Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Wednesday.
Trump cancels plans to sign a bipartisan housing billPresident Trump blindsided his allies on Capitol Hill again this morning when he canceled the signing of the first major housing bill to pass Congress in more than three decades. Republican lawmakers — who overwhelmingly supported the legislation along with nearly every Democrat — had hoped to use it to show voters that they were addressing high living costs before the midterm elections. But the president said he would not sign the measure until Congress passed a law imposing new limits on voter identification and mail-in ballots. Such restrictions do not have sufficient support to pass the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. In private, Trump also seethed over the Senate’s vote yesterday instructing him to end the war with Iran. This afternoon, Trump criticized the four Republicans who voted for the measure in a closed-door lunch at the Capitol. Senator Bill Cassidy engaged in a shouting match with the president. As of this evening, the fate of the housing measure is unclear: Technically, a bill can become law without Trump’s signature if he does not sign or veto it within 10 days while Congress is in session. But the House has not yet formally presented Trump with the bill, and the White House has not yet said what he would do with it. In other Trump administration news:
Western Europe is sweltering. Here’s why.More than a dozen European countries were under high-level heat warnings today as an unusually early and potentially dangerous heat wave gripped swaths of the continent. In Bordeaux, where it was 108 degrees, people flocked to the lakes. In Geneva, where it was 95 degrees, seniors were offered free movie tickets. See photos from the region. My colleague Raymond Zhong, a climate reporter, explained that the heat wave is part of a grim trend: For the past three decades, Europe has been warming faster than any other continent, in part because melting Arctic ice has exposed more dark, sun-absorbing ocean, and because the continent’s pollution controls keep reflective particles out of the air.
Rubio seeks to assure Gulf alliesSecretary of State Marco Rubio met with Gulf Arab leaders in Kuwait and the U.A.E. today, hoping to get their support as the U.S. tries to negotiate a long-term deal with Iran. Rubio stressed in particular that Iran would not be allowed to collect tolls or fees from ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. In Washington, Trump criticized Europe for not doing more to support the Iran war. “Just be loyal,” he said. In Iran, government supporters are promoting a new kind of nationalism that claims to embrace former dissenters, including unveiled women. In Lebanon, Israel says it has trapped dozens of Hezbollah militants inside an underground complex.
Myanmar has collapsed under civil warMore than 90,000 people have been killed in Myanmar and millions more have been displaced since the military toppled the civilian government in 2021, fueling a brutal civil war against hundreds of disparate rebel groups. The fighting has continued almost entirely outside the spotlight — and the focus of aid efforts. Two of my colleagues recently became the first foreign journalists to visit the country’s devastated interior since the war began. “We found a heartland that felt lost in an apocalypse,” our reporter Hannah Beech wrote. See what it’s like there. More top newsPolitics
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The clothes that got Milan talkingMy colleague Jacob Gallagher spent much of the last week hopscotching between shows at Milan Fashion Week to get a sense of what’s next for men’s style. One thing that caught his eye: the jeans at Prada, if you can even call them that. The brand’s collection focused entirely on the pants, which were all cropped, exceptionally tight and calibrated for this Ozempic moment. The looks are polarizing, but Jacob saw it as an effort to nudge the industry from elaborate concepts to the basics of clothes. For more: Jacob is now in Paris to cover the men’s shows there. Sign up for his newsletter to follow along.
Can A.I. find Brazil’s next Pelé?No place in the world exports more star soccer talent than Brazil, where the sport is deeply intertwined with everyday life. But finding that talent is no longer just a human endeavor. Top Brazilian teams, including the one where legends like Pelé and Neymar Jr. got their start, are feeding footage into A.I. programs so they can assess players on their speed, footwork and much more. Players can even upload their own footage to scouting apps in the hopes of being noticed. Here’s how it works. For more on soccer:
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