In an interview with Semafor, an EU human rights official expressed grave concerns about the instability of the Middle East amid the US-Israeli war on Iran.
We’ve noticed that whenever the news is bad for Donald Trump, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dials up the cultlike obsequiousness to 11. She just let out a strange rant basically declaring that Iran will have entered into “unconditional surrender,” as Trump wants, whenever he merely says it has. In another really odd moment, she dismissed widespread MAGA criticism of Trump’s war by essentially declaring that MAGA is whatever Trump says it is. The two displays really went full North Korea in other ways too. That’s no accident: An average of the latest high-quality surveys now shows that support for his Iran war is at 38 percent, perhaps the lowest initial support for a war ever. Another analysis finds Trump’s net approval on immigration has dropped by 20 points since last year. And his economic numbers are awful. We talked to Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, a skilled decoder of MAGA. We discuss how this presidency is in trouble on many fronts and the role of cultlike praise in managing the base at difficult moments. We also discuss how Trump’s physical decline, and the prospect of a world without him, is hovering in the background of all of it. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.
Moscow is profiting from a spike in oil prices, and the Kremlin bets a windfall from prolonged hostilities could help boost its coffers to pay for military operations in Ukraine and plug a budget deficit.
Balendra Shah, who played a leading role in the Gen Z protests that toppled Nepal’s political old guard, is poised to win in a landslide following Thursday’s election.