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A fragile thaw in Hormuz but timing and sequence now matter

A fragile thaw in Hormuz but timing and sequence now matter

Richard Meade writes: The U.S.-Iran agreement has injected a rare moment of relief into a region where merchant seafarers have paid the highest price. But while the headlines trumpet de‑escalation, the maritime sector is treating the news with something closer to wary disbelief than celebration. The Strait of Hormuz may be reopening, but the rules of engagement — literal and political — remain murky. The industry is still waiting for clarity on the administrative and practical arrangements governing the strait,…

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Frustrated by courts, Trump weighed suspending a fundamental constitutional right: habeas corpus

Frustrated by courts, Trump weighed suspending a fundamental constitutional right: habeas corpus

The New York Times reports: Last spring, Will Scharf, an arch-conservative lawyer serving as the White House staff secretary, wrote a secret memo to the chief of staff that reflected growing unease in the West Wing about one of the extreme measures being weighed by Stephen Miller, the powerful adviser driving President Trump’s deportation campaign. Dated April 29, 2025, and stamped “confidential,” the memo was careful and lawyerly but amounted to a warning against end-running the rule of law. The…

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At G-7, allies plan for a world in which the U.S. has less influence

At G-7, allies plan for a world in which the U.S. has less influence

The Washington Post reports: When President Donald Trump arrives on the shores of Lake Geneva for this week’s Group of Seven summit, he will find America’s closest allies in a new posture: increasingly willing to tell him no. After years of tariff threats, diplomatic whiplash and public confrontations, many world leaders have concluded that Trump is not an interruption to the international order but a feature of it — a reordering likely to endure regardless of who sits in the…

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Trump’s anti-free speech rhetoric increases support for censorship among his voters

Trump’s anti-free speech rhetoric increases support for censorship among his voters

PsyPost reports: A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that when political leaders suddenly express support for censorship, their supporters tend to adopt those same views. The findings provide evidence that the statements of prominent politicians can easily sway public opinion on foundational democratic rights like freedom of speech. This highlights how political language can influence voters to abandon long-held values in favor of restricting the rights of opposing groups. President Donald Trump…

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U.S. and Iran will sign a ‘peace deal’ — then spend the next two months negotiating its terms

U.S. and Iran will sign a ‘peace deal’ — then spend the next two months negotiating its terms

The Wall Street Journal reports: Iran and the U.S. have agreed on a peace deal, the two nations announced Sunday, a major breakthrough after nearly four months of fighting that created global political and economic turmoil. President Trump, in an interview earlier Sunday with The Wall Street Journal, said this deal would either be signed electronically by himself or Vice President JD Vance on Sunday. Pakistani negotiators said a formal signing would come later this week. Trump’s interview with the…

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Elon Musk’s climb to extreme wealth while wrecking a civil society is the essence of our broken century

Elon Musk’s climb to extreme wealth while wrecking a civil society is the essence of our broken century

Will Bunch writes: The images coming out of Belfast — the city in Northern Ireland made famous by decades of ethnic violence that came to be known simply as, “the Troubles” — were horrific enough. The sight of cars and homes ablaze and hordes of masked, young men roaming the city streets brought back painful memories for old-timers. “I lost my teenage years to the Troubles,” a shell-shocked, 71-year-old, Paul Sharkey, told the New York Times, after watching a flaming…

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The Big Four accounting firms are selling AI governance while their own reports hallucinate

The Big Four accounting firms are selling AI governance while their own reports hallucinate

Janet Harrison writes: There is something clarifying about a consulting firm publishing a report on AI’s enterprise benefits that itself contains AI-generated hallucinations. That is what happened with KPMG, and it landed on top of a pattern. EY Canada pulled a cybersecurity report in May 2026 after researchers found fake footnotes, misattributed sources, and references to material that did not exist. Deloitte, meanwhile, agreed last year to refund part of an AU$440,000 Australian government contract after errors and fabricated references…

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France’s far-right front-runner rejects Trump’s backing

France’s far-right front-runner rejects Trump’s backing

Politico reports: If Jordan Bardella becomes France’s next president, don’t expect him to be Donald Trump’s man in Europe. The 30-year-old leader of France’s far-right National Rally — and the favorite to replace Marine Le Pen if she is barred from running in 2027 — sought during a 45-minute exclusive interview with POLITICO to put distance between himself and the U.S. president he once openly admired. Trump’s behavior is “not only erratic but also extremely unsteady and constantly shifting,” said…

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Conventional wisdom says climate change is a losing issue. Evidence suggests it actually helps Democrats

Conventional wisdom says climate change is a losing issue. Evidence suggests it actually helps Democrats

Kate Yoder writes: As the midterm elections approach, something strange has happened: Democratic politicians who once talked about climate change as the defining crisis of our time now barely mention it at all. The phrase has begun disappearing from their speeches, social media posts, and podcast appearances. The main exception is Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat who has given some version of his “Time to Wake Up” speech on the dangers of climate change more than 300 times…

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Meet Folarin Balogun, the accidental American leading USA’s World Cup charge

Meet Folarin Balogun, the accidental American leading USA’s World Cup charge

Lawrence Ostlere writes: There is little evidence about Folarin Balogun’s political beliefs and we should resist the urge to assign some. But there is a delicious irony in his emergence as the hero of USA’s opening World Cup 2026 game. At a time when Donald Trump’s administration is actively using the tournament to flaunt its strong-arm approach to border control, flexing against fans, players, staff and even celebrated Somali referees, a Londoner of Nigerian heritage seems like the poster boy…

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What ancient philosophy really thought about domestic life

What ancient philosophy really thought about domestic life

Sandrine Bergès writes: Political philosophy – a discipline we trace back to Plato and Aristotle – is reasoning about how we live together in political units. It is about states, government, laws, institutions and citizenship. But it doesn’t have much to say about homes, families, marriage or parenting. The discipline that studies how we live together in family units, as opposed to political ones, used to be called economics, from the Greek oikonomika, or science of the home. This was…

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Social Security is going broke. Where is the outrage?

Social Security is going broke. Where is the outrage?

Jason Furman writes: The first major public policy issue I worked on in the White House, almost 30 years ago, was President Bill Clinton’s call to “save Social Security first.” Though the fund wasn’t projected to run dry for another three decades, the country seemed gripped by the issue. A few years later, George W. Bush felt strongly enough about the looming crisis that he spent much of his political capital pushing a strategy to resolve it. This week the…

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A Peter Thiel-backed tribunal is putting journalists on trial. I’m its first target

A Peter Thiel-backed tribunal is putting journalists on trial. I’m its first target

Gary Baum writes: For many journalists, blowback is just part of the business. The irate call to the editor or publisher, often expressed through the promise of litigation. The online pile-on, often expressed through personal invective. Occasionally, the threat of violence, often expressed through all-caps derangement. It’s rare to encounter a novel variant. But on April 21, I received a remarkable email. “Someone has filed an objection against something you wrote,” explained Austin Livingston, pointing me to a web page…

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Trita Parsi: So they tried to deport me…

Trita Parsi: So they tried to deport me…

Trita Parsi writes: I have fought the neocons and warmongers in Washington for more than 25 years. Throughout, they have tried to silence, discredit, slander, and cancel me. Only recently, however, have they tried to deport me. At least, that appears to have been the aim of a hit piece in Bari Weiss’s The Free Press, which claimed that Marco Rubio’s State Department was “investigating” me for allegedly seeking to “undermine the U.S.”—presumably because of my opposition to war with…

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