In a newly unsealed three-page court document, the U.S. Department of Justice has announced criminal charges against former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey for unlawfully disclosing national defence-related classified information, marking the third time the high-profile former law enforcement chief has faced formal criminal accusations from the justice branch. Comey, a longstanding vocal critic of former U.S. President Donald Trump, is named in two unspecified counts outlined in the sparse initial filing, which provides limited granular context on the alleged offences. The legal proceedings trace back to an alleged 2016 disclosure of sensitive classified materials to the New York Times, which occurred while Comey still held the top leadership post at the FBI in October of that year, according to separate filings submitted by his legal defence team. Pushing back forcefully against the charges in a public video shared to his Substack account on Monday, Comey emphatically rejected any assertion of misconduct, framing the prosecution as a gross and alarming misuse of federal law enforcement authority. “This would almost read as absurd if the stakes were not so high – it is an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice, a violation of institutional integrity that we as a public cannot grow desensitized to,” Comey stated in the recorded address. He went on to reaffirm his personal stance, noting, “My position has not shifted at all: I am entirely innocent, I do not fear the actors behind this move, and I retain full faith in the independence of the federal judiciary system.” Lead counsel for Comey, prominent attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, further emphasized in an official public statement that two separate, fully resourced prosecutorial teams had already conducted full, exhaustive investigations into the same alleged New York Times disclosure nearly a decade prior, during the first Donald Trump presidential administration. “On both of those prior occasions, the government completed its full review and formally concluded that no individual merited criminal charges in relation to this matter,” Fitzgerald noted, adding that the newly filed court paperwork attempts to levy criminal liability against Comey for offences he never committed.
分类： politics
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The right cat for China?
On the cusp of a major Communist Party plenum that has removed 45 of the 376 full voting members from its ranks, Beijing is grappling with a defining existential question: does its current governing and development model align with the unique historical phase the nation now occupies?
There is no easy consensus within Chinese leadership circles. Domestically, a stack of unaddressed structural challenges mounts, while traditional global reference points no longer offer clear, reassuring blueprints. Once the United States stood as a potential positive paradigm for Beijing to adapt, but the MAGA-era Washington of today, which prioritizes Pentagon hard power and recently designated China’s long-running Confucius Institute cultural exchange programs as national security threats, no longer serves as a usable, aspirational model for Chinese policymakers.
This uncertainty echoes two earlier pivotal moments in modern Chinese political history: in the wake of the 1978 Xidan Democracy Wall protests in the early 1980s, and after the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy demonstrations, when the current generation of senior leaders first cut their teeth in political life. Back then, the core strategic fear driving Communist Party thinking was the concept of *heping yanbian*, or “peaceful evolution”: the gradual, non-violent transformation of a communist state into a liberal capitalist democracy, advanced not through military invasion or revolution, but through cross-border trade, cultural exchange, and the spread of Western ideas.
For decades of veteran Chinese officials, this was framed as an existential peril that could collapse the entire communist system — yet paradoxically, it was also recognized as an unavoidable global force. The only viable path forward, leadership concluded at the time, was to embrace targeted market reforms that mirrored elements of that “peaceful evolution” to avoid total stagnation.
Today, Beijing observes a very different iteration of that same “peaceful evolution” unfolding across the Pacific: the United States itself is undergoing an unrecognizable, turbulent transformation. The central open question for Chinese analysts now is whether this turmoil marks the terminal decline of the U.S. system, or simply a messy new stage of its long-term development.
This lack of definable clarity across Western societies stands in stark contrast to the unshakable ideological certainty of 40 years prior, during the final stretch of the Cold War and immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union. At that time, the U.S. held unrivaled cultural hegemony over both China and the global stage, projecting unassailable confidence in its liberal democratic model. Today, that aura of unchallenged superiority has evaporated.
Chinese political culture has long been rooted in pragmatic, empirical problem-solving, famously summed up by Deng Xiaoping’s iconic adage: “It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.” In the 1980s, Deng himself concluded that the U.S. model was the “cat” that delivered proven results. For decades, the U.S. stood as an explicit aspirational benchmark for China, whose stated goal was to first match, then surpass, American levels of prosperity and global influence. That widespread Chinese admiration for the U.S. was an unspoken, powerful diplomatic lever Washington wielded, intentionally or otherwise, to shape bilateral relations.
But now that China no longer views the U.S. as a model worth emulating, that entire historic channel of U.S. leverage disappears. Beijing is now fully committed to advancing its interests on the global stage using its own self-defined governing framework, under the conviction that its path is the correct one. The core unresolved question hanging over the country today is whether that “Chinese cat” actually delivers the tangible results it promises: widespread domestic frictions cast doubt on that assumption, but the visible chaos unfolding across the U.S. seems to validate Beijing’s rejection of the Western model.
This centuries-old Chinese preoccupation with selecting a viable external governing framework stretches back more than 100 years. In the interwar 1920s, in the aftermath of the Qing Dynasty’s total collapse, the nation faced an almost identical dilemma: which competing Western ideological system would best secure China’s survival and prosperity? The options on the table were Soviet communism, Italian and German fascism, and the liberal democratic model from Western Europe and the United States, each of which had vocal, organized supporters within Chinese intellectual and political circles. At that time, China was crippled by military defeat, cultural disorientation, and economic collapse, and its leadership concluded it had no choice but to adopt a proven foreign system, eventually aligning fully with the Soviet Union. Half a century later, post-Mao leaders concluded the Soviet model had failed to lift living standards meaningfully, and turned to selectively adapt elements of the U.S. system, which was then seen as the undisputed global victor of the Cold War that delivered widespread wealth to its population.
Today, for the first time in two centuries, Chinese leaders negotiate with the U.S. as formal equals, and many in Beijing openly argue their system is outperforming the American one. Donald Trump’s administration, which first took office vowing to erase China’s trade surplus and revitalize U.S. domestic industry, has after two years dragged the country into a new full-scale Middle East conflict with Iran, triggering the worst global oil crisis in 50 years and sending global financial markets into turmoil. For Beijing, there is little left to admire in the U.S. system: the American “cat” no longer appears to be working even for its own citizens, so there is no reason for China to attempt to adapt it to its own context. This fundamental shift upends 50 years of established U.S.-China bilateral dynamics.
Chinese analysts frame the current U.S. crisis through the lens of their own 19th century national trauma. They draw a direct parallel between the mass opium addiction that crippled the late Qing Dynasty and today’s widespread fentanyl and prescription opioid epidemic tearing through American working-class communities, and between the fanatical Taiping Rebellion pseudo-Christian movement that triggered a devastating 19th century civil war and modern U.S. social media platforms like TikTok that erode all shared boundaries between fact and fiction. Chinese observers note that U.S. regulators enforce strict quality controls for food and pharmaceutical products, but impose almost no oversight on social media platforms, which they argue systematically erode public critical thinking and educational outcomes for young people. Beijing frames its own strict drug prohibition regime and tightly controlled, party-curated domestic internet ecosystem as a deliberate protective “cultural bubble” designed to shield the nation from what it sees as a self-destructive Western cycle of substance abuse and information chaos, under the belief that its system will grow stronger as the U.S. decays.
Beyond these surface-level symptoms, Chinese analysts argue the U.S. foundational liberal *res publica* — the shared commitment to a common public good that binds its citizens together — is actively fragmenting. Two core fault lines drive this erosion: first, a new class of unaccountable American billionaires who prioritize personal, narrow agendas over collective national interests, with no unifying shared national purpose comparable to the anti-communist consensus of the Cold War era. Second, the growing spread of parallel sharia legal norms in parts of Western Europe, which they argue erodes the centuries-old liberal principle of equal citizenship under a single unified secular legal system, creating a patchwork of competing legal standards that undermines the foundation of liberal democracy. These observations lead many in Beijing to conclude that the entire Western liberal democratic model is no longer functional.
While the U.S. spent the years immediately after the 9/11 attacks prioritizing counter-terrorism and sidelining the China challenge, it has now spent more than a decade debating whether China, or domestic social divisions, or immigration, represents its primary national threat. This internal disorientation leads many Chinese policymakers to conclude the U.S. is too distracted and in decline to pose a meaningful challenge to China’s global ambitions. But this calculation carries significant risks: Washington is increasingly aligning with European and Indo-Pacific allies who now share a common wariness of China’s geopolitical ambitions, trade practices, and military support for Russia and Iran. If the U.S. successfully resets its priorities to focus on China, Beijing’s entire set of assumptions about Western decline could be proven wrong, creating a volatile new geopolitical landscape where miscalculation could trigger unintended, large-scale conflict across Asia’s many regional flashpoints. The recent U.S. decision to formally designate remaining Confucius Institutes as national security threats and accelerate their closure marks the latest step in Washington’s ongoing campaign to push back against Chinese influence operations on American soil, with no clear path yet for how the two powers will resolve their deepening ideological and strategic rivalry.
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Israeli press review: Netanyahu accused of pushing Iran escalation ahead of election
Just 48 hours ahead of Israel’s critical legislative elections, a series of explosive developments has roiled the country’s political landscape, starting with a high-stakes rift at the top of the national security apparatus. Per a Sunday exclusive from Israel’s Channel 12 News, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and sitting military chief of staff Eyal Zamir engaged in a tense, direct confrontation over a classified directive that Zamir warned could inadvertently spark a full-scale military conflict with Iran, in the final days before citizens head to the polls. The report did not publish the full details of the contested order, but confirmed that Zamir pushed back forcefully against Netanyahu’s instruction, refusing to greenlight any operational military action until he received formal, binding legal assurances that the move was justified under national security protocols. Multiple anonymous insiders close to the heated altercation told Channel 12 that senior ranks of the Israeli Defense Forces harbored deep fears that Netanyahu’s governing political tier was attempting to weaponize long-running tensions with Iran to generate last-minute electoral momentum, casting widespread doubt on the prime minister’s underlying motivations for the proposed action. Netanyahu and his newly appointed Defense Minister Israel Katz swiftly issued blanket denials of the entire account: in a public post on X published Monday, Katz explicitly stated that the Israeli government had no plans whatsoever to launch any offensive operation targeting Iran in the window before Tuesday’s vote. Channel 12’s reporting further contextualized that the unprecedented public-facing rift between political leadership and the military top brass unfolded in parallel with unconfirmed claims that Netanyahu had held direct talks with U.S. President Donald Trump to restart the long-running joint U.S.-Israeli coordinated campaign of pressure and targeted actions against Iranian military infrastructure. The allegations immediately sparked fierce backlash from Israel’s opposition camp. Gadi Eisenkot, Netanyahu’s leading electoral rival, issued a sharp rebuke on X Sunday, writing “Do not you dare place your personal political interests above the fundamental security of the state of Israel.” Eisenkot’s coalition partner Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the right-wing nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu faction, went even further, labeling the alleged scheme an act of outright treason. Speaking to Radio 103FM on Monday, Lieberman stated flatly that Netanyahu was “betraying this country in plain sight by trying to drag our entire nation into an unnecessary war for electoral gain” and vowed to push for a full formal investigation into the prime minister on formal treason charges if his bloc secures power after the vote. Alongside the explosive security drama, a separate independent analysis published Monday by leading Israeli women’s magazine LaIsha paints a stark picture of plummeting female representation in the incoming 25th Knesset. The outlet’s data, compiled from the latest pre-election polling, projects that only 31 women will secure seats in the 120-member legislative body, amounting to just over 25% of total seats. The figure marks a sharp downturn from the 45 women elected in the 2021 legislative vote, the highest total in Israeli political history, and also represents a drop from the 35 women who held seats in the outgoing Knesset. The breakdown of projected female lawmakers shows a stark partisan divide: 23 of the 31 winning female candidates are expected to come from centrist and Zionist opposition factions, including Eisenkot’s Yashar party, former prime minister Naftali Bennett’s Together party, Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu, and the left-leaning The Democrats led by Yair Golan. By contrast, Netanyahu’s hardline governing bloc is on track to send a mere six women to the next Knesset. Two of the core factions in Netanyahu’s coalition, the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties, bar women from running for public office entirely, meaning they will send zero female representatives, while his far-right Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism factions have also fielded almost no women in winnable slots. Palestinian-led political blocs, including the Islamist Ra’am party and the left-wing Joint List, are projected to send only two women total to the incoming legislature. Adding a final unexpected dynamic to the pre-election landscape, data compiled by Israeli financial daily Calcalist published Sunday reveals that roughly 90,000 Israeli citizens who normally reside abroad have already returned to the country in recent weeks, with the total expected to climb to 111,000 by election day. The figures, sourced from anonymized user location tracking data provided by a major Israeli telecommunications firm, represent a 94,000-person surge compared to average non-election periods. The unusual travel spike comes at a time when Israel has seen a major wave of emigration since 2023, with roughly 270,000 mostly highly educated, skilled citizens leaving the country for long-term residence abroad. The telecom firm’s analysts noted that the timing of the travel surge in mid-October, which does not align with typical holiday or tourist travel patterns, makes it overwhelmingly clear that the vast majority of the returning expats have traveled specifically to cast their ballots in the high-stakes vote. Independent cross-verification from Channel 13 News, drawing on passenger arrival data from Ben Gurion Airport, confirms the same scale of incoming expat arrivals. Political analysts note that a turnout of 90,000 eligible expat voters could translate to roughly two full Knesset seats, though outlets caution that the total arrival numbers include accompanying children who are not of voting age.
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Trump’s media bans ‘deprive the public’, press freedom groups argue
A coalition of six plaintiffs comprising veteran journalists, free speech advocates, and constitutional scholars, represented by the Knight First Amendment Institute and Yale Law School’s Media and Information Access Clinic, has filed a formal civil lawsuit against the Trump administration in a New York federal court, challenging a series of selective press access restrictions implemented since Donald Trump took office for his second presidential term in January 2025. The legal action follows a wave of high-profile conflicts between the White House and established mainstream U.S. news outlets, stemming from the president’s longstanding public accusations that many legacy media organizations disseminate so-called “fake news.”
Court documents submitted as part of the new legal challenge argue that the White House’s targeted revocation and restriction of press credentials directly violate core protections enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees broad safeguards for freedom of speech and a free independent press. The six plaintiffs state in their filings that without unfettered access to official briefings, events, and information distributed through the White House press operation, they can no longer fulfill their professional obligations to deliver accurate, timely public interest reporting to their audiences. The policy, they emphasize, not only harms journalistic work but systematically deprives the general public of critical, unfiltered information about government activities. The filing further warns that the arbitrary nature of the restrictions creates a pervasive chilling effect: reporters covering the Trump administration are forced to self-censor critical coverage out of fear that even a single offhand or unflattering remark about the president could lead to their press access being summarily revoked without due process, distorting the integrity of all White House-related news coverage.
Unlike many civil litigation cases, the new lawsuit does not seek financial damages for the plaintiffs, only a formal judicial ruling that the administration’s selective press ban policy is unconstitutional, a permanent injunction blocking the White House from continuing to enforce such arbitrary access restrictions, and an order requiring the administration to cover the plaintiffs’ legal fees if the case is decided in their favor. The BBC has reached out to the White House for an official statement on the new lawsuit, but no response has been issued as of press time.
This legal action is the latest in a string of escalating disputes between the second Trump administration and mainstream U.S. media. Last month, the White House moved to fully bar reporters from CNN, Politico, and MSNOW from White House premises, a move that prompted dozens of other news organizations to temporarily pause participation in official White House press pools in a coordinated protest. The three affected outlets filed their own separate legal challenge, arguing the White House was illegally discriminating against their journalists purely based on the editorial content of their coverage. A federal judge subsequently issued a temporary restraining order mandating the White House restore full press credentials to the affected reporters while that lawsuit proceeds, and the journalists were allowed back on White House grounds shortly after the ruling.
Despite that preliminary court order, the administration has continued to enforce selective, targeted access restrictions against other outlets, drawing widespread condemnation from U.S. press freedom advocacy groups. CNN has publicly warned it will pursue additional legal action after its reporters were repeatedly denied boarding privileges on Air Force One to cover presidential travel. Just last week, the White House banned a correspondent from UK-based outlet The Independent from traveling with the presidential delegation to cover Trump’s official trip to Iowa, after the president publicly berated the reporter during an open press conference.
The administration has simultaneously expanded press access for conservative bloggers, social media influencers, and other non-traditional “new media” figures, framing the policy shift as an effort to introduce more diverse perspectives into White House press coverage. In February 2025, the White House also seized direct control of the long-running White House press pool — the small rotating group of journalists granted exclusive close access to the president for events not open to the full press corps — breaking with a more than 100-year-old precedent that had delegated pool management to the independent White House Correspondents’ Association. That same month, the administration restricted Associated Press journalists from entering high-security limited-access spaces including the Oval Office and Air Force One, in retaliation for the outlet’s editorial decision to use the standard geographic term “Gulf of Mexico” instead of the rebranded “Gulf of America” the Trump administration has mandated. The AP has filed its own separate First Amendment lawsuit over that restriction, which remains active in the courts.
Most recently, Trump confirmed via a post on his Truth Social platform that he is actively evaluating a plan to relocate the entire White House press corps off the main White House grounds, citing a need to repurpose the space currently occupied by the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room to rebuild a long-shuttered swimming pool underneath the facility.
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Trump administration illegally fired James Comey’s daughter, judge rules
A federal judge in New York has issued a landmark ruling finding that the U.S. Department of Justice unlawfully terminated Maurene Comey, a seasoned federal prosecutor and daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, in July 2025. The ruling, handed down by U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman on a Monday, mandates that the Trump administration restore Comey to her prior post and award her full back pay covering the period between her July 2025 dismissal and December 2025, when she secured alternative employment.
Maurene Comey, who built a reputation as a top-tier legal talent handling some of the nation’s most high-stakes criminal cases, filed a civil suit against the federal government shortly after her ouster. She alleged that her firing was entirely motivated by her familial ties to James Comey – a prominent public critic of President Donald Trump – as well as baseless assumptions about her personal political leanings. At the time of her dismissal, Comey was only told the order originated from senior leadership in Washington, with no formal performance-related justification provided.
Court records confirm that over the course of her prosecutorial career, Comey earned consistent top-tier performance reviews from both supervisors and colleagues, and led high-profile prosecutions including those against deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, and hip-hop figure Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was convicted on prostitution-related charges involving two former partners in 2024.
In his 62-page written ruling, Judge Furman emphasized that while the U.S. Attorney General holds the authority to remove federal prosecutors, that power is not unlimited: dismissals must follow established procedural protocols and be rooted in legitimate, non-partisan justifications. He concluded that Comey’s termination violated both due process protections enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and established federal civil service rules governing career public servants.
The Department of Justice released an official statement in response to the ruling, noting that agency leadership strongly disagrees with the judge’s findings and intends to file a formal appeal within the legally permitted timeline. Court filings from the DOJ previously claimed that the decision to fire Comey was made directly by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, with no connection to her family background.
Legal representatives for Maurene Comey framed the ruling as a far-reaching victory for all non-partisan civil servants. In their public statement, they noted: “This hard-earned victory belongs to Ms Comey, to all civil servants, and to all fighting for the rule of law. It reaffirms that career public servants cannot be removed from their posts solely for their family connections or perceived political beliefs.”
The ruling unfolds against a broader backdrop of ongoing legal tensions between the Trump administration and James Comey, whose 2017 firing as FBI director sparked widespread controversy during Trump’s first presidential term. The Trump administration has twice pursued criminal charges against the former FBI director: the first, alleging James Comey lied to Congress, was dismissed by a separate judge who found the prosecuting official bringing the case had been unlawfully appointed. Earlier in 2025, the DOJ filed new charges against James Comey alleging he made a violent threat against President Trump via an Instagram post that showed seashells arranged to spell “86 47” – a reference prosecutors claim uses the slang term “86,” meaning to remove or eliminate someone, to incite harm against the 47th U.S. president. James Comey has repeatedly denied all wrongdoing in the matter.
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Trump faces backlash after invoking 9/11 in verbal assault on El-Sayed
The fiercely contested 2026 Michigan U.S. Senate race has devolved into a bitterly polarizing showdown, as former and current U.S. President Donald Trump faces widespread bipartisan backlash over incendiary, 9/11-themed verbal assaults targeting Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed. During a Sunday campaign rally in the battleground state, Trump leveled unsubstantiated claims labeling the U.S.-born El-Sayed a “jihadist”, even bringing on stage the father of Todd Beamer — the Michigan native passenger who led the passenger revolt against hijackers on United Airlines Flight 93 during the 2001 terrorist attacks — to rally supporters against El-Sayed. Trump went on to make wild allegations that El-Sayed would “open the floodgates for hordes of jihadis” to enter the U.S. if elected, claiming the scenario would eliminate public celebration of Christmas, and even joked that El-Sayed would need to pass through a metal detector to enter the Senate chamber. The president also pushed long-debunked insinuations tying El-Sayed to the Muslim Brotherhood, a faction of which his administration formally designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization earlier this year. El-Sayed, a former public health official born to Egyptian immigrant parents who would make history as the first Muslim U.S. Senator if he wins, has repeatedly denied any affiliation with extremist groups and affirmed his full loyalty to the United States. At his own subsequent campaign rally, he pushed back against Trump’s deliberate choice to use his full middle name Mohamed as a dog whistle to stoke anti-Muslim sentiment, telling cheering supporters, “I’ll be Senator Mohamed to you, bro.” He emphasized that such divisive, faith-focused attacks are a deliberate distraction from working-class voters’ top priorities, noting that opponents are “pointing at my name and my faith” to make people overlook the fact that they cannot afford gas, groceries, or accessible healthcare. Independent progressive leader Senator Bernie Sanders joined El-Sayed at the event, arguing that the Republican campaign is leaning into Islamophobia because it has no actionable policy solutions to address voters’ daily economic struggles. The narrow, high-stakes race pits El-Sayed against Republican nominee Mike Rogers, a former U.S. Representative and ex-House Intelligence Committee chair, and is widely viewed as one of a tiny handful of competitive Senate contests that will determine which party controls the chamber after the November 3 midterms. Critics have pointed out the clear double standard in the Muslim Brotherhood allegations against El-Sayed: back in 2012, Rogers himself told Reuters that policymakers should pursue careful, cautious engagement with moderate members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Even a prominent former Trump ally, Bishara Bahbah — founder of the once-influential Arab Americans for Trump group that helped Trump secure critical Arab American support in Michigan during his 2024 White House victory — condemned the president’s remarks, telling the Associated Press that the statements “cross a red line” and are openly racist. El-Sayed’s team has previously distanced the candidate from a 2012 social media post from his half-sister referencing her family’s longstanding ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, while El-Sayed has explicitly disavowed the organization on the record. A 2011 Huffington Post op-ed El-Sayed wrote about Egyptian pro-democracy protests, and a 2012 open letter he is alleged to have signed urging Egypt’s first democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated president to reform state security institutions, have been circulated by Republican surrogates as part of their smear campaign, though El-Sayed has not publicly addressed the latter letter. The BBC has reached out to the White House for an official comment on the controversy, as its correspondent Sarah Smith recently conducted an on-camera interview with El-Sayed to break down the key tensions in the tight Senate contest.
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Catholic bishops apologise for ‘exploited’ Trump meeting
Two prominent U.S. Catholic clergymen have issued public statements of remorse following a 22 October closed-door gathering at the White House that spiraled into a viral partisan controversy after unapproved footage and photographs of the group praying alongside former and current U.S. President Donald Trump were circulated on social media. The clips and stills, captured around the iconic Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, were shared publicly by Margo Martin, a senior special assistant to the president and trusted communications aide who regularly posts exclusive behind-the-scenes content of Trump on the X social platform. The two bishops at the center of the fallout — Milwaukee Archbishop Jeffrey Grob and Des Moines, Iowa Bishop William Joensen — both emphasized that they entered the meeting under the explicit impression that all proceedings would remain private, with no public media component planned. The gathering had been coordinated by staff from the White House Faith Office to discuss substantive policy priorities aligned with Catholic social teaching, including reform of immigration frameworks, streamlined visa pathways for international clergy serving in U.S. parishes, and targeted interventions to end systemic exploitation of low-income and vulnerable marginalized communities. Neither cleric had granted consent for any visual documentation of the event to be distributed publicly, they confirmed in separate public remarks. Both leaders stated that they had no intention of issuing any formal or implicit endorsement of a political party or individual electoral candidate through their participation, particularly with the 3 November congressional midterm elections less than two weeks away. Joensen went a step further in his public statement, noting he regretted not anticipating the event would be weaponized for partisan gain: “I wish I had been more shrewd and less simple, like those who exploited our meeting for partisan political purposes.” Grob shared that he had received a flood of concerned messages from parishioners in his Milwaukee diocese in the days after the footage spread, including accounts from congregants who felt personally wounded by policies implemented under the Trump administration that have negatively impacted them or their immediate family members. Long-simmering tensions between the Trump administration and U.S. Catholic leadership have been well documented for months, rooted in widespread episcopal criticism of the administration’s hardline mass deportation policies that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has repeatedly condemned for sowing widespread community fear, fracturing family units, stripping due process protections for migrant populations, and demonizing immigrant neighbors. Additional points of friction include the administration’s initially announced — and later abandoned — plan to livestream a federal military execution, which the national bishops’ conference had formally denounced as incompatible with Catholic teachings on the dignity of all human life. Trump’s relationship with Pope Leo XIV has remained openly contentious throughout his second term, even as top Catholic administration figures including Vice-President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have made official diplomatic visits to the Vatican, and high-profile U.S. Catholic leaders such as Minnesota Bishop Robert Barron and former New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan accepted appointments to the president’s Religious Liberty Commission last year. A September 2025 survey from nonpartisan religious research body Pew Research Center reveals that approval ratings for Trump among U.S. Catholic voters have dropped sharply, falling to just 30% this month from a 47% favorable mark recorded when he took office for his second term at the start of 2025. The polling gap, which shows 42% of Catholic voters now supporting Democratic House candidates compared to 39% backing their Republican rivals, signals a potential shift in electoral dynamics that could shape partisan control of the U.S. Congress in the upcoming November contests. When approached for comment by BBC reporters, White House officials declined to directly address questions about the unsanctioned release of meeting footage or the bishops’ public statements of regret, instead issuing a blanket defensive remark from press secretary Taylor Rogers that claimed “There has never been a greater president for Catholic Americans than President Trump, and his strong record proves it.”
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How ‘Lula’s Army’ WhatsApp chat helped turn Brazil election around
Against a backdrop of widespread polling forecasts that predicted a defeat for incumbent left-wing Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in his re-election bid, a grassroots digital campaign anchored on a single WhatsApp channel has emerged as a central figure in one of the most stunning political turnarounds in Brazil’s modern electoral history. For weeks leading up to the second round of voting, Lula had trailed far behind his right-wing challenger Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, whose conservative movement had held a decade-long unchallenged dominance over Brazilian political mobilization on encrypted platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram. That long-standing digital imbalance shifted dramatically when Congressman André Janones launched the informal campaign channel dubbed “Lula’s Army”, which swelled to a staggering 10.8 million followers in the narrow three-week window between the first and second rounds of voting. The channel operated with a highly structured, task-driven playbook: administrators distributed pre-written shareable content templates to every follower, issued urgent real-time calls to action to boost campaign videos and push new hashtags to viral status, and even issued playful, high-stakes rallying cries such as “No food before the mission!” and “Don’t go to sleep yet” to keep supporters engaged around the clock. On the final eve of the election, Janones hosted a nonstop 24-hour “turnaround livestream” to rally last-minute voters, even as nearly all major public opinion surveys continued to project a comfortable win for Flávio Bolsonaro. The unorthodox strategy drew internal pushback from moderate factions of Lula’s Workers’ Party, who worried Janones’ famously confrontational online tone would erode the centrist, unifying public image the campaign had sought to project. But the effort paid off: in his post-victory address, Lula publicly hailed Janones as “our General” and credited him with lifting the morale of the entire supporter base. Leading Brazilian political analysts, however, caution against overstating the singular impact of the WhatsApp operation, noting that quantifying direct vote gains from digital mobilization remains notoriously difficult. Political scientist Denilde Holzhacker explained the comeback rested on a carefully calibrated two-pronged shift in campaign strategy, where the viral digital momentum was paired with a sweeping expansion of on-the-ground grassroots organizing that tied a potential Bolsonaro victory to concrete voter concerns over cuts to social welfare programs and eroded civil rights. She noted Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign, by contrast, entered the run-off period overconfident after favorable polling and failed to run a coordinated outreach operation to match Lula’s combined digital and ground game. University of Rio de Janeiro sociology professor Mayra Goulart further emphasized that the campaign’s greatest strength was its ability to translate online enthusiasm into tangible real-world action: supporters organized neighborhood meetings, transported undecided voters to polling stations, and ran targeted outreach to reduce election abstention rates, a combination that delivered both higher turnout and a decisive edge with undecided demographics. Beyond the election results, the unprecedented mobilization has laid a foundation for Lula’s upcoming governing agenda: the president-elect has explicitly pledged to integrate the participatory, digital-first model into his administration, promising to expand public input in federal decision-making and leverage digital communication tools to keep supporters engaged in the policy process long after the campaign season ends.
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Alaska’s Democratic Senate candidate pauses midterms campaigning after car crash
Alaska’s prominent Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful Mary Peltola has temporarily suspended all campaign activities in the lead-up to the 3 November U.S. midterm elections, following a road collision that left her and her family with minor injuries, her official campaign team confirmed this week. The 53-year-old sitting member of Congress and her relatives were en route to a scheduled public campaign event on Saturday when their vehicle was struck by another motorist, according to an official statement released by her campaign management team. Cheryl Bruce, Peltola’s campaign manager, noted that all upcoming public appearances and on-the-ground campaign events have been rescheduled on the explicit advice of attending medical professionals, to allow the congressional representative sufficient time to rest and recuperate. “Mary and every member of her family involved in the incident walked away with only minor injuries, and all are in remarkably good spirits given the circumstances,” Bruce added in her public remarks. The incident unfolds against the backdrop of one of the most closely contested Senate races in the entire 2026 U.S. midterm cycle, a contest that national analysts widely agree could play a decisive role in determining which party controls the upper chamber of the U.S. Congress for the coming legislative term. Peltola, who made history as the first Alaska Native woman to serve in Congress, is mounting a direct challenge to two-term incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan. Nonpartisan election watchdog the Cook Political Report has categorized the Alaska Senate contest as a full “toss-up”, confirming that neither major party currently holds a measurable, decisive advantage over the other in voter support. Adding to the race’s national profile, former U.S. President Donald Trump last week directed the U.S. Department of Justice to prepare a federal lawsuit that would block official certification of the Alaska Senate results in the event that incumbent Dan Sullivan loses, citing the presence of a second candidate with the identical name “Dan Sullivan” on the general election ballot. The proposed legal filing argues that the presence of the namesake candidate, a retired local teacher, will confuse a significant share of Alaska voters and lead to widespread accidental mis-casting of ballots. Multiple prior legal attempts to remove the retired teacher Dan Sullivan from the election ballot were previously reviewed and unanimously rejected by the Alaska Supreme Court, leaving the dual-name candidate listing in place for the November vote.
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Algeria to send troops to Niger in first foreign deployment since 1973
In a landmark shift away from its decades-long non-intervention military policy, Algeria has formally approved the deployment of its armed forces to Niger, marking the country’s first foreign troop dispatch since it committed personnel to Egypt during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The historic decision was greenlit after consecutive emergency sessions of Algeria’s two parliamentary chambers: the upper house voted 148 out of 174 senators in favour of the measure on Sunday, with the lower house subsequently ratifying the proposal. The deployment also represents the first time a 2020 constitutional clause permitting overseas military missions has been activated in the North African nation.
The deployment framework was laid following a recent official visit by Niger’s defence minister to Algiers, as the Sahel state grapples with a persistent wave of violent extremist activity, including insurgent factions affiliated with al-Qaeda and Islamic State operating across remote border zones. Algerian legislator Belkacem Boulghiti clarified to reporters in the aftermath of the parliamentary vote that the operation is not an offensive combat mission, but a targeted assignment to safeguard high-priority economic assets across northern Niger, in territories adjacent to the Libyan border. No official timeline for the troop rollout, nor the total number of personnel to be deployed, has been publicly disclosed by either government to date.
The move is underpinned by deepening economic and strategic ties between the two neighbouring nations, which only recently emerged from a major diplomatic falling out in 2025. That rift erupted after Algeria shot down a Malian drone that violated its airspace, prompting Niger to withdraw its ambassador to Algiers in a show of solidarity with its military-ruled Malian ally. The two states’ relationship had already been strained earlier in the decade, when Algeria publicly condemned the 2023 coup that ousted Niger’s democratically elected president Mohamed Bazoum and installed the military junta led by General Abdourahamane Tchiani.
Bilateral relations have undergone a rapid thaw in 2026, however: Tchiani made an official state visit to Algiers in February, and as recently as late August, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune deployed fighter jets to Niger to help quash an attempted counter-coup, followed by a donation of four military helicopters to Niger’s armed forces. The security collaboration is closely tied to Algeria’s multi-billion-dollar energy interests in its southern neighbour, most notably a planned trans-Sahel gas pipeline that would transport Nigerian natural gas through Niger’s territory to Algerian export terminals on the Mediterranean coast. State-owned Algerian energy giant Sonatrach has also recently signed a formal exploration partnership with Niger’s petroleum ministry to drill for crude oil in the remote Kafra region, where preliminary geological surveys by Reuters indicate two identified wells hold estimated reserves of 168 million and 100 million barrels respectively.