House Passes Air Safety Bill, Setting Up Clash with Senate

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When Nato helped overthrow Gaddafi in 2011, there were hopes of a new beginning. More than a decade later, a former CIA asset runs the country – and Libya has become yet another lesson in the unintended consequences of foreign intervention
In July 2025, four of Europe’s most senior officials landed in eastern Libya for an urgent meeting. Italy’s interior minister had watched migrant arrivals surge during the previous six months. Greece’s migration chief was reeling after 2,000 people reached Crete in a single week. Malta’s home minister feared his island was next. And the EU’s migration commissioner was scrambling to rescue an agreement worth many hundreds of millions that was visibly failing to stop the boats.
Libya is a place where crises converge. Its 1,100-mile coastline, the longest Mediterranean coastline in Africa, has become the main departure point for migrants heading north. Since Muammar Gaddafi was toppled in 2011, the country has been torn apart by successive civil wars. Russia, Turkey, Egypt and the UAE arm rival factions, and the contest no longer stops at Libya’s borders. From military bases in the south, Russia and the UAE funnel weapons and fighters into Sudan’s civil war, which has driven hundreds of thousands more refugees north towards Libya’s coast.
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© Composite: Artwork by Alex Mellon and Guardian Design. Source Photographs by Reuters/AFP/Getty Images

© Composite: Artwork by Alex Mellon and Guardian Design. Source Photographs by Reuters/AFP/Getty Images

© Composite: Artwork by Alex Mellon and Guardian Design. Source Photographs by Reuters/AFP/Getty Images
The mutual resentments that have fueled tensions between the US and Iran have simmered for nearly half a century
For millions of younger Americans, the sudden explosion of Iran onto the national political stage and consciousness may seem like a bolt from the blue.
Yet for older generations and those with deeper historical awareness, Donald Trump’s announcement on Saturday of strikes against a distant foe is more like the outcome of a collision long foretold.
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As I write my last regular column for the Guardian, my thoughts turn to the lessons and hope we can take from history
From Greenland’s icy mountains, from India’s coral strand, as the old hymn has it, we seem to inhabit a world that is more seriously troubled in more places than many can ever remember. In the UK, national morale feels all but shot. Politics commands little faith. Ditto the media. The idea that, as a country, we still have enough in common to carry us through – the idea embedded in Britain’s once potent Churchillian myth – feels increasingly threadbare.
Welcome, in short, to the Britain of the mid-1980s. That Britain often felt like a broken nation in a broken world, very much as Britain often does in the mid-2020s. The breakages were of course very different. And on one important level, misery is the river of the world. But, for those who can still recall them, the 1980s moods of crisis and uncertainty have things in common with those of today.
Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist
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© Composite: Artwork by Alex Mellon and Guardian Design. Source Photographs by Alamy/Getty Images/Bettman Archive/Reuters/SPUTNIK/KREMLIN POOL/EPA/MirrorPix/REX

© Composite: Artwork by Alex Mellon and Guardian Design. Source Photographs by Alamy/Getty Images/Bettman Archive/Reuters/SPUTNIK/KREMLIN POOL/EPA/MirrorPix/REX

© Composite: Artwork by Alex Mellon and Guardian Design. Source Photographs by Alamy/Getty Images/Bettman Archive/Reuters/SPUTNIK/KREMLIN POOL/EPA/MirrorPix/REX

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The president is lashing out before the supreme court’s impending decision on his absurd policy
Halloween came early for Donald Trump. Ronald Reagan spooked him. Trump had a startled reaction to the TV ad that appeared during the first game of the World Series, placed by the provincial government of Ontario, featuring excerpts from President Reagan’s radio talk in April 1987 in which he explained the danger of trade wars. “Their Advertisement was to be taken down, IMMEDIATELY, but they let it run last night during the World Series, knowing that it was a FRAUD,” Trump posted. It was, he falsely claimed, a “serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act”. In retaliation, he slapped an additional 10% tariff on Canada.
Trump was apparently horrified at the sudden presence of the ghost of conservatism past, who had kept the outlandish bounder at arm’s length and whom Trump regarded warily if not nervously. Reagan was the original, bigger and more successful performer, whose appeal was as the harbinger of morning in America, not the grim reaper of a zombie nightfall. Canada is being punished for Trump’s fright.
Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist
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© Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/AP

© Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/AP