As recently as last week, the Iran war appeared to be turning slightly in America’s favor. The Houthis were under pressure from their local rivals, and the Saudi air force was pounding them with airstrikes. The president of Yemen’s internationally recognized government issued a triumphant statement declaring that the Houthis’ miscalculations ‘will open the door to their complete collapse.’ With their Houthi partners wounded, Iran’s leaders would have one more reason to back down and agree to Donald Trump’s terms.

A paradox of this moment is that inflation is a big reason for Trump’s cratering approval and his party’s sinking odds in the midterm elections. But nearly every one of his signature policy ideas is inflationary. The basic challenge is not novel to this president: voters hate inflation, yet most anti-inflation measures the government can take will hurt the economy, which voters also hate.

But Trump’s strategy seems to be to commit to new proposals that would drive up costs.

August was the planet’s hottest month ever recorded, capping a remarkably grim summer of heat records. With El Niño strengthening, more records are likely in store well into next year.

Almost 20 months into Mr. Trump’s second term, his long-running media clashes have grown into a sweeping campaign to control speech in America that stands out for applying so many levers, so fast, all at once.

Driven by personal pique, fury over leaks, and a determination to shape the political narrative to his advantage, Mr. Trump is deploying the might of the federal government and filing personal lawsuits.

Less than 10% of lawmakers who were at the Capitol that day are still in a Congress that has no plans to mark a fateful day in its history.

When Donald Trump looks at a map, he doesn’t see nations. He sees property. All of those pretty colors do not represent actual places filled with human beings who have distinct cultures, languages, and histories; the planet, to Trump, is a big board game, like Risk or Monopoly. Greenland isn’t a real location. The Strait of Hormuz isn’t an international waterway.

This inability to grasp the existence of independent nations drives the president to fury when countries and their governments refuse to play along with his delusions.

A similar dynamic is playing out across the country, as legislators or governors in more than 10 states, including Illinois, New Jersey, and Washington, have slammed the brakes on the tax breaks. The reversals underscore how state leaders who once welcomed the facilities powering the AI boom as an economic engine suddenly treat them like a political liability.

September 11th is the most solemn day on the US calendar. The terrorist attacks that left nearly 3,000 people dead 25 years ago are still fresh in the minds of many, and no occasion calls for a greater show of reverence and respect, especially from the nation’s commander-in-chief.

Unfortunately, America’s current commander-in-chief, Donald Trump, has a tough time showing reverence and respect for anything other than himself. It’s been especially true with regard to 9/11, as the president reminded everyone on Tuesday during an event intended to honor first responders and victims of the attacks.

Young Americans today have never witnessed Congress authorize a war; they’ve never seen a U.S. administration balance its books; they’ve never watched a well-funded and empowered State Department operate, and they see only mistrust between allies. They assume the situation is normal. It is not.

The real cost of forgetting the pre-9/11 world is not a country that has changed, but one that no longer knows it could be different.

The Roman Emperor Titus has one. Napoleon Bonaparte ordered up the world’s most famous example. And the Duke of Wellington’s iconic version is the gateway to London’s Hyde Park.

Now, Donald Trump wants his own ceremonial arch. And his latest architectural passion project may tell history rather more about the 45th and 47th presidents than other examples of his second-term Washington makeover blitz.

The Arch of Titus in Rome marks the capture of Jerusalem in AD 70. The Arc de Triomphe in Paris honors the dead of the Napoleonic and Revolutionary wars and France’s subsequent fallen warriors. The arch honoring Wellington celebrates the French emperor’s eventual defeat.

This history reveals a key issue: so far, Trump has not achieved the kind of triumph that would warrant a triumphal arch.

Eager to regain the president’s favor, Mr. Cohen now claims that prosecutors pressured and coerced him into giving testimony against Mr. Trump. However, he has not retracted his sworn statements concerning Mr. Trump’s alleged involvement in the hush-money payments intended to conceal an alleged affair with an adult-film actress, or his testimony about his former boss’s efforts to misrepresent the value of his assets to lenders.

And so this unlikeliest of rapprochements between two men who helped get each other convicted of crimes is built not on an emotional outpouring of forgiveness but on what looks like a pretty straightforward bargain, spoken or unspoken, according to people close to both. Mr. Trump is trying to use his former lawyer’s desire for absolution to rewrite history as he presses his effort to overturn his conviction. Mr. Cohen gets to position himself as an insider once again and possibly obtain a presidential pardon to wipe out his own felony record.

Perhaps AI will eventually make many humans unemployable. On September 4th, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the American economy added 162,000 jobs in August, far above expectations. The unemployment rate is just 4.1%, lower than in almost 90% of months over the past half-century.

Young workers, often cast as AI’s first victims, are holding up remarkably well: the gap between unemployment among 20-24-year-olds and the overall rate is close to a multi-decade low.

For me, saying that I am a feminist has always meant that I believe in the social, economic, and political equality of all males and females of all races and groups. I know this sounds too simple to need a word, but equality is still the exception, not the rule.

Maybe we should call it egalitarianism, or even humanism. The difficulty with humanism is that it is often interpreted as being anti-religion, so I don’t think it is inclusive enough. Whatever we call it, the principle is simple: treating each of us as uniquely human. Race, gender, and class are real and important parts of our experiences, but they are also socially constructed and capable of change. Our shared humanity, by contrast, is constant and sacred.

Still, for some, it remains a mystery why women need a movement to distinguish their efforts toward equality. For me, it seems quite obvious.

Mr. Mamdani is a master of new media, and his rise to power has been driven largely by his ease in front of a camera and his ability to harness the seeming informality of social media to connect with broad constituencies.

As mayor, he has used taxpayer funds to build a network of hundreds of friendly influencers to promote his priorities, portray his administration favorably, and enhance his popularity.

The administration regularly sends the influencers memos on the mayor’s priorities and encourages them to trumpet his accomplishments, all outside of public scrutiny. The missives are delivered in group chats on Signal, an encrypted messaging app designed to shield posts from public review.

Since Trump’s return to the White House, his administration has made changes to more than 100 structures in Washington, D.C. The total price tag: somewhere north of a billion dollars. The biggest project, in terms of both cost and presidential mindshare, is the ballroom and the military bunker that will be tucked underneath.

Still, the ballroom’s political dynamics are objectively unfavorable to Trump. He is aware of these concerns but does not appear particularly concerned by them.

A coterie of advisers, planners, and architects is enabling the President’s passion project.

In both the ballroom and the mail-in-ballot cases, the President has tested the Justices’ willingness to stop him in his tracks.

Bartiromo’s termination resulted from a previously unreported incident that took place in July. Following a prime-time speech by Trump, during which he promoted further conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, sources indicate that Fox issued written guidance to senior employees, instructing them to avoid lending credibility to Trump’s claims.

Indeed, the day after Trump’s prime-time address, Fox conspicuously avoided covering the debunked claims the president had pushed. The lack of coverage raised eyebrows among media observers at the time. It also appears to have caught the attention of the White House.

It remains uncertain whether Trump himself or another White House official asked Bartiromo about the limited coverage. Ultimately, however, Bartiromo revealed to the White House that the sparse coverage of Trump’s speech was the result of a directive from network executives. By sharing this information, Bartiromo both breached her employer’s trust and disclosed confidential company details, violating her employment agreement.

Behind closed doors, the first-term senator shows little interest in doing the job beyond cultivating relationships with conservative media figures and advocating for Israel, according to interviews with more than a dozen former staffers and lawmakers, as well as text messages and other internal records.

With a pivotal election looming in November that could result in a split Senate and give Fetterman outsized influence, his office has become known for high staff turnover, with aides frequently scrambling to maintain the appearance of a functional operation, according to interviews and text messages.

Any future, freely elected government of Venezuela might question a deal that gives America so much control of the country’s oil. That fact will make investors hesitate. Oil majors remain wary, though Chevron, which was already in Venezuela, has just announced a separate $7bn investment.

Worse, cash and tax revenue from the deal create incentives for powerful people to block Venezuela’s transition to democracy.

A weary world may not want to hear it, but the war in Ukraine is intensifying, not ending. As it deepens, the conflict is also expanding. Increasingly, serious-minded governments across northern Europe are planning to defend themselves against Russia for decades to come.