House Republicans on Thursday passed a partisan funding bill for the Energy and water development, cutting nondefense programs while boosting dollars for defense.

The vote was 214-213.

The annual appropriations bill would allow for about $57 billion in funding for fiscal year 2026.

The bill marks the third appropriations bill House Republicans have passed for fiscal 2026, as Congress continues to run behind is hashing out its annual funding work.

While the bill faces long odds in the Senate, where Democratic support is needed to pass funding bills, it provides a starting point for Republicans when it comes time for both sides to work out a funding deal for the next fiscal year. 

The bill increases funding to key Republican priorities, including the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the nation’s weapons stockpile.

It includes cuts to many programs favored by Democrats, including a 17 percent cut to the Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation account, according to a summary released by Democrats over the summer.

It also cuts the Energy Department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy nearly in half and cuts its energy research office, known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency ‒ Energy (ARPA-E) office by nearly a quarter.

While significant, these cuts are not as dramatic as cuts proposed by the Trump administration, which sought to cut 74 percent of the renewable energy office’s budget and the research office’s budget by 57 percent.

Overall, the bill cuts funding to the Energy Department by about 3 percent. 

In addition, the bill cuts $5.1 billion that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law put toward hydrogen energy, carbon capture technology, battery recycling and energy upgrades in public schools, per the Democrat summary. 

The United Kingdom’s Conservative Party suffered its worst defeat in almost 200 years in its July 4, 2024, elections. Two of the key issues in that race were the cost of living and immigration levels that were too high.

The current Labour Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, says the government in which she serves “inherited a broken immigration and asylum system that the previous government left in chaos.”  

In a speech on Nov. 28, the new prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, said that nearly a million immigrants came to Britain in the year ending on June 2023 — “four times the migration levels compared with 2019.” This wasn’t just bad luck or taking your eye off the ball. It was deliberate. The previous administration had liberalized British immigration policies and turned “Britain into a one-nation experiment in open borders.”  

In May, Starmer published a white paper, “Restoring Control over the Immigration System,” that outlined his administration’s immigration plan going forward. In addition to measures to reduce immigration to the UK, it provides that “if people want to come to Britain to start a new life, they must contribute, learn our language and integrate.” It also provides that if “employers want to bring workers from overseas, then they must also invest in the skills of workers already in Britain.” 

Some of the measures in that plan would be useful here in the U.S., too.

Our previous administration also had an open borders policy of sorts. Several measures from the UK plan would weaken the job magnet that attracts illegal immigration to the U.S. 

For example, their plan limits unnecessary foreign employees. This encourages employers to hire UK workers if they are available and provide them with training if it is needed. The UK should not be dependent on foreign workers.  

This also applies to American employers, who should be able to hire foreign workers when they can’t find U.S. citizens to fill their vacancies. But American jobs should be filled by American workers to the extent that it is feasible. Making jobs in the U.S. widely available to foreign workers makes it easier for unauthorized immigrants to find work here, which in turn encourages illegal immigration.  

Another smart UK policy pertains to resettlement. Assistance with resettlement for newly arrived immigrants with lawful status has focused primarily on refugees and aliens who are granted asylum. The government should provide resettlement assistance across the entire immigration system, not just for refugees and asylees. Among other things, this means helping them learn English.  

The U.S. should make assistance in learning the English language available to newly arrived immigrants with lawful status here, too. Among other benefits, it would make them available to fill job vacancies that require the ability to speak English. And filling more jobs with American workers and immigrants who have lawful status would make fewer jobs available to aliens who come here illegally.

Another example: The UK plan supports the Employment Rights Bill, which, among other things, would establish a Fair Work Agency to “co-ordinate stronger action against employers who are exploiting” foreign workers or flouting employment laws. Such an agency could coordinate the efforts of government agencies in the U.S. that enforce our employment laws.  

In the U.S., ICE enforces compliance with a provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act that makes it unlawful for employers to knowingly employ an alien who is not authorized to work in the U.S. And the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division fines employers for violations of overtime and minimum wage requirements in the Fair Labor Standards Act.  

These agencies should be working together. Employers are less likely to hire unauthorized foreign workers if they know they might be fined for hiring them or for paying them less than American workers would expect.  

Another idea the U.S. could learn from is the UK’s eVisas, which provide immigration officers with access to a digital record of foreign visitors’ identity and immigration status. These eVisas make it possible to determine such things as whether an individual alien is inside or outside the UK at any given time and whether they have overstayed their visa.  

A modified version of the UK’s eVisa would provide ICE with additional information for its data mining operations, and with proper software and portable biometric devices, ICE officers would be able to identify aliens in the field who have been issued eVisas and determine whether or not they should be arrested.  

These measures in the UK are expected to reduce net migration to about 240,000 from 2028 moving forward, but the Conservative’s party leader, Kemi Badenoch, says that doesn’t go far enough. The UK may have to resort to more draconian measures, such as the ones proposed by former Labor Home Secretary Lord David Blunkett. He thinks it may be necessary to suspend “elements of the European Convention on Human Rights and the UN Refugee Convention.”    

The United States may have to do that too. Our immigration court’s 3,446,855 case backlog makes it impossible to get a hearing for asylum seekers or to put deportable aliens in removal proceedings unless they are put ahead of the three-and-a-half million aliens who are in line for a hearing already.  

Nolan Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an Executive Branch Immigration Law Expert for three years. He subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years.  

Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a prominent election forecaster, moved its rating of Virginia’s gubernatorial race from “lean Democratic” to “likely Democratic.” 

The rating change is good news for Democratic nominee and former Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), who has consistently led Republican nominee and Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R ) in polling throughout the campaign. 

Spanberger leads Earle-Sears 47.1 percent to 38.7 percent, according to the Decision Desk HQ average. In April, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report moved the race from a “toss-up” to “lean Democratic.” 

Republicans have voiced concerns over their chances in the race in recent months. A Roanoke College poll released last month showed Earle-Sears seemingly narrowing Spanberger’s lead from 17 points to 7 points. However, critics note that the poll was weighted toward turnout in the 2021 gubernatorial election, when a larger percentage of GOP voters cast ballots.

Sabato’s Crystal Ball moved next year’s gubernatorial race in Maine closer to Republicans, changing the rating from “likely Democratic” to “lean Democratic.” In Iowa, the election forecaster moved that state’s governor race from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican.” 

The tectonic plates of global power are shifting. The American-led postwar order is eroding without a clear successor. In this uncertain interregnum, there is a growing risk of the world fracturing into rival geopolitical and economic blocs, threatening both prosperity and peace.

Two recent events in China encapsulate this transformation. On Aug. 31 to Sept. 1, leaders gathered in Tianjin for the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a 10-nation grouping that began as a regional security forum but has steadily expanded its scope and ambition. With China in the driver’s seat, the group is made up mostly of autocracies.

Soon after, on Sept. 3, China staged a massive military parade in Beijing to commemorate the end of the Sino-Japanese War and World War II. Yet far from celebrating peace, the event showcased Chinese military might, with a guest list that read like a who’s who of the world’s strongmen. They included Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, Myanmar junta chief Min Aung Hlaing, and the presidents of Iran, Cuba, Belarus and Vietnam. They make up the so-called “Axis of Upheaval” — a loose coalition of states determined to reshape the Western-led global order.

The juxtaposition was telling. The summit highlighted how Beijing and Moscow are institutionalizing their strategic alignment, while the military parade underlined the solidarity of a growing authoritarian camp. For China and Russia, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization serves as both a symbol and an instrument of their deepening cooperation — from joint military exercises to efforts at shaping the economic and security architecture of Eurasia.

For Washington and its allies, these gatherings sent a clear signal: An alternative power bloc is taking shape.

President Trump is accelerating the reordering of the international system, though not in the way he believes. Trump may think he is bending nations to his will, but history could record something else: the corrosion of America’s alliances and partnerships, the erosion of its credibility and the acceleration toward a truly multipolar world. By elevating disruption into his governing creed, Trump is unwittingly providing the very shock therapy the international system needs to break free from U.S. dominance.

This geopolitical realignment is mirrored in the economic sphere. Globalization, once seen as irreversible, has stalled and may even be going into reverse. Protectionist policies are proliferating.

Washington has turned to tariffs, subsidies and secondary sanctions to advance its geopolitical ends. Beijing is promoting yuan-based settlement mechanisms and alternative supply chains, while procuring gold at a voracious pace to insulate itself from Western financial pressure, including potential sanctions.

What is emerging is not a single global marketplace but a patchwork of rival trading and financial blocs.

The consequences are already visible. The U.S. push to “de-risk” supply chains has triggered costly reshoring and diversification strategies. Technology is splitting into parallel ecosystems. Energy markets, too, are fragmenting, with Russian oil and gas exports largely shifting from Europe to Asia. In finance, competing payment systems are gaining traction, threatening to erode the central role of the U.S. dollar.

At the same time, the spread of armed conflicts shows how economic and geopolitical fractures feed on each other. In recent years, the number of wars and crises has risen, each with ripple effects on energy prices, supply chains and refugee flows.

The turbulence reflects a world in transition: the slow decline of the U.S.-led order without the emergence of a stable successor. It is the dawn of a new era — fractured, fiercely contested and dangerously unpredictable.

This moment echoes the 1930s — not in its specifics, but in its warning. Then, a world system changing between orders witnessed the emergence of competing economic blocs, fueling nationalist rivalries that eventually erupted into global war. The challenge today is not merely to manage competition, but to prevent economic, technological and ideological fragmentation from spiraling into chaos. That requires leadership, restraint and imagination — qualities in short supply.

In this environment, much will depend on how “swing states” position themselves. A recent report by the Center for a New American Security identified six such states as pivotal to the emerging global order: Brazil, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey. Each is multi-aligned, seeking to balance ties with the U.S., China and Russia rather than choosing sides. Collectively, they wield the ability to influence whether the world fragments into hostile blocs or maintains a degree of pluralism and connectivity.
India is perhaps the most critical of these nations. As the only long-established democracy in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, it is trying to prevent the grouping from acquiring an overtly anti-Western orientation, even as it participates in Western-led forums such as the Quad and, as a special invitee, the Group of 7.

Brazil, like India, is charting an independent course on trade and climate, while Saudi Arabia and Turkey are expanding ties eastward without severing links to the West. These countries demonstrate that the binary framing of “democracies versus autocracies” does not reflect the real complexity of international politics.

The danger, however, is that intensifying U.S.-China rivalry could reduce the room for maneuver for such states. If Washington sharpens its protectionist edge while Beijing doubles down on its authoritarian partnerships, the middle ground will narrow. Economic and security fragmentation could harden into a bipolar structure — two camps with little trust, minimal cooperation and heightened risk of confrontation.

That outcome is not inevitable. But preventing it will require conscious effort. Multilateral frameworks must be strengthened, not abandoned. Global cooperation — on climate change, pandemic preparedness, food security and technology standards — must be preserved despite geopolitical tensions. Above all, great powers must recognize that fragmentation carries grave risks not just for growth but for stability.

The world has been here before. The lesson of the 20th century is that when trade and politics fracture into competing blocs, confrontation follows. Unless today’s drift is reversed, the coming decade may bring not just the end of globalization, but the return of bloc-driven conflict.

Brahma Chellaney is the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”