Donald Trump’s second presidency, it was said, would not be like the first. He was back after a period in the wilderness, but with lessons learned; this time he was surrounded by an army of loyalists and not, as in 2017, by a team of aides willing to disagree with him now and then. Nor would it once again be a nonstop spectacle of leaks, backstage betrayals and impulsive firings communicated through social media.

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On November 3, voters will head to the polls for the midterm elections, which will determine whether Donald Trump’s Republicans retain a friendly Congress or whether Democrats take control of one or both chambers, enabling them to mount a more aggressive opposition by blocking legislation, budgets and appointments during the final two years of his term.

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U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday fired his brand new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, just five days into the job. The story broke right after Trump told reporters that he had asked Zacharia to reconsider whether she wanted to remain in the job after her bumpy first briefing on Monday.

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Seasoned in defending rural communities and smallholder farmers, Sofía Monsalve, 56, was appointed United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food in May. In exchange for throwing herself into an unpaid position, the Colombian political scientist says she enjoys complete independence. “I have the freedom to call things by their name,” she tells EL PAÍS in Turin during Terra Madre, the gathering of the international sustainable food network Slow Food.

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The No Kings movement, which organized the largest protests against the government so far during Donald Trump’s second term, is taking its mobilization to the polls to promote early voting ahead of the midterms. The goal is to get as many voters as possible to cast ballots before November 3, the official day of the midterm elections, to counter abstention and problems that could arise at a time when, they say, the government is doing everything it can to restrict the right to vote.

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The United States on Wednesday lifted sanctions against Jorge Rodríguez, president of Venezuela’s National Assembly and brother of the South American country’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, the Treasury Department reported.

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Washington has stepped on the accelerator to renew Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal. It is its first major democratizing initiative in the country and the main task of the negotiation table between the 2015 National Assembly and the government of Delcy Rodríguez, which meets again this Wednesday. The goal is to have a new court by December, but beyond the outline the United States published last week, nothing is as yet known about the timetables, the profiles sought, the procedures to challenge appointments and how civil society will take part in a process crucial to a country that is supposedly moving toward a democratic transition.

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On Tuesday, three weeks before the midterms, the White House went back to its news conferences after a 47-day hiatus following the departure of former press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Her successor, Katie Zacharia, made a very brief appearance in which she only took three questions and fell short of the cool aplomb with which Leavitt made a name for herself defending the policies of her boss, President Donald Trump, resorting to lies when necessary.

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The government of acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez has handed Álvaro Pulido — Álex Saab’s Colombian-born associate who had been held in Caracas since 2023 — over to the United States. The transfer was announced Sunday on X by U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, while the Venezuelan government has remained silent on the case.

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Despite years of political defeats in Texas, Democrats are hoping that the 2026 midterm elections will finally turn a Senate seat in the staunchly red state purple. James Talarico, a rising star within the party, is seen as one of the keys to achieving that new shade. For Republicans, he has become one of the biggest challenges in this closely contested campaign. So much so that a substantial share of the money being spent in the race has gone not toward promoting their controversial Senate candidate, Attorney General Ken Paxton, but toward attacking his opponent.

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“What plague?” an Irkutsk resident exclaims when the epidemiological crisis that has put this small Siberian city near Mongolia on the front pages over the past week is mentioned. “Do you see me wearing a mask?” the annoyed clerk at a pharmacy retorts when asked whether she has noticed any concern over reports of quarantines and the death of a laboratory worker. “Whatever the authorities say, we’ll obey. We all obey the authorities,” say two elderly women, carefree as they sit on swings in a park in Shelekhov, the suburb that their own governor advised people not to visit due to “a particularly dangerous infection.”

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For the past 96 days, a huge tarp has hung over the facade of the Kennedy Center, a fitting symbol of Donald Trump’s assault on Washington’s cultural institutions.

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I found it easy to resist the early dispatches from “UFC Freedom 250,” the Ultimate Fighting Championship event held in June on the White House South Lawn. But Jon Ronson is the sort of writer I can’t help following into battle. Fresh off a new book about masculinity, Ronson brings a delightfully skewed perspective to the fights and the days that surrounded them. The result is a portrait of a planned media spectacle that can’t quite make sense of itself. The best battle here may be Ronson’s tussle with his own photographer, 79-year-old Bruce Gilden, who is a bit of a hugger.

“I’m pretty certain you hugged Stephen Miller first,” I say. “I don’t see Stephen Miller as initiating a hug.”

“You may be right,” he says. “I don’t remember. Look, I do things maybe other people aren’t comfortable doing, but I felt comfortable and I trust my instincts.”

He acknowledges that “nobody is immune to misreading a situation” and that because of him we were all forced back indoors, but he blames Miller’s entourage for not checking with their boss on whether he minded being hugged.