Jonathan Freedland on what Keir Starmer said – and didn’t say – to the House of Commons about the Mandelson vetting failure

“I think the whole Mandelson story, in a way, is an example of how much the Trump presidency has sort of wobbled and shaken the Starmer premiership,” Jonathan Freedland tells Helen Pidd. “And may in the end be responsible for the decision which ultimately costs this prime minister his job.”

On Monday, Keir Starmer addressed the Commons on revelations in the Guardian that Peter Mandelson had failed the UK security vetting process before taking up the role as US ambassador – but the foreign office had overturned the decision.

No matter how much Donald Trump outrages his opponents, nothing ever seems to stick. But what about his own base? With controversies surrounding the Epstein files, his war on Iran, and now a ‘blasphemous’ post depicting the president as Jesus, could Maga finally be pulling away?

Jonathan Freedland speaks to Rolling Stone’s Nikki McCann Ramírez about the string of scandals dogging Trump, the Maga big beasts biting the hand that fed them, and what happens when a personality cult loses its personality

Archive: CNN, Fox News, ABC News, and MS

Flora Garamvolgyi on JD Vance’s visit to Hungary in the run-up to the country’s elections on Sunday

“Hungary has been a model for the Trump presidency for a while now,” the Guardian journalist Flora Garamvolgyi tells Helen Pidd. “And US Republicans looked at Hungary for these past years as a model to follow.

“[Viktor] Orbán is currently on his fourth consecutive term. And the fact that he has been so successful and he had similar narrative, similar ideologies to US Republicans in terms of immigration, for example, I think they have found a link to connect with Orbán and they were studying his success.”

Tess McClure reports on the US bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Iran, and the families who lost loved ones in the attack

On 28 February, during the first US-Israeli bombing campaign in Iran, there was a strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab.

“The impact of dropping a 2,000-plus pound bomb on a primary school full of children mostly seven to 12 years old and their teachers is just unimaginable,” Tess McClure, the Guardian’s editor for rights and freedom, tells Nosheen Iqbal.

The journalists Ruaridh Nicoll and Daniel Montero report from Havana as Cuba suffers from a devastating oil blockade imposed by the US

When asked about Cuba by journalists last week, Donald Trump replied: ‘It may be a friendly takeover. It may not be a friendly takeover. It wouldn’t matter, because they’re really down to the fumes.’

It was the only the latest in a series of increasingly belligerent statements from the White House about the island 90 miles off the Florida coast. Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state and a Cuban-American himself, openly threatens Cuba’s communist leadership. Trump says ‘I can do anything I want with it’.

Are the German people on board with the government’s massive militarisation programme? Kate Connolly reports

“Not so long ago, to be a German soldier dressed in German uniform was quite a difficult role to embody. I mean, you could be going down the street and you could be spat on, or you could have names called at you.

“I’ve recently seen people get into conversation with soldiers, which I hadn’t seen in the past, [and] more recently, somebody going up to a soldier and actually getting him into conversation about his role, and at the end of the conversation, thanking him.”

Ashley St Clair – a conservative influencer and former partner of Elon Musk – and Dan Milmo chart the scandal over Grok, X’s AI chatbot, after it generated sexualised images of women without their consent

The conservative writer and political strategist Ashley St Clair had just put her young son to bed when she received a text from a friend with a link to a page on X.

When she opened it, she says she saw a photo of ‘Grok undressing me and putting me in a bikini’.