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Trump's speech announcement elicited fears from Democrats and voting rights advocates that he is planning yet another play for control over voting in November.

I was full of positivity when I began reading the National Survey for Wales, but the questions quickly grew deeper and deeper

Have I done any hang-gliding in the last four weeks? Hang on (no pun intended), let me think. No, not as far as I can recall. No hang-gliding. Will leave that box unticked.

Filling in the National Survey for Wales is a dizzying experience. One minute you’re exasperated with how long this trivial pursuit is taking, the next you’re into some serious soul-searching. Guilt-inducing, thought-provoking, sometimes moving. There’s a lot going on.

We’re now closing this blog. Please join us on our new live blog covering Donald Trump’s speech to the nation tonight.

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The average price of diesel fuel in the US has increased again to more than $5 a gallon, according to the AAA, and the average price of gas is almost $4, returning to their highs before the June memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran.

It’s a reminder to consumers and truckers of the costs of the Iran war and the unpredictable rhetoric from both Washington and Tehran. A year ago today, the AAA says, the average price for a gallon of diesel was $3.72, almost a dollar and a quarter less than it is now.

Agreement combines Uber Eats with food delivery brands in 99 countries and expands taxi service reach

• Business live – latest updates

Uber has reached an agreement to take over the German takeaway company Delivery Hero in a $14.8bn (£11bn, or €12.9bn) deal that would create a global food delivery giant.

The US tech firm said it had offered to pay €41.50 a share to Delivery Hero’s shareholders, valuing the business at $14.8bn. Uber will pay $13.7bn after accounting for its previous purchases of a quarter of Delivery Hero’s shares, most recently in May.

Agreement combines Uber Eats with food delivery brands in 99 countries and expands taxi service reach

• Business live – latest updates

Uber has reached an agreement to take over the German takeaway company Delivery Hero in a $14.8bn (£11bn, or €12.9bn) deal that would create a global food delivery giant.

The US tech firm said it had offered to pay €41.50 a share to Delivery Hero’s shareholders, valuing the business at $14.8bn. Uber will pay $13.7bn after accounting for its previous purchases of a quarter of Delivery Hero’s shares, most recently in May.

Among Democratic voters, Israel’s reputation is in tatters.

Polls show Democratic voters have dramatically unfavorable views of Israel. Three incumbent Democrats who’ve supported Israel lost primaries in recent weeks; pro-Israel groups are spending millions of dollars to try to defeat high-profile candidates in other races. And there’s been dwindling Democratic support in Congress for weapons sales and even aid to the Jewish nation.

The basic reason is obvious: the devastation of the Gaza war. Yet though Democrats and especially young voters soured on the war soon after it began, rank-and-file Democrats did not initially turn so sharply against the country of Israel itself.

Indeed, a review of years of polling data shows that, in retrospect, the turning point — the year the bottom fell out — was 2025.

That year, a confluence of events — Donald Trump succeeding Joe Biden as president, Trump’s decision to join Israel’s attack on Iran, and that summer’s intense hunger crisis in Gaza — spurred a shift in which hostility toward Israel was no longer just for the Democratic left. Much of the party’s mainstream began feeling it too.

What’s resulted, pollster and University of Maryland scholar Shibley Telhami argued to me, has been “a paradigm shift.” The young generation of Democrats, Telhami said, quickly came to see Israel as “a genocidal villain” — and then many in the older generations came to a similar conclusion. 

That’s not to say that Democrats are now all-out opposed to Israel’s existence. In an email, Jake McClory of the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC pointed to his own group’s polling of Democrats from last October, which found that 75 percent say they support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish homeland.

But as bad as things are for Israel now, there’s still room to get worse. In one alarming sign for those sympathetic to the country, polls show that Democrats are now unfavorably disposed not just to the nation’s leaders — but also to its citizenry. A new Pew Research Center poll found that just 43 percent of Democrats say they view the Israeli people favorably — down from 58 percent in 2024.

This is partly why the question of timing matters. While Israel has struggled to maintain its support over the years, the arc of its decline suggests a complete collapse was not inevitable: Instead, the polling tells a story of Israel’s specific actions and partisan politics mixing together at a sensitive time to turn public opinion decisively against its government — and raise its importance in Democratic primaries.

How mainstream Democrats turned against Israel last year

In a sense, Democrats’ turn against Israel has been in the works for years. Gallup has polled voters about whether they are more sympathetic with the Israelis or the Palestinians for more than two decades. Among Democrats, a historic advantage for Israel tightened in the 2010s and vanished in the early 2020s.

Sympathy for Israel after the October 7, 2023, attacks quickly disappeared, as the country became viewed as the aggressor rather than the victim. In February 2024, 43 percent of Democrats sympathized with Palestinians more, and 35 percent sympathized with Israelis more.

“A few months after October 7, younger and progressive Democrats overwhelmingly took the opinion that Israel was committing a genocide,” Hamid Bendaas of the Institute for Middle East Understanding, a pro-Palestinian advocacy group, told me. “But there were still elements of the Democratic Party — people watching MSNBC or NPR — that weren’t convinced. And the Biden administration was going back and forth.”

Indeed, Biden had attempted a kind of “middle ground” approach to the conflict, in which he tried to rein in Israel’s actions in Gaza somewhat while remaining sympathetic to the Israelis’ war aims. 

But Biden’s status as the leader of the Democratic Party also complicated the debate. Protests against Israel, like the “uncommitted” movement, were divisive not just because of disagreements over the war, but because many Democrats saw them as undermining Biden (and later Kamala Harris) ahead of the 2024 election. When pro-Israel groups successfully backed challenges to left-wing incumbents that cycle, the ads often focused not on Israel but on their targets’ perceived disloyalty to Biden. 

Once Trump took office and began working closely with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, this concern dissipated — and what Bendaas calls the “partisan-ization” of Israel took place. The pro-Israeli view of the conflict became much more associated with the GOP — and many older Democrats with more mainstream views began viewing Israel more negatively, as polarization did its work.

Milan Singh, a commentator at the center-left publication The Argument, concurred, recently writing: “When Trump came back into office, it was like a pressure valve was released. Older Democrats no longer felt conflicted between loyalty to their party’s leader and the arguments of elites they trusted.”

Indeed, by February 2025, the gap between Democrats’ sympathy for the Israelis and Palestinians in Gallup polling had turned into a chasm. 59 percent of Democrats now said they sympathized with Palestinians more, and just 21 percent sympathized more with Israelis. (In the same period, the share of Republicans and independents who said they were sympathetic to Israel also decreased, though by much less dramatic margins.)

These changes put public support for Israel on very shaky ground. But the events of the next few months sent it crashing through that floor, while also raising the issue’s importance among primary voters. 

In March, a brief ceasefire collapsed and fighting in Gaza resumed. 

Then in June, Trump joined Israel in attacking Iran’s nuclear program, a decision that was overwhelmingly opposed by Democratic voters. 

And later in the summer, a hunger crisis in Gaza, widely blamed on Israel’s mishandling of food aid, was heavily covered and drew condemnations even from typically reliable defenders within the party. That July, a majority of Senate Democrats voted to block a weapons sale to Israel, a high watermark at the time that’s only grown since then.

All the while, Israel’s polling among Democrats kept on worsening. A Quinnipiac poll last August found that 77 percent of Democrats thought Israel had committed genocide (a sharp increase from earlier polls), and that just 13 percent of Democrats sympathized with the Israelis more than the Palestinians.

But perhaps the most striking shift has been in views of the Israeli people. 

In Pew Research Center polls both before and after the October 7 attacks, Democrats’ views on the Israeli people had remained fairly stable — suggesting many were making a distinction between government policies they opposed and affection for the country’s people. 

This mirrors the way Democratic politicians often talk about Israel, with many criticizing Netanyahu and his governing coalition while stressing their support for the country’s people and their security. That’s true even of some candidates who’ve made criticism of Israel central to their campaigns: Brad Lander, who defeated Rep. Dan Goldman in New York with left-wing support last month, identifies as a “liberal Zionist.” 

By September 2025, though, the number of Democrats saying they viewed the Israeli people favorably had dropped significantly — from 58 percent the previous year, down to 48 percent. 

And another Pew poll released last week found that number had dropped yet further, to 43 percent. Conversely, Democrats’ views of the Palestinian people (67 percent favorable, in last week’s poll) haven’t changed much over this period.

This new reality is already having major ramifications in Democratic primary elections across the country — and is likely to weigh heavily on contenders for the party’s 2028 presidential nomination. What once was a split on Israel among the Democratic base has become a consensus: Most of their voters view the country very negatively indeed.

Timmy: Hope Dies Last elevates stranded humpback into Jesus-like figure, igniting hope and grief

When people in Germany organised a daring rescue mission for a humpback whale stranded on the Baltic coast in April, it briefly looked like a country stricken with political division and economic anxiety was rallying around a common cause.

A new satirical play inspired by the episode, however, suggests the spectators, social media influencers, politicians and millionaires who flocked to the seaside in support never just wanted to rescue the cetacean that came to be nicknamed Timmy, but for Timmy to rescue them.

Timmy: Hope Dies Last portrays stranded humpback as saviour for a divided country, igniting both optimism and grief

When people in Germany organised a daring rescue mission for a humpback whale stranded on the Baltic coast in April, it briefly looked like a country stricken with political division and economic anxiety was rallying around a common cause.

A new satirical play inspired by the episode, however, suggests the spectators, social media influencers, politicians and millionaires who flocked to the seaside in support never just wanted to rescue the cetacean that came to be nicknamed Timmy, but for Timmy to rescue them.

Looking for a new reading recommendation? Here are some fantastic new paperbacks, from the gripping story of an international murder case to a state-of-the-nation yarn

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Marco Rubio has offered nonsensical rationale in attacking the court. The Trump administration’s real goal is impunity

With the pointless war of choice in Iran going poorly, the Trump administration has declared a virtual war on the international criminal court (ICC). Secretary of state, Marco Rubio, vowed on Monday to “dismantle” the court as a supposed threat to US sovereignty. His rationale is laced with sophistry. The administration’s real goal is to secure impunity for war crimes, even those committed on the territory of ICC member states.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed and a video posted on X, Rubio conjures up a dystopia in which local American officials such as police officers or border patrol agents “could be dragged before an international court, tried by judges from random countries across the globe, found guilty under international laws we neither consent to nor control, and then imprisoned thousands of miles from America”.

Lewd propositions, drunken tirades, groping, grumbling and grubby behaviour – cabin crew have to experience it all, at altitude. They open up about the horrors they’ve seen from passengers and colleagues

Last week, right at the start of this year’s holiday season, a 30-year-old drunk British holidaymaker tried to kiss a male flight attendant on a plane, spent a week in Mallorca presumably thinking his actions were consequence-free, and was then arrested on his way back through Palma airport. In February, Jet2 banned two passengers from the airline for life after a mid-air brawl on a flight from Turkey to Manchester, and last week BA had to cancel a flight back from Barbados, because (some) members of the crew were still too drunk from the hotel bar to operate it. There’s a connection between these incidents, and it’s not just as flight attendant Thomas, 27, puts it: “Well, drunk Brits – you know how that goes”.

The term “air rage” was coined in the 90s, but the behaviour it describes went through the roof post-Covid. In 2021, the number of reported incidents in the US was greater than in the previous three decades combined. A new category of misdemeanour had appeared – mask non-compliance.

Watching England lose is one thing. Watching them lose surrounded by millions celebrating Argentina’s march to another World Cup final, is completely different

Look, most people were awfully good about it. Our waiter at a restaurant near Plaza de Mayo shook our hands warmly and said nice things about Jude Bellingham. On the metro ride back from the fan zone there was no massive gloating either, just bright-eyed kids in Lionel Messi shirts swept along by the nationwide euphoria. “Vamos, vamos, Argentina,” they sang, barely able to believe that their team were once again heading to a World Cup final.

To be a stray English bystander in a city totally awash in sky blue and white was a rare privilege. Some of us covering England’s rugby union tour have been lucky enough to visit a few memorable sporting cauldrons, but to be in Buenos Aires after Argentina defeated England at a football World Cup is right up there.

The annual rundown of Guardian writers picking their most played tracks of the season goes from club-ready pop to sunny tech house

• Check out a Spotify playlist of the choices

Kim Petras’ greatest song to date is also the best outsider country song in recent memory: if Ethel Cain and Lana Del Rey could ever put the beef behind them and duet, the dusty gutter romance of Jeep is exactly how you’d want it to sound. The song creates a flyover state love story in a strangely effective union of hyperpop and Americana, creating a windswept fantasy of “doing some middle America shit” with your man: Four Loko-fueled hookups, gas station canoodling and screaming along to rage music beneath the stars. The truly audacious thing is the bridge, a whispered and impressionistic slur that feels like Petras is eight drinks deep, doing donuts in her car until everything blurs. It’s total make-believe, but Petras is so good at making you feel her longing that it gets me choked up. When she recently came out at a Charli xcx show to perform Jeep unannounced, it already felt like an anthem. Owen Myers