It is between irony and sarcasm that during the state dinner hosted by Donald Trump for Xi Jinping at the White House, it was Chinese television that showed the world the images of the pompous meeting. In fact, more pompous than productive. The television of the communist single-party state with a planned economy provided the images, while American networks suspended joint coverage in response to Donald Trump's veto.

Suddenly, signs appear that give reason to think that the fabrications that led to the regressive phase of the transition from liberal democracies to post-democratic authoritarianism are beginning to decline. It was Milton Friedman who said that "the invisible hand of the market is superior to any other institution that regulates economic life" and that, consequently, the "social responsibility of business is to increase its profits," when the rise of capital was unfolding against the post-war mixed economy. This logic has been imposing itself at the same time that liberals and social democrats were disturbingly blurring.

In December 2025, a good number of African countries had found themselves with a window of opportunity. The price of oil was low and in global markets it seemed there was more supply of oil than demand, a fact that would have kept energy prices stable. Most African countries are importers of gasoline and diesel, with prices that tend to move at the same rate as those of oil. At the end of February 2026, however, war broke out in Iran.

The general debate of the 81st United Nations General Assembly runs the risk of becoming a mere stage for an increasingly unilateral world. But, paradoxically, it is the only stage that continues to exist so that the 193 countries that are part of it can make themselves heard. Even if it is to threaten the "annihilation" of the other, to make warmongering proclamations of "not bowing one's head" or to attempt to whitewash a genocide.

1. Here is a redundancy. For three days, New York has been the capital of the world. The UN General Assembly has staged, through speeches by the main heads of state or government, how tangled the planet is. Behind the lectern, and too busy reading the acrylic teleprompter, everyone has their say. Each leader says what they think their audience wants to hear, the majority speak on behalf of their own country's exclusive interests, and some naive Europeans still go around clutching lilies, calling for diplomacy, international law, and multilateralism as the only possible way out of all the evils, which are not few. There has been talk of the war in Iran, the one in Ukraine, the one in Gaza, or the one in Sudan. And Javier Milei, as much in his own world as anyone else, still claims the Falklands as “a national cause.” By the way, the president of Argentina craps on the UN... but he was there.

Trump withdrew access to the White House from a series of media outlets and now a federal judge has ordered him to let them back in because the ban was likely unconstitutional.

The United Nations was created by the San Francisco Charter in 1945 with the goal that the international community would have a forum to discuss global security issues without having to resort to armed conflict. The idea was not to repeat the mistakes of the interwar League of Nations and to have a truly representative body where all countries, however small, could have a voice and a vote to preserve the most precious good, peace. Surely, the creation of the Security Council with five permanent members, and therefore with veto power, already perverted the initial objective and has turned the UN into an inoperative entity, but what had never been seen before is the spectacle offered on Tuesday by Donald Trump threatening Iran with annihilation from the speakers' rostrum. This Wednesday, the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, appeared to show defiance and warn that "they have tested the strength and firmness of Iran, and they have learned that they cannot make Iran surrender".

New York, the city where, 263 days later, Nicolás Maduro remains detained, is the setting in which Delcy Rodríguez and Donald Trump held a meeting this Tuesday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. It is the first encounter between a Venezuelan president and a US president in eleven years, and represents one more step –especially symbolic– in the resumption of relations between the two countries. The parade of leaders and officials from the Trump administration through Caracas has been a constant since Washington's military aggression in January, but it is the first time that the person primarily responsible for that operation has met directly with the person who forcibly opened the doors of Venezuela to him to plunder its natural resources.

Donald Trump, who is a gentleman of those who do not want to take medication, and has sudden attacks of impatience, anger and nerves, has banned certain press from the White House, after several media outlets did not behave well. As an act of protest, the main television networks that have not been banned have stopped covering his acts. Now this big gentleman, with the name and posture of a duck, who talks nonsense, is left without bootlickers and, therefore, has set up a YouTube channel where he will satisfy himself.

Definitely, the authoritarian delirium that threatens democracies has moved to Europe. Meanwhile, in the United States, Donald Trump, with polls clearly on the decline, is losing his cool, probably unable to understand that the continued display of his indecency has ended up discomforting some of his own. There are reasons to think that Trump—despite still having two years left in office—has entered a downward slope. We will have objective data soon, when the midterm elections arrive, which, if the polls are not wrong, augur a serious defeat for the Republicans.

During the United Nations General Assembly, which is taking place in New York, an unprecedented image has occurred: the president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, approached the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, to address the future of her country. According to sources from the Spanish delegation, it was an initiative of the new Venezuelan leader –after the arrest of Nicolás Maduro by the United States–, who asked Sánchez to be able to sit down and talk about the political situation. The same sources add that the Spanish president responded to the offer and reaffirmed his "commitment" to the region.

Donald Trump's White House launched Trump TV this Monday, a video channel that broadcasts 24 hours a day via YouTube. The launch comes amid escalating tension between the United States president and several media outlets, after Trump announced on Friday that he was banning CNN, MSNBC, and Politico from the White House.

Americans are feeling the price of Donald Trump's war in Iran in their pockets. Last Friday, the average price of diesel in the United States was near its all-time high of $6.43 per gallon, according to GasBuddy, and the president's own voters are fearlessly expressing their discontent on social media. It is a situation that worries Republicans because it adds to the crisis also caused by the trade war. Their economic situation, however, is not nearly as serious as that of other countries, from Guatemala to Indonesia, where there have been demonstrations and protests over the rise and shortage of fuel due to the Gulf crisis. In Spain, of course, were it not for state aid, the unrest would also be deeper, and even so, a hot autumn is already expected, because farmers and transporters are demanding more aid, as what they have is not enough to maintain their activity.

As it could not be otherwise, the illiberal wave sweeping the world has set its sights on the right to vote. Voting with freedom of conscience is surely the most relevant civic act, the most transcendent right that a citizen can exercise. Ballot boxes identify democracies, even though authoritarian regimes falsify them to disguise themselves as democracies: Putin's Russia, for example. But the vote, and specifically the manipulation of the vote for one's own electoral benefit, is the dark object of desire for authoritarian politicians and rulers. They usually accuse others of engaging in it, because when they are in power they indulge in it gluttonously.The temptation to tamper with votes is sharpening. In Argentina, Milei has promoted an electoral reform that, if it goes ahead, will completely redesign the rules of the democratic game from top to bottom. Among other things, the chainsaw man proposes that electoral campaigns not be paid for by the state, but rather sponsored by individuals and companies, and he also wants to eliminate presidential debates and even the mandatory primaries within parties.Trump has turned manipulations regarding the vote into a raison d'être for his policies, starting with the fact of having instigated the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as a supposed rebellion against no less supposed fraudulent elections (which he had lost and Biden had won). Trump has likewise fueled the suspicion of fraud regarding the midterm elections in the month of November (and he will intensify it as they approach, because he fears losing them), and a few days ago, at a convention in Dallas, in the middle of an erratic and decadent speech, he wanted to cast a lure: five thousand dollars for every adult American citizen in the event that the Republicans win the elections. A promise like this is indecent, illegal, and obviously unachievable, but the shot has already been fired: it is about putting a price on the vote and treating it as just another commodity.In the Spanish state, the Supreme Court has just provisionally halted the so-called “law of grandchildren” to prevent the voting rights of the descendants of Spanish citizens who had to go into exile during the Franco dictatorship. This is equivalent to taking the right to vote away from more than four hundred thousand Spanish citizens, with the argument –wielded by the high court without any attempt to hide it– that their participation in the elections could “alter the result desired by the Spaniards” in the polls. The “desired result,” in case anyone has lost track, is for the sum of PP and Vox to win the elections. Since we mention it, Santiago Abascal's party has proposed more than once (and broad sectors of the PP view it favorably) to modify the electoral law so that “minorities” cannot run in elections as they have done until now, nor “impose their will” in Congress or the Senate. This, in case anyone has lost track as well, is aimed at the left-wing parties, and also at the Basque and Catalan nationalist parties.

The United States is preparing to send to Israel one of the most significant ammunition packages in recent years to enhance Israeli military capabilities. The administration of President Donald Trump plans to deliver 40,000 bombs of 900 kilograms in exchange for 2.8 billion dollars. The shipment includes some of the most destructive bombs in Western arsenals: about 20,000 MK-84 and BLU-117 bombs and another 20,000 I-2000 bombs, according to information reported by the Washington Post.All ammunition is intended to be launched from the air. However, the MK-84 and BLU-117 bombs have a general purpose, while the I-2000s are designed to attack bunkers and other armored structures. This type of ammunition already caused concern in 2024 for former President Joe Biden for fear that Israel would use it in a large-scale offensive in Rafah that would cause numerous civilian casualties. This led the former US president to suspend the shipment.

The honeymoon between the new Federal Reserve (the Fed, the United States central bank) chair, Kevin Warsh, and U.S. President Donald Trump is over. The organization announced this Wednesday that it is raising interest rates to the range between 3.75% and 4%, which represents an increase of 0.25 percentage points compared to the previous 3.5%, despite Trump's demands that it cut them.

The president of the United States Federal Reserve (Fed), Kevin Warsh, faces the challenge this Wednesday of raising interest rates to combat inflation, which stood at 3.4% in August, far from the 2% target. Markets and investors take for granted a quarter-point increase, with a probability of more than 90%, according to the digital tool Fedwatch CME. But there is a problem: this is precisely the opposite of what the country's president, Donald Trump, who pushed for Warsh's appointment, wants. The head of the White House, in addition, threatened to cut off trade with all countries with which it has a trade deficit if the Fed does not lower the price of money, currently situated between 3.50% and 3.75%, after keeping it in July.

Democracy is in decline globally and especially in the United States, where Donald Trump's return to the White House has caused an "unprecedented" democratic backsliding. This is indicated by the report from the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), which confirms a global deterioration of democracy, with special emphasis on the North American country, where various indicators, such as freedom of the press or judicial independence, have sunk to their lowest levels in 50 years.

The United States Supreme Court has blocked President Donald Trump's attempt to restrict mail-in voting ahead of the November midterm elections, which allows states to maintain the procedures they have used until now to send and receive ballots. The high court has confirmed two previous orders, from a federal judge in Boston and another in Washington, which temporarily prevented the United States Postal Service from applying new requirements for mail-in ballots.

A kind of perfect storm is taking over the world: gas prices are climbing like never before (which means that everything will go up even more) and in a matter of four days the fear that artificial intelligence will get out of control and kill us all (and that, along the way, it will sink jobs, stock markets, and the Chinese Communist Party) has increased exponentially.