Keir Starmer Resigns & The U.S. and Iran Actually Negotiate

Hi readers, happy Tuesday! Today we’re covering Keir Starmer’s resignation, U.S.-Iran negotiations, ringing the AI alarm bell, Colombia’s new president, more tech spending on midterms, Tim Walz’ great escape, and why your poop might be betraying you.

“Happiness, not in another place but this place...not for another hour, but this hour.” ― Walt Whitman

Man Down At Downing Street

Yesterday, Keir Starmer announced that he would be stepping down from his position as the head of the Labour Party, paving the way for a leadership shakeup across the pond. The Labour Party is set to open up nominations for the party head election on July 9, will close them when Parliament breaks for the summer on July 16, and will later hold an election to select the new Labour leader in September. Whoever wins that contest will become the U.K.’s new prime minister until the next general elections are held (no later than August 15, 2029).

“Every decision I’ve taken has been about putting the country I love first. That is why I will resign as leader of the Labour Party,” Starmer said in his resignation speech in front of 10 Downing Street. “When I leave the biggest job in the country, I shall spend more time on the most important job: being the best husband I can to my fantastic wife Vic, who has been a rock by my side through good times and bad; and being the best dad I can to my beautiful children, who are my pride and my joy.”

Labour members have been clamoring for Starmer to step down ever since the party took serious losses during municipal elections held in May. The frontrunner to replace him is Andy Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester. Just last week, Burnham soundly defeated a Reform UK rival to become the MP for Makerfield (a voting constituency within Greater Manchester) – he was sworn in just a few hours after Starmer announced his resignation. Soon after that, he announced that he would be participating in Labour’s upcoming leadership contest.

It’s Time To Deal

Heading into last weekend, it wasn’t clear that the U.S.-Iran ceasefire deal would hold until Monday. While the U.S. and Iran weren’t in direct conflict, their allies – Israel and Hezbollah, respectively – were. During the first few hours of the ceasefire, both sides traded blows, with Israeli airstrikes killing more than 47 people in Lebanon while Hezbollah forces killed four IDF soldiers also operating in Lebanon. While U.S. leaders tried to rein in Israel’s military in order to keep Trump’s peace deal in place, fighting continued into Saturday before both sides agreed to step down their aggression.

After it was made clear that that peace would hold (at least for a while), representatives from the U.S. and Lebanon participated in high-level negotiations held in Switzerland on Monday. According to a statement by mediators from Qatar and Pakistan, both sides agreed to “a road map” for establishing a final peace deal within 60 days. They also established a channel for direct communications “to avoid incidents” in the Strait of Hormuz, set up a mechanism to quickly end any conflicts that might spark up in Lebanon, and the U.S. agreed to waive its sanctions on Iran until August ​21, allowing Tehran to sell oil products to countries across the globe without penalty. Both sides seem satisfied with their progress (for now), and “technical talks” are slated to continue for the rest of this week.

Five-Eyes Spots A Five-Alarm Fire

• Yesterday, the Five Eyes – a Western intelligence bloc consisting of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S. – issued a rare joint statement about the impending dangers of AI. According to the announcement from the Anglophone security group, “Frontier AI models are anticipated to exceed current industry expectations, fundamentally transforming both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. The timeline is not years, it is months.”

• The warning comes just a few weeks after Anthropic’s release of its Fable and Mythos models, which are apparently so good at software engineering that they could enable bad actors to launch super-effective cyber attacks on countries across the globe. “What’s different about the latest [AI models] ones is they’re very good at generating exploits,” said one cybersecurity expert. “Cyber risk can no longer be treated as a purely technical issue,” the intelligence alliance went on in its statement. “This is a core business risk and leadership responsibility.” The U.S. blocked the use of Anthropic’s models by “foreign nationals” last week in response to the threat (which led Anthropic to take the models off the market entirely), but it’s not clear if any country has a long-term plan to contain the technology.

A Big Change In Bogota

• It looks like Colombia has a new, Trump-approved, right-wing president. Preliminary official results seem to show that criminal defense lawyer Abelardo De La Espriella is set to become the next leader of Colombia – with 99% of ballots counted, De La Espriella has 49.7%, compared to the 48.7% held by his leftist opponent, Iván Cepeda.

• De La Espriella ran on a hyper-nationalist platform, incorporating Colombia’s flag, the Colombian national soccer jersey, and a slogan of Firme por la patria! (Standing firm for the homeland!). He campaigned on tightening Colombia’s security, implementing more conservative economic policies, and fostering a closer relationship with the Trump White House. De La Espriella also wants to push back against progressive politics and “gender ideology,” and has promised to hunt down “narcoterrorists,” just like Trump. “I have never seen two leaders more aligned than Donald Trump and Abelardo De La Espriella,” said a prominent Colombian political scientist.

Additional World News

• Explosion at Qatar Gas Plant Kills at Least 13 and Injures 66 (NYT, $)

• Russian strikes injure six in Ukraine as fuel crisis deepens into Siberia (Reuters)

• World Cup 2026: Iran leave message asking for peace after Belgium draw (BBC)

• Tusk accuses Zelenskyy of medal blunder as Poland seeks to keep influence in Ukraine war (Politico)

• ‘Nightmare’ shooting in Montreal leaves three dead including police officer and bystander (Guardian)

• Mexico, Italy and others see up to two more months of heat stress than in the 1970s, study says (AP)

The AI Bubble Collides With Midterm Season

• As we all know, the momentum behind the AI industry has only increased over the past few years, leaving AI companies and their investors flush with cash (or at least, flush with high valuation numbers). What’s a tech millionaire to do with all that money? Apparently, “spend it to influence electoral politics” is one answer.

• According to the Guardian, AI-related super PACs have raised more than $100 million this election cycle; they’ve already spent about $49 million of that war chest on congressional races across the country. Roughly half of that $49 million has been spent on one single race – the Democratic primary for New York’s 12th House district – where Democratic upstart Alex Bores has been making a splash thanks to his calls for tighter AI regulations.

• So far, a PAC named Leading the Future (funded by venture capitalists Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen alongside OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and his wife) has spent a whopping $8.1 million on ads attacking Bores. Meanwhile, anti-AI tech-funded groups have fought back, spending roughly $17.5 million to support him. Bores has used all the buzz to promote the race as a referendum on AI regulation, saying, “This is the first congressional race in the country where the dividing line is: can we regulate AI at all?” New Yorkers will vote in the primary later today in order to show where they stand.

He’s Walz-ed Out Of Danger

• Yesterday, a federal judge ruled that a series of Justice Department grand jury subpoenas targeting Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and his allies were unlawful. The judge cited Trump’s repeated threats of “retribution” against Walz as evidence that the subpoenas “were a part of a broader campaign to coerce state and local officials in Minnesota to assist the Trump administration in its enforcement of immigration laws” – according to the Constitution, the federal government can’t force state governments to enforce its laws.

• “Initiating a criminal investigation in order to harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action — particularly official action that the federal government cannot directly require those political opponents to take — is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use the grand-jury process,” the judge wrote in his decision. Walz called the decision “a victory for the rule of law and our democracy,” while the Trump Justice Department has refused to comment on its defeat.

Additional USA News

• Judge finds a Trump data system to verify voters is unlawful (NPR)

• Senate Republicans say it’s time to give Trump a reality check (Politico)

• Senate passes housing bill in bid to ease supply crunch, high costs (Reuters)

• Los Angeles schools superintendent resigns after FBI search warrants (Guardian) 

• Dark Smoke in a Sunny Place: Neighbors of L.A. Fire Struggle for Breath (NYT, $)

• Alan Greenspan, US Fed 'maestro' through years of boom and bust, dies at 100 (Reuters)

Everybody Poops; Everybody Gets Surveilled

• Local governments across the U.S. are investing in a new type of surveillance system which allows them to quickly and efficiently track the usage and trafficking of illegal drugs. The system doesn’t involve AI-powered cameras watching dark alleys or anything like that – instead, governments are starting sewage sampling programs to track drug use in specific neighborhoods. 

• The drug-use-tracking systems leverage technologies deployed nationwide in the CDC's Wastewater Monitoring Program, which tracks the spread of flu and COVID-19 nationwide. The tests can detect drugs like fentanyl or even cutting-edge synthetic opioids in wastewater, and some tests can even track drug usage down to clusters of four houses. The new systems can inform responses to drug use, allowing local governments to do things like provide more overdose reversal nasal sprays in areas where certain drugs are being abused, or even train first responders in how to treat certain types of overdoses. 

• Of course, government employees scooping up your poop from the sewers in order to test if you’re using drugs has caused citizens to raise concerns about their privacy. “Why does the government feel a need to test my poop? And what else are you looking at while you’re there?,” one citizen asked a local official. Some cities have responded to those worries by rolling out guardrails to ensure that certain neighborhoods aren’t discriminated against, applying testing to their entire city and also ensuring that catchment areas only track populations of more than 3,000.

Additional Reads

• How to do less for your children (Psyche)

• The Repo Man Coming for Your Ride (New Yorker, $)

• Read this before you vibe-code another app (Verge)

• SpaceX stock tanks 16%, extending slump following post-IPO rally (CNBC)

• Buildings May Soon Have ‘Immune Systems’ That Fight Airborne Disease (NYT, $)

• Meta Exposed Data Internally From Its Controversial Employee-Tracking Program (Wired, $)

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