Former President Biden and his top advisers rejected recommendations that could have eased the border crisis that helped return Donald Trump to the White House.
Russian forces have advanced on several fronts in recent weeks. Vladimir Putin says Russia will achieve its territorial aims by whatever means necessary.
President Trump’s new strategy describes a country that is focused on doing business and reducing migration while avoiding passing judgment on authoritarians.
The court’s conservative majority said that Texas’ asserted political motives justified letting the state use voting maps meant to disadvantage Democrats.
Companies are petitioning for exemptions from the Trump administration’s high levies on foreign-made goods, saying they hurt business and raise prices.
Watching with horror from London last week as flames ripped through seven adjacent apartment blocks in Hong Kong, it was impossible not to think back to the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017, which exposed major systemic failures around UK social housing and eventually led to law changes around safety and accountability for high-rise buildings.
The comparisons with Hong Kong were not just visually obvious but also because the semi-autonomous city’s worst fire in decades appears to have followed months of complaints from residents about shoddy materials used in building works.
Hong Kong is of course a very different place to London, with politicians facing less public accountability in a political climate that makes it much harder for citizens to express dissent. But, as anger rises, hard questions are nevertheless being asked of authorities amid accusations of negligence and corruption.
Five essential reads in this week’s edition
The big story | Can Europe unite to tame Russia – without the US? Washington’s Putin-appeasing plan for peace in Ukraine has failed, but many heard the death knell sound for European reliance on US protection, writes Patrick Wintour
Spotlight | If Rachel Reeves goes, will Keir Starmer fall with her? British prime ministers rarely sack their chancellors – and when they do it almost inevitably leads to their own downfall. After last week’s budget, Starmer knows the same is true of him and Reeves, says Jessica Elgot
Feature | The dangerous rise of extremist Buddhism Buddhism is still largely viewed as a peaceful philosophy – but across much of south-east Asia, the religion has been weaponised to serve nationalist goals. Sonia Faleiroinvestigates
Opinion | From the West Bank to Syria and Lebanon, Israel’s onslaught continues Broken ceasefires, bombing, ground incursions and mounting deaths: Israeli imperialism is now expanding across the region, says Nesrine Malik
Culture | Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater: two men on the moon As their 11th movie together, Blue Moon, is released, the actor and director tell Xan Brooks about musicals, the legacy of Philip Seymour Hoffman and what being bald and short does to your flirting skills
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent could face President Trump’s wrath if the person chosen as the next Federal Reserve chair does not quickly lower interest rates.
Adm. Frank Bradley will soon face questions from lawmakers, as Republicans and Democrats express concerns about a Sept. 2 attack on a boat in the Caribbean.
Officials are accusing Russia of smaller-scale assaults. President Vladimir V. Putin sought to turn the tables, saying that if Europe were to start a war, Russia is ready.
It’s an irony to savour: the man who invented the Tudors was a German. If Henry VIII, his wives and courtiers exercise a stronger hold on the public imagination than their Plantagenet precursors or Stuart successors, it is because we can all picture them so clearly. That, in turn, is due to an extraordinary sequence of portraits and drawings produced between the late 1520s and early 1540s by Hans Holbein of Augsburg (c 1497–1543), many of which have become instantly recognisable.
Doublethink & Doubt
Orwell: 2+2=5 By Raoul Peck (dir)
George Orwell: Life and Legacy By Robert Colls
Nobody under the age of seventy-five has heard George Orwell’s voice. The only extant video footage is in a silent movie of the Eton Wall Game. None of his many wartime recordings for the BBC Eastern Service has survived. By all accounts his voice, damaged by a bullet to the throat during the Spanish Civil War, was thin, flat and weak. In fact, the controller of the BBC Overseas Service complained that putting on ‘so wholly unsuitable a voice’ made the BBC appear ‘ignorant of the essential needs of the microphone and of the audience’.
Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been convicted in the U.S. of drug trafficking charges, was released from a federal prison in West Virginia, his lawyer said.
Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s envoy, and Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, are expected to present President Vladimir Putin with a proposal to end the war.
Zelensky Turns to Europe as Witkoff Is Expected to Meet Putin in Moscow
Volodymyr Zelensky was meeting with France’s leader in Paris. Steve Witkoff, a special envoy for President Trump, was expected to travel to Moscow to meet Vladimir Putin.
The Justice Department is trying to access ballots cast in 2020, while several officials who fought over the election outcome are seeking higher office.
Electoral authorities said partial results showed the two conservative candidates were virtually tied — and far ahead of the governing left-wing party.
Top Republicans have joined Democrats in demanding answers about the military campaign the Trump administration says is aimed at targeting drug traffickers.
In this prodigiously researched epic, Torigian details the life of Xi Zhongxun—the father of China’s current leader, Xi Jinping—to explain the history of the Chinese Communist Party. Along the way, readers gain a sense of how the younger Xi became the man he is today.
Luce, a gifted storyteller, chronicles the personal life and intellectual journey of former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who played a significant but underappreciated role in opening the United States to China, bringing the Cold War to an end, and shaping the world that came after. In writing this gem of a book, Luce has rendered a genuine service to history.
Soldatov and Borogon, two Russian journalists, tell the story of their one-time group of friends and colleagues—young Russians who, over the course of the Putin years, steadily drift toward nationalist and illiberal ideas and end up as supporters of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
In this masterful study, Varouxakis tracks the meanings of “the West” from the late eighteenth century to the present—and argues that the modern notion of the term emerged in the 1830s as a way to distinguish western Europe from Russia. Today, for beleaguered countries such as Ukraine, “the West” is still a powerful idea.
Foreign Affairs Magazine: The very best of the hundreds of books on international politics, economics, and history that were featured in the magazine this year, selected by Foreign Affairs’ editors and book reviewers.
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