The emergency services in Suffolk, England, have declared a “major incident” as they struggle to contain a wildfire that has swelled to around 370 acres, roughly the size of 210 soccer pitches. 

“Changing wind conditions continue to affect the direction and behavior of the fire, making it difficult to predict how it may spread,” Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service said in an update Thursday afternoon.

More than 120 firefighters have been on site tackling the blaze at Dunwich Heath, an area of coastal lowland in the east of England, since the fire broke out on Wednesday. 

The blaze has spread across heathland and fields, forcing dozens of people to be evacuated from their homes, with vast stretches of land left charred.

Chief fire officer Jon Lacey described the blaze as "one of the largest” he remembers in the history of Suffolk.

“The fire is still developing. It is a challenging environment to be able to extinguish that fire,” Lacey said at a Thursday press conference. “We have surrounded it with resources, particularly on the fire front that is moving forward to make sure that we can protect the buildings, other forestry, and other items that need to be protected.”

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said the local authorities will have "all the support, mutual aid, [and] other services that they need,” as they continue to work around-the-clock amid another U.K. heat wave.

Read More: What Is a Fire Cloud and How Are They Making Europe's Wildfires More Dangerous?

The wildfire has caused power outages in the surrounding areas, placing additional challenges on local services.

U.K. Power Networks said a power cut affecting 116 customers across three postcodes in the area is under investigation.

Meanwhile, officials have quelled concerns about nearby nuclear power stations.

An EDF Energy spokesperson told TIME “the fire at Dunwich Heath is not currently affecting operations at Sizewell B power station but we are continuing to monitor the situation—we are not on high alert.”

Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service also said neither Sizewell B or Sizewell C—a second nuclear power station under construction nearby—are considered to be at risk.

“At the moment, Sizewell B and C are being monitored. We're in consultation with them, but we're not worried about fire spreading in that direction,” Lacey said.

Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, the Member of Parliament [MP] for Suffolk Coastal, praised the efforts of local officials and urged people to steer clear of the vicinity.

"I am so grateful, as I know so many others are, for the work of the fire brigade and the emergency services,” she said. “Please do avoid the area, and allow the fire and emergency services the space to respond.”

The wildfire has also raised concerns among local farmers.

Patrick Spencer, the lawmaker for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, described the wildfire as an "extremely worrying situation" and expressed he is "deeply conscious of the impact on our farming community."

"At such a critical point in the year, with harvest under way or about to begin for many, this is an especially difficult time for farmers whose land, livestock, or livelihoods are at risk," he said.

A series of heat waves have recently gripped England, worsening wildfire conditions.

The U.K. Health Security Agency on Thursday said it estimates there were 2,877 heat-associated deaths during two notable periods of hot weather in May and June 2026, putting the country on track to record its highest number of heat-related deaths since modern records began.

Seven areas of England have officially been declared as being in drought, after “record low rainfall and exceptionally high temperatures.”

British Water Minister Emma Hardy warned that the U.K. needs to be prepared “for this new normal” moving forward.

“Our climate is changing, droughts are becoming increasingly common,” she said. “We expect water companies to follow their drought plans, to go further and faster to reduce leaks, and to ensure supplies are not disrupted even in the driest of weather.”

This is the third drought in the past five years, with former extreme dry spells happening in 2022 and 2025.

At the start of the summer, in the wake of last year’s blazes across North York Moors National Park in eastern England, the U.K. government strengthened its wildfire resilience, announcing it would be placing “teams of specialist firefighters will be positioned in key areas and ready to respond to fires across England.”

Read More: Photos Show the Destruction in France and Spain From Ferocious European Wildfires

The wildfire in England comes as other European countries, including France and Spain, continue to battle ferocious blazes. 

Three firefighters died Wednesday while facing wildfires on the island of Crete and in the south of the mainland, the Greek fire department said.

President Trump said Thursday that he might pull Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general, after two Republican senators threatened to withhold their support. 

“I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name, if they do not do the right thing,” Trump posted on Truth Social. 

His comments came after the Senate Judiciary Committee postponed a vote Thursday that would have advanced Blanche’s nomination.

Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, one of the key holdout votes, told reporters Wednesday that he had not received a written confirmation from the Department of Justice that it would eliminate provisions in a proposed settlement between Trump and the department over a lawsuit he filed concerning the leak of his tax returns.

The most contentious provisions would have created a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” for Trump allies and Jan. 6 defendants, and shielded Trump and his family from future audits by the Internal Revenue Service.

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

“I think they [the administration] realizes that we are serious,” Cornyn, who lost his reelection bid in May after Trump endorsed his opponent, said after canceling an in-person meeting with Blanche.

The committee did not immediately announce a new date for a confirmation vote. Shortly after the postponement, Cornyn said negotiations between the committee members and the DOJ were still ongoing, and that the DOJ had received “some pushbacks” from the White House. 

“I thought we were pretty close to landing the plane last night, but this morning there's been some more complications. I think if this were just between me and Todd Blanche, we would have worked this out,” Cornyn added. 

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is not seeking reelection over his disagreement with the Trump administration, has also made clear his opposition to the Anti-Weaponization Fund. 

“He [Blanche] is a qualified candidate. We just need to get the issues off the table,” Tillis said on Wednesday.

What happens if Blanche is not confirmed? 

Todd Blanche has been serving as acting attorney general for the DOJ since Trump removed Pam Bondi in April over her handling of the Epstein files. Unlike interim U.S. prosecutors, who can lawfully serve 120 days without a Senate confirmation, an acting attorney general can serve for as long as a president wants. 

That is because of U.S. Code § 508, which states that “the Deputy Attorney General may exercise all the duties of that office” if the office of Attorney General is vacant and the law does not state a time limit for how long the acting attorney general can legally serve.

The law, which was passed decades before the Federal Vacancies Reform Act (VRA) of 1998, takes legal precedence. While the FVRA generally limits officials serving in a temporary capacity to no longer than 210 days after the position becomes vacant, the law also made exceptions to agency-specific laws that had been previously codified.

A similar arrangement existed under the Biden administration. In 2023, after Marty Walsh resigned as labor secretary, President Biden nominated Julie Su to fill the vacancy. Su, who had served as deputy labor secretary, ultimately failed to get confirmed by the Senate due to the lack of support from Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

Su served as acting labor secretary for the rest of the Biden administration under a similar statutory provision, despite Republicans' objections. In 2023, the Government Accountability Office, which oversees the federal government’s compliance with vacancy laws, concluded in a letter that time limitations “do not apply” to Su’s case. 

What did Blanche say about the demands?

During his confirmation hearing earlier this month, Todd Blanche said the Anti-Weaponization Fund was “dead.” 

However, Sen. Cornyn pointed out during the hearing that the settlement agreement made between Trump and the Department of Justice that included the fund could only be modified through “a written agreement” between two parties. When pressed by Cornyn, Blanche said Trump could potentially enforce the agreement if he decides to do so. 

“They [Trump’s legal counsel] could say that we breached by not moving forward,” Blanche said. 

TIME has also reached out to the Department of Justice for comment.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia launched over 70 missiles and 280 drones in an overnight attack on Ukraine that killed at least eight people, including three children, and left dozens injured.

Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and the western city of Lviv, near the Poland border, were most impacted, local officials reported. 

“Dozens of ordinary homes, civilian businesses, and infrastructure facilities were destroyed and damaged,” said Zelensky on Thursday, as he decried the “critical shortage of air defense missiles from our partners” and called for assistance from other countries.

“All partners know how and with what they can help. Untimely assistance and delays in the delivery of anti-ballistic missiles lead to this kind of destruction, these kinds of casualties that, unfortunately, we are seeing today,” Zelensky added, doubling down on his previous statements on the perils of delayed defensive equipment. 

Zelensky shared a series of images and videos that showed buildings reduced to rubble and emergency services carrying out search and rescue operations.

"This Russian terror once again proves that protection against the Russian missile threat is the most important task when it comes to saving the lives of our people," Zelensky declared. 

The Russian Defense Ministry said its strikes targeted Ukrainian air bases, arms factories, and military telecommunications and logistics facilities.

Following the attack, Ukraine’s air force said it shot down just one of nine ballistic missiles sent into its airspace.

Zelensky has repeatedly appealed for more U.S.-made Patriot missile interceptors as they are capable of downing Russia’s ballistic missiles, but there’s a critical short supply.

At the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, earlier this month, U.S. President Donald Trump told Zelensky that the U.S. would extend Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriot missile interceptors.

The pair met again for a closed-door meeting in the Oval Office on Tuesday, sharing what Zelensky described afterward as a “good” sit-down.

They “discussed licenses for Patriot interceptor production and several other ideas that could help,” according to the Ukrainian leader, but no concrete details or next steps for manufacturing plans have been released.

During his time in Washington, Zelensky watched from inside the chamber as the U.S. Senate advanced a bill that would impose tougher sanctions on Russia.

Elsewhere, the European Commission stepped up its support for Ukraine, announcing Thursday it would disburse a further €3.47 billion (around $3.99 billion) for drones, missiles, air defense, and fighter jets under its €90 billion Ukraine Support Loan.

Ukraine’s new Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi expressed gratitude, saying the “funds will strengthen our defense and help finance Ukraine’s most urgent needs.”

Zelensky later held a meeting with Ukraine’s new military chief Mykhailo Drapatyi and other defense officials to discuss the country’s challenges facing Russia’s ballistic missile attacks and its “ability to counter this tactic, both at the military and diplomatic levels.”

Russian missile "violated" airspace in Poland, says Tusk

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said "during the Russian massive missile attack on western Ukraine, a violation of Polish airspace occurred."

He convened a “coordination team” early Thursday morning to assess the site where the projectile fell.

“I am in contact with the leaders of European countries regarding the violation of Polish airspace. Everyone declares full solidarity and readiness for any assistance,” Tusk added.

The leader of Poland, a NATO member, later said in a press conference that “there is no reason to believe that Poland was the target,” but maintained a violation had taken place.

“After my conversation with President Zelensky, it is quite clear to me that the next 100 days could decide the outcome of this war,” Tusk, who met with Zelensky on Wednesday, declared. “Right now, I would say the chances are fifty-fifty. Much depends on decisions made by the President of the United States.” 

NATO is “in close contact with the Polish authorities about the violation of Poland’s airspace,” NATO spokesperson for the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) Col. Martin O’Donnell told TIME in an emailed statement.

“The Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), General Alexus G. Grynkewich, spoke earlier today with Poland's Chief of Defence General Wiesław Kukułan about NATO and Poland’s response to the incident, which remains under investigation,” the statement continued. “SACEUR underlined that NATO will continue to take all necessary measures to defend NATO territory.”

European leaders denounce Russian aggression against Ukraine

European officials were quick to denounce the overnight bombardment against Ukraine and the reported violation of Polish airspace.

“France condemns in the strongest possible terms the Russian strikes that killed civilians in Ukraine, as well as the violation of Polish airspace,” said French President Emmanuel Macron. “Our support for Ukraine and our allies will not waver. This is a matter of our collective security.”

European Council president António Costa echoed those remarks, warning that the incident underscored a broader threat posed by Russia.

“Last night, Russia launched a massive combined strike against Ukraine. During the attack, Polish airspace was also violated, underlining once again that Russia’s aggression is a threat to the security of Europe as a whole,” he said.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen labeled the attack “another unacceptable violation of our E.U. airspace caused by Russia’s latest strikes on Ukraine.”

“To put an end to this, we are helping Ukraine win this war in every way we can. And we are  building a robust European security architecture on land, at sea and in the air,” she said.

This is not the first time Russia has reportedly violated the airspace of a NATO member.

In late May, a Russian strike hit an apartment building in eastern Romania—a crash E.U. leaders referred to as “a serious violation of Romania’s sovereignty and European airspace.”

Turn on the television or flip through a newspaper, and you might think that the U.S. desperately needs to train more nurses.

Arizona has nearly 30,000 nursing vacancies, local TV stations there recently reported; Pennsylvania Republicans met in early June to discuss how to fill the state’s nursing shortage, two schools are even opening new nursing programs in Georgia to meet that state’s projected nursing shortage. “The Nursing Shortage Starts in the Classroom,” a recent Wall Street Journal headline proclaimed. 

Yet more people are going into nursing; 280,308 people passed the NCLEX examination to become a registered nurse (RN) or licensed practical nurse (LPN) in 2025, a 34% increase from 2016, according to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing. And currently 7 million registered nurses and practical nurses hold an active license in at least one state, according to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing.  

But there were only about 3.4 million jobs for registered nurses in 2024, the most recent year for which data are available, and 651,400 jobs for licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses in that year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—meaning that there are substantively more actively licensed nurses than there are nursing jobs. This suggests that well over two million licensed nurses are not currently working as nurses for patients.

This data—and the experience of many nurses across the country—suggest that the U.S. may have less of an actual shortage of licensed nurses than a shortage of nurses who are willing to work in bedside jobs that have become increasingly demanding. Pressure on nursing has not let up since the pandemic, nurses say, because of cost-cutting at hospitals and health systems that ask them to do more work with fewer resources. 

“We’re really putting a lot of money into building a pipeline for nursing, but if nurses are leaving after a year or two of getting into employment, the problem isn’t so much a pipeline problem as a leaking gas tank,” says Karen Lasater, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing who studies what she calls the nursing-retention crisis. 

Why nursing jobs are getting more difficult

Conditions for nurses were bad before the pandemic, got even worse during it, and appear to be deteriorating further a few years out, according to research Lasater and her colleagues recently published. Postpandemic, more than two thirds of hospital nurses reported having too few staff, compared to 57% before the pandemic, according to the paper, which surveyed 50,044 nurses in hospitals across New York and Illinois. From December 2023 to March 2024, about one third of nurses said they were dissatisfied and that they intended to leave their employer—“significantly” higher than pre-pandemic and pandemic levels, according to the paper.

It wasn’t just their imagination that the work seemed like it was getting harder. Among nurses working on medical-surgical units, the average staffing ratio increased to six patients per nurse, up from 5.7 prepandemic, according to the paper. (In California, one of the few states with mandated staffing ratios, ER nurses are staffed at a ratio of four per patient, and labor and delivery nurses are staffed at a ratio of two per patient.)

“I fear that we’re headed to a worse place, because it’s apparent that we didn’t learn much from the COVID-19 pandemic,” Lasater says. 

Ariana Lucio, a 45-year-old nurse in El Paso, Texas, has been a nurse for 14 years and currently works in the medical-surgical unit at Del Sol Medical Center, which is owned by HCA Healthcare, the largest health system in the U.S. HCA operates a network of for-profit hospitals across the country. Her hospital has been cutting back on staffing and embracing technology that makes work harder for nurses, says Lucio. Adequate staffing is a key issue for nurses unions and organizations, and Lucio, who is a member of National Nurses United, has protested staffing conditions at the hospital in the past.

Her unit used to have a unit clerk who would answer the phones, stock supplies, and handle paperwork, but the hospital eliminated the position, she says. Now, she says nurses are running to answer phones, clean the break room, and pick up the tasks the unit clerk used to do. In the past, the charge nurse—often the person managing a specific hospital unit—wasn’t assigned patients, Lucio says. No longer. The added responsibility of patients means the charge nurse can’t as easily help other nurses with difficulties they may encounter. 

The hospital also used to predominantly use “sitters”: hospital employees who stay in a patient’s room for a given amount of time to keep a patient company or ensure that they stay in bed for safety reasons. But Lucio says that the hospital is relying more on virtual sitters: a person on a computer screen who watches and can talk to the patient remotely. If a patient tries to get out of bed and doesn’t listen to the virtual sitter’s instructions to get back in bed, the virtual sitter messages the nurses on duty, who then have to get the patient back in bed, Lucio says. With in-person sitters, the nurse is called less frequently because the in-person sitters can get the patient back in bed. 

“It’s gotten harder, especially after COVID,” says Lucio, who recently became so burned out that she went from working full-time to part-time. “It’s coming not so much from patients but from changes in the administration.” 

HCA, which owns Del Sol Medical Center, referred questions about staffing to a public relations team handling the hospital’s communications. In a statement to TIME responding to these examples of how staffing conditions have changed, Del Sol Medical Center said that its staffing is “safe and appropriate” and that it utilizes technology to “limit administrative tasks so our nurses can spend more time taking care of patients.” 

“Like hospitals across the nation, we are actively recruiting new nurses to join our staff,” the hospital said. “We continue to provide a competitive wage for a hospital system in El Paso, as well as support our colleagues and their families by providing a generous and flexible benefit package with benefits specifically designed to support our colleagues’ families and careers."

A study of nearly 8,000 nurses who left the profession between 2018 and 2021 found that 26% left because of burnout, and 21% cited insufficient staffing. About two-thirds left because of planned retirement, suggesting that many of the others left before retirement age.

Data show that lower staffing ratios lower nurse burnout and improve patient outcomes. In one study of nurses at hospitals across Queensland, Australia, those who worked at hospitals that followed a minimum nurse staffing policy had 24% lower odds of high burnout and 27% lower odds of job dissatisfaction. 

Minimum staffing ratios were good for patients, too; they were linked to lower mortality, a shorter length of stay, and less readmission, according to a separate study. The costs avoided due to fewer readmissions and shorter length of stay were more than twice the cost of the additional nurse staffing, the study found. 

“There’s really substantive cost savings,” Lasater says.  

But hospitals are often reluctant to invest in lowering their nurse-to-patient ratios. Doctors can bill for their services, making it easy for administrators to see that they bring in money, Lasater points out. But it’s harder for administrators to see that nurses have an impact on the balance sheet. Instead, hospitals treat nurses like a labor expense, she says.

Yet nurses can save hospitals money, research suggests. Generally in the U.S., insurance or government payers like Medicare pay hospitals to treat certain conditions in a patient. But if the patient stays longer than most patients with that condition do, the hospital foots the bill for the extra time. So if nurses can reduce patient length of stay and readmission, they can be good for the balance sheet. 

In one study of hospitals in New York state, hospitals with fewer than six patients per nurse, patients were discharged sooner  and readmitted less often than they were at hospitals with seven or more patients per nurse. Had hospitals been staffed at a ratio of four patients per nurse—a ratio proposed most recently in 2025 in legislation that did not pass—an estimated 4,370 lives and $720 million would have been saved over two years, the study projected.

Yet rather than add nurses, many hospitals are paring back, sometimes turning to apps where they can hire nurses as gig workers. Such apps often allow hospitals to avoid paying for benefits for these workers, says Katie Wells, a senior fellow at the AI Now Institute, which has studied gig apps for nursing. “Lean staffing has just become the norm,” Wells says. 

The American Hospital Association argues that the issue is not lean staffing but that instead there are workforce shortages that are projected to continue for more than a decade. 

“The growing complexity and intensity of patient care, along with overly burdensome regulatory requirements and increased administrative demands from corporate insurers, continue to place significant demands on nurses,” the association said in a statement provided to TIME.

Hospitals are also facing increased costs of caring for patients, according to a March 2026 post by Rick Pollack, AHA’s president and CEO. In 2025, he writes, hospital expenses grew 7.5%, more than twice the rate of growth in hospital prices. Hospitals are also caring for patients who are sicker and whose care is more complex than it used to be, he points out. 

Some of the lean staffing can likely be attributed to the wave of private equity takeovers of hospitals in recent years. Hospitals that were acquired by private equity reduced full-time employees staffing by 11.6%, while control hospitals—those that were not taken over—increased staffing in the same time period, according to one 2025 study. The study also found that hospitals acquired by private equity reduced hospital-wide salary expenditures. 

Lean staffing has also been embraced by for-profit hospitals that aren’t owned by private equity, Wells says. About one-quarter of hospitals were for-profit in 2020, but that share is growing. For-profit hospitals had “statistically significant” lower investments in nursing services, higher nurse staffing ratios, worse nurse job outcomes, and worse patient safety outcomes when compared to non-profit hospitals, one 2025 study looking at hospitals in Illinois found. 

A few states have mandated minimum staffing ratios for hospitals. California has had minimum staffing ratios for nurses since 2004; research has shown that hospital nurses there have lower burnout than nurses nationally. (In California, the ratios differ depending on the unit; the medical-surgical unit has a mandated ratio of no more than five nurses to one patient, for instance, while the ICU has a mandated ratio of no more than two nurses for one patient.) Oregon passed mandatory nurse staffing ratios in 2023, which went into effect in June 2026. 

Other states have considered nurse-to-patient ratio legislation but have not passed it, though a few states require hospitals to publicly report their nurse-to-patient ratios. Other states allow hospital nurses to formally decline assignments they believe are unsafe. 

It’s one reason Lasater, the nursing professor, says that the best solution for getting more nurses to stay at hospitals is to mandate nurse-to-patient ratios by legislation. It works, she says.

“Hospitals have always had the opportunity to create better staffing conditions and to create more favorable working conditions,” she says. “They can voluntarily do this, but a large portion of them haven't.” 

Regrettably, the effects of U.S. President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, with oil prices rising and Trump’s lifting of Russian oil sanctions, have been massively helpful to Russian President Vladimir Putin. In fact, the war provided the exact lifeline that Putin needed to rescue him from economic catastrophe. 

Now, Putin is providing assistance to Iran in the form of munitions, money, and intelligence, effectively prolonging the war. Reciprocally, Iran is helping Putin prolong his invasion of Ukraine. 

Puppeteers like Putin manipulate their characters’ movements by pulling several strings at once, not just one. Accordingly, Putin appears to have his hands on quite a few strings, with U.S. intelligence reports confirming this linkage of Russia to the Mideast. For months, multiple U.S. intelligence agencies have documented Russian intelligence assistance to Iran against America.

Just last week, when asked about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s warnings that Russia is apparently passing satellite images of American bases to Iran to strengthen their missile attacks, Trump said, “We’ll find out if that’s true. I’ll ask Putin about it.” Experts agree it’s true; but the question is whether Trump is ready to confront Putin about it. Perhaps that’s why he decided to give Ukraine a license to produce Patriot interceptors, and endorsed the Russian sanctions bill. 

Putin’s assistance to Iran comes as he is reaping windfalls from higher oil prices. Until these higher prices bailed him out, Putin had been overseeing a seeming Russian economic collapse, as we documented extensively before with the Russian economy imploding in plain sight. Foreign direct investment in Russia has fallen from $100 billion a year to close to zero, amidst the exodus of over 1,000 global businesses. Now, Putin is running enormous deficits, with few countries stepping up to fund that debt. Meanwhile, Russia’s domestic productivity is weak; between 700,000 and 1.5 million skilled tech workers have fled the country; and oligarchs have spirited out billions in assets amidst drastic capital outflows. 

As a result, Putin was quickly running out of cash, and the value of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and rainy day reserves was plummeting. Then, higher oil prices provided a fresh windfall for Putin to stave off collapse. Indeed, with Trump’s lifting of certain sanctions on Russian oil, some analysts now estimate that Russia is on pace to double its annual oil revenues.

While windfall profits are helping Russia stave off economic collapse, Putin keeps throwing the living room furniture into the furnace to fund the war effort, cannibalizing all productive sectors and relying on unsustainable, record deficit spending, all directed towards the war. This has fueled rampant consumer inflation across sectors amidst rising consumer unease and usurious 14% interest rates. 

It is paradoxical, but not entirely surprising, that Putin is failing in his own bloody gambit for territorial expansion with hundreds of thousands of his own people killed and his own economy in tatters; yet he continues to hold sway over other leaders. No matter what Putin lacks, he extends this malevolent influence through manipulation befitting his background as a KGB operative, the puppeteer manipulating many strings at once, sparking diversionary fires and then pouring gas on the flames continually to distract from his own many problems.

It’s clear Russia is the single most important ally to Iran in their shared conspiracy against global peace and prosperity. According to many intelligence reports, in addition to passing on sensitive intelligence to Iran about U.S. military installations in the region, Russia is systematically upgrading Iran’s aging, pre-1979 military infrastructure as its single largest external source of weaponry. As of mid-2026, Moscow has completed production of advanced Su-35 fighter jets and helicopters for Tehran, augmented by deliveries of Yak-130 combat trainers, Mi-28 attack helicopters, and hundreds of long-range air-to-air and anti-radar missiles. Furthermore, in 2022, Moscow helped launch Iran's high-resolution Khayyam satellite, and Russian forces routinely transfer captured Western weaponry from the Ukrainian frontline—including Javelin and Stinger systems—directly to Iranian defense firms to be reverse-engineered and cloned for Tehran's proxy networks. Simultaneously, Russian telecommunications firms are supplying Iranian operators with advanced digital surveillance and cyber warfare technologies.

But all this is hardly a one-way street for Putin, as Russia has also benefitted from Iranian Shahed drone technology. These mass-produced, cheap drones are capable of wreaking disproportionate havoc on much costlier Western defense systems, and now Putin has been directly manufacturing these Shahed drones inside Russia using transferred Iranian manufacturing technology and blueprints. Similarly, Iran has also benefitted from easing sanctions and higher oil prices nearly as much as Putin, with oil windfalls providing up to $60 billion in annual sales—and that’s in addition to up to the $300 billion the White House agreed to in the most recent agreement with Iran. 

As Russia and Iran deepen their unholy alliance, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the conflict in the Mideast cannot be viewed as separate and isolated problems. Rather, they are part of the same global conflict, which is increasingly fueled by the same supply chain—a supply chain that is similarly tied back to the diabolical evil of Putin as a cynical mastermind and puppeteer. Treating peace negotiations in the Mideast as separate from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will only lead to more trouble to come. 

We may be seeing a growing recognition of this as Trump advocated adding Iran to the Russian sanctions bill, and Ukraine hit an Iranian ship carrying military supplies to Russia in the Caspian Sea. But much more needs to be done to suffocate the supply chains that sustain Putin’s power, by re-enforcing existing sanctions and passing the new comprehensive sanctions bill proposed by the late Republican Senator Lindsey Graham alongside Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal. It was encouraging to see this new set of sanctions ratified overwhelmingly with an 88 to 12 vote by the U.S. Senate yesterday with Zelensky smiling from above in the Senate Galley seats while colleagues celebrated the memory of their late colleague, Sen. Lindsey Graham. Now the House must act. The E.U. can likewise do much more irrespective of Trump, as we wrote previously, as the E.U. has been shamefully stepping up its purchases of Russian natural gas and oil.

All the evidence points in a single direction and toward a single unassailable truth: as President George W. Bush memorably warned in 2002, there is an “axis of evil”, and Vladimir Putin remains one of, if not its, most centrifugal hub, from which much anti-American mischief and malevolence spew.

Winston Churchill’s 1940 “Finest Hour” speech before the House of Commons rallied his nation’s resolve through his clear-eyed warning of Adolf Hitler’s ability to leverage the control of industry of the occupied lands he exploited. 

Rather than consult Putin for his advice, it is time for Trump and his E.U. partners to reinstate sanctions and rally military defenses against the Russian puppetmaster Putin.

The morning begins before anyone is fully awake. One parent is packing lunches while the other is answering a work message from the kitchen counter. A child cannot find a shoe. The school app says the bus is delayed. A phone buzzes with a reminder about a prescription refill for an aging parent, followed by another message from the care aide asking whether anyone can confirm the afternoon appointment. The day has barely started, and the family is already negotiating between school, work, care, money, time, and the small emergencies that do not look serious enough to be called emergencies.

Nothing about the scene looks unusual. That is part of the problem. It looks like modern family life: busy, stretched, familiar, and manageable because someone keeps managing it. The parents move through the day like runners in a relay race that never quite ends. School drop-off gives way to meetings. Meetings give way to eldercare calls. Eldercare calls collide with a sick-child pickup, dinner, laundry, bills, homework, and the quiet work of getting everyone ready to do it again tomorrow. No single moment breaks the family. Each demand is ordinary enough to explain away. Together, they begin to take up the room that a future would need.

Late that night, after the house finally settles, one parent opens a drawer and sees an old baby photo. For a moment, the noise of the day gives way to something softer. There had been conversations about another child. There had been a name they liked, a space they imagined making, a version of the family that still lived somewhere in the mind. Then the phone lights up again. A calendar alert. A payment reminder. A message about tomorrow’s schedule. The parent closes the drawer, opens a pregnancy-planning app, looks at it for a few seconds, and closes that too.

The family did not stop wanting a child. Daily life ran out of room. 

These are the kinds of moments that shape the future. They do not always arrive as an announcement or a breakthrough. They often arrive as a shrinking of room around ordinary choices. A family still appears to function, but the effort required to function has changed. Work still happens, care still happens, school still happens, bills still get paid, and dinner still finds its way to the table. Yet underneath that visible continuity, the old arrangement is carrying more than it was built to carry. The future does not first appear as a grand prediction. It appears as pressure inside the day.

We often talk about the future as if it sits somewhere ahead of us, waiting to arrive. But many futures begin earlier than that. They begin when familiar systems keep their shape while losing some of their fit, when people absorb more complexity than the official story admits, and when choices that once felt open become harder to hold, not because people lack desire, discipline, imagination, or responsibility, but because the conditions around those choices have changed.

For years, I have been troubled by a gap in the way we talk about the future. We can describe possible worlds with confidence. We can imagine new technologies, new institutions, new markets, new risks, and new ways of living. We can tell powerful stories that help people see beyond the immediate problem in front of them. Those stories matter. They stretch imagination and widen attention. But they often leave unanswered the question that matters most: how does a possible future actually form, and where can people still act before it hardens?

I know that gap from the front of the room. For more than 16 years, my writing has been a thinking laboratory for these questions, and for much of that time I have spoken with executives, boards, students, and communities about the forces reshaping the world around us. The stories often landed. People would tell me a talk helped them see the world differently or made the future feel closer. But I watched too many audiences leave inspired and still uncertain, sensing that change was coming without seeing what was already under pressure, where that pressure was moving, or where their own choices still mattered.

The future does not usually arrive as a finished condition. It forms in the middle, between the strain people can already feel and the larger consequences that have not yet become obvious. That middle is where workarounds become expectations, where private effort becomes part of how systems keep functioning, and where old rules keep operating even after the world around them has changed. It matters because action still has room there. Once pressure hardens into price, policy, habit, infrastructure, or culture, the choices narrow.

The family at the kitchen counter is one way to see that middle. Their story is not simply about household stress. It shows how the old logic of family life is being asked to carry more than it once did. Work, care, money, time, aging, and the desire to build a future are not separate pressures inside that home. They arrive together, and the family has to make one life out of them. The private decision is real, but the pressure around it is systemic.

This is what makes the current moment so difficult to read. Transitions do not move neatly through the categories we use to manage the world; pressure crosses them, changing role as it goes, and by the time the official language catches up, people may already have been living with the change for years.

The next transition is forming through that movement. It is not an artificial intelligence story alone, or a climate story alone, or a demographic story alone. Each of those matters, but none explains the whole moment by itself. What matters most is how these forces begin to interact, and how much load they place on systems built around older assumptions. When enough pressure moves at once, the operating and organizing logic of an age begins to lose its fit.

Every age has such a logic. Most people do not experience it as a theory. They experience it as the background of life: how work is organized, how families are supported, how knowledge is trusted, how institutions make decisions, how risk is absorbed, and how people are expected to build a life. For a long time, that background can feel natural. Then the world changes around it, and what once made life manageable begins to show its limits.

That is how an age gives way. Not all at once, and not because everything collapses. The old structures often remain visible. The question is not whether they still exist. The question is whether they still carry the world they are being asked to support. When they do not, people feel the mismatch first as effort. They spend more time navigating, proving, coordinating, adapting, waiting, caring, and explaining. The system appears to hold because people keep holding it.

Adapted with permission from Inside the Next Transition: Seeing Systemic Change Before Pathways Harden by Frank Diana.

When Liz Gumbinner first noticed a twinge in her right shoulder, she assumed she’d pulled a muscle. It was during the pandemic, when many exercise studios were closed, and Gumbinner, a writer who teaches advertising at Boston University, had been doing a lot of yoga and dance at home. 

But the pain, mild at first, gradually became excruciating, shooting down her arm whenever she extended it. “We're talking worse than labor contractions,” she says. 

Pretty soon, Gumbinner couldn’t zip up a dress, turn off a light switch on the wall, or even hold hands with her boyfriend. The only way she could sleep was flat on her back with her arms at her sides. “That's when I realized it wasn't a pulled muscle,” she says.

A few months later, she was diagnosed with adhesive capulitis, colloquially known as “frozen shoulder,” a condition in which the shoulder capsule—a fibrous sheath which surrounds the joint—becomes thick and inflamed. It usually develops in three phases: the freezing stage, which can last several months and cause severe pain; the frozen stage, during which the shoulder becomes stiffer and difficult to use, often for up to a year; and the thawing stage, when mobility finally begins to improve. 

In most cases, frozen shoulder is not caused by an external injury or trauma, says Dr. Jocelyn Wittstein, a sports medicine specialist and associate professor of orthopedic surgery at Duke University. Instead, patients often experience a sudden, spontaneous onset of pain, “and they’re kind of wondering, ‘What could I have possibly done to my shoulder?’” she says.

Women in mid-life are most at risk 

Frozen shoulder affects around 2-5% of the population, and occurs more frequently in women, predominantly those from ages 40 to 60. It’s also more common in people with endocrine disorders, like diabetes and thyroid disease.

During perimenopause and menopause, the loss of estrogen—which plays a key role in protecting musculoskeletal tissue—can lead to inflammation and loss of elasticity throughout the body. This hormonal shift can also cause metabolic changes, making women more susceptible to thyroid disease and diabetes. 

“There's likely a combination of things going on,” says Wittstein. “There's withdrawal of estrogen and the effect on the joint lining, but there's also probably some endocrine changes happening.”

Gumbinner, who hit perimenopause during the pandemic, had never heard of frozen shoulder before. “Here we are, with yet another ailment that impacts middle-aged women that gets no attention,” she says. 

Women who are being treated for breast cancer are also “a special at-risk population for frozen shoulder,” Wittstein says. Many take a kind of hormone therapy called aromatase inhibitors, which drastically decreases estrogen and can cause joint and muscle pain. 

Early diagnosis can be crucial

The earlier you catch frozen shoulder, the easier it can be to resolve, Wittstein says. “If you get into where you have really significant loss of motion, not just the early loss of motion, it takes longer to get better,” she explains.

The problem is that if you’re unfamiliar with the condition, you might mistake it for something else.

“We call it ‘the great mimicker,’ because it can look like everything,” says Dr. Stephanie Wong, an orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist at UCSF. “It looks like a rotator cuff tear, it looks like biceps tendonitis.”

That’s why it’s important to get evaluated by an orthopedic surgeon or shoulder specialist as soon as possible. “It’s a very straightforward diagnosis for us,” Wong says. The giveaway, she explains, is that not only will the patient be unable to move their arm during a physical exam, but another person won’t be able to either. “So when I try to raise your arm up, your arm is literally frozen,” she says. 

An X-ray or MRI can be helpful in ruling out other conditions, Wong says, but “it’s really a clinical diagnosis.” 

New treatment may be on the horizon 

The standard of care for frozen shoulder is physical therapy and anti-inflammatory injections into the joint; the majority of people get better with these interventions, Wong says, though “it can just take a really long time.” Most people recover within one to three years, and requiring surgery is rare, she adds: “We reserve that for the very stubborn cases.”

Though there isn’t yet enough definitive research to demonstrate that hormone therapy (HT) can help prevent or treat frozen shoulder, the clinical benefits are promising, says Wittstein, who is currently exploring the link; she recently presented new data on more than 10,000 women at the American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine suggesting that HT is associated with a reduced risk of developing frozen shoulder.

At UCSF, the orthopedic and ob-gyn departments are also investigating whether HT reduces the course of frozen shoulder, which Wong hopes will give women another treatment option. “It’s just so disappointing to have things be chalked up to perimenopause or menopause, and you have to suffer through it,” she says.   

It’s important, Wittstein says, to recognize that some women, including many breast cancer survivors, may not be able to use HT. “There’s this huge group of women who take a double hit,” she says. “They get early menopause from chemotherapy or they get aromatase inhibitor-associated musculoskeletal syndrome, and then they can't use this medication.”

What to do (and not do) 

Physical therapy for frozen shoulder focuses mainly on stretching and manual therapy, which may differ depending on what stage you’re in, and can often cause discomfort. That’s why it’s important to do it under the guidance of an experienced physical therapist, says Dr. Ariana Lott, an orthopedic surgeon at NYU Langone who specializes in sports medicine. 

“It’s really hard for patients to do these kinds of movements by themselves,” she says, because “it hurts.”

In terms of regular exercise and activity, “I hate to restrict people,” Wong says. “I always say, unless I think it’s really going to do you harm, do whatever’s in your realm of comfort. So if you want to do some light weights, totally fine. If you don’t feel up to that, also totally fine.”

The one thing she cautions patients against doing is immobilizing their shoulder by wearing a sling. “Generally, we worry about that making it more stiff,” she explains. 

Lott reassures her patients that they didn’t cause their frozen shoulder, which she says they can find freeing. “A lot of people place blame, like, ‘Oh, it’s because I did this or I didn’t do this,’” she says. “And it's like, ‘No, actually this is nothing that you did. And we can fix it. It's going to be a long process, but you can't blame yourself, too.’” 

For Gumbinner, that process is still ongoing. After her original right-side pain finally resolved, it resurfaced again in 2024, this time on the left. Multiple steroid shots, along with heating pads and ibuprofen, have provided stretches of reprieve, but almost two years later, she’s still dealing with it.

“I can work around it, but it’s not ideal,” she says. “I just want to be able to slip on a dress again without a whole gymnastics routine.”

Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez sat down with TIME for an interview at Miraflores Palace in Caracas on June 16.

Rodríguez discussed the U.S. raid that captured her predecessor, Nicolás Maduro; her relationship with President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Venezuela's economic future; and the prospects for a socialist autocracy to transition toward democracy.

Below is the transcript of Rodriguez’s interview with TIME Senior Political Correspondent Eric Cortellessa, lightly edited for clarity:  

TIME: We're in a transitional moment, perhaps a transformational moment. How would you describe your vision for Venezuela, post-Maduro? 

Rodríguez: I prefer not to label political moments. January 3 marked a turning point for Venezuela. Personally, I felt it was a time of great change. The first thing to change was the political landscape. We needed to seek a new Venezuela, to correct the mistakes of the past so we could move forward into the future. I believe that is the main focus: to drive economic transformation to address the most pressing needs of the Venezuelan people. So all this political and economic change, which seeks to meet socioeconomic needs, is paving the way for a new political era in the country. My daily work leads me to believe that there is a bright future for Venezuela. We’ve accomplished a great deal in just a few months. The reform of laws, legislative changes, and changes in the criminal justice system, and for me, the flagship moment—the program for democratic coexistence and peace—seeks to build a different kind of society. It aims to steer Venezuelan society away from hatred and intolerance and toward a time of understanding and coexistence rooted in diversity. That’s how I see the present and the future. 

We’ll get into a lot of the points you just raised. Where were you the day of the Maduro raid, January 3, 2026? 

I was meeting with him until 8 p.m. Then I left for Margarita Island, where my brother and my nephews were. I arrived at Margarita at 11 p.m. The attack took place at 2 a.m., but I was worried because my oldest niece and my mom were in Caracas. 

How did you find out about it? What was your reaction? 

My first reaction was that I was keeping a close eye on the radars, and before the attack happened, I saw many planes and called the person in charge of one of the posts of the vice president. If I’m completely honest, we never thought the capital of the country would be attacked, much less imagined what happened to the president and the first lady at that moment. 

What do you say to people who suggest that you might have known in advance about the attack? 

No. There’s absolutely no way to say that because I’m telling the truth. 

When and how did you learn that you would be Venezuela's interim president? Take me into that moment where you realize you're going to take over? 

First, I have to say that we went through a moment of great anguish when we thought they had killed the president and the first lady. And then there came a moment when we learned that they were taking him to the United States—that changed the situation completely. At that time, I spoke with a leader from another country and he told me ‘Now the responsibility rests on your shoulders, and you have a responsibility to preserve Venezuela.’

Who was that leader?

The Emir of Qatar. 

Wow, interesting. Did he reach out to you? How did that conversation happen? 

No, I sent him a message because I was worried about the situation. 

And he was in touch with the Trump administration? 

As I understand it, yes, his prime minister held talks with the government of the United States.

Do you consider Maduro to be the legitimate president of Venezuela today, even in absence or do you think it's time for the country to move on? 

I am the acting president because I was the executive vice president under President Nicolás Maduro. 

Do you still consider him the legitimate president though? 

The thing is, I’ll repeat the answer I gave you. It’s within the constitutional framework of a legitimate president who had an executive vice president, and in a situation like the one that arose, which is identical, it falls to me to assume the role of acting president. 

I understand. You spent decades as one of Maduro's closest allies. What do you say to those who say, who believe, that your government represents not a break from the Maduro government, but its continuation? What do you say to those Venezuelans? 

Look. Sai Baba. Do you know who Sai Baba is? You know who Sai Baba is? 

I don't. 

He is a religious figure. He says that holy acts are known more by the hands that act than by the lips that pray. I believe it’s clear that there’s a different Venezuela. There’s a change that’s evident regardless of whether I say it, you say it, or anyone else says it. There are new laws, there’s a program for peaceful coexistence, there have been significant releases, and there’s an amnesty law. I believe there is a process of transformation underway. Venezuelan society itself is different from what we experienced in the past, and I say that this should be recognized by its actions. This is different than we have in the past. 

What in your view was Maduro's greatest mistake? 

We should have been more open geopolitically. As I said in my first actions as acting president, we are moving toward a new relationship with the United States, and I believe that Venezuela’s international relations should be more open and diversified. I also understand that there was a lot of pressure on Venezuela. So I think that was a mistake. 

Interesting. So the mistake was that he left Venezuela too internationally isolated? And that's part of what you're correcting, it seems like, with these relationships forged with other nations? 

I am working in good faith and with trust. We must build trust in international relations. 

Last question on Maduro. Tell me about your final conversation with him? What was it like? What did you talk about? And have you been able — we'll have a quick follow up. 

My last meeting with him took place, and I’ve said so publicly, we discussed the economic plan for the year 2026, taking into account that Venezuela was under a naval blockade. During the month of December and part of January, Venezuela was unable to sell a single barrel of oil. So we were working hard with the economic team, and that was what I presented to him. 

Have you been able to have any communication with him since he's been in American federal prison?

Very little communication.

But you have spoken? You have had communication? 

No. I’ve received some messages.

He sends emails or letters or—how? 

No, no, just with the lawyers.

And have they told you anything of importance? What have they shared? 

He sees what is happening in Venezuela as very positive. 

How many people are currently imprisoned for political reasons in Venezuela? There's a recent report that says it’s down to 389. Is that true? 

On the subject of—quote ‘political prisoners’ unquote, it’s a topic with far too many different versions. We passed an amnesty law to address political violence from 1999 to the present. For example, in 2002, there was a coup against President Chávez. In 2014 and 2017, there were very violent protests; people were burned alive, motorcyclists had their throats slit, health centers were set on fire, schools were set on fire. Before the amnesty law, nearly 900 people were released, and with the amnesty law, nearly 9,000 people were released—more than 400 of them with full freedom, while the rest were subject to court-ordered reporting requirements. In parallel with the amnesty law, there has also been a process of granting relief to those who cannot benefit from the law, and there are more than 500 such people. 

Just so I understand, more than 500 people have been released since the amnesty law? 

No, roughly 9,000 under the Amnesty Law; of those 9,400, some were granted full freedom—physical freedom—while the rest were individuals subject to court appearance requirements. However, in addition to the amnesty law, there are more than 500 people who benefited from the law but were not eligible for its provisions. 

Would you allow an international body to audit those cases? 

Definitely. I asked the Human Rights Commission about it. 

And would you commit to releasing all political prisoners, not the ones who committed violence you described, but people who are in prison because of their political beliefs or positions?

The fact is, no one is imprisoned for their political beliefs—for example, those who used a drone to [try to] assassinate the president. The drone incident is a well-known, widely reported public fact. That is not a political belief—attempting to assassinate a head of state or planting a bomb in a public square. In other countries, this is considered terrorism and cannot be regarded as a political belief. 

When will Venezuela hold elections? 

Venezuela will hold elections when it is ready to do so. And if you think about what I said earlier, after January 3, we had to change our policy. Why? Because there are extremist groups that called for military aggression against Venezuela, and the Venezuelan people—especially those who experienced the attack first hand—felt a great deal of fear. The mothers who feared for the children, the children who were simply afraid. And that’s when I realized we had to change our political approach—that we had been mistaken in our policies—and that’s why the program for democratic coexistence and peace is, for me, fundamental. Because it must lead us to a different political reality where extremists don’t believe that violence is the path to political power, and where we, as a government, recognize that we have political opponents and that those differences will be resolved at the ballot box. 

You spoke about this but I just want to clarify. What exactly has to happen for those elections to be held? You have to eliminate the threat that you were just describing? What is the criteria for—now we are ready? What has to happen for Venezuela to be ready? 

I feel that moment will come when all of the country’s political actors reach an understanding and we can tell the nation that we, as politicians, are ready. I always say Venezuela as a country is much greater than the differences among politicians. I would ask young people what they think of politicians, and I hope that the people of Venezuela—the citizens—truly believe that politics is what can help them overcome many challenges in their daily lives. 

What do you say to those who worry that this is sort of a recipe for endless procrastination? 

I’ll say it again for you. January 3 marks the beginning of a new political era, and we’re all shaping that era together. For example, the Coexistence Program has already held meetings with more than 30 economic, political, and social sectors across the country. It doesn’t depend on any one person. In this case, it doesn’t depend on any one woman. I hope we can build it together. 

When that day comes, would you allow international organizations, the EU, the United States, to monitor the elections? 

The Venezuelan electoral process must, first and foremost, be a national process. Venezuela has a tradition of having international observers in its electoral process, but that international observation must be respectful of the country. It should not involve groups that come to make decisions on behalf of the country.

So the answer is yes, but with the caveat that they have to respect your national control and sovereignty over the election. Will you run? 

I don’t know. 

Let's talk for a moment about María Corina Machado. Will you allow her to return to the country? 

Look, I believe that Venezuela belongs to all Venezuelan men and women, and there will come a time, and I dream of that time, when Venezuela will not have a single sanction in place, a time when we can all come together. Extremism has cost the country dearly. From a congressman who proclaimed himself president of Venezuela and spoke of Venezuela’s assets as if they were the King of England, to those who called for sanctions and this invasion. We have to move onto a new political era. 

So it sounds like the answer is no. 

No. My question isn’t—my answer isn’t no. My answer was that there will be a political moment when coexistence and peaceful coexistence will be possible. And that this political moment will not involve economic sanctions against Venezuela. 

Would she be allowed to run for president? 

I believe, and I’ll say it again, that the situation in Venezuela goes far beyond who participates in an election. The most important thing isn’t who participates. The most important thing is the groundwork we’re laying for this new political approach. 

Let's move onto the economy. Exciting topic. Venezuela's oil sector has been opened to private investment for the first time after years of state control. Would you say the model of state control over the Venezuelan economy is effectively over? 

The economic blockade has led Venezuela to adopt innovative mechanisms for private-sector participation. We have incorporated new business models, but our constitution provides for private property and private participation in investments. The legal reforms have been aimed at increasing the return on investment and also providing greater legal certainty. We have just signed a new agreement with Repsol to expand its presence in Venezuela, and I’m going to share some data with you that will be useful for us. According to the International Energy Agency, 80% of the world’s oil wells are in decline, and 90% of global investment is directed toward halting that decline. But here’s the most important fact: Venezuela has 303 [billion] barrels of oil reserves. But of those 303 [billion, many] are green fields, which means that Venezuela represents one of the most significant opportunities for the world’s future energy. That is why my proposal to President Trump and the U.S. government was to develop a long-term energy agenda. 

Well we're going to certainly get to that in just a moment. But tell me in a story, you become interim president, all of a sudden now there's all this opportunity, potential, for oil investment, how did that begin? How did you get started on having these kinds of agreements and driving in this kind of foreign investment? 

I was also set to become the minister of hydrocarbons, and I had all these ideas in mind to attract more investment to the country. It was pointless to have those reserves if we couldn’t guarantee benefits for the people of Venezuela, and that’s why we were able to pass the reform of hydrocarbons law so quickly, as those investments that are about to start flowing into the country will translate into income for workers in healthcare, education, and public services. I am very hopeful that everything we are signing, which has been quite a lot, will have a positive impact and bring great benefits to the country. 

Beyond oil, what is your strategy for rebuilding an economy that saw millions of Venezuelans emigrate? And then to that point, what would you say to the Venezuelan engineer or doctor living in Miami, about why they should come back? 

Look, I’d like them to come back today. I set up a registry so that young professionals and entrepreneurs who want to join this economic initiative can sign up there. More than 56,000 young Venezuelans have registered in just one month, and right now the system is routing those who want to start a business to the “Emprender Juntos” program. We’re collecting data on professionals to make it available to the companies we’ve partnered with. We’re working toward Venezuela in 5, 10, 20 years. Venezuelan migration was an economic migration. Venezuela has always welcomed immigrants, nearly six million Colombians arrived in Venezuela, and Venezuela has always been welcoming and has incorporated and integrated Spaniards, Italians, Portuguese, Ecuadorians, and Colombians. I want those migrants to return to Venezuela, which is why I was telling you that this country belongs to all Venezuelan men and women. I was a migrant for 10 years, but the country always calls you back. 

Can Venezuela diversify beyond oil or will it always remain an energy state? 

Venezuela has an economy with great potential due to its diversity—not only in the area of hydrocarbons such as oil, but also natural gas, which will allow us to develop the petrochemical industry, which will have a major impact on the national economy. But we also have mining operations with some of the largest reserves of gold and diamonds. We have iron reserves sufficient for 350 years, and we have aluminum. In other words, Venezuela possesses a very significant diversity of minerals. We also have water for agriculture, millions of hectares available for food production, and a tourism sector that we would like to develop. Venezuela boasts a diverse range of landscapes, including deserts, plains, snow, beaches, mountains, forests.  

Of course a big mark of progress where you got commercial flights to and from the U.S. Made life easier for me, certainly. 

Trading, too. Retail. The United States is a key driver of digital retail commerce.

I want to talk about the U.S.-Venezuela relationship and work that you're doing with the Trump administration. Can you explain—let's just start with oil and then branch out—how the U.S. is managing Venezuela's oil reserves? What exactly is the agreement that was reached after you took over for Maduro? 

The most important thing is that companies from the United States are returning and arriving. The first hydrocarbon operation in Venezuela took place 114 years ago. It was the New York and Bermúdex Company, an American business. We’re not doing anything out of the ordinary. Chevron has been in Venezuela for over a century. What’s happening here is that companies that were here in the past are returning, but also new companies are arriving. Halliburton, for example, has returned. 

Haliburton came back. Can you give me two or three of the new ones? 

Oof. There’s a lot. Haliburton is a good company. It’s significant that companies that attended the meeting with Trump are here. But there are also companies that came with Secretary Burgum and Secretary Wright. We are currently negotiating 30 agreements. 

Is this done with the government's cooperation? 

We are always in communication and dialogue.

Well it's not just energy, oil, and trade. It’s also security. Recently, the U.S. and Venezuela participated in a joint operation to kill a leader of the Tren de Aragua gang. Can you just tell me: How did that come about? 

It was not a joint. It was a combined … Well, it was a joint operation. What are we combining? Intelligence information, and on the ground, we have our security forces. The important thing is that there are opportunities for joint cooperation—joint cooperation against drug trafficking, for example, against transnational organized crime. That is very important to us, so I believe, and as we said, we congratulate the officials who participated in this operation. 

 So you supplied intelligence to the United States that helped them locate—

And vice versa. 

And vice versa. Your forces were on the ground but the United States authorized an airstrike. 

Yes

Obviously, Tren de Aragua is a big preoccupation of President Trump’s. Should we be expecting more of this kind of cooperation? 

Look, we have, I repeat, anti-narcotics cooperation with European countries, such as France. We’ve also spoken with Colombia. 

Will you and the Trump administration continue to target more of Tren de Aragua together? 

Yes… it’s also transnational, but again, that’s nothing out of the ordinary. It’s just part of judicial, police, and security cooperation with other countries. Mexico and the United States have cooperation agreements. 

I'm not saying it's unusual. I'm saying it's a factor in terms of bringing people back to Venezuela, getting tourism, because obviously security is a concern for many people. Another Latin American leader who has driven down crime and opened up their economy, President Bukele in El Salvador. Are you considering adopting any of the tactics he has to reign in gangs and violence? 

As for what has been done in El Salvador, I’d rather not comment on other countries. I’ll just say that I wish things were different in Venezuela. 

How often do you speak with Secretary Rubio? My understanding is that you both talk a lot. What are those conversations like? 

As many times as necessary. 

Why do you think he took such an interest in Venezuela?

Well, we’re talking about a country that is a major player in the hemisphere. And what I see is that Secretary Rubio is interested not only in Venezuela, but also in the rest of the countries in our continent. He serves as secretary of state and is responsible for international affairs, that is the world. I was foreign minister and [unintelligible].

Tell me about the first time you spoke with President Trump? 

I think it was January 4, but I don’t remember. 

What did he say to you? Tell me about that conversation? 

He was very kind and very respectful, for which I am grateful, and from the very beginning, during my first conversation with President [Trump], I asked that our relationship be based on mutual respect. 

What did he say?

He responded respectfully. We discussed how diplomatic relations between Venezuela and the United States could be established and what areas of common interest might be identified. 

And what were they? What was the path of establishing diplomatic relations? 

Look, I think we’ve moved quickly because just a few days later—I think 12 days later—the first Chargé d'Affaires arrived for two hours, and then Barrett arrived, who I think has been here for five weeks and has been very active as well. Just like the former Chargé d'Affaires, and our diplomatic staff who went to the United States and are currently here. 

Yeah well the United States' relationship with Venezuela right now was unimaginable a year ago. What changed? 

I’m starting out by acting in good faith and trusting that these relationships can develop in good faith; and on the side, there’s a very full cooperation agenda that needs to be addressed. 

Do you and President Trump have a personal rapport, relationship now? and what has surprised you the most about him in private? 

I’ll say it again. He was straightforward when we spoke. Let me give you an example. One morning, Secretary Rubio called me and said ‘I’m going to put you on the line with someone who wants to say hello.’ It was President Trump, calling to tell me that he was going to approve commercial flights to Venezuela. So everything was very specific and focused on our agenda for work and cooperation. 

I want to get into your legacy. But are you worried if a Democrat wins the next election and reverses Trump's Venezuela policy, what happens to your strategy for the country's future? 

Look, my current and future strategy has always been to ensure peace and tranquility in the country—tranquility and social and economic wellbeing. I try to ensure that another country’s domestic policy does not affect Venezuela, and I hope that Venezuela does not become a pawn in any other country’s political agenda.

If Hugo Chavez were alive today, do you think he would recognize the Venezuela that you're building? 

Yes, absolutely. He maintained relations with the United States—for example, the country’s largest oil exports went to the United States—and there was cooperation on security matters. So Chávez always—and this is enshrined in the constitution—promoted the coexistence of the public and private sectors, and most importantly, the program of social protection and social and economic support for the people.

And so when you look back over all broadly with the Chavez era, do you feel pride, regret? Both? How do you look back? 

I think Chávez left a very important legacy during the Fourth Republic, large segments of the population–espeically the poorest—were excluded from the country’s political and social life. And I believe that is the legacy Chávez left Venezuela through the Democratic Coexistence” program. I have said that today everyone can sit at the table—on the republican side, that is–so now it’s up to us to bring everyone together.

So what from the Maduro-Chavez era do you want to keep and what do you want to get rid of? 

Look at the social protection programs. They show that the Venezuelan government is looking out for those who need it most, that there’s room for all of us here, and that just as the economic sectors are supported, so too are the most vulnerable. Let me give you an example. No one could explain how, in an economy that contracted as severely as Venezuela’s, such immense efforts were made to guarantee food for the most vulnerable—for 4 million families truly impacted by the economic blockade. In 2020, during COVID, Venezuela had no access to its financial resources, yet we administered 70 million doses of free vaccines to the population. I believe in a country where the president or government officials do not consider themselves the owners of the country. I believe in a Venezuela for everyone, regardless of who is here. 

Final question because I know you have to go. What is the single hardest decision you've made since taking office? And what does success look like for your presidency five years from now? 

I think the cooperation that we’re receiving has made me very happy to sign agreements with the company IMPSA, and General Electric makes me very happy to negotiate with them because you can’t imagine the relief the people will feel when their electricity service is up and running, regardless of the political dynamics. The people of Venezuela will feel the impact of what’s being done. This makes me happy. 

Thank you. I appreciate your time. 

Thank you. 

Delcy Rodríguez, the acting president of Venezuela, conducts the nation’s business out of the Miraflores Palace, a 19th century neoclassical mansion in the heart of Caracas. Gilded portraits of Simón Bolívar and Hugo Chávez gaze down on the ornate halls. Birds chirp in the manicured gardens. An unusually tight security detail shadows Rodríguez’s every step. The caution is understandable: Not long ago, the U.S. sent a Delta Force unit into her predecessor’s residence on a nearby military base to seize the man she had served for years.

Which may help explain Rodríguez’s careful manner. She speaks regularly with President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and her English is nearly flawless. Yet when she sits down with TIME for a rare interview with an American media outlet, she summons a translator. I suggest it would be easier to speak in English. 

“When I do interviews, I like to do them in Spanish,” she says.

“I’m not sure that’s best for this one,” I say. 

“It is best for me,” she replies with a faint smile.

It’s easy to understand her strategy. Speaking through an interpreter slows the conversation and gives Rodríguez greater control over the words that ultimately reach the page. It is the instinct of a disciplined operator who has spent decades in one of the world’s most unforgiving political systems—and who is now navigating an extraordinary diplomatic moment.

A socialist stalwart who rose through Chávez’s inner circle before serving for years as Nicolás Maduro’s second-in-command, Rodríguez, 57, was among the most recognizable faces of a movement largely defined for decades by its hostility toward the U.S. Today, she is the steward of a remarkable rapprochement with Washington. In exchange for U.S. support, she has allowed Trump and Rubio to turn Venezuela into a de facto vassal state, giving them an unprecedented degree of influence over her country. 

In an hour-long interview, Rodríguez insists she is not surrendering Venezuelan sovereignty but opening the country’s economy in the best interests of its people. “I’m starting out by acting in good faith and trusting that these relationships can develop in good faith,” she tells me. “My current and future strategy has always been to ensure peace and tranquility in the country—tranquility and social and economic well-being.”

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The nation Rodríguez now governs is not the same country that existed before the raid that captured Maduro. Before his fall, Venezuela was in stark decline: riddled with corruption, teetering on economic collapse, and ruled by an authoritarian who the U.S. and independent international observers say stole his 2024 election. Hyperinflation had wiped out citizens’ savings. Oil production, the lifeblood of the economy, had plummeted after years of graft, underinvestment, and sanctions. Nearly 8 million Venezuelans had fled, fueling the largest migration crisis in the history of the western hemisphere. Rolling blackouts, water scarcity, crumbling hospitals, and shortages of food and medicine had become routine. Once among Latin America’s wealthiest nations, Venezuela had devolved into one of its poorest.

Since Rodríguez’s ascension in January, signs of recovery have begun to emerge. Construction cranes have reappeared over parts of Caracas. Store shelves are fuller. Dormant oil fields are stirring back to life. American companies—including ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Halliburton, and GE Vernova—have returned or begun negotiating new investments. Commercial flights between the U.S. and Venezuela have resumed for the first time since 2019. The dollar circulates openly. Foreign executives, diplomats, and investors are filling hotels—the lobby of the JW Marriott is now a gathering place for oil executives, while at the more exclusive Cayena Caracas, impeccably dressed financiers and government officials mingle amid polished marble and soft jazz, discussing exploration rights, infrastructure contracts, and Venezuela’s future.

All this has come at a price. Under an arrangement overseen by Rubio, the U.S. has become deeply involved in Venezuelan state affairs. In an arrangement described to TIME by three senior U.S. and Venezuelan officials, the U.S. Secretary of State supervises the framework governing Venezuela’s oil revenues and public finances, effectively administering a joint fund that gives Washington influence over everything from how the country’s export earnings are allocated to the reopening of the energy sector to preferential treatment for American companies. Rubio and Rodríguez are in near daily contact through phone calls and WhatsApp messages, officials say. Rodríguez consults him on domestic appointments, including her selection of a Defense Minister, according to three officials familiar with the arrangement. “Basically, you have what they call the Rodrígato operating,” says James Story, a former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela under Presidents Trump and Biden, describing an arrangement in which Rodríguez’s government remains in power while carrying out Washington’s strategic priorities. “They are doing everything that we ask them to do.”

Washington and Caracas now cooperate on intelligence and counternarcotics operations too. In June, the partnership resulted in the killing of Niño Guerrero, the leader of the transnational criminal organization Tren de Aragua, at his compound in Venezuela’s Bolívar state. Rodríguez says Venezuela supplied the intelligence that located Guerrero and deployed forces on the ground, enabling the U.S. airstrike. “The important thing is that there are opportunities for joint cooperation,” she tells me. “Against drug trafficking, for example, and against transnational organized crime. That is very important to us.” Thousands of political detainees have been released under an amnesty framework encouraged by the U.S., while negotiators continue hammering out dozens of additional economic agreements.

Venezuela has become a case study of Trump’s ability to reshape the world in pursuit of his own priorities, unbound by the diplomatic conventions that restrained his predecessors. He launched an extralegal campaign of force and coercion, beginning with strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats and culminating in the capture of a sitting head of state, who was brought to the U.S. to face drug and weapons charges. Maduro is now in a federal jail in New York City, replaced by a subservient successor the Trump Administration believed would comply with American interests while preserving stability in Caracas.

Small and slender, dressed in tailored suits and oversize glasses, Rodríguez projects the demeanor of a technocrat rather than a firebrand. Cooperation with the U.S. has allowed her to consolidate power during a period of tremendous upheaval. The bargain is as brazen as it is fragile, and the leverage runs both ways. Over two decades, Rodríguez established herself as one of Chavismo’s indispensable figures. There is no guarantee another leader could sustain such an arrangement—or would choose to align Venezuela with Washington rather than Beijing or Moscow.

For Rodríguez, the role requires a delicate balancing act. Few Venezuelans mourn Maduro’s departure after years of oppression and economic collapse. But relief at his ouster has not translated into enthusiasm for his successor. To many, she is more sellout than savior. But her future rests less on public affection than on her ability to satisfy Trump’s demands, and to convince citizens that becoming a client state of a despised foreign power is in the national interest. 

When a major earthquake struck Caracas in June, killing more than 5,000 people and causing an estimated $6.7 billion in damages, the new relationship with Washington produced dividends. The State Department assembled a $300 million reconstruction package, and the U.S. Southern Command provided military support for the relief effort. An aide to Rodríguez points to moments like that as proof that the bargain can be a boon, even as Venezuelans criticized her for taking too long to address the catastrophe publicly, waiting eight days before holding a press conference.

Whether the arrangement will ultimately improve the lives of ordinary Venezuelans or merely enrich a privileged elite remains unclear. Rodríguez has taken few steps to institute democratic reforms. “Millions of Venezuelans that want to come back are only going to do it if they are certain that their rights will be respected,” says María Corina Machado, the opposition leader who won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for promoting democratic rights in Venezuela and now lives in exile. To Machado, who was barred from running in Venezuela’s most recent elections, Rodríguez has capitulated to Washington in pursuit of power and self-preservation. “She’s willing to give away anything she’s asked for—anything,” Machado says. “That’s the way those that have committed crimes reason.”

Rodríguez rejects the criticism. “I try to ensure that another country’s domestic policy does not affect Venezuela,” Rodríguez tells me. “I hope that Venezuela does not become a pawn in any other country’s political agenda.”

As we sit in a room of polished marble and gold leaf, Rodríguez recounts the chain of events that propelled her to power with the soft, measured cadence of someone accustomed to exercising authority without raising her voice. On Jan. 2, she recalls, she met with Maduro to discuss Venezuela’s economic plans and the ongoing naval blockade the U.S. had imposed since December. Afterward, she flew to Margarita Island, the Caribbean resort off Venezuela’s northern coast, where her brother and nephews were vacationing. She arrived around 11 p.m., only a few hours before the frantic phone calls began.

In the early hours of the morning, U.S. military units infiltrated Maduro’s compound inside the Fort Tiuna military complex as he slept. They found him in his pajamas, arrested him, and whisked him and his wife out of the country. “We went through a moment of great anguish when we thought they had killed the President and the First Lady,” Rodríguez tells me. “Then we learned they were taking him to the United States. That changed the situation completely.”

One of Rodríguez’s first calls was to an unlikely figure: Sheik Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar, with whom she had cultivated a relationship. “‘Now the responsibility rests on your shoulders,’” Rodríguez recalls him saying. “‘You have a responsibility to preserve Venezuela.’”

According to Rodríguez and U.S. officials, Qatari officials helped arrange a conference call between her and Rubio on the afternoon of Jan. 3. “Is Maduro alive?” she asked. Rubio assured her he was; to prove it, U.S. officials sent photographs of him in a jumpsuit aboard a helicopter en route to New York. The Secretary of State then delivered an ultimatum: meet U.S. demands or face continued military pressure. Rodríguez agreed. An aide says she saw no viable alternative. “If I’m completely honest,” Rodríguez tells me, “we never thought the capital of the country would be attacked, much less imagined what happened to the President and the First Lady.”

She spoke to Trump for the first time the following morning. “We discussed how diplomatic relations between Venezuela and the United States could be established and what areas of common interest might be identified,” Rodríguez says. Trump wanted access to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, seeing them as a way to increase global supply, lower energy prices, and strengthen the U.S. economy ahead of the midterm elections. But he delegated the logistics to Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, for whom uprooting leftist regimes in Latin America is a long-standing priority. As Secretary of State, he suddenly had an opportunity to pursue that ambition. 

Under the agreement, the U.S. would receive the proceeds from most Venezuelan oil exports and then disburse the money back through Venezuela’s banking system. The structure, one senior U.S. official explains, would function like an escrow account: Washington would release funds only as Caracas met agreed-upon conditions. By controlling the flow of revenue, the U.S. would gain leverage over how the money was spent while limiting corruption and the influence of rival foreign powers. In return, Rodríguez would remain President, buoyed by an influx of American investment and the economic benefits of renewed integration. The Trump Administration saw it as a straightforward trade-off: political stability in exchange for economic oversight, energy access, and the strategic realignment of one of the world’s most resource-rich countries.

One morning a few weeks later, Rodríguez received an unexpected call from Rubio. “I’m putting you on the line with someone who wants to say hello,” Rubio told her. It was Trump. According to Rodríguez, the President told her he was pleased with her cooperation following the Maduro extraction. As a reward, he said, the U.S. would restore commercial flights to Venezuela. By April, American Airlines resumed service between Miami and Caracas. In May, United Airlines launched flights from Houston.

Trump’s fixation on Venezuela had grown since his return to office. He dispatched Rubio to El Salvador to broker an unprecedented agreement with President Nayib Bukele. As part of Trump’s mass-deportation campaign, the U.S. transferred hundreds of detained Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, drawing fierce criticism from human-rights groups and immigration advocates. Trump justified the move by saying the migrants were members of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang he portrayed as the embodiment of the border crisis. 

The situation intensified when intelligence reports allegedly indicated vessels departing Venezuela were transporting drugs toward the U.S., Administration officials say. Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pressed Trump to respond with a campaign of military strikes against the alleged drug-smuggling boats, according to two senior White House officials. Trump authorized the strikes, hoping military pressure would compel Maduro to dismantle trafficking networks, crack down on criminal gangs, and open Venezuela’s vast oil sector to American investment. When Maduro was captured, U.S. boat strikes had killed more than 100 people over the course of 10 months, according to Just Security; as of June 21, the number of deaths has more than doubled, with 215 killed in 66 strikes. Many legal experts argue that the strikes on suspected Venezuelan drug-trafficking vessels violated both international law and the limits of presidential war powers under the U.S. Constitution. “One state is only really supposed to use force against another state when that other state has committed an armed attack against it or threatened imminent armed attack against it,” says Scott Anderson, a former State Department official and national-security law expert at the Brookings Institution. 

But while Trump saw a chance to secure access to Venezuela’s oil reserves, Rubio saw an opportunity to remake the balance of power in the western hemisphere. Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller soon joined the effort. Increasingly eager to expand his portfolio beyond immigration into national security, he viewed Venezuela as the point where those issues converged. Miller argued limited military pressure would never change Maduro’s calculus, a senior White House official tells TIME. He pushed for a more aggressive approach. (Miller declined to comment for this story.)

As Rubio, Miller, and their advisers continued briefing the President on the boat strikes, they emphasized Venezuela’s growing importance as a platform for American adversaries, including Cuba, Russia, and China, which had deepened their foothold through oil, military and intelligence cooperation, and economic support. “The type of influence that existed in that country is incompatible with U.S. interests,” a State Department official says. Senior U.S. officials were determined to change Maduro’s behavior—or remove him from power. “Our objective was simple: persuade Maduro to sever those relationships,” the State Department official adds. “He was unwilling to do that.”

According to the State Department official, the Administration persuaded Turkey to offer Maduro safe harbor if he agreed to leave Venezuela peacefully. He refused. “The inflection point was in December, when we sent him an offer via the Turks, and the offer basically was, if you leave the country permanently to Turkey or some other acceptable place, we’ll leave you alone, but you’ve got to leave the country,” another State Department official says. “He basically ignored it. He had multiple off-ramps where he could have left and lived happily ever after somewhere else, giving us the opportunity to work with someone else inside the government to make those changes. Instead, he posted silly videos of himself dancing and singing.”

That “someone else,” Rubio believed, was Delcy Rodríguez.

Rodríguez was born into one of Venezuela’s most politically committed left-wing families. Her father, Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, was a student leader of the Revolutionary Left Movement. He was arrested, tortured, and killed by government security forces in 1976, when she was just 7 years old. His death became a defining event in her life. Alongside her older brother, Jorge Rodríguez—who heads the National Assembly—she was raised in the ideology of the Venezuelan left. Trained as a lawyer, she followed in her father’s footsteps, rising through Chávez’s government before becoming one of Maduro’s closest confidants. She served as Venezuela’s Foreign Minister, in role in which she became one of the regime’s most combative international defenders, denouncing U.S. sanctions while strengthening ties with Russia, China, Iran, and Cuba. In 2018, Maduro elevated her to the vice presidency. 

But international diplomats viewed Rodríguez as a technocrat rather than an ideological hard-liner. “She was seen as a more pragmatic figure,” says Christopher Hernandez-Roy, a Latin America expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They picked her with a gun to her head, but she seemed to understand the country’s economics, and she had long been deeply involved in its oil sector. That’s obviously one of the Administration’s highest priorities—the recovery of Venezuela’s oil industry.” Rodríguez had long advocated for greater economic openness. She had also been responsible for attracting foreign investment and rebuilding relationships with international energy companies. According to multiple officials, Rubio concluded that Rodríguez was a realist with a grip on the levers of government, and who would be willing to meet Washington’s demands.

Rodríguez argues the relationship has already reaped benefits for the country. During the Maduro years, Chevron had been the only major U.S. oil company to maintain a significant presence. Now it may be joined by ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and Halliburton. U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright are negotiating more than 30 agreements that would give American firms a foothold in Venezuela’s energy sector. “The most important thing is that companies from the United States are returning and arriving,” Rodríguez says.

The shift reflects the carrot Trump has dangled: renewed access to American capital and global markets. The bet is that economic integration can induce geo-political alignment after decades of Chavista rule. It’s not yet clear, though, how much of this influx of capital has reached ordinary Venezuelans. Reliable polling remains scarce under the country’s authoritarian system. Venezuelans celebrated Maduro’s removal in large numbers, but many remain wary of Rodríguez, viewing her as someone who abandoned the cause to which she had devoted her political career. “The Venezuelan people don’t miss Maduro, right?” an aide to Rubio tells TIME. “They fully recognize that he was a bad actor and a destabilizing influence. The oil was tremendously valuable to the people of Venezuela. It was stolen by very corrupt elites and used to pay off massive debts to China, Cuba, and others. No more.”

To some Venezuelans, however, Rodríguez is a new face for the same regime. She spent years helping administer a government accused by international investigators of widespread human-rights abuses, including arbitrary detention, torture, and extrajudicial killings. “She was part of a regime that systematically violated human rights,” says Diego Area, an expert on Venezuelan politics at the Atlantic Council. “She comes from normalizing practices that are considered crimes against humanity.” 

For all the changes under way in Venezuela, the biggest one—a transition to genuine democracy—still appears distant. Rubio sees it as part of his mission to rid Latin America of its remaining socialist autocracies and lay the groundwork for Venezuela to one day hold a legitimate election and complete a democratic transition, according to a State Department official. At his behest, Rodríguez’s government enacted an amnesty law in February covering political violence from Chávez’s rise in 1999 through the present. (The law includes those accused of participating in the 2002 coup attempt against Chávez and individuals implicated in violent unrest in 2014 and 2017.) Venezuelan authorities say roughly 9,000 detainees have been released since the passage of the amnesty law. Rodríguez says she is prepared to have the process independently reviewed. During our interview, she says she has asked the U.N. Human Rights Office to audit the releases, arguing that outside scrutiny will confirm the government’s compliance with its commitments.

But there are few signs that Venezuela is moving quickly toward free and fair elections. “Trump’s not focused on democracy building,” says Story, the former ambassador to Caracas. “If anything goes bad, it increases instability and further erodes the chance of companies coming in and making investments. That’s the fear.”

Rodríguez expresses little urgency either. “Venezuela will hold elections when it is ready,” she tells me. “There are extremist groups that called for military aggression against Venezuela, and the Venezuelan people—especially those who experienced the attack firsthand—feel a great deal of fear,” she says, referring to the country’s competing power centers and the persistent risk of political violence.

But when will that moment come? What conditions must exist before Venezuela holds open elections? “I feel that moment will come when all of the country’s political actors reach an understanding and we can tell the nation that we, as politicians, are ready,” she says, skirting the question. Rodríguez says she would welcome international election observers, provided they respected Venezuela’s sovereignty.

When I ask whether she intends to run for President herself, she pauses. “I don’t know,” she says.

Then I ask the question that hangs over every discussion of Venezuela’s future: Would Rodríguez allow Machado to return and compete? Rodríguez sidesteps it. “We have to move on to a new political era,” she says.

“So the answer is no?” 

“My answer isn’t no,” she replies. “My answer is that there will be a political moment when coexistence and peaceful coexistence will be possible.”

The answer doesn’t mollify Machado. “I understand the U.S. government decided to start with the process of stability, but in order to make that sustainable, you certainly need legitimacy,” she says. “They fear an election because they fear the people, they fear popular sovereignty. They know what the Venezuelan people desperately desired.” Rodríguez’s halting response to the tragic earthquake, Machado adds, “exposed the true nature of the regime: its lack of humanity, its display of infinite corruption and incompetence.”

For Rodríguez, everything comes back to survival. “She needs to follow the guidance of the U.S. government, which at some point will include renewing democratic institutions and rules,” says Area. “She will do it not because of her democratic commitment, but as a means to achieve her political objectives.”

That would be not simply surviving politically, but creating conditions under which she—and perhaps Chavismo itself—can survive after power. She wants guarantees that she—a woman whose father was killed by the state—can remain in Venezuela without fearing imprisonment or retribution from a future government. “That’s what survival means for her,” Area says. “To make it so the system will be stable and able to govern itself, which will potentially include her being able to participate in the new Venezuela. It’s about survival.”

For now, Rodriguez is keen on reintegrating the nation into global markets: diversifying the economy, attracting long-term foreign investment, and ensuring that Venezuela’s prosperity no longer depends on a single commodity. The day before our interview, executives from General Electric sat across from Rodríguez discussing ways to modernize Venezuela’s aging electrical grid.
(General Electric did not respond to a request for comment.)

Whether these ambitions survive Trump’s presidency remains uncertain. Current U.S. foreign policy is animated by the application of leverage, economic incentives, coercion, and transactional dealmaking to draw former adversaries into America’s orbit. Venezuela’s future will depend not only on Rodríguez’s ability to manage the relationship with her current counterparts, but also on whether Trump’s successor embraces the strategy or chooses another path. 

As our interview comes to an end, we wander through the sunlit gardens of the palace. I tell Rodríguez I’m flying home the next day, connecting through Miami on one of the newly restored commercial routes. She smiles. Pretty soon, she says, I can skip the layover. “Maybe next time,” she says, “fly from Washington to Caracas.” —With reporting by Leslie Dickstein

The United States and Iran are again at war. The renewed conflict is not about Iran's nuclear program or regime change, but over the Strait of Hormuz through which a fifth of the world's oil must pass.

For two weeks, American missiles have struck Iran. In turn, Iran has retaliated against American allies: Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan. Four U.S. soldiers have been killed and 142 wounded; at least 53 Iranians have been killed and 592 injured since July 6. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) claimed to have destroyed an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. Traffic in the strait has slowed to a trickle and oil prices have jumped again.

The ceasefire and the initial agreement signed on Jun. 17 lasted barely three weeks, undone by rival readings of a deliberately vague text. Washington wanted free navigation in Hormuz restored; Tehran insisted that it was the master of the strait. When traffic resumed, ships and tankers avoided the mined central route of the strait and hugged its southern coast close to Oman under American protection or sailed along the northern coast of Hormuz close to Iran, where it levied a “toll” for safe passage.

On July 7, the IRGC fired on ships defying routes designated by Iran; American airstrikes followed. Three days later, on July 10, President Donald Trump notified Congress that the war between the U.S. and Iran had resumed. Iran formally suspended the agreement, citing strikes, sanctions and Israel's operations in Lebanon.

The costs are mounting. For decades, maritime traffic from Saudi Arabia, whose eastern border sits on the Persian Gulf, has passed through Hormuz to reach the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. Since the closure of Hormuz, the Kingdom has been moving roughly four million barrels a day—around four times its pre-war volume—through the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea, along its western border.

But the Red Sea has a chokepoint of its own: the Strait of Bab al-Mandab, at its southern end, off the coast of Yemen, which connects it to the Gulf of Aden and the broader Arabian Sea. On July 20, the Houthis, Iran’s allies in Yemen, declared a maritime embargo on Saudi Arabia at Bab al-Mandab, invoking “an eye for an eye.” They have already struck two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea. With the chokepoints of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab now contested simultaneously, the Gulf's energy systems face an unprecedented strain.

American strikes have targeted Iran’s southern coastline and the approaches to Hormuz, with inland strikes largely reserved for the missile bases that allow Iran to reach the U.S. bases across the region. Its intensity is lower than the 40-day military campaign that preceded it, and it is an open-ended campaign: a war of attrition fought over a waterway. This is, for now, a bilateral contest, with Washington keeping Israel outside the frame for as long as Iran refrains from striking Israeli territory directly.

American objectives have contracted to reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Having survived the war and denied the U.S. and Israel their stated aims, Iran now regards the outcome as a victory and is working to shape and cement its terms. 

Why Iran thinks it has won

Iran has managed to impose significant human and material costs. The war has already cost the U.S. more than $37.5 billion, 18 U.S. service members have been killed and 624 have been injured. Wartime learning, intelligence and technological cooperation with Russia and China, and better access to satellite imagery have markedly improved Iran’s missile and drone strike accuracy. And Iran has been able to rattle the global energy markets by closing the Strait of Hormuz, weaponizing a chokepoint that offers continuous leverage over the global economy.

Iranian strategists are aiming for something more ambitious: raising the cost of hosting American forces until the U.S. thins out its regional military presence. The U.S. has indeed moved some military assets away from the Persian Gulf toward Jordan and Israel. American radars, bases and surveillance systems across the Arab states also function as early-warning systems for Israel. Iran’s concentrated attacks on those systems in March and April likely improved its ability to attack Israel with its long-range missiles.

Tehran seems to hope that a combination of its control of Hormuz and the coercive power of its drones and missiles would make the Gulf states reluctant to host U.S. forces and facilitate military operations against Iran. That instead, the Gulf states would seek security arrangements with the Islamic Republic.

Iran is also tailoring its approach to different Gulf countries: it has no appetite for a direct war with Saudi Arabia, so the Houthis in Yemen carry the Saudi file. The Houthis imposed their embargo on the Bab al-Mandab Strait on July 20, days after Iranian officials signaled that the strait would close if American strikes on Iran’s infrastructure continued. The Houthis had their own reasons to move, especially Riyadh’s siege of Yemeni ports and a military strike on Sanaa airport. But either way, Tehran gained a second strategic chokepoint.

Intense Iranian attacks on Kuwait are the lesson intended for every Gulf state hosting U.S. forces. Kuwait facilitated American strikes on Iran from its territory, and Iranian drones have answered by striking the power and desalination plants that Kuwait depends on for roughly 90% of its drinking water. The strikes on Kuwait are also aimed at degrading a potential staging ground for a potential U.S. ground operation in southern Iran.

What this strategy lacks is a clear account of how Iran would convert wartime leverage into a durable political settlement. Tehran has shown how it can disrupt global energy supplies and impose costs on the U.S. and its allies, but it is not clear how it can remain in a permanent state of confrontation with America and the Gulf states.

Iran, America, and the limits of force

The first challenge Iran faces is the asymmetry of pain thresholds. American credibility is on the line, but Iranian territory is being hit hard. Year-on-year inflation in Iran reached an astonishing 88.6% by late June. In southern provinces, which are facing the brunt of the renewed conflict, inflation has crossed 101% in Hormozgan, 99% in Khuzestan, and 96.5% in Bushehr. Iran’s energy ministry has asked the citizens to ration electricity in extreme heat as American strikes strain the electricity grid. The Islamic Republic crushed a nationwide uprising in January, has an economy in free fall, and is fighting a war with America. Its most dangerous front may prove to be the domestic one.

Iran’s coercion of the Gulf states may produce the very coalition it fears. Attacks on Kuwaiti power and desalination plants are pushing Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates toward closer security cooperation with each other, with Washington, and eventually, with Israel. Given the disparity in economic resources between Iran on one side of the Persian Gulf, and Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar on the other side, a counterbalancing bloc would hold the stronger hand over time.

The biggest challenge Iran faces: Israel’s secretive nuclear powers. Iran has been trying to destroy the U.S. surveillance and radar systems in the Gulf that serve as early warning systems for Israel. If Iran continues succeeding in degrading those early warning systems, Israel would have to confront its missiles with less warning and thinner interception depth. A more vulnerable Israel could lean harder on its nuclear deterrent. Iran’s success could turn out to be extremely dangerous.

Washington’s options are no better. Trump has promised to destroy “one bridge or power plant” for every ship Iran fires on. A war on infrastructure would amount to war crimes by Washington, and it would not change Tehran’s calculations. Iran would retaliate against Gulf infrastructure, and the destruction would spread across states that are party to none of this.

Airstrikes on Iran’s most sensitive nuclear facilities would also yield little. Trump has threatened to “very heavily” hit the area around Pickaxe Mountain, a fortified underground site near Natanz, one of Iran's primary nuclear enrichment facilities. Such an attack would produce symbolic effects and trigger Iranian retaliation against energy and other critical infrastructure in the Gulf.

With the International Atomic Energy Agency locked out of Iran since June 2025 and the fate of nearly 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium unverified, fresh air strikes on nuclear facilities in Iran would make it even harder to determine what nuclear material and capabilities remain, where they are located, and how quickly the program could be rebuilt. Subsequently, greater ambiguity around Iran’s nuclear capabilities would make any settlement harder to negotiate and verify.

That leaves ground operations. On July 15, Trump reportedly convened a meeting to weigh seizing Kharg Island, through which some 90% of Iran’s crude exports pass, and other territory along the strait. U.S. officials told the Wall Street Journal that Trump remained reluctant to commit ground forces. The threat of a ground invasion is only a threat as long as it stays a threat. Kharg and other such Iranian islands are hard to take and harder to hold. Their occupation would sharply reduce Iran’s oil revenue, but it would not necessarily compel Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or accept American terms. Iran could respond by intensifying attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure and shipping, while presenting the seizure of its territory as proof that the war had become one of national defense.

Neither Iran nor America has a credible military path to a durable settlement that ends the fighting, restores freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, and prevents another rapid return to war. Iran’s problem is the long-term cost of its current strategy; Washington’s problem is the diminishing returns on each additional night of bombing.

The choice Tehran and Washington have to make

The way out runs through the initial agreement. Its basic bargain remains workable: Iran would restore freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and halt attacks on U.S. forces, while Washington would lift its naval blockade of Iran, end its air campaign and suspend the punitive measures imposed after the agreement collapsed.

Pakistani and Qatari mediators are still working. What sank the previous deal was ambiguity: obligations without sequencing, commitments without monitoring, and no mechanism for containing an incident at sea before it became a campaign. Any new agreement will have to specify who verifies what, in what order, and what happens when a ship is hit.

Iran faces a larger decision. It cannot strike American assets in Gulf states indefinitely while expecting those states to put up with the attacks. Tehran must choose between a region organized around coexistence and one it hopes to dominate. Bids for hegemony summon their own opposition: the counter-coalition Iran could provoke, backed by Washington and Israel, would leave it more encircled than the war that began in February ever did. That is the calculation Tehran has yet to make, and the one on which everything else now depends.

Most companies treat anxiety as a problem to solve. When employees feel stressed, they are offered meditation apps, mental-health days, and employee-assistance programs. These can be valuable resources. But they carry an underlying message: Anxiety is an obstacle to performance, and the goal is to make it disappear.

I saw this mindset clearly during a recent consultation with the CEO of a midsize company. I asked what comes to mind when an employee says they are experiencing anxiety. Her discomfort was immediate, as though merely hearing the word “anxiety” activated her own.

She then named three concerns: the employee might need accommodations, benefits costs may rise, and the company could face legal exposure. Her managers, she explained, were trained not to ask too many questions about anxiety. Instead, they were supposed to document the interaction, direct employees toward support, and avoid saying anything that could create additional risk.

That may be prudent from a legal perspective, but it also reveals a problem. Corporate America is getting anxiety all wrong.

I don’t fault the C-suite for thinking this way. For much of my career as a clinical psychologist, I made a similar mistake. I was trained to regard all anxiety as a symptom to reduce, manage, or eliminate.

In reality, the word “anxiety” is used to describe two very different experiences.

On the one hand, clinical anxiety is persistent, excessive, and disruptive. In professional nomenclature, these conditions are known as anxiety disorders. They interfere with work, sleep, relationships, and everyday functioning. Clinical anxiety typically requires professional treatment, workplace accommodations, or other meaningful support.

On the other hand, most anxiety is not a disorder at all. It is an ordinary and healthy human emotion involving apprehension we feel when an important matter is uncertain. The emotion of anxiety shows up before difficult conversations, major presentations, high-stakes decisions, and periods of change. Yes, it tends to be uncomfortable, but discomfort is not the same as a dysfunction or disorder. Fundamentally, anxiety is simply evidence that we care about what happens next.

We readily distinguish between depression, a clinical disorder, and sadness, which is a normal human emotion. Yet when it comes to anxiety, that nuance often disappears. We use the same word for everything from fleeting nerves to debilitating psychiatric conditions.

When companies pathologize ordinary anxiety, a self-reinforcing cycle develops. Employees become reluctant to admit they feel anxious because they fear being seen as unwell, unable to cope, or a professional liability. Managers, worried about saying the wrong thing, avoid honest conversations about emotions altogether. Leaders lose access to important information, psychological safety erodes, productivity suffers, and tensions tend to rise for all parties.

Companies have long treated emotional wellness and performance as separate agendas: one soft, the other serious. That is a false divide. When people know how to use anxious feelings well, they become both healthier and more productive.

Corporate America needs a different approach. Instead of trying to eliminate anxiety, business leaders and managers should help employees to use it constructively. 

Here are four steps that can help.

First, identify anxiety as information. When anxiety occurs, resist the instinct to dismiss it or make it disappear. Get curious. What specifically feels concerning? Is there a risk being overlooked? What does anxiety suggest is at stake?

The emotion of anxiety is not always accurate, but it is often informative. It can sharpen attention, improve preparation, and expose blind spots. The most anxious person in a meeting is often voicing questions everyone else is avoiding.

Second, employees and leaders alike should feel freer to share their anxiety with others. Of course, work should not become group therapy, and thoughtful disclosure is not the same as oversharing. But work colleagues should be able to acknowledge pressure in a grounded, professional way.

When appropriate, managers should respond to anxiety with validation: “I’m concerned about this, too. Here is what we know, what we don’t know, and how I think we should proceed.” That kind of honesty does not weaken authority or credibility. It builds trust, invites candor, and allows anxiety to move from a private burden to shared experience.

Third, embrace anxiety instead of avoiding it. Many of the best employees are anxious. I’m not talking about clinical impairment or paralysis due to fear. I mean team members who care enough to worry about quality, consequences, deadlines, and the people affected by their work. Managers should view anxiety as evidence of investment, not inadequacy.

Human Resources teams should treat healthy anxiety as a positive criterion in hiring and promotion. Constructive anxiety often signals foresight, conscientiousness, and genuine commitment when outcomes are uncertain. Those are qualities companies claim to value, but tend to overlook when they favor polished confidence over thoughtful concern.

Finally, let go of the illusion of control. This is the most important step in the age of AI. Jobs will change. Industries will be disrupted. Employees and leaders alike will have to make decisions without complete information.

Leaders who pretend to know exactly what will happen may look confident at first, but this quickly becomes hubris. A healthier response is to acknowledge uncertainty, identify what can be controlled, and accept what cannot. Letting go is not resignation. It is doing our best without pretending that effort guarantees the outcome.

In a recent keynote for business managers and executives, I asked audience members to raise their hands if they had felt any anxiety during the previous two weeks. Nearly every hand went up. “Thank God,” I said, and the room burst out laughing.

The joke landed because the alternative was alarming. In this era of uncertainty, a room full of business leaders who felt no anxiety would not be a picture of perfect mental health or corporate excellence. It would have signaled disengagement, denial, or even worse, emotional numbness.

Anxiety means you are human. It means you care. And it means you are living and working in a world no one can fully predict or control.

The future of work will not belong to the people who feel no anxiety. It will belong to the people who know how to use it.

FIFA is considering selling a minority stake in the World Cup’s commercial rights, a plan that critics say would turn soccer’s biggest tournament into an investment asset and threaten to upend the sport.

FIFA said Tuesday that it will create a $20 billion subsidiary to house its commercial and event operations and offer external investors the opportunity to buy shares of up to 20% of the subsidiary. FIFA claims that offering minority interests to private investors would allow it to raise up to $4.2 billion that can be used to fund soccer development programs worldwide. FIFA says it would retain sole control of the enterprise and “exclusive authority” over its competitions, governance, and all regulatory and sporting decisions.

“Football is the world’s most popular sport and an extraordinary engine of human and social development,” FIFA President Gianni Infantino said in a statement. “Parts of the game have turned that popularity into remarkable commercial value—and we celebrate that success and want it to continue, because it lifts the whole game.”

But the move has faced backlash from soccer officials, fans, and political leaders, who say it would overly commercialize the sport. Critics also fear that it could deepen FIFA’s already-controversial ties with U.S. President Donald Trump through potential investors linked to his family. The proposal comes on the heels of the 2026 men’s World Cup, which was co-hosted by the U.S. and brought in a record $12 billion in revenue for the organization.

“The soul and governance of football are not assets to trade—especially with zero transparency as to who gains financially,” European soccer body UEFA said in a statement. The organization is reportedly planning to hold an emergency meeting this week to discuss plans to oppose the proposal, including a potential World Cup boycott.

“The close relationship between the FIFA President and the US President  has reached a financial dimension that is deeply damaging football,” posted Infantino’s predecessor, former FIFA president Sepp Blatter, who was dogged by accusations of corruption and financial mismanagement during his tenure but has since become a vocal critic of his successor. “No one has the right to sell our game.”

Plan to bring in private investors

The commercial subsidiary, “FIFA Forward Enterprise” (FFE), would consolidate FIFA’s commercial rights, including broadcast, sponsorship, ticketing and licensing, with the operational delivery of FIFA tournaments. The enterprise would raise capital from investors and significantly increase funding for FIFA’s 211 member associations, according to FIFA’s announcement. Revenue generated through FFE would also help finance increased development funding for its member associations, FIFA said. FFE has an initial implied equity valuation of $20 billion, estimated by J.P. Morgan.

The existing FIFA Forward program is budgeted to provide $8 million in development funds to each member association during the 2027-30 World Cup cycle. Under the proposal, the program would increase funding to $20 million each during the upcoming cycle, and to $22 million and $24 million each for the following four-year cycles through 2038.

Each member association would also be able to access an optional $20 million in one-off, immediate funding for special development projects through a new “FIFA Fast Forward Program.” The funding could go toward infrastructure, coaching, national teams, competitions, grassroots football, and the women’s game. That means, if the proposal is approved, member associations that opt into the voluntary program could get up to a total $40 million in funding for the upcoming cycle.

In its proposal to member associations, FIFA argued that the World Cup has been under-monetized compared to other sporting competitions, and that FFE would allow FIFA to separate its commercial operations from governance of the sport. FFE would remain a FIFA-controlled entity.

FFE would be managed by a dedicated team and board of directors, none of whom have been appointed yet, according to FIFA’s website. “The proposal does not establish a future role or compensation package for any specific individual,” FIFA said.

Bloomberg reported that the idea for FFE first arose last year during private discussions between Infantino and Joshua Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. J.P. Morgan was reportedly brought in early this year to develop a way for FIFA to monetize its media rights and pitch it to potential investors.

Thrive Eternal, a company launched by Kushner, is expected to lead the investor group for FFE. Thrive is a permanent capital investment firm created earlier this year to buy and hold minority stakes in sports teams and other iconic brands.

Kushner does not have political ties to the Trump Administration. His most recent political donation was to the Obama Foundation, according to public records.

Investors in FFE would not have a seat on FIFA’s Council or be able to vote in FIFA’s congress. The Guardian also reported that investors would not receive dividends from the scheme. Instead, they would potentially realise a return if they sell their stake in future, the organization said.

“Outside investors will have only a minority stake in FFE and will not play any operational role,” FIFA said in its announcement. “Equally, they ​are investing in a subsidiary of FIFA, and not in FIFA itself. For FIFA, nothing changes.”

TIME has reached out to FIFA for comment. Thrive Capital, a venture capital firm founded by Kushner, said it did not have a comment to provide at this time.

Soccer confederations, lawmakers criticize proposal

The outline of the proposed project was shared with FIFA’s member associations in Manhattan on July 18, FIFA told the Associated Press. The final decision on the proposal will require majority support from FIFA’s member associations and approval by the FIFA council.

FIFA began the official consultation process on Tuesday, and member associations will have until Sept. 19 to decide on the proposal. FFE is “part of a democratic process, a consultation process,” Infantino said on Wednesday. “Above all, it is an opportunity but not an obligation.”

“If, and only if, it is approved by the majority of our 211 member associations and the FIFA council, it would be a FIFA-owned and controlled subsidiary,” he added.

If the proposal is approved, FFE would begin operating next year, according to FIFA.

But several of FIFA’s confederations have criticized the fact that the proposal was announced publicly before the consultation process was launched.

Some critics have also argued that the proposed financial benefit through the voluntary program to member associations creates an incentive for them to accept the broader proposal.

“Today we have learned of FIFA’s deadline to associations to support their proposals or have the one-off payout offer withdrawn. This says everything you need to know about this plan,” UEFA, which represents 55 FIFA member associations, said in a Wednesday statement. FIFA said that member associations will not receive ownership stakes in FFE and that the proposed funding is not an equity allocation.

UEFA was not the only soccer body to express concern about the proposal. The European soccer confederation said that it has had “discussions with many stakeholders across the game” and that there is “significant and growing opposition to FIFA’s scheme.”

CONCACAF, the confederation that governs soccer in North America, Central America, and the Caribbean and that represents 35 of FIFA’s member associations, said it was “deeply concerned by the lack of due process,” including the fact that plans had been announced “before any discussion with the relevant governance bodies and stakeholders has taken place.”

The Football Association, England’s national football governing body, also said it was “deeply concerned about the lack of process and governance to get to this point, and the apparent substance and principles involved.” FA Chair Debbie Hewitt is one of FIFA’s eight vice-presidents.

The Asian Football Confederation also expressed concern about the proposal and said it was not consulted on it. The body, which represents 46 FIFA member associations, said it “is disappointed that a matter of such significance entered the public domain” before it was discussed “through the appropriate and established governance channels.”

It’s also not the first time that FIFA has faced backlash over a proposed commercial deal. In 2018, Infantino pursued a $25 billion deal with a consortium led by Japanese firm SoftBank that would finance an expanded Club World Cup and a new global Nations League. But the commercial package ultimately failed due to opposition. UEFA had raised concerns about transparency and said that the new competitions would threaten European tournaments.

Other sports organizations have also created separate commercial entities, including UEFA which has a joint venture with European Football Clubs to sell commercial rights to certain competitions.

 “Establishing subsidiaries is nothing new for FIFA,” the organization said on its website.

The proposal comes as relations between UEFA and FIFA have strained. UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin skipped the World Cup final after disputes with FIFA over disciplinary procedures and match operations. UEFA said FIFA had “crossed a red line” when FIFA suspended the implementation of an automatic one-match ban for U.S. forward Folarin Balogun, who had received a red card, after Trump’s reported intervention.

Infantino, who is up for reelection as head of FIFA next year, has faced criticism from UEFA over his close ties to Trump and what critics say is a lack of transparency in FIFA’s decision-making. Infantino was scrutinized after accompanying Trump on a Gulf tour instead of attending the start of the FIFA Congress in 2025, prompting a UEFA-led walkout.

Ahead of this year’s World Cup, some European soccer officials and politicians called for fans to boycott the U.S. games, citing both Infantino’s friendship with Trump and the Trump Administration’s immigration and foreign policies. Infantino was also criticized for presenting Trump with a newly-created FIFA Peace Prize, and for opening a FIFA office in New York’s Trump Tower, a property owned by the Trump Organization.

“FIFA, Donald Trump’s favorite corrupt racketeering enterprise in world sports, is now going directly into business with the Trump family!” the House Judiciary Democrats posted on X. “Apparently the fake Peace Prize and giant lease with Trump Tower weren’t enough—now Infantino performs a kickback hat trick by pursuing a multibillion-dollar deal with Jared Kushner’s brother to sell ownership stakes in the World Cup to private investors.”

The Democratic committee members said the proposal was an example of “more oligarch corruption” after FIFA’s use of dynamic pricing helped push World Cup ticket prices to unprecedented levels. Earlier this week, the group of lawmakers called on Infantino to sit for an interview about “deceptive” ticket practices and alleged corruption between him and Trump. 

Andy Burnham, who became British Prime Minister earlier this month after Keir Starmer resigned, also criticized the proposal.

“Let me say this very directly. Football does not belong to investors. It belongs to the people who fill the stands and who stand on the touchline week in, week out, rain or shine,” Burnham posted on X. “The World Cup is not a product. It is the greatest competition in world sport, and it was never anyone’s to sell. Dress the deal up however you like. Once you have sold a piece of it, you have sold out.

“Football belongs to the fans. It always has, and it always will.”

American companies have dominated global markets for some time, but in the past few years, experts have become less certain about the future of America’s economic power and influence as a result of new tariffs, export controls, and the worldwide backlash against them. However, even in uncertainty, U.S. stocks have remained strong, and stateside companies continue to grow and expand domestically and abroad. 

To identify the top-performing companies in the U.S., TIME partnered with Statista to evaluate and rank the most prominent firms in the country based on employee satisfaction, financial performance, and sustainability transparency. Both public companies and private companies that report their financial and sustainability data were considered. The top 1000 companies were named to America’s Best Companies of 2026. 

Methodology: How TIME and Statista Determined America's Best Companies of 2026

While U.S. companies dominated TIME’s annual World’s Best Companies list in 2025, America’s Best Companies focuses more on the strength of financial performance over revenue growth. This explains why Apple, ranked no. 2 on this list, did not appear on World’s Best Companies of 2025—Apple had a slight revenue decrease between 2022 and 2024, the study period for that list. The tech giant has since resumed growth and is doing quite well now, says Jonathan Vincent, a data analyst at Statista. Because the list values sustainability in growth, companies that post strong revenues while reducing their carbon emissions, like Adobe (no. 7), also rose from their World ranks. 

Despite the overall trend of tech dominance in the U.S., this year, some health care companies have broken into the top 10—weight-loss pill maker Eli Lilly at no. 5 and cancer treatment behemoth Merck at no. 9. Investment firm UBS wrote in an online research note on June 30 that the healthcare sector has consistently outperformed the S&P 500 due in part to healthcare coverage and access expansion for obesity drugs, as Medicare patients begin qualifying for them, oral pills draw in new users, and generics expand its reach to markets outside the U.S. The firm wrote that the pharmaceutical industry, which makes up a third of health care, is predicted to grow rapidly: “In fact, the S&P 500 Pharma index’s 7.1% year-to-date gain has outperformed the Magnificent 7, with GLP-1 drugs shifting the paradigm in obesity treatment.” 

Led by recent positive clinical results from Lilly, Roche, and AstraZeneca, the $100 billion market for GLP-1 could potentially include other medical areas like cardiovascular, kidney, liver, arthritis, and sleep apnea disorders as the drugs evolve to treat not just diabetes and obesity, but all kinds of metabolic conditions.

In Q1 2026, Lilly reported a quarterly earning of $19.8 billion worldwide, up 56% from last year, with Mounjaro and Zepbound together accounting for $12.9 billion. The company is also continuing to test new therapies to maintain its lead in the metabolic health market; a cholesterol-lowering treatment it’s developing with Verve has shown promising early efficacy. 

Merck reported Q1 2026 revenues of $16.3 billion led by its strong portfolio in oncology and animal health. “We're in the midst of initial launches of over 20 new products,” said CEO Robert Davis on the earnings call in April, “almost all of which have blockbuster potential across a broad set of therapeutic areas.” The move to diversify and re-design their portfolio is timely as the company’s blockbuster cancer immunotherapy, Keytruda (which accounted for $8 billion of their Q1 revenue), has patents set to expire in 2028. 

Healthcare is becoming a top field for new grads as well, with separate analyses and surveys from Goldman Sachs, Glassdoor, and National Society of High School Scholars in 2025 indicating that younger professionals are increasingly choosing jobs in healthcare over tech.

See the full list of America’s Best Companies of 2026 below:

Splashy public companies often dominate headlines, but the majority of the companies in the U.S. are privately owned and these companies are just as important to the economic ecosystem as the public ones—they support millions of jobs and contribute trillions to the economy. For business owners, there are a number of benefits to staying private. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, being private “allows a company space to invest in and grow its business over a longer period without the same pressure to meet short-term financial targets.” Additionally, without the pressure of public disclosure, “private companies can more freely experiment with new technology and innovation, including greater tolerance for what others might see as ‘failure.’”

To identify the leaders in this space, TIME partnered with data firm Statista to launch the first edition of America’s Best Private Companies this year. The analysis highlights 500 privately owned companies ranked high on both employee satisfaction surveys and positive net impact on society, global knowledge and health, and the environment. 

Methodology: How TIME and Statista Determined America's Best Private Companies of 2026

There’s been a shift in the work culture for big companies over the century. Previously, employees of big, well-known companies were guaranteed stable income benefits until retirement, “but we have less and less public companies like that,” says Jegoo Lee, associate professor of management at the University of Rhode Island’s College of Business. “The number of public companies in the United States has decreased. Right now, one of the problems public companies have is the burden of big shareholders—Wall Street—that really focus on dividends and quarterly profit rather than longer-term profit.” 

This, he notes, is one of the reasons why public companies struggle to remain purpose-driven, because they have to justify their purpose to shareholders. And it’s also why it’s hard to design a corporate governance structure with priorities around employee wellness or corporate responsibility. One of the reasons Patagonia (no. 1 on the list) has been very successful at environmental sustainability and profit is because they are private, Lee says. Patagonia’s owner, Yvonn Chouinard, has designed the various ownership models for the company so that it would be kept out of the hands of outside investors that could push it away from its environmentally focused mission or hurt its employees. 

After the Covid-19 pandemic, however, more companies became more interested in providing wellness benefits for their employees, after seeing how workers negatively impacted by burnout, AI, and loneliness translated into a productivity and performance problem, Lee says. Focusing on keeping its employees happy is historically how grocery chain Wegmans (no. 2) has stood out among competitors. 

Now, younger generations entering the workforce are less drawn to big companies than the generations prior. They factor in wellness outside of work in addition to salary. “They really care about their family, life issues; whether their work will be valuable to their own life. In that sense private companies might be a better place because they can design their own purpose,” Lee says. In this trend, they may also be interested in alternative organization structures like employee-owned companies or worker cooperatives, which have been growing in popularity, with the federal government even encouraging more employers to adopt such models. Southern staple Publix (no. 9) and warehouse chain WinCo (no. 10) are both employee-owned through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). 

“Usually, employee-owned companies have higher productivity, their revenue growth is usually 3-4% higher than other companies, and then their quit rate is about a third of other companies,” Lee says. “These numbers always show that employees are very actively engaged in their own company, because their perspective is more long term. … These are motivational incentives for employee owners to make their companies better, and perform better, and that could impact their retirement.” On the other hand, worker cooperatives benefit from “a lot of diverse opinions and comments and insight that really makes their corporate strategy different than other competitors,” Lee says.

See the full list of America’s Best Private Companies of 2026 below:

In a rare display of bipartisanship, the Senate overwhelmingly voted to pass a sweeping housing bill on Monday—with only five lawmakers voting against the legislation. Ten other Senators did not vote.

All five of the lawmakers who voted against the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act are Republicans: Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Lee of Utah, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Rick Scott of Florida, and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama. 

The bill seeks to increase the U.S. housing supply by easing regulations and encouraging building, lower housing costs, restrict the presence of institutional investors in the single-family housing market, and give more control over housing to local jurisdictions, among a host of other provisions. 

Read More: What to Know About the Landmark Housing Bill Congress Is Poised to Pass

The legislation now heads to the House, where it is similarly expected to pass with broad support from both sides of the aisle, and could reach President Donald Trump’s desk as soon as this week. 

Here’s what each of the five Senators who voted against the bill have said about it.

Tommy Tuberville

Tuberville said in a written statement to TIME that he’s “looking for ways to bring down housing costs for American families. But giving the federal government more control over housing is not the answer.”

“We have seen time and time again that writing a blank check to blue cities means that federal tax dollars will end up in the hands of illegals instead of going to the American citizens it was intended to help,” Tuberville said. “This bill also expands the already bloated Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is the opposite of what we need to be doing. We should be focused on getting government out of the way and allowing the free market to drive down costs through competition and a booming economy.”

Tuberville also voted against an earlier Senate version of the bill in March. At the time, a spokesperson for the Senator told the Alabama Daily News that “like President Trump,” Tuberville “thinks the Save America Act is our No. 1 priority and doesn’t think we should be wasting our time on anything else.”  

Trump that month vowed not to sign any legislation until Congress passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act, a bill that would impose stricter voter identification requirements. Months later, the President is continuing to press congressional Republicans to push the legislation through.

The White House has, however, expressed support for the final version of the housing bill.  

Mike Lee

In a statement following his nay vote, Lee contended that the legislation fails to adequately address the housing affordability issue

“Americans need more affordable housing. Unfortunately, this bill doesn’t do enough to provide it, instead increasing the federal government’s long-running and failed involvement in the U.S. housing market,” Lee said. 

The Utah Senator further critiqued the bill for only temporarily banning the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency, a form of U.S. currency issued by the government, rather than prohibiting it from doing so permanently. Lee earlier this year reintroduced legislation seeking to implement a permanent ban; at the time, his office contended in a press release that the Fed creating such a currency would restrict financial institutions’ ability to offer loans and that “the Federal Reserve would have knowledge of every transaction involving” the currency.

In his statement on his opposition to the housing bill, Lee also argued that the legislation “does not do nearly enough to safeguard housing programs for American citizens only.” He went on to detail several measures he believes need to be taken “to truly improve housing affordability,” among them continuing “mass deportations” of undocumented immigrants who he claimed are “placing a significant burden on housing availability and affordability for American citizens.”

Rick Scott

Scott highlighted an amendment he offered to the housing bill that he said was not entertained in a post on X ahead of the final Senate vote on the measure.

“If we’re passing the ROAD to Housing Act, I think it’s only fair to make sure it actually works,” the Florida Senator said.

“I offered an Amendment to make sure Congress gets an annual report on how this bill directly impacts housing affordability for middle income homeowners. But, I never got the chance to bring it up. This should have been a no-brainer. It proves that what we’re doing HELPS the American people.”

Last week, Scott wrote on X that “home prices are going through the roof in America and Congress is playing around with solutions that will only make things worse — not better,” in response to another post sharing Zillow’s recent finding that “starter homes” cost at least $1 million in 242 cities. “Point me to the section of the ‘ROAD to Housing’ bill that actually makes housing more affordable for middle class families,” Scott said at the time.

In another post last week, Scott said that “Homes now cost FIVE TIMES more than a family’s median income. The REAL reason? Congress. Congress just spends, spends, and spends with no end in sight and Americans are left with higher interest rates and rampant inflation.”

Ron Johnson

Johnson’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his vote against the housing bill.

The Wisconsin Senator also voted against the Senate version of the legislation in March. A spokesperson for Johnson told the outlet The Center Square at the time that “he voted against the bill for several reasons – many of them laid out” in a column from The Wall Street Journal editorial board that opined that the bill would result in the creation of less housing due to the restrictions it would place on large, institutional investors buying single-family homes. The final version of the bill also includes such restrictions.

“The Senator does not like the government imposing itself into the marketplace and artificially reducing the demand, the number of buyers, and the price homeowners can obtain when they sell their homes,” the spokesperson said. 

Rand Paul 

Paul’s office also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his nay vote. 

The Kentucky Senator, too, was among those who voted against the Senate version of the bill in March, and made comments about his opposition to the legislation at the time.

In a March post on X, Paul called the bill the “Path Toward the Destruction of Property Rights Act,” and expressed his opposition to the limits it would put on institutional investors—at length.

Among other criticisms of the restrictions, he wrote that “Since there are two sides to every transaction, the provision also acts as a prohibition on property owners from selling their property to the highest bidder“ and “Since many of the houses owned by institutional investors are rented, banning this class of investors may decrease the number of rental houses thus raising rents.”

Paul also cited data showing that institutional investors’ share of the single-family home market is extremely low––something housing experts have previously highlighted to TIME. 

“With such a miniscule amount of the housing stock owned by large investors, the proposed ban could well have little to no effect on housing affordability or rent,” Paul wrote. 

Americans are seeking out solar, batteries, and electric vehicles at a pace unlike anything the clean energy movement has seen in fifty years. In the 23 days after the Iran war began and the Strait of Hormuz closed, requests for home solar systems paired with battery storage jumped 21%. Used EV sales reversed course sharply, rising 17% in a single quarter after hitting their lowest point since 2022.  

This moment demands attention. Across the U.S. and globally, interest in clean energy is accelerating faster than at any point in history, and not necessarily because of anything the clean energy movement achieved on its own. Understanding why is critical. 

I watched two previous attempts to move the U.S. toward adopting clean energy fall short. In hindsight, both were predictable. The first era, roughly 1970 to 2005, was driven by values: a belief that protecting the environment was simply the right thing to do. Twenty million people turned out for the first Earth Day in 1970. Congress passed the Energy Tax Act in 1978. The environmental conviction was real, and it moved a committed minority. By 2010, after four decades of moral-based advocacy, solar still represented less than 0.1% of U.S. electricity generation.

The second era was driven by economics. The challenge was no longer about inspiring moral conviction but making clean energy adoption cheap enough for the market to embrace it. The investment tax credit, introduced in 2006, was one of the most significant drivers of solar power growth, helping the solar industry grow by more than 10,000% over the following decade and a half. The Inflation Reduction Act, enacted in 2022, drove record solar deployment: by 2024, solar accounted for more than 80% of all new electric generating capacity added to the grid. Going solar requires real upfront investment—more so now that the federal residential tax credit expired at the end of 2025. But over a system's lifetime, today, solar generates electricity at costs comparable to or less than what utilities charge in most parts of the country.

Now, we are entering a third era, one defined not by values or economics, but by a drive for control. Psychologists have long documented that when people feel external forces are governing their lives, they seek out whatever domains they can control. Energy has now become one of those domains. Gas prices set by an unpredictable war. Blackouts from an aging grid. Energy bills that keep climbing. Rooftop solar, a home battery, an electric vehicle offer something the grid, the gas station, and the utility bill cannot: certainty. They are no longer just products. They are acts of self-determination. These solutions meet people where they already are—anxious, exhausted, and done feeling exposed—and offer them what they have been missing: stability.

The data confirms the shift is already underway. Even before the war began, nearly 78% of U.S. homeowners expressed concern about power grid reliability. Sixty-four percent say recurring blackouts would make them more likely to go solar within five years. Since the war began, nearly half say they are extremely or very concerned about affording fuel in the coming months. The conversation has shifted from "how much will I save?" to "how do I protect my family from the next crisis?"—whether that crisis arrives as a blackout, a gas price spike, or an economic shock. Americans want control. A growing number want to generate their own power, store it, and insulate themselves from volatile energy prices and an unreliable grid. And solar delivers exactly that.   

To be sure, the uncertainty driving demand for renewables is also making them more expensive to build. Supply chain pressures and tariffs on imported solar equipment are real headwinds. The expiration of federal tax credits for residential solar has raised upfront costs, although financing arrangements (like power purchase agreements) that require no money down have kept solar within reach for many homeowners. The long-term economics still hold: once panels are up, the energy is free. Every dollar invested in clean energy infrastructure today is a hedge against tomorrow's uncertainty.

For 50 years, the clean energy movement tried to change how Americans think about power. In the end, it may be global turbulence that ultimately moves what decades of advocacy could not. While the motivation may seem misaligned with the original mission, the outcome is what matters. 

Four years ago, Democrats were falling over themselves in delight. Republicans in Georgia knowingly nominated Herschel Walker, a political newcomer with mental health issues, accusations of domestic violence and stalking, and a no-exceptions opposition to abortion rights despite his alleged history of partners availing themselves of them.

Well, karma shows no grace.

Maine Democrats on Tuesday nominated their own version of Walker in Graham Platner, an oyster farmer with a thick and messy oppo file that includes Nazi imagery, sexting with women other than his wife, and allegations of domestic abuse. The 41-year-old harbormaster and combat veteran coasted to the nomination against five-term Sen. Susan Collins, age 73, in an election cycle in which Platner’s fiery spirit matches the mood and Collins’ cautious brand very much doesn’t.

But, boy, if this isn’t a potential self-own, I don’t know what is. 

In my conversations around Washington, the mood among Democrats is something close to a hostage situation. In a crucial race, they feel handcuffed to an untested candidate, one who they wish would step aside for the good of the party. The mood is different in Maine, where my colleague Julia Terruso found Democrats far more unfazed by the latest Platner revelations, including accusations from an ex-girlfriend that he was physically threatening.

In claiming the nomination Tuesday evening, Platner struck a tone of defiance about his skeptics. He said pundits, reporters, and Democrats in the the political establishment “keep looking for that one story, that one headline, that one moment in my life that they can define the campaign by.” Instead, he said they missed the bigger message he brought to the trail, one of second chances. “It is my job to earn your trust, faith, and support,” Platner said. It may prove a heavy lift.

Nevertheless, Platner is now the nominee, which means Maine is about to engage in an expensive experiment to answer several thorny questions: What are voters willing to overlook? How much weight does incumbency carry? Will voters fed up with Donald Trump give Susan Collins points for having held him at arms length, or punish her for so often backing his agenda?

When I was on the ground in Georgia heading into that early-summer primary in 2022, I spoke to voters all over the state expressing reservations about Walker. So, too, did party bosses, who saw the incumbent, Democrat Raphael Warnock, as beatable. Primary Day brought with it dread for Republicans. And it’s all happening again, neatly flipped

Maine Democrats had another option—sort of. Gov. Janet Mills suspended her campaign in April as she struggled to match Platner’s shine. Yet the term-limited Governor remained on the ballot. In recent days, she low-key reminded her supporters that she was still eligible to take the nomination if offered, but no one really took her up on that fact—in no small measure because the 78-year-old Mills would have been the oldest first-term Senator in history.

Barring Platner bowing out in time—which seems unlikely—Democrats are hunkering down, desperately hoping there aren’t more Platner revelations left to come out before Election Day. 

Republicans, meanwhile, are whispering that Democrats' fears of unused Platner oppo are well-founded. They’re also hinting that, when it comes to Platner, there's more than one shoe left to drop.

Democrats are setting the stage to pursue redistricting efforts in as many as 13 states before 2028, redrawing congressional lines to secure potentially dozens of additional House seats, according to an internal strategy memo obtained exclusively by TIME. To move forward on that plan, party strategists have a list of fewer than two dozen state legislative seats they need to flip in this year’s midterm elections.

“Our ability to go on offense in this year’s environment is not only important for power in 2026, but will have an enormous impact on the power we can build through the end of the decade and wield in the post-2030 redistricting process,” wrote Heather Williams, the president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the Democrats’ official arm that works on state legislative races.

Democrats are still smarting from the initial round of the redistricting wars that kicked off last year. Republicans appear to have done better at gerrymandering maps in states like Texas and Florida to give them an edge in this year’s midterm elections. The Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act in April set that fight into overdrive.

So Democrats plan to be more aggressive on the redistricting front ahead of 2028, and taking advantage of a favorable election environment in 2026 is key. Williams tells me her committee sees hundreds of statehouse seats as flippable this fall. Of those, just 19 targeted races would deliver Democrats a trifecta—the governorship and majorities in the state House and Senate—in four states: Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. That would open the doors to Democratic-led redistricting should those state houses choose to go down that path.

In other words, fewer than two dozen small-time races for seats in Madison, Wis., Lansing, Mich., and the like stand to sway control of the U.S. House in 2028 and beyond, according to DLCC’s analysis. It’s a plan that, if executed well, could make life very difficult for as many as 51 Republican House members, whose districts could be carved up to give Democrats’ nakedly partisan advantages.

Read more: They Gerrymandered Away the District He’s Campaigning to Represent. He’s Still Running

Williams tells me it is too early to predict what Democratic state legislators would choose to do with their potential majorities but acknowledged that an earlier sense of restraint was gone. “It was evident the minute that the President called on Republicans and the Texas statehouse to gerrymander,” she said. “We're going to understand what that battlefield looks like in 2027 and, before that, we're going to build the power necessary to keep those options on the table.”

Along with pursuing new trifectas in four states, Democrats also see changes to make gains in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. Plus they want to strengthen their existing majorities in Nevada, Oregon, and Washington state. 

Beyond that, Democrats are eyeing four more blue states—Colorado, Maryland, New York, and New Jersey—where they may try to amend the state constitution or push a voter referendum to allow them to redraw maps in their favor before the next presidential election cycle.

To be sure, Republicans still hold the upper hand in state legislatures. Republicans have about 55% of all state legislative seats in the country and control 57 chambers to Democrats’ 39. But a seat here and there can make a big difference. The Minnesota House is split dead-even. And in Pennsylvania, a three-seat swing in the state Senate could kick off a series of events that ultimately spells trouble for the state’s 10 GOP House members. 

So with an eye at going tit-for-tat against Republicans’ gerrymandering spree, Democrats see the midterms as just the next battle in the never-ending redistricting wars. “Redistricting is no longer a once-in-a-decade conversation,” Williams wrote to her donors in the memo going out Monday. “If you care about federal power, state legislatures matter now and they matter in every single election.”

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President Donald Trump is fond of putting his name on things, but employees have begun to remove it from the Kennedy Center, in compliance with a federal judge’s May 29 ruling.

A Thursday memo from the center’s Office of General Counsel, a copy of which was obtained by Politico, ordered staff to begin removing references to Trump from everything, from communication and promotional materials to signage. 

The memo called for some immediate changes, including in email signatures, letterhead, and other documents, to revert to the name “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts” or “Kennedy Center.” It added that templates, forms, signage, brochures, and website pages must be revised by June 12.

The memo did not state if the center, where Trump is chairperson of the board and whose leadership is packed with his allies, plans to appeal the ruling.

“We are complying with the court’s order while evaluating all legal options to preserve this revitalization and recognize President Trump’s leadership,” Roma Daravi, the Kennedy Center’s vice president of public relations, told the Associated Press.

The Kennedy Center’s board in December had attempted to attach Trump’s name to the storied institution, named by Congress after the assassinated former President John F. Kennedy in 1964. But the move drew backlash and a lawsuit from Rep. Joyce Beatty (D, Ohio), one of the board’s ex-officio members. 

On May 29, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington, D.C., an Obama appointee, ruled that the rebranding violated federal law and reiterated that only Congress can change the center’s name. Cooper then gave the Kennedy Center 14 days to remove all physical signage referring to a “Trump Kennedy Center” and eliminate similar branding on other official materials.

Cooper’s ruling also blocked the board’s March decision to close down the Kennedy Center for two years for renovations, ruling that the sweeping closure announced by Trump in February appeared “ill-informed and seemingly preordained.” But Cooper said repair work may continue, and he didn’t bar any future board decision to close the center, as long as the board has “sufficient information to make a considered, independent decision.”

“By way of this opinion, the Court does not purport to dictate how the Center should be run, nor does it prescribe any particular plan for the institution—construction, closure, or otherwise—moving forward,” Cooper wrote in his ruling. “It simply holds the Kennedy Center Board to certain minimum requirements imposed by law. Beyond that, the Court will let the parties play on.”

The ruling is a setback to Trump’s ongoing attempt to change Washington’s historical landmarks—which also includes plans to build a Triumphal Arch and ongoing demolition of the White House’s East Wing to make way for a ballroom, projects that are similarly facing legal challenges.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department said Cooper’s ruling “rejected challenges” to the renovations, stating it was “pleased” with the decision. It added that Trump Administration lawyers “will continue to defend President Trump’s ability to restore the Center to its former glory as the finest performing arts center in the country – if not the world.”

But Trump already seems to have soured on putting his personal stamp on the center, despite having previously gone into specific details about how he plans to remake it. 

In a post on Truth Social on May 29, Trump said he instructed the Commerce Department to “transfer” the Kennedy Center to Congress and make Congress responsible for its operation, maintenance, and management—though it’s unclear how that would work.

“Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically,” Trump added, “I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into ‘NEVER NEVER LAND.’”

Around the world, particularly in the U.S. and Europe, countries are in the middle of a climate reset. Right-wing politicians want to nix climate policy full stop. Their left and center-left counterparts are backtracking on promises for aggressive new policies under the assumption that climate is no longer popular—or perhaps that it never was.

Sadiq Khan, the London mayor who completed a decade in office last month, says his tenure offers a different lesson. His climate policy push has generated moments of significant blow back from right-leaning politicians and outspoken members of the public, leading political observers to cast green policies as all-but-inevitable instigators of climate backlash. And yet Khan survived and his policies did too. “There is a silent majority who aren’t keyboard warriors,” he told me in April.

Every country, province, and city has a different texture, but it’s a reminder that ditching climate entirely may not be necessary or wise in this moment of reassessment. “These policies, green policies, environmental policies, can be popular,” Khan says.

There was no greater backlash than in 2023 when Khan pushed through an expansion of the city’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ), a program that charges Londoners with vehicles that do not meet certain emissions standards for driving across the city. What was meant as a technocratic method of reducing air pollution and addressing climate change turned into a culture war focal point. Protesters tore down and disabled enforcement cameras and painted the policy as a civil liberties issue. Other opponents dismissed the air pollution science guiding the policy. “This new phenomenon… of disinformation, misinformation… gave a vocal minority massive airtime and gave people the impression this was an unpopular policy,” he says.

Calmer heads complained that the policy would increase the cost for commuters and small businesses that bring vehicles into the heart of London. The issue received wall-to-wall coverage. Watching from afar especially, it felt as though the effort had become a central political issue in Britain.   

But the reality was more complicated. A poll conducted the year after implementation, around the time of the 2024 mayoral election showed that voters ranked the issue ninth on a list of priorities.

In Khan’s telling, a lot was on the line when he was up for reelection in 2024. Leaders in other cities that were in various stages of considering a similar policy—including New York and Milan—were watching closely. Defeat might have signaled a political cost not just to pollution charges specifically but to climate policy more broadly. He won with an even greater share of the vote than in the previous election. 

Khan, who serves as the co-chair of C40 cities, a group of cities committed to climate action, explains his climate policy success in part by focusing much of his public message on kitchen table issues rather than climate specifically. He explained ULEZ as a health matter rather than a climate measure. (Indeed, air pollution in many cities including London is a silent killer). “People don’t talk about climate change, climate emergency, environment… What they do know is the young child’s been diagnosed with asthma,” he says. “What they do know is, in winter, bills keep on going up.”

And he has sought to connect clean energy with affordability and cost savings at a time when constituents in London and voters around the world are concerned with the rising cost of living, particularly energy. “The reason why we're suffering a cost of living crisis is we're relying upon fossil fuels from overseas,” he told me. 

It’s hard to map the particular policy approaches and particular rhetoric in London onto other cities—in the U.S. or elsewhere. Every city has its own characteristics. Driving is more entrenched in most U.S. cities. Pollution concerns are top of mind across much of Asia but less so in many advanced economies where the most dangerous pollutants tend to be less visible. And, of course, climate policy provokes a unique set of responses in the U.S. 

But Khan’s tenure is a reminder that climate policy that actually improves people’s lives can be popular, or at the very least durable, if only it’s given the opportunity to settle in. 

This story is supported by a partnership with Outrider Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners. TIME is solely responsible for the content.

The Justice Department said it would cancel plans to create a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” that critics feared would have gone to loyalists of President Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche testified that the DOJ would not move forward with plans for the fund, which was intended to compensate people who claimed to have been targeted by the “weaponization” of President Joe Biden’s government. It was the first time that an official publicly confirmed the DOJ would scrap the fund entirely after backlash from both Republicans and Democrats over concerns that it would serve as a “slush fund” for Trump’s allies and supporters, including those who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Legal experts also said the fund lacked a clear legal basis, with no judicial review or congressional oversight.

“We are not moving forward with the fund, period,” Blanche told the House Appropriations subcommittee. In response to questions from Rep. Grace Meng (D, NY), Blanche confirmed that the DOJ planned to drop the plans forever.

The fund was part of a controversial settlement of Trump’s $10 billion civil lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the 2019 leak of his tax returns by a former contractor.

After a federal judge temporarily blocked the fund last week, the DOJ said on Monday that it disagreed with the ruling but would abide by it.

Democrats and even some GOP lawmakers pushed to formally block the creation of the fund, but Senate Republicans narrowly voted down multiple efforts to strike it from a massive Trump-backed immigration enforcement package on Thursday. 

An attempt, led by Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, to amend the bill to codify Blanche’s promise failed 49-50. The vote extended for hours due to initial GOP holdouts.

Senators also rejected an effort by Sen. Thom Tillis (R, N.C.) to redirect the funding towards “fraud enforcement” at the DOJ, which Democrats said would still be a politicized use of taxpayer money.

“If Blanche says that this is largely inoperative, why not use this moment to codify that? Otherwise, you’re exposing every one of our members who are in cycle to having to deal with this between today and Election Day, and that makes no sense,” Tillis said before the vote. Tillis, who has bucked his party and opposed Trump on multiple occasions, said in June that he does not plan to run for reelection. Tillis refused to vote for the bill if it did not include language to permanently bar the fund. 

The fund could face at least one other challenge from Sen. Bill Cassidy (R, La.), who said he intends to offer an amendment to ban payouts from the settlement. Cassidy lost his bid for reelection in the Republican primary last month to a Trump-endorsed challenger. Republican leaders told the Associated Press that amendments restricting the settlement could endanger the bill’s passage in the House, risking another legislative impasse like the stalled Homeland Security funding legislation that led to a partial government shutdown in March.

Concerns that the Administration might resuscitate the fund in future have grown since Blanche refused to formally renounce the fund.

Blanche told Meng on Tuesday that he was not “committing to putting anything in writing” to rescind, amend, or reissue the DOJ’s May 18 press release announcing the fund.

“I’m just concerned because you’re not under oath,” Meng said. “I want to trust you, and I want to believe you. We all do, but putting it in writing would settle that issue.”

“I don’t know what the purpose of putting something in writing. I’m telling you what we’re doing,” Blanche said.

The “reasons for the fund,” he added, “remain as important as they were before, but we are not moving forward with the fund.”

On Wednesday, Trump injected more uncertainty into whether the Administration might try to revive the fund in the future. The President told CNN that he’d “have to ask the lawyers” about whether its creation was scrapped entirely or just put on hold.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Trump said of the fund, “it was a beautiful thing.”

Bipartisan pushback against the fund

A bipartisan group of 35 former federal judges filed a motion in late May asking a federal judge in Miami to reopen the settlement case and review whether the fund was “a product of collusion and is itself a fraud on the court.” The settlement was not made public until after U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams granted a voluntary dismissal of the case on May 18. On May 29, Williams launched an inquiry after receiving the third-party motion. The same day, a federal judge in Virginia, Leonie Brinkema, paused the creation of the fund.

Pushback against the fund from both Republicans and Democrats grew after Trump officials refused to rule out payments to Jan. 6 rioters who assaulted police officers. Vice President J.D. Vance said last month that the Administration would consider compensating Jan. 6 defendants on a “case-by-case basis.” Blanche had also said during a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing on May 19 that “anybody can apply” for compensation through the fund.

The Trump Administration has taken several steps towards absolving nearly 1,600 people who were criminally charged or convicted in relation to the Capitol attack. On the first day of his second term, Trump granted blanket clemency to nearly all individuals convicted of or charged with offenses related to the insurrection. Last month, the DOJ asked a federal appeals court to vacate seditious conspiracy convictions of the leaders and members of far-right groups, who had their prison sentences commuted by Trump’s move but did not receive full pardons. Also last month, the DOJ removed hundreds of news releases related to the prosecutions from its website.

The White House also published a page on its website describing defendants as “unfairly targeted, overcharged, and used as political examples” and characterizing the attack as a security failure by the Democrats. The page also repeated claims of a “fraud-ridden election,” which have been widely discredited.

The Trump Administration has also repeatedly accused the Biden Administration of “political weaponization” of federal agencies, including the Justice Department. Biden officials have denied the allegations. At the same time, Trump has urged the DOJ to investigate his perceived foes, including former Fed Chair Jerome Powell, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Sen. Adam Schiff (D, Calif.). Those cases either did not result in charges or were dismissed. The DOJ also indicted former FBI Director James Comey in late April over a purported threat to Trump, after an earlier indictment of him was dismissed.

Republican opposition to the fund stalled progress on a $70 billion funding package for immigration enforcement agencies, which Democrats are universally opposed to.

After initially appearing to resist pushback last month, the DOJ said it would comply with the temporary pause on the fund, and reports suggested that the Administration was amenable to discarding the plans.

Still, several Republicans said they needed to hear a clear promise to abandon the fund before they would move forward with the bill. Senate Republican leaders are now pushing for a vote on the bill as soon as Wednesday, sources told CNN.

Protections from I.R.S. audits remains

The settlement also “forever barred” the I.R.S. from auditing past tax returns of Trump, his family members, or their companies. “Nothing has changed” in terms of those protections, Blanche said on Tuesday.

The tax term was scrutinized by Democrats at Tuesday’s hearing.

“What you’re doing on this is that you’ve taken one piece and you said, ‘Okay we have had a ton of backlash on this $1.8 billion slush fund, however, so we’ll not move on that,’ but as part of the settlement, which is this immunity for the President and his family and his business, etc. that stands,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D, Md.) said. “Simply put, you just gave the President and his family a tax immunity to the tune of about $100 million.”

Blanche defended the tax term, which had been included in an addendum to the DOJ’s announcement of the fund and not separately announced.

“It’s standard, it’s typical to get rid of past ongoing audits. It’s not a forward-looking document,” Blanche said. “It’s nothing that gives any sort of immunity in the future to the president or his family or his organizations.”

DeLauro, however, said the term exempted Trump “from any accountability.”

“If the President, his associates, and family members were innocent of whatever they were being investigated for, the investigation would surely bear that out,” she said. “But now we will never know.”

Texas Republicans have nominated a Senate candidate with so many scandals to his name that an incumbent GOP Senator last month said that calling him ethically challenged was like saying serial killer cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer had an eating disorder. The GOP counter? The Democratic nominee is actually worse—a vegan.

As he claimed the Republican nomination last week, state Attorney General Ken Paxton derided Democrat opponent James Talarico as “Tofu Talarico” and “Low-T Talarico”—implying he suffers from low testosterone. A Fox News host recently called Talarico a "gay vegan” and President Donald Trump’s top adviser said Talarico is “clearly transitioning into a female.” 

To set the record straight: Talarico eats meat and has a girlfriend. That isn’t stopping this line of attacks, which make clear that the GOP hopes to make one of the marquee midterm races a referendum on what it means to be a man. 

The strategy is the most obvious example of something bigger going on. In states like Georgia and New Hampshire where Republicans hope to net seats, efforts are underway to make the race more about the personal traits of younger Democratic candidates than policy positions or relevant experiences. It’s a sign that, despite a year and a half of controlling every lever of the federal government, Republicans find themselves struggling to pitch a compelling narrative for continued dominance. The personal attacks suggest they fear a debate on merits is one they will have a tough time winning.

Nowhere is the ham-handed effort more evident than in Texas, where a blend of culture war grievance and incel-targeting rage have circled the sharp-witted but mild-mannered Talarico, whose campaign is shaping up to be a fundraising juggernaut. The race to define Talarico has almost nothing to do with the actual job of representing his state’s 32 million residents in the Senate. Instead, it’s rooted in Republicans’ framing of Paxton’s perceived masculinity—and Talarico’s perceived lack thereof because he was caught supporting a vegan local business and liking vegetarian breakfast tacos. 

Within an hour of capturing an upset of a nomination over incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn, Paxton was doing his best to channel Trump’s name-calling bluster. “Six-Gender Jimmy,” and “James Tala-freak-o” both came from the podium as the state Attorney General with a fat oppo file pivoted to general-election mode. 

Even though a Democrat hasn’t won statewide in Texas in decades, Republicans are still making something of a bet that the smart play is a narrow appeal to the manosphere. These Joe Rogan-types were a crucial voting bloc in Trump’s re-election bid. But it’s a strategy that risks backfiring against a candidate like Talarico, a white cisgendered man who held his own last year on Rogan’s podcast, so much that the host urged him to run for President.

To be sure, Talarico, a seminarian and state lawmaker, has been trying to walk back some of his past comments that have given Paxton and others fodder. Yes, Talarico previously said God is non-binary and that there are, in fact, six genders in terms of chromosomal combinations. Talarico has not softened on his support for transgender rights but has said his other comments were “cringey” in hindsight. 

That has not stemmed some truly ugly rhetoric being hurled. Fox News personality Jesse Watters tried to make a funny when describing Talarico as a "gay vegan.” (Watters later said he was not being serious.) Watters’ co-host also questioned if Talarico was fabricating a girlfriend: “Does she live in Canada?” co-host Greg Gutfeld quipped. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said Talarico is transgender. "He's clearly transitioning into a female," Miller said. "When Talarico goes in for a blood test, when he gets a physical, blood doesn't come out. Soy milk comes out."

Even the President has gotten in on the action. “He’s a vegan in Texas, and you can’t get elected as a vegan in Texas,” Trump told reporters.

Talarico, a steady and disciplined presence on the campaign trail, is responding to the attacks while staying on message. "I've been eating barbecue since before Ken Paxton's first indictment," he said, pointing to Paxton's 2015 indictment on federal securities-fraud charges. Talarico has started selling merchandise with the “Tala-freak-o” branding. And, just for good measure, his campaign confirmed the identity of Talarico’s girlfriend after Texas outlet Current Revolt published her name despite the campaign’s requests of other newsrooms to do the opposite.

That’s not to say Talarico is focused entirely on white papers. It’s just that his critique of Paxton is one rooted in his real record, one that includes felony securities fraud charges and being federally investigated—but never charged—for public corruption. “The most corrupt politician in America just became the Republican nominee for the United States Senate,” Talarico said almost immediately after Paxton prevailed. “For 50 years, megadonors and their puppet politicians like Ken Paxton have stolen from us, with their bribes, bailouts and billionaire tax breaks. Ken Paxton has gotten away with it. They’ve all gotten away with it. But that ends this year, in this state, in this race.”

In his updated standard campaign speech, Talarico distills the argument neatly: “I have a legislative record. Ken Paxton has a criminal record.”

Thus unfolds the next six months of competing pitches to the electorate: Republicans say the Democrat is a cultural mismatch; Democrats say the Republican is corrupt to his core. It may be the most revealing race of the midterms. 

A detention facility in New Jersey has become the latest flashpoint over the Trump Administration’s immigration agenda, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials clashed with protesters denouncing alleged inhumane conditions detainees face inside.

Federal agents fired pepper balls and mace at protesters outside Delaney Hall, a privately-run immigration facility in Newark, on Monday. CBS News reported that ICE agents in riot gear arrived late Monday afternoon to remove protesters blocking the facility entrance. Among those caught in the clashes was Sen. Andy Kim (D, N.J.), who had been trying to defuse the chaos. 

“What we saw here is unfortunately just what we see all over the country,” Kim told local news outlet NJ.com after the incident. “It’s sad, it’s a sad day.”

The Department of Homeland Security said in a post on X late Monday that “rioters” blocked law enforcement from exiting the facility, and federal agents “used the minimum amount of force necessary to protect themselves, the public, and federal property,” adding that the pepper balls did not strike anyone directly.

The clashes at Delaney Hall are an apparent culmination of monthslong accusations about the facility’s subpar conditions from detainees, their relatives, and local officials. But Delaney Hall is just one of many immigration detention centers reportedly operating below standard as significantly more migrants have been detained under President Donald Trump’s Administration. Rights groups have raised concerns over rising deaths in these immigration centers, and politicians have called for increased oversight of how these facilities are being run.

Here’s what to know about the situation in the New Jersey facility. 

Detainees on hunger strike

On Friday, some 300 detainees launched a hunger strike inside Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed facility operated by GEO Group, one of ICE’s biggest contractors for building and managing detention centers. 

According to the New Jersey Monitor, detainees shared with their loved ones outside, via calls and video chats, how they are being mistreated inside Delaney Hall. These include allegedly finding live worms in their meals and crowding in non-air-conditioned rooms. 

The detainees also claimed instances of judges allegedly snubbing their cases, or bonds being denied, to pressure them to self-deport. The strikers are calling for the release of innocent detainees and for immigration judges to attend to their cases.

But the New Jersey Monitor reported that calls from inside were later cut, with one activist telling the news outlet that it was “punishment and retaliation because of the ongoing organizing going on inside.”

The situation in Delaney Hall caught the attention of state and federal Democratic officials, who have panned the alleged mistreatment of detainees and demanded that the facility be shut down.

Sen. Kim and U.S. Rep. Rob Menendez visited the facility on Saturday, and, in several posts on X, Kim outlined what he found inside, including a pregnant woman allegedly denied full OB-GYN support, another who says she had a miscarriage inside the facility, and individuals who were arrested at scheduled interviews for green cards, among others. 

It also invited a larger crowd, with Gothamist estimating that more than 100 people gathered outside the facility at one point.

Gothamist reported that protests escalated outside Delaney Hall’s gates from Sunday afternoon until the early hours of Monday after word spread that ICE had attempted to move a detainee who was a key organizer of the strike.

Gov. Mikie Sherrill, another Democrat, also went to the complex on Monday morning but was denied access, which she said raised “even more questions about what [ICE] are trying to hide from public view.”

DHS refutes claims of subpar conditions

DHS, in a Monday press release, denied allegations of poor conditions inside Delaney Hall and accused New Jersey politicians of “spreading smears” about ICE and the facility.

The department claimed that all detainees are given three meals daily—evaluated by certified dietitians—as well as clean water, clothes, bedding, and toiletries. It also claimed detainees could access phones and communicate with family members and lawyers and that medical, dental, and mental health services, including 24-hour emergency care, are available to those in ICE custody.

“In fact, ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens,” DHS added.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Monday accused New Jersey’s “sanctuary politicians” on social media of staging a “political stunt,” adding that “there is NO hunger strike at Delaney Hall,” and that “there are no subprime conditions.” (Per ICE policy, a detainee observed to have not eaten for 72 hours is considered on a hunger strike and should be referred to medical authorities.)

TIME has reached out to GEO Group for comment on the specific allegations from detainees. A spokesperson told independent news outlet TheCity that they were “proud of the role our company has played for 40 years to support the law enforcement mission” of ICE, highlighting detainees having “around-the-clock access to medical care, in-person and virtual legal and family visitation, general and legal library access, translation services, dietician-approved meals.”

Delaney Hall’s history of issues

The facility in Newark has been a lightning rod of controversy ever since GEO Group announced in February 2025 that it secured a 15-year contract with ICE to reopen the facility and establish a federal immigration processing center there, which GEO Group estimated to be valued at $1 billion. Court documents show that the facility opened in 2000 and that, from 2011 through its closure in 2017, ICE previously housed up to 450 immigration detainees at a time there.

In April 2025, a month before Delaney Hall began accepting new detainees again, the city of Newark sued GEO Group for lacking the proper city permits. At the time, GEO Group accused Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, also a Democrat, of politicizing the issue. A federal judge ordered the city and the operator to try to resolve differences, according to a May 22 report from the Jersey Vindicator.

In May 2025, Baraka was arrested outside the jail and charged with trespassing, though the charge was later dropped. U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver, another New Jersey Democrat, was also charged with assaulting officers when she intervened during Baraka’s arrest. She has denounced the charges.

In June 2025, four detainees escaped from Delaney Hall after dozens of others inside the facility mounted an uprising in apparent revolt against detention conditions. The four were eventually apprehended. 

Before the strike, detainees in the facility penned letters pleading for help from officials and lamenting alleged violations of their rights and lack of due process.

A conservative admirer of U.S. President Donald Trump and a leftist senator will go head-to-head in a run-off election that will decide Colombia’s next president later this month.

Abelardo de la Espriella, a tough-talking lawyer and businessman, took the lead in Colombia’s presidential election on Sunday night, with about 43.7% of the total votes according to results released by the national civil registry, while Iván Cepeda, a seasoned politician from the Pacto Histórico party led by incumbent President Gustavo Petro, followed with 40.9%. 

But with neither securing an outright majority, the two are headed for what’s expected to be a highly polarized second round of voting on June 21, which may determine Colombia’s direction and the future of its relationships with other countries, including the U.S.

Petro, however, has cast doubt on the results of the first round of voting, alleging in a social media post that the preliminary vote-counting software added 800,000 voters who do not exist. Petro said that the only results that he would “heed and accept” are those that come out of the official scrutiny process—a dayslong process wherein Colombian commissions of judges, notaries, and other delegates review election records.

Cepeda similarly challenged Sunday’s vote results. “Only when the vote-counting commissions have fully clarified what happened will we comment on tonight’s results,” Cepeda said.

The elections are expected to be a referendum on Petro, Colombia’s first leftist President, as progressive leaders in Latin America increasingly face pressure—not only from their respective constituents, but also from the Trump Administration—to focus more on curbing gang violence and ramping up domestic security. 

Here’s what to know.

Who is Abelardo de la Espriella?

De la Espriella, 47, who refers to himself as “The Tiger,” is a political novice running as an independent under a movement called Defensores de la Patria (Defenders of the Homeland) and positions himself as an anti-establishment conservative.

He has publicly spoken in favor of the Administrations of Donald Trump in the U.S., Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, and Javier Milei in Argentina. Milei congratulated de la Espriella on social media for his first-round victory, adding that if the second round yields the same results, Colombia will “rejoin the concert of Free Nations.”

De la Espriella rejects gender ideology and has been previously slammed for actions deemed homophobic. On abortion, de la Espriella said he was “pro-life”. On firearms, he has expressed support for the legalization of civilians carrying them.

Like Trump, de la Espriella has spoken against multilateral institutions like the United Nations and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and he said he would withdraw Colombia from organizations that “have served no purpose.” 

Like El Salvador’s Bukele, de la Espriella presents himself as tough on crime, countering Petro’s “total peace” approach of attempting dialogue with armed rebels to end violence in the country. De la Espriella promised to “fight with an iron fist the criminals, the corrupt, the unpunished criminals and anyone who intends to continue threatening the existence of Colombia.” Also mirroring Bukele’s approach, de la Espriella has proposed the construction of 10 megaprisons.

The prisons are just one part of de la Espriella’s larger plans for Colombia’s security: in his campaign manifesto, he said he plans to launch a nationwide military offensive to enforce better state control in 90 days, and he pledged to strengthen the country’s armed forces through drones and artificial intelligence. He also plans to counter drug-trafficking by eliminating 330,000 hectares of coca farms—by any means necessary.

But de la Espriella’s opponents question his commitment to cracking down on crime, after he represented several controversial figures in Colombia. He was the former lawyer of David Murcia Guzmán, who masterminded a giant pyramid scheme in the country, and of Alex Saab, a close business associate of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro who was deported to the U.S. last month and indicted for money laundering. De la Espriella also represented some high-profile victims, including Natalia Ponce de León, who was the target of an acid attack in 2014, and Rosa Elvira Cely, whose murder in 2012 generated national outrage and led to the creation of Colombia’s femicide laws.

The lawyer, who is married and has four children, denied that he is far-right. Speaking to Agence France-Presse in February, de la Espriella said it was “absurd” to describe him as such despite his links to right-wing figures and conservative rhetoric. "Someone who is far right does not believe in democracy or in the separation of powers," he said, adding that he will respect Colombia’s constitution. “I’m a democrat.”

Who is Iván Cepeda?

If de la Espriella promises radical change in Colombia, Cepeda, 63, offers continuity. Cepeda, a Bogotá native, is a political veteran who led in opinion polling before the Sunday elections. 

Cepeda owes some of his popularity not only to Petro but also to his father Manuel Cepeda, a former Unión Patriótica senator and member of Colombia’s Communist Party who was assassinated by paramilitaries in 1994. The younger Cepeda then rallied for human rights and investigations into state and paramilitary violence. He established groups that intended to seek justice for victims of state-sponsored killings, but amid threats to his life, he went into self-exile overseas for a few years. 

In 2010, back in Colombia, he entered politics by winning an election to be a congressman and later won a Senate seat in 2014. As senator, Cepeda exposed former President Álvaro Uribe's alleged ties to paramilitary groups. Uribe sued Cepeda for allegedly manipulating witnesses, but the Supreme Court cleared Cepeda of wrongdoing. Uribe was himself later charged and convicted of bribing witnesses in the same case, though the conviction was overturned months later.

In line with Petro’s progressive agenda, Cepeda has vowed to continue peace pact negotiations. Cepeda is often described as one of the architects of Petro’s “total peace” strategy, and he was also involved in talks that led to a 2016 deal between the Colombian government and the now-defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group, which demobilized thousands of rebel fighters. But critics, including the Nobel Peace Prize-winning former President Juan Manuel Santos, have called Petro’s “total peace” strategy a “failure” for its poor implementation that eventually paved the way for the proliferation of armed rebels in other parts of Colombia.

Compared to his political opponent de la Espriella, Cepeda espouses a human-centric approach to drugs in Colombia. He rejects widespread herbicide spraying as a means to cut the supply of drug crops, opting for farmers to agree to replace them with legal alternatives, with government assistance. According to El Espectador, Cepeda has explained that most farmers plant coca crops not out of choice but due to a lack of available resources.

Cepeda has pledged to implement "social capitalism" as President, including expanding income support and social benefits for marginalized groups. He has also promised ​an “agrarian revolution”—to expand rural land reform ⁠efforts by handing 1 million ha. to those who have lost land amid clashes between government forces, paramilitaries, and rebels. 

What are the implications for U.S.-Colombia ties?

Both de la Espriella and Cepeda want to improve diplomatic ties with the U.S., but being on opposite sides of the political spectrum means their approaches are vastly different. The two countries are longstanding security allies, but Trump has criticized Colombia under Petro for supposedly failing to stem the supply of cocaine and has even mused about a possible military intervention similar to that in Venezuela.

Like Petro, Cepeda has publicly criticized the U.S.’s exertions of influence in Colombian affairs. “We’re open to having a constructive relationship with the U.S. government, but they can’t treat us like their lackeys, like slaves, like a colony,” Cepeda said in a speech last October. Cepeda said in early May that while he hopes Colombia has a “cordial” relationship with the U.S., it is not a “vassal state.”

If de la Espriella wins in the second round, he’s expected to bring the country ideologically closer to the U.S., in line with Trump’s push to influence affairs within Latin America. Recent elections in the region show a rightward shift, including in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru.

Speaking to Agencia EFE in March, de la Espriella said that he admires Trump’s “cultural battle against wokism, against globalism,” and that, should he win, he will fortify “the military alliance with the United States and with the State of Israel,”after Petro broke off diplomatic relations with Israel in 2024 because of the war in the Gaza Strip.

President Donald Trump has a type, at least when it comes to political candidates. They tend to be brash, razor-tongued mold-breakers, hardliners who want to own the libs, political newcomers unhindered by norms or niceties.

Then there’s Steve Hilton, a Republican who has a shot at being California’s next Governor. Hilton’s resumé reads like the opposite of what you’d expect for the next leader of a state that backed Kamala Harris over Trump by 20 points. A British-born dual U.S.-U.K. citizen since 2021, Hilton was once a member of Margaret Thatcher’s political machine and a senior adviser to British Prime Minister David Cameron’s coalition government before becoming a Fox News personality. In most other blue states, Trump’s endorsement would be the kiss of death. But under California’s jungle primary system, the top two vote-getters get to face each other in a head-to-head contest in November, regardless of party. If the latest polls bear out, Hilton is well-positioned to advance.

On a half-hour call with me this week, Hilton explained how he sees his competitiveness in the race as one of many signs that Californians are rejecting the hold-the-line liberalism that has defined California politics for a generation.

“We've had 16 years of one-party rule, and the results are in. And it's a massive disappointment on every front,” Hilton says. “People are sensing that there's an energy for change this year. You can feel it in the energy around Spencer Pratt's campaign [for Mayor] in L.A. You can feel it around the response that we're getting up and down the state.”

Helping Hilton be seen as more than just another Trump loyalist is a campaign approach emphasizing measured promises to make life easier at the granular level and pledges to work with the state’s Democratic majority. That’s all helped Hilton remain in the pretty settled first tier of candidates, alongside Democratic Attorney General Xavier Becerra and billionaire activist Tom Steyer. It breaks with Trump’s push for pushy disruptors—and is ringing true with voters who think the Democratic stranglehold of the nation’s biggest economic driver needs a reset.

So far, liberally aligned candidates like Becerra and Steyer have been fighting each other more—and splitting the Democratic vote in the process—rather than bothering with Hilton. That would change in a head-to-head-matchup when the issues where Hilton is closer to Trump’s position would move to center stage. A year after ICE raids in Los Angeles sparked mass protests and Trump deployed National Guard soldiers to the city, Hilton says he would work to have California work better with Trump on immigration. A challenge to the state’s sanctuary spaces law, passed in 2017, is underway, but Hilton says “I can’t just delete that” on his own. Instead, he wants to use provisions in the law—criticized by liberals at the time—that allow narrow collaboration with the feds. “We’ve got to lower the temperature. I think that we’ve had far too much confrontation. It’s unnecessary,” he says. “No one wants to see anything like what happened in L.A. last summer or, let alone, Minneapolis.” 

‘The Fix is Pretty Straightforward’

It’s been quite the unexpected slog through a field of candidates so numerous that all of their names don’t even fit on a single page of the ballot. Democrats in California have held the governor's mansion, state House, and state Senate for almost two decades and unrest about that trifecta out West is real. The traditional political alliances are frayed, at best, with socialists backing a billionaire and Trump supporting an immigrant. A sex scandal tanked the hopes of a leading candidate, Rep. Eric Swalwell, and Trump’s endorsement of Hilton all but sidelined tough-on-crime Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco. It’s why Hilton, who moved to California in 2012, is in the mix in a race that is set to test assumptions about party loyalty, candidate partisanship, and money’s power. And it carries massive consequences about who will be the de facto CEO of the fourth-largest economy on the planet, between Germany and Japan, and a major player on the national political stage. This is not some backwater local election.

“It's just very obvious that it hasn't worked, this experiment in progressive governance where Democrats have had total control, able to do everything that they want. They've had two-third majorities in both chambers in the Legislature, all the statewide offices, all of the big cities, in the counties. The state Supreme Court has a 6-to-1 Democratic majority. This incredibly powerful Democrat machine that's been able to do exactly what it wants, and the results are really bad.”

Hilton, 56, has a point that is reflected in the data. In a Public Policy Institute of California survey earlier this year, most Californians reported an unflattering view of the state: 54% think that things in California are generally going in the wrong direction and 69% think that the state will have bad times financially in the next year. It’s grounded in some hard truths that Hilton has been serving in his well-polished interviews. 

“It’s not just the visible things that you can see and anyone across the country can: the homelessness and the squalor of the big cities and smash-and-grab videos of crime rampant and all those things. But actually just the basics of life,” Hilton says. When I ask him about the solution, he says, his north star would be practicality: What can work and how quickly? 

“The fix is pretty straightforward: stop doing stupid things and just lift this massive burden that everyone is laboring under in California, this bloated nanny-state bureaucracy.”

It’s a line that others—including Democrats—have used in their campaigns. Hilton is definitely tapping into an anti-Establishment mood, one California Gov. Gavin Newsom might want to note as he plots his all-but-certain 2028 presidential campaign. Hilton’s populism is grounded in an argument less about feelings than about objective fact. “There's a certain place for righteous rage. It's institutions that're letting people down, but you can do it with a smile on your face,” he tells me.

Working With the California Legislature

But even if elected, Hilton will inherit a Democratic Sacramento unlikely to back most of his campaign promises. With the exception of two blips, Democrats have held the Legislature there since 1958. But the Governor controls the cogs of government through thousands of appointments to boards and commissions. In his own way, Hilton is plotting how to out-maneuver the so-called Deep State at the agency level.

Hilton is clearly a planner and player, stemming from his days as a top aide in the United Kingdom’s first coalition government running Number 10 since 1945—working with the Liberal Democrats. He even shared an office next to the Cabinet Room with his counterpart who advised coalition partner deputy PM Nick Clegg. It’s a skill that has more than a few Democrats in California paying attention to a technocratic pitch from the former London restauranteur. 

So what does Hilton promise? No more state income tax for the first $100,000 of income, gas down to $3 a gallon, electric bills cut by half, small-business taxes reduced. He plans to achieve much of that through slashing the state’s nation-leading efforts on climate change and consolidating bureaucracy with an aggressive eye on downsizing. He even has branding for his platform: “Californable.”

The accountants, though, will have their issues. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s last budget, in 2010, was $122 billion. Newsom’s most recent budget? $349 billion. Hilton’s plan would dramatically change this math.

“There’s nowhere better than California, but we’ve just been really badly governed,” Hilton says.

And when the California Legislature says not-so-much? Hilton knows he can’t override them lawmakers. But he wants to make them prove they actually think the vote is worth defending. In fact, Hilton is envisioning vetoes putting lawmakers on record; the last time a session in Sacramento overrode a veto was in 1979.

“At the very least,” Hilton tells me, “I can slow it all down and stop the problem [from] getting worse.”

That slight tweak—far from the grandiose promise of political revolution—might find power in the voters’ verdict. It’s one that echoes the grumblings in Washington after Trump’s win in 2024. “The election of a Republican Governor will change the dynamic,” he says. “People voted for change. My platform was very clear, very specific. … These are not controversial things. You could disagree about the means of getting there. I’m sure we will.”

First, though, he has to get past Tuesday’s first round of voting.

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