The British Council building in Kyiv was hit in a Russian drone and missile attack overnight. The strikes, which also significantly damaged the EU mission in the Ukrainian capital, killed at least 14 people, including three children. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen called it a “grim reminder” that the Kremlin will “stop at nothing”. Tony Blair met Donald Trump at the White House yesterday to advise him on a “comprehensive plan” for the future of Gaza. The former prime minister has reportedly been working for months with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former Middle East peace broker, on how to rebuild the devastated territory as a modern trade hub and resort destination. Thousands of people took to the streets of Buñol, Spain yesterday for the annual La Tomatina food fight, throwing 120 tonnes of tomatoes, which were grown especially for the event. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the festival, which started in 1945 after a food fight broke out between teenage boys during a parade in the town.

“I’m from the government, and I’m here to take over”

“The era of big government is over,” Bill Clinton declared 29 years ago. Donald Trump, says David Graham in The Atlantic, “never got the memo”. In his second term, the US president is embracing perhaps the “most sweeping expansion of federal power” since Franklin Roosevelt: bullying state governors (“using military force if necessary”); telling private institutions, including universities and the media, what to do; extorting law firms to work for free for the government; and, in the latest escalation, taking an unprecedented equity stake in the tech firm Intel. Today, where Ronald Reagan once joked that the nine most terrifying words in the English language were “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help”, Trump’s credo is: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to take over.”

Far from traditional conservatism, what Trump represents is something that’s been bubbling away for some time: voters moving right on cultural issues and left on the economy. Trump is living proof that a government can be both “socialist and reactionary”. Tellingly, the self-described socialist Senator Bernie Sanders is all for the Intel deal. Meanwhile Erick Erickson, the veteran conservative commentator, fulminated: “You may decide you like socialism, because someone from the Trump administration wants socialism, but my God, people, what have we been fighting for for the last decade?” The irony is that Trump is shrinking the government’s footprint – by firing hundreds of thousands of federal workers – leaving it less able to deliver services. But this over-reaching, intrusive government is just the nightmare that right-wing politicians and thinkers have been warning about for a century, “and now their party has made it reality”.