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Politics Home Article | Criminal gangs don’t care about Westminster’s smoking ban
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With the implementation of the Tobacco and Vapes Act on the horizon, BAT UK warns prohibition could drive consumers towards criminal gangs, undermine responsible retailers and weaken progress towards a smokeless future built on choice, regulation and enforcement
Freedom and personal responsibility have long been central to Britain’s national character. Adults have been trusted to make informed choices for themselves. Yet increasingly, politicians are reaching for prohibition as the answer to complex public policy challenges.
When it comes to smoking and nicotine, that approach risks creating serious unintended consequences – while handing an even greater opportunity to the criminals already profiting from the black market.
Let me be clear. Nobody wants to see children accessing age-restricted products. But there is a significant difference between protecting children and restricting the freedoms of law-abiding adults.
Public policy should be guided by the science and recognise that adults are capable of making their own choices. The truth is that for millions of smokers, a growing range of smokeless alternatives such as vapes and nicotine pouches may offer a pathway away from cigarettes. Indeed, NHS data shows that the number of adults reporting as ‘current smokers’ is at its lowest levels since the survey began back in 1993 at 11 per cent.
The government’s priority should be much simpler: enforce the law and take the fight to the organised criminals already profiting from illicit trade. The black market is already booming on our own shores. In one single operation, Trading Standards seized 46 million illicit cigarettes and over 12,500kg of hand-rolling tobacco across a three-year period. Despite these efforts, illicit tobacco trade in the UK continues to grow significantly, with official estimates failing to capture the true scale of the issue.
Parliamentarians have already warned that a Generational Smoking Ban risks creating an “unregulated, untaxed criminal bonanza,” at a time when the Chartered Trading Standards Institute has officially criticised a lack of funding for enforcement. A recent KPMG report estimates 7.3 billion illicit cigarettes in the UK which is an increase of 1.37 billion year-on-year, alongside £4.87bn in lost excise revenue.1
And now, we are increasingly, being made aware of incidents of counterfeit vapes and nicotine pouches being sold, often without consumers even realising what they are purchasing. We have sought to share our expertise with enforcement agencies to help identify counterfeit products and their potential sources. Industry intelligence can play an important role in disrupting illicit supply chains and should be treated as part of the solution.
The only true winners here, therefore, are the criminal enterprises. They do not check ID. They do not follow product standards. They do not pay tax. And they will not obey these new regulations either. They undermine the thousands of responsible, small British businesses who follow the law every day.
Further prohibition risks driving more consumers towards these gangs, as demand shifts from the regulated market to the black market.
Instead of focusing on measures that risk driving demand into illegal markets, such as the ill-advised Generational Smoking Ban, government ministers must start cracking down on the criminal gangs profiting from illicit trade. That means providing greater resources to Trading Standards, Border Force and law enforcement agencies. It means tougher penalties for rogue operators. It means ensuring that a retail licensing system is backed by meaningful sanctions that genuinely deter wrongdoing.
The choice facing policymakers is simple. Support adult freedom, maintain access to regulated products and come down hard on criminal gangs. Or continue down a path that risks strengthening the black market and empowering those who already operate outside the law.
A smokeless future will not be delivered by prohibition. It will be delivered through informed consumer choice, responsible regulation and relentless action against organised crime. Britain’s law-abiding adults deserve nothing less.
Reference
- KPMG; Illicit cigarette and heated tobacco consumption, and oral nicotine share in Europe
Countless Which? investigations have exposed dangerous or potentially lethal products being sold to UK consumers on online marketplaces. We are routinely told by these companies that safety is a priority, but the mountain of evidence we have accumulated makes it hard to take these claims seriously.
In 2014, Surrey Trading Standards sounded the alarm about killer child car seats that catastrophically failed in crash tests. In 2019, we found the same flimsy designs for sale on leading online marketplaces. Each platform responded to our investigation, insisting that child safety is of paramount importance. And yet, the same designs were found again in our follow up investigation in 2025 – more than a decade after they were first reported.
The car seats story encapsulates a pattern that we see time and again. We report dangerous items to these platforms and they remove the individual products while pledging that safety is a priority. However, their underlying business model remains unchanged, so their responses amount to little more than sticking plasters.
At the same time, these firms are investing in public relations and marketing initiatives, producing reports or signing voluntary commitments stressing their commitment to protecting customers. But it hasn’t become any harder for our investigators to find unsafe products.
In 2024 Amazon promoted the launch of an initiative working with experts to deliver baby safety education to consumers. A laudable project, for sure – but somewhat overshadowed by the continued appearance of potentially lethal baby products on its marketplace.
Which? found baby sleeping bags or sleep pillows that could smother a child for sale on Amazon and other marketplaces, including eBay and Etsy in 2025 and 2026, with Amazon one of the worst offenders in the most recent investigation. Offering parents a dedicated page for ‘safety tips’ is welcome – but taking real responsibility for the safety of products sold to new families would be true progress.
At a recent select committee session with safety experts from some of the biggest online marketplaces, MPs were able to turn up with examples of dangerous product listings they had found easily with an online search that very morning. Too often, parliamentarians’ concerns were met with the same stock answers and corporate soundbites we have been hearing for years.
What would it take for their assurances to be credible? For a start, online marketplaces need to adopt an effective proactive approach to blocking and removing dangerous products. Unsafe products should not be reaching consumers at all, but too often we find that action is only taken after a Which? investigation calls attention to unsafe items.
What’s more, the products that are taken down frequently reappear under different names or sellers. You can almost set your watch in the expectation that the same product will turn up again before long. Sometimes it’s only a matter of days. Our view is that the current approach does little more than provide online marketplaces with a paper-thin cover for failing to protect their customers.
It’s worth bearing in mind that online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay are among the most technologically advanced companies in the world. At the same time, we’ve easily found unsafe products using tools that are widely available, such as reverse image searching to match product listings with government recalls. It doesn’t seem to add up that they have the technical knowhow to deliver parcels via drone but fail to apply even basic tools to identify dangerous products.
Platforms should also verify sellers properly before allowing listings to go live. They should systematically monitor official safety alerts and remove matching or highly similar products without waiting for another investigation to force their hand.
None of this is beyond the capabilities of companies that operate at global scale. The technology exists, the data exists, but what is missing is the willingness and, more importantly, the incentives for these businesses to treat safety with a seriousness that matches their claims. Lives will be at risk until online marketplaces are forced to make good on their rhetoric.
Even if some marketplaces were to clean up their act, there will always be new platforms that are under no obligation to follow suit. The market is changing faster than ever with new actors entering regularly, so there is no substitute for fundamental legal requirements backed up with strong incentivising penalties.
The Product Regulation and Metrology Act, introduced last year, was an important first step. Now the government must urgently use the new powers it has under the Act to update product safety legislation and impose a clear legal duty on online marketplaces for ensuring the safety of products sold through their third-party sellers, with tough enforcement for those that fall short.
The Owens sisters are back after almost 30 years in Practical Magic 2.
Returning for the long-awaited sequel are Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman alongside new additions to the cast Joey King, Maisie Williams and Lee Pace.
Set 25 years after the cult classic original, the sequel sees the Owens clan heading to the UK, in the hopes of attempting to break the family’s love curse.
While many have been looking forward to reuniting with the film’s central duo for some more midnight margaritas, it seems critics haven’t fallen under this sequel’s spell, with select reviews describing it as a “structural mess”, “disappointingly conventional” and even a “money grab”.
Here’s what critics are saying about Practical Magic 2…
“This late sequel delivers a retread of the signposts that made the original a beloved fixture for certain moviegoers, while failing to correct the flaws that made everyone else all but forget it for three decades.”
“As the Owens well know, some spells are built to last, others to be broken. Some movies are made to endure in the public’s affection, such that there’s appetite for a follow-up even decades later. Others are content simply to provoke a few smiles, before dissipating like smoke with the very next breeze.”
“Beyond the cheap sell of seeing beloved characters again, Practical Magic 2 is not an especially entertaining movie.”
“Practical Magic 2 goes heavy on the sell that ‘no magic is stronger than sisterhood’, yet, beyond Kidman and Bullock, the rest of the Owenses barely share screen time or character development.”
“The Owens women remain bewitching company, but this belated sequel trades the original’s unruly feminist magic for something disappointingly conventional. The midnight margaritas are back. The magic, sadly, isn’t.”
“It’s comfort viewing for fans – ideally loaded with the original film’s ‘midnight margaritas’ – who may titter along to the script’s so-bad-it’s-good zingers […] But just as Sally has forgotten who she is and what made her powerful, so this sequel can’t bottle the original’s zig-a-zig-ah.”
“Ultimately, Practical Magic 2 has no idea what it’s trying to do. It’s lacking in magic in just about every sense – there is, genuinely, far less spellcasting than you would expect – and possesses no real point of view for the Owens sisters. The fact that the first film is such a structural mess actually left the door open for some imagination here, but it’s too committed to its tedious plot.”
“By the end of the first act, Practical Magic 2 abandons its secret weapon—cosy New England aesthetics, all burnt orange and worn fabrics—to journey to the cold, unappealing greys of London. This shift, combined with the antiseptic harshness of the digital cinematography (as opposed to the hazy film of the ’90s), lends the movie a made-for-TV quality it can’t shake.”
“The film finally finds its groove during the last 10 minutes or so — sweetly paying tribute to the original and feeling nostalgic in a good way — but by that point, it’s too late, and that’s the most heartbreaking part. It’s evidence that Practical Magic 2 had all the potential to be a satisfying follow-up but falls short in almost every way.”
“I knew the odds of Practical Magic 2 being a genuinely good legacy sequel were slim to none, but I didn’t think it was going to miss the mark this badly. Nothing screams ‘money grab’ quite like stripping away almost all of what made the original film so special.”
“[The film is] a fun, flawed sequel that does enough to conjure the original’s messy magic. But if an Owens sister had recited a spell for a tighter runtime – ‘Filmas Concisas’ perhaps? – Practical Magic 2 could have really taken flight.”
“A nostalgia-bait return to the witchy 90s comedy is as strange and messy as the first but there are warm seasonal pleasures to be had.”
“Disarmingly bad lines are peppered throughout, but there are far more genuine laugh lines. Kidman in particular shines, although, unsurprisingly, her scenes with Bullock are undoubtedly her best. It seems the passage of time didn’t affect these actresses’ ability to perfectly portray just how complex sister dynamics can be, all while charming the audience with their wit and, at times, downright silliness.”
“While Practical Magic 2 is not quite as satisfying as the original, failing to capture what made it so magical in favor of a nostalgia-driven IP grab, it lays the groundwork for a franchise that could take the opportunity to redeem itself.”
“The Practical Magic 2 cast are hexed by a script that focuses far too much on convoluted plotting instead of giving the legacy characters interesting growth and scenes where we get to know who these women are today, and how they’ve grown beyond their tropes 20 years later.”
“The story becomes convoluted, and character depictions are frustratingly thin. But after some whiz-bang action, the sequel’s tone evens out with a finale that is once more joyful and unapologetically girly. Ultimately, like its older sister, Practical Magic 2 offers a wild ride into different genre influences. But it’s undeniably a joy to see Kidman, Bullock, Wiest, and Channing back again.”
Practical Magic 2 is in cinemas now.
Donald Trump has been compared to a cult leader after he made his supporters publicly pledge to vote Republican.
The “fucking insane” ceremony took place at a so-called “midterm convention” in Dallas ahead of crucial elections in November.
Trump, who claimed to be “the greatest president in the history of the United States”, even suggested that they cheat in order to defeat their Democratic Party rivals.
Addressing the large crowd, he said: “Please raise your right hand.
“I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States, that loves us so much that he can’t even breathe, that I will go out with my family, my friends – I’ll do it anyway, I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m gonna try and cheat like hell like they do – and we are going to vote on November 3, or we are going to vote before that.”
As the crowd cheered and waved American flags, he went on: “We swear that on November 3 we are going to go out and vote. If you want you can vote Democrat, but I don’t think there’s one person in this room who’s going to. So help me God.”
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Imagine if you had told someone on 11 September 2001 that in 25 years’ time the streets of New York City would ring out with sympathy for Islamofascism. Imagine if you had said to one of the startled souls watching American lives be incinerated by Islamist filth that one day the West would swarm with youths cosplaying as Islamist filth. Imagine if you had said that in a mere quarter of a century even our leafiest campuses would be awash with jihad chic, with silver-spoon students gushing over an Islamo-army (Hamas) every bit as hateful and medieval as the one that burnt New Yorkers alive.
Imagine if you had said on that apocalyptic day that one day the twisted beliefs of Osama bin Laden would be commonplace in radical circles. Imagine you had said that his anti-Semitic cry that ‘the creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased’ would become the luxury belief of every smug activist. Imagine you had said that the very justification for that day’s pitiless massacre of New York innocents – namely, that America had become the ‘servant’ of ‘the Jews’ petty state’ – would soon be the hot take of the every woke leftist and crank rightist in Christendom. Imagine if over the thud of WTC workers falling to their deaths, you had said that one day Western youths will gush over bin Laden’s writings, and thank him for ‘open[ing] their eyes’ to the evils of America and Israel.
Imagine if you had said there will be further acts of Islamist inhumanity – smaller in scale but equal in evil intent – and that our response would not be horror, but nonchalance. Imagine if you said Islamists will one day massacre girls in Manchester, England and people would say, ‘Don’t look back in anger’. Imagine if you said there will soon be an Islamist atrocity in which more children would perish than on 9/11 – the Nice truck attack – and our response would be awkward silence followed by craven, snivelling amnesia. Imagine if you said that one day it will be a cancellable offence to talk shit about the totalitarian ideology that wreaked such savagery upon New York City.
Imagine if you said that in the near future it will be tantamount to a crime to criticise Islam. That kids in Europe would be interrogated by police for scuffing pages of a Koran. That people would be arrested for calling Muhammad a paedo. That police forces would discuss ditching the word ‘jihad’ so as to not offend Muslims. That people would lose their jobs – even their lives – for ‘blaspheming’ against Islam. And that all the while the intellectual classes would spinelessly whimper: ‘Well, if you’re going to be Islamophobic…’ Just imagine it: you turn to someone as the swirling fires of religious hate consume two of the greatest towers ever built by Man and say: ‘I bet we won’t be allowed to criticise this religion soon.’
They wouldn’t have believed you. More than that, your grim prophesying would have caused them immense pain. It was bad enough that they had to watch as nearly 3,000 lives were ruthlessly sacrificed to the cause of Islamist carnage. The knowledge that aspects of that cause, certain of its tenets, would one day hold sway over youthful imaginations and official policymaking would have pushed them over the edge. The revelation of a future West so consumed by self-loathing that it would wonder if perhaps it deserves the terror and bloodshed of Islamism would have been too much to take. ‘You mean’, they would have said, ‘that the enemies of civilisation who visited New York City today ended up winning?’.
Yes. Yes, that is kind of what I mean.
For here we are, 25 years after the greatest Islamist outrage in history, and it is safer to sympathise with Islamists than to condemn them as a foreign pox on our civilisation. Plaudits await the bourgeois youths who put on keffiyehs and cheer the Islamist foes of Zionism and its Western backers. Shame and blacklisting await the brave souls who say Islamism is the greatest menace the West faces. Hating the West is the intellectual bread and butter of bourgeois society, while those of us who love Western civilisation, and think it infinitely superior to any desert ideology that hates homosexuals and puts women in black sacks, risk being branded as racist. Behold the creeping, sickening victory of the Islamo-imagination, the slow-motion conquest of the West by the rancid anti-civilisational bigotry of the very men who brought terror to New York City 25 years ago today.
We have a tendency to focus on the visceral terror of 9/11. Every documentary, every book, dwells on the sheer pain of the day. The jumpers from the towers. The voicemails people left before being engulfed by al-Qaeda’s flames. The fight for survival on Flight 93 before it plunged into a field in Pennsylvania. All of this is important – of course it is. But the fixation on individual agony can distract us from the almost unbearable moral weight of that day. Emotionalism risks numbing us to the deeper, harder truth of 9/11. Which is that it was not just a tragedy, not even just terrorism, but an act of calculated and savage war against Western civilisation itself.
‘Are you Americans willing to fight for your civilisation?’ – that was the unspoken cry of this Islamist stab at the heart of the West. The selection of NYC as the prime target – alongside the Pentagon – was no accident. On one side, the self-styled Mujahideen of a seventh-century ideology with 21st-century tendencies. On the other, the greatest city Earth has ever known: the teeming, mettlesome metropolis that is the throbbing heart of Western culture and publishing and attitude. ‘The man that hates America hates the human race’, said Brendan Behan. 9/11 was barbarous proof of that. NYC was attacked as a proxy for the West itself, as a gleaming testament to the 20th-century spirit of reason, growth and swagger. Nothing – and I mean nothing – offends the cave-dwelling rich boys of the Islamist disease more than New York Fuckin’ City.
The importance of this historic atrocity is not only that it laid brutish waste to so much precious life but also that it set a moral test for the West. And while we have done our moral duty by the former – righteously commemorating all who died – we have catastrophically failed at the latter. For 25 years we have shirked our generational responsibility to assert the greater moral virtue of Western civilisation over the infantile, murderous rage of Islamism and its braindead apologists. On the contrary, we have bowed to the truthless creed of anti-Westernism, all but agreeing with the death worshippers of Islamism that our moral universe is in fact a violent, polluting, marauding and Zio-cucked horror show.
This is what 9/11 exposed: the pre-existing self-hatreds of the West. It raised to the surface of our societies, like scum on water, our shame at being modern and powerful and enlightened and special. Some clocked the explosive impact 9/11 would have in terms of entrenching and worsening our moral malaise. Martin Amis called it an act of ‘horrorism’, of ‘maximum malevolence’, of ‘pure totalitarian evil’. All should have united against this ‘fantastic vehemence ranged against [America]’, he said. But we didn’t. We ermed and ahhed. We said the West has done bad things too. We said, ‘What about Vietnam?’. To hell with your moral equivalence, said Amis. Whatever the undoubted sins of the West, the ‘paranoid, irrational, death-loving, freedom-hating’ Islamist ideology is worse. He was right. Others were too. Yet their words, like the World Trade Center, crumbled and evaporated into the dust of history.
Twenty-five years on, our moral corrosion has worsened. Bin Laden is dead and al-Qaeda is a busted flush, yet on 9/11 those religious tyrants planted a seed that continues to grow. The seed of doubt. The seed of self-loathing. It was this disease of self-flagellation that was animated like Frankenstein’s monster 25 years ago. The West needs to learn to love itself again. For the 3,000 dead, for New York City, for civilisation itself, it’s time we reminded ourselves of our greatness. Say it with me: we are better than them.
DALLAS — Top Republican lawmakers had no idea President Donald Trump was going to promise $5,000 checks to every adult American so long as his party keeps control of Congress. Now, they’re grappling with how to handle the fallout.
GOP leaders have privately pushed back on similar Trump promises of giving money to Americans in the past year, according to four people granted anonymity to share details of closed-door meetings. Senior Republicans on Capitol Hill were blindsided by Trump’s Wednesday night announcement in Dallas, and are trying to manage lawmakers’ and voters’ expectations about a trillion-dollar-plus proposal they cannot deliver.
“The only thing that I knew of was that he has this concept of a dividend of all Americans being able to share in the success of America,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, who appeared supportive of the idea, said in an interview on the sidelines of the party’s midterm convention. “But last night, no, I was just like you and everybody else when I went, ‘Oh, that’s interesting. Okay.’”
NRCC Chair Richard Hudson added in an interview: “First, I’d heard of it, so I want to talk to him and get some details before I comment.” Hudson said the idea was “exciting,” but he didn’t indicate the House GOP campaign arm would start touting the idea in ads for battleground candidates.
As for the chances of the measure passing Congress, Hudson responded: “Not this Congress. Because Democrats in the Senate will never go through with it.”
Republican leaders, indeed, don’t have the votes to pass such an offer this year, with some in the party questioning the legality of Trump effectively declaring he would pay for votes. GOP fiscal hawks and others also quickly shot it down.
And some Republicans worry Trump’s last-ditch move steps on their carefully laid messaging about the economic benefits of their major tax cuts package — benefits which have largely been erased by the Iran war and tariffs, according to five senior Republicans, who were also granted anonymity to speak candidly.
“It seems incredibly desperate,” said one of the House Republicans.
“I see zero chance of this happening,” said another House Republican at the convention.
The scramble to figure out their position — and how serious Trump is — comes at a critical final stretch of the midterms and as many voters grow increasingly skeptical of the GOP’s record on the economy.
Democrats were quick to slam Trump’s announcement as a way to bribe Americans and distract from an unpopular trade agenda and war in the Middle East. And as Republicans gathered in Dallas for their splashy midterm convention, the emerging splits over the dividends were on full display.
GOP lawmakers have privately noted a clear divide in the messaging around Trump’s promise of $5,000 checks: The White House and Trump’s campaign social media accounts are wholeheartedly touting the idea. GOP House and Senate campaign arms, meanwhile, are not. The NRSC declined to comment on the proposal.
Vice President JD Vance defended Trump’s offer on Fox News shortly after the president announced it Wednesday night, saying it was intended to boost “the American middle class.” But Vance did not mention the Trump proposal during a closed-door breakfast with GOP lawmakers, state party officials and activists from key battleground states on Thursday morning, instead touting a string of GOP economic achievements like Trump’s executive action that aims to lower prescription drug costs and the GOP tax cuts package.
“I think we’re all looking forward to learning more,” said Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) as he left the closed-door breakfast with Vance.
Asked if he would support Trump’s proposal, Steil repeated, “I think we’re all looking forward to learning more.”
While Republicans scramble to figure out how to position themselves on the “dividend” pledge, Trump told CBS on Thursday he doesn’t think he needs Congress to approve his plan to send out payments.
Amy Natoce, a spokesperson for Ohio GOP Sen. Jon Husted, who faces a tough battle for reelection this fall, said his team “has reached out to the White House to learn more about the proposal and how it would work.” Natoce noted that “putting money directly back into the pockets of hardworking Ohioans is in line with Jon Husted’s priorities.”
Some Republicans were willing to more fully embrace the idea.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said Wednesday that it was “an incentive for work” — even though the money will go to all Americans regardless of employment status. Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno pledged to draft up a bill on the checks “so that we can get the Trump Dividend passed immediately after the November 3rd election.” Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall, who’s facing a surprisingly competitive race, eagerly asked his social media followers to “comment how you will spend your $5,000 Trump Dividend when Republicans win in November.”
Fiscal hawks say they are eager for information. Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), who serves on the House Budget Committee, declined to say whether he would support the president’s proposal which could cost more than $1 trillion.
“I would like to know how they would plan to pay for … back of envelope … well over $1 trillion,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said in an interview Wednesday night shortly after Trump announced the proposal.
Trump has promised a litany of dividends and checks to Americans in recent years that have never materialized.
He raised the idea of direct checks to Americans in private meetings with GOP leaders before, often with money he says are from tariffs or the DOGE cuts. It’s an idea that Trump and some close White House advisers have discussed on and off for extended periods of time, particularly during his second term.
Each time, GOP leaders on Capitol Hill have argued that such an idea wouldn’t have the votes among Republicans given the price tag — and that it would likely require Congress to codify Trump’s controversial tariffs into law.
In December, Trump sent a $1,776 check to all members of the military, a move he referred back to while unveiling the dividend plan Wednesday. And he quickly followed up on Thursday with a separate offer to send money to Americans: $500 rebate checks to about 1 million Obamacare enrollees in 30 states.
Democrats immediately pounced on the latest proposal, including several candidates locked in competitive November races.
“Is this some kind of sick joke? Donald Trump’s policies are costing us more than [$5,000] — from his illegal war in Iran and his trade wars — and this dividend is nothing but a lie that wouldn’t even begin to make up for what he’s costing us,” Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed said in a statement to POLITICO.
A spokesperson for El-Sayed’s opponent, Mike Rogers, did not respond to a request for comment on the proposal. He also declined questions from reporters at the Dallas convention Thursday.
So far Democratic leaders have been dismissive of the idea.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the dividends a “bribe” to Americans and said they demonstrate Trump’s weak political position.
“Trump just talks out of who knows what,” he told reporters Thursday in New York City.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and House Majority PAC did not indicate that they planned to include the dividends in messaging to voters.
Emmer dismissed the criticism that the checks were a bribe, saying Trump wanted Americans “to share in the success” of the country.
He acknowledged it’s unlikely the House takes up such a bill before the midterms, given there is no proposal drafted yet and only one week of session scheduled before November, but expressed confidence the GOP could deliver on Trump’s promise after the election.
“Let the policy guys draft it. Let them debate it. Let them move it through committee,” Emmer said. “You get it to the whip’s office. We’ll pass it.”
With just over a week to go until Strictly Come Dancing returns to our screens, the cast have been getting their glam on in preparation.
Over the course of the summer, the BBC began slowly revealing the 15 stars competing on Strictly in 2026, which includes an eclectic mix of stars from the world of TV, music, sport and beyond.
Now, fans have been treated to a first look at the cast after being Strictly-fied, ahead of their dance floor debuts next week.
Publicity photos of all 15 cast members were released on Thursday, showcasing the celebs in all of the sparkles, sequins and adornments viewers have come to expect from the BBC dance show.
When she was first announced for the new series, actor Jaime Winstone previously made it clear that the glamour of Strictly was part of the appeal for her, teasing: “I am no stranger to a dance floor, but the ballroom is a whole new world for me.
“I love a challenge, though, so can’t wait to enter my showgirl era and get super sparkly!!”
Similarly, record-breaking Paralympian Dame Sarah Storey told the BBC that she is “looking forward to getting into my glittery and fake tan era!”.
EastEnders staple Lacey Turner was the first star to be confirmed for Strictly Come Dancing 2026, followed by reality star Dani Dyer, who was forced to bow out of last year’s season early after sustaining an injury during training.
BBC/Ray Burmiston/Artwork – BBC Creative
Strictly Come Dancing returns to our screens on Saturday 19 September at 7.25pm on BBC One.
The following week, Emma Willis, Josh Widdicombe and Johannes Radebe will then front their first live show, after being announced as the show’s new hosts earlier this year.
Kamala Harris will campaign with Sen. Jon Ossoff in Georgia and headline a fundraising dinner hosted by Fulton County Democrats next month, marking her latest involvement in the midterm elections.
Harris is also slated to join Nevada attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Aaron Ford next month in Las Vegas and campaign with Democratic challengers in two competitive House races in her home state.
“It is critical for Democrats to win this November so we can fight the Trump administration’s corruption and work to lower costs for the American people,” a Harris spokesperson said in a statement. “Vice President Harris will continue to do whatever is needed to support candidates in races where she can be helpful.”
The events in Georgia were first reported by CNN. Harris will also be the keynote speaker at the fundraising dinner on Oct. 30 in Atlanta. An Ossoff campaign spokesperson confirmed his plan to campaign with Harris. Ossoff’s campaign previously told POLITICO that it would welcome Harris to Georgia to stump with or on behalf of the senator.
Still, the announcements come as some Democrats have been keeping distance from the party’s last presidential nominee.
In Iowa, where Democrats are hoping to flip a Senate seat and retake the governor’s mansion in a state where Harris lost by 13 points in 2024, the two candidates both declined to have Harris’ help. So did Mary Peltola, the Democratic Senate candidate in Alaska who “isn’t seeking endorsements from anyone from the Lower 48,” and House candidates in some red states and rural districts.
For her part, Harris has skirted the question of whether she will run again in 2028 and said she is focusing on the midterm elections.
“Right now midterms [are] full-time occupying my thoughts, my mind and my work,” Harris said in a recent podcast episode with Megan Rapinoe on Vox Media. “I’m spending full time working on doing everything I can to help people restore some balance in our government, which is through the midterms, winning back Congress, the House and the Senate.”
“I haven’t decided. But honestly, from my perspective, ’28 doesn’t matter if we don’t win ’26,” she said to a question on another presidential bid.
Jimmy Kimmel has revealed that his interview with Texas State Representative James Talarico will not air on ABC’s broadcast network. Instead, the ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ interview with Talarico, a Democratic Senate candidate, will be posted in full on YouTube.
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