Donald Trump was dealt a devastating blow in the US midterm elections last week that saw his Republican party stripped of control of both the Senate and the House.
Our big story this week assesses the transformed political landscape ushered in by this blue tsunami.
The Republicans’ shellacking spells the end of Maga as we know it, writes David Smith, while Chris Stein runs through the likely Democrat agenda for the coming two years, and Uwa Ede-Osifo and Auzzy Byrdsell run through 10 historic firsts recorded as candidates shattered racial and gender ceilings.
Looking beyond the US, Deepa Parent spoke to Iranians about their feelings of uncertainty following the midterm elections, and Alice Speri says the results were a thumping rebuke of Washington’s relationship with Israel.
Then, foreign affairs commentator Simon Tisdall asks what the implications of Trump’s waning powers are for Iran, Russia, Israel – and the rest of the world.
Spotlight| A new cold war Do hot fridges, a fake nuclear alert and a $6bn heist suggest we in the foothills of a hacking epidemic, ask Dan Milmo and Aisha Down
Science| Deep secrets Beneath South Dakota’s Black Hills, scientists are building giant detectors to analyse neutrino particles – and possibly find the answer to existence. Ian Sample reports
Feature| An Indian political dynasty In a rare interview, Sonia Gandhi talks to Hannah Ellis-Petersen about her reluctant rise to power, Narendra Modi’s repressive regime – and why youth protests give her hope for the future
Opinion| A landmark victory on consent Russell Brand’s conviction for rape and sexual assault upholds the vital principle that women can say no, even after they’ve said yes, writes Gaby Hinsliff
In April 2025 in Leeds, a 38-year-old man attacked two women with a crossbow after consuming immense amounts of misogynistic, anti-feminist and racist content online. He left behind a manifesto and an online footprint peppered with neo-Nazi and violent incel (involuntary celibate) references. Weeks earlier, UK police foiled a threatened Valentine’s Day massacre by a teenage boy, who was later sentenced for releasing personal information online, a practice known as “doxing”, to encourage attacks against his female classmates.
Hezbollah’s conflict with Israel and the U.S.-Israel war with Iran have made systemic problems worse, causing the cost of living to soar and driving many Lebanese to despair.
It’s not clear whether the party’s midterm success signals a broad realignment in American politics or a temporary turn away from an unpopular president.
GPS-linked devices have been insisting that Ukrainians are in Lima, the Peruvian capital. The culprit is a jamming system built to thwart Russian airstrikes.
Governance experts question whether the board, which is investigating Mr. Huang’s conduct, has been too deferential as he has turned Nvidia into a global giant.
The A.I. company’s pricing would make it one of the biggest ever public listings. It comes at a volatile moment amid fears that the A.I. boom may not be sustainable.
President Claudia Sheinbaum drew a firm line barring U.S. forces from operating on Mexican soil. But in a northern border state, one local partner quietly helped the agency build a foothold.
The kingdom’s promised reforms don’t always match the realities of its justice system. Unmarried women, particularly foreign workers, face unique perils.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has shown a willingness to endure a high price to get what he wants in Ukraine, and he sees little reason to stop fighting now, analysts say.
In The Atlantic’s December cover story, “The Geo-Located Generation,” staff writer Sarah Zhang explores how constant surveillance is stunting children and making parents paranoid. Parents today can functionally track their children 24/7 from the moment they’re born through adulthood, starting with products such as the Snoo Smart Bassinet and Apple’s AirTags sewn into toddler backpacks and moving to apps such as Find My Friends and Life 360. Zhang examines how this is affecting kids, and namely their resilience and independence––but also how it’s affecting their parents.
If the board decides to punish Jensen Huang, who admitted to a relationship with a woman suspected of being a Chinese spy, there is no obvious successor.
Working with the Trump administration, foreign partners accept deportees, then ship them to nations where the U.S. itself would be prohibited from sending them.
Crowds have flocked to the stern, but reassuring, face of Angela Merkel in her official portrait, even as a backlash to her legacy roils German politics.
Twelve paintings, one century, and the man who painted time
Twelve paintings by Claude Monet, 1868–1922. All are in the public domain.
On 5 December 1926, Claude Monet died at Giverny, aged 86, in the house where he had lived for more than forty years. A century later, the twelve paintings in our gallery show how one man taught the world to look at light instead of things.
It begins with a sunrise. In 1872 Monet painted the harbour at Le Havre in quick strokes: grey-blue mist, ghostly cranes and a small orange sun that seems to burn through the canvas. When he showed Impression, Sunrise at the first independent exhibition in 1874, the critic Louis Leroy mocked it in a review headlined “Exhibition of the Impressionists.” The insult stuck, and a movement had its name.
Earlier still, in The Magpie, he had painted snow in blue, violet and cream. The Salon jury rejected it in 1869. Then came the sunlit years at Argenteuil. In Poppy Field and Woman with a Parasol, the figures are his wife Camille and their son Jean, painted so quickly that the wind seems to move through the brushwork. In The Gare Saint-Lazare, Monet turned modern Paris into weather, making locomotive steam as beautiful as clouds.
In the 1890s he made his boldest discovery: the subject hardly mattered. He painted stacks of wheat near his home at every hour and season, then more than thirty views of Rouen Cathedral’s façade, its stone dissolving from dawn grey to noon gold. In London, working from St Thomas’ Hospital across the Thames, he painted Parliament as a dark silhouette against a burning sky. A building, a field or a river was only the occasion. The true subject was time.
At Giverny he built his own subject. He diverted a stream, dug a pond, planted water lilies and crossed it all with a Japanese bridge, then painted that garden for the rest of his life, some 250 canvases of lilies in all. On 12 November 1918, the day after the Armistice, he wrote to his friend Georges Clemenceau offering the nation water-lily paintings as a monument to peace. They were installed at the Musée de l’Orangerie in May 1927, five months after his death, in two oval rooms that surround visitors with water and sky.
The true subject was time.
The final picture in our gallery is the strangest. Cataracts had clouded Monet’s sight, and in The Japanese Footbridge, painted around 1920–22, the bridge almost disappears into blazes of red, ochre and blue. Critics once dismissed these late works as the failings of an old man. In the 1950s, as Abstract Expressionism rose in New York, they were rediscovered as visions of the future. Joan Mitchell later spent her last decades in Vétheuil, in a house overlooking the one Monet had rented in the late 1870s.
Paris is marking the centenary. Monet: Painting Time is at the Orangerie through January 25, and From Monet to Hockney is at the Musée Marmottan Monet, home of Impression, Sunrise, through January 31. Take the gallery above as an invitation. A hundred years on, Monet’s light has not finished changing.
The Gallery
Impression, Sunrise, 1872 · Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
The Magpie, 1868–69 · Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Poppy Field, 1873 · Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Woman with a Parasol – Madame Monet and Her Son, 1875 · National Gallery of Art, Washington
The Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877 · Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Stacks of Wheat (End of Summer), 1890–91 · Art Institute of Chicago
Rouen Cathedral, 1894 · One of more than thirty views of the façade
Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies, 1899 · The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Houses of Parliament, Sunset, 1903 · National Gallery of Art, Washington
Water Lilies, 1906 · Art Institute of Chicago
Water Lilies, 1914–26 · Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris
The Japanese Footbridge, c. 1920–22 · The Museum of Modern Art, New York
See it in Paris
Monet: Painting Time · Musée de l’Orangerie · through January 25, 2027
From Monet to Hockney · Musée Marmottan Monet · through January 31, 2027
— The Editors, Intellicurious —
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious
