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Acclaimed Ukrainian opera singer Vladislav Horay has been killed while on a volunteer mission to the Sumy region, where a frontline battle for territory continues.

Horay was a soloist with the Odesa National Opera, which said in a statement that he was a “world-class tenor” and “Honored Artist of Ukraine,” whose voice was known around the globe.

“Tragic news has shaken the entire artistic community of Ukraine,” the opera house said in a post on Facebook on Sunday. “(Horay) was not only a talented performer — he was an example of strength, dignity, and kindness in life.”

The post did not say how Horay died.

According to a June 5 post on Horay’s Facebook, he was raising money for a Ukrainian naval unit.

Horay joined the Odesa National Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet in 1993 and performed in the USA, Britain, Canada and many other countries, according to its website. He also toured Britain and performed at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

His last performance was just a day before he died, according to the Odesa opera house, which uploaded a video of Horay singing the Neapolitan song “O Sole Mio.”

“Today, we share this video with you. It is not just a performance. It is farewell. It is the last concert. It is the last gift from a singer who lived for the stage and left a piece of his soul there.”

The northeast Sumy region where the Opera house said Horay was killed, has been a fierce battleground in the Russia-Ukraine war. The Opera said he was there on a volunteer mission, but did not elaborate.

Russian forces have in recent weeks made incremental progress advancing towards the capital of the region, also called Sumy.

While capturing the region’s capital is likely beyond what Moscow is setting out to do, the move underlines the pressure Kyiv is under, from the northern border to the Black Sea.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other politicians from the U.S. and Latin America condemned the shooting of Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe on Sunday.

Rubio blamed the assassination attempt on ‘violent leftist rhetoric’ originating from the Colombian government. Uribe, a Colombian senator, is currently fighting for his life after sustaining three gunshot wounds, one of which was to the head.

‘The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms the attempted assassination of Senator Miguel Uribe. This is a direct threat to democracy and the result of the violent leftist rhetoric coming from the highest levels of the Colombian government,’ Rubio wrote.

‘Having seen firsthand Colombia’s progress over the past few decades to consolidate security and democracy, it can’t afford to go back to dark days of political violence. President Petro needs to dial back the inflammatory rhetoric and protect Colombian officials,’ he added.

Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno also condemned the attack in a statement on social media.

‘The assassination attempt on leading presidential candidate Miguel Uribe is a vile attack on democracy. This evil act must be investigated and anyone responsible, directly or indirectly, must face swift punishment,’ Moreno wrote.

Chilean President Gabriel Boric also reacted to Uribe’s shooting.

‘My strongest condemnation of the attack against Miguel Uribe Turbay, pre-presidential candidate in Colombia. In a democracy, violence has no place or justification,’ Boric wrote.

Authorities say Uribe was shot by a 15-year-old hit man, and they are investigating who was behind the attack.

‘Miguel is fighting for his life at this moment. Let us ask God to guide the hands of the doctors who are attending to him,’ Maria Claudia Tarazona, Miguel’s wife, wrote on her husband’s X account. ‘I ask everyone to join together in a prayer chain for Miguel’s life.’

Colombian President Gustavo Petro, Uribe’s chief opponent in the presidential race, said the attack crossed a ‘red line’ and ordered an investigation. He also canceled a planned trip to France this week, citing the ‘seriousness of the events.’

Colombia’s Ministry of Defense has offered a nearly $750,000 reward for information relating to the assassination attempt.

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Former President Barack Obama’s White House physician said in a new interview that former President Joe Biden’s doctor should have performed a cognitive test to evaluate his fitness to serve in office. 

Obama’s doctor, Jeffrey Kuhlman, told The Washington Post that Biden White House physician Kevin O’Connor should have performed a cognitive test during Biden’s last year as president, given his age. 

O’Connor, who Kuhlman first appointed as Biden’s doctor in 2009 when he was vice president, declared in a 2024 report that the then-81-year-old president ‘continues to be fit for duty.’ The report did not mention any neurocognitive testing. 

‘Sometimes those closest to the tree miss the forest,’ Kuhlman told the Post.

‘It shouldn’t be just health, it should be fitness,’ Kuhlman said. ‘Fitness is: Do you have that robust mind, body, spirit that you can do this physically, mentally, emotionally demanding job?’

Kuhlman, who departed the White House Medical Unit in 2013, described O’Connor as ‘a good doctor’ who appeared to do his best to ‘give trusted medical advice.’

‘I didn’t see that he’s purposely hiding stuff, but I don’t know that,’ Kuhlman told the Post. ‘Maybe the investigation will show it.’

President Donald Trump on Wednesday ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate whether Biden’s aides ‘abused the power of Presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden’s cognitive decline and assert Article II authority.’ 

‘This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history,’ the order says. ‘The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power, all while Biden’s signature was deployed across thousands of documents to effect radical policy shifts.’  

‘Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency,’ Biden said in a statement Wednesday night. ‘I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.’

Trump’s order appeared to nod to the findings of special counsel Robert Hur, who investigated Biden’s handling of classified documents while he was vice president. 

In a report released in February 2024, Hur concluded Biden ‘willfully retained and disclosed’ sensitive materials but should not stand trial, describing the president as a ‘sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’ Hur cited instances when Biden could not recall key dates and events, including when he served as vice president and when his son, Beau, passed away. The report was released at a time when Biden was still planning a second term run. 

Last week, House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., issued a subpoena for O’Connor to appear for a deposition at the end of the month ‘as part of the investigation into the cover-up of President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and potentially unauthorized issuance of sweeping pardons and other executive actions.’ 

The committee re-posted the Post’s interview with Kuhlman to X, writing, ‘Even Obama’s doctor admits the truth. This is precisely why Chairman @RepJamesComer subpoenaed Dr. Kevin O’Connor, Biden’s physician. This is a scandal of historical proportions, and we will investigate it thoroughly!’ 

In a letter to O’Connor, Comer said the transcribed interview would focus on the physician’s February 2024 assessment that Biden was ‘a healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male, who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency.’

‘Among other subjects, the Committee expressed its interest in whether your financial relationship with the Biden family affected your assessment of former President Biden’s physical and mental fitness to fulfill his duties as President,’ Comer wrote. 

Questions about Biden’s cognitive state stretch extend solely past Republicans. 

CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson recently published a book titled ‘Original Sin,’ which details concerns and debates inside the White House and Democratic Party over Biden’s mental state and age.

In the book, Tapper and Thompson wrote, ‘Five people were running the country, and Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board.’

Naomi Biden, the former president’s granddaughter, dismissed the book as ‘political fairy smut for the permanent, professional chattering class.’ 

Comer requested transcribed interviews with Biden’s White House senior advisers Mike Donilon and Anita Dunn, former White House chief of staff Ron Klain, former deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed and Steve Ricchetti, a former counselor to the president. He also called for former senior White House aides Annie Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, Ashley Williams and Neera Tanden to appear before the committee and suggested subpoenas could be forthcoming if they did not schedule voluntary interviews. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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One of the leading opponents of President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ declared not even the commander in chief will be able to deter him from speaking out against what he sees as a bill that falls short of Republicans’ goal of cutting government waste.

‘It’ll completely backfire on him,’ Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told Fox News Digital of any attempts by Trump to sway him on the current legislation.

Johnson has become a prominent voice of opposition against the House GOP’s offering to the budget reconciliation process. Senate Republicans finally began the tedious process of parsing through the bill this week.

Lawmakers in the upper chamber, Johnson included, are determined to make changes to the bill, with most wanting to make reductions to Medicaid and food stamps more palatable. Trump has made it clear his bill must pass but has acknowledged the Senate will need to make a few changes.

Trump’s directive has been to deliver a bill that can survive the razor-thin majorities in both chambers.  

Johnson, however, wants to see spending returned to pre-pandemic levels, cuts that are trillions of dollars deeper than what House Republicans could stomach. And he is ready to vote against the bill unless he sees the changes he wants.

And he believes that a pressure campaign from the president against him and other like-minded fiscal hawks will fail.

He said a better approach would be to work with lawmakers and fiscal hawks like him to gain a better understanding of the reality of the country’s fiscal situation, a reality that ‘is grim,’ he said.

Johnson has been up front about his disdain for the bill but has so far avoided public retribution from Trump. In fact, the two have spoken twice this week, once on Monday and later during a Senate Finance Committee meeting at the White House Tuesday.

The lawmaker has told Trump he’s in Trump’s corner and that he wants ‘to see you succeed,’ but he has been steadfast in his position that the bill does not go far enough to tackle the national debt.

And the debt continues to climb, nearing $37 trillion and counting, according to Fox News’ National Debt Tracker.

The House’s offering set a goal of $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade, which lawmakers in the lower chamber have pitched as a positive step forward to righting the country’s fiscal ship, an offering Johnson panned as falling drastically short of the GOP’s promises to cut deep into government spending.

‘What’s so disappointing about what happened in the House is it was all rhetoric. It’s all slogans,’ Johnson said. ‘They picked a number. Literally, they picked a number out of the air.’

Johnson views this attempt at the budget reconciliation process as a rare opportunity to ‘do the hard things’ when it comes to spending cuts, but others in the GOP have been more hesitant to cut as deep.

Johnson said a main reason Republicans have so far fallen short of meeting the moment for the most part is that lawmakers don’t understand just how much the federal government shovels out the door year in and year out.

The lawmaker recalled a moment roughly three years ago during a debate over another year-end omnibus spending bill, when each of the dozen appropriations bills is crammed into one, bloated package that is universally reviled and almost always passes.

He asked his colleagues if they really knew just how much the government spends, and no one ‘volunteered to answer.’

‘Nobody knew. I mean, think of that. The largest financier in the world. We’re supposedly, in theory, the 535 members of the board of directors, and nobody knew,’ he said. ‘Why would they? We never talked about it.’

Johnson has been busy trying to better educate his colleagues, putting together his own charts and graphs that cut out the ‘noise,’ like the latest nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office report that found the legislation would add $2.4 trillion to the national debt over a decade. The GOP has universally panned that projection.

‘We can’t accept this as a new normal,’ Johnson said. ‘We can’t accept — you can take pot shots of CBO, but you can’t deny that reality. [It] might be off a little bit, but that is the trajectory, and that’s undeniable.’
 

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By all appearances, the world is edging perilously close to the brink of a catastrophic global conflict. In just the past few days, five deeply troubling developments have emerged — each significant on its own — but taken together, they form a pattern too urgent to dismiss. Viewed in context, these events expose a rapidly deteriorating international order, where diplomacy is failing, deterrence is weakening, and the risk of multi-theater war is rising sharply. 

First, Ukraine’s audacious drone strike deep inside Russian territory — reportedly destroying or damaging a significant share of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet — bears the hallmarks of Western involvement. While Kyiv claimed responsibility, the attack’s sophistication, including precise long-range targeting and coordinated timing, suggests U.S. or NATO intelligence and technological support.  

Former intelligence officials have even pointed to likely CIA or allied agency involvement. Whatever the true origin, Moscow now sees itself not merely at war with Ukraine, but with the broader Western alliance. Russia’s retaliation — whether cyber, kinetic or covert — could spiral well beyond the front lines. 

Second, efforts to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions have collapsed further. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly rejected a U.S. proposal that would have permitted tightly restricted low-level uranium enrichment. Denouncing the offer as ‘100% against our interests,’ he reaffirmed Iran’s demand for full sovereign enrichment rights.  

With Israel openly contemplating military action and negotiations at a standstill, the Middle East stands on the edge of a potentially region-wide conflagration — especially if Iran accelerates toward weapons-grade enrichment. 

Third, a highly anticipated phone call between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin yielded no diplomatic breakthrough. Though both men discussed the escalating war and the drone strike, the call ended with no commitments, no ceasefire, and no plan for de-escalation.  

Trump admitted it was not the kind of conversation that would bring peace. Instead, the call served to underscore how deeply entrenched the conflict has become — and how narrow the remaining diplomatic off-ramps now are. 

Fourth, a chilling threat emerged on American soil. Federal prosecutors charged a Chinese national couple with attempting to smuggle Fusarium graminearum into the U.S. — a crop-killing fungus labeled by the Justice Department as a potential ‘agroterrorism weapon.’ The pathogen can devastate wheat, barley and corn, and its toxins are harmful to both humans and livestock.  

The couple is linked to Chinese state-sponsored research and is suspected of prior smuggling attempts. Whether or not this plot was state-directed, it underscores an alarming vulnerability: America’s homeland is increasingly exposed to unconventional threats from hostile actors. 

Fifth, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth warned that China may be preparing to launch a full-scale invasion of Taiwan. Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, he declared, China ‘is rehearsing for the real deal.’  

With Beijing ramping up military drills and tightening its rhetoric, the Taiwan Strait has become a powder keg. Should China act, U.S. intervention would be virtually guaranteed — potentially igniting a major conflict in the Indo-Pacific. 

Together, these flashpoints paint a stark picture of a world in crisis. Three nuclear powers — Russia, China and Iran (potentially) — are simultaneously testing Western resolve.  

The United States faces a mounting burden to deter aggression on multiple fronts, with few diplomatic successes to lean on. Traditional tools — talks, sanctions, summits — are proving inadequate. What remains is a binary choice: step back from global leadership or confront rising threats in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, possibly all at once. 

This is not alarmism. This is convergence. With diplomacy unraveling, adversaries emboldened and the homeland no longer secure, the global order is careening toward synchronized escalation. The world is not yet at war — but it is teetering dangerously close to systemic conflict that could engulf major powers and redraw the map of the 21st century. 

The warning lights are flashing red. The only question now is whether the world will act — or continue its drift toward fire. 

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One day after seeing their largest-ever one-day drop, Tesla shares recovered some losses Friday as the spat between CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump that exploded into public view Thursday took appeared to take a breather heading into the weekend.

Shares in the electronic vehicle maker gained as much as 5% amid broader market gains following a report showing the U.S. added more jobs in May than forecast.

Even with Friday’s rally, Tesla shares are still down approximately 21% in 2025 — a decline that accelerated last week following Musk’s departure from the Trump administration.

Musk, the world’s richest person and until recently Trump’s cost-cutter-in-chief, said last week he was leaving as the head of his Department of Government Efficiency project to refocus on his businesses.

Those companies — Tesla, the satellite and space-launch company SpaceX, the social media platform X and the brain tech startup Neuralink — have faced growing criticism as Musk oversaw deep cuts to the federal workforce. Tesla sales around the world have fallen sharply this year.

Trump and Musk traded escalating insults Thursday afternoon, with the president threatening on his Truth Social platform to ‘terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts.’ Yet there was no sign of any follow through on the threat Friday. At the same time, a senior White House official told NBC News that Trump is “not interested” in a call with Musk.

Tesla stock closed more than 14% lower Thursday. The automaker is Musk’s only publicly traded company — and one that the president tried to boost as recently as March, drawing sharp criticism on ethical grounds for turning the White House driveway into a car showroom just as the company’s stock was plunging.

The Trump-Musk rift has dented Tesla’s stock anew after Musk slammed the GOP spending bill as ‘a disgusting abomination” in a post on X last week.

‘Bankrupting America is NOT ok!’ he wrote in another post, part of an ongoing barrage of public ridicule.

Musk began speaking out after an electric-vehicle tax credit that would help incentivize Tesla purchases was not included in the bill, which is estimated to add $2.4 trillion to the national debt over 10 years. Musk has lobbied congressional Republicans for that tax credit, NBC News reported Wednesday.

‘I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, doesn’t decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,’ Musk told ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ over the weekend.

As Trump spoke about the former DOGE chief in the Oval Office on Thursday alongside German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Musk began firing off dozens of posts on X.

‘Whatever,’ he wrote. ‘Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill. In the entire history of civilization, there has never been legislation that both big and beautiful. Everyone knows this!’

Trump pushed back further on Musk’s criticism.

“Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here, better than you people. He knew everything about it. He had no problem with it,” he said during the meeting with Merz. “All of a sudden he had a problem, and he only developed the problem when he found out that we’re going to have to cut the EV mandate because that’s billions and billions of dollars, and it really is unfair.”

As Trump continued speaking, Musk posted another comment: ‘False, this bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it!’

Tech analyst Dan Ives said the EV tax credit isn’t the main factor behind Tesla’s stock slide. “The reason Tesla stock’s off the way it is — and I think overdone — is because of the view that this means that Trump is not going to play nice when it comes to regulatory” issues, he told CNBC on Thursday. The feud between the two men is “not what you want to see as a Tesla shareholder,” Ives added.

‘Where is this guy today??’ Musk added Thursday in yet another post, resharing a compilation of Trump’s past tweets including one in which Trump called the federal debt ‘a national security risk of the highest order.’

‘Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,’ Musk added on social media. ‘Such ingratitude.’

Musk is the richest person on the planet, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires index. His net worth of $368 billion is $125 billion more than that of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is ranked second. Musk spent $250 million supporting Trump’s most recent campaign.

The president quipped from the White House that he thinks Musk ‘misses the place.’

‘I think he got out there and all of a sudden he wasn’t in this beautiful Oval Office,’ Trump said. ‘He’s got nice offices too, but there’s something about this one.’

The president’s own publicly traded company, Trump Media & Technology Group, has also suffered in the market. Shares of the Truth Social parent company fell more than 8% Thursday and are down over 41% so far this year.

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A planned exchange of Russian and Ukrainian prisoners of war failed to take place on Saturday, with Moscow accusing Kyiv of postponing the swap at the last minute, something Ukrainian officials dismissed as “dirty games” from the Kremlin.

Russia said Ukraine unexpectedly postponed a transfer involving prisoners of war and the bodies of dead soldiers, leaving more than 1,200 frozen Ukrainian bodies waiting in refrigerated trucks at an exchange point with no one to collect them.

Ukraine rejected Russia’s account of the events, saying that the two sides had agreed to exchange seriously wounded and young troops on Saturday but a date had not yet been set for the repatriation of soldiers’ bodies.

During a second round of direct peace talks in Istanbul on Monday, Russia and Ukraine agreed to exchange more prisoners this weekend. Vladimir Medinsky, the head of Russia’s delegation for peace talks with Ukraine, said this week that the exchange would be the largest since of the three-year war.

“In strict accordance with the Istanbul agreements, the Russian side began a humanitarian operation to transfer more than 6,000 bodies of killed Ukrainian servicemen,” as well as badly wounded soldiers under the age of 25, Medinsky said Saturday afternoon on Telegram.

He claimed that 1,212 bodies of killed Ukrainian soldiers were at the exchange point, with the rest “on their way.” He also said that Russia gave Ukraine the first list of 640 prisoners of war for exchange, listed as “wounded, seriously ill and young people,” in order to start the swap.

In a video posted by Russia’s Defense Ministry on Telegram, two men wearing hazmat suits are seen opening the doors to the back of a truck parked on the side of a road. Inside the truck were dozens of sealed white bags, which the ministry said contained the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers.

Medinsky said Russia’s Defense Ministry contact group was waiting at the border with Ukraine, but alleged that Kyiv had “unexpectedly postponed the transfer of bodies and the exchange of prisoners of war for an indefinite period” and had given “pretty weird reasons” for doing so.

Ukraine swiftly rejected the accusations, saying Medinsky’s claims “do not correspond to reality.” It said the exchange of prisoners of war and soldiers’ bodies were separate processes.

“Unfortunately, instead of constructive dialogue, we are again faced with manipulations and attempts to use sensitive humanitarian issues for informational purposes,” Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War wrote on Telegram.

“We call on the Russian side to stop playing dirty games,” it added.

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said Russia was creating “artificial obstacles” and making “false statements” to obstruct the exchange of living prisoners, reneging on what had been agreed in Istanbul.

“The Ukrainian side has faced yet another attempt to renege on the agreements after the fact,” the ministry said.

Although prisoner of war swaps had been a rare point of agreement between the warring countries, the unraveling of Saturday’s scheduled exchange underscores the lack of trust that has so far marred the peace talks.

The spat came soon after Russia launched another aerial assault on Ukraine, killing three people in the city of Kharkiv.

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They know all about glory days on the Kop – the fabled terrace that is the spiritual home of fans of Liverpool – England’s Premier League champions.

But they’re more used to legends like Kenny Dalglish or Mohamed Salah banging in goals than political cries for help. So, it was surreal to watch alongside thousands of middle-aged Brits as Bruce Springsteen bemoaned America’s democracy crisis on hallowed footballing ground.

“The America that I love … a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous” administration, Springsteen said at Anfield Stadium on Wednesday night.

The Boss’s latest warnings of authoritarianism on his European tour were impassioned and drew large cheers. But they did seem to go over the heads of some fans who don’t live in the whirl of tension constantly rattling America’s national psyche.

Liverpudlians waited for decades for Springsteen to play the hometown of The Beatles, whose “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” set his life’s course when he heard it on the radio as a youngster in New Jersey.

Most had a H-H-H-Hungry heart for a party. They got a hell of a show. But also, a lesson on US civics.

“Tonight, we ask all of you who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices, stand with us against authoritarianism and let freedom ring!” Springsteen said.

His European odyssey is unfolding as Western democracies are being shaken again by right-wing populism. So, his determination to engage with searing commentary therefore raises several questions.

What is the role of artists in what Springsteen calls “dangerous times?” Can they make a difference, or should stars of entertainment and sports avoid politics and stick to what they know? Fox News polemicist Laura Ingraham once told basketball icon LeBron James, for instance, that he should just “shut up and dribble.”

Springsteen’s gritty paeans to steel towns and down-on-their-luck cities made him a working-class balladeer. But as blue-collar voters stampede to the right, does he really speak for them now?

Then there’s this issue that Springsteen emphatically tried to answer in Liverpool this week: Does the rough but noble America he’s been mythologizing for 50 years even exist anymore?

How Springsteen and Trump mine the same societal ground

Trump certainly wants to bring the arts to heel – given his social media threats to “highly overrated” Springsteen, Taylor Swift and other superstars and his takeover of the Kennedy Center in Washington. Any center of liberal and free thought from pop music to Ivy League universities is vulnerable to authoritarian impulses.

But it’s also true that celebrities often bore with their trendy political views, especially preaching at Hollywood awards ceremonies. Springsteen, however, has been penning social commentary for decades. And what’s the point of rock ’n’ roll if not rebellion? Rockers usually revolt in their wild-haired youth, rather than in their mid-70s, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Oddly, given their transatlantic dialogue of recent weeks, Trump and Springsteen mine the same political terrain – globalization’s economic and spiritual hollowing of industrial heartlands.

“Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows, And vacant stores, Seems like there ain’t nobody, Wants to come down here no more,” Springsteen sang in 1984 in “My Hometown” long before Trump set his sights on the Oval Office.

The White House sometimes hits similar notes, though neither the Boss nor Trump would welcome the comparison. “The main street in my small town, looks a heck of a lot worse than it probably did decades ago before I was alive,” Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt said rather less poetically in March.

Political fault lines are also shifting. In the US and Europe, the working class is rejecting the politics of hope and optimism in dark times.

And the Democratic politicians that Springsteen supported – like defeated 2004 nominee John Kerry, who borrowed Springsteen’s “No Surrender” as his campaign anthem, and former President Barack Obama – failed to mend industrial blight that acted as a catalyst to Trumpism.

Shifting political landscapes in England and the US

There are warning signs in England too. The Boss’s UK tours often coincided with political hinge moments. In the 1970s he found synergy with the smoky industrial cities of the North. In his “Born in the USA” period, he sided with miners clashing with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. A new BBC documentary revealed this week he gave $20,000 in the 1980s to a strikers’ support group.

Liverpool, a soulful, earthy city right out of the Springsteen oeuvre is a longtime Labour Party heartland. But in a recent by-election, Nigel Farage’s populist, pro-Trump, Reform Party overturned a Labour majority of nearly 15,000 in Runcorn, a decayed industrial town, 15 miles upstream from Liverpool on the River Mersey. This stunner showed Labour’s working class “red wall” is in deep peril and could follow US states like Ohio in shifting to the right as workers reject progressives.

Labour Cabinet Minister Lisa Nandy, whose Wigan constituency is nearby, warned in an interview with the New Statesman magazine this month that political tensions were reaching a breaking point in the North.

“People have watched their town centers falling apart, their life has got harder over the last decade and a half … I don’t remember a time when people worked this hard and had so little to show for it,” Nandy said, painting a picture that will be familiar to many Americans.

In another sign of a seismic shift in British politics last week, Reform came a close third in an unprecedented result in a parliamentary by-election in a one-time industrial heartland outside Glasgow. Scotland has so far been immune to the populist wave – but the times are changing.

Still, there’s not much evidence Trump or his populist cousins in the UK will meaningfully solve heartland pain. They’ve always been better at exploiting vulnerability than fixing it. And Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” would hurt the poor by cutting access to Medicaid and nutrition help while handing the wealthy big tax cuts.

“When conditions in a country are ripe for a demagogue, you can bet one will show up,” Springsteen told the crowd in Liverpool, introducing “Rainmaker” a song about a conman who tells drought-afflicted farmers that “white’s black and black is white.” As the E Street Band struck up, Springsteen said: “This is for America’s dear leader.”

A battle for America’s soul

Springsteen has his “Land of Hope and Dreams.” But Trump has his new “Golden Age.” He claims he can “Make America Great Again” by attacking perceived bastions of liberal power like elite universities and the press, with mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and by challenging due process.

Springsteen implicitly rejected this as un-American while in Liverpool, infusing extra meaning into the lyrics of “Long Walk Home,” a song that predates Trump’s first election win by a decade: “Your flag flyin’ over the courthouse, Means certain things are set in stone. Who we are, what we’ll do and what we won’t.”

Sending fans into a cool summer night, the Boss pleaded with them not to give up on his country.

“The America I’ve sung to you about for 50 years now is real, and regardless of its many faults, is a great country with a great people and we will survive this moment,” he said.

But his fight with Trump for America’s soul will go on. The contrast would be driven home more sharply to Americans if he tours on US soil at this, the most overtly politicized phase of a half-century-long career.

Perhaps in America’s 250th birthday year in 2026?

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The Israeli military says it has killed the leader of a Palestinian militant group that took part in the October 7, 2023, terror attacks on southern Israel.

Asaad Abu Sharia, who led the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement and its armed wing the Mujahideen Brigades, was killed in a joint operation with Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Saturday.

His death and that of his brother Ahmed Abu Sharia were confirmed by the militant group hours after Gaza’s Civil Defense reported that an Israeli airstrike had hit their family home in the Sabra area of Gaza City.

Hamas run Al-Aqsa TV said the strike killed at least 15 people and injured several. Video showed people searching through the debris of a demolished four-story house.

The Mujahideen Brigades took part in the October 7 attacks alongside Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups and took hostage some of the most high-profile captives, including a family whose suffering became a symbol of the attack.

According to the Israeli military, Sharia was among the militant leaders who stormed Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where many residents were killed or taken hostage during the brutal terror assault that led to Israel’s war in Gaza.

Despite not being aware of Hamas’ plans in advance, fighters from the jihadist group joined in the cross-border assault “as an extension of the Hamas attack,” the Israeli military said.

According to Israel, Sharia was directly involved in the abduction and murders of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas – a family that became one of the most recognizable victims of the attack, partly because of the young ages of Kfir and Ariel, who were nine months and four years old respectively at the time.

Kfir was the youngest hostage kidnapped into Gaza and the youngest to have been killed. The boys’ mother, Shiri, was 32 at the time of her kidnap. Their father Yarden was also captured, but was released alive in February after 484 days in captivity.

Reacting to news of Sharia’s killing, the Bibas family expressed their “heartfelt gratitude” to the Israeli military, saying his death was “another step on the journey towards closure.”

“While Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir cannot be brought back, we find some measure of comfort knowing these despicable murderers will not harm another family,” the Bibas family said in a statement shared via the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

Israel’s military said Sharia was also involved in the abduction of the Israeli-American couple Gad Haggai and Judi Lynn Weinstein Haggai and the abduction and killing of Thai national Nattapong Pinta.

The Israeli-American couple were killed near their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz during the attack in 2023. The body of Nattapong, an agricultural worker who was abducted alive on October 7, was recovered from southern Gaza in a military operation on Friday.

Israel said it believes the Mujahideen Brigades are still holding the body of an additional foreign national. The group has previously denied killing their captives.

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Colombian senator Miguel Uribe, in the running to join next year’s presidential race, has been shot at an event in Bogota, according to national police.

The mayor of Bogota, Carlos Galán, said Uribe was receiving emergency care after being attacked in the Fontibon district on Saturday and that the “entire hospital network” of the Colombian capital was on alert in case he needed to be transferred.

The mayor added that the suspected attacker had been arrested.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro expressed his solidarity with the senator’s family in a tweet on X, saying, “I don’t know how to ease your pain. It is the pain of a mother lost, and of a wounded homeland.”

Colombia’s government has issued a statement condemning the attack on Uribe.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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