issue: Foreign Policy & Defense

Ainsley and Mattinson for The Observer: Why working-class voters have turned their backs on Labour

Posted on by Alex Terr

Before Andy Burnham takes power on Monday, he could do worse than spend a moment reflecting on what happened to Keir Starmer’s landslide victory and 17% post-election poll lead. How did Starmer end up trailing Nigel Farage and Reform UK just two years later? Why have so many working-class voters once again turned their backs on Labour?

Many had returned in 2024 after leaving the party in 2019, but now feel deeply let down. Reflecting on this is well worth Burnham’s time because Labour’s relationship with working-class supporters, once its core vote, is in peril. Yet there is no route to a parliamentary majority without them.

Of course, this is not just an electoral imperative – championing the rights of working-class voters is most progressive parties’ moral mission.

Read more in the Observer

Trump’s Claims on Election Security, Foreign Influence Do Nothing but Weaken America’s Trust in Elections

Posted on by Alex Terr

WASHINGTON (July 17, 2026) — Today, Danielle Steitz, Director of National Security Policy at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), released the following statement in response to President Donald Trump’s speech yesterday evening on election security:

“Six years ago, Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden. This simple fact has become taboo to utter in the Republican Party because Donald Trump cannot and will not accept it. Trump’s address last night, where he alleged that China had interfered with the 2020 presidential election, would be laughable if the implications for American democracy were not so serious.

“The president’s claims of Chinese interference are not substantiated by any of the documents whose declassification he has directed. The intelligence community’s assessment has been clear from the start — there are no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 U.S. elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results. The cherry-picked declassification of intelligence reports from singular, unvetted human sources with no corroboration or verification is yet another example of Trump weaponizing the vital work of American intelligence for personal gain.

“To be clear, foreign influence operations around U.S. elections remain a bipartisan concern, and there is much to be done to strengthen resilience against these efforts to exacerbate divisions in American society. If President Trump wished to confront these issues, he could reverse the drastic cuts his administration has made to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. He could restore the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, the intelligence community’s Foreign Malign Influence Center, and the State Department’s Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Office — all three organizations that were slashed or shuttered by members of his cabinet. Instead, Trump chooses grievance politics and rambling White House speeches that only weaken American trust in free and fair elections.

“The president and his administration would do well to listen to the recommendation approved by their colleague Marco Rubio in 2020: given the ‘significant national security and electoral consequences’ of allegations around the safety of elections, ‘sitting officials and candidates should use the absolute greatest amount of restraint and caution if they are considering publicly calling the validity of an upcoming election into question.’ Trump’s continued crusade of unsubstantiated allegations that call democratic elections into question only serves the interests of foreign adversaries who wish to see America weakened and divided.”

Founded in 1989, PPI is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Find an expert and learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Follow us at @PPI.

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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org

Jacoby on CNN: The impact of Ukraine Patriot System Manufacturing and What It Is Like to Endure a Russian Attack

Posted on by Max Sherrill

Jacoby appeared on CNN to discuss her experience of the Russian bombardment of Kyiv on the July 2 Russian bombardment of Kyiv. She described navigating the attacks firsthand and addressed the pending approval for Ukraine to begin manufacturing Patriot interceptors to strengthen its defense capabilities. Also, Jacoby noted that this approval remains contingent on President Trump, highlighting that while his current support is encouraging, uncertainty persists regarding his long-term commitment and the level of cooperation from industry partners.

Jacoby on Background Briefing: What it is Like to Have Russian Missiles and Drones Heading for Your Apartment Building

Posted on by Alex Terr

Background Briefing with Ian Masters · What it is Like to Have Russian Missiles and Drones Heading For Your Apartment Building

We speak with Tamar Jacoby, the Kyiv-based director of the Progressive Policy Institute’s New Ukraine Project. She was a senior writer and justice editor at Newsweek and, before that, the deputy editor of the New York Times op-ed page. She is the author of The Ukrainian Refugee Experience and as Putin intensifies his bombardment of civilian targets in Kyiv ahead of the NATO summit after a 90 minute phone call with Trump on the 4th of July, we discuss what it is like when Russian ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and swarms of drones are heading for your apartment building

Steitz on Substack: NATO is Facing a Catch-22 Thanks to Trump

Posted on by Alyssa Brown

The administration wants its European allies to spend more on American weapons, but is making it impossible for them to do so.

As the leaders of NATO’s 32 member nations arrive this week in Turkey to discuss their implementation plans for a record military buildup, some are rightly starting to worry that Donald Trump has plunged them into a classic Catch-22.

On the one hand, the U.S. president has demanded that Europe spend more on its own defense and buy more American-made weapons. On the other hand, his administration is making it increasingly impossible to do just that by delaying the delivery of already-purchased weapons systems and implementing changes restricting future sales.

The paradox is drawing frustrated Joseph Heller references in Europe. And if it isn’t somehow resolved, it could fatally undermine Trump’s own stated goal of having the continent shoulder more of its own protection.

Trump’s pressure was instrumental in nudging America’s NATO allies to commit to spending 5% of GDP each year on defense by 2035 at last year’s summit in the Hague, up from the old 2% threshold that was itself rarely met. Since then, the administration has continued signaling that Europe will not be able to rely on America alone for its defense.

Over the past 8 weeks alone, the U.S. has notified allies that the United States would be reducing its contributions to the NATO Force Model and has announced a six-month review of its military posture in Europe. These actions are being undertaken by the U.S. under the guise of creating “NATO 3.0,” a European-led, “post-Cold War embodiment of the defense alliance” which the Department of Defense describes as “what President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth believe the alliance should be.”

Continue reading on Substack. 

Ainsley on Moral Maze: Are America’s founding ideals a reality or a myth?

Posted on by Alex Terr

In 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, endowed with unalienable rights… life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. During his lifetime Jefferson owned more than 620 slaves. As America marks 250 years since the Declaration, that contradiction is impossible to look past: a document of universal liberty, written by men who denied it to the women in their households, the people they enslaved, and the nations whose land they were settling.

One reading says this was hypocrisy – that “all men” never meant all men, that the rhetoric of equality was cover for the interests of rich, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, and that the centuries of struggle since have been a slow correction of a lie dressed up as a promise. Another reading says something genuinely radical was set loose that day – a principle larger than its authors, one that would eventually demand Abolition, Enfranchisement and the end of Segregation, precisely because the words of the Declaration meant more than the men who put their names to it could envisage. On this account, the Founding Fathers endorsed an ideal and left their descendants to grow into it.

That same split runs through America today. The current presidency has departed from constitutional norms everyone had assumed were solid – over courts, elections, the press and the limits of executive power. One view says this is a crisis the Republic will survive: a serious one, but a blip in the two and a half centuries during which American institutions have weathered civil war, economic depression, and social upheaval, and during which the founding ideals have always held firm. The soul of America gets shaken, but it holds. The other view says the Republic was never held together by Constitutional Law – it was held together by a myth – a shared belief, perhaps deluded, that Americans would behave decently and that the norms would prevail. Once a leader has tested every one of those boundaries and paid no price, the myth shatters, and there is nothing to stop the next leader from going further. On this view, the current administration is a distorted reflection of what America truly is.

Listen to the podcast

Steitz for The Hill: Eliminating This Crucial Intelligence Agency Would Make America Less Safe

Posted on by Alex Terr

President Trump has announced his intent to nominate Jay Clayton as the director of National Intelligence, with the controversial Bill Pulte set to take the reins as acting director upon Tulsi Gabbard’s accelerated departure last week. While it remains to be seen how long Pulte will serve in the role, Trump has stated that he intends to have Pulte reduce the size of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), calling it “unnecessary and/or too big.”

Apparently not content with the reported 40 percent workforce reduction and declining morale inflicted by Gabbard, Trump is pushing for Clayton to lead a dramatically smaller and weaker office. This would be a massive mistake that undermines the necessary role ODNI plays in coordinating the 18 organizations comprising the intelligence community.

ODNI is not a perfect organization, and there are reforms to be made. Its mission and its staff size have grown over time, and careful study is warranted in order to right-size both. However, as Senate Intelligence Vice Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) stated, serious discussion is necessary before dismantling organizations created to address failures identified after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Reducing the office’s ability to deconflict intelligence collection resources and provide strategic guidance on national intelligence priorities would be a colossal step backward and would make America less safe.

PPI Responds to Clayton Nomination Delay: President Trump is Playing Politics with America’s National Security

Posted on by Alex Terr

WASHINGTON (June 17, 2026) — Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) Director of National Security Policy Danielle Steitz released the following statement regarding President Trump’s decision to delay Jay Clayton’s nomination as Director of National Intelligence and to add new conditions to FISA Section 702 extension efforts:

“Two weeks ago, during the middle of bipartisan negotiations on an extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), President Trump announced his intent to appoint Bill Pulte as the acting director of national intelligence. Pulte is a private equity executive with no intelligence, military, or national security experience of any kind – indeed, he’s never even held a security clearance — whose sole qualification appears to be his willingness to abuse his authority to retaliate against Trump’s critics and political adversaries. At present, Pulte remains under investigation by the Government Accountability Office for grossly abusing his authority as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency to initiate fraud probes against such Trump targets as Lisa Cook, Adam Schiff, and Letitia James.

“In naming Pulte as acting DNI and remarking on his hopes that Pulte would use the position to look into ‘rigged elections’ — a clear reference to his loss in the 2020 presidential campaign — Trump made it clear that he prioritized personal grievances over national security, and effectively blew up any chance of preventing Section 702 from lapsing. FISA Section 702 hit its statutory sunset date on June 13, and it remains lapsed as of today — setting the stage for what may be the longest lapse in the history of Section 702.

“This morning’s Truth Social rant from President Trump provides yet another example of his dangerous lack of care for national security. In it, he railed against the Senate’s desire to fast-track confirmation of Jay Clayton, his own nominee, to serve as director of national intelligence. He continued on to decree that he had ‘canceled’ a hearing called by a coequal branch of government, and then absurdly stated that ‘to add a slight bit of intrigue,’ he would not approve a FISA Section 702 extension without passage of the SAVE Act.

“This ‘intrigue’ is nothing more than pure political gamesmanship with national security at stake. Intelligence collection under FISA Section 702 is reliant upon cooperation with US electronic communications service providers like Verizon or Google. Section 702 allows the government to compel providers to share data on targets for specific reasons in exchange for liability immunity; letting Section 702 lapse means that the mechanism to compel that cooperation and the liability immunity both disappear, potentially fracturing cooperation with private businesses who could choose to challenge government directives and deny access to vital information.

“This type of legal uncertainty around the status of a critical authority was absolutely avoidable had Donald Trump not dismantled months of bipartisan negotiations with his irresponsible and indefensible demands. Instead, right as high-profile events like the FIFA World Cup and celebrations around America’s 250th birthday are taking place in the United States, the Intelligence Community is facing tremendous uncertainty around the use of an incredibly valuable tool to counter potential terrorist threats against the U.S. and the American public.

“When the Intelligence Community is not certain that it will have access to the data it needs to keep Americans safe, that should be of paramount concern to any leader. Instead, President Trump has chosen to jeopardize the safety of these events in order to push Congress to pass an entirely unrelated piece of legislation that the president has repeatedly failed to pass on its own merits.

“This behavior is unacceptable and would be unthinkable from any other U.S. president, but is sadly not surprising at all from Trump. Instead, today’s temper tantrum is yet another example of him putting his own priorities above the safety and security of the American people.”

Founded in 1989, PPI is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Find an expert and learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Follow us at @PPI.

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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org

Ainsley for Fondation Jean Jaures: The “Third Left”: Sovereign Citizens

Posted on by Alex Terr

Each day brings new proof that the old order is crumbling: sometimes a further violation of the international rules and norms that have governed the globalized world for half a century, sometimes an advance in artificial intelligence with no regard for citizens’ safety. Life in the mid-2020s feels like an accelerated collapse. In English, we would say that we are walking on  black ice  : that invisible ice that forms on the roads, snatches your feet without warning, and against which brakes are useless.

We are experiencing one of the great transformations of our societies, and the left, for the most part, has missed the boat. Incapable of seizing the pivotal moment to steer the change toward a fairer, more humane, and more sustainable order, it watches as the right holds sway on both sides of the Atlantic, despite a few notable electoral victories for the center-left. These victories are often narrow, snatched with meager votes or built on makeshift coalitions, governing against the tide while absorbing the domestic repercussions of global shocks. Every conquest for the center-left matters: it brings to power a government committed to fairness and progress, hostile to the extremism of national populists. The strengthened coordination between center-left parties worldwide is indeed producing tangible electoral results. But these victories often remain marginal, based too much on mobilization against the adversary rather than for a shared vision, which fails to generate lasting support. Beyond tactical successes, the center-left lacks a program capable of defeating nationalist populists for good. It is in this void that the politics of the “third left” can emerge: finally defining what the center-left is and for whom it fights, rather than defining itself by what it doesn’t.

The emerging post-identity “third left” is resolutely turning the page on the identity politics that has plagued a segment of the left and which the right now exploits to sow social and cultural discord. As Renaud Large explains in a collective report , this identity politics failed to provide the left with the intellectual framework necessary to adapt to the major transformations of the world; it distanced it from the class politics that fueled collective movements for greater equality. Blind to class, identity politics failed to forge the solidarity necessary for winning coalitions; it even severed ties with working-class communities, which are essential for any lasting electoral base. Advances in the rights of women, racial minorities, and LGBTQ+ people would never have occurred if the debate had remained confined to university campuses. Seeking common interests at the intersection of class and identity remains today a sine qua non condition for greater social equality and the re-establishment of the left as a decisive political force.

Read more in Fondation Jean Jaures

Ainsley on Talking Progress: Industrial Heartlands: Shifting the Tide through Local Leadership

Posted on by Alex Terr

How can structural transformation in former industrial regions be managed in a way that fosters economic resilience, climate action, and democratic trust?

In the fifth episode of our “Talking Progress” series, we put the spotlight on the crucial role of local governance. Looking at the Industrial Heartlands in both the US and Germany, we explore how local governments shape the day-to-day lives of citizens, and why delivering reliable answers on the ground is the most effective remedy against the populist radical-right.

Jacoby for Washington Monthly: Could the Tide Be Turning in Ukraine?

Posted on by Alex Terr

Fire Point CEO Iryna Terekh remembers the moment in February when long-range cruise missiles manufactured by her defense technology company struck a Russian arms factory in Votkinsk, nearly 900 miles from Ukraine. The Votkinsk plant manufactures the Kinzhal and Iskander ballistic missiles that Moscow regularly rains down on Kyiv and other cities. Three of Fire Point’s powerful Flamingo missiles hit the plant’s electroplating and stamping facility, and a Russian video captured a giant fireball burning on the horizon.

“We’re finally hitting the archer,” Terekh, a small, slender engineer with dark hair and aviator glasses, tells me with a smile. “That’s much more effective than stopping the arrows. Votkinsk was my first sense that something was really changing.”

The Votkinsk strike was just the beginning. Ukraine has been pounding Russia with long-range weapons—missiles and drones—all spring. After one startling mid-May assault on Moscow, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported intercepting 628 drones over 14 regions, destroying 120 above Moscow. Ukrainian strikes damaged critical infrastructure across Russia, including the Moscow Oil Refinery and a major semiconductor plant, killing three, injuring 18, and causing severe delays at the capital’s main international airport.

Particularly stunning and effective are the now almost daily Ukrainian drone and missile strikes on Russian oil facilities. Kyiv has doubled the tempo of attacks in recent months, boosting the effect with repeated hits on the same refinery—sometimes several in a single week. In late May, Reuters reported the attacks had stopped or scaled back operations at all major fuel refineries in central Russia, cutting 30 percent of Russia’s gasoline output and 25 percent of its diesel fuel production. What Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wryly calls “long-range sanctions” also target Russian pipelines and storage facilities. The campaign has forced the Kremlin to halt gasoline exports and dented the tax revenues Moscow relies on to finance its war machine.

Read more in Washington Monthly

Ainsley in IPS Journal: ‘Britain is moving into a multi-party era’

Posted on by Alex Terr

[…]

Labour suffered a historic defeat in last week’s local elections, leaving both the party and Prime Minister Keir Starmer badly weakened. In response, Starmer tried to regain the initiative with a forceful speech. Did he succeed?

He made a strong speech yesterday in making the case for why his government should be allowed to continue. It was quite personal, which is something he hasn’t always been able to do. But there are still many question marks over whether his leadership will last until the end of this Parliament, which is what he was elected to do. Principally because of concerns within his own parliamentary party following Thursday’s election results and a fairly long run-up of rumbling discontent about whether he really has the credentials to lead the country in a moment of global uncertainty and domestic difficulty. However, it remains to be seen whether it will be enough for the parliamentary party to get behind him.

Starmer insisted he would fight any leadership challenge and would not walk away from his responsibilities as prime minister. How secure is his position?

Technically, he was elected for five years, so there doesn’t have to be another election until July 2029. On paper, he is in a secure position and he’s got a big majority in Parliament. Theoretically, he should be able to get through the laws the government wants to pass.

In practice, however, his position has been weakened by these elections and by growing discontent in the country, which had already been visible in the opinion polls beforehand. The elections really confirmed what the polls have been saying for some time: like in a number of other European countries, the main centre-ground parties – both Labour and the Conservatives – are losing support to Reform UK on the right and the Green Party on the left.

And this is the first time that has really happened in the UK. I think the multi-party element of what’s happening is being overlooked. There is a lot of fixation on Keir Starmer and Labour without fully recognising that voters are abandoning the traditional centre-ground parties and moving towards what were previously minority parties. But none of those parties currently commands more than about a quarter of the electorate.

[…]

Read more in IPS Journal

Ainsley on ABC Australia’s Radio National Breakfast: More than 80 Labour MPs are now calling for the British Prime Minister to resign

Posted on by Alex Terr

Critics and supporters of the British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer are asking how long he can hold the top job.

More than 80 Labour MPs have now publicly urged Sir Keir to resign immediately or draw up an exit timetable, with four ministers stepping down.

Meanwhile more than 100 Labour MPs have signed a statement opposing a leadership contest. So which side will prevail?

Listen on ABC Australia