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Karol Nawrocki win deals blow to Poland’s EU agenda

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Karol Nawrocki win deals blow to Poland’s EU agenda

Karol Nawrocki, Poland’s newly elected president, is expected to block Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s pro-EU reform agenda and offer fresh impetus to rightwing populists across the continent.

In a narrow run-off victory on Sunday, Nawrocki — a historian and political newcomer representing the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party — defeated Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, the candidate backed by Tusk’s centre-right Civic Coalition, with a vote margin of less than 2 per cent.

Nawrocki’s win is likely to exacerbate tensions between the presidency and government, scuppering a judicial overhaul that Tusk had pledged in 2023 in return for Brussels releasing billions of EU funds that were frozen during a rule of law dispute with the previous PiS government.

Nawrocki, an amateur boxer and self-confessed football hooligan from Gdańsk who has never held elected office, is expected to be more combative than outgoing President Andrzej Duda, another PiS nominee who frequently used his veto rights to block Tusk’s bills.

“He will be much worse for Tusk than Duda,” said Adam Leszczyński, director of the Gabriel Narutowicz Institute of Political Thought, a government-affiliated think-tank.

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“He is much more extreme in his views and he is coming into this presidency with a lot of resentment, after really getting a very personal beating from Tusk and his allies during the campaign.”

Nawrocki’s win is a big defeat for Tusk, whose own return to power less than two years ago was hailed by many as a breakthrough that would restore Warsaw’s standing in the EU at a time when Russia was waging the largest armed conflict on European soil since the second world war.

But the presidential race has revealed how Tusk’s premiership has failed to paper over divisions in a highly polarised society, as radical candidates on both ends of the political spectrum fared better than expected in the first round, endorsed in particular by younger voters.

The Polish vote was also a rare victory for the Maga movement abroad, after rightwing politicians emulating US President Donald Trump were defeated in elections in Canada, Australia and most recently Romania. It came before other key votes in central Europe, with Eurosceptic billionaire Andrej Babiš hoping to return as Czech prime minister this autumn, as well as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Europe’s longest-serving prime minister, who is both a Trump and Russia ally and is seeking re-election next year.

“You now have inside the EU another leader determined to sabotage many things,” said Leszczyński. “Nawrocki shares Orbán’s mindset, but with more aggression and less [negotiation] skills.”

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While Nawrocki had only briefly met Trump in the run-up to the election, some of the US president’s top officials were dispatched to Poland for a Conservative Political Action Conference there last week.

Jarosław Kaczyński, the 75-year-old PiS founder and long-standing Tusk nemesis, handpicked Karol Nawrocki © AFP via Getty Images

US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem endorsed Nawrocki at that conference, calling on Poles to “elect the right leader” and describing his rival Trzaskowski as “an absolute train wreck”.

“You will be the leaders that will turn Europe back to conservative values,” Noem said.

Sunday’s result is also a personal victory for Jarosław Kaczyński, the 75-year-old PiS founder and long-standing Tusk nemesis who handpicked Nawrocki, 42, a relatively unknown figure who led Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance.

Nawrocki is set to provide “a more radical and uncompromising presidency than Duda’s, possibly leading to an even more far-right government . . . than PiS ever was”, said Piotr Buras, head of the Warsaw bureau of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

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Sunday’s result showed that “the far-right, anti-EU, pro-Trump forces are stickier and more entrenched than many observers assumed”, said Matt Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University.

“The fight pitting liberal internationalists against pro-Trump, pro-Orbán populists is being joined, and Poland is one of the more important battlegrounds in what is likely a generational struggle within the world’s leading democracies.”

Nawrocki’s campaign gained momentum after he sealed a pact with Sławomir Mentzen of the far-right Confederation party, who won nearly 15 per cent of votes in the first round. Their agreement included pledges to oppose tax increases and protect gun ownership rights — priorities designed to appeal to Confederation’s libertarian base.

Nawrocki’s victory came despite fierce criticism for a series of personal scandals and alleged ties to criminals — accusations he denied. Kaczyński said on Sunday that his candidate had successfully navigated “a Niagara of lies”.

By contrast, Trzaskowski, a former government minister and member of the European parliament, was seen as an experienced candidate who had only narrowly lost to Duda in the presidential election in 2020.

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But Trzaskowski struggled to escape Tusk’s shadow, particularly over his government’s failure to enact promised reforms, including reversing a near-total ban on abortion that was introduced under PiS and maintained in part because of disagreements within Tusk’s coalition, which includes some socially conservative lawmakers.

Tusk acknowledged his government’s shortcomings and issued a rare apology in the final mass rally in Warsaw a week before the run-off — a gesture analysts say came too late.

Opinion polls had shown Trzaskowski in the lead throughout the campaign, but Nawrocki caught up with his rival, narrowing the gap to just two percentage points in the first round. Sunday’s upset victory is set to embolden voices within PiS pushing for early parliamentary elections and could create fresh tensions within Tusk’s unwieldy ruling coalition.

Before the run-off, Tusk ruled out snap elections. But Dorota Piontek, a political scientist at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, said there would now probably be “a play for early elections and the takeover of power by PiS and Confederation, which means a conflict with the EU and a weakening of Poland’s position”.

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Reagan Library on Sept. 9, 2025, in Simi Valley, Calif. Barrett discussed and signed copies of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.

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Even as the Supreme Court was handing down one legal thunderbolt after another last week, the justices were quietly releasing their annual financial reports. Justice Samuel Alito was the only sitting justice to request an extension, which he has done for 15 years. The disclosures do not give a complete account of the justices’ total income and wealth, but they give insights into their concertgoing, guest professorships and even their involvement in youth sports.

In addition to their salaries, much of the justices’ reported income came from their book deals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the pack earning more than $1.1 million last year for a total of roughly $4 million since her memoir, Lovely One, was published in 2024.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy also reported income from published books. Earnings from their books ranged from $849,000 for Barrett, to $300,000 for Gorsuch and $88,000 for Sotomayor, whose books include her 2013 autobiography and five children’s books. Justice Clarence Thomas, who previously earned $1.5 million for his 2007 memoir, listed no publisher payments last year, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of 13 co-authors of a 2016 legal treatise, also received no payments last year. Kavanaugh is said to be working on a memoir but he listed no payments for the anticipated book. Alito does have a book coming out in the fall, but with his financial report still outstanding, there is no data on how much he was paid for the work in 2025.

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The only two sitting justices who have not written books are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.

Many justices also earned income from teaching at law schools. Roberts reported income from New England Law, located in Boston, and Gorsuch reported teaching income from George Mason University in Virginia. Thomas taught classes at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Barrett and Kavanaugh taught at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett graduated from the school and began teaching there 23 years ago; Kavanaugh has family connections to Notre Dame.

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.

A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.

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City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”

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Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.

Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.

“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.

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Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.

Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.

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“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.

@fernando40tiktok.commarc via Storyful

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Image from @fernando40tiktok.commarc via Storyful

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Image from @Bogs4NY via X

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The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.

Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.

“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.

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Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.

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Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.

On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

The Justice Department sent letters warning election officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that they could face criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting, a spokesperson for the Justice Department confirmed Tuesday.

The letters, signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads up the department’s Civil Rights Division, give states five days to explain how they will comply with federal voter eligibility laws and how they will maintain “clean voter lists.”

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“The Department sent these letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, asking for voluntary compliance in a timely manner with their obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.

Noncitizen voting in federal elections is extremely rare, but Trump and his administration have falsely portrayed it as a widespread issue.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar and Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson are among those who said they received the letters from the Justice Department.

The letters say state election officers “could be criminally prosecuted for aiding and abetting” noncitizen voting. They further specify that any election officer who knowingly retains noncitizens on a statewide voting registration list or who facilitates noncitizens’ receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability.

“An intentional act that is aimed at diluting the votes of citizens could also constitute a violation” of federal law, the letters said.

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Henderson wrote on social media that the threats constitute “truly bizarre behavior.”

“Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution,” she wrote. “I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts.”

The letters are the latest move in the Justice Department’s campaign to assert more federal control over state elections.

While some states have complied with the administration’s demands that they hand over voter roll data, the Justice Department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., for resisting. So far, 11 different federal courts have dismissed the Justice Department’s efforts to seize voter rolls.

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