In life, some things are always true. One such truth is that wherever there is instability, pain and suffering in the world, former Navy SEAL and mercenary kingpin Erik Prince will be there trying to make a profit out of it. Like a fly on an open wound…

The Trump loyalist is now operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And he’s got a drone armada and a bunch of Israeli contractors with him. Prince signed a deal with Congo in 2025 to support the government in a conflict with Rwanda-backed rebels.

Haaretz reported on 11 February:

Blackwater founder Erik Prince deployed a private security force to operate drones and help the Democratic Republic of Congo’s army secure the strategic city of Uvira against Rwanda-backed rebels

His entourage includes:

a private security force trained by Israelis to operate drones and help the Democratic Republic of Congo’s army secure the strategic city of Uvira

But Prince, descendant of a line of US industrialists, is a busy man if nothing else…

Erik Prince — real-life Bond villain

Prince made a name in Iraq, where his now-defunct firm Blackwater is famous for the massacring of civilians. The early stages of that unpopular US occupation saw a boom in private military firms being used by the US and others, as well as by foreign oil firms. Trump eventually pardoned those convicted for the killings. Prince raked in millions anyway.

Blackwater was re-branded as Xe in 2009, then Academi in 2011. What hasn’t changed is that Prince has been making money out of war and chaos for decades.

Prince has interests in Ukrainian drones, Israeli occupation and the US dirty war with Venezuela. Prince sought to securitise Europe’s frontier against desperate refugees. He has been described as a real-life Bond villain and a hardcore Trump man from the start:

Erik Prince has always been politically connected to Maga, the Maga movement, and that’s going back to 2015.

He is also reported to be:

 a central figure among a web of other contractors trying to sell Trump advisers on a $25bn deal to privatize the mass deportations of 12 million migrants.

Prince also ran private military contractors to Haiti and is implicated in illegal arms deals in Libya. There doesn’t seem to be an authoritarian regime or shadowy outfit he won’t roll with: the UAE, Ecuador, China, Russia, the CIA… and the list goes on.

Now we know what sort of man this is, back to Congo.

Diamonds in Africa

Kinshasa hired the mercenaries

to help secure and improve tax revenue collection from Congo’s vast mineral reserves.

Sources in the country told the press:

Prince’s contractors operated in coordination with Israeli advisers who were involved in training two Congolese special forces battalions on day and night operations, according to a fifth source briefed on the operation.

They added the Israeli mandate is “training only”:

The AFC/M23 rebels briefly seized the city on the border with Burundi in December in a major blow to ongoing US- and Qatar-backed peace negotiations. They withdrew after Washington threatened to retaliate

And Hareetz said:

The US has offered Congo support brokering an end to the conflict in return for access to the nation’s critical mineral resources.

Trump’s art of the deal at work again…

Now Prince’s mercenaries are on the ground. Neither his nor the Congolese government’s spokespeople offered any comment. Prince is again confirming his role as colonialist grim reaper figure. In truth, he probably relishes that persona. It follows that he and Trump are natural bedfellows. Like the US president, Prince embodies the spirit of American capitalism and its role across the world. The trail of bodies his operations have left behind seems to confirm this.

Featured image via the Canary

The UK government has admitted that a study into the suitability of Scottish sites for new nuclear power projects could have been “a waste” of money. The government commissioned Great British Energy-Nuclear (GBE-N), a public body, to carry out the study.

The revelation came after Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) secretary of state Ed Miliband told Scottish journalists in October 2025 that:

given the growing interest in nuclear in Scotland, I’m asking GBE-N to assess Scotland’s capability for new nuclear power stations, including at Torness and Hunterston.

This is going to be a very, very big issue in the Scottish election campaign. We are saying yes to new nuclear in Scotland.

Labour hoping to end SNP ban on new nuclear in Scotland

Scotland is due to go to the polls to elect a new Scottish parliament and Scottish government in May 2026. Labour is hoping to wrest back control from the Scottish National Party (SNP).

In an article about the same interview published in October 2025, the Scotsman newspaper reported that a “senior UK government source” had said they were considering submitting planning applications for new nuclear developments at Torness and Hunterston because they expected a Scottish Labour victory at the Holyrood election.

The UK Labour Party and Scottish Labour support nuclear power and nuclear weapons. This position is coming under pressure as the Green Party of England and Wales, which vehemently opposes all nuclear, increasingly challenges Labour in public opinion polls.

Under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, the government released documents to the Canary about Miliband’s request to GBE-N. These included a Q&A document prepared by DESNZ officials. It revealed that officials knew there would be concerns about new nuclear proposals in Scotland.

No new nuclear can be built in Scotland because planning policy is a devolved matter, and the ruling SNP opposes nuclear power. The rebuttal in the DESNZ Q&A was that there is “cross-party interest in new nuclear” in Scotland.

Energy department officials contradict each other on responsibility for study

The documents released under FOI also revealed that a DESNZ official, whose name was redacted, had sought to reassure GBE-N colleagues that DESNZ was not “behind the briefing” in an email sent on 22 October 2025 at 4:02pm.

That position was contradicted by an email in a separate earlier conversation where, on 21 October 2025 at 6:46pm, John Staples, DESNZ director for new nuclear strategy and fusion energy, said:

our SpAds [special advisors] want SoS [secretary of state] to be able to say the below to Scottish journalists.

‘Below’ in the email were lines drafted for Miliband which included:

I will ask Great British Energy – Nuclear to begin assessing Scotland’s capability for new nuclear power stations.

The internally prepared Q&A included a question which asked:

Isn’t this study a waste of money?

The DESNZ answer said:

New nuclear projects can deliver millions of pounds of investment and thousands of high-quality jobs to a region – UK ministers want to understand the potential for new projects right across Great Britain.

The Canary approached the Labour Party for comment, which deferred to DESNZ. DESNZ did not respond to a request for comment.

‘Obvious’ that study would be ‘waste of money’ – Scottish CND

A Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) spokesperson told the Canary:

It is obvious that an assessment of the viability of new nuclear sites in Scotland would be a waste of money, since the foremost issue is not the viability of sites but Scottish government policy.

Energy policy is devolved to Holyrood and the Scottish government very sensibly opposes new nuclear plants in Scotland.

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There are a whole host of reasons why new nuclear plants in Scotland would be a terrible idea, including the absolutely exorbitant cost of nuclear plant construction, the reliance on destructive and unjust international uranium supply chains, and the enormous and cross-generational burden of decommissioning nuclear plants, which in the case of Dounreay is expected to take hundreds of years.

In particular, the notion that Scotland, which is a net energy exporter and has the potential to become an international renewables powerhouse, should pivot to costly nuclear projects at this stage is somewhat absurd.

Investing the same sums invested in nuclear power plants – scores of billions and climbing for Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C – into the grid, home insulation and the renewables sector across Scotland would be an immeasurably better investment.

For Scottish CND, another concerning element of the renewed push for nuclear power is the deep imbrication [overlapping] of the ‘civil’ and military nuclear industries, as openly promoted in the 2025 Industrial Strategy.

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From this perspective, investment in new nuclear power plants can be seen as defence spending by stealth and a means of shoring up the UK nuclear weapons industry – something which is of no benefit to Scotland and indeed causes major risks and harms in Scottish communities.

New nuclear would be incredibly expensive – Scottish government minister

Cross-party Scottish politicians elected to the Holyrood and Westminster parliaments criticised the commissioning of the study.

Scottish government energy secretary Gillian Martin MSP told the Canary:

The Scottish government does not support the creation of new nuclear reactors in Scotland.

New nuclear would be incredibly expensive and the levy placed on energy bills to pay for nuclear reactors will cost Scottish electricity bill payers £300m over the next decade.

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Nuclear reactors also produce a legacy of dangerous radioactive waste. Instead, we are focused on supporting the development of Scotland’s immense renewable energy potential – which provides more jobs, is faster to deliver, is safer, and more cost effective than the creation of new nuclear reactors.

Significant growth in renewables is providing key opportunities for our future energy workforce in Scotland, with independent scenarios from Ernst and Young showing that with the right support, Scotland’s low carbon and renewable energy sector could support nearly 80,000 jobs by 2050.

SNP criticises ‘Westminster obsession with nuclear’

The SNP’s Westminster energy spokesperson Graham Leadbitter MP told the Canary:

People in Scotland are already paying a tax for new nuclear power stations in England they neither want nor need, driving up energy bills at a time households are already under serious financial pressures.

Scotland is blessed with an abundance of clean, renewable energy already, enough to power our nation many times over.

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So this Westminster obsession with nuclear isn’t based on need, or even any desire from people living here who would rather not pay hand over fist for expensive and unnecessary nuclear power.

Instead what they should be focusing on is delivering on their promise to cut energy bills by £300 which have instead, under Labour’s rule, risen significantly higher.

People in Scotland are tired of these out-of-touch diktats from Westminster politicians about what should be built here, all while ignoring the genuine concerns of the people who live and work here.

It’s no wonder more and more people are concluding that decisions about Scotland should be made in Scotland with the full powers of independence.

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‘New nuclear would waste time, money and political attention’ – Scottish Greens

Scottish Greens net zero spokesperson Patrick Harvie MSP told the Canary:

There is a clear majority against new nuclear power programmes in Scotland.

New nuclear would waste time, money and political attention which should be spent on the real challenges we face on climate and energy policy.

Scotland has made impressive progress in building an energy system based on renewables, which are cheaper, faster to deliver and far safer for people and the environment. There’s still plenty of potential for renewables to keep growing.

The UK government shouldn’t be wasting money trying to push nuclear projects on Scotland, against the wishes of Scotland’s parliament.

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If they care about cutting emissions and cutting fuel poverty, they’d be changing electricity price regulation to pass on the low cost of renewable generation to billpayers, which would cut the cost of living and create a powerful incentive to switch away from fossil fuels for heat and transport.

If the UK government won’t do that, it should give Scotland the power to do so for ourselves.

Scotland should not have to deal with the distraction of UK Labour’s nuclear fantasy, when we need both governments to scale up and speed up in eradicating fuel poverty and in the race to net zero.

Featured image via the Canary

Novara Media’s Ash Sarkar has laid bare the blatant double standard in the Labour Party’s vetting process:

Worth remembering that Faiza Shaheen was deselected as a Labour candidate for liking tweets from the Greens *before* she was ever a Labour member.

What could possibly explain such an intensive vetting process for the left, and such an apparently shoddy one for the right? https://t.co/hSxjZfYKfN

— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) February 11, 2026

Labour have one rule for one lot, another for the rest

Sarkar’s interjection followed a post from the Times assistant political editor Geri Scott. Scott referred to a comment from Education minister Georgia Gould, who insisted the government were ‘unaware’ of Matthew Doyle’s links to Sean Morton when announcing his peerage.

Doyle reportedly campaigned for Morton, a former Moray Labour councillor. A court sentenced Morton in 2018 for possessing Child Sexual Abuse Materials (CSAM). Authorities brought charges against him in 2016, yet Labour waited a year before suspending him from the party. A recent investigation found that Doyle was jailed for further similar offences last year, shining a spotlight on Labour’s selective vetting.

Despite Gould’s deflection, Scott has pointed out the government were aware prior to the letters patent being sealed and passed to the King, adding:

A govt source says: “There is no established precedent for withdrawing a peerage nomination after the announcement stage.”

An X account responded and challenged Gould’s links to Mandelson herself:

Georgia Gould? daughter if Philip Gould? Appointed by Peter Mandelson ? See? dots dots dots all joining up

Sarkar points out this double standard by referring to the Labour party’s treatment of Faiza Shaheen. The party suspended Shaheen prior to the general election. The scandalous suspension came after old posts showed Shaheen liking content from the Green Party. Sarkar astutely points out those likes were prior to being a member of the Labour Party, whilst shining a light on what is (or isn’t) a ‘sackable offence’ in the eyes of Labour leader and PM Keir Starmer.

One X account commented:

You can’t say they’re not thorough when investigating things they are bothered about, it’s such a shame they have really bad priorities.

They can hardly say they weren’t warned, with the leader of the SNP tabling a motion 4 weeks ago in response to Doyle’s peerage:

It’s just 4 weeks since I tabled a motion opposing this very appointment to the House of Lords.

Why did Keir Starmer ignore the warnings, and the victims, and appoint him anyway?https://t.co/oBXOdUm9hF https://t.co/NJxMbFujGm pic.twitter.com/IiVFNQwt6O

— Stephen Flynn MP (@StephenFlynnSNP) February 10, 2026

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Vetting process clearly works, but the boss shouldn’t get to decide

This issue once again exposes a blatant double standard at the heart of government. It also reveals the autonomy afforded to those in charge when it comes to deciding what ‘issues’ matter to them.

Sexual offences against children should really be on that list of concerns. And Starmer must answer why it doesn’t seem to actually bother him in the first place.

Featured image via the Canary

Findings from a new national survey from Internet Matters and Full Fact highlight a significant challenge to the government’s intention to lower the voting age. Extending the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds risks becoming a missed opportunity to strengthen democratic participation and trust in politics, unless young people get more support to navigate political information online.

The survey quizzed more than 550 young people aged 13-17, and over 800 parents and carers across the UK. It found that young people do not feel well-equipped to assess the political information they are encountering online from a young age.

Key findings – young people want to know more

Children are navigating political content well before voting age. 74% of those aged 13-14 have seen content about news, politics or current affairs online.

Children lack foundational skills for evaluating political information. Only 53% of young people aged 13-17 who have seen political information online are confident in telling whether it’s true or false. And just 59% feel confident distinguishing fact from opinion online.

Misinformation and AI are undermining trust in elections. 63% of young people say they’re concerned about voters being misled by false or misleading claims during elections. 60% are concerned that AI-generated content may affect the results of a general election. And the same number ignore what politicians and political parties say because they don’t know if they can trust them.

Parents think children aren’t ready to make informed electoral decisions. 52% of parents think young people are unprepared to vote. Only 49% express confidence in their child’s ability to recognise satire.

Young people believe there’s a shared responsibility for helping them to identify false or misleading information online. This spans across schools, parents and carers, government, and social media companies.

Recommendations – institutions need to do better

Internet Matters and Full Fact are calling on parliament and government to take four immediate steps to ensure support for newly enfranchised voters to participate confidently in democratic life.

1. Schools need support to strengthen media and digital literacy across the curriculum through access to high-quality resources and comprehensive teacher training. A recent independent review of the curriculum in England highlighted the need to equip young people with the ability to make informed decisions and to help them to understand how opinions, AI-generated content and satire can all influence democratic participation.

2. The government needs to establish a clear, coordinated national approach to media literacy. This should involve supporting young people and adults, including parents and carers. The government should urgently publish its ‘vision statement’ on media literacy, setting out objectives, priorities and measures of success.

3. The government must commit to sustained funding to deliver media literacy education outside schools. This should include the Electoral Commission delivering evidence-based public information campaigns on issues such as misinformation.

4. Parliament must require social media companies to support users’ media literacy on platforms, including labelling AI-generated content, design features that support critical evaluation (e.g. read-before-you-share prompts and source information labels), and user controls for recommender systems.

Rachel Huggins, CEO of Internet Matters, said:

Young people are growing up in a digital world where much of their political information comes from online platforms, where it can be difficult to judge what is a fact and, with the rise of AI-generated content, even what is real.#

Lowering the voting age will only succeed if young people – and the parents and carers supporting them – are given the tools to navigate and engage successfully within that world, rather than attempting to shut them out of it.

Mark Frankel, Head of Public Affairs at Full Fact, said:

By the age of 13, many young people are engaging with political information. Rather than banning them from social media, we need to teach children the skills to navigate and assess these sources of political information.

MPs debating the Elections Bill need to send a clear message that future elections will be protected from disinformation and AI, to keep young people engaged with politics.

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Emily Darlington MP, Member of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee said:

We have seen from the Committee’s inquiry into the 2024 summer riots just how damaging misinformation can be for our democracy. This research shows that a majority of kids agree, and that they’re worried about how safe our democracy is in this new age of AI and mis/disinformation.

If the next generation of voters doesn’t have confidence in our democracy, we have a responsibility to act before it’s too late. Online platforms must be participants in the fight to protect trust in our democratic processes, rather than undermine it.

Kirsty Blackman MP, Co-Chair of the APPG on Political and Media Literacy, said:

These findings underline what members of the APPG have long argued: extending the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds must come with a whole-of-society commitment to equipping young people to navigate the digital information environment they already inhabit.

When 6 in 10 young people are concerned about the potential for misinformation and AI-generated content affecting elections, protecting our democracy means embedding political and media literacy education in the National Curriculum, supporting teachers to deliver it, and holding tech platforms to account through media literacy by design.

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Stella, a student aged 14, told Internet Matters:

I think it’s important for children and young people to be taught how to navigate the information they see online from a young age, so they can feel confident forming their own views about politics and voting. The earlier this support starts, the better prepared young people will be to take part.

Featured image via the Canary

Jewish activists from Jewish Anti-Zionist Action, and other grassroots groups within the Jewish Bloc for Palestine have protested and interrupted the launch event of the “Reform Jewish Alliance”.

As Reform UK leader Nigel Farage took the stage to address the launch event’s attendees at London’s Central Synagogue, a group of protesters in the audience disrupted his speech. They loudly accused him and members the Reform party of “inciting attacks” on refugees and minority groups. And they claimed that Farage’s party “would have deported” the protesters’ ancestors when they arrived in Britain as Jewish refugees in the first half of the 20th century.

Jewish protesters criticise synagogue for hosting Reform

Protesters also gathered outside the Central Synagogue to picket the launch event and protest against the use of Jewish religious spaces to host such events. They accused the venue of providing a platform for racism, xenophobia and antisemitism. And protesters held signs highlighting a series of high-profile controversial quotes by Reform UK-affiliated politicians. Several referenced antisemitic remarks which Nigel Farage allegedly made during his time at Dulwich College.

Max Hammer, a spokesperson for the Jewish Bloc for Palestine, said:

It’s not surprising to see disgraced right-wing provocateurs and former spokespeople for Israel’s genocidal government make overtures to Farage’s Reform.

But we’re dismayed and disgusted to see the Central Synagogue play along. How can a synagogue provide a platform to a man who allegedly spent his school days saying that Hitler was right?

We cannot stay silent when known antisemites use our sacred spaces to try and launder their reputation. Farage and his ilk are dangerous to Jews, dangerous to Muslims, and dangerous to all minority groups in the UK. No one in our community should let him forget that.

A coalition of progressive Jewish groups had previously decried the launch of Reform Jewish Alliance. Reporting suggests the group will aim to provide members with a programme of regular events featuring senior politicians from the far-right party and figures in the Jewish community.

The Jewish Bloc for Palestine previously released a statement denouncing the Synagogue’s plans to host the Reform Jewish Alliance launch. They called it a “desecration of [the synagogue’s] purpose” and encouraged Jewish community leaders to condemn the event.

The Reform Jewish Alliance was reportedly initiated by noted right-wing Jewish activist Gary Mond. And its leader will be Jason Pearlman, a former advisor to Israeli president Isaac Herzog.

Amid the high-profile accusations of antisemitism against Farage, the controversy surrounding its launch symbolises the growing political polarisation within the UK Jewish community. Recent polling by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research indicates that support for Reform UK has risen sharply among Jews in the past year. Although at 11%, it remains substantially below the levels of support in the overall British population.

Featured image via Talia Woodin / Jewish Anti-Zionist Action

Infamous outsourcing company Maximus is telling employers their staff living with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) need to exercise more to “boost energy” and “get more done”.

Amid a shocking and, likely, wilful misrepresentation of the devastating chronic systemic neuroimmune disease, the notorious privatisation giant is promoting dangerous treatment “strategies”, namely, Graded Exercise Therapy (GET) and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), that a leading UK health body roundly discredited in 2021.

Maximus peddling ME advice to employers

Maximus, with its decades of hoovering up government contracts to profit from making chronically ill and disabled people’s lives hell, appears to have appointed itself the oracle of:

Creating inclusive workplaces for people with disabilities.

Setting aside the first red flag that it’s clearly not operating from the Social Model of Disability and using community-preferred ‘disabled people’, its history of benefit deaths and harm hardly screams authority on inclusivity. Nevertheless, the ‘Kill Yourself’ scandal benefit assessor has a whole host of advice for employers with disabled staff — because of course it does.

Specifically, it’s providing this in the form of free ‘toolkits’ on particular health conditions and disabilities.

One of these offers information to employers on ME. The first issue to note here is that, instead of ME, it heads its webpage:

Chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and multiple sclerosis toolkit

So to start with, Maximus is ignoring the community-preferred term. Not only that, but it’s also conflating ‘chronic fatigue’; the symptom, with ‘chronic fatigue syndrome’; the condition.

And naturally, with that strong start, it’s all only further downhill from there.

Exercise yourself better

A sparsely-informative three-page spread tells employers that ME is a:

long-term chronic fluctuating illness affects many parts of the body, including the nervous and immune systems.

It then states that:

The most common symptoms are severe fatigue or exhaustion, problems with memory, concentration and muscle pain.

Predictably, the toolkit fails to even mention the hallmark of ME — post-exertional malaise (ME). This involves a disproportionate worsening of other symptoms after even minimal physical, social, mental, or emotional exertion. And it’s the key reason that Graded Exercise Therapy (GET) is dangerous for people living with ME.

So with this omission, it opens the door to the guide promoting GET and GET-type rebrands (‘activity management’). This is despite the fact that in 2021, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) removed GET as a treatment recommendation in the treatment of ME.

There’s a brief mention of pacing. However, any good work it does highlighting this, it quickly undoes with talk of increasing activity.

A separate page on its website gives further alarming advice to employers around staff with ME. In an A-Z of Disabilities, Maximus tells employers to give “onsite exercise classes” and “discounts on gym memberships”.

This is because, according to the self-appointed ME expert (emphasis ours):

Symptoms may be worsened by over-exercising or too much inactivity

Think yourself better

Of course, no gaslighting guide to cover for employers unprepared to make genuine accommodations for people with ME would be complete without an undercurrent of psychologisation.

Maximus was only too happy to hawk this psychosomatic intimation. In the toolkit, it lists CBT amid its “treatment strategies”. NICE downgraded this ‘think yourself better’ garbage for people living with ME in 2021 as well. For years, psychologising clinicians have used it as a stick to beat ME patients with. The unsubtle implication is always that it’s all in their heads.

The A-Z is no less minimising. It tells employers to “reduce stress by promoting mindfulness” and signposts to Maximus’s own Access to Work Mental Health Support Service.

Parts of the guidance point to “large or unhealthy meals” and “lack of relaxation” as exacerbating symptoms. People with ME will likely have specific dietary requirements due to symptoms and co-occurring conditions. However, the suggestion that it’s their unhealthy lifestyle that’s making their ME worse is insulting. The aim — and effect — is to shift responsibility away from employers and the medical profession who are failing ME patients everywhere.

A brand new toolkit — entirely out-of-date

If all this weren’t bad enough, another toolkit gives practically the same advice to employers over long Covid.

Maximus might be forgiven (though still wrong) for hosting an error-riddled toolkit like this in 2021. But over four years after NICE published its updated guidelines, it’s indefensible that the outsourcing giant is STILL peddling these harmful stereotypes and treatments for people living with ME.

According to source page information, the A-Z webpage is from 29 September 2022. In other words, it published this nearly a year after the NICE guideline changes. And Maximus even updated this again in January 2025.

To make matters worse, in the toolkit’s case, source information dates the toolkit to 2 December 2025. Maximus seems to have even modified the page in early January 2026. So, this is essentially brand new guidance it’s promoting to employers.

Not the first time Maximus has done this

This isn’t the first time Maximus has produced flawed information around ME either. The Canary previously exposed how alongside other outsourcing giants like Serco and Capita, it compiled problematic ME training materials for staff administering Work Capability Assessments (WCA).

It’s another glaring example of why profit-driven private companies should be nowhere near services supporting chronically ill and disabled people inside or outside of work. In this instance, the information is out-of-date and actively dangerous.

What’s patently clear is that it should not be posing as any sort of expert in ME or long Covid. But Maximus’s fallacious advice is very convenient for corporate capitalists and a government hell-bent on coercing chronically ill and disabled people into low-waged, inaccessible, and inappropriate work.

And at the end of the day, misinformation and manipulations like this are nothing you wouldn’t expect from a money-grubbing megacorporation like Maximus.

Featured image provided via the author

US plans to fund MAGA-aligned think tanks in Europe could reshape debates over Britain’s Online Safety Act and global platform regulation.

A new transatlantic political debate is emerging around Britain’s Online Safety Act. The issue is now being shaped not only in Westminster but also in Washington.

Reporting by the Financial Times says the US State Department plans to fund MAGA-aligned think tanks and charities across Europe. The programme links to the upcoming 250th anniversary of American independence. Officials say it will promote what they describe as “American values,” including free speech.

A “freedom of speech tour” for MAGA

According to the report, US Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah B. Rogers travelled to London, Paris, Rome, and Milan last year. Officials described the trip as a “freedom of speech tour.” During the visit, she met right-wing think tanks and political figures and discussed how grant funding could support their activities.

The MAGA-linked programme is expected to focus in part on opposing online-regulation laws such as the UK’s Online Safety Act and the EU’s Digital Services Act. US officials argue these rules threaten American technology companies and free expression online.

Across Europe, governments are tightening rules aimed at protecting children and reducing harmful online content. Countries such as Australia have also introduced tougher limits on children’s access to social media. This shows how global regulation in this area is moving in a stricter direction.

At the same time, Washington has increased criticism of these measures, arguing that they unfairly target US-based platforms.

State Department response

In response to questions from the Canary, a State Department spokesperson said the MAGA think tank funding represents “a transparent, lawful use of resources to advance U.S. interests and values abroad.” The spokesperson added that officials were “not shy” about supporting American aims overseas. They rejected claims the programme was a “slush fund,” stating that every grant would be publicly disclosed and accountable.

Campaigners and digital-policy researchers take a different view. Dr. Elinor Carmi of City St George’s, University of London, told the Canary:

Just like any democratic society, freedom must be regulated so people are not harmed.” She added that the same principle should apply to digital platforms, where regulators have taken years to address harms affecting children and other vulnerable users.

The issue is especially sensitive in Britain, where the Online Safety Act has already generated intense political debate between those calling for stronger protections and those warning about the risks of expanding state oversight of online speech.

A growing influence debate

For the UK, the question is no longer only how the Online Safety Act will be enforced. It is also whether state-funded international MAGA-linked networks will begin to play a more visible role in shaping domestic regulatory debates. As these efforts expand, some observers ask a broader question: are we seeing routine diplomatic advocacy, or the gradual normalisation of what critics once described as dark-money politics, now operating more openly through state-backed influence campaigns?

Featured image via the Canary