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The most subversive aspect of Donald Trump’s tyrannical designs and paranoia is his corruption of the Department of Justice. He has made it into a personal weapon against any perceived foe whom he wants to
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The G7 summit convening today in France is expected to be dominated by Donald Trump’s dithering over his Iran war. He has once again demonstrated his predilection for abrupt policy changes. One moment he wants
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Google tells me that Scrooge McDuck has an “estimated net worth at $315.36 quadrillion,” making him a good role model for Elon Musk.The only concern in that possibility is that Scrooge is usually thought of
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Nothing worth doing is easy. Do what you love. Maryssa Barron had Post-it notes of those quotes on her dorm room wall at Stanford Law School for motivation as she created her own tech startup
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Three events this summer each tell a very different story about the United States. On June 14, President Donald Trump turns 80, while on July 4 the US will celebrate 250 years since the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. The third event is the FIFA World Cup which began on June 11 in Mexico City and culminates in the final in New Jersey on July 19. Separately, and together, the events suggest an uneasy summer ahead against the backdrop of political tension and geopolitical friction. Trump became the oldest man ever to be elected president when he defeated Kamala Harris in November 2024 and returned to the Oval Office two months later. Aged 78 and seven months, Trump was five months older than Joe Biden was when his administration began in January 2021 (Biden remains the oldest person to hold the presidency, a record that Trump will surpass in May 2028). Biden celebrated his 80th birthday in November 2022 in a low-key manner that contrasts with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) cage fight on the South Lawn of the White House on Trump’s milestone birthday. Since 2020, Biden and Trump have redefined notions of “ageism” in American politics which had, for decades, been seen as a younger person’s game in the decades since Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush held the presidency between 1981 and 1993. Bill Clinton’s victory over Bush in the 1992 presidential election heralded a generational shift in politics yet his own generation of baby boomers remains in office a quarter-century later. It is a quirky statistic that Clinton, his successor, George W Bush, and Trump were all born within two months of each other, in June, July, and August 1946. Clinton, the youngest of the three, was the first to become president and Trump, the oldest, was the last to take office. The increase in the age of the president can thus in part be seen by tracking the ages of Clinton, Bush, and Trump in office. At 46, Clinton was the youngest man to win a presidential election since John F Kennedy and he left office aged just 54; both he, and George W Bush, who was 62 at the end of his presidency, have led long lives after the White House. Remarkably, Barack Obama is the only occupant of the Oval Office in the last 30 years who was not born in the 1940s, and the scene is set for another generational shift post-Trump. “America 250” is a moment of celebration for the nation which, perhaps symptomatic of the fractious political moment in which it occurs, has been riven by factionalism. An official Congressional bipartisan commission (America 250) is vying with a White House task force (Freedom 250) established by an executive order of Donald Trump, its chair. Each of them will be arranging events to honour and commemorate July 4 but in isolation of each other, and their coexistence is a reminder of the rifts that the US has occasionally faced in history. To get to its 250th anniversary, the US overcame a civil war in its ninth decade as a country as well as periods of internal friction, including violence and political assassinations, which were last seen at elevated levels in the 1960s, when Vietnam also roiled the nation. To say that the past decade has been turbulent is an understatement, even if this is true of world politics more generally and not necessarily specific to the US. Although the tensions in recent years do amount to significant differences between groups of Americans over how the country should be run, they have not yet threatened to spiral out of control. One wildcard, however, that was not present in earlier eras is the intense atomisation of the social media age that has split communities into echo chambers that barely interact with one another. This poses a significant challenge to political leaders around the world, not just in the US, and has been on display in the United Kingdom in recent weeks as protests against perceived injustice in the application of law and order have been fanned by online commentary. Such transnational flows of information and disinformation may worsen as artificial intelligence (AI) tools and deep fakes become more sophisticated, and as so many tech companies are headquartered in the US, it may be up to Congress and the White House to regulate them. Political polarisation may, however, make this task much harder in practice. Finally, the FIFA World Cup kicked off with Mexico defeating South Africa 2-0 in a game which saw the referee send three players off, leaving the tournament just one red card short of the total of four sendings off during the entirety of the 2022 edition in Qatar. The stormy start may be seen as emblematic of a World Cup that has been buffeted by political and geopolitical tensions as never before, and whose run-up was dominated by negative media headlines about the denial of entry to Iranian support staff and Somali referee Omar Abdulkadir Artan. For someone so steeped in the performative world of television and entertainment, Trump will not want the World Cup to be overshadowed by news narratives which focus on issues such as empty seats in the stadiums or potential Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity in host cities. More than any other occupant of the White House, Trump understands the importance of visual images, and the showman in him will desperately want the tournament to be a success. By the same token, suggestions that Trump might attend the opening US game in Los Angeles may have been motivated in part by concern that he might be booed by sections of the crowd, as he was when he attended a New York Knicks basketball game in New York on June 9. How the summer unfolds will therefore provide indications of the political temperature across the US as the potentially consequential midterm elections in November loom on the horizon. The writer is a leading scholar specialising in Gulf politics and international political economy, and a fellow at the Baker Institute and co-director of the Middle East Energy Roundtable.
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As SpaceX completed the biggest initial public offering (IPO) in history, Elon Musk saw his wealth blow past the symbolic – and unprecedented – level of a trillion dollars. Following strong demand for shares in the space technology as part of the IPO, they jumped more than 20% when they began trading on the Nasdaq on Friday. That lifted the estimated wealth of the South Africa-born Musk, 54, to above $1tn, according to Bloomberg and CNBC. That takes him into an uncharted zone of the mega-wealth stratosphere, leaving Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as Amazon creator Jeff Bezos trailing in his wake, according to data from Forbes and Bloomberg. However, what could a discerning unfathomably rich investor actually do with a cool trillion at his disposal? That’s around the wealth produced over a year by entire countries, such as Switzerland or Poland ($1,040bn GDP in 2025, according to the International Monetary Fund). Or, if you prefer, see it in terms of totalling three times the current value of France’s gold reserves. Yet Musk’s wealth is considerably different to that afforded by precious metal, a tangible asset with safe haven status owing to its reputation for stability. Musk’s wealth is mostly derives from his stock portfolio, the value of which fluctuates and can be decidedly volatile. “If Elon Musk wanted to sell off a huge chunk of his shares to buy real estate or whatever, the stock price would drop hugely,” warned Alexandre Baradez, head of market analysis for investment company IG France. That would mechanically see his total wealth follow the same trend. “There’s the law of supply and demand,” Baradez said. “But there’s also, and maybe even more importantly, the psychological effect: a massive sale of Elon Musk’s shares, given the strong influence he has on his companies’ strategies, would send a very strong signal to the market.” Other investors would likely follow suit, which would further decrease the stock’s value, and ultimately, the fortune of a man who would revert from being a trillionaire to merely a multi-multi-billionaire.
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The photo is for representation purposes only (Reuters/File Photo) A key US foreign surveillance law is set to expire at midnight amid a political fight over President Donald Trump’s choice for interim chief of US intelligence. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is a key tool for collecting foreign intelligence, officials say. It allows authorities to gather communications from foreign targets overseas and then search that data, including for information about Americans who may have been in contact with them, a central concern for critics. The deadline is the second for renewing the law this year. Section 702 is “a key provision” of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 that “permits the government to conduct targeted surveillance of foreign persons located outside the United States, with the compelled assistance of communication providers”, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in an explainer document. The law allows targeting of non-US citizens abroad, but bars US agencies from targeting US citizens. It also prohibits collecting data on anyone located in the US, or targeting a foreigner to get to a US citizen. However, the communications of Americans get scooped up when they communicate with a foreigner who is under surveillance. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), National Security Agency (NSA), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Counterterrorism Centre “routinely” search the data for Americans’ phone calls, e-mails and text messages without having to obtain a warrant, the Brennan Centre for Justice said in March 2026. Section 702 expired on April 20, 2026, but Congress passed a 10-day extension. Bipartisan critics pushed for a warrant requirement to better protect Americans’ data, while the White House and intelligence officials sought a “clean” renewal with no changes to the law. On April 30, Congress extended it again, this time for 45 days. As part of that agreement, Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat who has long opposed warrantless data collection, secured an agreement to publicly release a secret FISA court ruling related to how Section 702 has been used. Efforts to extend it further stalled when Senate Democrats baulked at providing the needed votes after Trump refused to reconsider his decision to appoint mortgage regulator Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence. Pulte is a Trump ally with no national security experience. Even if the law expires, federal authorities may still be able to query Americans’ data under Section 702, according to the Brennan Centre for Justice’s Hannah James and Elizabeth Goitein, because the programme operates under yearlong certifications last renewed in March. There would be limits, however. The legal protections Section 702 gives telecom and technology firms for providing Americans’ data to the government would apply only to operations already authorised. They may not cover new requests, and some firms could decline to co-operate, according to Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee. A T-Mobile representative said the company’s teams “carefully review each request and provide legally required information. Our teams are closely monitoring developments, and our focus remains on complying with the law and protecting our customers’ information”. Neither AT&T nor Verizon responded to requests for comment. Even without Section 702, US authorities have other surveillance tools but they are less sweeping and generally require court orders. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) uses facial recognition, social media monitoring, phone hacking tools and cell site simulators, which allow for granular surveillance of mobile phones in some cases, and the deployment of MQ-9 Predator drones. Local police departments also employ facial recognition technology under various laws, news outlet Stateline reported last year. FISA allows the US attorney-general to authorise a surveillance operation on an emergency basis, but the government must obtain court authorisation after 72 hours or terminate it.
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Either we have to spend less on defence, and say what we will not be able to do, or we have to meet the target Sir Keir Starmer himself set, and say how we would
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Holly Evans, The IndependentRegardless of which party leader moves into Downing Street at the next general election, one certainty is that they will have to grapple with the same grim reality when it comes to
