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.

“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”.

According to Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, “white working-class children are underperforming at GCSE”, says The Spectator. She’s right. Here are the percentages of each ethnicity which achieved at least a grade 5 (what we used to call a high C or low B) in English and maths in 2024:

Chinese: 78%
Indian: 70%
Bangladeshi: 57%
Black African: 50%
White other (than British): 48%
Pakistani: 46%
White British: 43%
Black Caribbean: 31%
Irish Traveller: 17%
Gypsy/Roma: 7%

Republican Gen Zs are obsessed with the “Reagan Bush ‘84” campaign T-shirt, says Rachel Kurzius in The Washington Post. Conservative students have taken to wearing the throwback threads at debates and events, apparently to celebrate the uncomplicated Republican dominance of that era. Chairman of the New York Young Republican Club, 24-year-old Mario Nicoletto, calls them “the MAGA hat of the 1980s”, while 19-year-old Kieran Laffey, who bought his online in 2020, says it was a “cool way join the movement” of anti-establishment young conservatives.

Four years ago, several zebra crossings in Camden were repainted in the pink and blue livery of the trans movement. In Birmingham last week, says James Marriott in The Times, there was a “belated riposte” – activists added red crosses to white zebra stripes, forming elongated St George’s flags. When they first appeared, the trans-themed crossings seemed like just another irritating example of the “fatuous student union-style politics” that was then ubiquitous. What the Birmingham activists confirmed with their red paint is something else. Today, every “neutral bit of public space” has been transformed into a “tribal battleground”. It is the most lamentable trend of our time: “politics intrudes everywhere”.

Those who seek to escape the “dreary rages and spittle-flecked monomanias” of our partisan age have fewer refuges than ever, thanks to the acolytes of the “woke” movement, who resolved in the early 2020s that “every corner of life must be politically cleansed”. Colleagues were denounced for “problematic” fancy dress; “footballers knelt”; and art galleries were filled with solemn placards condemning any painter who had ever “shaken hands with the uncle of a man who owned a slave ship”. Even microwave meals had to be morally pure: the hapless Jamie Oliver was memorably denounced for his “culturally appropriative” punchy jerk rice. Today, the right is fighting over the same territory – American Eagle Jeans was generally thought to be pitching to a MAGA audience with its recent campaign starring the voluptuous Sydney Sweeney; you can now buy “anti-woke dog food”. Adherents of this two-dimensional world view – on both left and right – want an “instantly legible, ultra-simplified moral landscape” where everything is neatly divided into goodies and baddies. The rest of us are left to watch as the shared cultural experience societies depend on “crumbles away”.

The latest viral dating trend is something called “Shrekking”, says Charles Trepany in USA Today. The practice – named after the wholesome animated film Shrek, in which a princess falls for an ogre – involves dating someone relatively unattractive in the hopes that they will treat you better in return. There’s nothing especially new about downplaying the importance of looks and hoping attraction will grow, but it’s not without risks, says dating coach Amy Chan. If, for example, the bloke you’re Shrekking doesn’t twig that he’s on to a winner, you could end up “dating an ogre without the princess treatment”.

A Ukrainian sniper has set a new world record for the “longest confirmed sniper hit”, says Antonia Langford in The Times, after killing two Russians with a single bullet from a distance of 2.5 miles. The sharpshooter – from Ukraine’s shadowy “Ghost” unit – was supported by a complex system that used AI and reconnaissance drones. The previous record also belonged to a Ukrainian, Vyacheslav Kovalsky, 58, who shot a Russian soldier dead from a distance of 2.36 miles in 2023, with a custom rifle named “Lord of the Horizon”.

It’s a “Kitchen Cosmo”, says Jennifer Hahn in Dezeen, a machine that uses AI to churn out recipe suggestions based on the ingredients you have in your house. Developed by students at MIT, the bright-red “retrofuturistic” appliance, which is currently only a functioning prototype, also allows cooks to set their dietary preferences and mood, as well as their skill level and desired cooking time. Once the bot has all that information, and has scanned the leftover food in your fridge using its integrated webcam, it produces a receipt-style recipe that “ticks all these boxes”.