The World Health Organization has recommended the use of novel weight-loss drugs to curb soaring obesity rates, and urged pharma companies to lower their prices and expand production so that lower-income countries can also benefit. The WHO’s new treatment guideline includes a conditional recommendation to use the so-called GLP-1s — such as Wegovy, Ozempic and Mounjaro — as part of a wider approach that includes healthy diet, exercise and support from doctors. The WHO described its recommendation as “conditional” due to limited data on the long-term efficacy and safety of GLP-1s. The recommendation excludes pregnant women. While GLP-1s are a now well-established treatment in high-income countries, the WHO warns they could reach fewer than 10 percent of people who could benefit by 2030. Among the countries with the highest rates of obesity are those in the Middle East, Latin America and Pacific islands. Meanwhile, Wegovy was only available in around 15 countries as of the start of this year. The WHO wants pharma companies to consider tiered pricing (lower prices in lower-income countries) and voluntary licensing of patents and technology to allow other producers around the word to manufacture GLP-1s, to help expand access to these drugs. Jeremy Farrar, an assistant director general at the WHO, told POLITICO the guidelines would also give an “amber and green light” to generic drugmakers to produce cheaper versions of GLP-1s when the patents expire. Francesca Celletti, a senior adviser on obesity at the WHO, told POLITICO “decisive action” was needed to expand access to GLP-1s, citing the example of antiretroviral HIV drugs earlier this century. “We all thought it was impossible … and then the price went down,” she said.  Key patents on semaglutide, the ingredient in Novo Nordisk’s diabetes and weight-loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, will lift in some countries next year, including India, Brazil and China. Indian generics giant Dr. Reddy’s plans to launch a generic semaglutide-based weight-loss drug in 87 countries in 2026, its CEO Erez Israeli said earlier this year, reported Reuters. “U.S. and Europe will open later … (and) all the other Western markets will be open between 2029 to 2033,” Israeli told reporters after the release of quarterly earnings in July. Prices should fall once generics are on the market, but that isn’t the only barrier. Injectable drugs, for example, need cold chain storage. And health systems need to be equipped to roll out the drug once it’s affordable, Celletti said. 

VENICE, Italy — Luca Zaia, a towering force in northern Italian politics, is plotting his next move and that’s turning into a headache for his party, the far-right League, led by firebrand Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini. As regional president of Veneto, the wealthy region of 5 million people around Venice, Zaia is one of the League’s superstars, but his mandate comes to an end after an election this weekend. That is sparking intense speculation about his ambitions — not least because his political vision is so different from Salvini’s. While Salvini is steering the League away from its separatist roots — no longer seeking to rip the rich industrialized north away from poorer southern Italy — Zaia remains a vocal advocate for northern autonomy from Rome. He is also more moderate on immigration, climate and LGBTQ+ rights than his right-wing populist party chief. One of the big questions looming over Italian politics is whether these two rival visions can survive within the League, a party at the heart of Giorgia Meloni’s coalition government. Zaia himself suggests the League could split into two allied factions along the lines of the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union on Germany’s center right.   MEET THE DOGE Nicknamed the “Doge of Venice,” Zaia, a former Italian agriculture minister, has spent 15 of his 57 years running Veneto from an office lined with emerald silk in a 16th-century palazzo on the Grand Canal. He won eight out of 10 votes cast in 2020, the highest approval rating of any regional chief, but is barred from running again because of a two-term limit. In an interview with POLITICO, he joked about the whirl of theories about his next steps. “I am in the running for everything: [energy giant] ENI, Venice, parliament, minister.” But when pressed on what he will do, he gave nothing away, only that his focus is squarely on the north. “I gave up a safe seat in Brussels a year ago to stay here,” he said, only adding he would work until the last day of his mandate. “Then I’ll see.” Amid internal power struggles in the League, Zaia is increasingly seen as an alternative leadership figure by those unhappy with its trajectory.  Zaia has clashed with Salvini’s deputy leader Gen. Roberto Vannacci over his revisionist views of the fascist era under Benito Mussolini, but has held back from criticizing Salvini openly. Zaia, right, at the closing event of the center-right coalition’s campaign for the Veneto regional elections in support of Alberto Stefani, left, Nov. 18. | Alessandro Bremec/NurPhoto via Getty Images When asked whether Salvini made strategic mistakes as party leader, he stayed cryptically diplomatic. “We all make mistakes,” he replied. A CHANGING LEAGUE When Zaia joined what was then the Northern League in the 1990s it was a separatist movement, opposed to tax redistribution from the wealthy north to the south, perceived as corrupt and inefficient. But under Salvini’s leadership, the rebranded League became a nationwide party, with a strand increasingly courting the extreme right. This approach has alienated both mainstream voters, and more moderate and north-focused activists, for whom Zaia is a political lodestar. One major bugbear is Salvini’s drive to build a €14 billion bridge between Calabria and Sicily, seen by separatists as a wasteful southern project sucking in northern tax revenue. In a sign of the shifting tectonic plates, one faction, supported by the Northern League’s founder Umberto Bossi, and that has in recent years unsuccessfully tried to oust Salvini, last week launched a new party, the Pact for the North. Its leader, former MP Paolo Grimoldi, expelled from the League after 34 years, told POLITICO his group would welcome Zaia “with open arms.”  Zaia and other northern governors “just have to find the courage to say publicly what they have been saying privately for some time, that Salvini has completely betrayed the battles of the League.” Zaia himself is recommending a new-look League modeled on the German CDU-CSU, with sister League parties catering to Italy’s north and south. He aired the idea in a new book by journalist Bruno Vespa, pointing out the CSU had a separate Bavarian identity within the German Christian Democrat family. “We could do the same here,” he said. Most political insiders and observers think it unlikely that Zaia would seek a national leadership role — being too associated with Veneto — but he would be an obvious choice to lead the northern wing of a divided party. For Salvini, this internal schism is an obvious challenge. He has said he’s intrigued by the CDU-CSU idea, but few believe him. He needs to find something to prevent Zaia from turning into a nuisance, and has proposed him for a vacant parliamentary seat in Rome and as mayor of Venice. “It’s up to him to decide if he stays in Veneto or brings Veneto to Rome,” Salvini said at an event in Padua last weekend. MAYOR OF VENICE? Which way will Zaia jump? A return to Rome seems unappetizing. “When he was minister, he didn’t like Rome”, said a political colleague. “Rome’s values are not the values of Veneto.  In Veneto, we value meritocracy, work, effort, seriousness in politics. In Rome it’s all compromise.” Which makes Venice the more likely option, if he does decide to avoid a head-on clash with Salvini. Zaia would be very well set to run for mayor of Venice next May, according to the MP and two friends of Zaia’s from Veneto. He has a manifesto ready: Autonomy for Venice. Venice should become a city-state with special powers to address its unique problems of depopulation, overtourism and climate change, he said in the interview. Zaia’s popularity in Veneto, according to the locals, derives from his down-to-earth persona. He’s better known for speaking in regional dialect and attending traditional events, rather than being snapped at glamorous galas or on the fleet of speedboats at his disposal, rocking gently at his Grand Canal doorstep.   He was also lauded for his handling of the Covid pandemic, readying Veneto for the Winter Olympics next year and even helping boost exports of Prosecco sparkling wine. Local lore holds that half of Veneto’s 5 million residents have his phone number. “Maybe even more,” he quipped. “I have never changed my number, people know they can call me if they have a serious problem.” DISCO DOGE Raised in a small village near Treviso, just 30 kilometers from Venice, he was an unusually independent and motivated teenager, passionate about horses and teaching himself Latin on Sundays, according to one classmate. At university, where he graduated in animal husbandry, he supported himself by running club nights in local discos. It was a useful training for politics, Zaia said. “Clubs are a great school of life. You meet humanity in all its forms: rich, poor, good, bad, violent, peaceful.” One of the big questions looming over Italian politics is whether these two rival visions can survive within the League, a party at the heart of Giorgia Meloni’s coalition government. | Ivan Romano/Getty Images Indeed, it seems he took the role ultraseriously. “I never saw Luca dance. For him it was work,” said the same former classmate. He entered politics in the aftermath of the 1990s Clean Hands scandal, a nationwide corruption investigation, which took down a generation of politicians, and became a rising star in the region. As well as being the youngest provincial president in Italy, adorning Treviso with numerous surprisingly popular roundabouts, he was minister of agriculture in Silvio Berlusconi’s government. He is sufficiently self-assured to diverge from central League dogma when he sees fit. He tried to bring in a law this year to regulate doctor-assisted suicide in contrast to national League policy. He also supports sex education in schools, something the League opposes. “When it’s an ethical matter … I  have my own ideas, regardless of what the party says,” he said. But he is clearly smarting about the party’s deal with Meloni to keep the Zaia brand out of the campaign for this weekend’s Veneto election. The original plan, which would have given him significant ongoing influence in the region, was for him to choose a list of regional councilors to go on the ballot and for the League logo to feature his name, he told journalists on the sidelines of a Venice Commission event in October. “If they see me as a problem, I’ll become a real problem,” he threatened. (He will still appear on the ballot as a candidate for regional councilor, giving him yet another option — stay on to assist his successor.) If he does decide to chart his own political path as mayor of Venice next year, at least he won’t have far to go. The doge needs only to step into one of his speedboats to whizz off to the mayor’s equally opulent palazzo along the Grand Canal.

LONDON — The robots are coming for us all — even the parliamentary researchers. British politicians — and the industries seeking to influence them — are increasingly embracing artificial intelligence tools in a bid to make their jobs easier.  But the rise of the emerging tech is prompting big questions about the output and job security of young people working in politics — and the vital ladder into the world of Westminster their entry-level gigs provide. “Across the whole of public affairs, you’ll be able to write and communicate better. I think there’s a positive here,” said Peter Heneghan, a former No. 10 deputy digital communications director and now an AI advocate in the public affairs world.  “The negative side of that is there will be a lot of roles that go alongside it,” he added. “It’s inevitable.”  Politicians and the people supporting them are already jumping on AI to help write everything from books, speeches and media briefings to policy proposals and responses to constituency casework.  In public affairs, it’s already proving useful for all manner of run-of-the-mill jobs, including drafting strategies, press releases, communiqués, timelines and media monitoring.  It’s cutting the need to trawl through large documents like Hansard — the official record of the British parliament — or Westminster’s register of all-party parliamentary groups, a frequent source of influence for lobbyists.  Both sources have hundreds of pages added in each routine update — and entry-level staffers can often be found combing them for insight to brief their bosses or clients.  So far, British officialdom is leaning into the trend. The government’s own AI incubator has even created “Parlex,” a research tool leting anybody with a government email address examine a parliamentarian’s stated position on even the most minor issues in little to no time.  Proponents argue these tools will free up people working in politics to do the kind of work AI simply can’t.  But there are frustrations too.   The only sanctioned AI tool for the majority of parliamentary work, as outlined in House of Commons guidance, is Microsoft’s Copilot, which the government has licensed for internal use. | Algi Febri Sugita/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images The only sanctioned AI tool for the majority of parliamentary work, as outlined in House of Commons guidance, is Microsoft’s Copilot, which the government has licensed for internal use. The use of other chatbots — including ChatGPT, Elon Musk’s Grok, and Claude — is still frequent in parliament, however, amid some grumbling about the official offering.  In June last year, one MP included in a trial emailed the Parliamentary Digital Service — which oversees tech in the Commons — to fume that they “do not want my staff to spend time testing Copilot when the productivity tools are not those that we want or need,” according to correspondence obtained under freedom of information by POLITICO Pro.  ROBOTS TALKING TO ROBOTS  Parliamentarians in the digital age are already inundated with correspondence over email. And artificial intelligence could turn that deluge into an unmanageable flood.  AI-generated email campaigns are now a frequent bugbear for MPs’ offices, with staff feeling pressured to respond to more and more material of a lower and lower quality. One person working in public affairs called it “slop campaigning.”  Heneghan suggests that the “sheer volume” of constituency correspondence that MPs are now getting — and the need to sift through it and reply — means the future of interacting with parliamentarians could become “AI talking to AI.” It would, he says, be “awful” for an already record-low trust in politicians.  Tom Hashemi, the boss of comms consultancy Cast from Clay, echoed that concern. “It’s almost insulting to the point of democracy. MPs are there to respond to genuine constituent concerns, not to have to spend hours of their time responding to AI-generated messages.”  He added that, in his own conversations with ministers and MPs, “they always say those campaigns” — labelled “clicktivism” by Labour MP Mike Reader — “don’t work.”  One parliamentary staffer said: “I can tell that now lots of the email campaigns [by charities] are written by AI — the ones that we get in — whereas before they weren’t. They want it to seem like lots of people are, so they use AI to change the subject lines in the first line of the email very slightly, and the language is all bizarre.”  SQUEEZE ON JOBS AI’s widening use in politics comes amid an increasingly difficult job market for U.K. graduates across the board.  Heneghan suggests there will be a “massive squeeze” on junior jobs available for people working in public affairs, which he argues represents a “double-edged sword” in that menial tasks can be performed more efficiently — while the gains that young people themselves could make from performing them will also be lost.  Prospective job losses will, he predicts, go further than just junior level jobs, with roles for middle managers, human resources, sales and more all being affected.  Meanwhile, Hashemi suggests a route for public affairs firms to continue to expand would be to train new hires to use AI, saying the tech will “affect junior public affairs jobs in firms that don’t adapt to using it and integrating it.”  As trivial as these jobs can seem, many a high-flying politician or adviser got their start shifting around a lot of paper. None other than the prime minister’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, for example, got his start in Labour’s headquarters entering data into spin doctor Peter Mandelson’s famed “Excalibur” rebuttal machine.  Current parliamentary aides expressed less concern that AI is coming for them just yet.  Almost all those POLITICO spoke to in parliament said they wouldn’t use AI to write speeches for their bosses, because it is too easy to spot.  However, a Conservative adviser said they imagined junior staffers could become “checkers” of work as opposed to creators of it, due to the ease of asking AI to generate a first pass at materials.  Meanwhile, a second parliamentary staffer said: “It’s like an aid. I don’t think it can replace jobs yet.”  AI’s one attempt to imitate an MP has so far have been widely derided. Labour MP Mark Sewards became the first parliamentarian to create an AI version of himself that constituents could speak to at any hour — to mixed results. It garbled a Guardian reporter’s Northern accent into unintelligibility, and offered relationship advice, alongside producing a deficient haiku about Nigel Farage to PoliticsHome.  That might be the case right now. But as AI continues to develop at breakneck pace, it could soon seem like child’s play. 

LONDON — Britain’s Department of Health is pressing ahead with plans to open up a trove of pandemic-era patient data to outside researchers — despite concerns from doctors’ representatives. A formal direction titled “GP Data for Consented Research,” yet to be signed by Health Secretary Wes Streeting but shared in draft format with doctors’ reps, would enable NHS England to disseminate patient data originally collected solely for the purpose of Covid-19-related research to other studies. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) confirmed to POLITICO that the direction has been drafted and is awaiting Streeting’s signature. A group of doctors has warned the government that the move could erode patient trust. While the direction says government will obtain patient consent to share the data more broadly, doctors groups are worried this won’t happen in practice, and that patients won’t be aware their data is being funneled to other studies. NHS England has been in discussions with the Joint GP IT Committee, which comprises representatives from the British Medical Association (BMA) and Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), about the data, a person close to the talks told POLITICO. DHSC confirmed it had been in dialogue with the doctors’ groups, and a spokesperson said it had delayed signing the direction in order to engage with doctors’ concerns. The JGPITC argued it hasn’t been properly consulted on the change in line with established governance processes, and that repurposing the dataset without asking patients’ permission risks damaging already-fragile public confidence in the profession, the same person said.  While the direction says government will obtain patient consent to share the data more broadly, doctors groups are worried this won’t happen in practice, and that patients won’t be aware their data is being funneled to other studies. | Pool photo by Hannah McKay/EPA It comes after the same group of doctors filed a formal complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office in June alleging that NHS England had breached data protection law by training a general-purpose AI model on the same dataset without consent. The disagreement is also set against the wider backdrop of a long-running dispute between government and the BMA over doctors’ pay and working conditions. DHSC maintains that proper processes have been followed. “As the Secretary of State made clear last year during his speech to the Royal College of GPs in October 2024, we are committed to implementing this direction in line with patients’ explicit consent for their data to be used in research,” a DHSC spokesperson said. ‘CONSULTED EXTENSIVELY’ In his speech last month, Streeting said he would direct NHS England to take responsibility for sharing patient data with projects including UK Biobank, Genomics England and Our Future Health. “I know there are issues we need to work through together around information governance, risk and liabilities,” he said. “There’s also, let’s be honest, some producer interest in play.” NHS England asked the JGPITC to confirm whether it was happy with the direction on broadening access to the dataset by Nov. 4. The JGPITC couldn’t reach a consensus to give its blessing to the change, the same person close to the talks and cited above said. The doctors’ group has pushed for NHS England to notify consenting participants about where their data is going via text or the NHS App, they added. DHSC is not obligated to comply with any of the JGPITC’s requests. “We have consulted extensively with GP representatives over the past 18 months to ensure patients’ wishes are respected and their data used appropriately, while minimizing the burden on busy GPs,” DHSC’s spokesperson said.

The European Commission said Tuesday there is no evidence linking paracetamol use during pregnancy to autism, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s warning against the medication. “Regarding the question about paracetamol — or Tylenol, or whatever you call it — the European Medicines Agency, which authorizes medicines and imposes strict controls on every product entering the European market, has not found any evidence linking its use during pregnancy to autism,” Commission spokesperson Eva Hrncirova said in a press briefing in Brussels. Trump, in contrast, said Monday that taking Tylenol — the U.S. brand name for paracetamol — “is no good” and suggested the drug should only be used when pregnant women could not “tough it out.” Speaking at a White House press conference on Monday, President Trump claimed that the use of Tylenol during pregnancy may be associated with a “very increased risk of autism,” and stated that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will notify doctors about this potential risk. “The European Medicines Agency has reviewed a large amount of data from pregnant women who used paracetamol during pregnancy and found no indication of risk of malformations in the developing fetus or newborns,” Hrncirova said, adding that “there is no evidence that would require changes to the current EU recommendations.” “Paracetamol remains an important option to treat pain or fever in pregnant women,” EMA Chief Medical Officer Steffen Thirstrup stressed in a statement Tuesday. The agency noted that its advice is based on “a rigorous assessment of the available scientific data,” including a 2019 review of studies on the neurodevelopment of children exposed to paracetamol in utero. Trump’s remarks have prompted warnings from doctors that pregnant women could be discouraged from using one of the few medicines considered safe to treat fever and pain during pregnancy. “The European Union believes in provable, robust science,” Commission spokesperson Olof Gill added.

On Wednesday evening, Emily Cleary, a 47-year-old journalist and public relations consultant from Buckinghamshire in the U.K., was sitting watching TV with her 12-year-old son when she got a BBC alert that Charlie Kirk had been shot. She’d never heard of him, but she soon gathered from the coverage that he was associated with President Donald Trump. “You might have seen him, Mummy,” her son insisted. “He’s the man on TikTok with the round face who shouts all the time.” He began filling her in on a long, detailed list of Kirk’s views. “He thinks that if a 10-year-old gets pregnant she should be forced to keep it,” he explained. In the U.S., Kirk was a well-known figure on both sides of the political spectrum thanks to his proximity to the Trump family and profiles in outlets such as POLITICO Magazine and The New York Times Magazine. On the other side of the Atlantic, a schism appeared this week between those perplexed at why Prime Minister Keir Starmer was making statements about a seemingly obscure American podcaster, and those who already viewed him as a celebrity. Debates about the activist’s legacy sprung up in online spaces not usually known for politics, such as Facebook groups intended for sharing Love Island memes or soccer fan communities on X, with some people saying they will “miss his straight talking.” Parents of teens were surprised to find themselves being educated by their children on an issue of apparent international political importance. To some, this was all the more bewildering given the U.K. offshoot of Kirk’s Turning Point was widely mocked as a huge failure when it tried launching at British universities. But Emily’s son learned about Kirk somewhere else: TikTok’s “for you” page. “He hadn’t just seen a few videos, he was very knowledgeable about everything he believed,” she said, adding that her son “didn’t agree with Kirk but thought he seemed like a nice guy.” “It really unnerved me that he knew more about this person’s ideas than I did.” Kirk first rose to prominence in the U.S. when he cofounded Turning Point USA in 2012. It aimed to challenge what it saw as the dominance of liberal culture on American campuses, establishing a network of conservative activists at schools across the country. Kirk built Turning Point into a massive grassroots operation that has chapters on more than 800 campuses, and some journalists have attributed Trump’s 2024 reelection in part to the group’s voter outreach in Arizona and Wisconsin. But across the pond, Turning Point UK stumbled. Formed in 2019, it initially drew praise from figures on the right of the U.K.’s then-ruling Conservative party, such as former member of parliament Jacob Rees-Mogg and current shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel. However, the official launch on Feb. 1 of that year quickly descended into farce: Its X account was unverified, leading student activists from around the country to set up hundreds of satirical accounts. Media post-mortems concluded the organization failed to capture the mood of U.K. politics. The British hard right tends to fall into two categories: the aristocratic eccentricity of Rees-Mogg, or rough-and-ready street-based movements led by figures such as former soccer hooligan (and Elon Musk favorite) Tommy Robinson. Turning Point USA — known for its highly-produced events full of strobe lights, pyrotechnics and thundering music — was too earnest, too flashy, too American. And although U.K. universities tend to be left-leaning, Kirk’s claim that colleges are “islands of totalitarianism” that curtail free speech didn’t seem to resonate with U.K. students like it did with some in the U.S. “For those interested in opposing group think or campus censorship, organisations and publications already exist [such as] the magazine Spiked Online,” journalist Benedict Spence wrote at the time, adding that “if conservatives are to win round young voters of the future, they will have to do so by policy.” Turning Point UK distanced itself from its previous leadership and mostly moved away from campuses, attempting to reinvent itself as a street-based group. However, five years later in early 2024, Kirk launched his TikTok account and quickly achieved a new level of viral fame on both sides of the Atlantic. Clips of his “Debate Me” events, in which he took on primarily liberal students’ arguments on college campuses, exploded on the platform. This also coincided with a shift in the landscape of the British right toward Kirk’s provocative and extremely online style of politics. Discontent had been swelling around the country as the economic damage of Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic began to bite, and far-right movements distrustful of politicians and legacy media gained traction online. While some of Kirk’s favorite topics — such as his staunch opposition to abortion and support of gun rights — have never resonated with Brits, others have converged. Transgender rights moved from a fringe issue to a mainstream talking point, while debates over immigration became so tense they erupted in a series of far-right race riots in August 2024, largely organized and driven by social media. In this political and digital environment, inflammatory culture-war rhetoric found new purchase — and Kirk was a bona fide culture warrior. He called for “a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor,” posted on X last week that “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America” and regularly promoted the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which asserts that elites are engaged in a plot to diminish the voting and cultural power of white Americans via immigration policy. “The American Democrat Party hates this country. They want to see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white,” he said on his podcast in 2024. Harry Phillips, a 26-year-old truck driver from Kent, just south of London, began turning to influencers for his news during the pandemic, saying he didn’t trust mainstream outlets to truthfully report information such as the Covid-19 death toll. He first came across Kirk’s TikTok videos in the run-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election. “I really liked that he was willing to have his beliefs challenged, and that he didn’t do it in an aggressive manner,” he said. “I don’t agree with everything, such as his views on abortion. But I do agree with his stance that there are only two genders, and that gender ideology is being pushed on kids at school.” Through Kirk, Phillips said he discovered other U.S. figures such as far-right influencer Candace Owens and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, whom he now follows on X, as well as more liberal debaters such as TikToker Dean Withers. “America’s such a powerful country, I think we should all keep an eye on what happens there because it can have a knock-on effect here,” he said. University students in the U.K. may not have been concerned about free speech in 2019, but Phillips definitely is. “I believe we’re being very censored by our government in the U.K.,” he said, citing concerns over the numbers of people reportedly arrested for social media posts. He also said Kirk was not just popular with other people his age, but older members of his family too — all of whom are distraught over his death. In May 2025, six years after the original Turning Point U.K. failed to take off, Kirk found his way back to U.K. campuses via the debate societies of elite universities like Oxford and Cambridge. He wasn’t the first far-right provocateur to visit these clubs, which have existed since the 19th century — conservative media mogul Ben Shapiro took part in a Cambridge debate in November 2023. Oxford Union’s most recent president, Anita Okunde, told British GQ these events were an attempt to make the societies, which were widely considered stuffy and stuck-up, “culturally relevant to young people.” Kirk’s hour-long video, “Charlie Kirk vs 400 Cambridge Students and a Professor,” has 2.1 million views on YouTube and has spawned multiple shorter clips, disseminated by his media machine across multiple platforms. Clips from the same debates also exist within a parallel left-wing ecosystem, re-branded with titles such as “Feminist Cambridge Student OBLITERATES Charlie Kirk.” Although Kirk has been lauded in some sections of the media for being open to debate, these videos don’t appear designed to change anyone’s opinion. Both sides have their views reinforced, taking whatever message they prefer to hear. Karen, a British mother in her late 50s who lives on a farm outside the city of Nottingham, said clips of Kirk getting “owned” by progressives are extremely popular with her 17-year-old daughter and her friends. “I had no idea who he was until she reminded me she had shown me some videos before,” said Karen, whose surname POLITICO Magazine is withholding to protect her daughter’s identity from online harassment. “I think he’s a bit too American for them,” she said. “He’s too in-your-face, and they think some of his opinions are just rage-baiting.” The U.K. political landscape is currently in turmoil, with Farage’s Reform U.K. leading the polls at 31 percent while Starmer’s center-left Labour lags behind at 21 percent. Given the unrest at home, it may seem unusual that so many people are heavily engaged with events thousands of miles away in Washington. Social media algorithms play a role pushing content, as do Farage and Robinson’s close relationships with figures such as Trump, Musk and Vice President JD Vance. In any case, young people in the U.K. are as clued into American politics as ever. Cleary’s 12-year-old son’s description of Kirk wasn’t the first time he surprised her with his knowledge of U.S. politics, either: He recently filled her in on Florida’s decision to end vaccine mandates for schoolchildren. “I’m happy that he is inquisitive and he definitely questions things,” she said. However, she wonders if this consumption of politics via social media will shape the way he and his peers view the world for the rest of their lives. “He even says to me, ‘No one my age will ever vote Labour because they’re no good at TikTok,’” she said. “And he says he doesn’t like Reform, but that they made really good social media videos.”

In an AI-first era, where AI is becoming an integral part of everything we do, its applications spanning across different sectors and facilitating various parts of our daily routines, healthcare should be no exception. In an ideal world, this is what healthcare should look like: a patient goes to an app to book an appointment, AI directs them to the doctor with the best expertise, knows which equipment is available, and which location makes most sense, and puts the appointment in their respective diaries. The complexity with healthcare is that this isn’t just a system, but three interconnected worlds that must work together seamlessly. Patients rightly want care when and where they need it. Clinicians want to ensure their expert resource is directed as impactfully and efficiently as possible. And medical assets, from MRI scanners to life-saving medications, must be available when and where required. This is where investing in technology becomes key. The good news is that the AI revolution in healthcare is already beginning, and the early results are encouraging. Some GP practices have cut waiting times by 73 percent using smart triaging systems, reducing waits from 11 to three days. AI can help tackle the dreaded ‘8am rush’ when phone lines jam with appointment requests. In the same study, GP practices using these systems reduced phone-based contacts from 88 percent to 18 percent and saw a 30 percent drop in missed appointments — potentially saving £350 million annually from reduced non-attendance. Through ServiceNow’s work with NHS Trusts, we’ve identified five areas where change can make an immediate difference, as outlined in ServiceNow’s NHS Digital Transformation white paper: * improving the staff experience; * joining up corporate services; * protecting against cyber threats; * streamlining patient journeys; and * harnessing AI. The reward for getting this right? We could see £35 billion in productivity savings by 2030. That’s money that could be reinvested directly into patient care. Better staff systems could save £750 million annually — not through cuts, but by giving critical NHS workers back the 29 million hours currently lost to bureaucracy. Right now, it takes up to 120 days to get a new NHS employee properly started. In some trusts we have cut that to 25-40 days. Imagine the impact if this was rolled out across the whole NHS. When you’re trying to grow the workforce from 1.5 to 2.4 million people by 2036, every day matters. Joining up corporate services could save another £1.6 billion each year. This is especially urgent given that Integrated Care Systems are facing combined deficits and have been told to slash running costs by 50 percent. The NHS 10 Year Health Plan for England talks about rebuilding the NHS in working-class communities; areas that currently get 10 percent less funding per person. Digital transformation isn’t just about efficiency; it’s about equity. When systems work properly, everyone benefits, but the biggest gains go to those who currently struggle most to access care. The problem is these parts barely speak to each other. The white paper reveals just how costly this disconnection has become: 13.5 million hours wasted annually due to inadequate IT, a 7.5 million case waiting list, and nearly £3 billion spent each year compensating for care failures. Behind every statistic is a person. Someone facing a delayed diagnosis, a cancelled operation or simply not receiving the care they deserve. This fragmentation isn’t just inefficient, it has a direct effect on patients and clinicians too. We’re spending £15.5 billion annually, 6.5 percent of the entire NHS budget, on corporate services that don’t talk to each other. Nurses are spending over a quarter of their time on paperwork instead of caring for patients. GP practices are drowning in 240 million calls annually from frustrated patients who can’t get through. We have a patchwork of systems where crucial information gets lost in translation.  When it takes 20 separate manual processes just to say goodbye to a leaving employee, you know there’s room for improvement. In addition to internal challenges, there’s the cyber threat affecting the NHS. Healthcare cyberattacks doubled between 2022 and 2023. A single ransomware attack forced over 10,000 patients to have their appointments cancelled at just two trusts. Without proper digital defenses and monitoring, we’re one attack away from regional healthcare paralysis. But here’s the thing, AI is only as good as the systems it connects to. That’s where we need to be honest about the infrastructure challenge. You can’t build tomorrow’s healthcare on yesterday’s technology. We need systems that talk to each other, share information securely and put the right information in the right hands at the right moment. The truth is, the NHS can’t do this transformation alone. The scale is too big, the timeline too tight and the technical challenges too complex. It’s about partnership — because the best outcomes happen when public sector insight combines with private sector innovation and speed. We need genuine partnerships focused on outcomes, not just products. At ServiceNow, we’ve seen what’s possible when this approach works: connected systems, freed-up time and better patient experiences. We’re at a crossroads, and the path we choose in the next two to three years will determine the NHS our children inherit. We can keep tinkering around the edges, managing decline through small improvements or we can be bold and build the digital foundation that healthcare needs. This isn’t a distant dream; it’s an immediate opportunity. Patients have waited long enough. NHS staff have endured enough frustration with systems that make their jobs harder, not easier. The cost of inaction isn’t just measured in pounds, it’s measured in lives. The technology exists, the knowledge is there and the legal framework is in place. What we need now is to act on what we already know works for this transformation to happen.

Donald Trump this spring dubbed himself the “fertilization president.” But some conservative family policy advocates say he’s done little so far to publicly back that up and are pushing to get the White House in the remaining months of the year to prioritize family policy — and help Americans make more babies. A top priority is a pronatalist or family policy summit that spotlights the U.S.’s declining fertility rate. Other asks, which typically run through the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, include loosening regulations on day cares and child car seats, further increasing the child tax credit and requiring insurers to cover birth as well as pre- and post-natal care at no out-of-pocket cost. While the Trump administration has advanced a handful of policies explicitly billed as “pro-family,” some conservative advocates are dismayed that the president has not done more on one of his campaign’s most animating issues. The lack of movement threatens to dampen enthusiasm among parts of the Republican Party’s big tent coalition, including New Right populists, who worry about the erosion of the U.S. workforce, and techno-natalists, who advocate using reproductive technology to boost population growth, as the GOP stares down a challenging midterm election. “I think there are people, including the [vice president] and people in the White House, who really want to push pro-family stuff,” said Tim Carney, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who recently wrote “Family Unfriendly,” a book that has become popular in conservative circles. But “it hasn’t risen to the forefront of the actual decision-making tree in the White House, the people who can put some velocity on things.” “It’s all nascent,” Carney added, but “it is going to be something that Republicans want to talk about in the midterms.” White House aides acknowledge advocates’ restlessness, but argue that even as it has yet to take action on the suite of explicitly pro-family proposals advocates want, they have taken a whole-of-government approach to family policy. Privately, the White House is deliberating its next moves now that the GOP’s tax and policy bill passed. It’s taking a two-pronged approach: addressing financial pressures and infertility issues that prevent people from having children; and helping couples raise kids in alignment with their values. That latter bucket includes bolstering school choice and parental rights, promoting kin- and faith-based child care, and other actions that can help with the costs of raising children, including health care and housing. “You saw what we were able to accomplish in 200 days. It was a lot. Just wait for the next three-and-a-half years,” said a White House official, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy. “There’s a lot of opportunity to accomplish a lot through pure administrative action, through the bully pulpit and, of course, if we need to, through working with Congress.” The official couldn’t rule out a family policy event hosted by the White House in the future. “Look, the president loves to convene stakeholders and thought leaders and policy leaders,” the official added. While they understand the White House has had its attention fixed on other issues, like foreign policy, immigration, and trade, pronatalists are anxious for the administration to do something about the declining birth rate. They see it as, quite literally, an existential crisis. “Demographic collapse has become the global warming of the New Right,” said Malcolm Collins, who along with his wife Simone, are two of the most outspoken techno-natalists and have pitched the White House on several policies. “And this is true, not just for me, but for many individuals within the administration, and many individuals within the think tanks that are informing the administration.” The Trump administration has advanced a handful of policies that conservatives argue will support families and, they hope, encourage people to have children. The president’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill made permanent the child tax credit first passed as part of Trump’s first-term Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, increased the rate and adjusted it for inflation on an ongoing basis. The legislation also established a one-time $1,000 so-called baby bonus for children born in 2025 through 2028. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy instructed his agency to give preference in competitive grants to communities with higher-than-average birth and marriage rates. Critics of the administration note that the megalaw will make it harder for people to keep their Medicaid insurance, the president’s proposed 2026 budget eliminates childcare subsidies for parents in college, and Trump’s CDC eliminated a research team responsible for collecting national data on IVF success rates. But family policy advocates say on the whole they see progress, though not nearly enough to reverse the trend of declining birth rates. “From my conversations with folks in the administration, there is definitely interest in doing something visible on the family stuff. They feel like they’re going down the list — homelessness, crime, obviously immigration — of different things and families’ time will come,” said Patrick Brown, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center who focuses on family policy. The U.S. birth rate has been declining since the Baby Boom ended in the early 1960s, falling from 3.65 births per woman in 1960 to 1.599 in 2024, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. There are similar trends across high-income nations, in part the result of easier access to contraception, changing societal values favoring careers over having children and high costs of living. The issue came to the fore during the campaign when Trump promised government-funded in vitro fertilization in an effort to allay concerns over his anti-abortion stance. A few months later, then-Sen. JD Vance doubled down on controversial comments about the country being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies” and argued for more babies in the U.S. Elon Musk, perhaps the most prominent pronatalist, was Trump’s biggest financial booster during the campaign and a key adviser in the early days of the administration. There is no agreed-upon solution to the problem of a declining birth rate. Hungary is held up as a model by pronatalists for its family friendly policies but its birth rate remains low, despite exempting women with four or more children from paying income tax, among other incentives. The birth rate also remains low in Nordic countries like Sweden, Norway and Finland that have generous paid parental leave and heavily subsidized childcare. Still, advocates in the U.S. have a list for the Trump administration they believe will make a difference, arguing that even if they fail to increase the birth rate, they would support families. Some policies that pronatalists hope the Trump administration will pursue are more typically associated with the left, such as expanding child tax credits, which Trump did in the GOP megalaw, and reducing the costs of child care. But others have a home in the libertarian wing of the GOP, such as cutting regulations on day care and curbing car seat rules. Some of these proposals, pronatalists acknowledge, come with more risk but would overall result in more births. For decades, social conservatives led the GOP’s charge on families, arguing in support of policies that promote two-parent, heterosexual families. But declining birth rates, coupled with a broadening of the GOP coalition, has broadened the lens to focus on increasing the birth rate, a new pronatalist tinge. In an effort to keep their nascent and fragile coalition unified, neither social conservatives nor the techno-natalists are pushing policies at the extremes — like banning IVF or creating genetically modified super soldiers. That helps explain why the president has not taken action on one of his most concrete promises, making IVF free, despite receiving a report on it in May. A second White House official, granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said expanding IVF access for families remains “a key priority,” but declined to offer specifics on the status of any policy moves. “This issue is a winner for the Republican Party, it’s a winner for women, it’s a pro-life issue,” said Kaylen Silverberg, a fertility doctor in Texas who has consulted with the White House on IVF. “This will result in more babies, period.” But social conservatives are morally opposed to IVF both because of a belief life begins at conception and because they don’t think that science should interfere with the natural act of procreation. The proposal would also be quite costly. Instead, they want the White House to support something called reproductive restorative medicine, which can include supplements and hormone therapy, that they say will help women naturally improve their fertility. “The point of President Trump’s campaign pledge was to help couples with infertility have children. There’s a way to do that that’s cheaper, faster, less painful and more preferable to couples,” said Katelyn Shelton, a visiting fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s Bioethics, Technology and Human Flourishing Program who worked at the Department of Health and Human Services during the first Trump administration. While most of the family policy conversation has been concentrated on the right, it’s also starting to grow on the left, alongside the so-called “abundance” movement focused on reducing government bureaucracy. Both the National Conservative Conference and the Abundance Conference this week in Washington hosted panels on family policy. Reducing barriers to building housing is “good for families,” said Leah Libresco Sargeant, a senior policy analyst at the Niskanen Center, a think tank that describes itself as supporting free markets and effective government, who co-moderated the Abundance Conference’s family policy panel. “That’s not kind of a family centered policy per se, [but] it’s a good policy that’s good for families.” Ultimately, many conservative family policy advocates argue there is only so much government can do to address what they see as a fundamentally cultural and religious problem. It’s a posture that the GOP’s historically small-government contingent takes as it pushes back on their new populist bedfellows. “I do not think that the problem of people not having enough kids is a problem of economics. I think that is very often a line that is used in order to promote a larger government populism,” said conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. “This is a predominantly religious problem, it’s a cultural problem.” Pronatalists have a lot of hope in the future of the GOP in part because of Vance, the administration’s most prominent and ideologically committed proponent of family policies, to carry the mantle, either during Trump’s presidency or as part of his own 2028 presidential bid. They love that Vance brings his children on official trips and is open about carving out time during the day to spend with them. “Our political leaders are inherently cultural leaders,” Carney said. “Bringing his kids with him to Europe and at the inauguration — where the little one, she was sucking on her fingers, so they had put Band-Aids on some of them so she wasn’t sucking all of them at once — all of those things that show a loving family and that kind of stuff, I think that can be culturally really productive.”

A day after senators of both parties rebuked his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for restricting access to Covid vaccines at a congressional hearing, President Donald Trump praised them, along with some other shots, during an Oval Office event. “A lot of people think that Covid is amazing,” Trump said, referencing the vaccine, not the disease. “You know, there are many people that believe strongly in that.” Trump also said he thought the polio shot was amazing and that “you have to be very careful when you say that some people don’t have to be vaccinated.” Trump was responding to a question from a reporter about Florida officials’ announcement this week that they would be lifting all vaccination requirements in the state, including for schoolchildren. Trump said: “You have vaccines that work. They just pure and simple work. They’re not controversial at all. And I think those vaccines should be used. Otherwise some people are going to catch it and they endanger other people.” Kennedy has long maintained that parents should have the right to refuse vaccinations required by schools, and he has only approved new Covid vaccines for people older than 65 and those with underlying health conditions. Others may no longer get the shots at pharmacies without a prescription depending on the state where they live. Senators at a Finance Committee hearing Thursday, including Republican Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and the chamber’s second-ranking Republican, John Barrasso of Wyoming, both doctors, questioned Kennedy sharply about the changes to vaccine policy. Barrasso cited polling that he said showed the vast majority of Americans supported most vaccines, while Cassidy praised Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, which helped bring the Covid shots to market in record time. Kennedy struggled to explain how he could both be so critical of Covid shots — he once said they were the “deadliest vaccine ever made” – and at the same time agree with Cassidy that Trump deserved credit for helping to develop them. Trump’s endorsement of vaccination also comes two weeks before a government vaccine panel, which Kennedy has stacked with members who share his skepticism of the shots, will meet to consider revisions to the childhood vaccine schedule. Among other issues, the panel is considering whether to change guidance that newborns receive Hepatitis B vaccines. Kennedy has argued against that practice. Though the disease is usually transmitted through sex or infected needles, mothers can pass it to their babies. Kennedy ran a group, Children’s Health Defense, that questions vaccine safety and was involved with litigation against vaccine makers before he dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Trump. He’s long believed that an increase in childhood immunizations is connected to rising autism cases, despite abundant evidence to the contrary. Trump named him health secretary shortly after he won the election. Still, in the immediate aftermath of the Senate hearing Thursday, Trump backed Kennedy, saying his health secretary means well and that he appreciated that Kennedy had a different take on health issues than others. Trump also didn’t sound alarmed when Kennedy pulled $500 million in funding for research on the mRNA technology that undergirded the Covid shots last month, saying at the time that Operation Warp Speed was “a long time ago and we’re on to other things.” On Monday, Trump asked drug companies to justify the success of their Covid vaccines with more efficacy data. Moderna, Novavax and Pfizer responded quickly with evidence they said demonstrated the shots saved lives. Trump also supported Kennedy last week by firing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez. Kennedy had picked Monarez for the job and she’d been in it only a month. Monarez said Kennedy pushed her out because she refused to agree in advance to support changes to vaccine guidance recommended by Kennedy’s handpicked vaccine advisory panel. The CDC director ultimately decides what shots to recommend and to whom. Kennedy denied that was why he dismissed her at the Thursday hearing and said Monarez had told him she wasn’t trustworthy. Monarez’s lawyers said that was not true.