Palestinians in Gaza face widespread starvation, some Israeli officials admit in private

Palestinians in Gaza face widespread starvation, some Israeli officials admit in private

The New York Times reports: Some Israeli military officials have privately concluded that Palestinians in Gaza face widespread starvation unless aid deliveries are restored within weeks, according to three Israeli defense officials familiar with conditions in the enclave. For months, Israel has maintained that its blockade on food and fuel to Gaza did not pose a major threat to civilian life in the territory, even as the United Nations and other aid agencies have said a famine was looming. But…

Read More Read More

Trump’s family is rapidly striking business deals across the Middle East

Trump’s family is rapidly striking business deals across the Middle East

The Wall Street Journal reports: When President Trump tours the Middle East this week, he will be looking to secure investments in the U.S. from the world’s richest petrostates. His family businesses and close associates already have been striking deals in the region at a rapid clip. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, the three countries on the president’s itinerary, stand out for their warm embrace of Trump Inc. In the past year, Trump-branded residential towers have been…

Read More Read More

As U.S. popularity collapses worldwide, foreign tourists stay away

As U.S. popularity collapses worldwide, foreign tourists stay away

The New York Times reports: The U.S. welcome mat is rolling up — at least that’s how some international travelers see it, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council, a global organization representing the travel and tourism industry. And the cost for that hospitality lapse will be high. The United States is on track to lose $12.5 billion in international travel spending this year, falling to less than $169 billion from $181 billion in 2024, according to the latest…

Read More Read More

Biden ‘stole an election from the Democratic Party. He stole it from the American people’

Biden ‘stole an election from the Democratic Party. He stole it from the American people’

Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson write: President Joe Biden got out of bed the day after the 2024 election convinced that he had been wronged. The élites, the Democratic officials, the media, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama—they shouldn’t have pushed him out of the race. If he had stayed in, he would have beaten Donald Trump. That’s what the polls suggested, he would say again and again. His pollsters told us that no such polls existed. There was no credible data,…

Read More Read More

Chimpanzees’ rhythmic drumming and complex calls hint at origins of human language

Chimpanzees’ rhythmic drumming and complex calls hint at origins of human language

  NPR reports: Researchers have found two important building blocks of human speech in wild chimpanzees, one of our closest relatives. A pair of studies finds that chimp communication includes both rhythmic structures and call combinations, two key elements of spoken language. Taken together, the studies add to an emerging “early footprint” indicating how human language may have evolved, says Catherine Crockford, an author of one of the studies and a research director at the French National Centre for Scientific…

Read More Read More

Americans are losing interest in Gaza at the worst possible moment

Americans are losing interest in Gaza at the worst possible moment

Zack Beauchamp writes: Israel’s war in Gaza, which has long been a moral atrocity, is on the brink of becoming unimaginably worse. Earlier this month, Israel’s security cabinet approved a plan that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as “the concluding moves” of the war in Gaza. Called “Gideon’s Chariots,” the operation’s plan calls for the mass destruction of remaining buildings in Gaza and the “conquest” of much of the Strip by Israel. The more than 2 million Palestinian civilians would…

Read More Read More

Pope Leo calls on journalists to use communication as a tool for peace

Pope Leo calls on journalists to use communication as a tool for peace

  NPR reports: “The way we communicate is of fundamental importance: We must say ‘no’ to the war of words and images; we must reject the paradigm of war,” Pope Leo XIV said in an address to journalists Monday morning. He implored them to use communication as a tool for peace. Referencing Pope Francis’ message from the World Day of Social Communications in January, Leo said, “Let us disarm communication of all prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred; let…

Read More Read More

Palace in the sky: Corruption and a security catastrophe in plane sight

Palace in the sky: Corruption and a security catastrophe in plane sight

Chris Lehmann writes: Back when outrage over Donald Trump’s blatant Oval Office corruption was still a novelty, a group of former national security officials filed an amicus brief in a 2019 lawsuit Democratic congressional leaders brought over Trump’s repeated violations of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. They cited one scenario as a clear and present threat to US national security interests: “A nation that plays a central role in the balance of power in the Middle East, one of…

Read More Read More

Trump’s incompetence is troubling The Federalist Society

Trump’s incompetence is troubling The Federalist Society

Ian Millhiser writes: Few organizations have profited as handsomely off of President Donald Trump’s rise to power as the Federalist Society, a kind of bar association for right-wing lawyers. “We’re going to have great judges, conservative, all picked by the Federalist Society,” Trump announced during his first campaign for president — and boy did he deliver. Trump spent his first term filling the bench, including three seats on the Supreme Court, with the society’s luminaries. And yet, at a Federalist…

Read More Read More

Trump administration makes a mockery of refugee status by welcoming Afrikaners

Trump administration makes a mockery of refugee status by welcoming Afrikaners

Politico reports: President Donald Trump on Monday defended his decision to take in dozens of white South Africans who were granted refugee status as his administration limits refugee admissions for the rest of the world. A group of 49 Afrikaners claiming to face discrimination and economic hardship in their home country arrived to the U.S. on Monday morning after being awarded an expedited pathway into the country by the Trump administration under a new program established earlier this year. But…

Read More Read More

From defenders to skeptics: The sharp decline in young Americans’ support for free speech

From defenders to skeptics: The sharp decline in young Americans’ support for free speech

Support among young people for allowing controversial or offensive speech has dropped sharply. J Studios/Getty Images By Jacob Mchangama, Vanderbilt University For much of the 20th century, young Americans were seen as free speech’s fiercest defenders. But now, young Americans are growing more skeptical of free speech. According to a March 2025 report by The Future of Free Speech, a nonpartisan think tank where I am executive director, support among 18- to 34-year-olds for allowing controversial or offensive speech has…

Read More Read More

The risks from chemicals in our food may be even worse than Kennedy suggests

The risks from chemicals in our food may be even worse than Kennedy suggests

Julia Belluz writes: The health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., believes toxic chemicals in food are behind the U.S. explosion in rates of obesity and a range of other chronic illnesses. “A facade of normalcy has masked this meteoric rise in chronic disease, and we can no longer ignore it,” he said recently. He intends to rid the U.S. food supply of nine chemicals — all petroleum-based, synthetic food dyes — in as soon as 18 months. Mr. Kennedy has…

Read More Read More

Trump seems to be ceding the future to China while emulating its past

Trump seems to be ceding the future to China while emulating its past

Derek Thompson writes: China may well come to dominate the next century—because President Donald Trump is taking a page from the most famous Chinese leader of the previous one. The United States remains the world’s preeminent soft power. It’s a financial and cultural juggernaut, whose entertainment and celebrities bestride the planet. But as an industrial power, the U.S. is not so much at risk of falling behind as it is objectively behind already. A recent essay in the journal Foreign…

Read More Read More

Judges in several states face threats and intimidation tactics at their homes

Judges in several states face threats and intimidation tactics at their homes

The Washington Post reports: Federal judges say unsolicited pizza deliveries to jurists’ homes that began in February may number in the hundreds across at least seven states, prompting increased security concerns and a demand from a Senate leader for a Justice Department investigation. Many of the deliveries have gone to judges presiding over lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s policies. The U.S. Marshals Service has been tracking the deliveries, and judges have been sharing details about their experiences in hopes of…

Read More Read More