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Britain's diplomats have a new challenge: hiding their globes from Trump

Britain's diplomats have a new challenge: hiding their globes from Trump

Yahoo23-05-2025
Cartography news. The Government has ruled on what to call the Gulf of Mexico. And Donald Trump – who has renamed it the Gulf of America – won't be happy. Foreign Office minister Martin Wrigley told MPs that the Government 'will continue to follow the guidance of the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names who advise His Majesty's Government on the policies and procedures for the representation of geographical names for places and features outside of the UK'. And the committee has ruled that 'this body of water is Gulf of Mexico'. Better hide the globes when the President comes over for his state visit.
Life on The Archers can be cut-throat, says Charles Collingwood, who is marking 50 years playing the ageing lothario Brian Aldridge on the Radio 4 soap. He recalls getting into a BBC lift with Jack Holloway, who played Ralph Bellamy moments after Holloway was told that his character was being written out of the programme in 1980. 'When we got to the third floor where the bar was, he [Holloway] shot off to drown his sorrows,' Collingwood says. 'I went to join The Archers cast and said, 'I've just got in the lift with Jack Holloway – he says he's been written out of the programme?' They said, 'Yes, you've bought his farm!''
The pressures of financing an equestrian career has become unsustainable for Rory Bremner and his daughter Lila, 21, an accomplished showjumper. 'It's the sheer cost of it all,' the TV impressionist told me at the Chelsea Flower Show. 'There is sponsorship but it is a very competitive world. To sustain it, I compare it to highwayman Dick Turpin – he had a phrase: 'your money or your life?' The horses get more and more expensive. You need hundreds of thousands. So she's gone to London to do a personal assistant's course and have some fun London days, like I did as a young man.' And why not?
Gordon Brown told how British prime ministers traditionally give presents to incoming US presidents at the John Smith Memorial Lecture this week. 'David Cameron gave Barack Obama a table tennis table. Rishi Sunak gave Joe Biden a Barbour jacket. Theresa May gave Donald Trump a hamper from Chequers. Boris Johnson gave some poetry,' Brown said. 'Keir Starmer has had to give gifts to the two presidents. He gave a gift to Joe Biden of an Arsenal jersey with 46 on it to denote the 46th president of the United States. I don't know if Joe Biden knew too much about Arsenal. And of course, he has already given a gift and sent it to Washington, to Donald Trump: It's Peter Mandelson.' Perhaps Gordon misses Peter?
The European Commission helpfully distributed photos of Sir Keir Starmer unveiling the Brexit Reset deal on Monday alongside European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Council of Europe president Antonio Costa. The only problem was that while the other leaders were correctly captioned, the PM was described as 'Rodney Starmer'. Rodney is of course the PM's middle name. But could there be an Only Fools and Horses fan working for the Eurocrats? As Delboy said: 'This time next year, we'll be millionaires!'
Jonathan Aitken, 82, ex-Conservative minister and now a prison chaplain, has started a new political supper club called the Beaverbrook Forum to re-create the parties thrown by his uncle, Lord Beaverbrook, who owned the Daily Express and served in Churchill's wartime government. Political veterans Lord Gummer and Diane Abbott, as well as Robert Jenrick's wife Michal, dined on champagne and shepherd's pie as Aitken recalled how 'Bollinger Bolsheviks' such as Nye Bevan used to love Beaverbrook's parties. The future Labour leader Michael Foot was apparently so spoiled by Beaverbrook that he was allowed to stay for free in a house in Beaverbrook's garden. Sir Keir's Starmer's freebies from Lord Alli look like small beer.
RIP the much-missed Patrick O'Flynn, 59, the former Ukip MEP, as well as Daily Telegraph and GB News commentator, who died this week. One of his most memorable policies as Ukip's economic spokesman was for a tax on luxury goods like designer shoes, and handbags to win over former Labour voters. O'Flynn's so-called 'WAG tax' was unveiled at Ukip's conference in September 2014 and axed by leader Nigel Farage two days later, after an outcry. Farage declared: 'It was a discussion point yesterday, it isn't going to happen.' Perhaps with Farage's Reform leading the polls, the WAG tax's time will come again?
Peterborough, published every Friday at 7pm, is edited by Christopher Hope. You can reach him at peterborough@telegraph.co.uk
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The lawsuit seeking to kill Trump's tariffs is back
The lawsuit seeking to kill Trump's tariffs is back

Vox

time22 minutes ago

  • Vox

The lawsuit seeking to kill Trump's tariffs is back

is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. He received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court. Three very important tariff-related stories loom over the US economy this month. The first is that, after a few weeks of relative quiet, President Donald Trump is once again threatening to raise tariffs on a whole raft of other nations. According to the New York Times, 'Trump has threatened 25 trading partners with punishing levies on Aug. 1,' including major importers to the United States such as Mexico, Japan, and the European Union. SCOTUS, Explained Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. During Trump's brief time back in office, he raised the average effective tariff rate — the average of what all countries must pay to import goods into the US — from 2.5 percent to 16.6 percent, increasing US tariffs nearly sevenfold. If Trump's new tariffs take effect — an uncertain proposition, because Trump's trade policy has been so erratic — the average tariff rate will rise to 20.6 percent. That's the highest rate since 1910. The second story is that, after a brief period when the stock market and the broader US economy seemed to stabilize, inflation rose in June from 2.4 percent to 2.7 percent. Beforehand, US inflation had declined fairly steadily since 2022, when it spiked due to the aftereffects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Products that are particularly exposed to the tariffs, such as furniture and appliances, saw the highest price hikes in June. The delay between Trump's decision to impose high import taxes in the spring, and the onset of induced inflation in June, was widely predicted. After Trump's election, many US companies went on a buying spree, overstocking their inventories with foreign goods in anticipation of Trump's trade war. But those expanded inventories are now starting to run out, and inflation is expected to keep rising. Both of these stories, moreover, are hitting at a terrible time for Trump — at least if he wants his trade war to continue. On July 31, one day before the new round of tariffs are supposed to take effect, a federal appeals court will hear oral arguments on whether Trump's tariffs are illegal and should be struck down. The judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in other words, will hear these arguments while they are surrounded with headlines about an escalating trade war and the harm it is imposing on the US economy. The plaintiffs' legal arguments in this case, known as V.O.S. Selections v. Trump, are quite strong. So strong, in fact, that a bipartisan panel of three judges struck down the tariffs in May — that decision is currently on hold while the Federal Circuit considers the case. The Federal Circuit's hearing is largely an exhibition game before this case reaches the Supreme Court. Ultimately, the fate of the tariffs will almost certainly be decided by the justices, with their Republican supermajority that has thus far shown extraordinary loyalty to Trump. But that doesn't mean that the Federal Circuit's decision is irrelevant. At the very least, the Federal Circuit is likely to determine just how fast the justices will need to weigh in on V.O.S. Selections, and whether the Supreme Court can make this case disappear without having to produce an opinion explaining why. If the Federal Circuit upholds the tariffs, the Supreme Court could potentially end any legal threats to Trump's trade war by simply refusing to hear V.O.S. Selections. Conversely, if the Federal Circuit issues a broad injunction blocking the tariffs, the justices will need to decide very quickly whether to halt that injunction or the tariffs will go away, at least temporarily. The legal arguments against Trump's tariffs, explained Trump relied on a federal law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) when he imposed the tariffs that are now before the Federal Circuit. These tariffs include a broad range of import taxes that Trump claims are necessary to combat trade deficits — meaning that Americans buy more goods from many countries than they sell. They also include additional tariffs targeting Canada, Mexico, and China, which Trump claims will somehow help prevent illegal activity such as fentanyl trafficking. The IEEPA permits the president to 'regulate…transactions involving, any property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest,' but this power 'may only be exercised to deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat with respect to which a national emergency has been declared.' The plaintiffs challenging these tariffs raise several statutory arguments. Among other things, they argue that a statute giving Trump the power to 'regulate' trade does not permit him to impose import taxes. They claim that the Canada, Mexico, and China tariffs don't actually do anything to 'deal with' fentanyl. And they argue that trade deficits, which have 'been a consistent feature of the U.S. economy since the mid-1970s' are common and ordinary – not 'unusual and extraordinary' as the IEEPA requires. All of these are plausible statutory arguments — the last argument is particularly strong — and the plaintiffs' case against these tariffs should be a slam dunk under something known as the 'major questions doctrine.' This doctrine, which was recently invented by the Supreme Court's Republican majority, requires Congress to 'speak clearly' before it can give the executive branch the power to make decisions of 'vast 'economic and political significance.'' Related How the Supreme Court put itself in charge of the executive branch According to the Budget Lab at Yale, Trump's tariffs will cost Americans 'the equivalent of an average per household income loss of $2,800 in 2025,' and they will reduce employment by 641,000 jobs. So they are clearly a matter of great economic and political significance. Under the major questions doctrine, that means that any uncertainty about how to read the IEEPA must be resolved against Trump. The strongest argument for the tariffs, meanwhile, is not legal but political. Republicans control six of the nine seats on the Supreme Court, and the major questions doctrine is brand new — it has never been used against any president who isn't named 'Joe Biden.' So it is far from clear whether the Republican justices, who held last year that Trump is allowed to use the powers of the presidency to commit crimes, will actually apply this new constraint on executive power to a president of their party. (Trump's lawyers, for what it is worth, do make legal arguments against applying the major questions doctrine in V.O.S. Selections. Their primary argument is that the doctrine doesn't apply to policy decisions made directly by the president himself, an argument that at least three federal appeals courts have previously rejected.) The Federal Circuit, however, is a highly specialized court that primarily deals with patent law. Patents aren't a particularly polarizing topic — or, at least, they aren't a topic that tends to divide Democrats from Republicans — so Federal Circuit judges tend to be more technocratic than the highly vetted political operatives who are typically appointed to the Supreme Court. For this reason, partisan politics are likely to play less of a role in the Federal Circuit's deliberations over V.O.S. Selections than they will when this case reaches the justices. There are also many prominent voices within the Republican Party that oppose the tariffs. The lead attorney representing many of the plaintiffs is Michael McConnell, a prominent conservative legal scholar who spent seven years as a federal appellate judge after he was appointed by President George W. Bush. At a recent conference hosted by the Federalist Society, a highly influential bar association for right-wing lawyers, several speakers criticized the tariffs. So, even in a Supreme Court that is typically in the tank for Donald Trump, there is a very real chance that these tariffs could fall. The Federal Circuit is likely to determine when the justices have to decide this case Realistically, the Federal Circuit is unlikely to have the final word on the tariffs. If the appeals court blocks the tariffs, Trump's lawyers will race to the Supreme Court seeking a stay of that decision. That said, the Federal Circuit's decision is likely to decide how quickly the justices must take up this case, and whether they need to explain their ultimate decision to support or oppose the tariffs. Broadly speaking, the Federal Circuit could decide this case in one of three ways: First, the appeals court could strike down the tariffs and issue an injunction prohibiting the Trump administration from enforcing them. If that happens, Trump will ask the Supreme Court to block that injunction on its 'shadow docket,' a mix of emergency motions and other matters that the justices decide on an expedited basis. In this scenario, we are likely to know whether the justices support the tariffs or not within a few weeks of the Federal Circuit's decision. At the other end of the spectrum, the Federal Circuit might uphold the tariffs. If that happens, the plaintiffs will ask the Supreme Court to review the case on its merits docket, but that process can take more than a year to resolve. And the Court may refuse to hear the case, which would mean that the tariffs will remain in effect and the justices will likely never have to explain why they sided with Trump. A third option is that the Federal Circuit could rule against the tariffs, but not issue an immediate injunction blocking them. If that happens, the Supreme Court is still likely to take up the case, but it will do so on its merits docket rather than on the fast-moving shadow docket. We will likely have to wait months or longer before the justices show their cards — and the tariffs will likely remain in place during that entire wait.

And Now It's The Wall Street Journal's Turn To Tango With Trump
And Now It's The Wall Street Journal's Turn To Tango With Trump

Newsweek

time22 minutes ago

  • Newsweek

And Now It's The Wall Street Journal's Turn To Tango With Trump

When, oh when, will Americans realize we are descending into dictatorship? President Donald Trump has already silenced ABC, CBS, and Facebook, extorting millions of dollars from them for offending him. The job was done using bogus lawsuits and the power of the presidency. And now it's the turn of The Wall Street Journal. Trump is suing the newspaper owned by his sometime supporter Rupert Murdoch. The Wall Street Journal had the effrontery to publish a piece painful to Trump—painful because the truth hurts. The truth works like water on a witch. People have been pouring it over Trump for years, but tragically he is still president. This truth though may be different. It involves Jeffrey Epstein, the hyperfixation of Trump's hardcore adherents. The Journal reported on a gutsy and grotesque birthday greeting it claims Trump sent to Epstein showing his signature on the part of a woman's body that Trump in the past boasted he could grab any time he liked. President Donald Trump answers questions while departing the White House with first lady Melania Trump on July 11, 2025, in Washington, D.C. President Donald Trump answers questions while departing the White House with first lady Melania Trump on July 11, 2025, in Washington, is suing the Journal for $10 billion. He claims the card is just fake news and that the venerable conservative newspaper is a worthless rag. Will his supporters stomach this too? More important, will the Journal fall by the wayside with the rest of them and payoff Trump? That depends. The two things are linked. So long as Trump has an army of angry supporters to unleash on the media and Congress, he has a lot of leverage. Trump can threaten members of Congress with campaigns to oust them from office. Trump can threaten the media by denying them things they need from the government. Some of them, like PBS, get money. Trump has now punished it by cutting its federal funding. Others need permission to do things. That's how Trump got at CBS, holding FCC approval of a license transfer over its head until it coughed up $16 million. CBS even sweetened it by conveniently timing the cancellation of the most popular but unprofitable star in late night TV—Stephen Colbert. So, what does Rupert Murdoch have that Trump could threaten? Fox News perhaps? Not so simple. Unlike ABC, CBS, NBC, and others, Fox News does not broadcast its programs over the air. It distributes its content solely over a cable network. This means it doesn't need a license from the FCC. No leverage there. And he can hardly tell his adherents to stop watching Fox News. It's being absurdly slavish. While other traditional news outlets and MAGA podcasters have lashed Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi for not releasing the Epstein files, Fox hasn't. When it wasn't publishing stories about savage attacks by immigrants and squirrels, Fox was announcing that Trump was ordering Bondi to seek court permission to release the "pertinent" grand jury files from the Epstein prosecution. Fox didn't dwell on the fact that the grand jury files only reflect what the Justice Department submitted to the grand jury rather than the documents the Justice Department has in its possession. It didn't make anything either of the slippery use of the word "pertinent." Once again, Trump and his minions are obviously camouflaging the real files by talking solely about "incriminating" client lists and "pertinent" grand jury records. Fortunately for Trump, Fox doesn't care. So what else is there? Maybe those who listen slavishly to Trump and read The Wall Street Journal will stop—all 12 of them. Or maybe Trump will use or threaten to use the Justice Department to investigate Murdoch's business dealings for potential crimes. This one's a real possibility. As Stalin stooge Lavrentiy Beria famously said: "Show me the man, and I will show you the crime." Stalin, by the way was a real dictator. He could shut anybody up and wasn't shy about it. He used the gulag or the garrote. Trump is using the government against others, and he can use it against Fox. Clearly, he hasn't been shy about it. Consider, for instance, the Justice Department investigation of New York Attorney General Letitia James for supposedly lying on a mortgage application. So, Murdoch will probably join the others in kowtowing to the commander-in-chief. His only hope—and ours—is that Americans will now recover their spines and demand that it stops. Thomas G. Moukawsher is a former Connecticut complex litigation judge and a former co-chair of the American Bar Association Committee on Employee Benefits. He is the author of the book, The Common Flaw: Needless Complexity in the Courts and 50 Ways to Reduce It. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

Turkey and Britain sign preliminary deal for Eurofighter Typhoon jets
Turkey and Britain sign preliminary deal for Eurofighter Typhoon jets

The Hill

time23 minutes ago

  • The Hill

Turkey and Britain sign preliminary deal for Eurofighter Typhoon jets

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey and Britain on Wednesday signed a preliminary agreement for the sale of Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets to Turkey, a significant step in Ankara's efforts to modernize its air fleet. Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler and his British counterpart, John Healey, inked a memorandum of understanding during a defense industry fair in Istanbul, Turkey's Ministry of National Defense said. NATO member Turkey has long aimed to buy 40 Eurofighter jets, which are built by a consortium of British, German and Italian companies. Germany reportedly initially opposed the sale but later reversed its position. Britain led negotiations on behalf of the consortium. A Turkish defense ministry statement said the memorandum takes the two countries 'one step closer to a full agreement on the Typhoon.' 'Both Ministers welcome signature as a positive step towards bringing Turkey into the Typhoon club and share a mutual ambition to conclude the necessary arrangements as soon as possible,' it added. Turkish officials have said that they are still negotiating over pricing and technical terms, saying that they have received an initial offer and expect to submit a counter-proposal. Turkey is also seeking to return to the U.S.-led F-35 fighter jet program, from which the country was ousted in 2019, following its purchase of Russian-made S-400 missile defense systems. The U.S. said the systems posed a risk to the F-35s. Turkey is also developing a domestic fifth-generation fighter jet, the KAAN, which is slated to be operational in 2028.

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