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Somewhere along the way, we stopped designing Britain for childhood.

Not deliberately. No government ever announced that children should spend less time outdoors. No planner set out to reduce independence. No parent wanted their son or daughter to swap a bike ride for another hour in front of a screen. Yet, somehow, that is where we have arrived.

The latest report from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health puts data to something many of us have sensed for years. Child health has stagnated or worsened across many of the measures that matter, from obesity to mental health to physical activity, and health inequalities are widening.

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Their verdict was blunt: Britain’s record should be a “national embarrassment”. It is hard to argue otherwise.

When I was growing up on Merseyside, my parents rarely knew exactly where I was. Like millions of children of my generation, I’d disappear on my bike after breakfast and return when it was time for tea. We walked to school, climbed trees, built dens, kicked footballs around until it got dark and explored the world under our own steam. None of it felt like exercise. It was simply childhood.

Looking back, I realise those ordinary freedoms quietly built my health, my confidence and my independence. We weren’t active because someone organised it but because the world around us made activity the natural choice. Today’s children are growing up in a very different Britain.

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Roads carry far more traffic; parents have understandable concerns about safety, and green spaces have slowly disappeared from many communities. Leisure increasingly happens indoors and for too many children, especially those growing up in more deprived neighbourhoods, movement has become something organised rather than something that simply happens. We didn’t choose to make children less active – but we built a society that has made it harder for them to be active.

Health doesn’t begin in hospitals; it begins years before anyone becomes a patient. It begins in the streets that children walk along, the parks they play in, the routes they cycle, the neighbourhoods they grow up in and the freedom they are given to explore them.

We spend endless time debating how to fix the NHS and far too little protecting the environments that stop people needing it in the first place.

That is why the Government’s decision to retain statutory protections for playing fields deserves recognition.

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On the surface, it is a planning decision. But it’s much more than that: it is a statement about what kind of country we want to be.

Playing fields are not simply pieces of undeveloped land; they are places where children discover movement without thinking about exercise, where local sports clubs create belonging, where friendships begin and where confidence grows.

One in three children now leaves primary school overweight or obese. Behind every one of those statistics is a child whose future could have been different.

Protecting playing fields alone will not solve Britain’s child health crisis and neither will another strategy, awareness campaign or report. But it points us in the right direction. In an age when loneliness is rising and childhood is becoming increasingly indoor-based, playing fields are doing far more than hosting sport. They are quietly producing healthier and more connected children and people, which has a profound social and economic impact: active lifestyles save health and care services around £8 billion annually and prevent 3.3 million cases of chronic illness a year too.

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The greatest gift we can give is a childhood where walking to school, riding a bike, climbing a tree or kicking a ball around with friends becomes unremarkable again. So if we are serious about creating the healthiest generation in decades, we need to start asking a different question. Not, “How do we persuade children to exercise more?” But, “How do we make movement an ordinary part of childhood again?”

Those are very different challenges. The first relies on changing individual behaviour, the second asks us to change the places we build and the choices we make. History suggests the second will always be more successful.

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Michael Cohen and President Donald Trump have apparently patched up their differences in private. Now, they can do it in public.

The president is scheduled to do a phone interview Thursday with Cohen on the New York City radio show that Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” began hosting last month.

Cohen said in an interview ahead of the broadcast that he and his former boss have met privately three times and reconciled since a bitter and very public falling out during the president’s first term.

“I suggest you listen to the show. You may find it extremely interesting,” he told POLITICO.

Cohen, who made a stunning conversion from pro-Trump bulldog to fierce critic, said he wasn’t sure if during the interview he and the president would discuss presidential clemency for the conviction that landed him a three-year prison sentence.

He isn’t sure he will even push for clemency from the president.

“We’ll see,” he said. “Will I make that request down the road? I don’t know. Maybe maybe not.”

That the president’s erstwhile attorney is even considering asking Trump for a pardon is somewhat remarkable.

Cohen was the star witness in New York prosecutors’ 2024 hush money case against Trump, which saw the then-candidate become the first ever former president to become a convicted felon when he was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records to keep word of an affair with former porn star Stormy Daniels from public view.

Cohen, who testified that he lied and bullied for Trump during his years working for the Trump Organization, later turned on his former boss. He told POLITICO in an April 2024 interview, for example, that the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was “grotesque” and predicted “there will never be another election again in America” if he was reelected.

Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison in 2018 on charges related to hush money payments to help conceal his boss’ affair with a porn star.

He said he sent pardon applications to former President Joe Biden’s administration and the Trump White House but doesn’t consider clemency, which would enable him to recover his law license, critical to his life at this point.

“I’m turning 60 next week. What am I going to go start practicing law again?” he said. “What has the loss of my law license prevented me from actually doing? Though I do believe I’m deserving of it, that’s a whole nother story.”

Thursday’s interview will mark the culmination of a months-long effort by Cohen to get back in the president’s good graces. He told a New York radio station this summer that they had a text exchange that started their reconciliation.

Teasing the interview, Cohen said people will be “interested to hear two individuals that were friends for a decade and a half who have not publicly spoken in eight years” talk about their long shared past. “What could they talk about?” he said.

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The UK media has consistently mis-framed SAS war crimes allegations while marginalising the voices of alleged victims. That’s according to a new report by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) which delves into how the press has responded to the ongoing scandal. The report looks at a wide range of media coverage — with the Canary getting a positive mention for our work.

The study, titled ‘Witch hunts or war crimes? How the British media talks about allegations of SAS killings of civilians in Afghanistan‘, was published on 18 August. The Haddon-Cave inquiry into allegations of extrajudicial killings in Afghanistan at the height of the war is still underway. AOAV has covered the issue extensively; their top-tier work can read here.

SAS — Secrecy versus justice

As AOAV rightly points out, the UK special forces benefits from state secrecy. However, this also makes investigating allegations extremely hard:

That secrecy has helped sustain the SAS’s global reputation, but it has also made allegations of wrongdoing particularly difficult to examine.

Adding:

The war in Afghanistan brought the challenges of investigation “default heroes” into sharp focus, as claims emerged that members of UK Special Forces had unlawfully killed detainees and civilians during night raids. Furthermore, those killings were – it is becoming very clear – inadequately investigated.

Those allegations:

eventually led to the creation of the Afghanistan Inquiry, a statutory investigation examining possible unlawful activity by UK Special Forces between 2010 and 2013 and the adequacy of earlier military investigations.

However, the way the UK media has covered the issue is highly questionable. AOAV has set out to address those shortcomings.

Lawfare and warfare

The press response to these allegations reflects a set of deep problems. While the inquiry has certainly opened a doorway into the secret world of special forces operations:

 terms such as “lawfare”, “witch hunt” and the “hounding” of veterans have become increasingly prominent.

These terms obfuscate the real issues, creating:

a powerful competing narrative: whether scrutiny of alleged abuses should be understood primarily as a matter of law and accountability, or as an attack on soldiers and military effectiveness.

For example, terms like ‘witch-hunt’, lawfare and ‘hounded’ have been used to delegitimise questions about alleged SAS killings.

A broad narrative emerged of veterans being unfairly ‘hounded’ by lawyers, subverting the perpetrator-victim relationship.

The term ‘lawfare’, generally used to describe a weaker actor using the courts to undermine a bigger actor, has:

become widely seen as a pejorative term to describe use of the law to achieve a non-legal aim.

It has often been used by ex-military figures in right-wing media to attack the investigations. The Canary is a notable exception:

 The only use of the term outside of the right-wing media was its explicit rejection in Canary News.

And alleged victims appear to have been given very different coverage from military figures:

Coverage in general rarely platformed the perspectives of the affected Afghan families, choosing instead to focus on the perspectives of military figures and those involved in the inquiry itself – commentary from former military figures appeared [at] five times the frequency of the affected families.

Ultimately, the authors found that the allegations had up-ended a comfortable and widely held mythology about the SAS:

The Afghanistan Inquiry has forced the British media to confront allegations that cut against one of the most enduring narratives surrounding the SAS: that of an elite force defined by professionalism, secrecy and heroism.

And while the centrist and left-leaning media has focused on the allegations:

the right-wing media have shifted attention towards the supposed consequences of scrutiny, portraying investigations as “lawfare”, a “witch hunt”, a betrayal of soldiers or even a threat to national security.

AOAV director Iain Overton said there was more than the SAS’s reputation at stake here:

The way these allegations are reported helps determine whether alleged abuses committed in Britain’s name are treated primarily as questions of evidence, law and accountability, or as attacks upon the institutions accused of committing them.

The current inquiry, he added, represents “an unusual moment of insight”:

that breaches the sacred secrecy surrounding British Special Forces. But the British media response also makes it clear how difficult it remains for that breach to translate into a public debate in which the experiences of alleged victims carry the same weight as the reputation of the regiment.

Many horrors emerged from the War on Terror. And many more will emerge. It is the responsibility of the press to cut through the myths, obfuscations and lies which have characterised the post-9/11 world. It should do so without favour to any state, individual or organisation. Parts of the media are clearly failing in that task. This report is an important corrective. The UK media should heed the warning.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

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CAGE International and 40 other organisations have signed a call for an immediate review of the convictions of the ‘Birmingham 4’. First arrested over 10 years ago, these four men were convicted of terrorism offences back in 2017.

The courts sentenced Naweed Ali, Khobaib Hussain, Mohibur Rahman and Tahir Aziz to life in prison following a joint undercover operation by MI5 and West Midlands Police. However, all four men and their legal teams have maintained their innocence throughout.

Now, the 41 organisations have highlighted serious concerns, including:

allegations of evidence being improperly introduced, police being in contempt of court during the trial, and the absence of clear forensic or video evidence linking the defendants to the items in question. Taken together, these issues raise significant questions about whether the men received a fair trial.

You can read the full joint statement here.

Birmingham 4 — ‘Police fabrication and mendacity’

The day after the jury’s original verdict, Gareth Peirce — the solicitor who represented the Birmingham 4 — took the unusual decision to publish a public statement. The Justice Gap reported her words:

We register our unqualified respect for the system we have of trial by jury in this country. But jurors can on occasion get things wrong.

She went on to state that:

There were cases in the 1970s and the early 1980s where West Midlands Police planted and fabricated evidence to such an extent that the squad responsible was completely disbanded and dozens of defendants convicted, one by one had their convictions quashed. This case rests on police fabrication and mendacity in the clearest way.

Accusations of a setup

Now, CAGE and organisations including the Justice Gap, Black Lives Matter UK and APPEAL have put their weight behind a call for authorities to re-examine their convictions and release the Birmingham 4.

They’re demanding that the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) use an exceptional circumstances provision to reopen the case immediately. The special power allows the CCRC to accept a new appeal even without the usual requirement of new evidence.

Likewise, the 41-organisation coalition also questioned the conduct of the West Midlands Police, calling for a full and independent investigation. They explained that:

The convictions rested almost entirely on evidence produced through an undercover operation where the men were set up. West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit, working with MI5, established a fake courier company – Hero Couriers – with the aim of ensnaring the men. On Naweed Ali’s first day of work, a ‘kill kit’ was discovered in his car after he had handed his keys to the undercover officer, known only as ‘Vincent’, who had sole and unobserved access to the vehicle for over an hour.

To make matters worse, no DNA, fingerprints or prior surveillance could link any of the four men to the items the police found. Likewise, the court withheld CCTV footage of the period when Vincent was alone with Ali’s car from the jury.

The judge presiding over the trial also found the West Midlands Police officers to have behaved in contempt of court. The officers claimed before the jury that they had never been in contact with one another. However, the evidence of 1,000 deleted messages between the undercover officers belied this falsehood.

History repeating itself?

Over two years ago, a formal application was submitted to the CCRC regarding the treatment of the Birmingham 4. However, to date, the commission has failed to action that complaint. CAGE stated that:

The CCRC was itself established in the wake of the Birmingham Six miscarriage of justice, a case bearing striking similarities to this one, making its continued inaction all the more concerning.

The Birmingham Six were six Irish men who were convicted of pub bombings in Birmingham back in 1975. In 1991, after 16 years in prison, their convictions were overturned due to the flawed and inconsistent nature of the evidence.

Regarding the Birmingham 4, Naila Ahmed — the head of campaigns at CAGE — said:

These four men have been unjustly imprisoned for ten years. There are major concerns about West Midlands Police’s conduct in a joint operation with MI5, especially regarding their undercover officers who have so far evaded any accountability. Any impartial assessment of the facts will recognise this as a gross miscarriage of justice. We urge the CCRC to do the same, and to use the exceptional circumstances provision to refer this case back to the Court of Appeal without further delay.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

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The hard-right Freedom Caucus is having a rough primary season.

Candidates with backing from the caucus and its allies flopped in primaries from Florida to Wyoming on Tuesday, adding to a string of recent losses for the group.

In Florida, Catalina Lauf lost in a House GOP primary to replace Freedom Caucus member and Florida Rep. Byron Donalds — despite backing from President Donald Trump as well as a late, small ad buy from the Freedom Caucus Fund and millions from other groups supporting her.

Hours later, more than a dozen Wyoming Freedom Caucus candidates in the state’s legislature lost to moderates. The group’s chair, Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, lost to a moderate in the secretary of state race, as did Freedom Caucus candidates for state superintendent and treasurer.

Those losses followed Rep. Andy Ogles’ (R-Tenn.) ouster earlier this month, Rep. Chip Roy’s (R-Texas) defeat in his run for Attorney General and Rep. Ralph Norman’s third-place primary finish in the race for South Carolina governor — all candidates who the Freedom Caucus Fund, the federal campaign apparatus of the House Freedom Caucus, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to boost.

The State Freedom Caucus Network, which backed the Wyoming legislative candidates, is not officially affiliated with the House Freedom Caucus, but its website says its mission is “building on the success of the House Freedom Caucus” to bring the fiscally conservative principles of the group to statehouses nationwide.

While there have been some wins for Freedom Caucus members this cycle, the combined pattern suggests that the ultra-conservative group’s name and influence is waning with GOP voters, and it comes as the factions of the party battle for relevancy when Trump’s presidency ends.

“They became largely an island of misfit toys: problematic in their party, and not for reasons that are necessarily popular with the public,” said GOP strategist Matthew Bartlett, who served in Trump’s first administration. “So you’ve seen diminished influence, and you’ve seen them losing seats, losing stature.”

In Wyoming, Robert Short, a moderate Republican, defeated Rodriguez-Williams by campaigning on a slogan of “make the secretary of state’s office boring again.”

“What Wyomingites were not and still are not is extremists,” Short told POLITICO, arguing that by pushing an “extremist agenda” in the state, the local Freedom Caucus tried to “usher in a national-driven agenda that really does not have a home in Wyoming.
And I think the voters of Wyoming responded resoundingly last night in saying, ‘not up in here.’”

The Wyoming losses were especially notable given how conservative that state is. Just two years ago, Freedom Caucus-aligned members took control of the state legislature and the state and gave Trump the highest vote share of any state in the nation. Two years before that, the state’s GOP primary voters resoundingly ousted former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who defied Trump over his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. It’s still one of only a handful of states where Trump’s approval rating is still positive. So for the Freedom Caucus to get thumped there is particularly notable.

Wyoming’s Freedom Caucus members struggled to pass its priorities and tried to axe broadly popular programs, from public media funding to dismantling the state’s economic development agency. In proposing those changes, the caucus often sparred with more traditional conservatives.

The caucus aimed to secure a supermajority through Tuesday’s primaries to ram its agenda through the legislature. Instead, voters resoundingly rejected them.

“It was a butt-whoopin,” said Wyoming GOP state Rep. Andrew Byron, who ran unopposed on Tuesday and is not a member of the Freedom Caucus. “It was a huge statement by the Wyoming voters that shows that if you’re not willing to govern and listen to your constituents, they react.”

Multiple Republicans in the state, including Byron, pointed to big spending from national outside groups backing the Freedom Caucus that made Wyomingites feel like out-of-staters were trying to influence their politics as reason for the sweeping losses.

“Wyoming people live in Wyoming because we like our way of life,” Byron said. “We’re not good at getting told what to do, and we really appreciate the Wild West out here.”

In a statement posted to social media, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus said it “IS NOT GOING ANYWHERE.”

“Last night’s results will not undo the policy wins we’ve delivered on behalf of the people,” the group wrote.

Their struggles are part of a broader pattern. The Freedom Caucus Fund has failed to elevate its candidates in four of the five races it spent in this year, spending a combined $1.5 million dollars to boost Lauf (who got just $30,000 in support from the group), Ogles, Norman, Roy and Nevada Republican David Flippo (who is the only candidate the group spent for and won).

These candidates didn’t all lose for the same reasons. Ogles had been plagued by various scandals, was running in a newly redrawn district with a number of new voters unfamiliar to him, and had limited campaign resources. Roy was hammered for his past support of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and criticism of Trump in the 2024 presidential primary. Norman was running in a crowded field in which Trump was backing another candidate (and he is again in the South Carolina special Senate primary). For her part, Lauf struggled to break out in a crowded 10-way primary in a ruby red seat.

But observers say there’s often a common through-line: The candidates have been mired in controversy.

“In a day and age where candidates matter, they tend to create their own headaches,” Bartlett said. “Sometimes behavioral, sometimes ideological.”

Neither the Freedom Caucus Fund nor a spokesperson for Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) responded to a request for comment on Wednesday. Multiple Wyoming Freedom Caucus members who lost on Tuesday also did not return calls.

The only victory for the group where it spent money this cycle was in Nevada’s 2nd District, where it elevated Flippo in the race to replace retiring Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nevada), who has declined to support Flippo in the general election for the deep-red seat. In other races where the campaign arm didn’t spend, Donalds and Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) cruised to their states’ GOP nominations for governor, and Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.) won the primary to succeed Sen. Tommy Tuberville in the upper chamber.

Some of those candidates, like Biggs and Tiffany, will face tough general election bids in battleground states — providing another test for the Freedom Caucus among a broader swath of voters.

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Filton 24 — Lawyers have issued a statement on behalf of barrister Rajiv Menon KC about the contempt of court proceedings brought against Menon by intelligence service-aligned judge Jeremy Johnson. Johnson is pursuing Menon for the closing speech he gave to the jury in defence of his client, Filton 24 defendant Charlotte Head.

Menon went public for the first time this week about the charges, giving an interview to news website Democracy Now. Lawyers want to remind the public that Menon denies any wrongdoing, but is currently in a phase of the case for technical challenges rather than direct argument on the merits of his case, judicial bias and the prosecution’s lack of merit.

Jenny Wiltshire, Head of Serious and General Crime at law firm Hickman & Rose, said:

Rajiv is grateful for the many messages of support he has received and is continuing to receive in relation to the contempt of court proceedings he is facing in respect of the closing speech he gave to the jury in defence of his client, Charlotte Head.

The legal challenges that Rajiv has so far made are necessarily procedural and jurisdictional. The pending appeal before the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division), which is awaiting a hearing date, concerns the legality of the Crown Court having purported to invoke a summary procedure on 22 June and 29 June 2026, more than five months after Rajiv’s speech, and further alleges that the proceedings against Rajiv raise apparent prejudice/bias.

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That the nature of the challenges thus far have been largely procedural and jurisdictional means that there has been no forum in which to set out Rajiv’s strong legal and factual challenges to the allegations of contempt themselves.

As the proceedings are currently ongoing, it is not appropriate to set out the details of his challenges now. What can be said at this stage is that Rajiv’s defence is not limited to the issue of jury equity but includes the nature and extent of the trial judge’s orders themselves which are alleged to have been in force and breached. If the time ever comes when the details of Rajiv’s challenges need to be presented, this will be done in full.

Nevertheless, it is important that all of those showing any interest in this matter know that Rajiv strenuously denies that the speech he gave breached any order of the trial judge, was intended to do so, or was in any way in contempt of court.

This is separate from the profoundly concerning decision by several senior judges to pursue this matter as a potential contempt of court and the procedure which has now been adopted on two separate occasions, which must be having a chilling effect upon other barristers and advocates.

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Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

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An Australian court has rejected the Israel’s ‘IHRA definition‘ of antisemitism as “verbose and imprecise” and “detached from reality”. The New South Wales Supreme Court ruling aligns with the findings of legal experts — and even the creator of the ‘definition’.

Judge Desmond Fagan rejected the state government’s attempt to impose a terrorism supervision order on a Sydney man for vandalism. The attempt mirrors the UK government’s move to treat anti-genocide activists as terrorists. However, unlike the suborned UK court system the NSW court has, at least so far, embraced justice rather than political lawfare.

Fagan’s damning description of the (non) definition was only the start. He went on to describe the so-called IHRA definition as incompatible with Australia’s established meaning, concluding that it is an attempt to “repurpose” the term to repress criticism of Israel.

IHRA — Israel lobby tactics

As in the UK, Australia’s Israel lobby — well entrenched in government — is trying to force the ‘IHRA’ onto all areas of government, education and media. Again mirroring the UK, ‘Labor’ PM Anthony Albanese has used the Bondi massacre – whose perpetrators were not linked to Palestine and which was stopped by a Muslim man — to wage war on anti-genocide protest.

But Fagan threw a spanner in the works when he ruled that the IHRA is “preposterous” if it is used to demonise opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza:

the IHRA proposal is detached from the reality of the common usage and understanding of antisemitism in this country…

…it would be preposterous to suggest that 79% of Australians are antisemitic because they disapprove of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

Anti-Zionism ≠ antisemitism

The judge also turned his fire to the lobby’s tactic of trying to equate opposition to the racist political ideology of Zionism with antisemitism:

As an ideology of Jewish nationalism, Zionism is open to political discussion and criticism, notably on grounds concerning the rights of the Palestinians.

This is a blow for the so-called ‘antisemitism plan’ of Australia’s Zionist ‘antisemitism tsar’ Jillian Segal, who frequently treats the two as interchangeable and used this to push for the blanket adoption of the IHRA. Fagan was having none of that, pointing out that being Jewish is not the same as being Zionist:

It may well be correct that ‘most, but not all Jewish Australians’ regard Zionism as ‘a core part of their Jewish identity’. That does not mean that anti-Zionists are hostile to that majority of Jews on account of their Jewishness; only that they hold a negative view of a political ideology with which the majority of Jews have chosen to identify.

And he correctly identified the fact that Israel’s supporters push the ‘IHRA’ specifically to conflate Jews and Israel:

Its tendency, and the apparent purpose of promoting it, is to graft onto the community’s abhorrence of antisemitism, understood as hostility to Jews for their Jewishness, a parasitic rejection of protest against Israel.

Fagan warned the federal government that it couldn’t change the real meaning of a word by means of a definition that “fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite”. He said that courts had to work with real meanings and added a rebuke for the government’s lawyer:

You are treating all Jews as monolithic. It’s quite wrong to treat all Jews as supporting Israel, because they don’t.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

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South Carolina Sen. Darline Graham has given opponents fresh ammunition to attack her on her biggest vulnerability: her inexperience.

She revealed a major blindspot in her understanding of a critical foreign policy issue, U.S.-Taiwan relations, during Tuesday’s debate for the Aug. 25 snap Senate primary runoff to replace her late brother Lindsey Graham. Her response spread like wildfire on social media, with critics saying it proves she is “unprepared” to take office.

Asked whether Taiwan and the South China Sea are relevant national security priorities, Graham responded: “I’m just going to be honest here … I’m not that informed on national security, so.” She added that “national security is not my thing, not my area of expertise, but I do support the military.”

It was a notable acknowledgement from a sitting senator, as tensions rise between China and Taiwan — and as the U.S. preoccupation with the Iran war calls into question how reliable a supporter it might be amid fears of a possible future invasion of Taiwan.

The gaffe exposed the exact weakness that her runoff opponent, GOP Rep. Ralph Norman, has been eager to highlight: the senator’s lack of tenure.

His allies immediately piled on.

Norman supporter and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley wrote in a post on X that foreign policy experience is “not something you inherit” — a swipe at Graham’s appointment to fulfill her brother’s current term. Ken Cuccinelli, a former Trump administration official, expressed support for Norman, writing that Graham has “worked hard to hide any firm positions, and here she is at least being honest.”

“It very much confirmed many of our suspicions that while she might be a very nice lady, she is woefully underprepared or unprepared to be one of the 100 U.S. Senators in the Senate,” state Rep. Jordan Pace, who is supporting Norman in the runoff, said in an interview.

Norman said in a statement that South Carolinians deserve a senator with “know-how” on foreign policy: “Whether it’s spy balloons flying overhead or buying up land near South Carolina military bases, China continues to prove that it is a threat to the United States.”

Graham’s campaign, asked to clarify her response on U.S.-Taiwanese relations and her critics’ attacks over her misstep, pointed toward comments she made in the spin room after the debate: “What’s important are the people of South Carolina. They’re worried about their pocketbooks more than they’re worried about the South China Sea, quite honestly.”

Graham’s answer is also raising eyebrows among some of her own allies, with less than a week before next Tuesday’s election. And it increases the pressure on President Donald Trump, who had championed Graham’s appointment in July, encouraged her to run for a full term and is even planning to rally with her on Friday to boost her election chances.

“[Darline] just doesn’t have the experience of executing, you have to be able to deliver a story about herself and right now her story is that she’s Lindsey Graham’s sister,” said a former Trump administration official, granted anonymity to speak openly about private conversations.

The White House is still backing Graham, this person said, because the president had a close relationship with the late senator but also sees her as a better alternative to Norman, who endorsed Haley over Trump in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.

A second person familiar with the White House’s thinking, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said, “POTUS is still all in on the endorsement.”

The White House declined to comment on Trump’s support for Graham.

Still, the flub highlighted the danger for Trump, as he seeks to propel a political novice into a six-year term in the Senate and avoid yet another stain on his endorsement record. His high-profile rally for Graham in Myrtle Beach later this week is a particularly notable step in a year otherwise marked by a decrease in his explicit campaign travel.

Norman, for his part, said during the debate that Taiwan is a “definite ally” and that Trump is right to enable them to “defend themselves against China.” He declined to take a swipe at Graham over her comment in real time, but that hasn’t stopped his supporters from hammering the newcomer for the embarrassing misstep.

Graham’s stumble was a far cry from her late brother’s hawkish defenses of Taiwan, in which Lindsey Graham had openly criticized the expansionist aims of Chinese President Xi Jinping, called allies of China “dirtbags” and stressed the need to maintain the status quo between Beijing and Taipei to protect U.S. national security interests.

“Anyone running for a seat in Congress should be able to explain to the American people why Taiwan is important to American interests. Taiwan is a vibrant democracy of 23 million people and the source of over 90 percent of the world’s advanced semiconductors,” said Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific program. “A Chinese takeover by force would shatter U.S. credibility with its allies across the Indo-Pacific.”

American intelligence has long suggested that China’s People’s Liberation Army will be sufficiently capable of seizing the island starting in 2027.

Trump in June said he was open to speaking with Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te, despite China’s warnings against doing so, in what would be the first direct dialogue between American and Taiwanese leaders in decades.

But the U.S.’ war with Iran is casting doubt on how effective an ally the Trump administration will be if China does invade Taiwan. Extended naval deployments to support airstrikes against Iran and a corresponding blockade of its ports have left the U.S. without a deployed aircraft carrier in the Indo-Pacific, as the USS George Washington steams toward the Middle East to relieve the extended Abraham Lincoln carrier, for instance.

The heightened risks and the rapid race to replace Lindsey Graham have left some in South Carolina’s GOP circles feeling less than optimistic about the choice they have to make to select a key proxy in Washington.

“It was shocking how we’re gonna give someone who was on stage last night six years in the U.S. Senate, and I think that’s the overall impression people are having today” said one South Carolina-based Republican operative who has stayed neutral in the Senate race and was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “One of these two is gonna get six years in the Senate? Like, big hanging question mark.”

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The chair of the Conservative party has called for the failed, racist Rwanda scheme to be reinstated. Kevin Hollinrake was quoted in the press arguing it was a better option than housing asylum seekers in a Yorkshire RAF base.

The Tory Rwanda scheme would have seen asylum seekers relocated to the African state. One of former PM Keir Starmer’s first moves upon taking power in 2024 was to scrap the scheme.

Hollinrake said:

We, in a previous government, decided where to put them, we said they should be detained and deported back to their home country, or if they couldn’t go to their home country they should go to Rwanda.

His comments followed an alleged Home Office attempt to apply:

for planning permission to house asylum seekers at former RAF Linton-on-Ouse near York, and two other Ministry of Defence sites.

They say this will help them close asylum hotels. The Yorkshire Post reported:

locals have reacted in uproar at the prospect of 1,300 men being housed in a small village of 650 people.

Rwanda scheme redux?

Hollinrake said:

Illegal migrants should not be in anybody’s community. That’s the reality. Whether it’s in hotels, houses of multiple occupation or air bases or military bases.

He added:

I set about a campaign with others in the local community in a village near me in my constituency in the last Parliament, because I think it’s totally wrong they should be in these communities.

Hollinrake, who is the current MP for Thirsk and Malton, said:

These people coming across the Channel should be detained in detention centres pending their immediate deportation back to their home country or a safe third country.

He invited the new Labour PM to work with the group:

That’s what should happen — Andy Burnham could work with us tomorrow to do exactly that.

As the Canary reported way back in 2022:

This scheme comes alongside the inhumane and discriminatory Nationality and Borders Bill, which seeks to criminalise vulnerable people seeking refuge in the UK. The European Court of Human Rights is questioning the lawfulness of plans to ship asylum seekers to Rwanda, a country with a poor human rights record.

For the Tories, violent deportations and a general love for anything carceral are eternal brain-worms. These kinds of dog-whistles allow them to appear relevant and appeal to the very worst tendencies in British public life. The Rwanda scheme encapsulated the current reactionary state of UK politics. And it completely failed to address the global instability which drives desperate refugees to come to the UK.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

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