76 civil society organisations have written to the justice secretary David Lammy, urging the UK government to act on a “long-overdue” commitment to protect basic human rights in UK law.

Just Fair has coordinated the joint letter and published it on 20 May. It marks exactly 50 years since the UK ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). This was a landmark treaty recognising rights to housing, food, health, education, social security and decent work.

Signatories warn that, despite this long-standing commitment, these human rights remain largely unenforceable in UK law. And this is leaving millions of people unable to rely on the basic foundations of a decent life.

Jess McQuail, director of Just Fair, said:

Fifty years ago, the UK made a promise, that everyone should be able to rely on the essentials of a decent life. Today, that promise is still being broken.

Millions of people are going without the essentials, not by accident, but because these rights are not properly protected in our laws. Delay is no longer acceptable. Incorporation is the next step, and it is long overdue.

The letter calls on the UK government to commit to incorporating economic, social and cultural rights into domestic law. That way, human rights can be enforced in practice and provide real accountability when systems fail.

Campaigners say not only would this help tackle poverty and inequality. It would also offer a shared foundation that brings people together, at a time of growing division in UK politics. McQuail added:

At a time when some seek to divide communities and scapegoat others, rights offer a different path, one rooted in dignity, fairness and shared standards we can all rely on.

Incorporating these rights into UK law is a practical step towards building a fairer and more just society.

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The call follows recent recommendations from the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It urged the UK to give these human rights full legal effect and access to justice when they are violated.

Fifty years after ratification, campaigners say the UK must now move from promise to delivery.

Featured image via Scott Olson / Getty Images

By The Canary

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We were excited to discover this old footage of a very young John Swinney.

?

How thrilled he must be that he’s managed to make his dream come true.

Because in the Scottish Parliament at least, there are now no men and no women, and indeed pretty much only wankers. Just days into its five-year term, gender ideology has already turned it into a trainwreck and a laughing-stock.

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After the election, the Parliament website had added “non-binary” to the list of filters by which one could search the MSP cohort, and included male Green MSP Iris Duane in the female category. Shortly afterwards it decided for the first time in its 27-year history to abolish the gender filter entirely.

It’s doubtful that the Scottish Government can comply with its duty to monitor progress on female representation, or indeed its Public Sector Equality Duty generally, if it refuses to recognise the sex of MSPs, but apparently it has been determined that “inclusion” is more important.

Meanwhile, the first act of new Presiding Officer Kenny Gibson – one of just three SNP MSPs who voted against the Gender Recognition Reform Bill – was to announce that he would impose compelled speech in the chamber on anyone with the temerity to know the difference between a man and a woman.

Sanctioning anyone for “misgendering” would be unambiguously unlawful anywhere else in Scotland, but there’s uncertainty over whether the Equality Act 2010 (which protects so-called “gender-critical” beliefs) applies in the Holyrood chamber. In theory both the PO and the Parliament’s standing orders are subordinate to UK law, but we can only hope that an MSP, probably a Tory or Reform one, puts the matter to the test as soon as possible in the interests of clarity.

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The Scottish Government has also refused to take any action over the trans-focused Equality Network – an organisation almost entirely funded by the government – giving businesses unlawful and inaccurate advice regarding the Supreme Court ruling in For Women Scotland.

All of this follows the chaos unleashed by the election of “non-binary” Green MSP “Q” Manivannan, who will under the law as it stands become an illegal immigrant long before the completion of his term in office.

(Although the Scottish Greens find biological women so intolerably gross and icky that they made a female candidate in exactly the same circumstances stand down before the election, despite all the other “diversity” boxes she ticked.)

And the important thing to note is that none of this is a bug. It’s a feature.

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The sociopathic freakshow that made up the Scottish Greens candidate list at the election, for example, was not merely an unfortunate aspect of to the fact that the party has nobody but sociopathic freaks to choose from.

The Greens are not a proper party in the normal sense. They have a tiny membership riven with incredibly bitter factional infighting, and don’t stand in most constituency seats. Instead, they exist to opportunistically exploit the electoral system as essentially a form of political terrorism. Everything they do is about “queering” the status quo, by which they mean normal people (especially white heterosexual ones, although “Queer Theory” is only passingly concerned with sexuality) with families and jobs and a fondness for an occasional pork chop.

“Q” Manivannan, whose real name is Srivatsan, takes his nom-de-plume from his social media identity “q_ueering”. Almost immediately after he was elected and a number of offensive and racist posts from his Twitter account surfaced, he locked the account so that it was only visible to his 2,471 existing followers, and then methodically removed every single one of them so that nobody could read any of his tweets. (He now has just two, and nobody but him and them knows who they are.)

Readers might be forgiven for wondering what he wants to hide so badly.

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Manivannan joined the Greens primarily because of the party’s stance on Palestine, and wants Scottish taxpayers’ money to be spent not on improving anyone’s lives in Scotland but on paying “reparations” for the “historical and contemporary complicity of Scotland in the colonisation and occupation of Palestine”.

He performs poetry urging people to migrate illegally to Scotland.

He describes himself as a “marriage abolitionist” and a “communist” who runs towards red flags rather than away from them, and also supports the abolition of prisons, like his dribble-witted fellow new Green MSP Kate Nevens.

The Greens want to soak the rich with high taxes, but at the same time they don’t want anyone to BE rich in the first place. They oppose most forms of economic growth as environmentally harmful, and call for “degrowth” as both a tactic against climate change and a path to “upending the engine of capitalism”, ie destroying life as we currently understand it.

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Manivannan is explicit about the link.

So if you voted Scottish Green you voted for a communist Scotland with no marriage and no prisons, an end to capitalism not just in Scotland but worldwide, and all your money being given to Palestine. Oh, and more cycle lanes.

It’s not an accident that the Greens put such obvious nutters at the top of their lists. It’s a deliberate statement of open, provocative contempt for normal people and normal society, that says “We are going to do our damnedest to destroy everything you know and love”. Manivannan is simply less subtle than most of them about it.

Consider the selection of the infamous Mridul Wadhwa as a list candidate for Edinburgh. He was EIGHTH on the list. Regions only actually get seven list seats. For him to have any chance of getting elected the Greens would have needed literally 100% of the list vote. So why is he there?

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The answer is that he’s there to make a statement. The Scottish Greens WANT you to know that they support this man, who was fired for victimising a rape crisis worker, having lied to get a job running a rape crisis organisation that was supposed to be for a biological woman.

Wadhwa is absolute poison to every decent human in Scotland. And since there was no chance whatever of him getting elected there was no ostensible purpose for putting him on the list. But the Greens did it anyway purely to say “Screw you and your decent society. This is who we admire and prioritise over you, and would happily have making your laws.”

Alert readers may also have noted the presence on that list, in a literally-impossible ELEVENTH place, of Alex Staniforth, a repulsive piece of slime even by the standards of the Scottish Greens, who last year tried to defund Edinburgh Women’s Aid for not being sufficiently inclusive of men.

The Greens only stood three constituency candidates in the Edinburgh region, so even if ALL of them had won their seats and EVERY SINGLE LIST VOTE had gone to the Greens, Staniforth still wouldn’t have been elected. The only reason he’s there is to demonstrate the utter molten contempt in which the Greens hold women, and indeed most normal people generally.

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Most of this is the legacy of Patrick Harvie, a tiny angry man with the face of Heinrich Himmler but lacking the warm personality. By the end of this parliament Harvie will have been an MSP for 28 years and trousered over £2,000,000 in wages – not bad for an anti-capitalist – without ever winning a seat in his own right.

He claims to be a bisexual, but in all his decades in public life nobody’s ever known him to have a male or female partner – something which also applies to almost everyone in senior positions in the party. The last time he’s known to have been inside a woman it was his mother. If anyone’s having sex with the Scottish Greens leadership, they (perhaps understandably) don’t want anyone finding out about it.

Harvie took the mild-mannered environmentalist party of Robin Harper and transformed it into a far-left home for intolerant extremists, driving out widely-respected moderates like Andy Wightman for even daring to TALK to feminists.

Harvie groomed the repellent misogynist Ross Greer as his successor, but when the party held a leadership election last year 88% of its membership declined to vote for ANYONE. Greer got in on just 298 votes.

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It’s worth remembering that the Greens came dead last in last week’s election (of parties represented in the Parliament), with a total of just 375,000 votes. The Lib Dems got 478K, the Tories got 543K, Reform got 745K and Labour got 809K. But Scotland’s electoral system rewarded Greer and Mackay’s misfit crew with 15 seats, just two less than Reform who got twice the votes.

And that’s the heart of the issue – the Greens and their lunatic policies are toxically unpopular with Scots, which is why the party hates society, which is why the people it puts up for election are all so foul. It’s not a coincidence. It’s design.

That’s why when people question their motives, Greens don’t respond by saying “Look, we’re in this to make Scotland a better place, give us a chance and judge us on what we do”, they say “LOL just wait, you’re going to hate us even more!”

It’s because if you’re a normal Scot just trying to survive with your family from day to day without queering/destroying the entire order of Western society, they already loathe everything about you.

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Worryingly, despite the arithmetic in the chamber putting John Swinney in an almost uniquely strong position where he only needs the support of any one other party to pass any vote, all the early signs are that the SNP are going to cling to the Greens and their agenda anyway, giving a party with just 8% of the vote a massively disproportionate influence to go with their disproportionate seat numbers.

So get ready for five years of the queerest Scottish Parliament ever, folks. We can only hope there’s some fragment of a recognisable Scotland left at the end of it.

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The post PMQs Badenoch brands Labour government as ‘like the Soviets won’ appeared first on Conservative Home.

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Social and environmental causes are being positioned as close to the hearts of modern-day Royals. But given their enormous wealth and persistently high environmental footprint – amidst ongoing revelations about how much they extract from the public purse – how does this claim stack up?

The Royal assets

Prince William is set to sell off a fifth of the Duchy of Cornwall, raising money “to build homes and help nature”. Announcing this ten-year ambition in the Times earlier this week, its Chief Executive claimed that the Duchy:

should first and foremost exist to have a positive impact on the world.

Not many would disagree that Royal assets could – or should – be directed towards making the world a better place. But how much do the Royals currently benefit from all the resources afforded to them, and how does that compare to the good this does for people and the planet?

The Duchy of Cornwall, created as a source of income for the male heir to the throne, is an enormous portfolio of land worth over £1 billion. It’s estimated to earn Prince William over £20 million each year. Similarly, the Duchy of Lancaster provides an annual sum now approaching £30 million that flows directly to the King. This is on top of the Sovereign grant that the monarchy receives from the government, which has risen sharply in recent years, approaching £140 million in 2026/7.

Beyond these reported sources of income, the Royal Family do not share details of their inherited or privately earned wealth, but this is evidently immense: they own three private estates, which between them occupy more land than Birmingham, as well as extensive collections of jewels, art and more. Their postage stamp collection alone is valued at over £100 million, about 200 times what the average person in the UK earns in a lifetime.

Talking the talk…

So what do the Royals do with the astonishing amount of wealth and land under their control?

Whilst some of their money appears to be channelled towards well-meaning causes, how much remains unclear. The foundations fronted by the Royals, such as the King’s Trust and the Earthshot Prize, are well-publicised for their charitable work, but aren’t solely financed by the Royals themselves – they’re vehicles that redistribute donations and grants from a range of sources.

As large private landlords, both Duchies emphasise their:

commitment to local communities, economies and the natural environment.

But this is hard to reconcile with the profits made from tenants that have included state schools, the NHS and charities, nor the £1.5 million a year they receive renting out an empty prison to the government.

Whilst they act as patrons for nature charities and support several ecosystem restoration projects, the Royals are regularly criticised for the harm they cause to the UK’s nature. This includes presiding over the destruction of our seabed and their penchant for killing wild animals.

The sustainability data reported for activities funded by the Sovereign Grant alone shows the Royals shifting to buying renewable electricity, but does not provide any evidence of significant changes in their consumption, waste or carbon emissions. State-funded “business travel” by the Royals has risen each year since Charles became King, and resulted in the equivalent of 1,900 tonnes of CO₂ emissions last year. That’s like taking five economy-class flights between London and New York every single day.

…but the action does not match

There’s perhaps no starker symbol of UK inequality than the Royal Family living lives of such obvious excess, while an estimated 30% of children live in poverty. And for an institution that benefits so significantly from a legacy of colonialism and slavery, the idea that the Royals are doing anywhere near enough to address systemic injustice is hard to swallow.

And to show the kind of environmental leadership often ascribed to them, they would need to go far, far beyond buying solar panels, planting hedgerows, and adjusting the fuel guzzled by Royal helicopters.

Ecologist Prof James Bullock, who has previously campaigned for the Royals to rewild their land, said:

The UK is one of the most biodiversity depleted countries in the world. To start reversing that and to help adapt to climate change we need to give large areas of land and sea back to nature, as well as use farmland and other productive land more sustainably. The Royals, with their huge landholdings and wealth should be taking a lead on this necessary transition rather than tinkering around the edges.

Commenting on William’s recent announcement in the context of the Royal’s historical land-grabbing, Bullock also said:

The Prince is selling land appropriated from the nation. It would be more appropriate if he gave it back.

Featured image via Aaron Chown – WPA Pool / Getty Images

By Abi Perrin

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Chancellor Rachel Reeves will announce eased ring-fencing rules for commercial banks such as Lloyds, HSBC, Santander and Barclays. Strengthened after the 2008 financial crash, the regulation separates investment banking from retail banking.

Why deregulate banks?

The government aims for the eased regulation to enable big banks to lend more to businesses. The current ring-fencing means banks cannot use deposits from individuals and small or medium enterprises (SMEs) (retail) to lend to huge corporations and governments (investment).

Reeves wants to deregulate and enable an additional estimated £80 billion in lending to businesses. But taking £80 billion that’s backed by the deposits of individuals and SMEs, and using it to increase the excessive profits of large corporations, doesn’t seem like the best move.

In a letter organised by Positive Money in December 2024, 50 academics and experts warned:

Lending to the real economy has consistently made up around just 10% of bank lending in recent decades. The vast majority – around 80% – of bank lending goes towards inflating the price of pre-existing property and other assets.

Inequality is the real issue

In order to increase lending to the real economy, the UK must reduce economic inequality. This disparity is stark: 157 billionaires have wealth to the sum of 22% of the UK’s entire GDP. Meanwhile, more than 14 million people, or 21% of the country, live in relative poverty.

It means there is a huge lack of demand for products and services in the UK as people struggle to meet basic needs.

For example, citizens can’t afford to buy a home, let alone upgrade one. Millions of people upgrading their homes delivers a lot more economic activity than a few super rich people upgrading theirs. But banks aren’t lending to electricians or plumbers to start their own businesses because the demand isn’t there for those businesses to thrive.

What led to the financial crash?

Again, extreme economic inequality is the issue.

The financial crash happened because people didn’t (and still don’t) have enough money to account for inflated house prices.

Before 2008, banks gave people too much credit to make up for it, known as ‘sub prime mortgages’. People then defaulted on the mortgages when house prices fell and rates increased, causing the financial crisis. However, if the super rich weren’t hoarding houses and using them as assets, the crash wouldn’t have happened.

Featured image via Leon Neal/ Getty Images

By James Wright

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Yves Sakila, a 35-year-old Black Congolese man who has lived in Ireland for more than 20 years, has been killed in a horrific encounter with a team of brutish security guards in Dublin.

Video footage from 15 May shows a group of five men holding Sakila down with what is clearly excessive force. All five men are placing their weight on the grounded man, who is not providing any meaningful resistance. At one point, one of those on top places his knee forcefully into the back of Sakila’s neck.

The footage closely resembles the appalling racist murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, US, in 2020.

In media reporting of the Dublin incident, the phrase “became unresponsive” is applied to Sakila. It is the same passive voice framing so often used for police killings as if victims’ sudden loss of life was a spontaneous incident unrelated to the actions of anyone else. The evidence strongly indicates the men restraining Sakila caused his death.

Sakila mourners: ‘Don’t whitewash this crime’

People mourning his death held a vigil at the scene of the crime on Henry Street on Tuesday. There, a woman can be heard demanding:

We want the media to say that a man was killed. We want the media to cover what happened…we want justice.

Another man berates the media present and insists they cover the incident properly, and be on the side of justice. The likes of RTÉ and the Irish Times have referenced the claim that the five-man assault of Sakila occurred in the context of an alleged shoplifting incident. They have not emphasised that even if Sakila had been accused of murdering someone, the nature of restraint the men used had no justification.

The Irish Times at least made some limited attempt to humanise Sakila, who was homeless. Quoting staff at the Salvation Army shelter where he lived, the Irish Times wrote:

Staff described him as a “pleasant and quiet” resident who had a “deep interest in technology and sometimes attended prayer services”.

They also quote a mourner at the vigil, Boma Biansolo, who said:

I came here because…my brother [died] here on Friday and no one tried to help him or save him…Of course I am scared for my son because that happened.

This is another disturbing aspect of Sakila’s killing — the fact he was assaulted while a large crowd of people looked on and did nothing to assist him as he clearly cried out in distress. It poses disturbing questions for Irish society, especially in the context of Bertie Ahern’s recent disgusting racist remarks.

Speaking on the doorstep of a potential voter who was vomiting out a torrent of xenophobic bile, Ahern said:

The ones I worry about are the Africans. I agree with you on the Africans. We can’t be taking in people from the Congo and all these places. I think there’s too many from those places.

Killing follows racist remarks from Bertie Ahern

It would be excessive to directly blame Ahern for Yves Sakila’s death. However, such remarks, made often enough by influential people, create a racist culture in which violence against people of colour becomes more frequent.

Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, of People Before Profit, emphasised this.

He said:

Immigrants are facing increasing hostility and fear of attack created by far-right groups, but also by anti-immigrant government policies and rhetoric. Bertie Ahern’s recent comments were a shameful example of how government parties are fanning the flames of anti-immigrant hatred to divert from their own disastrous policies. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael bear heavy responsibility for the fear immigrant communities have to live with today.

In a statement, Shane O’Curry, of Irish Network Against Racism (INAR), said:

The death of a black man in such circumstances is extremely worrying, and we urge the authorities to thoroughly investigate all of the circumstances leading to this man’s death, in order to ensure minority ethnic community confidence in the criminal justice system.

The group is calling on supporters to attend a protest organised by the Congolese community in Ireland. It will take place at the Dáil at 1pm on Thursday 21 May.

Featured image via the Canary

By Robert Freeman

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AI has outpaced us, thinks faster, scales wider, comprehends more. To cede cultural, emotional, and imaginative labor to algorithms is not progress; it is capitulation. Automated search engines or text-to-image prompt-to-creation systems are not just about machines; they now involve the executives, institutions, and stakeholders who determine how, where, and why these technologies are deployed.

When state companies and nation-state enterprises opt for the shortcut of AI-generated content in public communication and cultural production, the consequences go beyond the aesthetic and strike deeply at the level of meaning. It broadcasts a message louder than any campaign: that authentic creative labor is dispensable. Meanwhile, advocates argue that AI literacy should be treated as a public infrastructure issue, on par with education or access to information, to make society more resilient to systems capable of influencing our decisions and emotions. 

Yet removing human accountability breeds monsters: it undermines professional environments, disrupts competitive fields, and gradually erodes the human sense of initiative and creativity day by day. What was once a subculture, a shared resource, one requiring careful stewardship and limited use, is being transformed into an infrastructure of extraction and efficiency. 

Its social, cultural, and environmental costs are increasingly displaced outward, absorbed quietly by those who neither built it nor were consulted in its redesign. This shift, however, is not simply the result of technological inevitability or bad intentions. Rather, it extends to the gradual marginalisation of professional and creative roles in favour of optimised, automated services that quietly reconfigure the fabric of human work, expertise, and value.

Education integrated with AI

In China, university students now face educational landscapes stripped of artistic practice. Local universities that are less hesitant shutter arts degrees in the name of AI’s march. 

As reported by Al Jazeera’s Katrina Yu, such decisions render humans into passive bystanders. Moreover, the kinds of careers these students will pursue are increasingly shaped – or deformed – by this shift, ultimately orienting them away from traditional approaches to creative and performative work.

An open letter signed by some students of the university began circulating on social media. As a reaction to this outspoken strategy by the Chinese academic system, students reacted: 

When we saw the news, we were completely stunned. We applied to the Communication University because of these programmes. Now they’re being cut just like that. Will our diplomas still be recognised? What will happen to our remaining classes? And when we apply for jobs after graduation, will potential employers think we have also been eliminated in this game since our majors have been scrapped?

Once that path is normalized, it is unclear whether we, or our children, will recognize the contours of human creativity at all in the same way as we once did.

AI and the Performing Arts

AI is now also capable of generating avatars, songs, scripts, and even entire stage narratives. 

Fabrice Laffon is living proof of a professional exploring this new frontier of art and digital automation. He is the director of the legendary Madame Arthur, Pigalle’s historic drag cabaret. The troupe’s communications team unveiled Data von Tana, an AI-generated entity, at the beginning of April, signaling a subtle but profound shift in the cabaret’s artistic tone. 

Arkadi Zaides’ theatrical performance The Cloud is unique: much of the creative work – editing, staging, even the act of performance – is executed by artificial intelligence itself, rather than by the performer or the artist. If even learning to act can be algorithmically optimized and distributed at scale, the very foundation upon which theatre and performative arts stand begins to wobble.

Only by keeping firmly in mind that human creativity and AI literacy can and must coexist without machines “tricking” people will it be possible to manage the automation processes of contemporary society. Difficult? Yes, but our survival as human beings depends on our ability to assist human decision-making, never to replace it. 

The real question is not whether AI can replace performance, but whether enough people will stop caring about the difference to make replacement economically sufficient. That is a cultural question, not a technological one, and it is considerably more disturbing.

Featured image via Hollie Adams / Getty Images

By Tommaso Zerbi

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Arsenal have ended a 22‑year wait for the top-flight title, finally turning near-misses into silverware under Mikel Arteta. The Gunners sealed the 2025/26 Premier League crown after Manchester City drew 1-1 at Bournemouth, a result that handed Arsenal the trophy with one game to spare.

How it happened

Arsenal led the table for much of the season, then weathered a tense April that threatened to derail their bid.

A 2-1 defeat at Manchester City looked like a momentum shift, but Arteta’s side steadied, kept their nerve and capitalised when City failed to win at Everton and Bournemouth. The draws mathematically ended Arsenal’s long wait for a league title.

What it means for the club

This is Arsenal’s first league title since the Invincibles season of 2003/04.

Beyond the nostalgia, the victory marks the end of a run of three consecutive second-place finishes and a six-year trophy drought.

For Arteta, it’s his second major honour as manager at the Emirates and a vindication of a project built on structure, discipline and a clear identity.

The squad and style

Arsenal’s season was defined by a compact, resilient unit rather than a single superstar explosion.

The defence proved the backbone of the campaign, while key midfield signings and tactical tweaks allowed the team to grind out results when flair alone wasn’t enough.

The balance between organisation and attacking intent gave them the consistency required over 38 games.

The moment and the reaction

Players and staff celebrated at London Colney as the final whistle blew at Bournemouth. Social media and former figures associated with the club joined the chorus of congratulations.

The club will lift the trophy after their final game of the season at Crystal Palace, a formal coronation to match the long, patient build-up.

What’s next

Arsenal now head into the Champions League final against PSG in Budapest with momentum and belief.

The European final represents a chance to add a historic first Champions League trophy to the season’s haul and to cement this campaign as a genuine turning point for the club.

Quick takeaways

• End of an era: First league title since 2004; the Invincibles’ shadow finally lifted.
• Managerial milestone: Arteta’s project reaches a major peak; continuity rewarded.
• Team effort: Defence and midfield balance carried the campaign; collective over individual.
• Still to play for: Champions League final against PSG offers a chance for a double.

Arsenal’s title feels like the payoff for a long, methodical rebuild: smart recruitment, a clear tactical identity and a manager who learned from setbacks. The celebrations will be loud, but the real test is whether this becomes a launchpad for sustained dominance or a glorious peak.

Either way, north London has its crown back and the club’s next chapter starts with a trophy in hand and a European final on the horizon.

Featured image via Julian Finney / Getty Images

By Faz Ali

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President Donald Trump has finally delivered on his promise a decade ago: He has made Republicans “so sick and tired of winning.”

The winning — a series of retributive primary challenges this month that settled scores up to five years old — has led to a fresh round of chest-thumping from MAGA allies boasting about their victories in Indiana, Louisiana and Kentucky.

Trump ended his vendetta spring Tuesday by dropping a two-stage MAGA bomb, backing Attorney General Ken Paxton for Senate in Texas on the same day he ushered Rep. Thomas Massie to the exits in Kentucky.

But the revenge tour is increasingly imperiling Trump’s midterm agenda on the Hill.

That’s because for every apostate ousted by Trump this month, there’s a sign of not only his waning political capital on the Hill, but that his backward-focused endeavors have damaged his own legislative ambitions, leaving him a victim of his own primary success.

“Those so-called victories over the last couple weeks are just a mirage. They are self-owns,” said one senior Senate Republican operative, granted anonymity to speak candidly about frustration with the White House. “We’re not actually beating Democrats, and we’re not actually advancing legislation. Instead, gas is up 45% due to our actions and the President’s decision to go to war with Iran. He’s focused on the ballroom. He’s announced a $1.8 billion restitution fund with zero details or congressional authority to do so. It just is crazy.”

In just one day, a conquered — and, consequently, unbridled — Sen. Bill Cassidy joined Democrats to become the 50th yes vote on a war powers resolution, opposed Trump’s ballroom funding in reconciliation and called Trump’s freshly picked Paxton a “felon.” And that was just day three of Cassidy unchained.

Cassidy is not alone. Trump’s ballroom funding is stalled, the SAVE America Act is mired in the Senate and Majority Leader John Thune is pushing back on his desire to fire the parliamentarian. That’s not to mention the pushback even from the likes of the friendlier senator from Louisiana, John Kennedy, who expressed doubt about the Justice Department’s $1.8 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund.

“There are still many, many months to go before the election, and this president is going to have to continue to deal and work with, and partner with, or battle with this group of lawmakers,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told reporters Tuesday. “Even though Bill Cassidy lost his primary, he is still a voting member of the Senate until January. … So the president may have just opened some opportunities for people.”

Now Cornyn could join their ranks. After Trump endorsed Paxton, the senior Texas senator faces increasingly slim chances of surviving next week’s runoff election. Should he lose, Cornyn will be liberated to vote his conscience — unmoved by threats of further political vengeance from Trump — for the final months of his term.

“What is the return on investment for Trump?” said Greg Lamantia, a Texas businessman who supports Cornyn, about Trump’s Paxton endorsement. “I don’t understand why you take this risk, versus sitting back and doing nothing. Now you’ve created an enemy for six months, when you have a razor-thin majority.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Come November, if Paxton loses to state Rep. James Talarico, this week and Trump feeling himself after victories in Indiana and Louisiana could be remembered as the week where he overreached.

“Some of the issues I hear about when I’m at home in the grocery store, in the hardware store, are not the same issues we’re talking about in Washington, so I think it’s really important that we prioritize what people are talking about,” said Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo).

That daylight between Trump’s priorities and the top issues for voters is widening. The economy and cost of living remain voters’ top priorities, even as patience for the Iran war wavers. And though Trump has flexed his electoral muscle in primary after primary, his endorsement may hurt more than it helps in battleground races this November, according to a recent analysis from The POLITICO Poll.

“It seems to me his agenda is mostly vengeance,” said former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who spent 15 months as a vocal Trump critic after deciding not to run for reelection during Trump’s first term. “It’s not just those that he’s going after he’s gonna have to deal with — Massie and Cornyn and Cassidy — it’s anybody who’s gotten past the filing deadline, or past their primary, and realizing that supporting a lot of what he wants is not good for the general election.”

At the end of a month that put on full display Trump’s dominance over his own party, his season of settling scores may not have advanced the ball toward November.

That dynamic could pose a problem for Republicans, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley told POLITICO. “Congress doesn’t do much,” he said.

“In November, voters are going to say to Congress, ‘What have you done for me?’ And it’s not going to be enough to say that, ‘Well, you know, we liked some stuff President Trump did, but we didn’t do any of it,’” Hawley said. “I mean, we better do some stuff.”

What does it mean that Trump has vanquished his foes at the expense of his own agenda?

“It means President Trump and his team have completely lost sight of how DC operates and why the American people elected him in the first place,” said the senior Senate Republican operative.

Last year, chief of staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that she had a “loose agreement that the score settling will end before the first 90 days are over.” That was 395 days ago.

Dasha Burns and Ali Bianco contributed to this report.

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Fenerbahçe players celebrated the Turkish Women’s Football League title amid remarkable scenes that included raising the Palestinian flag during the coronation ceremony. The moment received widespread interaction across social media.

Both Zeynep Kerimoglu and Ipek Kaya were seen raising the Palestinian flag inside the stadium during the celebrations.

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Other clips showed a number of the team’s players celebrating the title with the Palestinian flag after the end of the coronation ceremony. Observers considered this to be a continuation of the frequent presence of Palestinian symbolism inside Turkish stadiums and sports celebrations during recent times.

This comes days after a similar scene during Galatasaray’s celebrations of the Turkish league title, when French player Sacha Boey, 24, stole the show after appearing draped in the Palestinian flag on Friday evening.

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Turkish stadiums have witnessed several similar situations in recent months, both from fans and players, in support of Palestine and the Gaza Strip.

Turkish Parliament speaker supports Lamine Yamal

Politician Numan Kurtulmus, who is speaker of the Grand National Assembly of Türkiye, praised Barcelona right winger Lamine Yamal for his anti-genocide stance. Yamal raised the Palestinian flag during his team’s celebrations of the Spanish League title and faced condemnation from Israeli officials for doing so.

Kurtulmus said Yamal had taken a “humanitarian stance” by supporting Gaza despite the pressure, adding that the player had become “the greatest football player humanity has ever known”.

He also attacked Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, for his criticism of Yamal, while praising the prime minister of Spain, Pedro Sanchez, for backing the 18-year-old footballer.

Featured image via Instagram/ celebrities4palestine

By Alaa Shamali

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