Trending Now
We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
News
A banner announces the construction of a photovoltaic solar farm in Cabaiguan, Cuba, on May 21, 2025.
55: China is financing 55 new solar power projects in Cuba this year, the latest sign of how it is overtaking Russia as the crisis-wracked island’s main benefactor. Some of Moscow’s recent projects in the communist country have stalled: a Russian firm pledged two years ago to revitalize a sugar mill that once employed 2,000 people, but it still sits idle.
3%: In a win for US President Donald Trump, Canada walked back on its 3% Digital Services Tax that prompted the United States to suspend trade talks on Friday. The tax, which disproportionately affected American technology firms, was set to take effect on Monday.
71: Israel’s strike last Tuesday allegedly killed 71 people at a notorious detention facility in Tehran, per Iranian State Media. The prison houses thousands of political prisoners, including opposition politicians, journalists, and activists.
4,000: More than a third of Tuvalu’s population – around 4,000 residents – have applied for a landmark ‘climate visa,’ which grants Australian residency to migrants from Pacific Island nations battling rising sea levels. NASA scientists expect that the country’s main island, home to 60% of the population, will be fully submerged by 2050.
$80,000: US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem reportedly re-routed $80,000 in political donations to a newly established personal company during her time as South Dakota’s governor in 2023. Noem’s lawyer said she “fully complied with the letter and the spirit of the law.”Anna Wintour attends The Costume Institute's exhibition "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, U.S., May 5, 2025.
37: Anna Wintour is stepping down after 37 years as editor-in-chief of American Vogue. She revolutionised the iconic fashion magazine, introducing celebrities to the cover and spotlighting emerging designers. Wintour will remain Vogue’s global editor, as well as chief content officer at the magazine’s publisher Condé Nast.
1: China’s Central Military Commission, the country’s highest military leadership body, now has one fewer member after voting to remove Miao Hua, senior admiral of the People’s Liberation Army. Miao has been under investigation for “serious violations of discipline” since last November, and his ouster is seen as part of a broader crackdown on corruption under Chinese President Xi Jinping.
28: Norwegian police on Friday accused Marius Borg Høiby, the 28-year old stepson of Crown Prince Haakon, of multiple counts of rape, sexual assault, and bodily harm. The announcement follows a months-long investigation involving “double-digit” victims.
$30 million: The US State Department approved $30 million in funding for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a controversial US and Israeli-backed aid organization that has been criticized by the UN and other rights groups. Over 400 Palestinians have been killed at various aid points in recent weeks, per UN estimates, after Israeli soldiers fired into crowds seeking food. Israel has reportedly launched a war-crime probe into the incidents.What We’re Watching: Budapest Pride parade, Rwanda and DRC peace agreement, SCOTUS ruling on Trump’s executive power
A woman lights a cigarette placed in a placard depicting Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, during a demonstration, after the Hungarian parliament passed a law that bans LGBTQ+ communities from holding the annual Pride march and allows a broader constraint on freedom of assembly, in Budapest, Hungary, on March 25, 2025.
Pride and Politics: the drama in Budapest
Hungary’s capital will proceed with Saturday’s Pride parade celebrating the LGBTQ+ community, despite the rightwing national government’s recent ban on the event. The culture war between the city and “illiberal” Prime Minister Viktor Orbán reflects wider urban/rural splits in Hungary. The European Union has urged Orbán to lift the ban and is probing the legality of Hungarian police using facial recognition to identify attendees. Many countries have expressed support for the parade, but the Trump administration, sharing Orbán’s misgivings about LGBTQ+ culture, is not among them.
Rwanda and DRC to sign Trump-brokered peace deal
Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo will sign a peace deal in Washington today, hoping to end a conflict that has killed thousands and displaced millions. The war in a nutshell: Rwanda has backed rebel groups that have seized large swaths of territory in the mineral-rich DRC. The Trump administration, which wants a Nobel peace prize for its efforts, brokered the agreement in part to gain access to DRC critical minerals, but critics say the economic terms are still vague.
US Supreme Court hands Trump a win versus the judiciary
The US top court on Friday limited federal judges’ ability to issue nationwide injunctions against executive orders, but did not rule directly on the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s order to limit birthright citizenship. The 6-3 decision, which halts Trump’s citizenship order for 30 days while other legal challenges play out, was split along ideological lines – the liberal minority dissented. The ruling could affect the roughly 255,000 children born annually in the United States to parents who are neither citizens nor permanent residents, per a Penn State estimate. But it also expands executive power vis-a-vis the courts more broadly. For more on this, watch Ian Bremmer’s recent interview with Yale Law School senior fellow Emily Bazelon.American President Donald Trump's X Page is seen displayed on a smartphone with a Tiktok logo in the background
In August 1991, a handful of high-ranking Soviet officials launched a military coup to halt what they believed (correctly) was the steady disintegration of the Soviet Union. Their first step was to seize control of the flow of information across the USSR by ordering state television to begin broadcasting a Bolshoi Theatre production ofSwan Lake on a continuous loop until further notice. (Click that link for some prehistoric GZERO coverage of that event.)
Even in the decade that followed the Cold War’s end, citizens of both authoritarian states and democracies had far fewer sources of reliable information than today about what was happening in their communities, across their countries and around the world.
Earlier this month, the Reuters Institute published its 14th annualDigital News Report, which Reuters claims is the “most comprehensive study of news consumption worldwide.” Its findings detail just how fundamentally different today’s media landscape has become. Here are some key takeaways that help us understand how and where people get their information and ideas about what’s happening today:
- “News use across online platforms continues to fragment.”
- “Engagement with traditional media sources such as TV, print, and news websites continues to fall, while dependence on social media, video platforms, and online aggregators grows. This is particularly the case in the United States.”
- “The proportion accessing news via social media and video networks in the United States (54%) is sharply up – overtaking both TV news (50%) and news websites/apps (48%) for the first time.”
- “Around a third of our global sample use Facebook (36%) and YouTube (30%) for news each week. Instagram (19%) and WhatsApp (19%) are used by around a fifth, while TikTok (16%) remains ahead of X at 12%.”
- Personalities and influencers are, in some countries, playing a significant role in shaping public debates.
- There’s no reason to expect these trends won’t continue indefinitely.
There’s much more in the Reuters report, but today let’s focus on a few political implications of the points above.
In the years since social media and online influencers began shaping our perception of reality, we’ve seen strong anti-establishment political trends. Think Brexit, the election of charismatic political outsiders (like Donald Trump), and a move away from long-entrenched political establishments in dozens of countries.
Social media algorithms create “filter bubbles” as algorithms feed us steady supplies of what they’ve learned we like at the expense of new information and ideas that make us question what we believe. That trend helps explain the worsening polarization we see in the United States and many European countries.
That problem is compounded by the increasing prevalence in social media feeds of AI bots, which can generate heavy volumes of false information, distorting our sense of reality every day and in real time.
All these trends will make politics, particularly in democracies, much less predictable over time as elections swing outcomes between competing ideologies.
As a source of news and insight, social media has brought billions of people directly into the political lives of their countries in ways unimaginable a generation ago. They’ll continue to play a positive role in helping news consumers and voters learn more and share their views. But the unreliability of so many social media information sources — and the political volatility it increasingly generates — create problems that will only become more complex as technologies change.
And this problem is intensifying at a time when more of the big threats facing governments extend across borders — the eruption of more regional wars, climate change fallout, management of refugee flows, and governance of artificial intelligence. Big ideological swings following elections will make long-term multinational cooperation much more complicated.
Tell us what you think. How should our elected leaders, media sources, and all of us news consumers respond to these challenges? Let us know here.
What We’re Watching: Separatists go bust, Canada goes social, US readies tax retaliation
Alberta sovereigntists and supporters gather outside the Alberta Legislature on May 3, 2025.
Alberta separatists underwhelm in local election
Alberta’s separatist movement came up short in a bellwether by-election in rural Calgary on Monday, winning a disappointing 19% of the vote in Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills. Cameron Davies, leader of the separatist Alberta Republican Party, came in third, behind the governing United Conservative Party and the left-leaning New Democratic Party. Although a referendum on separatism is still in the cards, the weak showing in what was thought to be prime separatist territory suggests the movement may have little steam after all.
Canada to get its own private social network
A handful of nationalistic Canadian tech leaders provoked by Donald Trump’s threats are launching a Canadian social media platform operated independently of the American cloud. Known as Gander, it will run on Canadian servers, in line with Canadian privacy and moderation rules — meaning tighter policing of posts considered hate speech. In a unique feature, users will have the option of posting on a globally visible network or a Canada-only one. Can an upstart like this really challenge US and Chinese social media giants? We’re keen to have a … Gander.
Republicans could strip tax retaliation clause from “Big Beautiful Bill”
The Trump administration’s massive budget bill currently gives the White House the power to retaliate against other countries that impose taxes the US considers unfair. Key targets are minimum corporate tax rates and digital services taxes (like Canada’s). Top Republican officials say they will remove the clause if the EU and other countries drop or renegotiate the offending taxes. But that would need to happen by this weekend, since Donald Trump wants to sign the bill into law ahead of next week’s July Fourth holiday.
U.S. President Donald Trump, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at a NATO leaders summit in The Hague, Netherlands June 25, 2025.
But, as the world’s most powerful military alliance moves into a new and more robust phase, here are three things to ponder.
First, this was a win for Trump.
Donald Trump’s Reality TV approach to global politics is working. The US president has leveraged his country’s awesome military power, along with his own personal unpredictability and media savvy, to command the spotlight and advance his “America First” agenda. In this world, international meetings are merely backdrops for the Donald Trump show.
At the G7 summit in Alberta 10 days ago, he wrestled control of the world’s attention by leaving early to respond to the military conflict between Israel and Iran. After bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities, he announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran that he initially sought to manage in CAPITAL LETTERS on social media. Flying off to the NATO summit, he published an ostensibly private text message from NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, in which the mild-mannered former Dutch prime minister flattered Trump for his “decisive” bombing of Iran and insisted the president was headed to another major triumph at the meeting in The Hague.
“Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win,” Rutte wrote, accurately.
Rutte in fact set up the summit as an extended ceremony of capitulation. He even called Trump “daddy” in an exchange about wrangling peace between Iran and Israel. It looked undignified, and out of step with the attitudes of European voters who are largely hostile to Trump. But it worked. The alliance is paying more for defense, and Trump now seems to be a staunch supporter of NATO again.
Note: Trump is hardly the first US president to demand that NATO members shoulder more of the alliance’s defense burden. But he is the first to get them to actually do it so decisively. The most powerful unscripted drama in the world is playing out in Trump’s favor.
Second, the rearming of Europe has begun.
Europe’s voters, accustomed to social democracies that spend a lot of money on public services, might rather their governments spend money on butter, but they have come to see that they must buy guns. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has made it necessary. Last year, Putin spent $149 billion on the Russian military, 7.1% of the country’s GDP, creating a vast and menacing war machine on Europe’s doorstep. And it is not possible to be confident that Russia’s ambitions are limited to Ukraine, since Russians are engaged in sabotage and disruption actions in many countries.
Could Europe contain Russia on its own? Not anytime soon. A recent study found it would take 25 years and a trillion dollars to replace the US presence that has largely kept the peace on the continent since the end of the Second World War.
But the rearmament of the continent has already begun, most swiftly in the parts closest to Russia. Poland, which has the example of Ukraine to consider, increased defense spending by 31% in 2024, to $43 billion, straining its ability to pay. Germany spent $88.5 billion in 2024, removing a legislated debt limit to do so. It is now, for the first time since reunification in 1990, the biggest defense spender in Western Europe. France spent $64.7 billion in 2024, the UK $81.8 billion. On Wednesday, they all agreed to spend a lot more.
Third, higher defense spending is a promise but not yet a reality.
Trump is mollified, arms manufacturers are cheerful, and a clear signal has been sent to the Russians, but only time will tell if NATO members will do as they have said they will. Politicians setting targets is one thing, actually spending the money is another.
After all, there is only so much money to go around and, in democracies where voters can be fickle, it may be hard for leaders to ramp up defense spending consistently over the course of a decade.
Some of them can’t even do it now: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez showed up in the Hague with the right script, but without his checkbook, because he leads a minority government that would not be able to pass a budget if he aimed for the 5% target.
Canadian PM Mark Carney, for his part, promised Canada will hit the target, doubling its budget by 2035, but it is not clear whether voters there — or in Spain or other countries that don’t have Russian troops on their borders — will want to keep spending so much money. And by 2035, most of the current leaders will likely not be in power.
There is another wild card too: Russia. Global military spending increased at 9.4% last year, the steepest increase since the end of the Cold War, which ended when the Soviet Union ran out of money.
If history repeats itself, and Russia is unable to sustain its aggression, voters in NATO countries will no doubt find they have better things to spend on, and there will be no way to hold them to the commitments Trump won this week.
A Canadian border services superintendent, stands at the Canada Border Service Agency (CBSA) border crossing with the United States in Stanstead, Quebec, Canada
115: Canada’s border agency has opened at least 115 investigations into how suspected agents of Iran were able to enter Canada despite being banned from the country since 2022. Three individuals have been given deportation orders, and another has already been removed from the country.
1.3 billion: The US State Department has been advised by the Office of Budget and Management to end nearly all pro-democracy programs, effectively halting $1.3 billion in grants supporting pro-democracy activists or minority populations in authoritarian countries like China and Yemen.
20: The remote town of McCallum, Newfoundland, is home to just 20 people, and the youngest of them just graduated as the high school’s only student. The celebratory event has reopened conversations about the future of the town, where residents remain fiercely connected to a place and a community at risk of dying out within a generation.
800: A visit to the dentist is always a bit of a bear, but this time … quite literally. Tundra, an 800-pound Alaskan brown bear, was sedated in a northeastern Minnesota zoo and fitted with the world’s largest dental crown ever created — marking the first time the procedure has been performed on a bear.