachtung durch den Verfassungsschutz wächst die AfD weiter. Wie ist das möglich? Was treibt ihre Anhänger, Strategen und Gegner an? Wie funktioniert das Innenleben der Partei? Und was bedeutet ihr Aufstieg für das politische System Deutschlands?

Antworten liefern immer mittwochs Pauline von Pezold von POLITICO und Frederik Schindler von WELT — unaufgeregt, aber kritisch.

Fragen und Feedback gern an insideafd@politico.eu.

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Scaleup Europe, a public-private fund with a $5.7 billion target, made its first investment by backing Finnish satellite company ICEYE.

Fusion power startups are turning to Kyoto Fusioneering to supply components for future power plants. The Japan-based startup just received a grant to build a part of the fuel system.

Last week, President Donald Trump issued a new executive order that purports to strip citizenship from some Americans. 

This isn’t our first time here: Last year, Trump issued an executive order that attempted to strip citizenship from many Americans born in this country. Months later, in response to a lawsuit brought over Trump’s order, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that everyone born in the United States who is subject to US law is a citizen. The Court’s decision in Trump v. Barbara (2026) was hardly a surprise, as the Court first ruled that everyone born in the US and subject to its laws are citizens in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898).

Still, the Barbara decision did invalidate an executive order from Trump. And that made him very angry. The new order appears to be a response to that 2025 Supreme Court decision, though it is much narrower than his original one.

In this sense, Trump appears to be experimenting with where the line is for the justices when it comes to birthright citizenship. When Trump’s first order came before the Court in Barbara, there was more than a century of precedent establishing that the order was unconstitutional. Nevertheless, four justices voted to overrule at least some of that precedent. 

Now, with the new order, Trump is testing whether a smaller bite at the apple is enough to win over one of the justices who voted with the majority in Barbara — two of whom are Republicans. If he manages to hold onto the four dissenters in Barbara and pick up just one more justice’s vote, his new order will stand. It’s a plausible outcome, and one that could potentially foreshadow future efforts to chip away at birthright citizenship.

What does the order actually do?

Trump’s first citizenship order, the one struck down in Barbara, attempted to strip citizenship from many Americans whose mothers were either undocumented or legally-but-temporarily present in the United States when they were born. Had this order been in effect at their birth, it would have stripped citizenship from many prominent Americans, including former Vice President Kamala Harris.

The new order, entitled “Continuing to Protect the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship” is much narrower; indeed, it’s unclear some of the categories of people it hopes to denaturalize actually exist. The new order, for example, purports to strip citizenship from children of two non-citizen parents when either parent belongs to a “designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.”

So, in the unlikely event that, say, a member of Al-Qaeda impregnated a non-US citizen woman who later gave birth on US soil, Trump’s order would mandate that the child’s US citizenship would be taken away. 

Another provision purports to strip citizenship from the children of foreign nationals who work in their nation’s embassies or in similar diplomatic capacities but who do not enjoy diplomatic immunity from US law. Again, it’s unlikely that all that many children fall into this category, given the relatively small number of these jobs.

The largest group of people that Trump targets in his new order is children whose parents “engage in a commercial transaction to ensure that the person’s mother is present in the United States” for their birth, such as by buying a plane ticket to enter the United States while pregnant. But this category is also fairly small. 

In 2024, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 9,576 people were born in the United States to residents of foreign countries — out of about 3.6 million annual births — though it is unclear how many of these babies would be affected by Trump’s new executive order, because we don’t know if their mothers entered the United States “to ensure” that their child we be on US soil when born.

So, what does the Constitution actually say about birthright citizenship?

The question of whether people born in the United States are citizens was, until fairly recently, one of the most uncontroversial questions in US law. When Judge John Coughenour, a Reagan appointee, handed down the first court decision blocking Trump’s original attack on birthright citizenship, he commented that he’d “been on the bench for over four decades [and]…can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is.”

The relevant provision of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment provides that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” So, everyone born in the US, regardless of their parent’s immigration status, past behavior, or membership in a particular organization are citizens — unless they are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.

As the Court recently reaffirmed in Barbara, moreover, a child is within US jurisdiction if they are “subject to American law.” So, if undocumented immigrants and their children were not subject to US jurisdiction, that would mean that it was illegal to arrest and deport them. And, if members of foreign terrorist organizations were not subject to US law, that would mean that it is illegal for the US government to prosecute them for committing terrorist acts.

That said, Wong Kim Ark did recognize a few narrow categories of individuals who are present in the US but not subject to its laws — two of which are still relevant today. Children of invading foreign armies do not receive birthright citizenship, nor do children of foreign ambassadors and other diplomats who are immune from US law.

As the Court clarified in Barbara, both of these exemptions are derived from an old English rule that provided that the King could not convey citizenship to “those born in lands that he did not control.” Thus, when a foreign military occupied English soil and stripped the King of his ability to rule over those lands, children born to members of that military were not citizens.

The exemption for ambassadors and some other foreign diplomats, meanwhile, flows from what Barbara described as a “fiction of extraterritoriality.” While senior diplomats are present in the United States, they are nonetheless deemed to “remain on foreign soil” and thus are not subject to US law.

But not all employees of foreign governments qualify for this diplomatic immunity. Consider, for example, the tragic facts of Moncada v. Rubio (2025), a recent federal appeals court decision holding that a man who lived as a US citizen for nearly seven decades was not, in fact, a citizen. 

Roberto Moncada is the son of a Nicaraguan diplomat who worked in the United Nations when Moncada was born in 1950. The US government previously concluded that Moncada’s father served as a “consul” when his son was born, and, thus, Moncada was a US citizen, because consuls and their families do not enjoy diplomatic immunity. But, in 2018, the US government discovered that Moncada’s father was actually an “attaché,” a more senior diplomat who does enjoy immunity. And then, the father’s diplomatic immunity cut the son off from US citizenship.

Under these principles, several provisions of Trump’s new executive order are unconstitutional, at least in part. The provisions stripping citizenship from the children of employees of foreign governments are lawful to the extent that they apply to children of people with diplomatic immunity but unconstitutional to the extent they apply to lower-ranking individuals with no immunity. 

The provision dealing with members of foreign terrorist organizations is also unconstitutional, since people who engage in terrorism on US soil are very much subject to US law — as are babies born on US soil to parents connected to terrorism. Although, in the unlikely event that a foreign terrorist group actually seized control of some portions of US soil, then the exemption for children of invading armies would likely apply. 

The provision dealing with so-called “birth tourists” is also unconstitutional, because a pregnant woman who enters the United States to ensure that their child is a US citizen is subject to US law, as is her child.

Indeed, Trump appears to concede this later point in a separate executive order handed down at the same time as his “Continuing to Protect” order. The second order, entitled “Ending Birth Tourism,” instructs two federal cabinet departments to update their rules to discourage alleged birth tourists from entering the country, including by taking “appropriate action to prevent the entry into the United States of, or the granting of any visa or other travel authorization” to such individuals. But, again, if the United States has the power to deny visas or otherwise bar these individuals from entering the country, that means that they are subject to US jurisdiction.

Why Trump keeps trying to restrict birthright citizenship

So, the Constitution’s text, the Court’s venerable decision in Wong Kim Ark, and its brand new decision in Barbara are all clear about who qualifies for birthright citizenship. All of these authorities establish that much of Trump’s new executive order is unconstitutional, because it purports to strip citizenship from people who are subject to US jurisdiction.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the order will be struck down. While Barbara did little more than reaffirm the same rule the Court announced nearly 130 years ago in Wong Kim Ark, four justices dissented in Barbara — although, these justices also released four separate opinions with four separate definitions of who does and does not qualify for birthright citizenship. So, on this Supreme Court, the mere fact that a legal question has been settled for more than a century does not prevent many of the justices from voting to unsettle it.

Indeed, this Court does not even reliably follow its own recent precedents. The Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais (2026), which repealed a 1982 amendment to the Voting Rights Act and limited Congress’s power to prevent race discrimination in elections, was wholly at odds with the Court’s three-year-old decision in Allen v. Milligan (2023). The Court’s decision in Medina v. Planned Parenthood (2025), which repealed a federal law permitting Medicaid patients to choose their own doctors, cannot be squared with its decision two years earlier in Health and Hospital Corporation v. Talevski (2023). 

So, while two of the Court’s Republicans joined all three of its Democrats in Barbara, it is possible that at least one of those Republicans will vote with the dissenters on a narrower question, like whether Trump can strip citizenship from the children of so-called birth tourists. And even if all of the justices in the Barbara majority hold the line, if one of them leaves the Court while Trump is still in office, he will almost certainly replace them with someone who opposes birthright citizenship.

So, while Trump’s executive orders often defy the Constitution’s explicit text, Trump also understands something important about US law: It doesn’t actually matter what the Constitution says if you have five votes on the Supreme Court who are willing to do what you want them to do.

Anthropic has pledged to start marking Claude-generated text and images with machine-readable data, in an effort to comply with European rules for AI transparency. "Generated text will carry embedded watermarks, and generated files will include digitally signed provenance metadata where supported," Anthropic says on a new Claude support page. The changes are invisible to human eyes, but will make it easier for people and online platforms to detect if content was generated by Claude models.

These updates are a future commitment rather than something that will go into effect immediately. New AI labeling and transparency obligations under the …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Right-wing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and center-left Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen on Monday reiterated their push to combat illegal migration after thousands of unauthorized migrants surged into Spanish exclave Ceuta in late July.

“We are aware that many might be wondering about our cooperation. We come from very different political backgrounds, and we certainly do not agree on everything,” Meloni posted in a “joint message” on Facebook, sharing an archival photo of herself and Frederiksen.

“We do not accept uncontrolled immigration to Europe, and we have promoted a strict immigration policy, both in our Nations and in Europe,” the statement continued.

In response to the Ceuta crisis, which reignited Europe’s long-running debate on illegal migration, Denmark and Italy had sent a joint letter to the European Commission demanding immediate action at the EU’s external borders. The letter was co-signed by 20 other European heads of state and government.

Italy has since been one of the harshest critics of Spain’s left-wing government and its migration policies, with Rome announcing border controls for travelers arriving from Spain on Friday.

Meloni and Frederiksen argued that the adverse effects of illegal migration — “rising crime rates, growing pressure on public services, and an erosion of citizens’ trust” — were indisputable.

“For too long, ordinary people … have paid too high a price because of uncontrolled immigration,” they said.

“We are both proud of Europe’s Christian cultural heritage and want to protect it. We expect those who come to our countries and choose to make Europe their home to respect our values and not seek to impose ways of life on us that we do not share,” they said.

Los Angeles offers one of the most vivid examples of our nation’s broken housing system: a quintessentially American expanse of traffic-clogged roads and single-family homes, coupled with the highest home-price-to-household-income ratio of any major city in the country.

To moderate prices, LA urgently needs to build more homes by allowing more density in its neighborhoods — but much of the city’s leadership has vigorously opposed it. Nowhere has that been more evident than in the fight over SB 79, a landmark California law that overrides local zoning to permit taller, denser housing near major transit stops. LA’s city council and its incumbent mayor, Karen Bass, have opposed it and sought ways to avoid complying with it. 

Now, as Bass seeks reelection, mayoral candidate Nithya Raman — one of the city’s, and perhaps the country’s, strongest advocates for building more housing — wants to oust her.

Raman has gained unusual traction in a city long resistant to growth and has become a nationally prominent YIMBY. How to accommodate LA’s need for more housing, Raman told Vox in a recent interview, is “a question that the city has actually turned away from.” She believes she can do better.  

Earlier this summer, Raman advanced in LA’s mayoral primary, setting up a November runoff against Bass. The race has resonated far beyond Los Angeles, because Raman is making one of the defining problems in American life — the punishing non-affordability of our most productive cities — the centerpiece of her campaign. Its outcome could shape the future of housing in America’s most populous state and help determine whether LA can become the engine of California’s pro-housing turn, or its most potent obstacle. If she succeeds, she might cut a path forward for better housing policy in high-cost blue cities elsewhere.

Just as core to Raman’s appeal is a commitment that’s often seen as at odds with housing abundance. She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and a forceful champion of tenant protections, including rent control. (Her relationship with the DSA is complicated, however.) She helped shape a stricter rent stabilization formula that was adopted in LA late last year, though it was strongly opposed by rental property owners. 

Many housing policy experts, as I recently wrote, believe rent control can worsen the housing affordability crisis it aims to solve, because it tends to reduce the supply of rental housing. But in high-cost cities and states, interest in it has been surging nonetheless. A rising cohort of progressive politicians, including Raman and Zohran Mamdani in New York City, believes cities must protect current renters from price shocks and displacement while adding housing supply. In doing so, they hope to mount the kind of political support that has long eluded YIMBYs.   

I spoke with Raman about how she thinks about these competing interests, and how she intends to combine them to make a meaningful dent where her predecessors have failed. I was struck by how cautiously she discussed one of the city’s most politically explosive housing policy questions — densifying single-family neighborhoods. Though she has previously pushed for legislation allowing midsize apartment buildings in some wealthier single-family neighborhoods, she emphasized gentler, more gradual change in our conversation. It reflected the core paradox facing housing reformers in LA and nationwide: the need for sweeping change, and the political pressure to make it feel gradual.

Our conversation, condensed and edited for clarity, is below.

You’ve gotten an enormous amount of traction on housing issues in LA. If you win the election, then what? 

When I’m asking for-profit developers and affordable housing developers alike, “What is your biggest barrier to building in LA?” they say that the city of LA is their biggest barrier to building in LA. Whether it is extraordinarily long permit approval timelines, whether it is the failure of the Department of Water and Power [DWP] to be a good partner and to provide real predictability in the building process, both in timelines and in costs. The city of Los Angeles stands in the way of new housing. 

As mayor, I want to do everything in my power to change that. I want to set deadlines by which departments have to respond to applications. I want to bring DWP to the table early and to ensure that they’re a predictable partner for new development. I want to make sure that departments that need to talk to each other are talking to each other quickly and early on in the process, as opposed to providing conflicting answers and taking months and even years to respond. These are all within the power of the mayor to influence and things that this mayor has ignored.

Sometimes rent control and renters’ rights on one hand and new housing production on the other are treated as rival agendas, yet you have made them both central to your politics. What connects them for you?

I don’t think that you can have lower rental costs in a city like Los Angeles without having more housing being built. This is a city that has resisted the construction of new housing for decades, explicitly restricted new apartments from being built in many, many parts of the city for a very long time. We have among the fewest homes per adult of any major city in America and the highest rent-burdened population of any city in America, and to me those two facts are very deeply connected. We can’t really lower rents unless we have more housing here, and lower rents are a big part of how you protect renters.

LA has a rent control system, and you were a champion of a change that tightened that system last year. Do you worry at all that tighter rent control could do damage to housing supply through some of the well-documented mechanisms, like causing landlords to convert apartments to condos? Is that in tension with the goal of increasing housing supply?

Housing built after 1978 cannot be subject to rent stabilization [in LA]. So, making sure that renters in older buildings are protected and trying to incentivize new housing from being constructed to me are not in conflict with one another.

You talked about landlords potentially exiting the market. We’ve also heard concerns from apartment associations and from neighborhoods that there’s been increasing corporatization of housing, that smaller landlords are selling to larger corporate landlords, that being a mom-and-pop landlord is becoming increasingly unfeasible. What we’d love to see is more data on that. And, if that is actually happening, if we are driving landlords out of the market through these changes, if smaller landlords are selling to large corporate landlords, I want to know, and we should be looking at the impacts of this policy accordingly.

I’m very open to learning more. But, so far, what I see is that we have an extremely unaffordable city where all the data has shown us that rents have risen higher than incomes for a very long time. The regulations that we put in place are really trying to ensure that struggling renters are still able to stay in LA.

Is there one specific, concrete housing policy mistake made by Mayor Bass that you would point to? How would you have handled it differently?

There has been an overall lack of urgency in addressing housing supply in [Bass’s] administration, exemplified by the fact that we have not had a deputy mayor of housing for years.

The city has actually opposed and written letters to state officials pushing back against new mandates to build more housing. Instead of telling Sacramento, “How do you want to build that housing?” and trying to shape state laws to suit us — the largest housing market in the entire state — those laws should be written with our input, not written with our opposition. 

I think the most stark example [of Bass’s failures on housing] is this: We’ve had 100 percent affordable housing projects like Venice Dell that are fully funded, that the city has sued and opposed and stalled for years.

“I think there is a growing consensus that supply is part of the problem and is driving the cost of housing.”

To what degree do you think that LA voters see the housing affordability crisis as a problem caused by a lack of supply — a housing shortage? 

I think there is a growing consensus that supply is part of the problem and is driving the cost of housing. It’s not universally necessarily agreed upon, but I think if you were to ask people, “Is there a housing shortage? Is there a shortage of housing you can afford?” everybody would say yes.

Why should renters trust private developers?

I think that renters should trust the city to regulate private development such that we actually are building what we need here in LA and such that new building is actually enhancing what people love about their neighborhoods. I don’t think it’s the job of renters to trust developers. They need to trust that their city is going to make sure that we’re working hard to build neighborhoods that are beautiful, and welcoming, and beneficial, and can help families thrive. 

That’s part of why I talk about production and protection always in the same breath. If you see that new construction is going to displace you, I think you’re less inclined to support it or to accept it. But if you feel secure in your current housing, and you know that you’ll be able to stay there, then new housing is less of a threat and can actually be a boon for a neighborhood.

That relates to an argument I’ve heard a lot: that tenants who feel protected from displacement by rent control and eviction protections will be less afraid of new development and more willing to support it. Have you seen evidence of that happening in LA?

There is a very broad coalition of people who are fighting for more housing now, a much broader coalition than I’ve seen in many other places. And it includes renters’ rights organizations that have historically been some of the strongest advocates for tenant protections. They’re actually in council chambers testifying around the need for more density across the entire city, particularly around transit hubs. 

Do you see rent control as a temporary bandaid on a broken housing market, or is it something that should have a permanent place in housing policy?

I think protections against rent gouging are really important, and I think regulation in the housing market is really important. As a city, we have to be very careful about how we regulate these markets so that we are eliciting the best results and outcomes for our residents. I’m going to follow the research, and I’ll always engage with these issues closely. 

The Democratic Socialists of America, of which you are a part, has talked about wanting to “de-commodify” housing and take it out of the private market. The DSA’s Housing Justice Commission says, “the housing market is not necessary.” Do you think that’s a good idea? 

My approach to these issues is driven by how I can help Angelenos who are dealing with spiraling costs that’s driving working families out of the city. The city saw, I believe, a 16 percent drop in people under 18 over the past few years, because families cannot afford to live here anymore. That is a travesty for the city of Los Angeles. 

My question as I approach this is about what I can do to ensure that we can keep people here. We can build new housing through publicly funded housing. I want to be able to make sure that people who will never be served by the private real estate market have support from the city to rely on that can help them stay, whether that’s in the form of housing vouchers, whether that’s in the form of social housing, whether that’s in the form of permanent supportive housing or new public housing.

I’m supportive of measures that are bringing public dollars to the table to build. However, the money that we have available to us will never be able to satisfy the extraordinary demand that there is for new housing in Los Angeles. So now, we have to rely on the private real estate market to make housing available and affordable to a much larger number of Angelenos. 

Rent control primarily protects tenants who already occupy apartments that are covered by rent control. But building more housing is partly about people who don’t yet have a foothold in LA and who would move there if they could afford it. Is it possible to build a housing politics that gives those future residents real weight, even though they don’t vote in city elections?

I think that’s the question of this election in many ways. That’s been the question of my politics. But it’s not just about the future; it is also about our present. It’s also about parents whose children can’t live near them anymore, because it’s too unaffordable here. It’s about rising homelessness, which is inextricably connected to the cost of housing. All the impacts of not having housing are already felt by Angelenos. 

So much of LA is single-family homes, and there’s been research finding that the city’s housing shortage can’t be filled without densifying single-family neighborhoods. Is that politically possible?

Some of the largest numbers of new units being built are actually ADUs, which are densifying single-family neighborhoods. And duplexes and triplexes and other kinds of interventions are in many places already legal to build. That’s been happening and, largely, been non-controversial in neighborhoods. 

Around certain transit hubs, I think potentially greater density will be allowed in single-family neighborhoods through SB 79. So I think some single-family neighborhoods will have to change. But what I’m seeing in LA is a gradual process of adding more density that I think, in many ways, can be even beneficial for homeowners, because they’re able to make additional income or accommodate more people on their lots.

European People’s Party leader Manfred Weber has called for the swift establishment of migrant return hubs in Africa after tens of thousands of unauthorized migrants surged into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta in late July.

In an op-ed for German outlet Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that was published Monday, conservative boss Weber wrote: “Ceuta has shown that close cooperation with neighboring countries can work. Morocco immediately took people back. No one was able to travel onward into the Schengen area” and, he added, “Europe must quickly establish return hubs in Africa.”

After tens of thousands forced their way into Ceuta — which is situated in North Africa — several international leaders pointed the finger at Spain’s left-wing government and its migration policy. Madrid had previously granted legal status to half a million unauthorized migrants.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her right-wing government are among the harshest critics, with Rome introducing border controls for travelers from Spain on Friday and sparking retaliation from Madrid.

Weber echoed proposals made last week by EU Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner, arguing that countries outside the bloc could be offered closer trade ties, economic collaboration and legal migration opportunities in exchange for accepting the installation of return hubs.

“Migrants who have no right to remain must leave Europe — no ifs, ands or buts!” he wrote, adding that returns must no longer depend on the political will of individual member countries.

Weber called for expanding the EU’s border and coast guard agency Frontex to 50,000 operational personnel, working alongside national forces and monitoring member countries’ compliance with the bloc’s border rules.

Weber also rejected internal border controls within Europe as a long-term solution. “They may be necessary in exceptional situations. But they do not address the root cause of the problem … There can therefore be only one answer: strong, joint European protection of the external border.”

In early June, the European Parliament and European Council announced new EU rules on migrant returns, including removals to countries outside the bloc in return hubs.

Weber also argued that the Ceuta crisis, which left around 100 dead, was the result of unilateral national action and said that the Spanish government’s “political signals” have had “an immediate impact on migration routes.”

This article has been updated.

Solar energy, at any time of day or night - that's the dream of space mirror projects. Futurists have been imagining satellite mirrors that could reflect the sun's light onto the Earth's surface for over a century. Russian scientists experimented with the concept in the '90s with the Znamya project. The idea is to put a large mirror in orbit and angle it such that sunlight can be reflected onto a specific geographical area for illumination or the generation of solar power.

Now, the California-based company Reflect Orbital wants to try this idea again, launching a test satellite named Eärendil-1 as a precursor to a fleet of up to 50,000 spa …

Read the full story at The Verge.

PISA, Italy — Giorgia Meloni doesn’t want to be beaten at her own game.

With an election approaching next year and a new far-right rival emerging, the Italian prime minister — whose political origins lie in Italy’s post-fascist right — is putting aside the moderate image she has built over her four years in office and hardening her tone on migration and security.

Meloni’s government was the first in the EU to attack the Spanish government over a sudden influx of migrants from Morocco into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta last week. 

While France and other countries tightened border checks, Italy went further and announced it had suspended the EU’s free-movement Schengen agreement with Madrid. Now, in Italian airports, passengers from Spain are asked to join a different line. 

Meloni’s office has made clear it has no intention of lifting the controls until at least Aug. 15, escalating the clash with Spain, which retaliated by imposing checks on travelers from Italy.

“We will not back down one millimeter on illegal immigration,” Meloni posted on X while her allies attacked the socialist Spanish government, accusing it of failing to manage migration flows. “Defending our borders, stopping human traffickers, and ensuring effective repatriation will continue to be this government’s policy,” she added.

The clash with Spain is just the latest sign that the Italian leader is doing all she can to secure her core, hard-right electorate in the face of a challenge from the right by Roberto Vannacci, a former general and member of the European Parliament.

With an election expected as early as next spring, Vannacci’s far-right National Future party has been advancing in the polls, overtaking one of Meloni’s coalition partners, the far-right League party, and gaining on another, Forza Italia, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls. 

For Meloni, who began her political career in the youth wing of Italy’s post-fascist movement, the challenge strikes particularly close to home.

“There is no doubt that there is concern about containing the competition from National Future,” said Marco Tarchi, a leading right-wing political scientist. “It all boils down to a sharpening of tone. The issues — security, immigration, identity — remain the same as before.” 

During the electoral campaign that brought her to power in 2022, Meloni promised to crack down on illegal migration by putting in place a naval blockade off Italy’s coast. Though that project never ultimately happened, Meloni’s government did open detention hubs in Albania to house migrants while their asylum applications are processed. 

Vannacci, who is campaigning on security and a hard line on immigration, is calling for a more radical solution: “remigration” — a yet-to-be-detailed plan to encourage migrants to return to their countries of origin.

The crisis in Ceuta, during which tens of thousands of migrants crossed from Morocco into the Spanish exclave and nearly 100 died, provided Meloni with an opportunity to show that fighting irregular migration remains an absolute priority for her government.

Meloni’s reaction was “purely the result of domestic political calculations,” said Giorgio Gori, a member of the European Parliament from the left-wing Democratic Party. The Italian prime minister is trying to secure her electorate “by showing that she is loyal to the right-wing slogan and propaganda on migration and beyond.”

For Giovanni Orsina, director of the political science department at Rome’s Luiss Guido Carli University, Meloni’s priority at this stage is “that the Brothers of Italy [Meloni’s party] doesn’t start losing votes too” — in preparation for a potential alliance with Vannacci before or after next year’s election.

“Vannacci has been growing a lot in polls, especially over the past two months,” said Lorenzo Pregliasco from the YouTrend polling firm, noting that National Future is polling at over 7 percent. 

“Without Vannacci, the center-right could lose the upcoming election,” he said. “These seven points matter a lot.”

The Vannacci effect

Nicola Procaccini, Meloni’s lieutenant and co-chair of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, denies that Meloni is shifting on policy to protect herself from Vannacci.

“She stands where she has always stood,” he told POLITICO. “She simply isn’t the racist, xenophobic fascist she was made out to be when she first took office. And she isn’t one now, either.” 

Meloni is also facing a challenge to her support for Ukraine, with both the League and Vannacci advocating a softer line on Moscow, opposing military aid to Kyiv and arguing against an increase in defense spending. 

Though Meloni has portrayed herself as a strong backer of Ukraine, her reliance on the League for support has meant Italy has contributed just €3 billion in four years, roughly the equivalent of €1 a month for every Italian citizen, less than the cost of an espresso.

Italy has also declined to join NATO’s PURL (Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List), an arms-buying scheme set up last summer after U.S. President Donald Trump ended new military aid commitments to Kyiv.

Ukraine is where Meloni’s real difference with Vannacci lies, argued Tarchi, who teaches at the University of Florence and is considered the key figure of a movement called the New Right.

“Otherwise, the gap is artificially exaggerated in rhetoric and posturing for tactical reasons,” he said.

Meloni’s allies haven’t ruled out an alliance with Vannacci but they stress that the possibility will depend on where he stands on key values such as foreign policy.

If he seeks “to position Italy, alongside Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, clearly, it is not possible to stand together,” said Procaccini. “If, instead, he chooses the West — the democracies, Western nations, Western liberal democracies — then we can certainly stand together.”

Editor’s note, August 9, 8 am ET: We’re bringing you some of our best-loved Your Mileage May Vary columns while Sigal Samuel is on parental leave. The one below was originally published in April.

This unconventional advice column offers you a unique framework for thinking through moral dilemmas. It’s based on value pluralism: the idea that each of us has multiple values that are equally valid but that often conflict with each other. Submit your own question here.

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I’m trying to decide whether to keep my elementary school-age kid in the neighborhood public school or move him to a more exclusive private school. Our public school is okay, but my partner and I feel that he might be more challenged and ultimately better off moving to a private school.

But I’m very aware of the increasing flow of students around the US out of public schools, and the effect that is having on the children who remain there. For one thing, since public schools get more funding the more students they have, every family that leaves effectively takes money with them. I worry that by taking my child out of public school, I’m contributing to that problem, but I also don’t want my child to bear the personal burden of my politics.

Dear Public School Parent,

The way you’ve framed the question makes it sound like keeping your kid in public school means imposing a burden on him. And if that were the case — if we really were talking about sacrificing your child’s well-being — I know exactly what I’d tell you.

I’d tell you not to be bullied by utilitarian philosophers. They argue we have to consider everyone’s well-being equally, with no special treatment for our own kids, so they’d probably say it’s wrong to give your child a fancy education while consigning other children to a school with fewer resources. But the 20th-century British philosopher and critic of utilitarianism Bernard Williams argues that this sort of total impartiality is an absurd demand — and I agree.

Williams points out that moral agency — the capacity to act on values and commitments — always comes from a specific person. And as specific people, we have our own specific, individual, core commitments. These “ground projects,” as Williams calls them, are the commitments that give a life its meaning and continuity. A parent has a commitment to ensuring their kid’s well-being, over and above their general wish for all kids everywhere to be well. Williams would say any moral theory that requires you to ignore such personal commitments severs you from the very things that make your life recognizably yours.

So if keeping your kid in public school really meant hurting him, I wouldn’t say you have to do it.

But you said your neighborhood school is okay. It sounds like it’s not bad and not unsafe. So I don’t have reason to think that it is actually hurting him. In fact, it might be helping him in ways you’re not fully accounting for. 

Education is complicated. If I were to get into all the details about school choice and vouchers and charter schools and magnet schools, I’d have to write a whole book. So let me just stick to the main points relevant to your dilemma, starting with this: There’s a popular narrative that says private schools are better than public schools, but the evidence does not support that — especially if we take a broad look at what we mean by “better.”

Although studies do show private school students outperforming their public school counterparts on tests, the studies also show that private school advantages disappear mostly or entirely once you control for family background. 

Longitudinal research led by Robert Pianta and Arya Ansari at the University of Virginia tracked more than 1,000 children from birth to age 15 in 10 locations nationwide. After controlling for family income, parental education, neighborhood socioeconomic makeup, and other background variables, the private school advantage…vanished.

“If you want to predict children’s outcomes — achievement test scores, the things we care about socially — in high school, the best thing you can use to predict that is going to be family income — regardless of what high school you go to,” Pianta said.

Pianta’s was a modest-sized study with some methodological limitations. But another analysis of two large, nationally representative datasets also found that public school kids did just as well in math as private school kids — or even outpaced them — after accounting for demographic differences. (Math is considered a particularly robust indicator of school quality writ large because, unlike reading, it’s a subject learned mostly at school and not at home.) The researchers suggested that might be because public school teachers have to do stricter certification and can be required to do more frequent professional development, so they may be more reliably up-to-date on the latest pedagogical approaches, like those developed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.  

Admittedly, the very fanciest of private schools do offer some special advantages. Network effects are real. Maybe you want your kid rubbing elbows with a future senator. And maybe if you send your kid to ultra-elite Andover or Exeter, he’ll have a leg up if he applies to a fancy private college. 

But that is not the same as ensuring your child actually thrives. I’m sure you also care about your child’s psychological well-being. And here, some of the evidence about exclusive, high-achieving schools is worrying. 

The most important educational institution in your kid’s life is you.

The unrelenting pressure to compete and achieve can be brutal in those schools. When students constantly compare themselves to others and peg their self-worth to achievement, the results are alarming. Studies conducted over decades by psychologist Suniya Luthar and colleagues found that students attending high-achieving schools are at significantly higher risk for anxiety, depression, and substance use. (These are often private schools, though hyper-competitive public schools can also fall into this trap.) In fact, the National Academies of Sciences now names these students an “at-risk” group for mental health problems, alongside kids who live in poverty or in foster care or who have incarcerated parents.

In addition to potentially providing a less stressful environment, public schools can confer other important advantages. For one thing, your local public school can help you and your child be part of the neighborhood community, which is incredibly valuable for social development and countering loneliness. And being in an environment that’s more diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, or class can teach your kid to empathize and get along with a wide variety of people. 

As the American philosopher John Dewey pointed out, these are essential skills and capacities for a flourishing adult life and for a flourishing democracy. Democracy is a way of being in community with people unlike yourself; that’s a mode of life that has to be cultivated, and public schools are great grounds for learning to navigate a shared world.

Plus, public education is free! (Well, “free” — you’ve already paid for it with your taxes, whether or not your kid uses it.) So you could save all the money you’d spend on private school and instead use it on enriching opportunities to expand your child’s horizons. Personally, I’d take my kid to Italy and teach them about Ancient Roman gladiators and Renaissance art and the many flavors of gelato! Or you could collaborate with your child to decide where to donate some of that money to fund education resources for kids elsewhere. 

On balance, since the evidence suggests that a child at a decent public school, with involved parents, probably won’t gain meaningful advantages from switching to an exclusive private school — and may face real psychological risks in a hyper-competitive environment — I don’t see a compelling reason to make the move. If you’ve got the resources to even consider private school, then your home life will probably play the biggest role in your kid’s academic trajectory, regardless of which building he sits in during the day. The most important educational institution in your kid’s life is you.

That said, I’m not arguing that parents should never pick private school. To some extent, this depends on the unique needs of your kid and your family. Maybe your kid is absolutely in love with music and the private school nearby has an amazing music program. Maybe your kid is being bullied at his current school but has a couple great friends who attend the private school. Or maybe a religious education is very important to you, so a private parochial school makes sense. 

If you do make the choice to send your kid to private school, you’ll have to grapple with the collective action problem you hinted at: Any single family’s departure from a public school barely registers, but when every family with options reasons the same way, the cumulative effect on the school’s funding — and on the kids who remain — can be devastating.

Here, the American political philosopher Iris Marion Young can help you. She points out that our usual model of responsibility — the “liability model,” which says that when something bad happens we should assign blame to a particular individual — is inadequate when we’re dealing with situations of structural injustice. In these situations, it’s a whole system that’s producing predictable patterns of disadvantage. 

Just look at the complex web that breeds educational inequality: Historical housing segregation has concentrated poverty in certain neighborhoods. Poorer neighborhoods generate less property tax revenue, which means less money for local schools. States can try to offset that, but schools in poorer areas still tend to end up with fewer resources. Families with options leave for better-resourced schools, enrollment drops at the local public school, and the school loses even more funding. The kids who remain get less of the materials — from textbooks to counselors — that would have set them on the path to success. There’s a clear downward spiral, but no one person or decision is the villain.

So instead of blaming any one individual for their personal lifestyle choices, Young says that in cases of structural injustice, we should adopt the “social connection model” of responsibility. Under this model, you don’t bear blame if you send your kid to private school, because systemic problems shouldn’t rest on one family’s shoulders. Young doesn’t think you need to discharge your obligations through personal lifestyle choices. 

But that doesn’t mean you owe nothing. 

You do still have a political obligation: to work toward changing the structure that produces injustice. As a participant in the political system that shapes education in this country, you have some power to act on it. You can vote and organize and advocate. You can pressure decision-makers and support reform movements. The more power you’ve got, and the more privileged you are by the current system, the greater your obligation to take action.  

Make the effort to act on that obligation. Let your child watch as you do. Better yet, involve them in the process. Kids learn from seeing what their parents do: Show them that you’re bent on enacting your values, and you’ll be giving them an education for life.

Bonus: What I’m reading

• This is a fun piece in Asterisk about how high-school science fairs have become so ridiculously competitive that they no longer give students a chance to do real independent research.
  
• This week’s question prompted me to listen to the podcast series “Nice White Parents.” It’s a fascinating look at what happens when parents think that choosing public school would mean sacrificing their child’s prospects on the altar of their own political ideals. Spoiler: Practically no parent is willing to sacrifice their own child. But they often don’t realize they’ve constructed a false trade-off.
  
• Living life requires making choices. It’s unavoidable that we’ll feel regret about some of the paths not traveled. But this Aeon essay explains how “living in closer alignment with our values and authentic preferences may help us avoid the worst pain of regret.”

This story was originally published in The Highlight, Vox’s member-exclusive magazine. To get access to member-exclusive stories every month, become a Vox Member today.

Buc-ee's became something of a viral sensation during the World Cup, but it has a troubling history of suing small gas stations and convenience stores. On a recent episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver literally begged the company to sue him for selling merch featuring his squirrel mascot, Mr. Nutterbutter, with branding that reads "Buc-Off." But Buc-ee's has so far declined to take the bait, instead targeting yet another small business that lacks the deep pockets and legal team of HBO.

According to WDTN, an NBC affiliate in Miami Valley, Ohio, Buc-ee's opened its first locations in the state earlier this year. And now it's targeting es …

Read the full story at The Verge.

A draft rule reviewed by WIRED would prevent the census from counting undocumented immigrants. To protect against “distortions,” it would also bar questions about race and sexual orientation.

Most of Donald Trump’s success in politics has stemmed from his reputation as a savvy dealmaker. But in his 11 years on the national political scene, that has been exposed as a fiction — a persona invented by Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter for the president’s bestselling book “The Art of The Deal,” who followed him around for 18 months and realized in the process that no one would want to read a book about the real Trump. 

After Trump announced his run for president in 2015, Schwartz told the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer he felt deep remorse for creating this erroneous image of Trump, saying if he wrote the book today, he would call it “The Sociopath.” He said, “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes, there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”

His words were startling, to say the least, but Schwartz’s description of the president’s true personality was revelatory. The man who touted himself as the world’s greatest dealmaker was a pathologically dishonest hype artist with the attention span of a four-year-old, described by Schwartz as having “a stunning level of superficial knowledge and plain ignorance” who seemed “driven entirely by a need for public attention.” His alleged negotiation prowess was actually nonexistent, as the multiple failures of his businesses should have made clear. 

In Trump’s first administration, it became obvious that his idea of dealmaking consisted of willingly succumbing to flattery by malevolent actors and ineffectually bellowing at allies. Professional diplomatic and national security advisers managed to steer him away from most disasters, although he commonly embarrassed the nation on the world stage by displaying his ignorance and fondness for sucking up to adversaries. 

Trump’s second term is a whole other story. 

The president has confused his “Art of the Deal” with the art of diplomacy, and they are most definitely not the same thing. Even if he were actually talented at the former, which he is not, it would have no bearing on the latter, and the consequences of that are turning out to be substantial and damaging. By this point, it’s a cliché that Trump is “transactional,” which many (if not most) people understand to mean he is negotiating on behalf of the American people, bringing riches and security to the nation. In reality, Trump’s often self-serving deals are gravely harming the national interest. 

Diplomacy isn’t just signing a particular agreement between two countries. That may be the culmination of negotiations or just the beginning, but it isn’t actually the goal, especially for a superpower. The aim is to manage relations between countries over the long term to maintain stability and predictability; it’s not a “winner take all” proposition. Credibility is everything for a country like the United States, and now, without it, we are unleashing powerful forces that will be very hard to control.

Trump is a pathological liar. Schwartz discovered that from the very beginning. He was attached to Trump at the hip for many months, listening in on every phone call, observing his conversations and racking his brain to figure out how to present the man as a lovable rogue rather than the damaged personality he really is. The whole world has seen this up close for the past decade. 

At first, allies depended upon the professional diplomatic and national security apparatus to continue to run things in spite of Trump’s erratic behavior and belligerence. They understood early on he loved pomp and circumstance, and that he was easily flattered by obsequious compliments, so they played along, giving him the pageantry of over-the-top state visits and paying homage to him at his properties and the White House. But for the most part, they were just trying to wait out the term, expecting that the American people would realize the error of their ways and revert to being a serious nation. 

This time around is different. A recent report in the Washington Post by Steve Hendrix and Anthony Faiola revealed that the world is no longer taking the U.S. seriously, leaving the government with no credibility. As a result, international relations are unstable and dangerous. 

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When Trump regained office the second time, the world quaked at his swagger, backed up by a bizarre tariff regime that seemed to be put together by Mad Libs. The markets dropped, recriminations flowed, and it looked as if Trump had finally been completely unleashed. To some extent, he had been. He and his close circle had decided to do whatever they wanted and see what they could get away with. But it soon became evident there wasn’t really any strategy or even any particular goals, despite the apparent participation of people like Elon Musk and the authors of Project 2025. In the end, it was all about Trump’s whims, which changed from minute to minute. 

The short attention span Schwartz described is now even more pronounced. The president’s obsession with building monuments to himself notwithstanding, he flits from subject to subject, bellowing threats to all who oppose him and rewarding his cronies with ever more obvious modes of corruption. 

The world has decided to stop paying attention. “[M]ost consequently,” Hendrix and Faiola wrote, “Iran refuses to bend under American bombs and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and Russian President Vladimir Putin persists in his war in Ukraine. Europe met Trump’s recently renewed demands for Greenland with a collective sigh, and trading partners have shrugged off the latest tariffs.” 

Over the years, world leaders have had varying reactions to American presidents of both parties. But the country’s leaders have never been disregarded. 

Jeremy Shapiro, director of the U.S. program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told the Post he was surprised at how long Trump’s bluffs and bellicosity had worked, crediting it to the “awesome power and deep, long-stored-up diplomatic capital of the United States” that Trump has “finally started to blow through.”

The president’s threats are now seen as empty, and his so-called deals aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. This was most recently on display in mid-July when he made a big, splashy announcement of a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia. Within a day, Trump added a poison-pill requirement by way of a Truth Social post that left the Saudis reeling. His threats to annihilate Iran are now falling on deaf ears because he’s all over the place, usually lying about the progress of diplomatic talks, showing that he’s full of bluster and bombast but lacks a strategy to win and ideas about how to get out. 

America’s political dynamics have us all just trying to hold on until he’s out of office so we can try to rebuild from the rubble. But the loss of credibility, the exposure of the nation’s weaknesses and the people’s willingness to put such a man in charge will not be easily repaired. The long-term damage to our international reputation, coupled with the weakness we are demonstrating in any number of areas, will leave us vulnerable for a long time to come.

The post The world is finally calling Trump’s bluff appeared first on Salon.com.

This story was originally reported by Shefali Luthra of The 19th. Meet Shefali and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Todd Blanche — whom Republicans hope to confirm as attorney general by the end of the week — has indicated he could steer the Justice Department to prioritize national abortion restrictions, a major shift from how the Trump administration has handled the issue thus far.

In a call last week, Blanche, who is serving as both acting attorney general and deputy attorney general and has previously served as Trump’s personal lawyer, suggested that under his leadership, the department would prioritize restrictions on medication abortion.

“If states have said we are going to protect the unborn and we’re going to protect every life from the moment of conception, we’re putting practices and policies in place so that other states and other organizations can’t attack that,” Blanche said on a call organized by the White House Faith Office and posted online in full by Intercessors for America, a Christian organization. The call’s contents were first reported by Politico.

The remarks are only the latest to suggest that if confirmed, Blanche might take a more aggressive approach than his predecessor. In a July hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Blanche said that if confirmed, he would commit to reviewing how the federal government interprets the Comstock Act, an anti-obscenity law from the 1800s that abortion opponents believe could be interpreted to prohibit the mailing of any drug used to terminate a pregnancy. 

Anti-abortion activists have been pressing the administration to revive the Comstock Act since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term; Trump has declined to do so.

When asked about the possibility of enforcing the law to ban mailing of abortion medications, the Department of Justice confirmed that its Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the president and attorney general, “is undertaking a thorough review” of policies and procedures related to abortion.

Blanche requires one more vote to secure support from a majority of the Senate. Two Senate Republicans — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana — have not yet indicated whether they would vote to confirm him. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican up for re-election, said Tuesday she would not vote to confirm Blanche, citing his abortion-related remarks as a key factor.

The confirmation fight comes months before a midterm election in which Republicans — already facing an uphill battle to control both chambers of Congress — have largely avoided talking about abortion. Though reproductive rights dominated the 2024 election, polling suggests that the issue has taken a backseat, with voters primarily concerned about the cost of living. 

Still, national restrictions on abortion remain unpopular. 

Abortion pill restrictions have emerged as a top priority for the anti-abortion movement. Even as bans have proliferated across the country, medical professionals in protective states have continued to prescribe and mail them to people living under abortion bans. This telehealth practice is medically safe and has enabled thousands of people to circumvent their states’ laws and end their pregnancies. 

Anti-abortion activists have called on the federal government to intervene, arguing that the existence of this telehealth model has undercut states’ abilities to enforce bans. But so far, the Trump administration has taken no action to block telehealth abortion, despite pressure from top anti-abortion groups.

Blanche’s remarks suggest that could be changing, though it’s unclear when or how that shift might take place. 

In the White House Faith Office call, he did not reveal what approach the administration might take to limit the availability of abortion medication, or when any switch might take effect — only saying that “victory will be soon and victory will be permanent.” 

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Abortion opponents have pressed for the Food and Drug Administration to reverse its decision approving mifepristone, one of two drugs used in most abortions, to be dispensed without an in-person visit. The FDA is currently reviewing mifepristone’s approval, despite a vast body of medical research showing the drug’s safety and effectiveness, including by telehealth. 

They have also pressed for the Department of Justice to revive the Comstock Act to bar the mailing not only of mifepristone, but also misoprostol, an ulcer medication that is prescribed off-label as part of the abortion medication regimen. Under the Biden administration, the Justice Department argued that the Comstock Act could not be enforced to enforce a blanket ban on the mailing of mifepristone or misoprostol. 

Democrats have argued that Blanche’s remarks are disqualifying. 

“He wants to strip Americans of their right to choose and strip states of their right to govern,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, said Tuesday during a meeting of the Senate’s Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, posted on the social media platform X that “Senators who vote for Blanche are voting for an Attorney General who will attack abortion rights in EVERY state.”

Abortion opponents are concurrently pursuing restrictions on mifepristone through the courts, notably in a case filed by Louisiana, in which the state has argued for the government to reverse its decision approving mifepristone for telehealth. That case is set to be heard by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in September.

The post Trump’s attorney general pick hints at making national abortion restrictions a priority appeared first on Salon.com.

Meta has been ordered to pay $567 million in the second phase of New Mexico's landmark child safety case, bringing total charges to nearly $1 billion for being a "public nuisance." In a ruling published on Thursday, the Santa Fe district court found that Meta's platforms are a "significant contributing cause" of a teen mental health crisis affecting public health and safety throughout New Mexico.

"This case has always been about protecting children, standing up for families, and making sure that one of the world's largest technology companies cannot profit from practices that endanger young people without consequence," New Mexico Attorney G …

Read the full story at The Verge.

BRUSSELS — EU Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner warned on Thursday the bloc is vulnerable to unauthorized migration if control of its external borders depends on the goodwill of neighboring countries.

Brunner’s remarks came at an extraordinary meeting of the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee, a week after a major migration surge from Morocco into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta, which has reignited debate over how the EU should secure its frontiers.

“What we have seen in Ceuta during the past few days was … a test of our resilience and also of the security of our external borders,” Brunner said.

“We must cooperate with our neighbors, of course. But as long as control depends on the goodwill of one neighboring state, we remain … vulnerable,” he added.

Brunner described last week’s events in Ceuta, when around 72,000 migrants forced their way into the Spanish exclave, as “solid proof that we need a strong and effective tool — and different tools — to combat smuggling.”

Ceuta Mayor-President Juan Jesús Vivas, who also attended the meeting, said that around 100 people died during the mass border crossing, and that between 3,000 and 5,000 remained in the exclave.

Brunner said the EU should use all available leverage to secure the cooperation of countries bordering the bloc.

“It’s about further strengthening the work with partners … [We need to] step up our migration diplomacy by reinforcing comprehensive partnerships to stem this illegal migration, secure effective returns and create the right opportunities for people at home,” he said.

Brunner said cooperation with non-EU countries was essential “because the goal there is to make sure such events never happen again.”

The conservative Austrian commissioner’s party colleague Integration Minister Claudia Bauer warned on Thursday in a written statement that “another attempted mass crossing” in Ceuta could happen on Aug. 15, quoting Spanish media.

“In light of reports of another attempted mass crossing, Spain must immediately and significantly reinforce border protection in its African enclaves and ensure that this time it will hold,” she said.