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Trump signed two new executive orders on Thursday. These orders were aimed at narrowing birthright citizenship. This came just a month after the Supreme Court struck down his previous attempt.

According to Fox News, “the new directives rely on existing executive and immigration authorities and are intended to narrow eligibility for automatic citizenship in certain cases while cracking down on foreigners who travel to the United States to give birth.”

Trump announced the orders in the Oval Office, with adviser Stephen Miller looking on. Miller called birth tourism “a fraud on the American system” and “a fraud against the American government.”

.@POTUS: “We had a very unfortunate decision in the Supreme Court concerning birthright [citizenship]… so we’re making adjustments.”

President Trump is signing two Executive Orders to protect the meaning and value of American citizenship after Trump v. Barbara:

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— The first… pic.twitter.com/NGSNNuzM0h

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) August 6, 2026

Trump characterized the Supreme Court’s decision as “very unfortunate” and “a bad decision,” and that birthright citizenship has been “made a joke out of.”

The Trump administration have said that the two orders “protect the meaning and value of American citizenship after Trump v. Barbara.” It said:

 The first Executive Order non-exhaustively identifies certain categories of children of aliens who are not entitled to birthright citizenship consistent with historical exceptions to birthright citizenship recognized by the Supreme Court in Barbara.  The second Executive Order delegates presidential authorities to the Secretary of State and Secretary of Homeland Security and directs them to halt the practice of birth tourism.

Miller is a longtime critic of birthright citizenship. He posted on X in April that:

Trump is throwing toys out of the pram again — another day, another executive order, another round of lawsuits.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

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Welsh thinktank the Bevan Foundation, working in partnership with Shelter Cymru, has published a new report on 7 August at the National Eisteddfod. It analyses evidence on the prevalence of second homes and holiday lets using permanent homes across Wales. And it evaluates policy measures to tackle the issue which have been put in place over recent years.

The report follows an announcement by the Welsh government that it will be reviewing the controversial 182-day rule for holiday let businesses in Wales, as well as a commitment in the Plaid Cymru manifesto to review the effectiveness of the range of current measures to tackle the impact of second homes and holiday lets on local housing markets.

In its report, Holidays or homes? The loss of homes for the people of Wales to holiday accommodation, the Bevan Foundation provides new estimates on the scale of the issue. It highlights that between 21,300 and 25,300 dwellings with could provide permanent homes in Wales are currently being used for holidays. To put this into context:

• The higher estimate of 25,300 is equal to the number of households in Merthyr Tydfil County Borough. It accounts for around 2% of the total housing stock across Wales.
• The lower estimate of 21,321 would still be enough to rehouse every household in temporary accommodation at the end of September 2025 (6,426) three times over.

Holiday homes have growing impact on Welsh housing

The Foundation’s analysis shows that while there are clear concentrations of holiday accommodation in areas which have traditionally been hotspots, growing numbers can be seen across Wales, as ‘staycations’ remain popular and tourists explore new areas.

It reveals a 10% increase in holiday lets using permanent homes over the last four years, with an additional 1,345 homes likely to have been lost to households in need of a home.

The report commends the scale of the action undertaken by the previous Welsh government. It introduced several measures working with Plaid Cymru via the Co-operation Agreement. However, the report argues that the overriding policy intention of improving the affordability and availability of homes has not always been clearly stated, nor how interventions will directly achieve it.

Taxation action in particular has had implications for the broad range of accommodation which is used for holidays, rather than focusing on the use and loss of permanent homes. This lack of focus is diluting the opportunity to address the availability and affordability of homes for local people, as well as impacting commercial holiday let businesses using types of accommodation which could not provide permanent homes.

The report argues that given the evidence of the growth of the issue across Wales, second homes and holiday lets are now a national driver of pressure on housing supply. National action is therefore needed, rather than leaving it to local authorities to tackle the problem, and that action should focus on preventing the loss of permanent homes.

Recommendations

The recommendations in the report include:

• A national requirement for planning permission for change of use from a permanent home to holiday accommodation (second home or holiday let) or a change between holiday accommodation types. This would replace the current ‘Article 4’ system whereby local authorities must introduce their own planning restrictions.
• Moving away from the current lettings day threshold system (the 182-day rule) and instead using the planning status or intended purpose of the accommodation to establish the tax system in which they should sit – businesses being charged business rates and homes coming under the Council Tax system.
• Ringfencing the funds raised through Council Tax premiums on holiday accommodation for local housing services and boosting the supply of homes which are genuinely affordable to local people, in particular social homes.
• Incentivising holiday accommodation which does not use permanent homes (such as yurts, barn conversions or shepherd huts) as part of a wider tourism strategy.
• An increase of at least 2 per cent in the higher rate of Land Transaction Tax on the purchase of homes for holiday accommodation.
• A robust and effective registration and licensing scheme for holiday lets to not only improve the management of properties, but to minimise any negative impact on the surrounding community and the availability and affordability of homes locally.

Wendy Dearden, senior policy and research officer at the Bevan Foundation, said:

It cannot be right that thousands of people in Wales are homeless and living in B&Bs or hotels while up to 25,000 homes are being used for holiday accommodation.

In our research, we heard about range of action being taken by local authorities, but we don’t think that this is enough. It’s time for the Welsh Government to take more national action through a cohesive package of taxation, planning and regulation.

Taken together, the measures we recommend would lead to a more consistent approach across Wales, while supporting targeted local action where it is needed. They would support businesses in the tourist industry while minimising the impact on local communities and ensuring that houses are used for their intended purpose – as affordable homes for local communities.

Ruth Power, CEO at Shelter Cymru, said:

Every day we see firsthand the impact of the housing emergency on people and communities across Wales, and nowhere has the long-term failure to address this been more clearly seen than in the growth of temporary accommodation across Wales.

Through our work providing advice and advocacy to people in every part of Wales, we know the impact this is having, with lives stuck on hold, sometimes for years, while people wait for a permanent home.

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Shelter Cymru recognises the important role that tourism plays in the Welsh economy, but we also believe that everything starts with home. At a time where we face a housing emergency, it cannot be right for families to be ‘temporarily’ housed in hotel rooms while ever more of our homes, already in short supply, are given over to holidays.

This is why we are calling on the Welsh Government to take the steps needed to reverse this trend and to build a Wales where everyone can access a safe, secure, suitable and genuinely affordable home.

The report forms part of a series of research reports the Bevan Foundation and Shelter Cymru are producing in partnership. It examines the use of temporary accommodation in Wales and aims to move people into permanent homes by providing more social housing.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

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Another Severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) Awareness Week will pass in absolute silence from the government.

The Canary has reported extensively on how ME patients are left to die in hospitals by the NHS. People like Sophia Mirza who died in 2005 after being sectioned under the mental health act without even basic nurse care. 8 August would be Sophia’s 53rd birthday; instead, she died aged 32.

Severe ME Day is held on her birthday, 8 August, to honour her memory, and many others who have since lost their lives to this devastating disease and neglect caused by the NHS.

Or  27-year-old Maeve Boothby O’Neill. The Canary reported on how her inquest, which showed appalling trivialisation of her condition, arrogant medical professionals, and hospital staff’s culture of psychologisation, led to her death in October 2021.

The Canary has also reported on the case of Karen Gorden, who was bed-bound and abandoned by the NHS. As well as Savannah, who was starved in hospital. Both Karen and Savannah are still in hospital being neglected by NHS staff and fighting for their lives.

NHS neglects severe ME patients

ME is a chronic systemic neuroimmune disease which impacts at least 65 million people worldwide – and that is likely a vast underestimate. Similar to, and sometimes overlapping with long Covid, it affects nearly every system in the body and causes a range of symptoms that impact patients’ daily lives. These include influenza-like symptoms, cognitive impairment, multiple forms of pain, and heart, lung, blood pressure, and digestive dysfunctions, among other significantly debilitating symptoms.

Significantly, post-exertional malaise (PEM) is the hallmark feature of ME/CFS, which entails a disproportionate worsening of other symptoms after even minimal physical, social, or mental activities.

Severe ME affects approximately 25% of people living with the disease. In these cases, people living with severe ME/CFS are mostly, if not entirely, permanently bed-bound. What’s more, they are sometimes unable to digest food, communicate, or process information.

Campaigners demand government action

Campaigners at ME Foggy Dog are urgently calling on the government to step up and stop the NHS from neglecting and eventually killing people with ME.

In 2024, ME Foggy Dog launched a campaign calling for a dedicated NHS protocol for people with severe ME. Over 5,220 people with ME, many severely ill, housebound, or bedbound, signed the open letter.

Despite this, nothing meaningful followed from the government. Over 2024 and 2025, successive Secretaries of State responded to campaigners with the same generic messages that the ME/CFS Delivery Plan and updated NICE guidelines would resolve most of the problems raised.

However, as campaigners have noted, the plan still falls massively short of supporting people with ME. On top of this, the NICE guidelines are not mandatory, the NHS training is not compulsory, and neither addresses the realities of severe ME or the dangers patients face every day.

The government must act now

As campaigners say, this issue is now critical and cannot wait while those in charge squabble to keep power. Government intervention is the only way forward.

ME Foggy Dog said in a statement:

Without equitable biomedical research funding, the risk of deterioration into severe ME remains present for most of the community, we just don’t know who is at risk and who is not. The number of people with severe ME will continue to rise unless action is taken.

The campaign group is calling on the new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Yvette Cooper, to take this issue seriously, to champion equitable research funding from the Treasury, and to work with the organisation to implement an NHS protocol that protects patients and clinicians alike.

As the campaigners said:

The open letter demonstrated the scale of public concern, the past few years have demonstrated the consequences of political inaction.

Sally Callow, founder of ME Foggy Dog, said:

Severe ME patients are being failed every day. Without Government‑level action, neglect and harm will continue unchecked. We cannot wait any longer for safe care, accurate information, and proper protection. The crisis is escalating, and decisive leadership is now essential.

The government must act now, before more people with ME die due to NHS neglect.

Featured image via the Canary

By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

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Donald Trump insists the US has no shortage of weapons. But his latest move to restrict exports for key materials for munitions production — tells a different story.

Trump recently threatened “long-term jail sentences” for anyone leaking information about alleged munition shortages facing the US, accusing them of making “treasonous statements”.

He said:

Long-term jail sentences will be sought!

Yet while Trump dismisses reports of shortages, his administration has moved to restrict exports of tungsten scrap and black mass — two materials critical to weapons production.

Depleted supplies of tungsten

According to Gavin D. J. Harper from the University of Birmingham, modern militaries rely heavily on tungsten, a material used in weapons production. He recently wrote about tungsten shortages during the war on Iran.

Amid the geopolitical turmoil that is unfolding in the Middle East, there is a newfound gargantuan appetite for tungsten, with every bomb, missile and kinetic interceptor further draining stockpiles.

This presents an intractable problem for the defence industry. There has been a 12% increase in the use of military tungsten this year alone – in helicopters, fighter jets and munitions. This is hard to accommodate in a market with no availability.

If the US truly has an “unlimited supply” of missiles, as Trump claims, there should be little reason to restrict exports of recycled tungsten scrap.

Scrap is typically melted down and reused to supplement mined ore. Restricting its export suggests the opposite of abundance: that the military is concerned about maintaining supplies for weapons production.

Years to get back to pre-war levels

According to the Financial Times (FT), the American weapons manufacturers – Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon — are reporting surging sales as the US expands spending to replenish its missile stockpiles and put its defence industrial base on a ‘war footing’.

However, Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Washington-based think tank CSIS, said the figures behind rebuilding US stockpiles is sobering.

Cancian said that, for Patriot missiles, even with expanded production, recovery will probably take about three years to get back to pre-war levels. And then it will take several years after that to reach the levels where war planners actually want to be.

The result is a prolonged period of reduced inventories rather than a quick recovery.

In the same video clip, Tom Karako, director of the CSIS Missile Defense Project, describes the situation as:

generational annihilation of our theater missile defense capability. It’s going to take years to get back there.

More warmongering from Trump

So the answer to depleted stocks has been more warmongering by Trump’s allies like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) – an arms industry-favourite think tank.

Bradley Bowman, a senior fellow at FDD, said in an interview that the U.S. needed more spending and more confrontation, and this munition depletion was a “silver lining” showing  Americans that they need to “put our money and our actions where our mouth is.”

Bowman said the US military has been “seriously degraded” by the Iran war, but he did not call for restraint. Instead, he warned that China, Russia and North Korea are “cooperating across all domains of power” and that the US must attack their assistance to Iran.

If Washington sits on its hands and doesn’t attack this assistance that China and Russia are giving Iran,” Bowman said, “it’s going to simply exacerbate the munitions crisis.

He criticized the Pentagon for ordering only 37 THAAD interceptors in fiscal year 2026 and just 12 the year before.

In short, Trump says the U.S. has unlimited missiles while his administration just banned exports of tungsten scrap, a metal without which you cannot make missiles.

His think tank allies say the solution to depleted stockpiles is more war, more spending, and more confrontation with China, Russia, and North Korea all at once.

By The Canary

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We might have seen a dramatic dip in the number of people having sex with each other over the last few years, but if there’s one thing we can count on, it’s that people will always find a way to get off.

Alongside the celibacy and boy sober trend, we’ve seen the rise of something more peculiar: romantasy fiction.

Sure, Heated Rivalry falls into its own category of erotica that features people you’ll never have sex with (because, well, they’re into each other) but this specific fantasy features characters outside the realm of humankind.

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In case you’re not familiar, dragons, gargoyles, fairies, and other mystical creatures are becoming the subject of our horniness – and it’s caught on in the sex toy world.

As well as bookshops being stocked full of spicy romantasy novels, you can now buy a matching dildo or vibrator to go along with the story.

So you don’t have to do the work of trawling through sex toy sites, we’ve taken one for the team and found some of the best fantasy sex toys on the market today.

This way for your dark and handsome fire breathing dragon…

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9 best fantasy sex toys to shop now

Don’t knock a glass sex toy until you try it. They might not vibrate, but they can add an exciting dose of stimulation to your solo play thanks to easily changing temperature.

Simply pop this dildo in a bowl of ice cold or lukewarm water to adapt it to your preferred temperature, and you’ll feel the ridges and bumps on the side of this dildo even more acutely.

Thanks to the loop at the bottom, this dildo is safe for vaginal and anal play (just make sure you keep hold of that loop to prevent any accidents) and it’s also extremely easy to clean.

If you’re not quite on board with a glass tentacle, perhaps this silicone grind pad will float your boat.

It’ll make for a bumpy ride, as it’s not only covered in plenty of discs that you’ll be able to feel while it’s inside you, but the whole thing is loaded with five vibration speeds and five patterns, all powered by a remote control so you won’t have to budge from your stoop to up the ante.

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We’re all on our own personal quests; if yours is conquering a fire-breathing dragon, today is your lucky day.

Covered in hundreds of scales, this girthy dildo boasts seven inches of textured length for penetration that will send you flying.

You’ll need to quench its burn with plenty of water-based lube, but even if you can’t take its whole shape, it makes an excellent grinding toy.

Sextoys.co.uk

You know the phrase ‘rise like a phoenix from the ashes’? Yeah, well that will take on a whole new meaning for you after using this toy.

As well as a pointed shaft that leads to several inches of ribbing, the dildo suddenly blooms into a pair of wide bulging balls (if you can take them).

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Ever dreamed of being penetrated by a grotesque Orc? It’s not his schlong we’re talking about, but instead his tusks that emanate from his jaw.

Use this alongside a clit suction vibrator to get as close to you can as double stimulation from the Orc, or rely on that second tusk to rub against your clit or perineum for a blended orgasm that will thrust you into another dimension.

Float away into sweet dreams with this pastel clouds-coloured unicorn dildo.

Those bulbous ridges last for a whole 7.3 inches, getting thicker the further you get, so you can slide your way towards orgasmic delight in no time at all.

Take yourself to the limit with this 10 inch dildo, which is coated in veins and ends in a three inch-wide knot. Intense.

Its tip is tapered, so you’ll have no problem getting at least the first few inches inside, but you’ll definitely want to load up on lube to avoid the burn further down.

If the sound of a tentacle slithering its way into your insides turns you on, good news.

Wrapped around an 8.5 inch shaft is a curly wurly cephalopod, which feels great as the toy slides in and out of you.

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That suction cup is plenty wide, which means it sticks to whatever surface you like, and also makes it suitable for anal and vaginal play.

Calling all girth lovers. There couldn’t be a better way to get your width in that with this inflatable dildo, which comes with a pump to expand inside you and stretch you out.

It comes with a cock ring, to keep the air in there, and you might even want to pair it with a clit vibrator for double the fun.

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If you have questions about why certain members of the Ted Lasso cast haven’t returned for the new season, producer Brendan Hunt has got answers.

After a three-year absence, the Apple TV+ comedy returned to our screens earlier this week, with Jason Sudeikis, Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple and Brett Goldstein among those who are back for the new run of episodes, alongside some new additions.

However, there are also some prominent absentees who aren’t back for the new episodes – perhaps most notably Phil Dunster, who played footballer Jamie Tartt in the first three seasons.

Toheeb Jimoh, Kola Bokinni, Cristo Fernández, who played members of Richmond F.C.’s squad, also do not appear in the new episodes – which centre around the titular coach taking over at the helm of the club’s female team.

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Brendan – who co-produces Ted Lasso, as well as co-writing multiple episodes – told Variety that the decision was made to write the Jamie Tartt character out of the show because they knew “Phil was going to be busy”.

He added: “But also, it would have strained credulity a bit further than we wanted to if all the old team were still on Richmond. If this team is doing so well, then the best players would be gone. They’d be bought by bigger clubs.”

Since the success of Ted Lasso, Phil has landed roles in major shows like the thrillers The Devil’s Hour and Surface, as well as the Steve Carell comedy Rooster.

Reviews for Ted Lasso’s fourth season have been a little on the mixed side, with some lamenting that too much attention is paid to the characters who have returned, at the expense of some new additions.

However, critics have singled out Sex Education’s Tanya Reynolds for praise.

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Tanya plays Ted’s new right-hand woman, with the likes of Adolescence’s Faye Marsay and Enola Holmes’ Abbie Hern also among those to have joined the award-winning sports comedy in its fourth iteration.

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