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.
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.
The movement has often seen its ideas flourish as its organizations withered. Will today’s resurgence follow the same course?
The Ubiquitous Melancholy of Max Richter
The composer’s song “On the Nature of Daylight” has popped up in countless sob fests including “Arrival” and “Hamnet.” With billions of streams, he’s become one of the most popular and successful composers of our time.
An N.B.A. Player Got Hooked on Sports Betting. Soon, He Became the Bet
Jontay Porter got deep into FanDuel, and in debt to the wrong people. The only way out, it seemed, was to gamble on himself.
IDLER MAGAZINE: This Christmas special of The Idler (issue 113) mixes the seasonal with the quirky, promising the secrets of churchyard lichens, a tale of Dickens’ favourite outlaw, the oyster thief, John Harris on why he hates whistling, an explanation of why fitness gadgets fail, a new Bullshit Detector column with Murray Lachlan Young, and a first-person story of becoming a chimney sweep, plus Georgia Mann, Rowley Leigh and Arthur Smith, a Yayoi Kusama exhibition, a Cinderella story, spies on screen, walks around old York, lunch in Whitstable, scientists in sheds, a car turned into canvas, allotments, cassoulet, saving with sumo and Christmas ukulele albums.
Don’t rake them away, let them decay. Autumn’s fallen leaves will enrich your garden’s soil – or you can turn them into multi-purpose leaf mould, says Graham Burnett
Look at the trees nearest to where you are right now. Whether in your back garden, local park, woodland or out of a train window, they don’t seem to be doing much, do they? But trees are far from idle, even though much of their activity happens in ways imperceptible to our senses.
Since early spring, tap roots have been constantly pumping underground water and soil nutrients to the highest branches of the leafy canopy. Each of those tens of thousands of individual leaves is a highly efficient solar panel carrying out the magic of photosynthesis.
Join “A Drink with the Idler” as we chat to journalist Sarah O’Connor about the future of work in a world with AI, the perils and the potential.
Sarah O’Connor talks to Idler editor Tom about how AI and robots can change the ways we work, in both sinister and useful ways, and how we can harness new technology and shape its development in a way that makes jobs better, safer and more enjoyable.
Join Sarah and Tom as they discuss the ideas in her book We Are Not Machines, which is inspired by stories from nineteenth-century English cotton mills to twenty-first century Swedish mines, and how we can fight for work which is more respectful of our limits, and more worthy of our minds.
The discussion between Sarah and Tom will be followed by a live Q&A when you will be given the chance to ask Sarah your own questions.
We’ll have a philosophical “Thought for the Week” from Dr Mark Vernon and the event will be hosted by Idler Academy director Victoria Hull.
Welcome to How the Stoics Can Help You Get Happy. Over six lessons, Idler editor Tom will teach you how to apply Stoic wisdom to your outlook on life. Drawing on the ideas of ancient Greek philosophers from Zeno to Socrates and Plato, and touching on themes of politics, love, freedom and death, Tom will show you how the Stoics can help you live a happier life.
By leaning into nativist absolutism, Netanyahu almost doubled the Arab vote, creating a political — and foundational — crisis for Israel.By Roger Cohen
In 1995, Itamar Ben-Gvir appeared on camera brandishing the hood ornament of the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s Cadillac. “We got to his car,” he vowed, “and we’ll get him, too.” Soon after, in one of history’s most successful assassinations, Rabin was killed by a fanatical religious-nationalist Jew, and 27 years later the teenage hoodlum who boasted of his theft became Israel’s minister of national security.
There is perhaps no better representation of Israel’s steady march rightward over the past three decades than the ascent of Ben-Gvir to the high office he still holds. The vandal became responsible for preventing vandalism, the ethnocentric fanatic for stopping sectarian violence. This unhappy outcome, and its predictable consequences, reflects the nationalist and more messianic country that Israel has become as the idea of a two-state peace, the ultimate target of Rabin’s assassination, withered and died.
There used to be an honorable way to try to profit from online infamy: selling nearly worthless memecoins. The machines could take it over. By Willy Staley
I’m not afraid to admit it, right here in the newspaper: It finally happened to me. I saw an A.I. video, and I thought — if that’s the right word — it was real. It showed a guy standing on a street corner somewhere in Europe, with an insane haircut and a houndstooth suit, shadowboxing while a French rap song played in the background. In his misplaced confidence and swagger, he called to mind a protomemetic figure from my youth, Napoleon Dynamite.
This was Jean Phil, someone who — as far as anyone can tell — doesn’t exist. Has never existed. Was conjured from a bunch of NVIDIA chips in a low-slung building outside of Kenosha.
The term captures the self-defeating loop of losing and not being able to stop. It also describes doomscrolling, politics and our society’s default state. By Mitch Therieau
Five experts on how best to limit a rapidly evolving technology. By Emily Bazelon
Oct. 26, 2026
Artificial intelligence is alarming many of its human creators by leaping the guardrails designed to contain it. In the last few months, safety researchers have resigned from OpenAI and Anthropic, warning that their former employers could be courting disaster: A.I. that escapes our control irrevocably. The companies are reportedly gaming out scenarios of a catastrophic cyberattack or other event in the next six to 12 months.
President Donald Trump got one of the rarest things in American politics: a second chance. Voters rendered the verdict that he blew it. By W. James Antle III
