A Crunchwrap Supreme and a bag of supermarket salad generally appeal to rather different notions of a good lunch. One offers the architectural pleasure of a crunchy tostada tucked inside a warm tortilla; the other, the satisfaction of having arranged to eat vegetables without chopping any. This summer, however, both came with a less welcome consideration: iceberg lettuce.

A massive cyclospora outbreak linked to shredded iceberg from Taylor Farms de Mexico prompted recalls extending from Taco Bell kitchens to supermarket produce aisles. Shoppers began trying to determine which seemingly unrelated groceries shared a supplier; someone even made a barcode-scanning app for precisely this purpose. (Such was the broader atmosphere of suspicion that an entirely unsupported rumor about the Trump administration’s promised bargain beef being horse meat eventually inspired online guides for distinguishing one animal from the other.)

It was, in short, Bad Lettuce Summer.

And according to a Gallup poll published October 8, Americans emerged from it considerably more cautious about what they eat. Nearly three-quarters now say they have avoided buying certain foods because of recalls or government advisories, up from 53% in 2024. This newfound vigilance crosses party lines: 81% of Democrats and 63% of Republicans report having taken such precautions.

What it did not produce was much agreement about the people responsible for keeping the lettuce safe.

In 2024, when Joe Biden occupied the White House, 74% of Democrats and 50% of Republicans expressed confidence in federal food-safety oversight. Two years and one change of administration later, those figures stand at 30% and 70%, respectively. 

A 24-point Democratic advantage has become a 40-point Republican one, a remarkable 64-point reversal.

Ahead of the midterms, the findings illustrate a curious feature of American political life: People can encounter the same dangers, take similar precautions and nevertheless arrive at radically different conclusions about the institutions responsible for protecting them. And if there were ever a summer when one might have expected a little consensus about the importance of competent food-safety oversight, surely it was this one.

The outbreak, the largest recorded cyclospora outbreak in U.S. history, sickened nearly 13,000 people across 21 states, hospitalizing 570 and killing two. The recall included lettuce served at Taco Bell and Marketside iceberg salad sold at Walmart. Taylor Farms maintained that its own branded salad kits were unaffected, a distinction that mattered scientifically, if not necessarily psychologically, to shoppers eyeing the refrigerated wall of greens.

The trouble with becoming an amateur food-safety inspector is that the job is never quite finished. You can establish that the blueberries in your refrigerator haven’t been recalled, but this tells you remarkably little about the blueberries you’ll purchase next Thursday. You can discover who owns the company that packaged your broccoli, though what to do with that information is another matter. Every new discovery yields a little more knowledge, if not necessarily a corresponding increase in certainty.

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There was a policy dimension to this uncertainty, too. In March 2025, the FDA announced plans to delay compliance with its Food Traceability Rule, which requires businesses handling higher-risk foods, including leafy greens, to maintain records that help investigators identify and remove contaminated products more quickly. Originally scheduled for January 2026, the compliance deadline was proposed to be extended to July 2028; Congress subsequently directed the FDA not to enforce the rule before then. The agency said businesses needed additional time to coordinate their systems.

The delay did not cause the summer’s outbreak. Still, there is something peculiar about postponing industry-wide traceability requirements while ordinary shoppers are left scanning their broccoli with smartphones, hoping to learn something useful about where it came from.

During Bad Lettuce Summer, even the official answers required some translation.

In July, the FDA announced that a lettuce sample had tested positive for cyclospora, then corrected the finding as a false positive. Taylor Farms emphasized the correction; federal investigators maintained that their broader epidemiological and traceback evidence still implicated the company’s shredded iceberg. Subsequent environmental testing strengthened that evidence, without conclusively establishing how the contamination occurred.

One could read the competing statements carefully and emerge with some more information, but not much more confidence about dinner.

Then came the political subplot. As the investigation intensified, Taylor Farms representatives met privately with White House officials. The company and its leadership had donated substantial sums to Republican-aligned political groups, including $1 million to the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. Rep. Robert Garcia, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, subsequently sought answers about whether the company had attempted to influence the investigation. The White House denied compromising public safety, and no evidence established that political access changed the FDA’s findings.

Still, it is an extraordinary distance to travel from wondering whether the lettuce in your taco is safe to wondering who has the ear of the White House.

The Gallup numbers do not establish why Americans’ confidence has diverged so dramatically. Someone may distrust the industrial food system while enthusiastically supporting an administration promising to reform it. Someone else may have specific objections to that administration’s regulatory decisions. But the speed of the partisan reversal suggests that who runs Washington matters enormously to how Americans evaluate its institutions — though there is a certain irony to this in the age of Make America Healthy Again, which has elevated suspicion of the conventional food system into something approaching a civic virtue.

Its influence has extended all the way to the fast-food fryer: Steak ‘n Shake announced that it had “RFK’d” its French fries by replacing vegetable oil with beef tallow, a development Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. celebrated over burgers and fries during a televised appearance with Sean Hannity. The nation’s health secretary had become a verb, and the French fry a political statement.

It is, admittedly, easier to stage a photo opportunity around a basket of fries than a database of food-traceability records. Both involve questions about what Americans eat, but investigating foodborne illness requires a rather different kind of governmental attention.

Of course, Americans did not suddenly begin losing confidence in food-safety oversight under Trump. 

Gallup found that overall confidence has fallen from 85% in 2004 to just 47% today. And recalls themselves contain an uncomfortable ambiguity: They reveal that something dangerous entered the food supply, but also that someone detected a problem and warned the public. The same event can look like evidence of a system working or a system failing, depending on which part of the story one chooses to emphasize.

With the midterms approaching, that distinction matters. The lawmakers elected in November will have a say in how federal food-safety agencies are funded, scrutinized and held accountable when the next outbreak arrives. Yet Americans are approaching that election with increasingly different assessments of the institutions charged with protecting them, even as their own precautions suggest a broadly shared sense of vulnerability.

The next outbreak, unfortunately, will not wait for everyone to agree on whom to trust.

The post Food safety fears are bipartisan. Trust in oversight isn’t appeared first on Salon.com.

France called on Israeli authorities to take “all necessary measures” to “stop these acts of terror” following an attack by masked Israeli settlers against European diplomats in the West Bank on Saturday.

In a statement issued Sunday, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs said: “France calls on the Israeli authorities to arrest the perpetrators of this extremely serious assault and bring them to justice.

“Furthermore, the Israeli authorities must take all necessary measures to put an end to these acts of terror and to ensure the safety of civilian populations and diplomatic missions, as they are obligated to do under international law.”

The incident took place in Taybeh, a mainly Christian town north of Jerusalem, where diplomats and other officials from France, Poland and Belgium were watching local people harvest olives. Video footage of the attack showed settlers confronting a convoy of diplomats and a man wearing a French tricolor sash slumped beside a car.

“The mayor of the commune of Aulnoye-Aymeries was violently assaulted by extremist settlers in the West Bank,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said on X, adding that that Israel “must urgently put an end to these criminal acts.”

Belgian Foreign Minister Maxim Prévot said that in addition to the assault on the French mayor, a Belgian vehicle was damaged in the incident. He added that “Israeli authorities must protect Palestinians, ensure the safety of diplomats and journalists, and bring those responsible to justice,” and said Belgium “will continue to press for EU sanctions against those responsible for this violence and those who support them.”

On Sunday morning, an EU spokesperson said that the bloc “strongly condemns” the attacks by violent settlers in the West Bank, “including on European diplomats.”

The spokesperson added: “We take positive note of statements by several Israeli representatives who condemned the attacks but we expect full accountability as well as effective measures to prevent continued acts of violence and violent harassment against Palestinians, including during the ongoing olive harvest season, as well as against journalists.”

Writing on X, the Israel Defense Forces strongly condemned “the severe act of violence that took place in the area of Taybeh, during which diplomatic representatives were attacked by Israeli rioters.”

The IDF added that “according to a preliminary inquiry, no IDF soldiers were present at the scene at the time of the attack”.

However, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged caution “before drawing conclusions” from reports of the attack, while noting that “any violence against diplomats is unacceptable.”

DUBLIN — The Irish capital, which doubles as Europe’s de facto tech capital, hosted two very different AI summits in the past week.

Most eyes were on the International AI Summit, the signature tech event of Ireland’s six-month presidency of the Council of the EU, where top brass from the world’s biggest tech firms discussed ways to harness artificial intelligence and minimize safety risks.

But the weekend before, a very different conversation was taking place at the Workers’ AI Counter Summit, as Ireland’s tech workers demanded a say in how the burgeoning technology reshapes the workplace and society.

Ireland’s lucrative tech sector has been rattled by waves of AI-driven layoffs — and the country’s fledgling tech union has seen an exponential spike in sign-ups from workers who are worried about their future.  

There’s an “awakening” happening right now among workers in Ireland’s tech sector, and a growing “awareness that they’re not bulletproof,” said Sinéad Gibney, a social democrat lawmaker who previously worked for Google.  

“I do think what we will see is that parts of roles will be automated, which means that people will be competing more heavily for the same roles,” she said. “They won’t have the same labor power and therefore we’re going to see a drop in quality of work, we’re going to see more zero-hour contracts, in more places than we already see it.”

The labor movement brewing in Ireland, where many of the world’s tech giants have their EU bases, is part of a wider trend among tech workers globally, who have seen their work disrupted by rapidly evolving AI.

Rise in layoffs

Ireland’s dedicated union for tech workers, the Digital and Techworker Alliance (DATA), has seen a five-fold increase in membership since it was first founded in 2023.  

In its first year and a half of existence, membership hovered around 270 people. In the past year-and-a-half, it’s jumped to more than 1,350 members, DATA organizer John Bohan told POLITICO.  He added that this number tends to spike around layoffs and other actions.

“The tech industry was founded on the idea that it would never have a union, because they’re making people rich, and treat them really well,” Bohan said.  “But post-Covid, workforce adjustments happened again and again, with layoffs and declining conditions in the sector. We started to see more people wanting to get organized around redundancies.”  

The spike in sign-ups coincides with a wave of layoffs in Ireland’s tech bubble (and the tech sector globally), as companies corrected pandemic-era overhiring, and diverted investment to AI.  

Ireland hosts the EU headquarters of most of the world’s largest tech companies, and more than 170,000 people are employed in the tech sector, according to the country’s statistics institute.

Social media giant Meta has roughly halved its workforce in Ireland since the pandemic, axing well over 1,000 roles to offset AI investment and boost efficiency. Separately, Meta subcontractor Covalen also announced massive layoffs earlier this year, cutting more than 700 people.  

Video-sharing platform TikTok announced this year it would shed around 300 Irish jobs, mostly from its trust and safety team, shifting the work to other countries, outsourced vendors or automated AI solutions.  

A report by the IMF earlier this year warned that Ireland’s labor market is “relatively more exposed” to AI than many advanced economies, partly due to its concentration of tech workers.  

The AI race is also creating new jobs on the Irish market – as AI firms like Anthropic and OpenAI are setting up Irish bases and trying to lure Big Tech workers with even bigger salaries.  

Amid the uncertainty and volatility of the AI boom, tech workers are turning to unions for the first time as a safety net. One tech worker who used to work in trust and safety at a big tech firm told POLITICO that there used to be a feeling that as a “pampered” tech worker you “can’t ask for your rights, because you already have it so much better.” 

But as layoffs continue and teams get leaner, workers in fields like trust and safety “now have to deal with these issues with fewer and fewer resources”, and face a “constant threat of being chopped,” the worker said.  

That’s causing an “undoing of a certain perspective that we have of ourselves as tech sector workers,” they said, “because of undeniable experiences that now put us in situations where we clearly see our rights being violated, even if we may have it so much or somewhat better than most people.” 

A different tech worker who currently works for Covalen told POLITICO that there is a sense that “if they believe they can replace you with AI, they will do that.”  

“All these Big Tech firms only care about profit, and what I have realized is the Irish government protects that Big Tech capital [rather than workers],” the Covalen worker said. “But the question is, what’s the government going to do when the tech bros change their mind and move elsewhere?”  

Workers at the center

The speaker list at this week’s AI summit was a flex of the country’s strength as a tech hub, as top names from the world’s biggest companies like Google and Microsoft took to the stage.

Fionnuala Ní Bhrógáin, head of organizing and campaigning at Ireland’s Communications Workers’ Union (DATA’s parent union), was the only union voice on the line-up.

“The fact that 36 executives and industry bosses featured on the program, compared with just one trade union speaker — invited at the last minute after attention was drawn to the absence of workers’ voices — says a lot about the value the Irish government places on AI’s impact on workers,” she told POLITICO.

“The reality is that a meaningful conversation about AI’s future can only happen through genuine engagement with workers and collective bargaining,” Ní Bhrógáin added. “Without that voice, we risk deepening mistrust and resistance rather than creating the conditions for workers to shape these changes collectively.”

DATA organized its counter-AI summit the previous weekend, to put “workers at the center of the debate about power, AI, technology and the future of work.” 

The event cut through the “hype and futurism of politicians and industry figures to focus on the real present harms faced by ordinary workers and communities,” DATA’s Bohan said.  

The union is pushing for stronger legal protections for tech workers caught up in AI-driven layoffs in Ireland, including making it mandatory for employers to recognize unions during collective bargaining. It is also calling for a ban on cooling-off clauses that prevent laid-off workers from moving between Big Tech subcontractors.  

A spokesperson for Ireland’s department for enterprise told POLITICO in a written statement that the government is “committed to strengthening collective bargaining and industrial relations” and has published an action plan to do so between now and 2030.  

They said that employers already have to comply with obligations under Irish employment law, including consultation and notification procedures for collective redundancies, and workers who feel those rules have been broken can complain to the Workplace Relations Commission. 

Firefighting to future-proofing 

Naoise Ó Cearúil, a center-right Fianna Fáil lawmaker who chairs the AI committee, pointed out that while there have been high-profile job cuts in Ireland’s tech sector, “the actual net is that there has been an increase [in jobs], particularly over the past year and even five years.” 

According to Ireland’s central statistics office, total employment in tech and related sectors surpassed 177,000 in the second quarter of this year, up from around 144,000 at the same time in 2021.  

Ó Cearúil pointed out that many job losses were in trust and safety jobs like content moderation that are “very difficult mentally,” and now tech firms are able to “utilize AI and software to be able to do a lot of detection, rather than using humans.”  

He has called for a national program to be established, to support workers whose jobs are at risk due to AI and automation.  

A spokesperson for Ireland’s department of enterprise acknowledged that the country’s tech sector has “experienced significant adjustment in recent years,” but said the changes were generally part of wider global restructuring “rather than reflecting any Ireland-specific weakness.” 

They said the Irish government is currently focused on “ensuring workers and businesses are equipped to adapt to technological change through investment in education, training, lifelong learning and digital skills.”  

Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten sharply criticized Friday the U.S.’s decision to publicly livestream an execution, labeling it “absurd.”

“Personally, I find it truly absurd to broadcast a death penalty execution live,” Jetten told reporters at a press conference in The Hague. “I haven’t discussed this with the U.S. myself recently, but I can imagine that if there is contact with them, for instance, at the level of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we would certainly make our dissatisfaction known,” he added.

The U.S. military plans to carry out a public execution for the first time in recent history, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Thursday. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, is scheduled to be executed on Dec. 3. The Pentagon has said his death will be livestreamed, but has not provided details on which social media platforms would be used, if any.

Jetten said social media platforms in Europe have a responsibility to ensure the execution is not broadcast on the continent.

“As far as I’m concerned, it is really up to the social media platforms in Europe to prevent this from being circulated and broadcast on their channels. But I fear it will be impossible to prevent,” he said.

Jetten added that if the execution does appear on European social media, there will be “a great number of reports filed,” as violent content must be moderated by social media platforms under European law.

“Video-sharing platforms that allow video content displaying scenes of gratuitous violence must use effective age assurance so that children cannot normally see this content,” a spokesperson for the Irish Media Commission told POLITICO. This means platforms can show violent content as long as they ensure it doesn’t reach minors.

The media regulator is currently investigating X over possible breaches in online safety rules for failing to carry out proper age checks.

The UN has said livestreaming an execution would amount to torture. “The livestreaming of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture,” the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights told AFP.

The body said its statement is in line with previous ones it has released about public executions in Afghanistan and Iran.

The European Commission did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.

This is a developing story.

BRUSSELS — The European Union’s cybersecurity agency and in-house research center have each begun experimenting with open artificial intelligence models from China, three EU officials have told POLITICO.

The Joint Research Centre (JRC) — the EU’s in-house scientific research center — is evaluating “publicly available open-weight models” originating from China, European Commission spokesperson Maciej Berestecki confirmed. The head of ENISA, the bloc’s agency responsible for cybersecurity, also said in an interview that his team was now testing Chinese AI.

The experiments with Chinese models at the JRC are part of a broader research project to evaluate artificial intelligence that also includes leading models from the United States and Europe, Berestecki said. “Models from different origins are included in a comparative scientific evaluation of their capabilities, performance, limitations and risks,” he said, adding that the JRC is also looking into their potential scientific applications.

AI safety and security — topics currently under intense scrutiny following a series of incidents in which advanced AI models hacked real-world networks during testing activities — are not the core focus of the JRC’s testing activities, according to a different Commission official, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive material.

Open-weight models are those whose core components are publicly released, allowing anyone to run the model and study how it works. China’s approach to AI has leaned more towards open models than the United States. Some major U.S. tech and AI companies, including chips giant NVIDIA, are investing in open-weight models.

Forced to choose

The U.S. and China are locked in a race to dominate in the technology, with Europe largely sitting on the sidelines. Without a viable European frontier model, European private and public organizations may be left to choose between American and Chinese providers for advanced AI applications.

In a recent speech, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen suggested Europe should not try to win the frontier AI race. A top German tech company told POLITICO this week it was dropping Europe’s leading AI lab Mistral in favor of open-source Chinese models.

The JRC has not entered into any “bespoke access” or licensing negotiations with the relevant Chinese developers, Berestecki said. The models are run on the center’s “secure, on-premises scientific infrastructure” and the Commission is not intending to use Chinese models for its own purposes, he added.

EU cyber agency ENISA — which has gained access to advanced models from top U.S. AI firms Anthropic, OpenAI and Google — is also experimenting with “a couple” of open-weight Chinese models, its executive director Juhan Lepassaar confirmed in an interview on Wednesday. 

JRC and ENISA have been tasked with working together to set up an AI testing platform under a recent EU action plan on AI and cyber, the European Commission’s attempt to respond to the growing concerns after a series of incidents involving AI systems breaking out of testing environments and breaking into other organizations’ digital systems.

BRUSSELS — NATO is seeking to reassure Russia that an upcoming nuclear drill in Italy is nothing to fear, with tensions high between the alliance and Moscow.

NATO announced Thursday that 17 allies will participate in the annual Steadfast Noon exercise from Oct. 13-23. But this year, the exercise follows a tense exchange of letters between Moscow and NATO after allies conducted exercises near Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave in August.

“We have been doing this every year and … this is also a clear message to nations like Russia that there is no need to worry,” said Nassima Barrows, NATO’s nuclear policy director. “This is predictable and there is no reason to miscalculate.”

“Its purpose is really essentially to train our allied forces so that we are ready and prepared, and we ensure the safety and security of our nuclear capability,” she told reporters.

Following the previous NATO exercises, Moscow sent a letter to the alliance threatening to hit allied territory and mentioning the use of its nuclear arsenal — a move that NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte publicly rebuked last week.

Tensions are rising as European countries accuse Russia of sabotage and growing so-called hybrid attacks across the continent. 

“Our intention is to really keep things calm,” said a senior NATO official, who was granted anonymity to speak freely. Russian officials “keep ratcheting up this mood of tension and we are going to keep trying to calm the mood.”

U.S. Col. David Bull, chief of NATO’s nuclear operations, said the exercise has garnered “similar” participation to previous years and involves everything from a “simulated alert to [a] live flight exercise” — but “no live nuclear weapons.” 

It will also feature dual-capable aircraft and ground troops to support the exercise and train on loading, fueling, and maintaining planes, a senior NATO military official added.

Russia’s embassy to Belgium didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Three fired OpenAI safety researchers dispute allegations of mishandling sensitive information, warning in an open letter that their dismissals are creating a chilling effect on the company’s AI safety culture.

New York’s lawsuit against the company is one of more than two dozen cases brought by states accusing the social media giant of designing its platform to encourage addictive use among children.

LONDON — The U.K. and Israel have stepped back from the diplomatic brink by securing a compromise to prevent the full closure of the British consulate in East Jerusalem.

Most diplomats will leave what will now be operating as a “U.K. Mission” in the occupied territory — but Israel has stopped short of closing it entirely ahead of Thursday’s deadline.

Both sides were presenting this as a good outcome Thursday, in a diplomatic tussle over the U.K.’s plans to impose sanctions on illegal settlements in the West Bank.

U.K. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said the diplomats and their families were being “temporarily withdrawn” to secure their safety, but he said the mission will remain independent, operational and continue to work with the Palestinian people.

“We will work in the coming months to build back up our presence, and we will not take reciprocal action while such discussions are underway and credible,” he continued, in a statement released as he was visiting Ukraine.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar set out a list of diplomatic actions taken against Britain, adding: “We established a clear principle: It is not possible to act against Israel without Israel taking appropriate measures in response.”

Sa’ar said the consulate would be “closing its operations today” and that the “sign of the British Consulate in Jerusalem has been removed.” Twenty British diplomats, including the consul general, will be leaving East Jerusalem.

But the British flag was still flying on Thursday afternoon. Seven diplomats remain.

The dispute over the consulate has been the latest marker of declining relations between Israel and the U.K. under its Labour government. Israel threatened to close the consulate within 30 days of Sept. 8, in retaliation against Andy Burnham’s government announcing a ban on trade with illegal settlements in the West Bank.

A person familiar with Israeli government thinking, granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, told POLITICO the mission is “basically an empty shell” that cannot issue visas, renew passports or liaise with the Palestinian Authority. Britain does not tend to issue visas or passports in consulates. 

“The seven diplomats there, their work is basically to maintain the building and hold the Union Jack in place,” they said.

A British official presented the deal as a “good outcome” nonetheless. After three weeks of hard-fought negotiations, a feared spiral of tit-for-tat expulsions has been avoided.

The U.K. has told Israel it is keeping the possibility of retaliation open, however, after Israel threatened to expel British diplomats from Israel. The Israeli government had been demanding that the U.K. rolls back its pending package of sanctions on West Bank settlements, but British ministers are holding firm.

Miliband maintained Thursday that Britain does not accept Israel has a “legal right” to shutter the site that has been there for nearly 200 years, because East Jerusalem is deemed “occupied territory.”

The hope in the U.K. Foreign Office is that maintaining a presence will make it easier to build back up after elections in Israel on Oct. 27.

U.K. National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell traveled to Jerusalem last week as part of efforts to persuade the Israeli government not to shut the consulate, but a breakthrough wasn’t reached until Wednesday night.

This developing story is being updated.

MADRID — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has finally done something the far right approves of — calling a snap election on Nov. 29 that the anti-immigrant Vox party is hailing as “Spain’s last chance to be Spain again.”

Polling third in the race, Vox is Spain’s leading nationalist, euroskeptic force and it sees next month’s contest as its prime opportunity to remold the country after eight years of Sánchez’s socialist premiership by getting its people into top ministerial jobs.

Party leader Santiago Abascal greeted Monday’s election announcement as “excellent news.” His delight is hardly surprising given that polls suggest Vox is on track to make the biggest gains of any major party.

While the center-right People’s Party is expected to come first — with about 33% of the vote, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls — it will almost certainly have to team up with Vox, which commands support of about 18%, to build a stable coalition.

Abascal will then be able to demand the inclusion of key elements of Vox’s agenda as its price for that partnership. Its goals include deportations of undocumented migrants, a benefits preference for Spaniards over foreign nationals, slashing EU health and safety rules in the farming sector and rolling back support for gender equality and the LGBTQ+ community.

Vox secured 33 of the 350 seats in Congress in 2023, but is now set to double that. Under the PP’s coalition leadership, it should be able to form part of a comfortable majority.

“This time round, Vox is much stronger,” José Antonio Fúster, spokesperson for the party and a member of the Madrid regional parliament, said. “We are going into a very important election, not so much for us, as for Spaniards … This is the last hope for Spain to be Spain again.”

Fúster would not be drawn on which ministries his party has set its sights on, warning against “selling the bearskin before it has been hunted.”

Pointing to talks with the PP in recent months in four regions where the two parties now govern in coalition, he said the shaping of policy was being prioritized ahead of institutional power. “That is the last thing we negotiate because it is the least important,” he said.

Pet portfolios

In August, Vox MEP Jorge Buxadé told POLITICO that forming part of the government was not the only option open to his party, but that in a hypothetical coalition with the PP, his party would seek a number of ministries “in proportion to our vote share.”

That would amount to a significant percentage. If current polls translate into results in November, Vox would be in a position to claim about a third of ministerial posts.

Analysts expect Vox to press for portfolios that focus on its pet policies, such as agriculture, domestic policy, immigration and industry. The culture and education portfolios could also be of interest to the party, given their relevance in the hard right’s campaign against so-called wokeism.

The regions where the PP and Vox currently govern together — Andalusia, Aragón, Castile and León, and Extremadura — offer clues: The government departments that Vox controls are mainly linked to agriculture, welfare benefits and the family.

The party is heading into the election campaign espousing three main ideas: the concept of “national priority” — ensuring that Spaniards have access to public services and benefits ahead of foreign nationals — a clampdown on immigration and broad deregulation.

Although Vox’s rise to prominence was driven by its fierce stance against Catalan nationalism nearly a decade ago, that debate has faded from the political arena. Now, its focus is, like its European far-right counterparts, more firmly on immigration-related matters.

“Before, Vox talked about immigration, but it wasn’t the nuclear issue it has become,” said Guillermo Fernández Vázquez, a political scientist at Carlos III University and author of a book about the European far right. “Now, when Vox talks about social security payments, it talks about immigration; when it talks about the economy, it talks about immigration. Immigration is the issue that dictates everything.”

Vox also subscribes to the “remigration” policy being touted by many far-right parties, under which undocumented migrants and those who commit crimes would be deported. The PP has appeared to respond to Vox’s hard line by toughening its own stance, calling for the expulsion of foreign criminals and opposing a government migrant legalization program.

In each of the regions where the two parties are in coalition, Vox has ensured that its senior partner agreed to formally include the national priority principle in their governing agreement.

“But when it comes to national priority, the PP has added the caveat that it has to be implemented in line with the law,” said Miguel González, a journalist at the El País daily newspaper and author of a book about Vox. Legislation prevents discrimination against foreign nationals when it comes to accessing public benefits and services, meaning the policy is currently little more than symbolic in those regions. 

“In reality, in order to implement this properly, you’d have to change the immigration law,” González added.

Vox is eyeing an overhaul of that legislation to make it a workable policy.

“It’s very possible to change laws that are bad for Spaniards, so we have to roll them back and introduce new laws, making sure that Spaniards are not last in line,” Fúster said.

Deregulation nation

Deregulation also offers a platform from which to attack EU health-and-safety norms that are reviled by the farming sector, one of Vox’s main voter bases.

Fúster accepted that this could lead to clashes with the European Commission, but insisted that pressure from what he described as a rising tide of European parties sharing Vox’s values would “make sure that Brussels returns to the path of common sense.”

PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo has criticized phytosanitary restrictions on farmers but has shown little appetite for conflict with European institutions.

In social policy, González said Vox might use the broader notion of deregulation to dismantle funding for gender equality and LGBTQ+ departments and projects, as it has done on a local level. Fúster was reluctant to be drawn on this: “We believe in the equality of Spaniards,” he said. “We don’t believe that anyone should have privileges above others.”

Fernández Vázquez of Carlos III University said that the origins of Vox suggest a bumpy ride for the PP. Vox would be the first far-right party to enter government in half a century since the death of Francisco Franco in 1975 — and there would likely be clashes.

The far-right party formed in 2013 as a breakaway from the conservatives in frustration at what its founders saw as the pusillanimity of the PP in the face of Catalan separatism. 

“I think the relationship between Vox and PP [in government] will be a bad one,” the researcher said. “Abascal and his colleagues are going to enjoy showing up Feijóo whenever they can, portraying him as lukewarm and weak.”

Fúster accepted “it could be a difficult relationship,” adding that the PP “don’t see things the way we do and we don’t share their vision.”

“We’re not willing to make concessions, we’re willing to have a frank, open and reasonable negotiation.”

But for now, the priority is simply to remove the Socialists. In his traditionally combative style, Abascal insisted the election was a chance to hold on to “the peace, prosperity and freedom that a mafioso government wants to snatch from us forever.”

Max Griera contributed to this article.

Meta launches new AI tools after discovering ads on its platforms that may look normal but direct users to harmful content elsewhere online.

A federal judge ruled that a sheriff’s deputy violated a woman’s Fourth Amendment rights when using Flock to search for her license plate without a warrant. 

This week, the White House got nearly every major tech CEO in one room — Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei among them — to sign an AI safety pledge that President Donald Trump called “morally binding.” Trump also signed an executive order officially rebranding AI as “super intelligence,” and meanwhile, Meta and OpenAI are putting friendlier faces on their AI products, even as the biggest money […]

Parents can limit how teens use channels, whose Status they can see, who can see their Status updates, and control who can add teens to groups.