Americans are experiencing historic national pessimism. Polls find Americans feel that the country needs major changes, but doubt these changes are possible.

For many Americans, just following the news can feel exhausting. Each day, Americans see health protections rolled back, climate commitments abandoned, and more technologies that nobody asked for and nobody can opt out of. The decisions that shape our lives—health coverage, the air children will breathe, the tools they will grow up with—seem to be made far above our heads. 

In many ways, the country is moving in the opposite direction the public wants. Americans largely favor expanding clean energy, yet federal incentives for it are being dismantled and the banks are walking away from their climate pledges. Similarly, national healthcare programs are more popular than ever, yet policy is moving to strip coverage from millions. And an astonishing 97% of Americans say the immensely wealthy AI industry should face some form of oversight, and yet Washington has moved to stop states from regulating it.

What is there to do when big companies, and even the government, stand in the way of progress on national emergencies? The scale of these problems alone is intimidating: one may reasonably worry, “Can I make any difference? Even if I take action, will others join in?” It is well documented that this sense of futility is demotivating. And, research also shows that when people believe powerful actors will not do their part, they conclude their own effort is both pointless and unfair, and they disengage from the issue. Faced with all of this, is civil society simply powerless?

Our research suggests a more hopeful outlook. Even amid systemic opposition, the public’s voice matters—a lot. Specifically, we find social change can be mobilized when two groups are united behind a solution: scientists and the public. 

Through a mix of survey and field studies involving more than 55,000 Americans, we examined how people decide whether to act on a national problem when they receive signals about what to do from a variety of influential players in society: scientists, fellow citizens, governments, and private companies. The finding was strikingly consistent. The joint endorsement of scientific experts and the general public was the most powerful force motivating Americans to act, whether on climate, public health, or technology.

We found that when people learned that scientists and the public both backed a solution, they became more supportive of climate, health, and AI policies, more inclined to pursue solutions like electric vehicles and new vaccines, and more willing to donate their own money to the cause. Collectively, these choices are the building blocks of social change: the votes, purchases, donations, advocacy, and visible support through which public opinion begins to shape markets, movements, and eventually institutions. 

Crucially, these effects held even when government bodies and private companies actively opposed the action. In one experiment we conducted, options backed by scientists and the public were chosen about 80% of the time, even when people learned both the government and industry opposed them. We then experimented with the reverse scenario: when a solution was backed by government and industry but opposed by scientists and the public. In this case, the solution was less than half as likely to be chosen.

In other words, failure of our major institutions need not leave the public powerless and immobilized. Government and industry opposition can make progress feel unrealistic, futile, or out of reach. But our findings point to an antidote to the demotivating pull of institutional inaction: it can be offset by a different kind of signal, a bottom-up one, that helps keep the public from giving up. 

When you speak up, you are not simply expressing a private opinion. You are helping create the public signal that others use to decide whether change is possible. Your voice becomes part of the evidence that people are not alone in wanting change and that powerful institutions do not have to get the final word. When citizens’ support is made visible alongside scientific consensus, it can move others to act—even when government and industry stand in the way

Together, visible support from scientists and citizens can restore the two things institutional retreat takes away: confidence that action is sound, and confidence that it will not be taken alone.

Intuitively, scientists and the public meet two distinct human needs: Scientists are typically seen as knowledgeable, satisfying the need to be right, while fellow citizens are seen as relatable and likable, satisfying the need to belong. Our theory is that because the two core needs operate through different psychological channels, the duo is more persuasive than either alone. By contrast, the influence of government and industry on Americans’ decisions to take action is relatively weaker. Government support or opposition to a solution carried less weight than some may assume, perhaps due to Americans’ historically low trust in government.

While there is a lot to be hopeful about in these findings, there is an important catch. Our studies show what happens when people are given clear signals that scientists and the public hold a particular view. But in day-to-day life, people may not know what the general public or scientists actually think. We rarely get unfiltered information about public opinion or scientific consensus. Instead, their positions are conveyed to us through the media, political elites, and heads of industry who can amplify, mute, or distort them. The predictable result is that Americans badly misjudge where everyone stands. People consistently underestimate how many of their fellow citizens, and how many scientists, support action on issues like climate change. And when those misperceptions are corrected, willingness to engage goes up.

In our eyes, this points to a clear course of action: We must build coalitions between scientists and citizens and make those coalitions visible. A scientific consensus on its own can be shrugged off as esoteric or impractical, and a popular movement on its own may be dismissed as uninformed, but articulated together, in the form of "the experts agree, and so do the neighbors next door," they become far harder to ignore.

In this effort, journalists, communicators, and advocates become indispensable, because the public cannot draw motivation from an agreement it does not know exists. Correcting the widespread underestimation of how much scientists and ordinary people actually want action may be one of the highest-leverage things a communicator can do. And it means no one should mistake the silence of governments and corporations for the last word. Their opposition, our results suggest, is far less paralyzing than it feels in the headlines, as long as the alternative coalition is loud enough to be heard.

None of this means institutions don't matter. Ultimately, durable solutions need policy and capital behind them. But our findings overturn the assumption that may be underlying America's current pessimism: that the public needs to wait for action from the top. It doesn’t. The most powerful force we found in moving Americans to act toward social change was not a government mandate or a corporate pledge, but the visible agreement of scientists and ordinary people. That coalition already exists on many of the nation's most urgent problems—it may simply be invisible to Americans. Every time you voice support for a solution the science backs, you are not just expressing an opinion; you are supplying the evidence someone else needs to believe change is possible. Two hundred and fifty years in, that remains the idea this country stands for: that ordinary people, not the powerful, get the final word.

If you think mosquitoes suck, science is on your side. They don't actually bite, explains Lyric Bartholomay, a medical entomologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Veterinary Medicine: They have sucking mouthparts, not biting ones. "So they literally suck," she says, "and they figuratively suck, too."

Their resume only gets worse from there. The mosquito is the deadliest animal on the planet, killing more people than any other creature by spreading malaria, dengue, West Nile virus, Zika, chikungunya, and other diseases. In the contiguous U.S., West Nile is the leading mosquito-borne disease, sickening about 2,000 people and killing more than 130 every year.

There isn’t one mosquito-borne-disease hot spot in the U.S. West Nile virus has been reported across the contiguous U.S., and where cases surge can change from year to year. Most locally acquired dengue transmission happens in Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories, though limited local transmission has also occurred in Florida, Texas, Arizona, California, and Hawaii. 

Fortunately, protecting yourself doesn’t require surrendering your backyard—or spending the summer sealed indoors. It does require avoiding some surprisingly common mistakes. We asked mosquito experts what they never do during the summer, from overlooking tiny pools of standing water to relying on products that don’t actually work.

They don’t ignore standing water

Bird baths, koi ponds, and fountains are the easy stuff—the water you can see from the kitchen window. The real trouble is the more hidden water.

Louisa Messenger, a vector-borne disease researcher at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, points to a bottle cap that has rolled underneath a shrub and catches a little spray whenever the sprinklers run. It holds less than a milliliter of water, but that’s enough for certain daytime-biting mosquitoes to lay their eggs. “You would never find that, never in 1,000 years,” she says. “But your mosquitoes will find that.”

Other easily missed breeding spots include a tiny pocket of water beneath the soil in a potted plant, a discarded tire, or a planter saucer. Maintained, chlorinated pools and fountains with moving water generally aren’t the problem. Mosquitoes want still water—and the smaller the pool, the easier it is to miss.

They never walk past a container without glancing inside

Once mosquito experts learn what a breeding spot looks like, they see them everywhere.

In her own yard, a tarp left crumpled over some lumber became a collection of tiny pools after it rained. Buckets and cups forgotten after parties are equally inviting. Then there’s her neighbor’s wheelbarrow, which is full of weeds and refills whenever it rains. “I keep sneaking over there and emptying it out,” Bartholomay says. “The mosquitoes just love it.”

Where you live determines where else you need to look. In parts of Florida, some plants, like ornamental bromeliads, collect water in the cups of their leaves, allowing mosquitoes to breed several feet above the ground. Daniel Markowski, technical advisor with the American Mosquito Control Association, flags children’s toys—dump trucks, sand pails, plastic cups—and buried downspouts that aren’t draining properly. Mosquitoes can breed in the trapped water underground, then fly in and out through the top.

Once you find standing water, dump it. Scrub the sides of containers you’re keeping to dislodge any eggs, then turn them upside down so they can’t refill. Bromeliads should be flushed with a strong stream from a hose, while blocked downspouts need to be cleared or repaired so they drain completely.

The habit follows Markowski everywhere. “Walking my dog down the street, I see something and think, ‘Oh, yeah, they need to empty that bird bath,’” he says. “You just can’t help but make a mental note of everywhere you see standing water.”

They never let a bird bath sit untouched 

A bird bath can become a mosquito nursery in about a week. Markowski recommends dumping and refilling it at least that often. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises scrubbing it too, which helps dislodge eggs stuck to the sides. Stick with plain water: Bleach and other harsh chemicals can leave residue that harms birds.

Do the same weekly sweep for flowerpot saucers, buckets, toys, tarps, and anything else that has collected water. Bartholomay’s rule is simple: “Just take away their habitat.”

Gutters don’t necessarily need weekly attention, but they do need to stay clear. Markowski cleans his every spring, before mosquito season gets underway; Bartholomay uses gutter guards to keep water from pooling in the first place.

They wouldn’t dare underestimate the power of a fan

One of Bartholomay’s favorite mosquito-fighting tools is low-tech: a fan. Mosquitoes are weak flyers, so even a modest breeze makes it harder for them to land. “You can make your own breeze with a fan,” she says.

When her family plans to eat outside, she points a fan toward the table and switches on a spatial repellent—a small device that heats and releases repellent into the surrounding air—about 10 minutes before they sit down. Together, they make the patio much less hospitable to pests before dinner even arrives.

They never assume daylight means they’re safe

The dawn-and-dusk rule most people think applies to mosquitoes isn’t comprehensive. The pests are also active midday.

Culex mosquitoes that spread West Nile virus tend to feed around dawn and dusk. But invasive Aedes mosquitoes, including Asian tiger mosquitoes, are “really vicious daytime biters,” Bartholomay says.

Aedes mosquitoes can transmit dengue, Zika, yellow fever, and chikungunya. These viruses aren’t endemic in the continental U.S., but travelers can bring them home after getting infected elsewhere. If a local Aedes mosquito bites an infected traveler while the virus is circulating in their blood, the mosquito can pick it up. After the virus multiplies inside the mosquito, it can spread dengue by biting someone else—starting a local chain of transmission.

Daylight, in other words, offers no protection. “You’re out in their environment in the daytime, and so it’s up to you to protect yourself,” Messenger says. “They will come and find you.”

They never assume a drought—or a desert—means no mosquitoes

Drought may knock back some mosquitoes, but it doesn’t get rid of all of them.

“I wouldn’t assume that when it’s really hot and dry, there’s no mosquito risk,” Bartholomay says. Species that flourish after heavy rain may dwindle, but some of the mosquitoes that transmit West Nile virus continue doing just fine.

Moving to the desert doesn't guarantee an escape, either. Messenger lives in Las Vegas, where she hears from people who expected the heat and aridity to leave them mosquito-free. Instead, Southern Nevada has a significant mosquito problem, as do parts of Arizona and Utah.

“Mosquitoes are super adaptable,” Messenger says. Some of her friends and colleagues are being “absolutely shredded”—bitten so badly they can’t enjoy their yards.

They won’t grab a repellent without checking the label

When it comes to bug spray, mosquito experts worry less about the branding than the active ingredient and concentration.

Markowski favors products with 20% DEET. “It’s the gold standard,” he says. “It’s been around for 50-plus years for good reason.” Picaridin is another well-supported option. Bartholomay uses the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s searchable repellent list to compare ingredients and protection times rather than guessing in the store aisle. Products with a lower concentration, for example, typically need to be reapplied sooner.

They don’t rely on repellent alone

When mosquitoes are especially intense, the experts add a physical barrier. Markowski wears long pants and sleeves—even when it’s 95°F outside. “I know no one’s going to do it,” he says. “But I’m not getting bit.” Lightweight, loose-fitting fabrics make the strategy more realistic in summer.

Pay particular attention to your feet and ankles, which Wolff says mosquitoes find especially attractive. In higher-risk areas, she trades sandals for socks and closed shoes.

Bartholomay goes further during fieldwork, wearing permethrin-treated clothing and, when mosquitoes are truly out of control, a net over her head—so she doesn’t end up “sucking mosquitoes into [her] nose holes.” Permethrin should be applied only to clothing and gear, never directly to skin, and always according to the label.

They never rely exclusively on an untested natural remedy

Natural doesn’t necessarily mean useless, but it does mean less certain.

Citronella, lemongrass, cinnamon, and other botanical extracts may repel mosquitoes to some degree. But if the finished product isn’t EPA-registered, you might not know how well it works—or how long the protection lasts. “There’s nothing wrong with people using that,” Messenger says. “But I wouldn’t rely on it exclusively.”

Gabriella Wolff, an assistant professor of biology at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, draws the line based on risk. Around her Cleveland neighborhood, she sometimes mixes cinnamon oil into lotion. In a place where mosquito-borne disease is a bigger concern, she reaches for DEET or picaridin.

They never count on a citronella candle

Asked what he would tell someone relying on citronella candles alone, Markowski doesn’t hesitate: “I’d say good luck.”

Citronella does have mild repellent properties—but the problem is delivery. If the breeze carries the plume downwind while you’re sitting upwind, the mosquitoes might enjoy a citronella-free meal of you.

They stay away from ultrasonic gadgets

Wolff studies how mosquitoes hear, making her a good person to ask about ultrasonic repellents—small electronic devices, often sold as plug-ins or portable units, that claim to drive mosquitoes away by emitting high-frequency sounds humans can’t hear. Her verdict is straightforward: “So far, we haven’t found any evidence that mosquitoes respond to ultrasonic frequencies.” 

Researchers are exploring whether certain lower-frequency sounds—including noises made by mosquito predators—can disrupt their behavior. For now, though, that’s an experiment in a lab, not a reason to buy a gadget online.

Ultrasonic devices aren’t the only products that make mosquito experts skeptical. Markowski is similarly unimpressed by repellent bracelets, stickers, and passive patches, which release repellent from one small spot. At best, a bracelet protects the small area around your wrist. Your neck, legs, and ankles remain available—and mosquitoes are particularly drawn to feet and ankles, Wolff notes. When they’re out in force, socks and closed shoes offer considerably more coverage.

They never prop the back door open

During the hottest part of the day, mosquitoes often rest in cool, shaded eaves—sometimes directly above your door. Prop it open, and they have an easy route inside. “We’ve all seen the flies fly in,” Markowski says. “Well, mosquitoes are flying in with them.”

He insists on intact, tight-fitting screens on windows, doors, and patio sliders. Otherwise, mosquitoes can get inside and feed on you while you sleep.

Bartholomay hates feeling sealed indoors, so she relies on screens and applies the national-park rule to mosquitoes: Don’t feed the wildlife. “Don’t feed them,” she says. “Don’t give them your blood.”

They try not to scratch with abandon

Everyone knows this rule, and almost nobody obeys it. Messenger included: “You’re not supposed to scratch them, but obviously I do.”

Scratching can break the skin, which raises the risk of infection and scarring. Instead, try a cold compress or an over-the-counter anti-itch or antihistamine cream. Wolff also likes targeted heat. Small handheld gadgets that you press directly against the bite use a ceramic tip to warm the skin for a few seconds; research suggests this controlled heat can reduce itching and pain. Follow the device instructions; don’t substitute scalding tap water, which can burn the skin.

They never forget that pets are on the menu

Your pets have blood too, and mosquitoes know it.

Mosquitoes transmit heartworm disease, a connection Markowski says surprises many dog owners. Heartworm can damage the heart, lungs, and blood vessels, and advanced cases are harder and riskier to treat. Ask your veterinarian about year-round prevention; don’t wait until mosquitoes become noticeable.

The stakes are high for horses, too. West Nile virus kills an estimated 22% to 44% of horses diagnosed with it, while eastern equine encephalitis can kill more than 90% of horses without prior immunity. Vaccines for both are considered core vaccinations for horses.

Don’t improvise by spraying an animal with your own repellent. Some human formulations can make pets sick, so stick with veterinarian-recommended preventives and vaccines—and work on keeping mosquitoes out of their environment.

They never surrender the summer to mosquitoes

Mosquito experts don’t spend the summer hiding indoors. Messenger considers it the best time of year. Markowski says he would never give up the outdoor activities he enjoys.

Messenger doesn’t rule out having your yard professionally treated if mosquitoes are making it impossible to enjoy. But the relief may be temporary: A private pest-control treatment “will probably be effective for a few weeks,” she says. “If you’re not treating everybody’s house, you’re just going to be doing that all summer.” Before hiring a company, she suggests contacting your local or state health department and asking whether your community has a mosquito-control program. Not every community does, and services vary. Some programs investigate complaints by setting small surveillance traps—often baited with light, carbon dioxide, water, or another attractant—to collect mosquitoes, identify the species, and gauge where activity is concentrated. 

Experts also know that an immaculate yard can only get you so far. If a daytime-biting female mosquito can find water, sugar, a mate, and blood within about 100 meters, she has little reason to leave. The mosquito on your ankle is probably “homegrown,” as Messenger puts it—yours or your neighbor’s. Control what you can, then protect yourself from the rest.

Bartholomay wants that knowledge to feel empowering, not frightening. “Get outside, enjoy,” she says, “and don’t get bitten.”

Emergency services in Greece are rigorously battling wildfires across the country, a day after two firefighting helicopters collided in midair, killing two crew members.

Almost 500 firefighters have been deployed to stop advancing wildfires west of Athens, with water-dropping planes utilized early Monday morning in an effort to stem the blazes.

A high risk warning is in place until at least Tuesday for areas surrounding Athens, with hundreds of people already evacuated from the nearby regions.

The Greek seaside resort of Porto Germeno has also issued further evacuation notices as emergency services continue to tackle major blazes.

According to the national fire and rescue service of Greece, around 220 agro-forest fires have broken out across the country since July 27.

Chief fire officer Vasilios Vathrakoyannis referred to the uphill battle as “perhaps the most difficult days of the summer,” noting that the strong winds have “created extremely difficult conditions.”

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis also highlighted the plight of the emergency services, explaining how “the burden of the battle” has fallen almost exclusively on “frontline” responders due to unforgiving weather conditions.

“When the winds blow with such force, even the dozens of aerial resources at our disposal cannot operate safely,” he said. “In several cases over the last few days, it was not possible to carry out either water intakes or water drops, as the extreme turbulence made flights prohibitive.”

Greek authorities have also been issuing fines and carrying out arrests on suspicion of arson-related crimes, according to local officials. Around 22 administrative fines have already been issued, totalling €70,100 euros ($80,666), Vathrakoyannis said.

Firefighting helicopters collide midair, killing two crew members

A midair collision between two firefighting helicopters occurred Sunday during operations to combat a blaze around 65 km (42 miles) west of Athens.

Two crew members, a Greek and a Danish national, onboard one of the helicopters were killed in the crash in the ​Psatha area of the Attica region. A Briton and another Greek national were pulled from their helicopter alive.

An investigation is underway to determine the cause of the crash.

Mitsotakis paid tribute to the fallen frontline fighters, expressing his “deepest sorrow” over the incident. “The loss of the Greek coordinator and the Danish pilot while they were operating in the major fire at Porto Germeno fills us all with grief,” he said. “Sincere condolences to their families.” 

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, also remembered the contributions of the fallen.

“It takes a special courage to fly towards the flames so that others can be safe. As we continue to battle these fires side by side, Europe grieves with Greece and Denmark,” she said.

Widespread wildfires devastate Europe

Blazes across Greece come as significant fires have also gripped other European countries in recent weeks.

Wildfires have swept across regions in France, with President Emmanuel Macron describing the situation as “the toughest since the Second World War.”

In Spain, officials fighting the blazes near Madrid last week said they were the worst the region had ever experienced.

Elsewhere in western Europe, an emergency incident was declared in Suffolk, England, last week as firefighters tackled a blaze the size of at least 210 soccer pitches.

Much of Europe is in the midst of yet another heat wave, further compounding the issue and raising concerns that even contained fires may gather pace once more.

A drought has been declared in seven areas of England after record low rainfall and exceptionally high temperatures.

Additionally, the U.K.’s national weather and climate service said England and Wales have provisionally recorded their driest July on record.

Reflecting on the devastation sweeping Europe, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez referred to the wildfires as "the most painful expression" of the climate emergency.

Protein is having a moment. Supermarket shelves are chock-full of protein-packed cookies and cereal, popcorn and Pop Tarts, and even coffee, soda, and water. Social-media influencers—and people at the highest levels of the U.S. government—are advocating for Americans to eat more of the nutrient. The Trump Administration issued new U.S. dietary guidelines in January 2026 that urge people to prioritize “protein at every meal.” 

But more protein might not always be the healthier choice, a new scientific review suggests. Instead, restricting protein could be better in some cases for health and longevity.

The review, published July 31 in the journal Cell Press Blue, analyzed 350 studies of protein-restricted diets in animals and people. It found that mice, rats, flies, and fish that ate less protein consistently lived longer and healthier. In some small human studies, people who ate a protein-restricted diet for several weeks lost weight and fat mass, and saw improvements in their fasting blood sugar—even though people on these diets tended to eat more calories. 

While animals in these experiments were sometimes placed on diets that were very low in protein, the lower protein diet in the human studies usually was within the range of the official RDA, or recommended dietary allowance, of the nutrient. (The new U.S. dietary guidelines recommend people consume 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight daily, which is up to twice the minimum RDA.) 

Still, eating the RDA of protein and not more appeared to be sufficient to improve health outcomes in people, the review shows. “Accumulating evidence challenges the idea that higher protein intake is beneficial,” it says.

These findings appear to contradict other research that suggests higher protein diets are more beneficial for health. Some studies have shown that eating more protein promotes weight loss, lowers the risk of sarcopenia—age-related muscle loss—in older people, and extends health span, or the period of life spent in good health. 

This apparent paradox is part of what drew Dudley Lamming, co-author of the new review and a researcher of aging, to study protein in the diet and its effects on health.

“We think of protein as beneficial because it promotes satiety and it’s good for muscles, but at the same time, a series of epidemiological studies have shown that people eating higher protein diets tend to have higher rates of cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and even, in some studies, mortality,” says Lamming, a professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Some studies have also suggested that more protein doesn’t necessarily equal more muscle. A 2023 study of about 1,500 pairs of British twins found that the sibling who ate more protein had a higher risk of developing sarcopenia compared to their protein-restricted twin—“exactly the opposite” of what one might expect, Lamming says. 

How protein restriction may slow aging

Scientists have known for decades that protein restriction can slow aging in animals, but interest in the subject—particularly how it could benefit people—has snowballed in recent years as longevity research has intensified and people want to eat more protein.

Lamming says scientists don’t know for sure why protein restriction appears to lengthen life and improve health, but one theory is that limiting protein consumption might prompt the body’s cells to shift from a “growth and proliferation” state—in which new cells and new components of cells are made—to one focused on the “recycling and repair” of existing cells. 

Cell division, Lamming explains, can accelerate aging and disease. “One of the easiest ways to think about this is that every time you replicate a cell, you need to copy its DNA, and that process isn't perfect. There are always errors introduced,” he says. “Every time a cell divides, it increases the chance of that cell getting cancer.” 

But when protein consumption is limited, the thinking is that the body prioritizes repairing and recycling cells instead of making new ones—processes that some scientists think could help delay aging. The same theory has been used to explain why calorie restriction improves health and extends lifespan in animals and people. But protein restriction and calorie restriction aren’t the same thing, Lamming says, and appear to trigger distinct biological responses. 

“In some of these [protein restriction] studies, people actually ate more calories,” he says, including in his own research. Studies in mice suggest a potential mechanism: protein restriction appears to increase thermogenic fat—a special type of body fat that burns energy to produce heat instead of storing extra calories. “They're eating more calories, but they're also increasing their energy expenditure,” Lamming says. 

Calorie restriction is widely acknowledged by scientists as the “gold standard” experimental intervention for delaying aging in lab animals, Lamming says. “But anyone who has tried to go on a diet knows that calorie restriction is very difficult,” he says, which is why researchers are exploring lower-protein diets as an alternative anti-aging intervention and also searching for drugs that could mimic the health benefits of calorie and protein restriction. 

People likely have different protein needs

Despite some promising research on protein restriction, people shouldn’t start eating diets that are very low in protein, Lamming and other scientists of aging say.

“While we know that protein restriction extends lifespan in yeast, fruit flies, mice, and rats, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will do so in humans,” says Christopher D. Morrison, a professor at Louisiana State University’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center whose lab pioneered the discovery of a life-extending hormone known as FGF21 that is required by mice to respond to protein restriction. The hormone also increases in people eating a protein-limited diet.

Protein restriction studies in people have also been small in scale and short-term, Lamming says. He adds that more research is needed into how protein restriction might impact exercise and people of different ages and needs. 

Matt Kaeberlein, a molecular biologist and longevity scientist, says there could also be some negative consequences of a diet that is very low in protein, such as poor immune function and lower bone density. He also points out that while the diets of lab animals in protein restriction studies can be extreme, the studies in people have involved more moderate diets. “We're not talking about extreme protein restriction down into malnutrition territory,” he says. 

There also remains plenty of evidence that a protein-rich diet can be good for health. A 2024 study, for instance, found that people who ate more protein than the RDA were associated with healthier aging, including better physical health and cognitive function. 

Lamming says he suspects that some people may benefit more from higher-protein diets than others, including those who do resistance training and pregnant women.

“Protein is now infused in water and spread on potato chips, and maybe that’s neutral to beneficial for people who are doing some exercise. But maybe for sedentary people, that could be detrimental,” he says. 

The type of protein likely also matters, says Andres V. Ardisson Korat, a Tufts University researcher who led the 2024 study linking more protein intake with healthier aging. In that study, Korat says people who ate more plant-based protein were significantly less likely to suffer from chronic diseases and had better physical and cognitive health compared to people who ate less plant-based protein. On the other hand, people who consumed more animal-based protein were at higher risk of chronic diseases than people who ate less animal-based protein, though they had better physical function than people who ate less protein overall.

The new review points out that even individual amino acids—the building blocks of protein—could be more beneficial to health than others. Of the nine essential amino acids that people and many mammals need to survive, studies suggest that restricting some of them could extend lifespan, the review says. This research is too preliminary, however, to warrant people supplementing or restricting specific amino acids, says Kaeberlein, the longevity scientist.

Eventually, he says, we might have enough scientific data to personalize how much and what kinds of protein someone should ideally consume. But for now, “our understanding of how to optimize protein levels for the population or even for an individual is still really early,” Kaeberlein says. “For the average person, you're better off not getting lost in all the weeds, because we don't really have concrete answers.”

Instead, Kaeberlein recommends that people focus on the quality of their diet, eating mostly “whole foods and lots of vegetables.”

“Think about the quality of your diet before you worry about how much protein you're eating. And then I think it really depends on your goals, where you are in your life course, and what's going to be sustainable for you,” he says. “I know people want a number, like how many grams of protein should I eat per pound of body weight. But we don't have the long-term data to be able to say with confidence that we know what's optimal.”

The Republican Senators who stood in the way of Todd Blanche’s confirmation as U.S. Attorney General said they will now support it, after Blanche signed an order Monday to formally rescind the Justice Department’s planned $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund.”

The fund was intended to compensate those who the Trump Administration claimed were unfairly persecuted by the government, and it has been the subject of bipartisan criticism—partially because payouts could extend to Jan. 6 defendants.

The Republican holdouts on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, had said that they would not stand behind the Acting Attorney General’s confirmation without a written assurance that the fund had been killed by the DOJ.

Blanche fulfilled this request after what he described as a series of “good faith discussions” with the holdouts.

“The Department always welcomes and appreciates productive engagement with all members of Congress,” Blanche wrote in his post on X, where he attached copies of the formal retraction alongside a statement from the Justice Department.

“Although the Acting Attorney General has repeatedly advised Congress through testimony, including under oath, as well as in written responses, that the Fund is not moving forward, and the Department has repeatedly represented to district courts that the Fund is not moving forward, today’s Order officially rescinds the May 18, 2026 Order,” the statement explained.

Blanche also clarified that the written order did not imply that the fund had ever been operational. 

“No Members were appointed; no funds were transferred; no process for receiving claims was established; no claims were paid,” the retraction order said. “This Order establishes, beyond any doubt, that there is no Fund.”

In a joint statement Monday, Cornyn and Tillis said they were “pleased” by Blanche’s decision and “look forward to voting to advance his nomination out of the Senate Judiciary Committee soon.”

The Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on whether Blanche should replace Pam Bondi as Attorney General on Tuesday. With Tillis and Cornyn back in his corner, Blanche is expected to move forward without further Republican opposition. 

Could Trump revive the fund?

The “anti-weaponization fund” stemmed from the Justice Department's settlement of Trump's lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns. It was formally established May 18.

Despite its retraction nearly three months later, Blanche indicated amid his Judiciary hearing last month that there may be avenues for the settlement to proceed in the future, such as advancing through Congress.

A congressional bill could establish a similar fund and appropriate money for it. With support from both the House and Senate, Trump could sign the bill into law—a route that he has already said he might pursue. However, the timing of such a move would be important, as its prospects of passing both chambers could shift following midterm elections in November.

Trump said on Truth Social on Saturday that he would “push hard” to keep the fund alive in some form.

“Todd Blanche was a voice of reason! It will immediately be back on the table, and I will get it done. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” he wrote.

Iran is expanding the theater of war with an eye on the Strait of Hormuz. Last week, according to U.S. Central Command, more than 30 Iranian-directed drones attacked American forces and Saudi energy installations near Riyadh and the Eastern Province. On July 28, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) spread the battle to Jordan, firing a fresh volley of ballistic missiles at U.S. forces in the country.

American and Saudi aircraft answered in Iraq, striking targets across seven provinces, where the Popular Mobilization Forces—militias funded by, and loyal to Tehran—counted 20 dead. There were strikes on targets in Iran, too, and threats of more to come. President Donald Trump, who only four days earlier had called off a 13-day bombing campaign, promised that the Islamic Republic was “going to get a beating.”

Oman’s most recent attempt to find an off-ramp that would satisfy all the belligerents collapsed. Muscat had reportedly handed Tehran a Gulf-backed plan for joint management of the Strait of Hormuz, under which Iran would not exercise sole control and any fees would be voluntary. Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, rejected it. The Islamic Republic, he countered, should run one full lane through its own waters and part of the other—and Tehran would consider “any action” to keep control of the strait, including resuming the war.

And so, here we are: Iran has restarted its on-again, off-again war with the U.S. over the administrative terms of a shipping lane. The American-Saudi response, punitive in its immediate purpose, must also be understood as an effort to break Iran’s grip on the strait. This is not where we began. When the U.S. and Israel struck Iran on Feb. 28, they had a list: regime change, elimination of the nuclear program, destruction of missile capabilities, dismantling of proxy militias.

Tehran initially turned Hormuz into an instrument of defense, closing the strait to make the conflict unaffordable for everyone else. The U.S. answered with a naval blockade to make it unaffordable for Iran. Each was using the waterway to force the other to stop. Somewhere in the past five months, the instrument became the objective. In March, I argued in these pages that the strait was Iran’s real nuclear option—a weapon cheaper than a nuclear bomb and immune to American or Israeli bunker-busting munitions. That was right as far as it went. But I misjudged the ambition.

Tehran has spent the summer turning a blockade into a business. And now it is going on the offensive to protect it. Consider what a ship’s master must now do to enter the Persian Gulf. According to Windward, a According to Windward, a maritime intelligence firm, he must first communicate with the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, a regulatory body that Iran established in May. Then he must file a Vessel Information Declaration: ownership, insurers, crew manifest, cargo and intended routing. A permit follows once the paperwork is accepted and a fee is paid.

No official tariff has been published, but Lloyd’s List has reported vessels paying as much as $2 million per transit, and since mid-March, every recorded passage using the corridor controlled by the IRGC rather than the normal route. J.P. Morgan estimates that a fully operational regime could earn Tehran $70 billion to $90 billion a year.

Minefields are lifted when wars end; customs houses are not.

The Malacca model with a twist

The Omani plan deserves more credit than it has received. Contributions of the kind collected in the Strait of Malacca—where Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore charge ships fees for navigation assistance, environmental protection, and search-and-rescue services are entirely lawful. Article 43 of the Law of the Sea Convention encourages strait states and user states to cooperate. One Western diplomat likened the scheme to a voluntary carbon offset for airline passengers: check the box if you like.

But the Malacca fund works because Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore have never claimed the right to stop a ship. Nobody pays them for permission, because permission was never theirs to sell. Iran has stopped the ships, and says it will stop them again.

India, Pakistan, Thailand, and the Philippines have all since made their own arrangements with Tehran. But one of very states whose model Oman hopes to replicate has refused to do so. Asked in Parliament whether his country would negotiate passage or pay Iran a toll, Singapore’s foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan minced no words: “It is not a license to be supplicated for. It is not a toll to be paid.”

Once a state establishes the right to charge, buying it back gets expensive. A little history lesson: Denmark charged tolls on ships entering the Baltic for more than four centuries, and it took a treaty, in 1857, and a large cash payment to stop the practice. Designed to prevent a repeat of that episode, Articles 26, 38 and 44 of the Law of the Sea Convention forbid any coastal state from charging ships merely for passing through an international strait.

Another instrument, the Montreux Convention, allows Turkey to recover costs, but not to impose a transit fee for passage through the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles. The rules for canals, like the Suez canal and the Panama canal, are different because they are not natural bodies of water: somebody had to dig them.

Iran signed the Law of the Sea Convention in 1982 but never ratified it, objecting from the start to the transit-passage rule it is now defying. A state that objects consistently from the beginning is not bound by an emerging custom. Iran has been that objector for four decades, and now it proposes to collect.

On Mar. 30, Iran’s parliament passed a law to formally impose transit fees on commercial vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz, codifying Iranian sovereignty over the strait “while also creating a source of revenue,” as Mohammadreza Rezaei Kouchi, an Iranian lawmaker, told Iranian state media. “We provide its security, and it is natural that ships and oil tankers should pay such fees.”

Except that some ships don’t pay. Malaysia’s transport minister announced in March that Iran’s ambassador had exempted Malaysian vessels “because we are a friendly party.” A charge that can be waived for friends is not a fee so much as a tribute.

What Washington signed

The International Maritime Organization saw the danger in April. A spokesperson for the UN shipping agency explained that no international agreement permits tolls for transit through straits, and a toll of ships sailing through Hormuz would set a “dangerous precedent.” Only days earlier, Trump had mused to ABC News about a joint U.S.-Iranian toll system. A charge on Hormuz, he said, would be a “beautiful thing.”

Two months later, Trump signed an initial agreement that seemed to formalize the arrangement. Paragraph 5 of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, which Trump signed at Versailles on June 17 during a dinner with President Emmanuel Macron of France, has Iran undertaking to arrange safe passage for commercial vessels “with no charge, for 60 days only.” Sixty days sounds suspiciously like a trial subscription. The agreement also committed Iran to talks with Oman “to define the future administration and maritime services” in the Strait of Hormuz, in line with “the sovereign rights of coastal states” of the strait.  

The agreement conceded that the strait has an administration, and that it is a matter for the coastal states. It conceded that free passage now has an expiration date. That expiration falls around Aug. 16.  General License X, a waiver issued by Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, that made the reopening commercially possible, lapses five days later. Nobody has agreed on what comes next.

But Iran’s latest missile and drone attacks must be read as a statement of intent: Tehran is ringing the bell, and the tolls are coming for us all.

The United States and Japan have coordinated to prop up the yen after the currency fell to a 40-year low against the dollar.

In a statement Monday morning, Japan’s Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said the action was taken “pursuant to the U.S.-Japan Finance Ministers' Joint Statement issued in September 2025 and countered excessive volatility and disorderly movements in the Japanese yen in recent months.”

The two countries “will not hesitate to conduct further joint intervention,” she emphasized, reflecting on the action carried out Friday.

The rare move marks the first joint intervention since 2011, after Japan was struck by a devastating earthquake and tsunami and the U.S. joined other G7 nations in coordinated action to weaken the yen.

The yen is historically weak largely due to Japan having notably lower central bank interest rates than other major economies.

According to Bloomberg analysis of central bank data, Japan most likely used around $34 billion intervening in the currency market to support the yen. TIME has been unable to independently verify these figures.

“Economic security is national security. And the U.S.-Japan alliance is built on both,” said U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Sunday. 

Bessent also indicated the U.S. may consider increasing the size of the Federal Reserve's repurchase facility providing temporary dollar liquidity. “The FIMA Repo Facility is an important backstop. We would encourage it to be upsized in the coming months,” he said.

When asked why the United States intervened to support the Japanese currency, U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One over the weekend that the U.S. is “always there” for Japan.

"They have a weakening yen, and they wanted a little bit of help,” he said. When questioned over what the U.S. is “getting out of that arrangement,” Trump replied “financial benefit,” but emphasized it’s also “good for the world economy.” 

This is not the first time that the Trump Administration has intervened in another country’s currency. In October 2025, Bessent announced U.S. financial support for Argentina, which included a $20 billion currency swap framework with Argentina’s central bank.

What is behind the fall in the yen?

Japan had already expressed “serious concern” over the yen's rapid depreciation in March and conducted unilateral intervention between April 28 and May 27.

Despite those efforts, the currency continued to weaken, with the yen sliding to 163.73 per dollar on Thursday before rebounding to 157.57 on Friday.

One reason a stronger yen matters is Japan's dependence on imported energy. According to the International Energy Agency, Japan remains heavily reliant on imported oil and gas, particularly from the Middle East.

A summary of opinions at the Bank of Japan's Monetary Policy Meeting in January warned that while the yen's “depreciation pushes up the profits and wages of large firms, it pushes down those of small and medium-sized firms—coupled with the yen's depreciation pushing up prices, this could lead to wider inequality.”

As for how the yen depreciated, Japan's comparatively low interest rates have remained a key factor weighing on the currency. The Bank of Japan’s 1% rate remains below the Federal Reserve’s 3.5% to 3.75% target rate, the International Monetary Fund has previously said the yen-dollar exchange rate has been driven by shifts in these interest rates differentials. 

The Bank of Japan was slow to raise rates across the 2000s and 2010s in fear that it could curb efforts to break out of the country’s “structural deflation"–a multi-decade economic stagnation, says Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as a senior advisor to the U.S. Trade Representative from 2021 to 2022.

“The core reason why the yen is weak is that nominal Japanese policy rates, the rates set by the central banks, are well below that of the Fed, which creates an incentive to hold dollars, and it's also below inflation,” he tells TIME. 

However, a weaker yen has meant that investors are less likely to invest in the country, which in turn has further contributed to the depreciation of the currency. 

“Japan both has a low [interest] rate, and a rate that's below the rate of inflation, so that has disincentivized investors from wanting to hold a lot of yen-denominated assets, and that's one of the big factors behind the yen's weakness,” says Setser.

Is Japan’s currency expected to bounce back?

An Oxford Economics report shared with TIME determined that the U.S.-Japan coordinated intervention will likely have a longer-lasting effect compared to Japan’s previous unilateral interventions, but predicted it will still not be enough to reverse the trend of yen weakness. 

“The coordinated intervention will likely temporarily halt the yen’s depreciation, but it won’t cure all that ails it,” researchers argued. “Intervention over the past several years has led to movements in the yen in the short run but has failed to durably reverse the underlying depreciation trend and a similar pattern is likely to play out this time.”

Setser similarly argues that the main goal of this intervention is likely just to “keep the yen at this level, around this range, until the Bank of Japan has its next meeting."

Could the U.S. benefit from a stronger yen?

There are various factors the U.S. may have considered ahead of coordinating in propping up Japan’s currency, experts say.

A weaker yen would “encourage firms globally to invest in Japan... rather than invest in the U.S,” Setser argues, elaborating on potential financial reasoning. 

“That's what a weak currency does, it says you're going to make more money producing here, and so it creates a disincentive for investing in the U.S.”

A persistently weak yen could also trigger the selling of U.S. bonds held by Japan, placing additional pressure on the bond market, at a time when both the U.S. and Japan deal with rising government borrowing costs, he says.

The burgeoning alliance between Trump and Japan’s first female Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi  is another factor to consider.

“Trump is a political animal, he likes Takaichi, and Takaichi wanted a stronger currency,” Setser tells TIME. 

Takaichi hosted Trump in October 2025, where delegations from both countries held a signing ceremony to mark the bilateral framework agreement on critical minerals and trade.

During an address to U.S. forces aboard the U.S.S. George Washington in Yokosuka, Japan, Trump invited Takaichi to join him on stage to tout the strong bond between the two countries.

“The cherished alliance between the United States and Japan is one of the most remarkable relationships in the entire world,” he said. “Born out of the ashes of a terrible war, our bond has grown over eight decades into the beautiful friendship that we have—a foundation of peace and security.”

In February 2026, Trump endorsed Takaichi ahead of the country’s snap election. She ultimately led her party to a landslide victory.

A month later, when hosting Takaichi at the White House, Trump described her as a “very popular, powerful woman” and once again praised the “tremendous” relationship between the U.S. and Japan.

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R, Ohio), whose daughter has leveled allegations of domestic and child abuse against her former husband Rep. Max Miller (R, Ohio), argued that Miller should not serve in the House and should “seek professional help.”

“If there are any basic standards of character required to hold elected office, Max Miller fails them,” Moreno posted on X Sunday. “He should not serve in the House of Representatives.”

Moreno’s statement came after Miller, in a Sunday livestream, defended himself again against allegations from Moreno’s daughter Emily following their contentious divorce. Miller married Emily Moreno in 2022, had a daughter with her in 2023, and filed for divorce in August 2024, which was finalized last year.

The Ohio Senator, however, had largely refrained from commenting publicly on the matter or on his former son-in-law’s reelection campaign amid the fallout. But in his statement, Moreno said that while he had hoped to keep the matter private for the safety of his family, Miller’s “increasingly erratic and dangerous behavior has made that impossible,” adding that “it has been horrific to watch this play out in full public view, all while knowing an innocent two-year-old girl is caught in the middle.” Moreno also said that he believes Miller needs professional help “to end the clear pattern of abuse he has left in his wake.”

Miller, 37, is running for reelection in Ohio’s 7th district, facing Democratic nominee Brian Poindexter in the November midterms, where the GOP would have to defend its razor-thin majority in the House. 

But while Miller has the endorsement of President Donald Trump, the allegations and the ongoing court proceedings concerning Miller’s private life have become a political opportunity for Democrats. Last week, some of Miller’s Democratic House colleagues called for an ethics probe in light of the allegations.

Asked by reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday whether Miller should resign, Trump said that “so far it’s accusations,” and that he’ll be “looking at it.” Earlier this year, as the allegations against Miller surfaced, Speaker Mike Johnson told NBC News: “I don’t get involved in the personal lives of members and those things. You know, he’s refuted some of these allegations, and he’s got to work that out.”

While Moreno’s office has previously said the Senator “will not litigate these matters in the media,” he has been under pressure from critics and other observers to break his relative silence on his daughter’s legal debacle. 

Miller responded to Sen. Moreno’s statement on X: “If my daughter said the same thing to me, I personally wouldn’t wait two years before holding him accountable. You know this isn’t true and the only reason you are speaking out now is to hide from your own media circus. This is all political.”

Miller continues to deny accusations

Miller used a nearly 20-minute livestream on Sunday to once again dispute the allegations his ex-wife has made, including that he abused her and their daughter, saying that they have damaged his reputation.

“Just want to be clear: no court, no agency has ever substantiated any allegation of abuse against me, no criminal charge has ever been filed against me,” Miller said. “Every single one of these allegations were already investigated, and I cooperated fully every single time because I had nothing to hide and I have nothing to hide now.”

Emily Moreno had previously told investigators that Miller threw hot water at her, shoved her, and held a gun to her head, according to court filings. Reports also surfaced of their two-year-old daughter also suffering a collarbone fracture, though the cause of the injury hasn’t been clearly determined.

Miller, in his livestream, claimed that his former spouse was facing “significant” mental health challenges, which he believes have “contributed” to her allegations. The Ohio lawmaker also posted online a public folder containing documents, video, and audio recordings that he claimed would support his account.

Miller wrapped his livestream with a vow to stay in the congressional race. “I’m winning in November, and I’ll be back in the 120th [Congress],” he said.

Emily Moreno’s spokesman Stefan Mychajliw said in a statement on social media that it was “shameful” for Miller to “go on a bizarre and lie-filled rant about his ex-wife to desperately try to save his political career.” 

Miller’s previous controversies

Before being elected to the House in 2022, Miller spent six years in the Marine Corps Reserve. He also previously served in Trump’s first-term Administration, including as a senior advisor to the President. 

Politico and the Washington Post have previously reported on Miller’s run-ins with the law as a young adult, including charges, which were later dismissed, for underage drinking, assault, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest.

From 2019 to 2020, Miller dated Stephanie Grisham, a White House press secretary during Trump’s first-term Administration. Grisham has also accused Miller of abuse: she wrote in a 2021 op-ed for the Post and in a memoir the same year, without naming Miller, that her relationship with a White House staffer had “turned abusive” and that she had told Trump himself about her former partner who had “anger issues and a violent streak.” 

The partner was later identified as Miller, who then sued Grisham for defamation, though he voluntarily dropped the suit in 2023 as part of a confidential settlement agreement. 

This year, Grisham filed a new lawsuit against Miller for allegedly breaching that settlement. Grisham pointed to statements he made during a Spectrum News interview, and she claimed that as part of their agreement, they were not allowed to make disparaging comments about each other.

President Donald Trump said over the weekend that U.S.-Iran talks would resume after he called off major planned strikes—but on Monday, the day he said negotiations were going to restart, Iran denied that it was engaged in any talks with the U.S.

“At present, we are not having any negotiations with the US,” Iranian Foreign ​Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said during a news conference Monday morning, according to the Financial Times. 

Baghaei said Iran was in talks with Oman, which he described as being “focused on reaching an understanding on a route for the safe passage of shipping to resume through the Strait of Hormuz.”

Trump fired back at Iran on Monday, calling the country’s leaders “unbelievably duplicitous!”

“They ask for a meeting, some would say ‘beg,’ talks begin, with more scheduled in the immediate future, and they say, openly and proudly, that they’re not having any discussions, that nothing is being talked about, and they’re only dealing with ‘Oman,’” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “Whether Iran wants to admit it or not, we are, in fact, talking of a solution to a problem that they have caused, for decades. It is very simple, IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!”

Later on Monday, during an unrelated signing for an Executive Order, Trump insisted that talks with Iran are “going on right now.”

“For some reason, when they’re talking, they don’t like saying that they’re talking,” Trump said of Iran. He went on to tell reporters that the negotiations are focused on opening the Strait of Hormuz, and that “phase two” of the talks will be about Iran’s “nuclear capacity.”

The American President previously said in a late Saturday post on Truth Social that he had agreed to requests by Iran and other Middle Eastern countries to “hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to.” The framework agreement, Trump said, “would include the Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and an end to Iran’s  nuclear threat.”

“Based on this request, I have agreed, for the future benefit of the WORLD and, likewise, the survival of a successful and prosperous Iran, to cancel the attack, subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL,” Trump said. “Get to work, everybody, and get it DONE.”

He added that Israel also agreed to join the U.S. “in this commitment.” Israel has not publicly announced a commitment to suspend attacks on Iran.

The U.S. President told reporters on Sunday that a new round of talks would begin on Monday afternoon but did not provide further details about the negotiations or a deadline for a deal.

It’s far from the first time that the U.S. and Iran have agreed to pause attacks or signaled diplomatic progress, only to backtrack days later.

Trump has reportedly contemplated relaunching major operations in Iran and the U.S. has carried out weeks of strikes against Iran in an attempt to reopen the Strait, which Iran militarized in early March. In his Saturday post, Trump also warned that the U.S. “is locked and loaded and ready to go” against Iran “at levels of Military Terror, Strength, and Power not seen since World War II.”

Still, the President’s back may be up against the wall as the war, now in its sixth month, remains unpopular with Americans facing rising prices of gas and other goods. Months of attacks have also depleted the Pentagon’s stockpile of key munitions, and the widening conflict has entangled more countries in the Middle East, which could push the human and economic cost of the war even higher.

On again, off again

Since the U.S. and Israel launched the war against Iran on Feb. 28, the countries have paused and resumed fighting multiple times. The joint U.S.-Israeli strikes collapsed ongoing nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran, and analysts previously told TIME that the attacks likely hardened Iran’s position towards negotiating with the U.S. Iran has consistently denied seeking a nuclear weapon.

On March 9, Trump said the war was “very complete, pretty much” and claimed that Iran’s military had been destroyed. Yet, fighting continued, and six days later Trump called on NATO allies and China to help reopen the Strait. 

Late in March, with global energy prices soaring as Iran targeted Gulf refineries and ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz, Washington and Tehran began to exchange cease-fire proposals via Pakistan and other mediators. The two countries agreed to a two-week Pakistani-mediated cease-fire that began on April 8. The cease-fire suspended most of the intense fighting, but low-level exchanges especially around the Strait of Hormuz continued.

Israel also escalated its attacks on Lebanon, which Iran said was a cease-fire violation. Iran has repeatedly insisted that any cease-fire must include Lebanon, and analysts have said that Israel’s continued attacks—even after Trump later pressed Netanyahu to stop—could upend any U.S.-Iran deal.

Trump announced on April 21 that the cease-fire was extended indefinitely, even as the Strait remained closed, the U.S. continued to blockade Iranian ports, and clashes continued around the Strait. The U.S. insisted the cease-fire was still on and suspended its large-scale aerial campaign.

On May 1, Trump informed Congress that hostilities with Iran “have terminated,” arguing that the War Powers Resolution’s deadline for congressional authorization no longer applied. A week later, U.S. and Iranian forces exchanged fire around the Strait, with U.S. forces disabling two Iranian tankers. Later that month, Trump said he cancelled a planned attack because “serious negotiations” were underway. U.S. strikes resumed by the end of May after negotiations faltered.

Hours after threatening to hit Iran “VERY HARD,” Trump announced a negotiating “breakthrough.” On June 17, the U.S. and Iran signed a 14-point memorandum of understanding that halted military operations, ended the U.S. blockade, and reopened the Strait of Hormuz. The two parties began talks towards a fleshed out agreement to end the war that weekend in Switzerland.

But the issue of the Strait of Hormuz remained unresolved, and in late June, days after the MOU was signed, U.S. officials said Iran struck a commercial ship in the Strait. The U.S. retaliated with strikes on Iran and officials said Iran attacked another tanker. The U.N. maritime agency paused its escort mission for ships stranded in the Strait, as the renewed violence heightened uncertainty around when global energy prices might stabilize.

The U.S. and Iran held indirect talks with mediators in Doha beginning June 30. While Qatar and Pakistan announced “positive progress,” the next round of talks did not proceed as envisaged. In the midst of a weeklong funeral processions for Iran’s slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in which officials and people called for his death to be avenged, three commercial ships were attacked. The U.S. retaliated against the suspected Iranian attacks with strikes on Iran on July 7. 

On July 8, Trump declared the cease-fire “over.” The U.S. resumed its aerial campaign on Iran, including nearly two weeks of consecutive strikes, while Iran retaliated with missile and drone attacks against countries with U.S. bases.

Over the weekend of July 25, the U.S. and Iran paused fighting. Trump said he ordered U.S. forces to hold fire at the request of mediators, and Iran said it would halt its attacks for as long as the U.S. held off on strikes.

But again the pause was short-lived.

On July 28, Iran launched missiles at U.S. forces in Jordan. At the same time, Houthi rebels in Yemen attacked several Saudi vessels in the Red Sea, threatening to disrupt another maritime chokepoint.

Fears spread of a widening war as more countries appeared to be getting involved. On Wednesday, U.S. and Saudi forces struck Iran-linked militias in Iraq, as Saudi Arabia accused them of launching drones at its oil facilities. And two gas vessels, including a U.S.-owned floating storage facility, at a Mediterranean port in Egypt caught fire in what appeared to be the first attack on Egyptian territory during the war.

Where things stand now

Trump’s announcement of a pause in U.S. attacks and the resumption of talks with Iran over the weekend came after he publicly and privately mused about resuming full-scale operations against the country. Last week, Trump reportedly ditched plans to escalate the U.S. military campaign after advisers cautioned that such an offensive could put the Pentagon’s munitions stockpile at dangerous levels. Still, at least publicly, Trump continued to threaten more attacks on Iran. On Friday, the President said U.S. forces “will be hitting them very hard, and you know at some point, they’re going to say, ‘We just can’t take it anymore.’”

It appeared that the U.S. was planning a major attack. On Saturday, the State Department issued new security alerts over the potential risk of escalation, and U.S. embassies in Jordan, Iraq, and Israel advised heightened caution.

Later that day, Trump said he had called off the attack at Iran’s request.

But Iran disputed Trump’s rationale for calling off the attack. Instead, Iranian officials suggested that the threat of further disruptions to global markets, including if Iran’s proxies escalated attacks in other shipping routes, forced Trump to back down.

Iran’s Mehr news agency rejected Trump’s claim that Iran had requested the pause. The country’s Acting Defense Minister Majid Ebn-e-Reza said Trump retreated “within the context of psychological operations and a war of calculations,” and that Iran “will neither be taken by surprise nor will we be passive” after the announcement.

Iranian media reported that Iran and Oman were in the final stages of negotiating an agreement over the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S.-Iran MOU had stated that the Strait should be open but left the details of its management to discussions between Iran and Oman. Baghaei told Iranian state TV that the talks are centered on a new route through the Strait “that respects the sovereign rights of both sides,” but that it “will in no way return to the status it was before” the war began. During the Monday news conference, he said that the “matters concerning Iran and the U.S. will be addressed at a later stage.”

“As long as the U.S. naval blockade against Iran remains in place and its military aggression continues, there will naturally be no change in the status quo in the Strait of Hormuz,” Baghaei said, according to the Financial Times.

Israel’s position in the U.S.-Iran talks is also unclear. Trump met with Netanyahu in Washington last week and discussed the possibility of using diplomacy, economic pressure, and force to curb Iran’s nuclear program, an Israeli official told Reuters. Analysts previously told TIME that Iran would have little incentive to accept an agreement without sufficient guarantees against an Israeli attack.

“With or without an agreement, and regardless of any external commitments,” Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen told Reuters, “if Iran attempts to renew its nuclear program or advance its ballistic missile ⁠industries, we ​will be there. We will take action, and we will strike.”

Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) stopped recommending that all children get an annual influenza vaccine. Instead, it made the shot a matter of “shared clinical decision-making”—something for parents and a doctor to weigh case by case—citing, among other reasons, a lack of randomized controlled trials proving the vaccine’s efficacy in children, including the very young.

After a lawsuit from public health organizations, a federal court blocked it, leaving the previous recommendation in place. But the case is ongoing, and earlier this year President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing the government to treat a recent HHS assessment as a “guiding resource” and to revisit the childhood vaccine schedule. That assessment argues that recent evidence behind annual flu shots for children, much of it from observational studies rather than randomized trials, is thin. While we believe that the evidence base, which in fact includes many clinical trials, is stronger than suggested by that assessment, it is correct to note that observational studies of annual flu shots suffer from various statistical biases.

In a new study published this summer, we showed one way that vaccine efficacy can be reliably measured each season using data we already collect, minimizing statistical bias without running a randomized trial at all. In principle, it’s a measurement that could be repeated every year.

Randomized trials have earned their reputation as the “gold standard” because they address a real statistical problem. When we simply compare children who got the flu shot with those who didn’t, for example, the two groups can differ in ways that have nothing to do with the vaccine, like how cautious their parents are or how often they visit a doctor. A randomized trial solves this by assigning the shot purely by chance, so the only way the groups differ is in whether they got a flu shot. 

But randomized trials are not the only place to find randomized data. Sometimes the world randomizes people for us by accident. 

Young children tend to have their annual checkup around their birthday, and that visit is a convenient moment for a flu shot if the vaccine happens to be available in the pediatrician’s office. Children with fall birthdays, who tend to see their pediatrician in the fall, just as the season’s vaccine arrives, can get it then and there. Children with summer birthdays have to make a separate trip, which many families never get around to doing. And birth month is essentially random when it comes to the flu; there is no biological reason a child born in October should need a flu shot more than a child born in June.

This lottery has real consequences. In a prior study, we showed that among children aged two to five, those with fall birthdays are more likely to be vaccinated, less likely to be diagnosed with the flu, and less likely to have a family member catch it than children with summer birthdays.

For this new study, we took advantage of this same randomization, but this time we used it to estimate how effective the vaccine was in each of five recent flu seasons, tracking vaccination and influenza rates among two- to five-year-olds with fall vs. summer birthdays. 

In a given flu season, if children with fall birthdays were vaccinated more than children with summer birthdays, but didn’t get the flu less often, it would suggest that the flu shot wasn’t very effective in that season. This could happen if the strains of influenza that the flu shot protected against didn’t end up circulating that season. Alternatively, in a season where children with fall birthdays got vaccinated more and also avoided more flu than the summer-born children, it would tell us the vaccine was effective in that season.

In every season we examined, the vaccine clearly worked as intended: for every 100 children vaccinated because of the timing of their birthday—the children whose shot hinged on that convenient scheduling—there were between 9 and 14 fewer diagnosed cases of influenza, depending on the season. 

If children with fall and summer birthdays are truly comparable—as they would be in a randomized trial—we shouldn’t see differences in conditions the flu shot doesn’t prevent. So, we compared their rates of non-influenza infections, like stomach viruses and common colds, and found no difference. That result suggested our flu findings weren’t the result of one group simply seeing the doctor more often, or being more health-conscious than the other.

As helpful as accidental randomization can be, producing what are called “natural experiments” like this one, true randomized controlled trials remain the most rigorous form of evidence. But it is simply not feasible to run a trial to settle every question medicine and public health face each year. Trials are slow, expensive, and logistically challenging. And when it comes to research on existing treatments, they can be unethical, since researchers cannot withhold treatments believed to be effective just to keep proving the point. 

If the federal government’s concern is that we lack fresh randomized evidence that a long-established treatment is effective, the solution isn’t to stop the treatment and wait for a trial that may never come. Using the enormous quantity of data the health care system already generates—that is largely sitting idle and unexamined—to its fullest potential is an excellent alternative. Birthdays handed us a natural experiment that, unlike a randomized trial, didn’t require enrolling thousands of patients, spending millions of dollars, or waiting years to complete. 

With a bit of creativity and rigorous statistical methods, that evidence can be drawn from the data we already have in the form of natural experiments. The efficacy of flu shots in children is just one of thousands of questions we could answer this way—no new trial required.

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Episode 7 of House of the Dragon Season 3.

To say that Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) has been down bad this season of House of Dragon would be putting it lightly. In the wake of being nearly torched to death by his brother Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) and Aemond's dragon Vhagar at the Battle of Rook's Rest in Season 2, Aegon has spent Season 3 dejectedly traipsing around the Crownlands at the behest of his advisor/frenemy Larys Strong (Matthew Needham).

Permanently disfigured, dragonless, and in near-constant pain, Aegon's best hope of survival this season has been to lay low and keep his true identity a secret from anyone he and Larys encounter. Unfortunately, the spoiled former king is incapable of suppressing his royal impulses enough to make that an easy feat. To top it all off, despite Aegon's refusal to accept that his dragon Sunfyre has really died after reuniting with her lifeless body earlier in Season 3, he has no choice but to once again leave her side after discovering local peasants have turned her maimed body into a paid tourist attraction.

Meanwhile, Larys' plan to smuggle Aegon across the Narrow Sea and stash him away in Braavos is thwarted at every turn. So when Tyland Lanister (Jefferson Hall)—who has apparently survived getting thrown into the Gullet in heavy armor back in Episode 1—finds Aegon and Larys hiding out at Rook's Rest, he suggests a different idea: retreat to Casterly Rock, form a new Small Council, and restart the war effort from the seat of House Lannister. But after testing Tyland's ability to advise him honestly (no matter how brutal the truth may be), Aegon ultimately rejects his proposal in favor of Larys' original scheme.

In Episode 7, it seems like Larys might finally get his way—that is, until the road to the port at Maidenpool gets cut off by an advancing army of soldiers loyal to Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy). With the walls closing in around him, Aegon decides to stop running and surrender to near-certain death. "I'll make my stand here. And be buried as a king. With my dragon," he says. "I will not have the histories say that I was slain in ignominy by my own brother."

This declaration marks the final straw for Larys, who quickly opts to take his leave. Tyland, on the other hand, chooses to stay by Aegon's side to try and protect his king. But it's clear the pair stands little to no chance of surviving the advancing army. Luckily, Sunfyre finally gains enough strength to make her grand reentrance. Just as it appears that all hope is lost, Sunfyre rises from her dormant healing state to rain fire on the enemy soldiers as an ecstatic Aegon screams in triumph.

Those who have read George R. R. Martin's Fire & Blood likely weren't surprised to learn Sunfyre was in fact alive, as she still has a significant role to play in the endgame of the Targaryen Civil War. And with just one episode to go before House of the Dragon moves into its fourth and final season, things are starting to get down to the wire.

***We're going to talk about what happens with Sunfyre in the book below, but if you want to avoid any potential future spoilers, now is the time to stop reading***

If House of the Dragon sticks to the script from Fire & Blood, Sunfyre will eventually be the dragon who kills Rhaenyra once the tables turn for the current queen. In one of the most horrifying moments from Martin's text, after Aegon retakes the Iron Throne, he has Rhaenyra brought before him and orders Sunfyre to burn and eat his half-sister alive while her youngest son, Aegon III, is forced to watch.

No one involved in the Dance of the Dragons gets a particularly happy ending, but Rhaenyra's is certainly one of the worst and most devastating of the bunch. To sum it up, those hoping for an Aegon redemption arc may want to temper their expectations.

Malicious cyber activity has affected technology at water systems in at least seven states last week, forcing some facilities to switch to manual operations and prompting the FBI and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to warn facilities nationwide of hackers.  

Minnesota IT Services said in a statement last week that at least 30 municipal water facilities were targeted July 26-27 and that it had “immediately activated the state's cybersecurity incident response capabilities.” Over the weekend, Michigan also reported cyberattacks on nine of its water systems. 

Without confirming just how widespread the attacks may have been or which states they affected, the FBI and EPA said in a joint statement that multiple incidents had occurred. It explained that hackers are remotely accessing internet-connected controls, changing administrator passwords, and “causing operational disruption” like flooding and pressure loss, which “could potentially allow untreated ground water to seep into pipes.”

The incidents also came days after federal agencies updated a warning about ongoing Iranian cyber threats targeting U.S. critical infrastructure, though investigators have not publicly linked the latest attacks to Tehran.

Read More: Why Cybersecurity Threats Are Growing

United States water systems are a part of critical infrastructure in the country, which makes them attractive targets for cyberattacks. The EPA has warned in recent years that a significant number of local water systems had critical or high-risk vulnerabilities, including “outdated software, poor network security, weak access controls, and a lack of employee cybersecurity training.” 

But it has also indicated that it’s up to individual operators to protect their own systems from external threats. An EPA spokesperson pointed TIME to Administrator Lee Zeldin’s comments on FOX on Saturday, where he called on utility operators and local entities to protect themselves.

“There is a lot of individual responsibility on the part of companies and local water systems and infrastructure and local municipalities and state governments,” he said.

“Even water organizations with mature cybersecurity processes should validate their external connections,” the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said in an alert issued last week. It outlined several mitigations, including adding extra layers of password security and disconnecting key systems from the internet. 

In practice, this responsibility is split between local utility operators and federal oversight bodies, with funding coming from both federal allocations and municipal budgets, making cybersecurity upgrades difficult to coordinate.

And vulnerabilities may be present within water systems of all sizes, CISA said in its alert, which further noted that the agency was “observing a significant increase in cyber threat actors.”

But the impact of the latest round of attacks has been limited, according to state officials. The attacks primarily resulted in an interruption of service at the facilities, rather than putting Americans at risk by means such as exposing their drinking water to contamination.

Dale George, the director of communications for Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, said in a statement Saturday that “all systems continued to operate safely.”

Federal agencies are investigating who might be behind the latest attacks.

“The FBI and our interagency partners are fully engaged to protect critical infrastructure and we remain well-equipped to protect against cyber threats of all varieties,” the FBI said in a statement to TIME. 

“Cybersecurity threats are a serious concern for our nation’s water infrastructure, including the communities, businesses, hospitals, schools, and other critical infrastructure sectors that rely on these critical lifeline services,” EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Jess Kramer said in an advisory released by CISA in April.

The advisory, which warns about Iranian cyberattacks targeting the internet-connected systems commonly used to operate pumps, motors, and valves, was updated on July 22—just days before the latest attacks on U.S. water systems.

Could Iran be connected to the attacks?

The FBI, EPA and CISA put out a joint statement last week to accompany the advisory updates. It warned of “ongoing Iranian-affiliated cyber activity” targeting critical U.S. infrastructure, including “Water and Wastewater Systems, Energy and Government Services and Facilities, to include local municipalities.” 

When water systems were attacked in the following days, it quickly drew attention to the possibility of Iranian involvement—especially in light of the similarity to an incident from 2023, involving a cyberattack on a municipal water facility in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. CISA attributed it to a group called CyberAv3ngers, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. 

"If a hack like this can happen here in Western Pennsylvania, it can happen elsewhere in the United States," lawmakers wrote in a letter to the Attorney General.

The latest attacks also come at a moment when Iran has both an apparent motive and well-established cyber capabilities.

They took place amid escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran, marked by near-daily strikes and an ongoing standoff over control of the Strait of Hormuz. 

When asked about potential Iranian involvement, President Donald Trump dismissed the suggestions and instead, without offering evidence, blamed Minnesota.

"You know who's behind it? Minnesota. Because they're grossly incompetent,” Trump said during a televised Cabinet meeting at Camp David on July 31. “I think the governor's behind it. I don't think there was an Iranian cyberattack. I think that Minnesota ought to get its act together."

He continued, “They like to say, 'Oh, it was Iran.' Iran should be so lucky. Iran's got bigger problems than worrying about Minnesota.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who has repeatedly come under attack by Trump, fired back on social media, pointing out how the Trump Administration’s Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) “took an axe to CISA and left the U.S. exposed to cyber attacks.” In 2025, DOGE performed sweeping workforce reductions to the agency, which is responsible for coordinating civilian cybersecurity, leading to a loss of roughly one-third of its workforce.

In a separate statement on X, Walz suggested Iran targeted Minnesota as retaliation for Trump’s recent strikes on its infrastructure.

“This is what modern warfare looks like, and it further illustrates there’s no plan to win a war with Iran,” Walz said.

Emphasizing comments that he recently shared on X, Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said that it would be reasonable for Iran to attempt cyber attacks as a “warning” that it is prepared to retaliate for U.S. strikes.

And Parsi tells TIME that Iran is more than capable of fulfilling the threat.

“Iran is a highly capable cyber power, only one tier below the U.S., China, and Russia, and in some aspects on par with Israel,” he says. “It has in the past demonstrated a clear ability to target industrial control systems, water facilities, and energy infrastructure.”

The joint statement issued last week by federal agencies also underscored Iran's cyber capabilities. “Iranian cyber actors continue to target U.S. critical infrastructure,” said Assistant Director Brett Leatherman of the FBI’s Cyber Division. However, he added, “The FBI is committed to identifying, disrupting, and imposing costs on those responsible. Sharing timely, actionable intelligence is a critical part of that work.”

As investigators work to determine who was behind the attacks, federal officials have continued to point operators to the updated advisory for guidance on defending against future incidents. In the statement accompanying its release, Leatherman urged network defenders to use the recommendations to "identify malicious activity, strengthen their defenses, and reduce opportunities for Iranian cyber actors to disrupt the essential services Americans rely on."

FIFA President Gianni Infantino said Friday that football's international governing body would scrap plans to sell private investors a stake in a new commercial venture tied to the World Cup. The pivot came after widespread backlash and vows from all 55 members of UEFA (the Union of European Football Associations) to boycott future FIFA competitions if the plans went through.

“Having listened carefully to all the views, it has become clear that the project has created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place,” Infantino said in a statement. “Our purpose has always been — and will always be — to unite and improve. As a result, this proposal will not proceed.”

The turnaround followed escalating blowback from leading soccer organizations and top voices in the sport, culminating in Friday’s resignation of Carlos Cordeiro, a top advisor for FIFA who said that he could not “stand by while FIFA considers selling a stake in the World Cup.”

Read More: FIFA Draws Fury Over Plan to Sell Stakes in World Cup

"Let me be clear: I had no involvement in this proposal, and I oppose it unequivocally,” his statement said. “It is a bad deal for FIFA's member associations, a bad deal for football, and a bad deal for the long-term future of the game."

But the criticism has not abated with Infantino’s reversal. UEFA and CONCACAF—the governing body for North and Central American and Caribbean soccer—continued to attack the underlying premise and said they would seek ways to prevent future attempts to advance it.

A UEFA statement on Saturday said that it and “other members of the football family” had lost confidence in FIFA leadership while implying that “shabby, back room, opaque” deals had been taking place. It also said that Infantino had “failed to deliver” on his 2016 election promise of transparency. 

The organization said it would “reflect on how this happened and devise a plan to make sure that it cannot occur again,” adding: “We cannot keep going on like this with secret schemes on fast track timescales, cooked up by faceless individuals and of dubious benefit to the game.”

The continued backlash could have broader repercussions for Infantino, who is up for reelection in 2027. Before the debacle, he was expected to run unopposed. However, Infantino's $20 billion private equity plan has complicated the 56-year-old Swiss administrator’s chances at running for another four-year term—particularly after criticism spread beyond FIFA itself, prompting accusations of football mismanagement and corruption.

“The fervent torrent of rejection emerging from numerous federations is extremely significant,” Jules Boykoff, professor of political science at Pacific University, tells TIME. “It signals that, despite FIFA's clientelistic patronage network—whereby FIFA brings in billions and redistributes millions to member associations around the world—Infantino overplayed his hand.”

The English Football Association said on social media Saturday that it “fully” supports the UEFA position and echoed its calls for a “full and robust review of FIFA’s leadership and governance.”

CONCACAF, which comprises 41 member associations, said that the fact that the plan materialized at all was a “symptom of leadership that has stopped putting football first.”

“A comprehensive reckoning with this presidency is imperative,” it said.

The FIFA President is not without some friends. Qatar’s Football Association has thrown its weight behind him, saying it “fully supports [his] efforts to continue growing and strengthening the game globally.” 

But Infantino’s position has been significantly weakened at a delicate time for the organization, which ran into multiple scandals during the 2026 World Cup, including ticket pricing strategy in the United States, sponsored hydration breaks, and its decision to overturn Folarin Balogun’s red-card suspension ahead of the USMNT’s Round of 16 match, which followed a phone call between Infantino and U.S. President Donald Trump.

Who are possible challengers to FIFA President Gianni Infantino?

Infantino was originally expected to easily retain his position at the helm of FIFA in March 2027. 

Now, with public calls for review into his leadership, potential rivals may feel emboldened.

“FIFA is full of sharks, and there's no question that many of them can smell blood. Infantino's election in 2027, which seemed like a sure bet only a few days ago, is now an open question,” Boykoff says.

Challengers for his role must submit their candidacies by Nov. 18, and there has already been some speculation as to who might make a bid. 

Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, president of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), was defeated by Infantino in 2016, the current administrator’s first term, but he could return a decade later as a frontrunner. He called Infantino’s investment proposal and his failure to consult AFC on it “totally unacceptable,” putting the two publicly at odds. 

Paris Saint-Germain President Nasser Al-Khelaifi has also been floated by European football officials as a potential candidate to run against Infantino. But when approached by Politico earlier this week, his representatives said he has “no ambition, no intention, no interest in the FIFA role, and he will continue to discreetly support all the institutions of world and European football.”

Once the world of soccer is no longer in the immediate wake of the equity venture controversy, more contenders could emerge.

However, UCLA law professor Steven Bank tells TIME that he would not count Infantino out of the running yet—especially with over seven months to garner support.

“I think he’ll be weakened, but it's the classic case of if you come for the king, you better kill him, you can't leave him just wounded,” Bank says. “And none of the prospective candidates for president are free from problems themselves.”

And countries are going to have trouble parting from Infantino, he explains: “They're going to say, ‘Look, I don't like Infantino, but I know what I'm going to get from him.’”

Regional administrators who are worried about FIFA corruption should be concerned with more than just Infantino, Bank adds, saying that he is merely part of a larger, ongoing issue.

“Maybe it was just Infantino who was pushing this [proposal], but the existing governance structure allowed him to,” Bank says. “If that's the case, then there are problems with the governance structure.”

“This is not a single-person issue,” Bank explains, warning that a replacement for Infantino could just as easily come in and try advancing a similar plan in the years ahead.

In the final segment of Creepshow, the horror anthology series written by Stephen King, Upson Pratt, a ruthless old businessman, lives alone in a penthouse fitted with surveillance screens, control panels, and alarm systems. He has a pathological phobia of germs and contamination, is obsessed with exercising complete control over his environment, and regards every competitor as little more than a bug to be squashed.

One night, a cockroach breaches his citadel, and Pratt swiftly dispatches it. But the cockroaches keep appearing in ever-greater swarms, creeping out from air vents, drains, cupboards, and electrical panels until they are everywhere. Despite his manic efforts to smash and spray them out of existence, the ever-multiplying cockroaches eventually overwhelm him.

Over the past 12 years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India has single-mindedly gone about building an extensive machinery of control to tame India’s raucous democracy. He has gradually managed to bring the entire architecture of normal, institutional politics under his sway. The American watchdog Freedom House, for example, ranks India as, “partly free,” and the country’s press freedom ranking on a Reporters Without Borders index of 180 countries has sunk from 140 in 2014—the year Modi came to power—to 157 in 2026. Elsewhere, the V-Dem Institute in Sweden, which monitors democracy and its variants, has described India as an “electoral autocracy,” where, despite the occurrence of multi-party elections, there is a corrosion of true democracy because of decline in core liberties.

These damning assessments reflect the way Modi has consolidated his grip on all manner of national institutions in recent years: from the media, where pliant owners have repeatedly bent the knee to the administration, to election authorities, which in a recent state poll erased millions of names from voter rolls in a move widely seen as benefiting Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). 

Considering his hegemonic control over power and institutions, one can presume that when Modi first watched hundreds of disaffected young people, describing themselves as cockroaches, trickle into Jantar Mantar, a traditional site of protest in New Delhi, a few miles from his residence, the 75-year-old strongman would have felt fairly confident of squashing them like bugs. The reality turned out to be wholly different—uplifting the spirits of democratically minded Indians and no doubt surprising the country’s longtime leader.

Origins and growth of a Gen Z protest

The call to protest came on Jun. 1 from Abhijeet Dipke, a 30-year-old Indian student in Boston, who had previously worked as a political communications specialist. The catalyst was a comment on May 15 by Surya Kant, the chief justice of India’s Supreme Court, who compared the country’s unemployed youth to "parasites" and "cockroaches." Dipke responded by forming an online parody party, the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), whose meme-like name was partly a dig at Modi's BJP. He billed his satirical party as the "Voice of the Lazy & Unemployed," and the CJP's instagram account amassed 20 million followers within days, eclipsing the BJP's following on the platform.

India’s young men and women were already frustrated and angry over recent paper leaks in an examination for admission to medical schools. More than two million students had competed for around 140,000 places to train as a doctor. After the paper leaks, the test was canceled and the government forced the students to repeat the exam on June 21. In despair, reportedly at least 20 students committed suicide.

On the morning of Jun. 6, Dipke arrived at Delhi airport holding a copy of the Constitution of India in one hand, and made his way to Jantar Mantar in central Delhi, where he started the protests with a modest gathering of supporters. On most days throughout June a few hundred people showed up at Jantar Mantar for the protests. On June 28, a prominent educator and activist, Sonam Wangchuk, and a group of student activists began a hunger strike in support of the CJP and its primary demand: the resignation of the education minister. 

I thought Modi might just co-opt the protest leaders or ignore them till they were exhausted, but as it turned out, his administration couldn’t tolerate even passive, peaceful resistance. On the evening of July 18, police charged the protest site and forcibly removed Wangchuk and others, who had been on the hunger strike for 20 days by then. Images and videos of Wangchuk being removed from the protest site went viral. 

Tens of thousands showed up at the protest site in solidarity. Among the multitudes in Delhi was Prashantkumar Dhramshibhai Patel, a middle-aged lawyer, who had traveled to the capital from Ahmedabad, a city in the western state of Gujarat. He carried a most painful wound inflicted by the failures of India's education system: on Jun.18, Kahaan Patel, his 17-year-old son, who had taken the medical-school test that was scrapped after the paper leaks, jumped from the sixth-floor balcony of their apartment and killed himself. “I have another son. I have to save him,” Patel said, in an interview at Jantar Mantar. “The system has to change.”

On July 20, the protesters marched toward the Indian Parliament. The police attacked them with batons, tear gas, and pellet guns. More than 100 protesters ended up in hospital with broken ribs, fractured legs, head trauma, and other injuries. Viral videos of the police brutality on Instagram and YouTube swelled the crowds even further and transformed the protest site into a zone of occupation with the energy of a carnival. Copycat protests sprang up in other major Indian cities—Kolkata, Mumbai and Patna—lending the Gen Z protests the aura of a nationwide youth resistance that would humble Modi and force his education minister to resign.

Gen Z challenges the strongman 

The success of India’s Gen Z protests revealed a paradox: while Modi has effectively domesticated institutional politics, his control breaks down when confronted with eruptions of extraordinary, extra-institutional politics. He is forced into a corner when political mobilization originates from the ignored margins, erupts in waves of collective action, and thrives in its own irregular, informal public spaces. India has witnessed such eruptions before: in the protests around a citizenship law led by Muslim women in 2019, in the protests led by Sikh farmers in 2021, and now in the Gen Z protests. These extra-institutional mass upsurges have posed the greatest challenges to the Hindu nationalist political order helmed by Modi.

After the police crackdown, the Gen Z protests in Delhi and other Indian cities gained the energy and tone of a carnival. The people who joined were not there at the behest of a political organization but were drawn, like pilgrims to hip pilgrimage sites, by the promise of an insurrectionary pleasure. Jantar Mantar, the protest site in Delhi, embodied an aesthetic of collective transgression. The crowds ignored the best efforts of the protest leaders to act as disciplinary conductors and reveled in their own playful spontaneity, their slogans and posters heaping colorful profanities on the prime minister. Fundamentally, the protest in Delhi amounted to a carnivalesque bonfire of Brand Modi.

The burnishing of Modi’s political brand traces back to another protest in Delhi, in the summer of 2011. A movement called India Against Corruption—led by a group of tech-savvy middle-class men and fronted by a talismanic Gandhian veteran on a hunger strike—mounted a protest against corruption scandals in the federal government, then led by the Indian National Congress. That movement tapped into, and crystallized, widespread public anger against the “system” and turned it into a crisis of legitimacy for the ruling Congress Party, from which it never recovered.

The social imaginary of the “corrupt system” in India resembles the American populist notion of “the swamp”: it refers to a self-serving nexus of politicians, bureaucrats, and businessmen who control the workings of state institutions, much to the detriment of ordinary people with no “connections” within it.

Soon after those 2011 protests, Brand Modi was carefully marketed on television channels and burgeoning social media platforms as the redemptive opposite of the images, associations, and stereotypes attached to the corrupt and feckless system. Modi was the charismatic outsider (at least to Delhi, since he had been a state level leader for years) and decisive executive who could cut through the thicket of vested interests and make institutions work for ordinary people.

In contrast to the wealthy, dynastic politicians who dominated other parties, Modi presented himself as a fakir, or ascetic, free from the usual familial interests and material ambitions—a man uniquely suited to provide a renewed political and moral leadership. And unlike the English-speaking politicians, bureaucrats, and journalists of the old establishment mold, Modi was cast as the authentic son of a tea seller, whose provincial career in the western state of Gujarat had left him untouched by the incestuous courtly culture of the national capital.

Fifteen years later, the Gen Z protests in Delhi and other Indian cities have incinerated Modi’s carefully constructed political brand, delivering death by a thousand burns. The target of the anger and scorn in all the insulting posters, slogans, and graffiti of the protest zone was not the education minister but Modi himself.

A bonfire of vanities in Delhi 

It was an exhilarating spectacle to watch a prime minister elevated to the status of a demigod through the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars of public money spent on ubiquitous advertising campaigns, becoming the butt of a torrent of wickedly humorous, profanity-laced slogans from young men and women in the capital. The eminently Instagrammable viral burns of the protesters were deliberate, taking apart and inverting each element of Modi’s political brand. 

The weapon of choice was satire. The unofficial anthem of the protest was a call-and-response chant: “Chappan inch ka chhota bandar,” followed by the crowd’s chorus, “Bhaag Narendra, Bhaag Narendra.” (“The little monkey with the 56-inch chest. Run Narendra, Run Narendra!”) The viral reel that originated the chant features two women, who seem to be in their early 20s, dressed in casual streetwear, leading the chant while a man holds a poster depicting Modi as a little monkey.

One could not imagine a more lethal grenade lobbed at Modi’s strongman image—a play on his 2014 campaign claim of being a leader with a “56-inch chest” who embodied the masculine resolve needed to overcome the obstacles and transform India in the decisive manner he had transformed Gujarat, the state he had governed for 12 years.

The chant, which deployed Modi’s first name, quickly spawned the kind of meme-like variations typical of viral reels. The chorus, “Bhaag Narendra, Bhaag Narendra,” (Run Narendra, Run Narendra!”) sometimes became “Bal Narendra, Bal Narendra!” (Baby Narendra, Baby Narendra!) —a nod to the 2014 comic book that mythologized Modi’s childhood, depicting heroic tales like a young Modi helping soldiers during India’s 1965 war with Pakistan and rescuing a baby crocodile. Other chants added new bits lampooning Modi's relationship with friendly oligarchs.

And there were posters tearing apart his otherworldly self-projection as a fakir, or ascetic, depicting him in his monogrammed suits, designer sunglasses, and aircraft. Street skits satirized the myth of Modi’s tea-seller origins. A man carrying a bullhorn wandered through the crowds playing Modi’s viral bloopers on a loop, taking requests from the audience like a disc jockey.

A particular target of attack was Modi’s tactic of preserving his political brand by evading accountability: presenting himself as the supreme leader who sets the country’s political direction and articulates its moral vision while shifting responsibility for the government’s failures onto subordinate officials. 

A viral poster showed a young girl deriding Modi’s habit of falling silent whenever the government came under attack: “Ghosting works on dating apps, not on citizens.” The posters bore Modi’s face, not the education minister’s, under the banner headlines, “Leak in India” and “Destroy in India” (a play on “Make in India,” Modi’s signature campaign to build up India’s manufacturing sector).

For India’s youth, Modi has become the symbol of the hated system, the man who bore ultimate responsibility for everything that was wrong with the country’s institutions. He is no longer the crusader against a corrupt and sclerotic system but its prime patron.

Why the Cockroaches won 

The cockroach protests overwhelmed Modi’s regime of control because the young protesters were immune to the blackout and the vilification by India’s mainstream media. The protest was anchored in its own alternative digital public sphere, primarily on Instagram, the loopy mimetic cauldron that served as both the lingua franca and the primary driver of the protests.

Platforms such as Instagram and YouTube host a new generation of progressive journalists and influencers who command huge audiences, particularly among the young who hardly watch mainstream news channels at all. Such an alternative digital sphere had already emerged and grown during India’s previous major protest movements in the past decade.

India’s young people live with profound resentment against the current state of affairs. After the police crackdown, that resentment was directed at Modi himself, who was seen as the face of a system that treats ordinary people like cockroaches.

Many of those who had streamed into the capital after Wangchuk was forcibly removed from Jantar Mantar in Delhi had endured long train journeys. Most of them did not have the luxury of air-conditioned coaches. They had traveled in ordinary train cars, which Indians refer to as “general-class” coaches. In those sweltering, poorly ventilated coaches, passengers are routinely packed like sardines and somehow brave the lingering smells of piss and sweat.

The “general-class” coaches in Indian trains exist as visceral reminders to young Indians of what the “general” quality of life feels like. Millions of young aspirants are condemned to ride these moving purgatories every year, traveling to college or job-recruitment examinations that they often find have been canceled.

The essence of the youth protest was a revolt against the persistent denial of education and employment that would enable them to lead the decent lives of people they glimpse in the few air-conditioned coaches most Indian trains have.

Most of these young people never make it to a future of decent employment, given the deepening structural mismatch between the expansion of higher education and the availability of secure, high-quality jobs. The number of college graduates has increased since the education sector was opened to private investment, at a far more rapid pace than the employment opportunities available to them. A recent report by researchers at Azim Premji University showed that while the share of graduates among 20-to-29-year-olds has risen from just 4% in 1983 to 28% today, graduates now account for 67% of the unemployed in that age group.

India ranks near the bottom globally in providing formal salaried employment, according to World Bank data. A mere 23% of Indians hold salaried jobs; the share is double that in countries with more developed manufacturing sectors: Vietnam, Indonesia, and Bangladesh. Worse, many of these salaried jobs in India’s service-led economy are not in high-tech fields such as information technology but in occupations like retail sales, primary school teaching, domestic cleaning, and cooking.

The long “waithood” of young Indians between education and employment, as the anthropologist Craig Jeffrey put it, can turn into a humiliating ordeal. The stigma of unemployment is compounded by the guilt of knowing that your parents had to drain their savings or mortgage their land to pay for the steep fees demanded by colleges and coaching centers. All for nothing.

India’s National Crime Records Bureau estimated that more than 1,23,000 students in the country committed suicide between 2014 and 2024, citing “failure in examinations” and “family problems” as the primary reasons for ending their lives. As many as 15,000 students died by suicide in 2024, the last year for which government data is available, an 80% jump over the past decade.

In the end, the young cockroaches proved so resilient because Modi’s regime of control had no punishment or humiliation to threaten them with beyond what the system already inflicts on them every day. These young men and women had reached a point where they felt they had no voice in the existing order—and nothing left to lose.

These protests pose no immediate threat to the stability of the Modi government. Nor are they bound to seriously damage his BJP’s prospects in upcoming state elections given the extent of the party’s institutional dominance and the fragmented state of the opposition. What is more, the Hindu nationalist BJP maintains its ideological hold over roughly a quarter of the population in many Indian states. 

Yet the protests have exposed the limits of the 75-year-old prime minister’s personal appeal to an expanding swath of the population after 12 years in power.

With just a week left before the Senate leaves for its August recess, the Trump Administration is increasing pressure on lawmakers to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general.

The White House said in a press release on Friday that Blanche “should be confirmed by the U.S. Senate without delay.” The White House included statements from law enforcement organizations, state attorneys general, former Justice Department officials, and other groups that it said were “united in demanding [Blanche’s] expeditious confirmation.”

That same day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged the upper chamber to confirm Blanche before leaving Washington, D.C., to go on recess at the end of next week.

“Todd Blanche has been an invaluable partner in advancing President Trump’s agenda and as a result of his leadership at the Department of Justice, Americans are safer today,” Rubio said in a post on X. “The Senate should not leave for recess without confirming him as Attorney General.”

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins also on Friday called on lawmakers to confirm Blanche.

“President Trump chose the right leader for @TheJusticeDept,” Rollins said in a post on X. “It’s time for the Senate to confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General.”

The confirmation of Blanche, who has been serving as acting attorney general for the Department of Justice (DOJ) since Pam Bondi was ousted from the role in April, was upended this week after the Senate Judiciary Committee postponed a vote that would have advanced his nomination. 

Two senators in the President’s own party have threatened to pull their support of Blanche, saying that they want confirmation from the DOJ that the proposed $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” which was part of a settlement agreement for Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the I.R.S. over the leak of his tax returns, has been eliminated.

Trump and Blanche have said that the fund, which would have provided compensation to people who claim that they were unfairly targeted by the government, is “dead.” But Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas who was one of the two holdout votes, said this week that he has not received written confirmation of that.

Read More: What to Know About the DOJ’s $1.8B ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ That Could Compensate Trump Allies Investigated Under Biden

“This is about making sure that even if you’re the President of the United States, you don’t get favorable terms from the government in a settlement of a lawsuit that ordinary citizens would not get,” Cornyn said on Thursday. Cornyn lost his re-election run in his state’s Republican primary in May, to the President-backed challenger, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

The Trump Administration’s renewed pressure on the Senate to push through Blanche’s confirmation comes a day after the President indicated he might pull the nomination.

“I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Thursday, referring to the two Republican holdouts.

During his Cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday, Trump said of Cornyn threatening to pull his support of Blanche: “I don’t really blame him, to be honest with you.”

“I endorsed his opponent,” Trump said. “The man that lost, the man that I didn’t endorse, has become very angry, and that’s ok.”

“I mean, I understand that,” he continued. “I probably would do the same thing.”

Every week brings more twists and turns to the war in Iran and the crisis that has kept the Strait of Hormuz, a key lane for fuel shipments, mostly closed. As the crisis has continued, electrification and non-fossil fuel power has received more and more attention. In the long run, electric vehicles can displace the oil that is refined into fuel for the internal combustion engine. And renewables can displace natural gas in the power sector. Largely missing from the public discussion is the opportunity to catalyze a broader shift to alternative fuels across sectors that can’t be electrified easily. 

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz hasn’t just stopped the flow of natural gas and crude oil but has also simultaneously made it more difficult to get refined products—everything from jet fuel to cooking fuel—to market. In theory, both the rapid price increases and the present volatility should provide a strong incentive to invest in alternative fuels. The reality is more complicated. The same forces that make the case for alternative fuels also make it hard to invest right now.

There’s perhaps no better example to illustrate the challenge than jet fuel. Hundreds of thousands of barrels of jet fuel left the Strait of Hormuz every day before the crisis. In some places, including Europe, that supply had been central to keeping planes in the air. More than 40% of the continent’s jet fuel imports originated from the Persian Gulf last year, according to data from S&P Global. 

Alternatives are already on the market. Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), an umbrella term for a wide range of fuel sources including everything from recycled cooking fuel to plant-based fuels, is blended with jet fuel in many parts of the world, bringing down carbon emissions from flying. But in recent years SAF has been anywhere from 3 to 5 times more expensive than conventional jet fuel. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has closed some of that gap leaving SAF prices closer to 1.5 to 2 times as expensive.

But, with higher fuel prices eating into airline profits, companies are now poorly positioned to take advantage of the moment. To facilitate SAF production, airlines typically agree to long-term agreements to purchase the fuel. With high levels of geopolitical uncertainty, this is not the moment for executives to commit to a price premium without a regulatory mandate. SAF may sound nice, but it remains unaffordable. 

The refiners who make SAF, on the other hand, are enjoying record profit margins. But they, too, see too much uncertainty as prices fluctuate wildly. On earnings calls this summer they say they are more focused on improving operations and executing existing plans than investing in new projects. 

At a national level, the thinking should be different. SAF is more expensive, but a government can now clearly see the differential as an energy security premium as well as a sustainability advantage. It’s well worth paying to protect the country’s economy in the event of a Hormuz-like situation. 

The industry already sees this opportunity. Last year, a SAF executive corrected me when I used the word “sustainable.” It’s “synthetic aviation fuel.” Better optics, he said. 

Even still, response from governments around the world has thus far been uneven. This moment has strengthened policymakers’ resolve in the European Union, where an airline SAF mandate has faced pushback from industry since it was signed into law in 2023. In the U.S., the SAF debate remains at a standstill. Last year, a tax incentive for SAF survived the gutting of the Inflation Reduction Act albeit at a reduced rate. Tax incentives may help move the market, but they’re not enough; governments can help coordinate the necessary infrastructure.  

Even amid the uncertainty, the clever businesses—whether that’s airlines, refiners, fuel transport companies, or commodity traders—will be the ones that figure out how to deploy alternative fuels while mitigating risk. 

SAF, of course, is just one example. Fuels represent nearly 80% of final energy consumption, and not everything can be electrified. “We have not had anything like the success in producing affordable, scalable, low-carbon fuels to displace oil,” says Ernie Moniz, a former U.S. Secretary of Energy who now runs the Energy Futures Initiative. “We need a lot of innovation on the fuel side.”

After decades of success innovating and deploying clean power alternatives, more work needs to be done on molecules. Today’s volatility is making the business case.  

To get this story in your inbox, sign up to TIME's Future Proof newsletter here.   

The Department of State is rolling out an additional 250,000 of the “special commemorative passports” featuring President Donald Trump’s face.

The agency announced on Thursday that it was expanding access to what it calls the “Patriot Passport” because of “overwhelming demand.” 

The special passport design was initially unveiled in April, when the State Department said it would “release a limited number” of the travel documents to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary. The design includes an image of the President alongside the text of the Declaration of Independence, as well as a Freedom 250 gold flag and a depiction of the Founding Fathers gathering to sign the Declaration of Independence.

“Since its release in celebration of 250 years of American independence, the commemorative passport has generated extraordinary public interest,” the State Department said in its press release. “The Department of State is responding by expanding access so Americans across the country can obtain this unique and special document. The Department is hosting application events at passport agencies and centers for patriots all across our nation.”

Read More: All the Things Trump Has Put His Name and Face on as President

Several Democrats criticized the Trump Administration for expanding access to the new passports rather than focusing on other issues, such as affordability.

“Most of my constituents are asking how they’re going to afford rent, groceries, childcare, and health care,” Rep. April McClain Delaney, a Democrat from Maryland, said in a social media post on Thursday. “They are NOT focused on a Trump-branded commemorative passport for overseas travel. I’ll keep fighting for a more affordable America and for working families.”

American citizens interested in obtaining the limited-edition passport must make an in-person appointment to apply for it. Initially, the State Department was only offering appointments at the Washington Passport Agency; but, starting Aug. 8, the department is expanding access so that Americans can make appointments at passport agencies or centers nationwide. 

Trump is the first living President to be displayed on the American passport. The travel document is one of a number of government items, buildings, and programs that Trump has attached—or tried to attach—his name and face to since he took office for a second term. 

Earlier this month, the Palm Beach International Airport was officially renamed to the President Donald J. Trump International Airport. While several airports in the U.S. have been named after American Presidents—for instance, John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City—the Palm Beach airport marks the first time that a President has had an airport named after him while sitting in the Oval Office.

Trump also displayed his name on the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.—but last month, six months after it was affixed to the building, it was removed, per a federal judge’s order to restore the cultural center’s original name.

Democrats have overwhelmingly denounced the President’s efforts to affix his name and likeness onto government buildings, programs, and items. Several lawmakers signed an open letter to Trump in February objecting to his plans to shutter the Kennedy Center for two years while it underwent renovations.

“The Kennedy Center is a living memorial to President Kennedy,” Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, a Democrat from Texas, said in a social media post, in which she shared the open letter in February. “President Trump’s announcement that it will also bear his name (in violation of the law establishing it) and that it will be closed for two years (for unidentified repairs) show the narcissism and lawlessness that define this Presidency.”

The U.S. Senate narrowly rejected a largely symbolic effort to limit Trump's Iran war powers, marking the second time in two weeks that such a measure has failed to advance in the upper chamber.

The 49-50 vote on Thursday was mostly along party lines, but with some notable exceptions. As he has done previously, Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted with GOP lawmakers to sink the measure, while three Republican Senators broke ranks in an effort to curb the Trump Administration’s renewed military campaign.

Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Susan Collins of Maine voted in favor of the war powers resolution, as they have done before, on account of concerns over the lack of congressional oversight relating to the conflict which has now entered its sixth month.

Just last week, Paul told reporters on Capitol Hill that he believes the Iran war has left the U.S. “worse off” than before, citing the continued disruption of a vital trade passage.

“If you look at the militarization of the Strait of Hormuz… there’s not an easy way to un-militarize the Strait. From that point of view, I think we’re in worse shape,” he said.

Paul has long been a vocal critic of the U.S. military operation. In March, he stood alone as the only Republican to vote in support of a previous attempt to rein in Trump’s ability to use military force against Iran without congressional approval.

Murkowski changed her own position some months later in May, when she vowed to “support measures to officially end hostilities and bring our men and women home” moving forward.

Collins had opposed an earlier effort to pass a resolution of this kind, arguing it would “send the wrong message to Iran and to our troops.” But she has since changed her position, insisting "the President’s authority as Commander-in-Chief is not without limits."

Read More: Nearly 100 U.S. Troops Injured in Two Weeks Since Iran War Resumed, Says Pentagon

Democrats, meanwhile, are continuing to bring forward war powers resolution votes in an effort to showcase, and have a record of, their ardent opposition to Trump carrying out the Iran war.

Last week, the House extended a symbolic rebuke to Trump by approving a resolution to curb the war with a 214 to 208 vote. In June, both the House of Representatives and the Senate passed War Powers Act resolutions aimed to restrict the President from continuing the war.

Trump referred to those votes as “meaningless” and has declined to abide by the resolutions.

“These Senators have just made my job more difficult, but I will get it done, one way or the other, because I always get it done,” he vowed in late June.

Read More: 'This Must End': Lawmakers Demand Termination of Iran War After Three U.S. Service Members Killed

Outside of Congress, public sentiment in America is also showing unease over the conflict and its financial ramifications.

A nationwide AP-NORC poll, conducted between July 23 and July 27, found that 64% of Americans believe the war with Iran has not been worth fighting.

In an earlier poll from Reuters/Ipsos, which surveyed 1,262 American adults across the country over June 18 to 22, just 24% of Americans thought that the war with Iran was worth the costs.

On July 21, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was grilled by the Senate Appropriations Committee over the $37.5 billion cost of the Iran war.

The death of 18 American service members during the conflict has also prompted strong reactions, with lawmakers demanding an immediate end to the hostilities.

These simmering issues pose a threat to the Republicans ahead of the November midterm elections.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for Spider-Man: Brand New Day

The Dark Phoenix will rise again. Probably. Eventually. 

A new version of Jean Grey made her debut in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink follows in the footsteps of Famke Janssen and Sophie Turner as the redheaded telepath who is arguably the most powerful mutant in the Marvel comics. But the Jean that Peter Parker (Tom Holland) meets is just a lonely teenager who can’t fully control her powers. She presumably won’t learn how until she meets Professor Charles Xavier and the other mutants at his school. Those X-Men are coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a new cast in the iconic roles. It’s just going to take a few more years.

Disney acquired 21st Century Fox way back in 2019, and Marvel fans have been waiting ever since for Magneto, Storm, and Cyclops fighting alongside the Avengers. There have been hints of what is to come: Ms. Marvel carries the X-gene, the fabled marker of a mutant. And the Deadpool & Wolverine movie was the first X-Men movie set inside the MCU. But Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige has long promised something more deliberate, a dedicated series of X-Men movies and a “reset” of the stories that came before.

Jean appears to be the first character in that reset, which is confusing because the old versions of various X-Men characters are still here. Ian McKellen's Magneto, Patrick Stewart's Professor X, and James Marsden's Cyclops all turn up in Avengers: Doomsday later this year. Whether they survive it is another question, and the odds don't look good. Here's what Jean's introduction tells us about how Marvel plans to get from one set of X-Men to the other.

How is Jean Grey introduced in Spider-Man: Brand New Day?

Jean is the misunderstood villain of the latest Spider-Man movie. She uses mind control to break into the Department of Damage Control, the government body originally created to clear the rubble after the fight in the first Avengers movie and since expanded into something closer to SHIELD, charged with safeguarding the public. Its head, Bill Metzger (Tramell Tillman), has a private agenda: he wants to contain superpowered beings and take their abilities. He kidnaps Jean's sister Sarah, also a telepath, and performs experiments on her. Jean tries to save her, but arrives too late.

The movie draws a parallel between Jean Grey and Peter Parker. Both are isolated. Both see their powers evolve. (We even get hints of the destructive emotions in Jean that could eventually manifest in her alter-ego Dark Phoenix.) Peter talks Jean out of killing Metzger and encourages her to find friends who can embrace her for who she is rather than shame her for being different. At the end of the movie, she boards a bus out of New York. Somewhere ahead of her is the found family at Professor X’s school.

For now, Jean is the only future X-Man we know of in Peter's timeline. That distinction matters, because the MCU has spent years establishing that variants of the same hero exist across parallel timelines. Bruce Banner and the Ancient One lay out the branching rules in Avengers: Endgame. Loki built an entire series around the TVA, the bureaucracy tasked with policing different timeline branches. And in Deadpool & Wolverine, Deadpool shops across timelines for a Wolverine variant willing to help him save his universe. The Jean Grey played by Janssen, along with Cyclops (Marsden), Magneto (McKellen), and Storm (Halle Berry), live in one of those other timelines.

How do the events of Spider-Man: Brand New Day set up an X-Men film?

In Brand New Day, Peter’s actions may set in motion a major conflict between mutants and the government. Peter begins to develop new abilities thanks to a spike in arachnid hormones. At first, he can’t control his new powers; they make him stronger but also more angry. In an effort to return to “normal,” Peter visits Bruce Banner, a.k.a. The Hulk, who has invented a gamma radiation inhibitor to prevent himself from turning into “the big green guy.” Peter suggests that he could adapt the technology to target specific genes, preserving his “good” powers while suppressing the “bad” ones. Banner warns that judging which evolutionary traits are good or bad is an ethical slippery slope.

Nonetheless, Peter builds both an inhibitor calibrated to target his own evolved powers and a universal one, which he uses to defeat Jean Grey. By the end of the film, the Department of Damage Control has its hands on the universal inhibitor. It’s probably not the last we see of it.

A device that can suppress superhuman abilities will likely play a major role in future X-Men films. Mutants, and Magneto in particular, are frequently in conflict with the government over the attempt to eliminate or “normalize” them. While Professor X advocates for finding a way to live harmoniously beside humans, Magneto frequently takes the stance that humans will inevitably target mutants because of their differences. With the inhibitor, Peter may have accidentally seeded a future conflict between whoever this universe’s Magneto turns out to be and Bill Metzger, should Metzger attempt to use this technology to continue to capture, control, experiment on, and eliminate mutants as he does to Sarah.

Already some early fans are comparing Peter’s invention of this universal inhibitor to J. Robert Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer: The physicist built the atomic bomb and then came to regret it, spending years advocating against nuclear proliferation. By the end of Brand New Day, Peter has accepted his own evolution and come to realize the government had specifically designed weapons to contain him. Once Peter understands how the universal inhibitor could be weaponized against people with special abilities, he surely will side with the mutants against its use.

How are the Fox X-Men in Avengers: Doomsday if they are from a different timeline?

Trailers and casting announcements have confirmed a substantial Fox contingent in Doomsday: Stewart as Professor X, McKellen as Magneto, Marsden as Cyclops, Rebecca Romijn as Mystique, Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler, Kelsey Grammer as Beast, and Channing Tatum as Gambit, who never appeared in the Fox movies but did make his debut in Deadpool & Wolverine.

It’s unclear which timelines these X-Men hail from. Stewart’s Professor X has already died three different times: vaporized by Jean Grey in X-Men: The Last Stand, stabbed through the chest by X-24 in Logan, and neck-snapped by Wanda Maximoff in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Whatever version shows up in Doomsday, it's presumably a variant we haven't met.

The Doomsday trailers suggest that Marvel is employing a specific mechanism that gets all the superheroes in the same room: an incursion, a catastrophic event where the two separate universes collide and destroy one another. In a recent trailer, Professor X seems to witness an incursion. Fans are speculating that various superheroes travel across timelines to join forces and stop both the incursions. In fact, the Fantastic Four have already made that journey: At the end of Thunderbolts*, Yelena (Florence Pugh) spots the Fantastic Four's ship entering her universe. If the Fantastic Four can reach the Avengers' timeline, the Avengers can presumably reach the X-Men timeline.

What role will the X-Men play in Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars?

Feige said at a fan event that Secret Wars will launch “a new age of mutants” in the MCU. That tracks with the comics storyline from which the movie takes its name. In the comics, every parallel timeline is destroyed. A great many heroes and villains die. Many survivors forget their past lives and live on the single remaining planet, Battleworld, ruled by Doctor Doom. That story let Marvel writers clear the board, cut the characters who weren't working, keep the ones who were, and introduce new ones.

On screen, Secret Wars is a tidy way to justify a new cast and a rebooted storyline. How Jean Grey fits into this plan is unclear. She could survive the incursions and wind up on Battleworld, possibly alongside Peter Parker, who winds up in space in a Brand New Day post-credits. Or perhaps she will become an early recruit to the X-Men team after the events of Secret Wars.

When will there be a new X-Men movie?

A new X-Men movie is in the works, though fans won’t see it until after 2027’s Secret Wars. Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier is helming with a script by Lee Sung Jin (Beef) and Joanna Calo (The Bear).

At the San Diego Comic-Con in 2026, Feige told fans, "I can't wait for all of you to see Avengers: Doomsday. We have a movie after that called Avengers: Secret Wars, and then after that the mutants are coming, and the X-Men are coming. That's been a dream of mine." He has since said the cast will be young, as the characters are in the comics.

A lot is riding on the Marvel Studios’ execution of the X-Men saga. Fans have expressed frustration at how convoluted the Marvel multiverse has become and how newer additions to the MCU haven’t reached the emotional highs of Iron Man or Captain America. Refocusing on the X-Men could open up new stories and offer a more streamlined Marvel storytelling experience going forward.

It has been a summer of good news for Ukraine.

Its drone strikes deep inside Russia have created gasoline shortages, strained Russia’s economy, stoked anxiety among ordinary Russians, and created headaches for Vladimir Putin. Ukrainian forces have effectively isolated occupied Crimea from the Russian mainland, and they continue to strike Russian vessels in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

But Russia has scored some points of its own recently, and not just by terrorizing Ukrainian civilians with long-range missiles. A newly intense campaign against Ukraine’s Black Sea ports is exposing a shortage of air-defense interceptors, disrupting grain exports, undermining export revenue, and halting arms deliveries to Ukrainian forces. Agricultural products account for 60% of the country’s goods exports, and Russia’s attacks come just as Ukraine’s farmers prepare for the harvest season.

If the disruption lasts, Russia could choke off a crucial source of foreign currency for Ukraine and boost Russia’s international negotiating leverage by inflicting pain on major grain importers in Africa and Asia.

Kyiv is playing down the damage. After a two-week Russian drone and missile barrage on Odesa and other coastal cities, Ukraine’s agriculture minister claimed in July that ports were open and operational. But roughly 90% of shipowners have suspended port calls because, as in the Strait of Hormuz near Iran, insurance premiums have soared as the risk of further attacks remains.

This is not the first shutdown of Black Sea traffic since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Waves of Russian attacks on ports in late 2025 and early 2026 did not slow operations for long. But this latest barrage is both broader and more intense, largely because Ukraine’s recent successes, particularly inside Russia, have provoked Putin to try to reclaim battlefield momentum. For now, both Ukraine and Russia remain committed to aggressive military strategies.

Ukraine’s immediate problem is that it relies on its limited supply of American-supplied Patriot interceptors—the only reliable defense against Russian missiles—to protect its cities and military supply lines. Shifting the Patriots to protect ports would be both expensive and dangerous. Knowing this, Russia will continue its port attacks with both missiles and swarms of drones, offering insurers no reason to lower premiums and shipowners no incentive to return.

Beyond cutting into Ukraine’s revenue and its ability to finance the war, Moscow also hopes to weaken international backing for Kyiv by driving up global food prices. Ukraine supplies a quarter of Egypt’s wheat imports and about 18% of Indonesia’s. It is also the European Union’s largest corn supplier, provides 92% of its sunflower oil imports, and remains an important source of feed grains and vegetable oils.

Putin is betting that higher food prices, at a time when the American war with Iran is already driving up the cost of oil and much else, will persuade Ukraine’s trade partners, particularly in Europe, to press Kyiv to de-escalate its attacks inside Russia. That strategy is unlikely to work.

European support for Ukraine remains strong, and governments suffering from higher prices are more likely to blame Moscow than Kyiv. But Putin is now so anxious for battlefield wins that he will stay the course even without a clear-cut victory. Nor should we expect a revival of  the agreement brokered by the United Nations in July 2022 that restored safe maritime traffic to and from Ukrainian ports.  

Just as the standoff in the Strait of Hormuz has sent neighboring countries scrambling for new ways to move oil out of the Persian Gulf, Ukraine may be able to move grain through the Danube, via Romanian ports, and by rail, as it did in the war’s early days. But as before, diversions are costly and logistically complicated.

For all these reasons, the shape of Russia’s war on Ukraine will continue to shift as each side searches for new ways to break the battlefield stalemate in its favor. And the economic damage, felt well beyond Ukraine and Russia, will continue.

A Spanish territory in northern Africa was left experiencing a humanitarian crisis on Friday after thousands of migrants swam across the border from Morocco, with at least 67 dying in the chaos.

Ceuta has long been considered a gateway for migrants seeking better lives in Europe, and the city has progressively fortified its border in response to perennial illegal border crossings.

Yet Spain's Interior Ministry on Friday said close to 50,000 migrants had rushed into Ceuta since Thursday morning. In an update shared later in the day, the ministry said more than 48,300 migrants had already returned to Morocco.

The Moroccan ambassador to Spain, Karima Benyaich, said at an embassy event that the situation in Ceuta was “not wanted by the Kingdom of Morocco,” adding that it would “prefer legal, orderly, and safe immigration for everyone.”

Centers that receive migrants had been overwhelmed after the surge, while parks and streets were crowded with people from across the border.

Footage and images showed scores of people, many of whom appeared to be young men, bypassing the Tarajal border fence between Morocco and the Spanish exclave of Ceuta.

Juan Jesús Vivas, Ceuta’s President, called the crisis “a situation of absolute humanitarian and social emergency."

Spain called in its military to assist law enforcement in Ceuta, Agencia EFE reported.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, in a social media post, vowed his government is working with Moroccan and international authorities “to restore normalcy as soon as possible."

What is Ceuta?

The city of Ceuta, a peninsular region covering 19.9 sq. km (7.7 sq. mi) on Africa’s northern coast, is one of two Spanish exclaves on the continent, along with Melilla, which is about 220 km (140 mi) southeast.

The two Spanish autonomous cities represent the European Union’s only land borders with Africa. Spain has possessed Ceuta, which is separated from mainland Spain by the Strait of Gibraltar, since 1580.

Ceuta has a population of more than 83,000, a mix of Christians and Muslims, including residents and day workers from Morocco and Spain. Ceuta’s population has generally lived harmoniously.

But Morocco, which largely surrounds the two exclaves, still treats them as occupied lands and challenges Spain’s sovereignty, citing history dating back to the Islamic conquests during the 8th century.

Over the years, Rabat, the political seat of the African nation, has triggered diplomatic incidents as part of the dispute. In 2002, Morocco and Spain had a standoff after both sent forces to a small uninhabited island off Ceuta. And in May 2021, amid a deepening diplomatic spat over the disputed Western Sahara region, the Moroccan government loosened its border controls, resulting in nearly 8,000 people from Morocco and sub-Saharan countries pouring into Ceuta in just two days. Some of the migrants eventually returned, but the diplomatic rupture was only repaired when Spain backed Morocco’s autonomy plan for Western Sahara in 2022. 

What are authorities saying about the spike in migrant crossings?

Thursday’s events did not begin without warning. Vivas, speaking to Cadena SER, said arrivals from across Morocco have overwhelmed the city’s social services and security apparatuses over the past few days, with more than 300 people per day.

“To give you an idea of ​​the scale, for the rest of Spain, this is equivalent to 2% of Ceuta’s entire population. It’s like a million people entering Spain irregularly,” Vivas told the broadcaster.

The crisis in Ceuta bucks the trend for the rest of Spain, where irregular arrivals fell from 17,990 in the first six months of 2025 to 12,138 in the same period in 2026, according to Interior Ministry statistics. For Ceuta, there were 2,582 land arrivals, compared with 978 during the same period of 2025—an increase of 164%.

Spain’s Interior Ministry argued an earlier court ruling is behind the latest influx, stating it “believes that human trafficking networks are exploiting a court ruling to encourage the flow of undocumented migrants, mostly young people.”

A June 29 ruling by the Spanish Supreme Court stopped authorities from summarily returning migrants who arrive in Ceuta and Melilla by sea, at least not without due process. While it did not legalize irregular entry or guarantee that those swimmers could remain in Spain, Spanish broadcaster RTVE reported on Thursday that the ruling spread on Moroccan social media, reportedly prompting people to try to enter Spain by swimming to Ceuta.

What has the response been?

The crisis in Ceuta has garnered worldwide attention, with U.S. President Donald Trump saying the incident looks like an “invasion.”

“I saw Spain yesterday, and I watched the catastrophe that took place. It looks like an invasion of a country... that same thing is going to happen to us if the Republicans don't get elected [again], except worse,” he claimed during a Cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday.

Closer to home, Spain’s right wing figures targeted Sánchez’s leftist, pro-migrant government when discussing the matter.

Sánchez has planned to give 500,000 undocumented migrants in Spain a path to legal status. More than a million have applied to that program.

“Pedro Sánchez, with his mass regularization, has provoked an invasion of our border, which is being experienced first and foremost by the Spaniards of Ceuta,” said Santiago Abascal, who leads the far-right party Vox. Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the conservative Popular Party, said in a video on X that Sánchez’s government “refuses to acknowledge that we are facing a serious national security problem.”

Italy announced it had "decided to temporarily suspend the free movement regime provided for by Schengen in maritime and air connections with Spain, reintroducing border controls."

"This is an extraordinary measure, adopted to safeguard national security and prevent possible repercussions for our nation," said Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. "The measure will be kept in force only for the time necessary, with particular attention to limiting any impact on summer tourist flows."

The Schengen Area allows passport-free travel across 29 European countries, but member states can temporarily reintroduce border controls ​for security or public-order purposes.

French Minister of the Interior Laurent Nuñez gave instructions "to immediately strengthen the controls at the Spanish border" upon learning of the sudden influx of people.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen insisted the “images coming from Ceuta are unacceptable.”

“We cannot allow anyone to come to our Union without abiding by our rules," she said. "Dangerous crossings must stop immediately. Smuggling networks must be dismantled. And returns must be swift, as our rules allow."

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Cape Fear finale.

Dusk is easing into dark on the Cape Fear River when Max Cady (Javier Bardem) steps out of his car near Bluff’s Point. Aboard the houseboat ahead, his half-sister Crystal Cady (Juliette Lewis) sees him coming, and dread crosses her face before she can even speak. Their father, Robert “Bob” Cady (Ron Perlman), and a young man named Luke (Max Mattern) are still arguing inside when Crystal warns them that Max has arrived. Max knocks on the door, a strange formality for a man about to burn the boat down to the waterline.

This scene arrives at the climax of Nick Antosca’s Cape Fear adaptation, which sees Max walking free after 17 years in prison for allegedly murdering his wife Melissa. Newly exonerated, he's treated in some corners as a folk hero. What Max actually wants is for Anna Bowden (Amy Adams), the public defender who represented him at that original trial, to answer for choices that shaped his fate more than she ever admitted. Across the 10-episode season, Max stalked the Bowden family—Anna's husband, Tom (Patrick Wilson), and their teenagers, Zack (Joe Anders) and Natalie (Lily Collias)—and shattered their trust in one another, all while demanding to be seen as a man wronged by the world. But every step toward revenge transformed him into the very threat he insists he is not. The finale’s real tragedy is that Max, in his own warped pursuit of justice, destroys everyone around him before being forced to see his entire crusade differently. By then, it’s too late for redemption. 

Antosca shaped the season around sustained pressure, as a family’s small cracks split open under the weight of a man determined to make them suffer the way he once did. “This show is an experiment in dread and pressure on a family,” Antosca says. “I wanted to see the family come together to fight in a primal way for their survival.” The finale delivers on that promise, but it lets Max nearly destroy everyone else first. 

Max’s family meets a violent end

“Where is she?” Max asks Crystal on the houseboat, referring to Anna. Crystal tells him Anna escaped, jumping into the river hours earlier. Max’s gaze drifts toward the water, and his face closes like a fist. When Luke tells him, meekly, not to touch Crystal, Max only wants to know who the young man is. The audience doesn’t know yet, either. 

Crystal, the child their father favored while Max lived in a cage, offers a fragile truce, remembering how she also used to trail behind him along the river: “I’ll forgive you if you forgive me.” Max shoots her without hesitation, then shoots Luke when he lunges to intervene. “When you die, don't forget this face,” Max tells her. “Don't forget the face of the little boy you tormented.”

When Bob calls him a devil for shooting his own blood, Max doesn't flinch. “If I’m the devil, what are you?” he asks. He pistol-whips his father, traps Luke and Crystal below deck, and douses the boat in gasoline, saving the last of it for Bob, now in a cage. Crouching beside him, Max speaks in Spanish, the language of the Spanish mother who raised him until her suicide when he was 13, and the one his American father then caged him for using: the equivalent of “bad dog.” He strikes a flame, cuts the mooring line, and disappears into the dark as the boat catches fire.

Lewis’s casting carries its own echo: in Martin Scorsese’s 1991 film version, she played the Bowden daughter Cady preyed on. Here she’s a Cady, and Max kills her in the finale’s opening minutes. Bardem describes Max entering this hour “at the peak of his patience,” a man who spent years engineering this exact convergence. “Now it’s time to really create the situation and create the final step of his own goal of revenge,” he says. “That also includes fixing his family problems in a Max Cady way.”

Anna, meanwhile, has stumbled off the riverbank and flagged down a family to drive her back to her car. Tom is still sitting in Chatham County Jail on a murder charge Max framed him for.

Anna turns the tables on Max

Max is opening a restaurant, Melissa & Adam, named for the wife he was convicted of murdering and the son she was carrying when she died. At the grand opening, with supporters wearing shirts that read “Max was a victim,” Anna walks to the front holding a paper bag that could, for one long beat, contain anything. It turns out to hold a Bluetooth speaker.

She plays an audio recording of Max’s daughter, Nevaeh Valentine (Malia Pyles), detailing his instructions: break into the Bowden home, spike the family’s tea, seduce Zack, push him to bite off his own toe, and kill Natalie. Anna’s colleague Noa Toussaint (CCH Pounder) follows with a video of Max coercing his mistress into suicide, shattering the narrative that bought his freedom.

“This is who he is!” Anna shouts to the crowd. Max wraps both hands around her throat before a guard tackles him. Cuffed and seeing visions of his dead wife and imagined son, he looks at Anna with pure hate as her expression mirrors his. The moment is a deliberate callback to the premiere, when Max seized a microphone at a fundraiser and humiliated Anna in public. “She had to have an opportunity to come and confront him in the same way at the end of the season, before we get to that primal fight in the house,” Antosca says.

Adams reads it as the turn where Anna finally matches Max on his terms. “She’s so physically and emotionally exhausted that I think she's acting without any barriers,” Adams says. If dying is what it takes to save her family and reveal who Max is, she adds, Anna is willing.

What Anna gains, Max loses. It is the first time, Bardem says, that Max sees her in complete control, and that public reversal triggers everything that follows. Once Max understands that “now everybody’s playing his game,” Bardem says, he moves to “close the deal.” From there, his psychological games give way to physical violence.

The calm before the storm

Tom enters this stretch of the finale about as low as a person can go. “For a guy that's in total control for most of his life, he's now completely out of sorts, to say the least. He's frayed,” Wilson says. He's released on bail after a night in jail spent beside a makeshift noose—an image Wilson says was designed to leave viewers wondering whether Tom had reached the point of taking his own life or someone else’s—then goes straight to Anna at the hospital. “Those are very important questions that we just wanted to propose, versus giving answers,” he says.

Natalie, meanwhile, finds Zack wandering back toward the house, unharmed, having simply walked out of rehab. At the hospital, Anna and Tom’s conversation turns quiet. She is glad he finally knows the truth, she tells him: that Max may have taken advantage of her during blackouts around his original trial 17 years earlier.

The conversation is also where Anna might finally let herself be fully loved, Adams suggests. “For her, it’s never being truly able to accept the love of her husband, the love of her children, the life that she's built, because she knows it was built on so many secrets and so much uncertainty,” Adams says. “Now, with everything being revealed, I think she can start from a place of more authenticity.”

Anna tells Tom she loves him. Neither answers the real question between them—what happens now?—before the hospital loudspeaker announces an evacuation. A hurricane is coming for Savannah, Georgia. 

By the time the family reconvenes at the house, the room exhales. Tom sits Zack down and explains what really happened to his brother, who died by suicide when Tom was 14, not in the accident Tom had always described. “For a long time, I didn’t want to see how bad things were with you,” Tom tells his son. “It was easier for me to just tell myself you would get better. But sometimes things just suck, and we can't pretend otherwise—just get through it together.”

Then Detective Grayson Park (Paul Schneider) arrives with several officers and reports that Max assaulted a cop and escaped custody. As the Bowdens light candles for the storm, Anna gets a text from Noa: a photo of a homebirth certificate connecting Crystal to a boy named Luke, a detail that means little to her yet. Upstairs, done running, Tom pulls a shotgun from the safe. He wants Max gone for good.

The police search the property, find nothing, and leave. Then the camera pulls back to reveal Max standing on the Bowdens’ roof, unbothered by the storm breaking around him. Zack, packing a bag, hears him first. He opens his window just as lightning catches Max's grin, and Max drops through it onto him.

Max puts the Bowdens on trial 

Anna finds Max holding a knife to her son’s throat on the staircase; Tom raises his shotgun. Max tells him to put it down, releasing Zack in exchange, then picks up the gun himself, herds all four Bowdens into the kitchen, and makes Natalie bind her parents' wrists with plastic restraints. He injects Zack with scopolamine, leaving him docile, and refuses to let the children go. He doesn’t want hostages so much as a jury.

What follows is the hour’s centerpiece: Max staging a trial of his own devising, as judge, prosecutor, and executioner at once. “Max has lost faith in all institutions: institutions of law, institutions of religion, the financial system,” Antosca says, drawing on guidance from a wrongful-conviction attorney the production consulted. “So Max becomes that institution for himself.” In its simplest form, Antosca says, the scene signals: “I was on trial. Now you’re on trial.”

Max asks Tom whether he owns a Bible—he means to swear his witnesses in—and strikes him across the face when Tom’s only answer is a baffled “What?” When Anna and Tom hesitate, Max turns to Zack, still glassy from the drug, and suggests the boy bite off his own tongue. Blood runs down Zack’s chin before his parents swear to tell the truth. Anna admits she secured Max a plea deal that took the death penalty off the table 17 years earlier. Max strikes Tom with the shotgun and keeps pushing.

The real confession arrives in pieces. Anna admits she learned through a leak that the jury at Max’s trial was deadlocked, and that fear—not conscience—decided what she did next. She could have used that leverage to secure Max a lighter sentence. Instead, she let the jury put him away for good.

Max smiles, imagining the life he might have had outside prison. “Did you hear that, jury?” he asks Natalie and Zack. “She betrayed her own client.” Then Anna admits the fear underneath the betrayal: Natalie might have been Max’s daughter, and Anna could not bear the thought of her knowing that her father was a monster.

Power flickers as the storm worsens. A window shatters. The lights die and come back. Max raises his arms, a half-lit prophet. “I have carried you in my skin, so that this day would come,” he declares. “Justice. Fire. Thunder and lightning. Today’s the day that you will be judged.”

Max’s restraint finally disappears here. “We haven't seen him like this in the whole show, because he's always been under control,” Bardem says. Now, he adds, Max becomes the “personification of his wildest impulses,” transforming into this “theatrical figure of revenge, this real evil avenger.”

Wilson plays the scene from the opposite instinct, a lawyer discovering the law has nothing left to offer him. “By that point, I’m not thinking about the law,” Wilson says. “I’m thinking about how to get out, how to save my family, and probably how to kill this guy.” Getting there meant stripping Tom’s composure away entirely, an approach Wilson suspects comes from his years working in the horror genre. “You want to paint in primary colors. You want to see a guy that is completely together, and then the complete animal side of him,” he says. While Tom looks for a way to fight, Anna looks for a way through. Adams describes her as switching tactics in what she calls “deep survival,” thinking about her family more than herself.

The trial brings Max to Tom, whom he accuses of sleeping with Anna during the proceedings and building a “life of privilege” out of Max’s ruin. “I’ll say whatever words you want to hear, but we did not sleep together during your trial,” Tom answers, looking toward Anna. “I was falling in love with her, but nothing happened.”

Max staggers and envisions his dead wife and imagined son again before pulling himself back to his closing argument. He asks Natalie for a verdict. She curses at him and sides with her father. Max looks up, as if awaiting a ruling from somewhere higher, then delivers it himself: guilty, with a capital sentence to be carried out immediately.

The truth about Max’s son is revealed

He levels the shotgun at Natalie. That’s when Anna tells him the truth that breaks him: his son didn’t die with Melissa. He was Luke, the young man Max shot on the houseboat without knowing who he was.  

Anna has Max pull up the homebirth certificate Noa sent, then connects it to the scar visible in an old photograph of the baby, the same scar she saw on Luke's side. “Crystal killed Melissa, and she ripped him out of her. Your sister stole your baby, Max,” Anna tells him. “He was alive all this time, until you killed him.”

Max shakes his head, watching the story that drove his entire revenge plot come apart. He sinks to his knees, his hands covering his face. Antosca says the moment is a turning point for Max. “It changes everything, because he can tell himself that he is righteous and everything he's doing is righteous,” Antosca says. “The revelation that Luke was his son, that his son was alive this whole time, makes it feel like his whole campaign of vengeance was misguided.”

For Bardem, the revelation collapses everything that made Max who he was, and it lands where he is least defended. “It was the moment of deep vulnerability that has to hit him  in the weakest side of him, as the father who has committed the worst crime of them all,” he says. What replaces the man who ran the season is something feral: Bardem describes “an out of control, dying beast, wounded animal, that we have not seen before.” The collapse also costs Max the only weapon he ever had. His strength was always his ability “to play, to manipulate, to divert the attention.” Reduced to survival, he can't reach for it, and the pain is so total, Bardem says, that Max no longer knows how to react.

Adams, watching from Anna’s side of the revelation, says Anna is piecing it together at nearly the same moment Max is. Anna is trying to reach him, Adams says, to “apply some amount of logic” and “bring him back into a reasonable place.” “I think she recognizes the tragedy of it as well,” she says.

Natalie has been using a hidden lighter to burn through her restraints. Now free, she runs. Max corners her behind the sofa, and she fires a nail gun repeatedly, driving one nail into his skull. It barely slows him. He pulls it out and gets back up. Natalie reaches for a knife in the kitchen before Max overpowers her. 

Zack, still hazy from the drug, sees himself holding a flapping fish, with Max fishing beside him—the trip Max once promised while feeding the boy the lie that he was his real father. Then Max's face gives way to Tom's: the counterfeit father yielding to the true one. The vision, conjured by the very drug Max used to make him harmless, snaps Zack back just in time to lunge at Max, knocking him off balance and saving Natalie from the shot meant for her. 

Tom and Max fight. Anna drives a kitchen knife into Max's back. He staggers outside, and Tom knocks him into the pool, which glows an unnatural aquamarine beneath the storm. “It's a kill-or-be-killed sort of moment,” Adams says.

In the churning pool, Max grapples with Tom, who locks him in a stranglehold. Anna leaps in, and together they hold him under until his limbs finally go limp.

Moving the climax from the open waters of the Cape Fear River to the family's backyard pool marks a decisive break from previous film adaptations. “We felt for this version of the story that it should end in their home,” Antosca explains. “Bring the storm to them.”

The scene also pays off a detail from Episode 7, when Max told Natalie he’d been baptized in the Cape Fear River as a boy but never learned to swim. “[The pool] is also the place where he’s more vulnerable,” Bardem says.

The pool fight took days to shoot, with rain pouring down and cameras rolling underwater. Staging a brawl in water demands precision from everyone in it. “You’ve got to be so in tune with your dance partner,” Wilson says. It was also a release after months of playing Tom measured. “We all had been so measured for so long … it was nice to let it rip,” he says. For all the scale, the sequence plays as a test the Bowdens narrowly pass. “There’s a killer inside of everybody,” Wilson says, but killing Max at that point would be vengeance, not self-defense. “Tom, at his core, is not someone that would kill out of revenge.”

It is Anna who calls it off. “Let him die in a cage,” she tells Tom. The words land with the weight of everything before them: the dog cage Max was confined to as a boy and the metal cage in which his father died only hours earlier. Tom pulls Max, still breathing, to the edge of the pool. 

Adams frames the choice not to kill Max as Anna snapping back into herself the instant she sees her children watching. “She has to come back to some sense of reason,” Adams says. “She has to return to her moral code. … If they kill him, Max wins.”

The threat has passed, but things will never be the same

Once the storm passes, the episode finds Natalie in her room watching a video of Tabitha (Anna Baryshnikov), the journalist who spent the season chasing Max's story and fell in love with him. Natalie closes the laptop. In her hand is an unopened envelope from a DNA testing company, containing the answer to whether Max was ever really her father. Instead of opening it, she goes downstairs, where Anna is calling everyone to eat.

Downstairs, the scene echoes the premiere's opening barbecue: Tom grilling under the Savannah sun, Anna teasing him. They kiss. Zack finds a smile for his mother at the patio table; Tom glances over his shoulder at nothing before Natalie joins him at the grill. For one elongated moment, it looks almost like the family the show opened on.

Then the camera settles on Anna’s face and stays there long enough to watch her smile give out, a choice Adams says wasn’t necessarily written that way. “We discovered it in filming,” she says. “Things never go back to the way they were. Anna has changed, and I don't know for the better.” While the Bowdens still have each other, so much of Max’s darkness remains, Adams adds, and he’ll “never really go away.” Wilson, playing Tom’s own version of that unease a few beats earlier, needed only the smallest gesture to register it. “We needed a glimmer of fear or doubt in there,” he says.

That unease belongs to the whole family, not just the two of them, and it isn't so much about what they survived as what survival asked them to do: become, over the course of one long night, people capable of ending Max—before stopping just shy of doing so. Antosca always knew the finale would return to the Bowdens’ backyard. “I felt that this family would want to try and recreate their sense of safety and comfort, and they would never quite be able to,” he says.

As Anna glances behind her, the frame turns chromatic, echoing the show’s title sequence, while Neil Young with Crazy Horse's “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” rises over the cut to black. The lyrics long for a home that’s “cool and breezy,” a place to finally stop running and unwind. For the Bowdens, the irony is that they're already home; what they've lost is the ability to rest there. Cape Fear lets them win, but refuses them the relief triumph should bring. 

Antosca wanted that lack of clean resolution to linger with viewers. “I hope that when you’re finished watching the show, you feel like you just went through a really intense nightmare,” he says. Here, they do. The finale, which opens with Max pausing to observe a small courtesy before committing an atrocity on Crystal’s houseboat, closes with the Bowdens reaching for ordinary family life after surviving an atrocity of their own. As Anna’s smile dissolves in the final moments, survival is cold comfort. Nothing that happened that summer washes off, and no amount of time on that sun-drenched Savannah patio will convince her otherwise.

Good sleep is crucial to healthy functioning. If we don’t get enough sleep or if it’s of insufficient quality, we often have problems the next day. We may have a harder time concentrating or may feel irritable and sluggish. If sleep problems persist, as they do for up to one in three adults, those individuals are at risk for a range of serious physical and mental health difficulties, including problems with heart and circulatory systems, issues with thinking and memory, as well as respiratory and immune disorders.

A substantial number of Americans turn to cannabis and alcohol to help them fall asleep. Indeed, there are estimates that nearly one in 10 Americans regularly use cannabis for sleep, and many adults report using alcohol in this way. Sadly, these rates are higher for young adults.

While cannabis and alcohol may seem to assist in sleep, these substances offer a cheap trick. While they can initially make a person feel sleepy, they don’t produce the kind of restorative sleep humans need to function well. In fact, researchers warn that regular use not only weakens healthy sleep but increases the risk of dependence. 

Philip Gehrman is a psychologist and professor who directs the Sleep Neurobiology and Psychopathology lab at the University of Pennsylvania. I asked him what he thought of the use of these substances for sleep. “As alcohol is metabolized, it is broken down into compounds that disrupt sleep and lead to more wakefulness in the night. So, any benefit at the beginning of the night is not worth the price you pay the rest of the night,” he said. “There is much less research on cannabis, but it has a similar pattern to alcohol. Plus, if you use either alcohol or cannabis as a coping strategy to improve sleep, it increases the chances of becoming dependent on them.”

I also reached out to Lisa Fucito, a professor of psychiatry at Yale and the director of the Tobacco Treatment Service at Smilow Cancer Hospital.“Alcohol, cannabis, and other psychoactive substances do not address the behavioral and cognitive processes that perpetuate insomnia,” she said. “While these substances may provide short-term sedation, their sleep effects tend to diminish with tolerance in as little as a few days and can worsen sleep continuity and quality.” Tolerance can develop within days, and is often followed by rebound sleep disruption in the second half of the night.

As a psychologist, I venture that most people who use substances to sleep are trying to help, not harm, themselves. They are likely not informed about the potential damaging effects of these substances or their ineffectiveness.

The research evidence overwhelmingly supports that cognitive behavioral therapy is a safer, more effective long-term solution for many sleep difficulties, even if it lacks the appeal of a quick fix. This can help address the root cause of behaviors such as spending excessive time in bed awake, maintaining irregular sleep schedules, and conditioned arousal such as worrying about sleep. 

Noelle Smith is a psychologist and vice-president of clinical care at Moona Health, which specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia via telehealth. “The good news is that insomnia is highly treatable,” she said. Cognitive behavioral therapy teaches skills like establishing a consistent sleep schedule, strengthening the connection between bed and sleep, and changing the unhelpful worries that keep people awake. “The results are more durable than medication and other substances with fewer side effects,” Smith added, “so people see lasting improvement in their ability to fall and stay asleep.”

It’s possible that some of us who are struggling with sleep-related issues may not have the time or money to seek formal services. Fortunately, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD and the Department of Defense’s National Center for Telehealth and Technology developed free evidence-informed mobile apps that anyone can use alone or in conjunction with their health care provider. These apps can assist in learning effective ways to increase healthy sleep. 

To be sure, there are a wide range of sleep complaints and disorders including, but not limited to, insomnia, breathing, and movement disorders. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine launched the Sleep is Good Medicine campaign to increase public education about the importance of sleep and its connection to health. They offer a wealth of resources such as a podcast called Talking Sleep and tips on talking to one’s doctor about sleep.

Given that sleep-related difficulties are so widespread, please know that you are not alone. Effective strategies exist, and using alcohol or cannabis to sleep is counterproductive.

Dr. Anthony Fauci’s decision to invoke his Fifth Amendment right to avoid answering lawmakers’ questions about the government’s handling of the COVID pandemic during a Senate hearing on Wednesday sparked outrage from Republicans.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, the Republican chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said following the hearing that the panel would vote next week on whether it would recommend to hold Fauci, an infectious disease expert who helped lead the country’s pandemic response, in contempt of Congress after he pleaded the Fifth more than 100 times.

Here’s what to know about the Fifth Amendment, why Fauci invoked it, and if he can be held in contempt of Congress for doing so.

What is the Fifth Amendment?

The Fifth Amendment was ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights. It stipulates multiple key legal protections for Americans, including that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” In other words, the amendment establishes the constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination.

The American criminal justice system relies on the presumption that people are innocent until proven guilty; it’s the responsibility of prosecutors to prove that someone is guilty, rather than on the individual to prove their innocence. The Fifth Amendment is critical in preserving that presumption of innocence. And invoking the Fifth Amendment doesn’t necessarily mean that that person is guilty of a crime.

“Pleading the Fifth is not an admission of guilt—it is a constitutional protection designed to prevent coercion, mistakes, and unfair burden-shifting,” Whalen Law Office, a criminal defense law firm based in Texas, writes on its website.

Why did Fauci invoke the Fifth Amendment?

In his opening statement to the Senate committee on Wednesday, Fauci accused Paul of having an “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution.”

“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said. 

“Although it pains me to do so because of the respect that I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress,” he said, “under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions.”

Shortly before former President Joe Biden left office, in January 2025, he preemptively pardoned Fauci. Biden said he was issuing the pardon to shield Fauci from “politically motivated prosecutions.”

Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has for years been a target of Republicans’ persistent criticisms and probes into the U.S. response to the COVID pandemic. GOP lawmakers have accused him of covering up information about the coronavirus’s origins and the vaccines developed to combat the disease—claims that Fauci has denied.

The pardon only protects Fauci from being charged for events or actions that happened before it was issued. He is not protected under the pardon for anything that happens after January 2025. He could therefore be at risk of legal consequences if he were accused of a crime that occurred after that date—for instance, if he were accused of lying under oath. 

Several Republicans, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have said that Fauci could still face perjury charges if he made false statements while under oath during the Senate hearing.

Senate Democrats criticized their Republican colleagues’ actions during the hearing on Wednesday. Instead of questioning Fauci, they thanked him for his years of work in public health.

“It must be enormously frustrating to know that this hearing is designed to entrap you,” Sen. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire, said to Fauci during the hearing.

Can Fauci be held in contempt of Congress?

Paul said that the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will vote next week on whether to recommend holding Fauci in contempt of Congress. If the panel votes in favor of doing so, then the issue would go to the entire Senate to vote on.

Paul has argued that Fauci is not entitled to invoke his Fifth Amendment right because the pardon Fauci received from Biden protects him from any federal criminal prosecutions for his past actions during the COVID-19 pandemic, which was the subject of the Senate hearing on Wednesday. It’s unclear whether this argument would hold up in court; Paul said that it’s a “legal question that the courts may have to decide.”

Paul told CBS News after the Senate hearing one Wednesday that he believes “there is a very real chance that [Fauci] could be prosecuted” for refusing to answer the panel’s questions.

But Fauci’s lawyer, David Schertler, maintained that Fauci was within his constitutional right during the hearing.

“We are completely confident that Dr. Fauci has a valid Fifth Amendment privilege here and is on solid legal ground in asserting it,” Schertler said in an email to CBS News. “Rand Paul may be a doctor, but he is not a lawyer.”