Europe Pub

They pussied out at the last minute.

The two-week temporary ceasefire has done little to quell GOP fears about the war in Iran costing the party seats in November.

Republicans are relieved over Trump’s steps toward reconciliation in Iran — but they worry the measures are too little, too late to save them from a brutal midterm election cycle.

Behind the public celebration by many Republicans of the temporary two-week ceasefire announcement, longtime party operatives continue to warn of a bleak political reality as the cost-of-living concerns around the war including spiking gas prices that are likely to continue for weeks if not longer even if the fragile ceasefire holds.

A person close to the White House, granted anonymity to speak candidly, put it bluntly.

“This war in Iran almost cements the fact that we lose the midterms in November — the Senate and House,” the person said.

Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), gave the keynote speech at a conference on Wednesday morning, one which was hosted by a prominent climate-denying think tank that previously compared those concerned about the climate crisis to the Unabomber on billboard posters in 2012.

“No longer are we going to rely on bad, flawed assumptions instead of accurate, present-day facts, without apology or regret,” Zeldin said at the Heartland Institute’s conference on climate change in Washington, DC, referring to well-established climate science.

Zeldin has been widely criticized by climate experts. Last month, more than 160 environmental and public health organizations called for him to resign or be fired, saying no EPA administrator in history “has so brazenly betrayed the agency’s core mission.”

In his speech, Zeldin poked fun at the media for calling him “controversial” for not “following blind obedience to whatever the dire, doom and gloom position of the day is from John Kerry or Al Gore or AOC”—referring to the congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “It’s controversial that we won’t sign up for the script that the world is imminently about to end,” he said.

The Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said Israel’s strikes on Lebanon are a “blatant violation” of the US-Iran ceasefire agreement and their continuation would “render negotiations meaningless”.

A translation of his statement on X reads:

"Israel’s renewed incursion into Lebanon is a blatant violation of the initial ceasefire agreement. This is a dangerous sign of deception and lack of commitment to potential agreements. The continuation of these actions will render negotiations meaningless. Our fingers remain on the trigger. Iran will never abandon its Lebanese sisters and brothers."

The US and Israel maintain that the two-week ceasefire does not extend to Lebanon, where the Israeli military has launched one of its heaviest barrages of airstrikes yesterday.

Iran and Pakistan, which mediated the ceasefire, say Lebanon is included.

Czech president Petr Pavel warned that Donald Trump’s recent comments questioning the role of Nato have damaged the alliance’s credibility more than the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has done in several years.

Pavel, a retired Nato general and former chair of the Nato military committee, also said that Trump’s criticism of the alliance over the Iran war was “to put it mildly, unfair”.

“The moment we begin to question the alliance as a single, united entity, ready to act together and very decisively then, of course, its role is lost,” he warned.

He said that Trump ‘s criticism appeared to miss the fact that Nato is a defence alliance, and “not an alliance that will automatically help in wars waged outside its territory”.

The campaign to change the rules was years in the making, orchestrated in part by two men with close ties to US health secretary RFK Jr

When a federal judge in Mississippi ordered a sweeping rollback of the state’s strict school vaccine rules in 2023, the ruling hit some doctors like “a gut punch”.

Mississippi had for years achieved some of the highest vaccination rates in the US for children – a point of pride in a place that consistently ranks at the bottom of other health measures.

The state health director warned of the dire possible consequences, including a comeback of preventable illnesses like measles, diphtheria and pertussis – known as whooping cough.

“None of these diseases are gone,” Dr Daniel Edney told a talk radio host as the state implemented the newly ordered rules. “They’ve not been eradicated. They’re just waiting. They’re lurking.”

Some middle-income households are finding the benefits are smaller than they anticipated because of how certain tax cuts are structured, according to interviews with workers, accountants and tax policy analysts. Large groups, including many railroad workers and truck drivers, are excluded from the overtime tax savings. The Social Security deduction excludes both very low and higher earners. And the tips deduction is capped at $25,000 — even for couples like Cummings and her husband who both earn a big share of their wages from tips.

Meanwhile, the highest-income households are reaping the biggest gains, with about 60% of the tax savings from Trump’s law projected to go to the top fifth of households earning more than $217,000, according to the Tax Policy Center, which does research and analysis on tax legislation. In some cases, the highest-income households will see smaller tax savings as a share of their overall income, as compared with middle-income households, but the total dollar amount in their refund check will be much more: The wealthiest households could see millions of dollars in savings with bigger tax benefits on everything from private jets to multimillion-dollar inheritances.

Nur "CDU Mann/Männin sagte das", "AfD hat wieder gewonnen", "Messerstecherei, das sagt die CDU dazu", usw. Sind wir etwa die Trompete dee Rechten? Was ist hier los?