Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at King Charles III’s speech to the U.S. Congress, the United Arab Emirates’ plan to leave OPEC, and parliamentary deadlock over Kosovo’s next president.

Britain’s King Charles III gave a historic address to a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress on Tuesday that included several pointed messages aimed directly at U.S. President Donald Trump. “America’s words carry weight and meaning, as they have since independence,” Charles told U.S. lawmakers. “The actions of this great nation matter even more.”

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at King Charles III’s speech to the U.S. Congress, the United Arab Emirates’ plan to leave OPEC, and parliamentary deadlock over Kosovo’s next president.

Britain’s King Charles III gave a historic address to a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress on Tuesday that included several pointed messages aimed directly at U.S. President Donald Trump. “America’s words carry weight and meaning, as they have since independence,” Charles told U.S. lawmakers. “The actions of this great nation matter even more.”

Although the speech was broadly about celebrating the long-standing ties between the United States and the United Kingdom, Charles carefully laced it with subtle yet unmistakable critiques of Trump and some of his administration’s most contentious policies by highlighting such shared values as diversity, interfaith understanding, checks on executive power, commitments to allies, and the defense of vulnerable nations such as Ukraine.

Charles could have taken the safer path and avoided making comments that might spark the Trump administration’s ire; as a symbolic figurehead, the king is usually kept separate from political squabbles. However, Charles pulled no punches.

After opening with a quote by the Irish poet Oscar Wilde, who was famously imprisoned for homosexual acts, Charles went on to proclaim that “it is the very fact of our vibrant, diverse, and free societies that gives us our collective strength”—a message fundamentally at odds with the Trump administration’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. He stressed the need for increased defense spending, arguing that “unyielding resolve is needed for the defense of Ukraine and her most courageous people” at a time when Washington has been hesitant to provide Kyiv with more aid. And he lamented the “disastrously melting........

© Foreign Policy