NEW YORK — President Donald Trump on Monday asked a New York appeals court to overturn his criminal conviction in the Manhattan hush money case that made him a felon as he plotted a path back to the White House last year. In a 96-page filing, Trump’s lawyers relied on many of the same arguments that Trump previously made before, during and immediately following the 2024 trial, including that the conviction should be thrown out in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity and that the judge who oversaw the trial should have recused himself because he made political contributions. “This case should never have seen the inside of a courtroom, let alone resulted in a conviction,” his lawyers, a six-person team of Sullivan & Cromwell attorneys, wrote. The appeal is just one of Trump’s attempts to overturn his conviction last May of 34 counts of business fraud for his effort to conceal a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. He has separately asked a federal appeals court to transfer his state criminal case to federal court. Such a move would pave the way for Trump to eventually ask the Supreme Court to erase his criminal record by tossing his conviction on presidential immunity grounds. Though Trump has suffered few consequences as a result of the conviction — he won reelection in November and was subsequently sentenced to no punishment in January — he’ll still carry the title of felon unless an appellate court overturns the case. Trump’s lawyers argued in the filing Monday that the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity, issued more than a month after a New York jury convicted Trump in the hush money case, meant prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office should have been precluded from using evidence connected to Trump’s “official acts” as president during his first term. That evidence, his lawyers wrote, included testimony about conversations between Trump and Hope Hicks, who was then the White House communications director, as well as Trump’s social media posts. Late last year, the trial judge, Justice Juan Merchan, rejected the notion that the immunity ruling applied to the evidence used in the case, finding that evidence at issue related not to Trump’s official acts, but instead to his private conduct — specifically, his effort to conceal a hush money payment to Daniels. Trump’s lawyers also took aim at Merchan himself, as they did numerous times during the course of the prosecution, writing that “his impartiality was reasonably in doubt” because of small-dollar political contributions he made to Democratic candidates or causes in 2020. They also cited his daughter’s work for a digital agency whose clients include a number of Democratic officials. When Trump’s lawyers made the same arguments in 2023, asking Merchan to recuse himself, the judge disclosed that he had sought guidance earlier that year from the New York State Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics about several issues Trump subsequently raised. The judge said the committee had issued an advisory opinion regarding his daughter’s employment that concluded: “We see nothing in the inquiry to suggest that the outcome of the case could have any effect on the judge’s relative, the relative’s business, or any of their interests.”

The State Department rebuffed a recent ruling from the International Court of Justice on Wednesday, defending Israel on a court opinion that found the Israeli government is obligated to facilitate a stream of aid to Gaza. The ICJ ruling — issued earlier Wednesday — asserted Israel has an obligation under human rights law to allow essential aid to reach Gaza in collaboration with United Nations agencies. In a post on X shortly after, the State Department slammed the decision as “corrupt,” defending both Israel’s and the Trump administration’s actions in the region while also reiterating long-held allegations tying the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees to Hamas. “As President Trump and Secretary Rubio work tirelessly to bring peace to the region, this so-called ‘court’ issues a nakedly politicized non-binding ‘advisory opinion’ unfairly bashes Israel and gives UNRWA a free pass for its deep entanglement with and material support for Hamas terrorism,” the State Department wrote in a statement. “This ICJ’s ongoing abuse of its advisory opinion discretion suggests that it is nothing more than a partisan political tool, which can be weaponized against Americans,” the agency continued. The Trump administration has looked to sever ties with UNRWA due to claims that some of its members were involved in the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks against Israel. The ICJ found Wednesday that Israel “has not substantiated its allegations that a significant part of UNRWA employees ‘are members of Hamas … or other terrorist factions.’” In Wednesday’s ruling, the court said the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services had investigated 18 UNRWA staff members, with the cooperation of Israel, and dismissed nine members who “might have been involved” in the attack. The court said investigators “found either no or insufficient evidence to support the involvement of the other ten investigated persons.” The court also demanded Israel “co-operate in good faith” with the United Nations by providing assistance to the region. “The State of Israel has an obligation under international human rights law to respect, protect and fulfill the human rights of the population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including through the presence and activities of the United Nations, other international organizations and third States, in and in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” the court wrote. The court’s advisory opinion outlines other obligations Israel must adhere to as the country continues to take steps toward ending the war, like protecting access to medical services, prohibiting forcible deportations from the region and prohibiting the use of starvation of civilians as “a method of warfare.”

Last week, as the leaders of other Western nations used their trips to the United Nations to announce recognition of a Palestinian state, President Donald Trump was able to do little but watch disapprovingly. But now that a question about Israel is coming to the fore in a very different international organization, Trump finds himself with potentially much more power. Next week, the executive committee of soccer’s European governing body UEFA could vote to suspend Israel from the continental federation where its teams have competed internationally since the 1990s. Dozens of UEFA members have encouraged the organization to reconsider Israel’s standing, which could begin a process of effectively banishing the country entirely from international soccer, much as UEFA and its global analogue FIFA did in 2022 with Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. Trump, who has proposed undoing the Russian ban as part of a potential resolution to its war with Ukraine, now may be the only world leader with the influence to keep Israel from the same fate. It is an unanticipated source of influence for Trump in his second term, derived entirely from the United States’ temporary position as the primary host of next summer’s World Cup. “We will absolutely work to fully stop any effort to attempt to ban Israel’s national soccer team from the World Cup,” a State Department spokesperson told POLITICO. Trump has dangled the ability to compete as a possible reward for Russia to end its war in Ukraine and is expected to enforce his antagonistic posture toward Iran by blocking the country’s fans from traveling into the U.S. to cheer on their team. Some prominent Brazilians fear his administration will limit visas to spectators or government officials from their nation, too, as a way of gaining an upper hand in trade negotiations. “We know soccer is so important to so many countries all around the world,” White House FIFA World Cup Taskforce head Andrew Giuliani told POLITICO last month. “The president knows that better than anybody, and I think he’s willing to utilize whatever he has to to actually create peace around the world.” SWITCH OF PLAY When FIFA awarded the United States co-hosting duties for the 2026 tournament, Trump celebrated it as personal affirmation. “I fought very hard to get it in the U.S., Mexico and Canada,” he said in June 2018. “We are very honored to be chosen.” But Trump did not expect to be in office when the tournament took place in the summer of 2026. Now that it is months away, Trump is finding that being at the center of the world’s preeminent sporting event — and the practical and symbolic power that accompanies it — provides him a new, unexpected tool to use to advance American interests. Trump has grasped for leverage in international negotiations wherever he can find it, often mixing issues traditional diplomats would keep at a distance. He threatened to impose tariffs on French wine unless the country cut its tax on digital services, and on all imports from Mexico if it did not curb outbound migration. He floated intervening in the prosecution of a Huawei executive to help secure a trade deal with China. Trump expressed a willingness to mix sports and diplomacy in May, when he learned during the inaugural meeting of his White House task force that Russia was forbidden from participating in the tournament. The country had been under a joint ban from FIFA and UEFA, dating from the early days of the Ukraine invasion in February 2022, which excluded Russian teams from all international competition. (Those policies have since been relaxed to permit youth teams to compete under certain conditions.) Trump suggested that allowing Russia to compete again “could be a good incentive” for the country to end the war, a top diplomatic priority that continues to elude and frustrate Trump. “We want to get them to stop,” said Trump, sitting next to FIFA President Gianni Infantino. “Five thousand young people a week are being killed. That’s not even believable.” During another White House visit by Infantino three months later, Trump again invoked Vladimir Putin, this time brandishing a photograph of the two men together in an attempt to spur Russia’s president to resume negotiations over a possible truce. “He’s been very respectful of me and of our country, but not so respectful of others,” Trump said in the Oval Office, with the World Cup trophy at his side. “He may be coming and he might not, depending on what happens. We have a lot of things coming in the next couple of weeks!” A senior White House official granted anonymity to discuss Trump’s thinking on the World Cup said that the president’s priority is to showcase American ingenuity, spotlight domestic infrastructure and highlight the economic impact of his policies on the country’s cities — not to use tournament plans as leverage in other negotiations. But if they yield progress toward ending wars as a byproduct, the official said, Trump would happily accept it. James Talarico on immigration, his faith, and how Democrats are getting it wrong Much of Trump’s new influence comes from his close personal rapport with Infantino, who has spent significant time ingratiating himself with American political figures and raising his public profile. He has met with Trump at least a dozen times and traveled the country on a campaign-style tour of host cities for the World Cup and this year’s Club World Cup. Now the State Department may be counting on that relationship, as the Trump administration tries to aid an ally losing support from other Western countries from also losing its position on the soccer field. THE WANDERING TEAM Since Israel’s founding in 1948, the country has struggled to find a permanent home in the governing structure of international soccer. Unlike most national teams, which fight for World Cup places against other teams on their continent, Israel is functionally unable to play against its neighbors due to an Arab League boycott in place since the country’s 1948 founding. (Israel won its sole major international trophy, the 1964 Asian Cup, only after 11 of the 15 other competitors withdrew.) After a brief period competing as a far-flung outlier in the Oceania Football Confederation, Israel joined the Union of European Football Associations in 1991. Instead of traveling to Beirut or Kuala Lumpur for foreign matches, Israeli players are now more likely to end up in Dublin or Athens. That has subjected Israel to new political pressures since the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, and its military response. Then, citing security concerns, UEFA decided to indefinitely relocate all international matches from Israel, forcing the country’s teams to play in neutral locations overseas. The country has played its home matches for World Cup qualifying in Hungary. The situation has grown even more complicated as European public opinion has turned aggressively against Israel amid its siege of Gaza. Many European clubs no longer want to host Israeli squads in continent-wide tournaments. When the Israeli national team has traveled to play qualifying matches in other countries, some national governments have imposed travel restrictions on players, while others limited stadium attendance due to security concerns. The national team, which remains in contention to reach next year’s World Cup, now faces two crucial matches next month in countries whose soccer leadership have been critical of its actions in Gaza. Italy’s federation president has said “there is nobody who could be indifferent to this feeling of suffering and pain,” while the Norwegian Football Federation announced in August that it would donate proceeds from the match to organizations delivering aid in Gaza. “Neither we nor other organizations can remain indifferent to the humanitarian suffering and disproportionate attacks that the civilian population in Gaza has been subjected to for a long time,” federation president Lise Klaveness said then. Well over half of UEFA’s 55 member associations have called on its leadership to take action against Israel, a high-ranking UEFA official told POLITICO, prompting ongoing discussions within soccer’s governing body about how to deal with Israeli clubs and the national team. UEFA’s executive committee could vote to suspend Israeli club teams from European club tournaments. Maccabi Tel Aviv saw its Europa League match last week in Thessaloniki, Greece, met with protesters carrying a banner that said GENOCIDE. UEFA officials, granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, justified the discussions to boot Israel from continental competitions by citing security concerns. “We are responsible for the safety of fans and players in the stadiums,” one representative said, noting that match organizers “fear fatalities.” A UEFA decision to suspend Israeli club teams could provoke a similar campaign forcing FIFA to reconsider the place of the country’s national team in World Cup qualifying. A State Department statement said the U.S. government would work to block any “attempt to ban Israel’s national soccer team from the World Cup,” but it did not address European club competitions under UEFA’s purview. If the United States were not hosting next year’s tournament, it would be just one of 208 member nations in FIFA — a weaker position than it has in the United Nations, where at least the U.S. can wield a security-council veto to relieve pressure on Israel. (It did so again this month to block a draft resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.) But Infantino is highly motivated to keep Trump happy as a way to ensure preparations for next summer’s tournament proceed with full federal support. It is unclear whether Trump has personally appealed on Israel’s behalf to Infantino, who has asked UEFA’s President Aleksander Čeferin to approach the matter with patience, according to a European soccer official, citing the possibility that a peace deal between Israel and Hamas could moot the question. “It’s looking like we have a deal on Gaza, and we’ll let you know. I think it’s a deal that will get the hostages back. It’s going to be a deal that will end the war,” Trump told reporters before departing the White House on Friday. EVERYWHERE YOU WANT TO BE Trump’s willingness to commingle the World Cup with his other diplomatic challenges is winning attention worldwide from those who think he could wield the easiest power at his disposal — to control who enters the United States during the five-week tournament — as a cudgel. That power was on display around last week’s United Nations General Assembly, when Trump’s administration used it to punish representatives of countries vexing his foreign-policy agenda, several of which have qualified for a place in the World Cup. A visa issued to Brazilian Health Minister Alexandre Padilha circumscribed his movements to the U.N. headquarters and a few blocks around his hotel, while Iranian diplomats were barred from shopping at Costco and Sam’s Club without State Department permission. On Friday, the State Department announced it was revoking the visa of Colombian President Gustavo Petro after he spoke at a pro-Palestinian gathering while in New York. Iran is among the 12 countries whose citizens face a total travel ban under an executive order Trump signed in June. Two others, Equatorial Guinea and Haiti, could still qualify for the World Cup. (The ban also partially restricts travel from another seven countries, none of which are still in contention for a tournament spot.) Under the order, Iranian fans will be barred from the United States next summer, despite historical precedent in which World Cup hosts allow ticketholders free border entry. “You’ll have an issue with [visas for] Iran,” Giuliani told POLITICO. Although the travel ban includes an exemption for athletes, coaches and essential personnel participating in “major sporting events,” including the World Cup, that carveout does not extend to fans. American authorities will still have to approve visas for heads of state, business leaders and other prominent officials hoping to cheer on their teams. “There are other conversations [about Iran] that are teed up for the president and Secretary Kristi Noem and Vice President [JD] Vance, which we’ll be discussing here in the fall,” Giuliani said, in an interview at the Department of Homeland Security’s headquarters. Brazilian officials worry that the administration could weaponize World Cup visas for the country’s sports fans, part of a spiraling conflict with its origins in a prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro and the aggressive enforcement by the country’s election regulator against online political speech. CNN reported in July that Trump is actively considering blocking visas for Brazilian fans. Since then, the State Department has imposed visa restrictions on Brazilian judicial officials and their families and Trump has imposed a 50 percent tariff rate as payback for what he characterizes as a “witch hunt” of Bolsonaro. A Brazilian government official cautioned that it was unlikely that American consular officials would deny visas en masse for Brazilian nationals wanting to attend the World Cup and noted that Brazilians already encounter lengthy delays in obtaining visas to enter the United States. But the Trump administration has already demonstrated a willingness to interfere with international sporting events in the service of its diplomatic aims. Iran’s men’s team was denied visas to compete in next month’s FIP Arena Polo World Championship in Virginia, reported the Tehran Times this week, much as a Venezuelan Little League team and Cuban women’s volleyball team were earlier in the year. Those events foreshadow the higher-stakes flashpoints that could arise as the list of 48 countries that will send teams to the World Cup is finalized this fall. Among those that have already secured a place are some where Trump might be looking for any possible geopolitical edge. The U.S. is still trying to wrangle a new trade deal with South Korea, for example, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said the United States “stands ready to do what is needed” as it works to boost Argentina’s President Javier Milei’s fortunes ahead of an Oct. 26 election. “Many times, it’s sports diplomacy that creates opportunities for foreign leaders who might not see other things eye to eye, to actually sit down,” Giuliani said. “By the time the World Cup kicks off next June, hopefully we have some of these foreign wars solved.”

BIRMINGHAM — It had suits, wonks, outriders, sponsors, lobbyists, receptions, and a rapidly-growing party flock. But Reform UK’s conference remained in many ways the Nigel Farage show. From the scrum around the populist leader to the teal “No. 10” football shirts in his name, Farage — a 30-year veteran of right-wing insurgency — dominated. He filled most of the hall at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre for his Friday speech, despite a last-minute timing change. Much of Reform’s runaway lead in U.K. opinion polls is down to one man’s charisma. “It’s like going on tour with the Pope,” said one party figure, granted anonymity (like other officials and politicians quoted in this piece) to speak candidly. But to survive in government, Reform will need more. And Farage, who turns 65 in 2029, knows it. He and his allies are now conspicuously trying to emphasize that Reform is not just about him. Attendees could barely move for talk of new party structures and policy fringes. Farage tries to farm out media interviews and visits to his allies, particularly his deputy Richard Tice and new Head of Policy Zia Yusuf (neither of whom have ruled out eyeing the job of chancellor). Yet Farage’s word is still gospel. The leader personally pushed to have Aseem Malhotra, an adviser to Trump’s Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, on the conference’s main stage due to his links with the U.S. administration, one party figure said. Malhotra then used the platform to suggest Covid vaccinations may have caused King Charles’ cancer (Reform distanced itself from his comments). Like the MAGA movement — reflected in the conference’s “Make Britain Great Again” caps, stage pyrotechnics and talk of the death of the old right — Reform is still vested in an ultra-high-profile figurehead. But Britain does not have presidents, and Downing Street has far fewer political appointees than the White House. Reform must prepare for a system that is bigger than the principal. That begins, for now, with policy. THE SMALL TENT Reform now has three fully-fledged paid policy officials, said a party figure, including Simon Marcus, a former Tory councilor in London. This is a small number for a party hoping to reach government, though soon he will have more backup. Reform is recruiting at least four more paid policy officials, several officials told POLITICO, including two on central policy and one each for Scotland and Wales ahead of devolved elections in May 2026. There are unpaid officials too, such as Yusuf, and the party relies on enthusiastic volunteers. In Scotland, where the party does not yet have a paid policy official, party figures pointed to an unpaid activist as the main backroom thinker on policy (as part of a committee). Neil Hall/EPA Broadly speaking, though, the circle of people in the room for key decisions is small. As well as key elected representatives and Yusuf, Reform figures who were asked by POLITICO pointed to Farage’s Director of Communications and effectively his chief of staff Dan Jukes; long-time Farage ally and strategist Chris Bruni-Lowe; Director of Operations Aaron Lobo; and Reform Director of Communications Ed Sumner. A second Reform figure described Farage’s core team as “very tight.” A third Reform figure suggested four people plus Farage were in the room at key moments, adding: “Ultimately Nigel is the leader and he makes the decisions.” Yusuf told a conference event that Reform’s recent immigration policy — a sprawling pledge that would lead to around 600,000 deportations — was drawn up “entirely in-house.” On policy, though, Reform figures are keen to show that they know they’ll need a wider pool of thinkers. “Our biggest weakness is we have no experience in government,” said a fourth Reform figure. “We have no one that knows the ropes.” Sometimes it seems to show. Farage’s big announcement in his Friday speech, to stop migrant boat crossings in the English Channel “within two weeks of winning government,” became “within two weeks of legislation being passed” by the time he gave press interviews Saturday. Tory strategists are separately keen to pick at what they paint as fiscal incoherence in Farage’s call to ease a two-child limit on benefits — a pledge that emerged from his desire for more British babies — at the same time as “serious cuts” to the welfare budget. A fifth Reform figure argued the leader is a factor: “Nigel’s not a huge policy guy,” they said. “Nigel’s role is to drive the party forward, to inspire the ranks.” AND SO, ENTER THE WONKS Reform’s nine-member party board met for the first time last week. It consists of Farage, Yusuf, chairman David Bull, racehorse trainer Andrew Reid, the former leader of UKIP (Reform’s predecessor party) Paul Nuttall, ex-GB News presenter Darren Grimes, regional mayor Andrea Jenkyns, former Tory Greater Manchester mayoral candidate Dan Barker, and Farage’s former press chief Gawain Towler. Yusuf, who Farage named as head of policy on Friday, told a fringe event that board will have a “subordinate committee” that essentially “rubber-stamps” party policy. Then there is a nascent ecosystem of think tanks including the Reform-friendly Centre for a Better Britain (referred to verbally by supporters as CFABB). Its chief executive Jonathan Brown — Reform’s former chief operating officer — meets Tice roughly every couple of weeks, said a person with knowledge of the meetings. While the group declined to say who funds it, a document leaked to the Sunday Times suggested it wanted to raise more than £25 million by 2029 — much of it from the U.S. (A CFABB official insisted to POLITICO that all current donors are either British or reside in Britain.) The chair of its advisory board, James Orr, has been a friend of U.S. Vice President JD Vance since 2019. Neill Hall/EPA But CFABB also has a British flavor — as a home for Brexit warriors of old. Veteran Tory Euroskeptic John Redwood is helping with some of its work. Christopher Howarth, the former fixer for the Tory European Research Group, is one of its seven or so current staff. Brown is in a WhatsApp group with right-wing Conservative peers, including Boris Johnson’s former Brexit negotiator David Frost. And his fellow CBB director David Lilley — who has donated more than £250,000 to Reform — previously funded Johnson and the Vote Leave campaign. A CAST OF THOUSANDS Yusuf told members he will take the “best ideas” from right-wing think tanks — others include the Prosperity Institute (formerly known as Legatum) and the Taxpayers’ Alliance — at the same time as building out internal policy. But at other times they will disagree. Brown has also met Robert Jenrick, the ambitious Conservative shadow minister who is pushing on law and order. Reform is keen to stress that CFABB is independent of the party. Reform is involving its own MPs (Richard Tice, Lee Anderson and Sarah Pochin) in policy development, while Farage is also leaning on outsiders with real-world experience such as detective Colin Sutton and prison governor Vanessa Frake. Yusuf told a fringe event: “We have draughtsmen working on legislation. We will have thousands of pages of legislation ready to go.” Reform can rely too on its growing pool of elected officials in councils and mayoralties across England — expected to increase dramatically after May 2026 elections in Scotland and Wales. Yet this growing cast leaves some of Reform’s own foot soldiers in the dark. Helen Manson, interim chair of the South Cambridgeshire branch, told Yusuf — who focuses both on red meat policies such as migration and his personal interests like cryptocurrency — that she receives many questions on the doorstep about whether the party is ready for government. “We don’t know what Reform is doing. We can’t respond to that,” she said. Lobbyists at the conference for the first time felt similarly. One industry figure complained that Tice, when holding private business round tables, tends to lay out his “talking points” but does not respond well to challenge. A second said: “It was obvious that a small group of think tanks are currently the only engine room for ideas beyond Reform’s pet interests.” Speaking to POLITICO, Brown said: “You can’t really judge them on the policy for the next election because it’s early days. I think the idea is to build out a full and integrated policy platform and an implementation strategy before the next election.” But some senior Reform-linked figures resist opening the conversation too widely — as the center would lose control. Orr told a fringe event: “Don’t underestimate how much effect a small band of dedicated people in the cockpit of the nation can do.” Orr looked to an unlikely comparison — what he called Tony Blair’s “catastrophic and extremely consequential” Labour government in 1997. That, argued Orr, was run by “a gang of six … [and] they completely overturned the constitutional, legal, political and cultural landscape of the U.K. for 25 years. In fact, we’re going to spend the best part of the next 15 years trying to unravel it.” NO SUCCESSION PLAN? Small team or not, the importance of elevating the background players out of Farage’s shadow isn’t just desirable for Reform — it’s existential. When Farage denied on stage that his party is a “one-man band,” he used the example of the branded football shirts in the conference shop — pointing out that several other party figures had their names on shirts as well. Tellingly, when POLITICO visited the shop, only the “Farage” shirts were filling the shelves. An announcement that Farage was to sign shirts for 45 minutes (price for a signed shirt: £100) caused a jolt of excitement in the venue. More importantly, it was Farage’s return to the party last year that turbocharged its (already healthy) poll rating, and has senior Reform figures beginning to eye up which Whitehall department they would like to lead. Contrary to protestations by Farage’s allies, aides and the man himself, the party is still tied closely to him — to the point where some in Reform darkly wonder how the party would survive if he suddenly wasn’t on the scene. “If something happens [to Nigel] now, we’re fucked,” a Reform candidate in the last election said. In four years “maybe we’d be fine,” they said, but right now “there’s no one else with the charisma or the ability to pull people together.” Towler, his longtime former aide, has a more nuanced view. “There is nobody else in Britain who can do what he does,” he said, but “there is a bunch of driven people who want to change the country and I think they would still do it without him. It would be awful and it would be harder, but I really think the mood of the country is so febrile and so anti-the last two, that we need change. Nigel is a vector for that change — he’s not the only vector.” Farage is keen for the public to agree. He closed the conference by inviting all the main speakers for an on-stage singalong of the U.K’s national anthem led by the Greater Lincolnshire Mayor Andrea Jenkyns — who had earlier surprised attendees with a solo musical performance of her own-self written song Insomniac. The hope in Reform circles is that by boosting those around him, Farage will create figures substantial enough to be major players in a future government, while also reducing the party’s reliance on his oratory and leadership skills. “I think Reform is coming out of Nigel’s shadow to some extent,” said Brown. “All of a sudden there’s a raft of elected officials who are there. Are any of them Nigel yet? No, of course not. But Nigel has had 30 years so it’s very unfair to pick the consummate performer of his generation and say ‘why aren’t you like him?’ Nigel wasn’t like that in 2005.” Others point out that Farage, despite being electoral dynamite, remains a Marmite figure with harder-to-reach sections of the electorate. “Yes he’s a brilliant communicator and no one’s doubting that, but he’s a known quantity and a lot of voters don’t like him,” said one Labour Party official. Then there is the question of whether Farage — who spent years in lucrative TV work — really wants the grim responsibilities of being prime minister at all. His allies insist he does. Towler said: “He made a decision last year to get back involved. Is it his want, is it his ambition? Really, I don’t think it is. But does he think he’s the only person to break the duopoly of failure in this country? Yes. And he takes that responsibility deeply seriously.” Wherever things go from here, though, Farage remains a godhead for now — sometimes quite literally. “His body is stronger than anybody else’s,” said a sixth Reform figure, when asked about what the party would be without him. “He’s survived a plane crash and everything.” Some Reform figures are daring to dream of the party’s fortunes as similarly immortal. But things don’t always work out that way. John Johnston and Abby Wallace contributed reporting.

LONDON — Fracking is back. Three years after a botched attempt to unleash the controversial industry helped bring down Liz Truss, it has a new fan: Nigel Farage. Farage’s surging Reform UK says fracking will secure U.K. energy supplies and reduce bills.  Opponents say that’s nonsense — and that the drilling ruins the countryside and exposes locals to the risk of mini earthquakes. Brace for another round of Britain’s shale gas forever war.  Farage — whose party consistently leads national opinion polls — is committed to lifting a de facto ban on fracking, shorthand for hydraulic fracturing, which involves drilling horizontal, underground wells, then forcing water, sand and chemicals into them at high pressure to break up the rock and release the gas inside. “Abso-bloody-lutely,” he told The Spectator magazine in June, when asked if fracking would be on the agenda should Reform win the general election.  Richard Tice, Farage’s deputy and Reform’s energy spokesperson, claims fracking could deliver “hundreds of billions of pounds” for the U.K. economy. The Labour government’s decision not to pursue it is “bordering on criminal financial negligence,” Tice told POLITICO.  Reform’s top brass are not the first politicians to see pound signs in shale rock. Conservative Prime Ministers David Cameron and Liz Truss both looked at boosting domestic fracking in a bid to ape the United States’ shale gas boom, which helped transform the country’s energy fortunes in the 2010s from a net importer of gas to a net exporter for the first time since the 1950s. But in the U.K., the idea was beaten back each time by fierce local opposition over the risk to landscapes, water supply and — most notoriously — of earthquakes caused by the required underground extraction. Now Reform is readying for the same fight.  FRACKING AND THE RIGHT  Farage’s opponents — including politicians bruised by their own run-in with the fraught politics of fracking — question whether the new generation of shale enthusiasts have the stomach.  “Fracking is one of those great rallying cries of the right,” said Kwasi Kwarteng, who was an energy minister when Boris Johnson introduced the first fracking ban in 2019 and then chancellor when Truss briefly lifted it in 2022. “It feeds into the narrative of ‘broken Britain’ where we’re not bold enough, we’re not exploiting our resources enough, we’re too bound by red tape.  “But explaining that to people in the places where fracking will take place is a very different proposition.”  Nigel Farage’s surging Reform UK says fracking will secure U.K. energy supplies and reduce bills. | Neil Hall/EPA When energy firm Cuadrilla set up the U.K.’s only previously active fracking site in Lancashire, the area was shaken by minor earthquakes in 2019. Locals said the tremors shook wardrobes and beds. The industry has always maintained — and still does — that any seismic activity would be negligible. “The likes of Jacob [Rees-Mogg] and Liz [Truss] would say ‘Let’s just frack!’ But politically it was very difficult to land,” Kwarteng said.   When Truss tried to lift the ban, opposition MPs forced a vote in the House of Commons. The government won — but the chaos that evening shattered any remaining confidence among her MPs. Plagued by an embarrassing mini-budget and unable to shake off the fracking saga, she resigned the next day. Her successor, Rishi Sunak, reinstated the moratorium on fracking, leaning heavily on findings from the British Geological Survey that offered no guarantee it would not bring earthquakes, nor how big any might be. THIS AIN’T TEXAS For Kwarteng, there is a world of difference between fracking in the U.S. and the situation in the U.K. “The population density of a place like Lancashire is 400 times that of Wyoming or 40 times that of Texas … Given how small Britain is, you can’t get away with it that easily. I’m not saying it’s impossible. But there are a lot of political hoops you’ll have to jump through.”  Arriving in office in 2019, Johnson took one look at marginal parliamentary seats in Lancashire and other fracking zones and decided it was politically wise to step away. A month ahead of the December 2019 general election, he imposed the first moratorium, citing an Oil and Gas Authority report which said it wasn’t possible to accurately predict the likelihood or size of earthquakes linked to fracking. “There was no coincidence with that,” said Kwarteng. “This is a very controversial issue. Particularly people in Lancashire were very exercised … We put a moratorium on it, and that went a very long way to reassure people ahead of that election.”  Voters have now elected Reform to lead Lancashire County Council.   But the populist party will reach the same conclusion as Johnson when they wake up to the extent of local opposition, Kwarteng predicted.  Energy Secretary Ed Miliband appears to be relishing the prospect of a fight over fracking. | Pool Photo by Chris Ratcliffe via EPA “I think they’re very pragmatic. Their mission will be to try and get as many seats as possible and in that context they may well tread more warily as the election comes into view.”  BORIS ‘BOTTLED IT’  Tice, unsurprisingly, views the Tory legacy very differently.  “They bottled it,” he said. “The thing about leadership is it requires courage and conviction. We didn’t have that with a Boris-led Tory government that was obsessed with net stupid zero.”  Recent commercial announcements have only made Reform more excited about fracking.  American-backed energy firm Egdon Resources recently claimed new analysis showed gas reserves under Lincolnshire and surrounding areas could produce 87 percent of the U.K.’s demand and add £140 billion to the U.K. economy. (The estimates are based on a Deloitte report that the company would not share with POLITICO.)  Andrea Jenkyns, the former Conservative minister now elected as Reform’s regional mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, has met with the company and is bullish about the prospects.    Jenkyns wants “to make sure we have the skills in the local economy to ensure that — if we get a Reform government in 2029 — then we’ve got the workforce across the county to meet [energy] needs through fracking,” she said.  Jenkyns, who recently said she does not believe climate change is happening, added that she wants the U.K. to be “energy self-sufficient.”  To some, it all sounds wearily familiar.  Michael Bradshaw, professor of global energy at the Warwick Business School, who has spent years monitoring the development of U.K. shale gas policies, said Reform’s rhetoric today reminded him of David Cameron’s pledge in 2014 to go “all out for shale.”  “In the end, shale turned out to be a bust.” Bradshaw said. “There may be gas in the rocks, but the challenges of extracting it are many.”  Ira Joseph, senior research associate at the Center on Global Energy Policy at New York’s Columbia University, concurred. “U.K shale is not like the Permian Basin [in Texas]. … Everything I’ve seen [suggests] it’s definitely more faulted, more complex.”  Rishi Sunak imposed fracking moratoria in 2019 and again in 2022, one group spearheading opposition was countryside charity the CPRE. | Tolga Akmen/EPA More importantly, in Joseph’s estimation, British shale just doesn’t look a good commercial bet for any major energy companies. “The amount of bang for buck on shale in the U.K. seems pretty limited at the moment, particularly in a market where gas demand is falling not rising,” he said. “There are other, more attractive plays potentially out there than [fracking] in a country where gas demand is falling and the cost would be relatively high.”  IN THE COUNTRY  Energy Secretary Ed Miliband appears to be relishing the prospect of a fight over fracking. “We intend to ban fracking for good,” said a Labour spokesperson. “If Reform want to impose fracking on our countryside, we will take them on.”  Farage’s party will also need to take on campaigners who have fought this battle before — and won. Before Johnson and then Rishi Sunak imposed fracking moratoria in 2019 and again in 2022, one group spearheading opposition was countryside charity the CPRE.    The group remains “completely opposed” to fracking, said its campaign lead, Jackie Copley — and served notice to Reform that they won’t be changing tack.  “We believe it to be extremely harmful to our environment, in terms of atmospheric greenhouse gases, seismic events and via the trucking of contaminated water,” she said.   “I think Richard Tice is onto the wrong track,” she added, “and CPRE would be highlighting all the problems every step along the way. It’s not something we’d envisage for iconic British countryside.”  Tice is having none of it. Fracking’s impact on the countryside would be minimal, he insisted, with industrial sites no bigger than football fields. It was “not the middle-class people, the members of CPRE” who suffered from the fracking ban but “the poorest, the least well-off, in places like Skegness [his constituency]” left with higher energy bills, he added.   Reform will be betting that years of painfully high energy prices will encourage voters to give fracking a chance.  The U.K.’s gas price is largely determined by Europe-wide supply and demand, as well as the global market for liquefied natural gas shipped across oceans. | Neil Hall/EPA There are some signs they may be onto something. A new poll by Merlin Strategy, which asked voters whether they supported fracking based on what they know about it, found 41 percent support versus 25 percent opposed.   But other polls, including the government’s own public attitudes tracker from spring 2024, showed 40 percent opposed and just 18 percent supportive. A YouGov tracker from April this year, which explicitly mentions the risk of minor earthquakes, finds 51 percent against and 24 percent supportive.  Pollster Scarlett Maguire, founder of Merlin Strategy, said: “With higher energy bills and a recent energy crisis, Brits are looking for an abundance of energy supply here in the U.K., and are becoming more open minded as to what that could look like.”   But her company’s poll also found ongoing concerns about fracking. “The public are worried about its safety, and further messaging on its risk could cause support to fall,” Maguire said.  GIVE IT A GO Even Reform’s chief attack dog admitted the plans could yet come unstuck, no matter the billions he thinks fracking might unlock.  “The way through [local opposition] is to have a couple of test wells for a couple [of] years,” Tice said, “using different extraction techniques, under independent supervision and monitoring, so that one can show to people it can be done safely. I think that is the way through it.  “And, cards on the table — if you do a couple of test wells and, in a sense, for whatever reason, it doesn’t work out, then my hands are up, and I’ll say: ‘It was the right strategy to try, it doesn’t work, but at least we’ve tried and we know.’  That’s my position.”  If Reform can find a way to win the political battles, it will also have to show it was right about bringing down bills for hard-pressed voters. And the impact of even extensive fracking on energy bills is disputed.   The U.K.’s gas price is largely determined by Europe-wide supply and demand, as well as the global market for liquefied natural gas shipped across oceans.  In theory, significantly higher U.K. domestic production could lower wholesale gas prices enough to shift household energy bills, said one energy industry expert, granted anonymity to discuss a politically sensitive topic.   But even in this “most boosterish but still-credible scenario,” they said, it would “knock gas bills down by maybe a fiver or a tenner per year at peak.”  It is more likely to raise government revenue than cut bills, the industry expert added. And then only “if it works at scale … which is uncertain.” 

BREXITEERS GLOAT OVER TRUMP’S EU TRADE ‘DISASTER,’ BUT HAS BRITAIN REALLY WON?  While the U.K.’s low-tariff agreement with America is a Brexit bonus, victory over Europe may not be what Keir Starmer needs. By TIM ROSS Photo-Illustration by Malak Saleh for POLITICO LONDON — Dominic Cummings, the maverick former aide to ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson who masterminded the 2016 Brexit campaign, has other fish to fry these days. But on Monday he interrupted his stream of prophecies about immigration, censorship and the failures of the political elites to note what a terrible trade deal the European Union had struck with U.S. President Donald Trump. “Thanks to Brexit we’re outside this humiliating disaster for the EU and the many more to come,” Cummings wrote in a post on X which he began with two clown emojis. For a man known for colorful language and an insatiable appetite for savaging his former colleagues, the gloating seemed a little half-hearted. Perhaps he felt there was no point overdoing it, given how badly the deal had gone down inside the EU itself.  The trade agreement Brussels reached with Trump at his Turnberry golf course in Scotland on Sunday wasn’t even hailed as a triumphant victory by Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president who negotiated it. The best she could say was that it “creates certainty in uncertain times.”  Gallingly for Europeans, the raw numbers showed that the EU, with a 15 percent baseline tariff on its exports to the U.S., had achieved a worse result than post-Brexit Britain, which negotiated a lower tariff rate of 10 percent on goods sold into the American market. On top of the tariffs (which the EU will not apply to U.S. imports), Brussels committed European countries to spending hundreds of billions of euros on American energy and defense supplies.  French Prime Minister François Bayrou said the deal represented a “dark day” as he lamented the Commission’s capitulation. Commentators complained that the EU had not fought hard enough and should have retaliated against Trump’s tariff threats to demonstrate the sort of strength that he might respect.  But Friedrich Merz, Germany’s chancellor, won out with his calls for a speedy deal, refusing to put his manufacturing-heavy economy at risk in a transatlantic trade war. “Please let’s find a solution quickly,” he said in Brussels a month ago. For Merz, that old phrase from Brexit negotiations — “No deal is better than a bad deal” — seemed not to apply this time. While the legal details of Trump’s agreements are yet to be worked out, for some in the EU the U.K.’s apparently superior result stung most of all. “We seem to have gotten worse conditions than the U.K.,” said Brando Benifei, the Italian MEP who chairs the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with the U.S. “That’s not a good starting point.”  The question EU officials don’t want to ask is whether Trump’s transatlantic trade shakedown, more than any other episode in the five years since Britain left the EU, may be the moment Brexit finally paid off. BREXIT BONUS In London, Keir Starmer’s Labour government was diplomatic in its tone but clear in public that the U.K.’s freedom to go its own way outside the EU’s trade orbit had been a big advantage when negotiating with Trump. But European diplomats privately counter that there’s unlikely to be any economist alive who would claim that a slightly better deal on tariffs with Trump could make up for the long-term destruction Brexit caused to the British economy. Even though the U.K.’s freedom to strike its own trade deal with America did put Keir Starmer in the position of being able to score an easy goal against the EU, his government is not bragging about it. | Pool Photo by Chris Ratcliffe via EPA According to the U.K. Treasury’s independent forecasters, the Office for Budget Responsibility, leaving the EU will reduce long-term productivity by 4 percent, while both exports and imports will be about 15 percent lower than if the U.K. had remained inside the bloc.  In Europe, however, the unflattering U.S. trade deal has provoked some to rethink their criticism of Britain’s efforts. Back in May, the EU scorned the outline deal the British prime minister had negotiated. “We’re not interested in this kind of agreement; what we want are meaningful discussions with the U.S.,” one EU diplomat said at the time, dismissing the British deal as “a piece of paper that has virtually no impact.” Others went further and ruled out an agreement of the type that London had accepted. “If the U.K.-U.S. deal is what the EU gets, the U.S. can expect countermeasures from us,” Swedish Trade Minister Benjamin Dousa said on his way into a meeting of trade ministers in Brussels two months ago.  In comments to POLITICO this week, Dousa accepted that the deal von der Leyen struck may have been as good as it was possible to get, though he was far from enthusiastic. “This agreement does not make anyone richer, but is perhaps the least worst option,” he said. HOW DID STARMER ONE-UP THE EU? The U.S. talks had gone so badly that even French President Emmanuel Macron conceded at a summit last month that he would accept a U.K.-style 10-percent tariff if that was the best Trump would offer. But while Macron would rather have waited to secure better terms, he didn’t, in public at least, expect to get a worse deal than the British.  As for Germany’s Merz, he argued that “more simply wasn’t achievable.” Yet a glance across the English Channel shows that isn’t necessarily true.  How did Starmer achieve better terms than the EU despite representing a far smaller (and theoretically less powerful) trading partner? For one thing, he decided from the start that he wanted to fast-track talks with Trump and succeeded in getting better headline terms with the U.S. in part because talks began quickly. That’s not all Europe’s fault: For months, Trump was reluctant even to pick up the phone to von der Leyen.  “It’s quite obvious that Trump can’t stand the EU,” said Anand Menon, professor of European politics at King’s College London. “[But] he has a soft spot for the U.K. and he obviously has a soft spot for Keir Starmer.”  KEIR CHARMER The British premier has won plaudits for the way he has kept Trump onside through a mix of charm, flattering invitations to meet royalty, and regular contact including via WhatsApp messages.  At the same time as sticking close to the Americans, Starmer has improved the U.K.’s post-Brexit relations with the EU, soothing tensions with France, Germany and Brussels and making progress on deals with the bloc on both trade and security policy.  “Let’s see how long that lasts,” said Menon, who is also director of the UK in a Changing Europe think tank. “We already hear people in the EU grumbling about the U.K. playing both sides.”  Britain is trying to work closely with the EU on defense cooperation, the Gaza conflict, Iran’s nuclear program, and fending off Russia. New tensions in the relationship caused by Trump’s trade war antics won’t help.  The trade agreement Brussels reached with Donald Trump at his Turnberry golf course in Scotland wasn’t even hailed as a triumphant victory by Ursula von der Leyen. | Oliver Matthys/EPA One potential post-Brexit flashpoint is — as it always was — the highly sensitive issue of the different rules that will apply on either side of the Northern Ireland border.  Under the terms of Trump’s deals, businesses in the Republic of Ireland (which is in the EU) will export to the U.S. under a 15 percent tariff, while those across the border in Northern Ireland (which is part of the United Kingdom) will have a lower tariff of 10 percent. “It will just bring the issue of Brexit back to the fore,” Menon said.  GOOD FOR FARAGE In the end, even though the U.K.’s freedom to strike its own trade deal with America did put Starmer in the position of being able to score an easy goal against the EU, his government is not bragging about it — and he is unlikely to be thanked.  British voters are more ready to associate Starmer’s Labour Party with a desire to undo Brexit (he previously backed calls for a second referendum) than as a champion of buccaneering global Britain. In order to win the election last year, Starmer pledged that he would not take the U.K. back into either the EU customs union or single market.  Anything that seems like a victory for Brexit is more likely to favor an already potent rival — the godfather of the U.K.’s withdrawal from the EU, Nigel Farage. His Reform UK party is now consistently leading opinion polls with an eight point lead over Labour, and threatens to cut short Starmer’s desired decade in power.  Farage’s counterparts on the populist right elsewhere in Europe have also found fuel for their anti-Brussels fire in the Trump deal. In a post on X on Monday, Alice Weidel, leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany, said: “The EU has been brutally taken for a ride!” In France, veteran far-right former presidential candidate Marine Le Pen savaged the U.S. agreement as “a political, economic, and moral fiasco,” adding: “The European Union, with its 27 member states, obtained worse conditions than the United Kingdom.” For all Starmer’s success, it won’t win him friends in Europe when it’s used as evidence that the EU mainstream is failing to deliver for ordinary voters. As so often in the long and tortured story of Brexit, even the winners lose in the end. Clea Caulcutt and Josh Berlinger contributed reporting from Paris.

President Donald Trump’s approval rating remains underwater. But Democrats are faring worse, according to a new poll from The Wall Street Journal released Saturday. The new survey, conducted by Democratic pollster John Anzalone and Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio, found Democrats’ popularity at its lowest point in three decades of WSJ polling, with 63 percent of voters holding an unfavorable view of the party. Only 33 percent of voters hold a favorable view of Democrats, with a meager 8 percent holding a “very favorable” opinion, for a net negative favorability of 30 percentage points. While voters still have significant concerns over the president’s and the Republican Party’s handling of the economy, inflation, tariffs and foreign policy, the majority of respondents nonetheless say they trust Republicans more to handle those issues in Congress. Despite criticism of the administration’s handling of inflation — disapproval outweighed approval by 11 points in the poll — the Republican Party, by 10 points, is trusted more than Democrats to deal with inflation. That’s the same case when it comes to thoughts on the president’s drastic tariffs policy. By 17 points, voters disapproved of Trump’s handling of tariffs, while still trusting Republicans more on the issue to Democrats by 7 points. Health care and vaccine policy are the only two policy issues in which respondents favor Democrats to Republicans on. Both Trump and the Republican Party at large are also disliked by more Americans than liked, but by far lower margins than Democrats in this survey. The president has a -7 point net unfavorability, while the GOP is at -11 in the WSJ survey. The Journal poll has found Trump’s favorability rating to be relatively stable through the beginning of his second term. But other recent surveys have found far lower approval ratings for Trump. “The Democratic brand is so bad that they don’t have the credibility to be a critic of Trump or the Republican Party,” Anzalone told the newspaper. “Until they reconnect with real voters and working people on who they’re for and what their economic message is, they’re going to have problems.” Despite widespread irritation of Democrats, voters still said that if an election was held today, they would back a Democrat for Congress over a Republican by 3 points, 46 to 43 percent. It’s still a drop from this time in 2017, six months into Trump’s first term, when Democrats held an 8-point advantage in that category. The Journal polled 1,500 registered voters, conducted from July 16-20 by landline and cellphone. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer signalled that the U.K. will play a role in providing airdropped aid to the Gaza Strip as he faces growing pressure to recognize Palestinian statehood. Israel said on Friday that it will allow airdrops of food and supplies from foreign countries into Gaza in the coming days. “News that Israel will allow countries to airdrop aid into Gaza has come far too late — but we will do everything we can to get aid in via this route,” Starmer wrote in an opinion piece for British newspaper the Mirror. “The images of starvation and desperation in Gaza are utterly horrifying,” he said. “We are already working urgently with the Jordanian authorities to get British aid on to planes and into Gaza,” he wrote. The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said earlier this week that Gaza is suffering from a “man-made” mass starvation because of an aid blockade into the territory. The United Nations World Food Program has warned that almost one in three people in the Gaza Strip are going for days without eating. Airdrops to Gaza have been criticized for being dangerous and inefficient.  Starmer has been facing growing calls to recognize Palestinian statehood. A third of British MPs, including some of his own Cabinet ministers, have signed a letter calling for the U.K. to recognize a Palestinian state. The prime minister said that “recognition of a Palestinian state has to be one of those steps” to achieve peace in the region, although “it must be part of a wider plan that ultimately results in a two-state solution and lasting security for Palestinians and Israelis.” French President Emmanuel Macron said this week that France intends to recognize a Palestinian state in September at the U.N. General Assembly.

President Donald Trump’s job approval rating is slipping among independent voters in a new survey from Gallup, spurred in part by disapproval of how the president is handling key issues including the federal budget, economy and immigration. A July poll from Gallup found that Trump’s job approval rating has dipped to just 37 percent among all American adults, the lowest of his second term. Self-identified independents gave the president a 29 percent job approval rating. The 17-point decline since January matches his lowest rating with independents in either of his terms. Sixty-four percent of independents said they have an unfavorable opinion of the job Trump is doing. Just 7 percent of Republicans said the same, while 97 percent of Democrats said they had an unfavorable view. The poll, which was conducted just days after Congress passed Trump’s megabill, showed that 73 percent of independents disapprove of the president’s handling of the federal budget. Sixty-five percent of all adults surveyed said they disapprove of how Trump is handling the budget, an increase from 52 percent who said the same in March of this year. The decline in support could be a warning sign for Republican leaders as they look to maintain their slim control of the House and Senate ahead of the 2026 midterms. Trump struggled to garner more than 40 percent approval from independent voters on several issues central to his 2024 campaign. Though Trump made fortifying the economy a central pillar of his campaign, 68 percent of independents said they disapprove of how he is handling the issue. Overall, 61 percent of adults said they disapprove of how the president is handling the economy — a steady increase from the 54 percent who said the same in February, and roughly even with the 59 percent who said so in March. Independent voters also remain largely displeased with his handling of immigration, even as it remains a cornerstone of Trump’s agenda — framed as essential to national security and economic stability. Only 30 percent of independents approve of Trump’s handling of immigration in the Gallup poll. Sixty percent of all adults said they disapprove of his handling of the issue, also an increase from February when 51 percent said the same. Democrats in the poll broadly disapprove of Trump’s handling on most major issues. Only 2 percent of Democrats approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, and only 3 percent approve of his handling of the federal budget. Four percent approve of his handling of immigration. Republicans largely still approve of Trump’s presidency, with 89 percent overall approving. Eighty-four percent approve of his handling of the economy, while 81 percent approve of Trump’s handling of the federal budget. Eighty-eight percent of Republicans approve of how Trump is handling immigration. The poll was conducted by telephone from July 7-21, 2025 with a random sample of 1,002 adults. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points. Subgroups have a larger margin of error.

The European Medicines Agency has granted restricted EU authorization to Eli Lilly’s Alzheimer’s drug Kisunla, reversing an earlier decision to reject the drug over concerns that its benefits don’t outweigh the risk of brain swelling or bleeding. The treatment for early Alzheimer’s disease, which is administered via a monthly infusion, has already been approved in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and China. In March, the EMA’s human medicines committee CHMP rejected the drug saying there was a risk of “potentially fatal events due to amyloid-related imaging abnormalities (ARIA).” But on Thursday, after re-examining the drug at the request of Lilly, the CHMP recommended granting Kisunla marketing authorization for patients who do not have a copy or only have one copy of the ApoE4 gene, a gene that puts them at a greater risk of Alzheimer’s disease. The EMA said the treatment should be administered as part of a controlled access program and under the supervision of physicians trained in detecting and managing ARIA. It also mandated additional measures to manage the risk, including more stringent rules for stopping treatment, and said patients must start with a lower dose. Taking into account the new dosing regimen and the additional measures to reduce the risk of ARIA, the EMA said Kisunla’s benefits “outweigh its risks in noncarriers and people with just one copy of ApoE4.” “This positive opinion marks a significant milestone in our efforts to bring donanemab to eligible patients across Europe,” said Patrik Jonsson, executive vice president and president of Lilly International. “Donanemab has the potential to make a meaningful difference for people living with early symptomatic Alzheimer’s disease.”