Today in the short news: Pritzker tears into Trump and his Republicans, Australia’s far-right One Nation continues to gain ground, Canada mocks Trump’s “Lake America” - and Trump posts a disturbing video in which the “Lake Ontario” sign is simply kicked over. Also: A young Afghan whose brothers helped the U.S. military is deported to Central Africa. Russia sends warships through the English Channel to protect sanctioned cargo ships, while Rostov declares a state of emergency over blocked grain exports.
And we write about why investigative journalism needs far more support right now - in the United States, in Europe and everywhere authoritarian politics has long been learning from one another.
Pritzker tears into Trump and his Republicans: "Our state is under siege"
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker launched a frontal attack on Donald Trump and his Republican supporters, making no attempt to hide his anger behind polite language. His message was aimed not only at the president, but also at the Republicans who continue to support his policies even though, in Pritzker's view, they should have known long ago what they are doing.
He went especially hard after Darren Bailey, the Republican politician once again running for governor of Illinois. Pritzker said: "So here's the truth, plain and simple: Our state is under siege. Not by protesters, not by immigrants, not by the 'Deep State,' not by the press, not by Canada, Mexico or Greenland, not by Antifa, Jewish space lasers or Pride parades. No. Our state is under siege by a petty, corrupt man in Washington. By a man who ran for president because he wanted to live in a palace and get rich - or even richer. Our state is under siege by the skilled sycophants surrounding this president who use his lowest instincts as cover for their own destructive plans. Our state is under siege by the many, many Republicans who are either too infatuated or too afraid to stand up to Donald Trump on behalf of the people they serve. And by that I mean Republicans like Darren Bailey. You can be many things and still be a good governor. But there is one thing you cannot be: a coward."
Pritzker is turning the political fight in Illinois into an open reckoning with a party whose representatives, in his telling, no longer control Trump but follow him out of fear or conviction. His final sentence about Bailey leaves little room for misunderstanding: For Pritzker, this is no longer simply about different political views, but about who is willing to stand up to Trump - and who ducks away.
Australia moves further right - One Nation captures a Labor district that had looked safe since 1989
Australia's far-right One Nation is now turning rising poll numbers into real political power. In Western Australia, gym owner Luke Herdegen won the Secret Harbour district south of Perth for Pauline Hanson's party with 57 percent of the vote. The area and the districts that preceded it had been held by the Labor Party since 1989. Just a few months ago, hardly anyone would have thought such a loss possible there. One Nation now has its first directly elected member in the lower house of Western Australia's parliament.
The victory comes only months after the party's next historic breakthrough: In May, it won an elected seat in Australia's House of Representatives for the first time ever. In June, One Nation even overtook Labor in a nationwide poll for the first time. A party that spent much of the time since its founding in 1997 on the far-right fringe of Australian politics is now eating its way deeper into territory that once belonged to the major parties. Pauline Hanson has pushed a hard line on immigration for years and is now meeting a society where housing shortages and high living costs are fueling frustration. At the same time, declining trust in the traditional parties is only opening up more space beside them. Herdegen himself called his victory a huge message to Labor: There are no safe Labor seats in Western Australia or anywhere else in the country. Even Labor's leadership cannot play down the blow. Federal minister Tanya Plibersek said her party needed to think about how it could do a better job of showing people what it was doing to ease the economic pressure on ordinary Australians.
Victoria votes later this year, and One Nation will head into that fight with considerably more weight behind it. What is happening in Australia is hardly happening in isolation. Far-right populism is becoming a political force in more and more democracies, winning seats and pushing the limits of what can be said in public and demanded politically. The consequences do not only become visible once such parties are in government. They are already leaving their mark around the world in language, in the way society treats people, and in the question of which groups can suddenly once again be casually declared the problem. Australia is providing another example right now.
If you want investigative journalism, you have to make it possible
Investigative journalism needs far more support from society than it gets today. Day after day, colleagues give up because they simply do not have the money to keep doing this work, while others are pushed out of newsrooms, as we are seeing right now in the case of Italian investigative journalist Sigfrido Ranucci. Reporting takes time, travel costs money, equipment costs money, and sometimes that equipment determines how close a journalist has to get to a dangerous situation.
We know colleagues who walk straight into far-right demonstrations with an 85mm lens because they simply cannot afford a telephoto lens that would let them keep their distance and still get the pictures that matter. That is not a minor issue. It can determine whether someone gets home unharmed and whether the photos are taken that show what actually happened. Anyone who wants investigative journalism that holds power accountable, exposes wrongdoing and goes where things become uncomfortable or dangerous also has to make sure that this work remains possible in the first place. We know very well ourselves how hard that fight is every single day.
Anyone who thinks Trump is just an American problem still hasn't understood what is happening here
Investigative journalism has a very specific job in this situation. Find out what is actually happening, expose those responsible, bring cases before the courts together with human rights organizations, help those affected and make things public before they disappear beneath the next headline. Anyone investigating in the United States today is no longer working only for an American audience. Much of what is happening there is being watched very closely elsewhere - and not always with disgust. That is why this work is also a warning to Europe, South America, Asia and Australia: Look at what has become possible, how it became possible and what it does to the people caught in it. The American example is no longer merely used as an excuse along the lines of "well, they're doing it too," but increasingly as a blueprint.
And Mr. Putin should not be forgotten either. Anyone who wants to understand how authoritarian politics learns across borders should not look only to Washington - Moscow has spent years showing how press freedom, opposition and public scrutiny can be eliminated piece by piece.
Canada answers Trump's "Lake America" with a giant sign - and mocks him
Donald Trump wanted to rename Lake Ontario "Lake America" by executive order, and Canada has now answered with a 24-foot-wide sign on its own shoreline: "Lake Ontario. Now and Always." Ontario Premier Doug Ford had it put up near Grimsby, wearing a Team Canada soccer jersey as he did so, and made clear that the lake's name would outlive the American president. "Long after President Trump is gone, it will still be called Lake Ontario," Ford said.
Trump had ordered U.S. federal agencies to call the lake "Lake America" after months of tariffs, threats to make Canada the 51st state and personal attacks on Canadian politicians. In Canada, the response is no longer just anger, but open mockery. Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew compared Trump to a rock band whose best days are long behind it, playing the same 50-year-old hit over and over again in a casino. After renaming the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America," Trump was now trying to warm up the same hit again for his base, Kinew said: It was getting a little sad, and it certainly was not Trump's best work. Canadian historian Robert Bothwell was even more blunt, asking why the supposedly greatest country on Earth takes "this moron" seriously. Behind the jokes, however, Bothwell sees something far less funny: Trump wants to subordinate Canada, at best turn it into a colony, and at worst absorb it into the United States.
Professor emeritus Nelson Wiseman sees it much the same way and says Trump would like Canada to be a vassal state - except Canadians refuse to play that role. At the same time, relations between the two countries are getting worse. Trade talks collapsed last week, both governments accuse the other of making new demands at the last minute, and Canada has announced retaliatory tariffs set to take effect next month. Ford had previously said Ronald Reagan would "throw up" over Trump's tariff policies and would be disgusted by the current president. Trump responded with personal attacks, calling Ford a flunky of Prime Minister Mark Carney and mocking him as the less charismatic and less intelligent brother of the late Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. On Saturday, Trump went further and shared an image of Canada geese with his blond hairstyle, carrying rifles as they defended the supposed "Lake America." These map and naming games have become part of his politics: For a time, a map showing the "Gulf of America" hung in the Oval Office, and Trump has repeatedly posted images showing Canada as part of the United States or as its 51st state.
With Lake Ontario, he is also running into a history far older than his presidency and even older than both modern countries. The name comes from the Huron word "oniatarí:io" and means "lake of shining waters"; the Canadian province of Ontario, founded in 1867, took its name from the lake. Pierre Picard, Grand Chief of the Wendat Nation, therefore described Trump's move as an attempt to erase Indigenous history, culture and identity. Prime Minister Mark Carney also rejected the renaming and pointed out that the name predates both Canadian Confederation and the American Declaration of Independence. And for all the theater over executive orders and new maps, one very simple fact remains: Trump can tell American agencies what name to use - he cannot tell Canada what to call its own lake.
Trump administration deports young Afghan to Central Africa - his brothers helped the U.S. military
On Saturday, the Trump administration once again deported dozens of people to a country none of them came from: the Central African Republic. Among those on board was Khalil, a 24-year-old Afghan whose family had been threatened by the Taliban because of their work with the United States. An American judge had explicitly ruled that the young man could not be deported to Afghanistan because he faced persecution there. Both of his brothers had worked with the U.S. military. One now lives in the United States and served in the Afghan National Army, which fought alongside the Americans until the Taliban takeover in 2021. Another brother had been trained as a pilot by the United States. The Taliban killed him. Now the United States sent his brother not to Kabul, but thousands of miles away to Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. According to Human Rights First, the same flight carried twelve Afghans and eight Iranians, along with people from Nepal and Nicaragua.
The deportation is part of a system that has grown larger under Trump: People are not sent back to their countries of origin, but to third countries with which Washington has reached agreements that are often not made public. According to human rights organizations, thousands of people have already been deported this way to around two dozen countries that have nothing to do with where they came from. Immigration attorneys see this as a way to get around court orders blocking deportations and, through a detour, put asylum seekers back into situations they were supposed to be protected from. Saturday's flight was already the second to the Central African Republic since June. At that time, two dozen people were sent there, including an Iranian woman who also faced persecution in her home country. What makes this case especially bitter is that the young Afghan's family came under threat from the Taliban precisely because of the help they had given the United States. One of his brothers, Najib, served with the Afghan army in the joint fight with the United States, while the other was trained by America and later killed by the Taliban. For their brother, that history apparently offered no protection from the deportation machine. America could not send him to Afghanistan because of the judge's ruling. So it sent him to Central Africa.
Russia sends warships into the English Channel to protect sanctioned cargo ships
Russia is now deploying two warships at once to escort sanctioned vessels through the North Sea and the English Channel. The frigate Neustrashimy joined the destroyer Admiral Levchenko while the cargo ships General Skobelev and Sparta headed toward the Atlantic under military protection. The British Navy stayed on the Russian group's tail for three days. The destroyer HMS Duncan, the frigate HMS St Albans and the patrol ship HMS Severn escorted the group through British waters and the English Channel together with a Merlin helicopter. Only near the French island of Ushant did Britain hand over surveillance to another NATO country.
At the same time, HMS Mersey tracked the Russian replenishment tanker Akademik Pashin, which was traveling near the group. Moscow's decision to escort sanctioned ships through European waters with warships is no coincidence. Since the sanctioned Russian tanker Smyrtos was detained in June, vessels from Russia's shadow fleet have been changing routes more often, according to the British Navy, while Russia is increasingly sending military escorts. In the first eight months of this year, Britain had to send ships out to monitor Russian activity 25 percent more often than during the same period in 2025.
As recently as August 25, Admiral Levchenko had been spotted off Spain heading toward Gibraltar together with Sparta, General Skobelev and Akademik Pashin; at that point, only one Russian warship appeared to be escorting the three civilian vessels. Neustrashimy, meanwhile, has been operating near British waters since at least July and apparently replaced the frigate Admiral Grigorovich, which had spent months escorting shadow-fleet tankers through the English Channel. On July 20, Neustrashimy even conducted live-fire exercises about 46 miles south of Plymouth. The Russian crew warned the British in advance and asked the patrol ship HMS Tyne to keep a safe distance; a French military aircraft also observed the drills alongside the British. General Skobelev, Sparta and Akademik Pashin are not some random traveling group either. Back in May, they called at the Syrian port of Tartus together, escorted at the time by the Russian frigate Admiral Kasatonov. The ships switched off their automatic identification signals or transmitted false information, while experts believed they were carrying military equipment to the Russian base.
General Skobelev and Sparta belong to Oboronlogistika, a company linked to the Russian Defense Ministry, and have already been used for Russian military transport operations. As far back as July 2025, the corvette Boikiy escorted both ships through the English Channel. The fact that Moscow is now assigning two warships to journeys like these shows how much effort Russia is putting into keeping sanctioned shipments moving through European waters - and how regularly Russian and NATO forces are now coming into close proximity.
The grain cannot get out anymore - Rostov declares a state of emergency as wheat prices hit a three-year high
In Russia's Rostov region, grain is now piling up in silos because the ports are shut down and the route across the Black Sea is becoming increasingly uncertain. Governor Yuri Slyusar therefore declared a regional state of emergency at 6 p.m. on August 28. The order applies to a situation that, according to his directive, has existed since July 10. Russia can no longer get part of its harvest out of the region, while at the same time wheat prices on the global market have climbed to their highest level since 2023.
In the order, Slyusar blames the shutdown of port operations and disruptions to shipping in the Sea of Azov and Black Sea for the situation. The regional government says the cause is attacks by Ukrainian forces on logistics facilities. As a result, large amounts of agricultural products have accumulated at farms and agricultural businesses. Authorities are now warning of substantial economic losses and of possible effects on people's daily lives. The region's Agriculture Ministry has been instructed to continuously track how much produce is stuck, how the situation is developing and what consequences may follow. At the same time, farmers are to be informed about the measures authorities are taking. That does not create much room to maneuver, though. Grain that cannot get onto ships stays where it is, and with every additional day the pressure on warehouses, producers and exporters grows.
The consequences already extend far beyond Rostov. Wheat prices on the Chicago exchange climbed to their highest level since July 2023. Traders are reacting to fears that any further escalation of Russia's war against Ukraine could hit shipments from the Black Sea region even harder. Russia and Ukraine together account for nearly 30 percent of global wheat exports. If major volumes disappear there, they cannot simply be replaced somewhere else. Andrik Payen, a grain and oilseed analyst at Rabobank, says that is exactly the problem. Other suppliers would not be able to fully replace the missing Russian and Ukrainian grain. The numbers already show how sharply shipments have fallen.
Ukraine exported only around 300,000 metric tons of wheat in the first half of August. In all of August 2025, it had exported 1.891 million metric tons. Russia has exported around 2 million metric tons so far this August. Over the past five years, the average for August has been around 5 million metric tons of Russian wheat. These are not some small amounts at the margins of global trade. Two of the world's most important wheat exporters are currently having far more trouble getting their grain to market while the military confrontation on and over the Black Sea continues. Rostov now offers a very practical look at what that means: The harvest is there, the buyers are there, but between the two sit closed ports, dangerous sea routes and warehouses that keep getting fuller.
For Russia, this has become more than a logistical headache. When one of the country's most important agricultural regions has to declare a state of emergency because export routes are failing, the war has arrived somewhere Moscow never wanted it to reach - an industry that brings in billions every year and helps determine far beyond Russia what people pay for bread and flour. And the longer the ports cannot operate reliably, the less this remains a Russian problem.
The lake belongs to America now because someone kicked hard enough
In a video Donald Trump shared on his Truth Social page, Lake Ontario is not quietly renamed. Trump kicks over the sign reading "Lake Ontario" and puts "Lake America" in its place, as if history could be erased simply by kicking hard enough. What he cannot move, he at least kicks over, and the White House AI department hands out this garbage as a Trump victory. A man is confusing power with ownership here, and a kick with an argument.
What is disturbing is the rank of the person sending it. The President of the United States is showing the name of a Canadian lake being kicked to the ground after spending months hitting Canada with tariffs and saying he wants to make the country the 51st state. The kick is not some isolated idea. It comes after months of pressure in which a neighbor has been reduced to an object. Canada is not a piece of property where he gets to write his name, and Lake Ontario is not a golf course whose sign he happens to dislike.
You can laugh at the whole performance, and perhaps that is exactly where the danger lies. So much of it looks so absurd that you almost forget who is actually acting here. This is not some joke character. This is a man with real power turning the appropriation of another country's territory into a short entertainment video for his supporters. Getting used to it is the ally of the violation, because when something is presented as entertainment often enough, people rarely still read it for what it is. Other countries will soon recognize the contempt that is actually being expressed.
The video is already enough for a psychiatric assessment. For the political one, it is more than enough: This man should not be allowed to have power over any country, not even in his imagination.
