Stack the Week by John Dickerson

May 29, 2026 Stack the Week

Welcome everyone to the Stack the Week experiment for May 25th through the 29th. It is available here in text and audio and available in your podcast player.

Thank you to Annie Cohen and Laura Doan for help preparing this delicious offering.

A war plays out in press releases, a Pope puts down a marker, January 6 records are unmarked, but the acting AG has tire marks thanks to his predecessor. Everything is bigger in Texas but the electorate, but CEO pay is bigger than the lone star state, one sign of a strong economy where more people go hungry, stay out of the car and break the piggy bank. Gen Z is tan and unemployed. The markets think Anthropic has a plan Tony Blair doesn’t think his party does. Sonny Rollins was the last man on the stoop and the beer that made Milwaukee famous, poured out for good. But time has not caught up with the Floppy disks holding the planes apart. We’ll spell it out like bromocriptine but with typos so you’ll believe us.

Let’s take it day by day.

Monday May 25

Monday’s stories all seemed to circle the idea of memory. The memory stored in institutions, the memory carried by experts, the memory that disappears when the last person in a photograph dies, and the hidden memory written into our own lives– by the worship of the sun or profit– by choices whose consequences may not arrive for decades. The future, as it turns out, spends a lot of time in conversation with the past.

Iran: One Foot on the Gas and Break

Graham Wallas, the British political thinker, wrote a book exactly a century ago called The Art of Thought. We here at Stack the Week go in for that kind of thing because, as I will detail in a longer note later, part of this experiment is not just to come up with a way to deliver the news but how to think about how we think about delivering the news. More on that later, but Wallas writes that mankind had increased its power over nature without increasing its control over that power through thought. Chemists and engineers could devise methods of destruction beyond anything previous generations imagined. Statesmen, meanwhile, still struggled to cooperate much as tribal leaders had in the stone age.

This was on my mind Monday when President Trump described negotiations with Iran as proceeding in an “orderly and constructive manner.” The same day the U.S. military announced strikes on Iranian missile sites and boats laying mines.

The weapons have changed. They are advanced in ways that would have seemed like sorcery in 1926, but the political problem has not. Modern militaries can strike targets hundreds of miles away with extraordinary precision. Their countries still depend, however, on negotiations conducted by fallible human beings carrying rival interests, fears and ambitions.

K-shaped Gas Prices Impact

Since the Iran war began driving up energy prices, the burden has fallen unevenly. For households earning roughly $40,000 a year or less, commuting fuel costs now consume about 4 percent of income, according to a Washington Post analysis, up from 3 percent last year. For households earning $100,000 or more, the figure remains below 1 percent.

The difference is not simply income; it is flexibility. Lower-income workers are more likely to live farther from work after being priced out of expensive urban areas, more likely to have fixed schedules, and less likely to have alternatives to driving. Research from the New York Federal Reserve found that after the Strait of Hormuz closure pushed energy prices higher, households earning under $40,000 cut gasoline consumption by about 7 percent, while higher-income households changed little.

But cutting gasoline consumption is not like cutting back on luxury purchases. It often means skipping a doctor’s appointment, delaying errands, seeing family less often, or missing church. The cost shows up not just in a household budget, but in the routines and relationships that hold a life together.

Pope and AI

Maybe it was the Pope who had us thinking this week about the pace of technology and the pokey pace of the human race.

On Monday, Leo XIV released Magnifica Humanitas — “Magnificent Humanity” — his first encyclical, a roughly 42,300-word letter on how Christianity should guide the development of artificial intelligence. Its warning rested on two biblical images: the Tower of Babel, as a symbol of technological hubris, and Nehemiah’s rebuilding of Jerusalem, as a model of collective human restoration.

Leo signed the document on May 15, the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, the 1891 encyclical by Leo XIII that became the foundation of modern Catholic social teaching on labor and industrial capitalism.

That document met the upheaval of factories, child labor and urban squalor by calling on governments to “save unfortunate working people from the cruelty of men of greed.” Leo XIV is claiming the same moral jurisdiction over a transformation whose final shape no one can yet describe. (And he also reminded us that greed and its clash with the human condition is a permanent part of that condition, just as power and ego is a part of our politics today in a way that it was when America was founded. Both are an argument that old books and ideas can teach us new lessons.)

The more unusual signal came from Christopher Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, one of the major artificial intelligence companies. Speaking at the Vatican presentation, Olah said, “We need moral voices that the incentives cannot bend.” That is an extraordinary concession from inside the industry: someone building the technology acknowledging that the market’s incentives alone will not produce moral outcomes.

Leo called for government regulation of A.I. companies; protection and retraining for threatened workers; education that teaches students to think critically about the technology; stronger defenses for children against violent, sexualized and fake material online; and human responsibility over every decision involving weapons.

That last point connects to the warning at the start of our stack this week. “The growing ease with which autonomous weapons systems can be deployed makes war more ‘feasible’ and less subject to human control,” Leo wrote.

The message was not anti-technology. Leo described A.I. as a “profoundly human reality” that could relieve dangerous work, improve medical diagnosis and expand personalized education. But only if it serves human agency rather than replacing it.

At the core of the encyclical is the claim that work is not merely income but identity — “a requirement of the human condition, a normal path toward maturity, development and personal fulfillment.”

The predictable question is whether Silicon Valley will listen. But encyclicals rarely work by converting the powerful on first reading. Rerum Novarum did not persuade factory owners to raise wages.

It gave Catholic trade unionists, politicians and intellectuals a moral vocabulary for the labor fights that followed.

The question is not whether anyone reads all 42,300 words. It is whether the document gives people already uneasy about A.I. a sturdier language to encourage everybody to slow down and think what they’re doing.

Teen Summer Job Market

During my high school summers, I worked at the concession stand of a semi-pro basketball league, kept the books for that league, and spent two summers in a computer store selling and repairing computers. The jobs taught me how to deal with adults, show up on time, handle criticism, and generally keep from wandering off into the street.

Those jobs are becoming less common. The Wall Street Journal reports that teen summer hiring is on track for its worst season since 1948, when Americans were still celebrating victory in World War II. Inflation and fuel costs are squeezing the small businesses that traditionally hire young workers. Resorts, hotels, amusement parks and other leisure employers are cutting seasonal hiring. Many teenagers are choosing something else entirely: college preparation, sports, extracurricular activities or online ventures.

More than half of American teenagers worked in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, only about 35% do.

One exception stands out. Lifeguards remain in short supply. Job postings are up 78% from a year ago, according to Indeed. The work requires certification, however, and employers say low pay and difficult conditions make recruiting difficult.

What disappears when you don’t have to steal your Dad’s tie and sweat at the bus stop to make it on time to your summer job? For generations, entry-level work taught punctuality, responsibility, customer service, workplace conflict management and the simple experience of earning a paycheck. A first job often introduced teenagers to people outside their families, schools and friend groups. At a moment when concerns about adolescent loneliness and isolation already run high—with a Washington University study finding that nearly 1 in 2 young adults aged 18 to 24 now report chronic loneliness—one of the ways of mixing in a community is withering..

Jan. 6 Memory Hole

If the Capitol of the world’s most successful democracy is stormed by a mob and there isn’t a web page about it, did it even happen?

The Department of Justice has removed webpages detailing charges, convictions and case information related to the January 6 attack on the Capitol. When the Washington Post reported that the department was quietly deleting information about the cases, the DOJ’s Rapid Response account replied that there was “nothing ‘quiet’ about it.” The department said it was “proud to reverse” what it called the Biden administration’s “weaponization” of justice. It described its own prosecution records as “partisan propaganda” and pledged to help make whole those it says were persecuted for political reasons.

The records documented one of the largest criminal investigations in American history. More than 1,500 people were charged. Roughly 1,000 pleaded guilty or were convicted. The cases arose from the January 6 attack by Trump supporters that halted Congress as lawmakers met to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election which Donald Trump lost.

President Trump has now pardoned or commuted the sentences of most January 6 defendants. He continues to say he won the 2020 election.

That claim survived neither evidence nor scrutiny. More than sixty courts rejected challenges to the election results. Eighty-six judges rejected them, including many appointed by Trump. His attorney general rejected claims of widespread fraud. His campaign’s own data operation found no path to proving the election had been stolen. His director of election security called the election the most secure in American history. So, if you were looking for an analogy to explain the president’s position, this would not just be like a president saying the moon is made of cheese, but it would be like a president insisting that he’d had a grilled moon cheese sandwich that afternoon for lunch.

The fight is larger than a set of archived webpages. Democracies depend on public records because memory fades and political incentives change. Historians, students and citizens rarely agree about what an event means. They can at least begin with the same evidence.

The question raised by the deletions is not whether January 6 happened. The videos, court records and news coverage remain. The question is who gets to decide which parts of the historical record the government preserves, and which parts it treats as propaganda.

Gen Z Tanning

An entire generation is trusting influencers over institutions on a subject where the damage won’t show up for twenty years.

Only 25 percent of Gen Z respondents in a new American Academy of Dermatology survey expressed concern about developing skin cancer, compared with 39 percent of the general population. One in five said having a tan matters more than preventing skin cancer. A quarter previously told researchers that looking good now was worth looking worse later. And by worse we mean like a satchel you might find stuffed under a table at a flea market.

Part of the problem may be where people are getting their information. Thirty-six percent of Gen Z respondents rely primarily on TikTok and Instagram influencers for skincare advice, nearly double the rate of the general population.

One-third scored a D or F on a basic sun-safety assessment. Sixty-five percent believe a “base tan” protects against sunburns or lowers cancer risk, though a tan is actually evidence of DNA damage. (So this is like saying a few shots does not contribute to drunkenness). More than half wear sunscreen only when it’s hot and sunny, even though most ultraviolet radiation passes through cloud cover.

Influencers often portray commercial sunscreens as toxic and falsely claim they cause cancer. The dermatology academy says 16 million American adults have reduced or stopped using sunscreen because of unverified online claims.

The dispute takes place in the same register as the ones we had during the era of Covid-19. Dermatologists are trying to persuade people with expertise. Influencers are persuading them with social proof. The dermatologist says, “Trust me because I know.” The influencer says, “Trust me because you know me.”

The trouble is that skin cancer operates on a long delay.

A bad financial tip may empty your wallet by next month. A bad skin-care tip can sit quietly for decades. Melanoma is already the third most common cancer diagnosed in Americans between 25 and 39. Indoor tanning before age 30 increases melanoma risk by 75 percent. Five or more sunburns doubles the risk.

Many of today’s tanning decisions will not be judged by next summer’s beach photos. They will be judged years from now in dermatologists’ offices, when someone notices a changing mole, schedules a biopsy and discovers that the skin — while it was looking great on your TikTok account — was also keeping score the whole time.

Sonny Rollins

Sonny Rollins spent six decades proving that the purpose of mastering the rules was not to follow them forever.

The tenor saxophonist died Monday at his home in Woodstock, New York. He was 95.

Rollins came up in the bebop era alongside John Coltrane and Charlie Parker, learning jazz’s underlying architecture: chord changes, harmonic structures and the disciplined vocabulary of improvisation. Most great musicians spend their lives refining those skills. Rollins used them as a starting point.

He became one of the pioneers of free jazz, following fragments of melody wherever they led. A performance might begin with a familiar song and end somewhere entirely different. All jazz musicians improvise. Many improvise within established patterns, the way a speaker works within a language. Rollins improvised the way someone invents a language while speaking it.

The paradox was that this freedom required extraordinary discipline. Rollins once spent nearly two years in self-imposed exile from performing, practicing alone on the Williamsburg Bridge because he felt he had more to learn.

“You can’t think and play at the same time — believe me, I’ve tried it,” he once said. “I’m not supposed to be playing, the music is supposed to be playing me. I’m just supposed to be standing there with the horn, moving my fingers.”

It sounds mystical until you realize how many human pursuits work the same way. The experienced driver is not consciously calculating every movement of the wheel. The skilled interviewer is not reciting a checklist of questions. The writer is not diagramming every sentence. Mastery begins with rules. Sometimes it ends by making them disappear.

Rollins was also the last surviving person in A Great Day in Harlem, the famous 1958 photograph that gathered 57 jazz musicians on a Harlem stoop.

Schlitz Farewell

Schlitz, the beer that made Milwaukee famous, is disappearing just as the fastest-growing part of the beer business no longer contains beer.

Pabst Brewing announced it will discontinue the 175-year-old brand. Wisconsin Brewing Co. brewed one final batch Saturday in Verona. Dozens of locals showed up to watch. Milwaukee-area liquor stores quickly sold out of what remained.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Schlitz was the best-selling beer in the world. It got there through catastrophe. After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed much of the city’s brewing infrastructure, Joseph Schlitz loaded steamships with beer, crossed Lake Michigan and established distribution points throughout the devastated city. The effort won customers, broke local monopolies and helped transform Milwaukee into one of America’s brewing capitals.

The company’s famous slogan — “The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous” — was less a claim about taste than a claim about economics. Schlitz spent decades buying Chicago real estate and constructing ornate corner saloons that sold its beer exclusively. The company wasn’t simply producing a drink. It was helping build the places where people gathered after work, traded gossip, argued politics and met their neighbors.

That world appears to be fading. The overall beer market shrank last year. Non-alcoholic beer grew 8 percent. The category now generates roughly $25 billion globally and analysts expect it to double by the mid-2030s.

One way to read those numbers is as a health story. Americans want fewer calories, less alcohol and fewer hangovers.

Another way to read them is as a story about changing habits. The beer that made Milwaukee famous grew alongside crowded saloons and neighborhood gathering places. The industry’s future may belong to people who still want the taste but increasingly organize their lives around work, fitness, wellness and activities that begin not at the end of the day but the next morning.

Tuesday May 27

Tuesday’s stories were full of things that revealed their true value only when they disappeared. The internet after an eighty-eight-day blackout. Competitive elections after power migrates to primaries. Transparency after governments tighten control of information. Even typos, which turn out to matter once machines stop making them.

Iran

On Tuesday the United States struck Iran for the second day in a row, hitting missile sites and minelaying boats, and again called the attacks acts of self-defense carried out with restraint. Tehran called them a flagrant violation of the ceasefire, proof of “bad faith and unreliability,” and warned that Washington would answer for all consequences. The talks President Trump had called orderly and constructive on Monday were, by Tuesday, being conducted by press release and ordnance.

When the House debated a War Powers vote earlier this year, the Speaker argued there was no kinetic activity underway, so no vote was needed. The resolution does not say that. It speaks of situations where hostilities are imminent — exactly the condition a second day of strikes appears to describe, long after the 60 day triggering threshold for the War Powers Act has passed.

Nevertheless, the “ceasefire” remains in effect. But if attacks can still take place during a ceasefire, that seems a pretty weak word to use. What is meant by it, apparently, is not that the firing has ceased but that it has not yet become full-scale carnage.

The gap between words and reality showed up elsewhere in Iran this week.

For eighty-eight days an Iranian shopkeeper could not take a payment, a student could not reach a server, a family could not call out, and a business could not reliably do business. The government imposed what became the longest internet blackout ever ordered by a country. Tens of millions of people were cut off from the outside world because their leaders feared what citizens might learn, organize or communicate more than they feared the cost of silence.

Eventually the costs won. Students needed to take exams. Businesses needed to function. Even some officials reportedly wanted the networks restored before the economic damage became politically damaging too.

After eighty-eight days, internet service began returning, though only partially.

One Iranian man told the BBC that the restoration felt “exactly like a prisoner being released after three months of imprisonment and seeing the sky for the first time.” When websites finally loaded again and messages began flowing through WhatsApp and Telegram, he said he was nearly brought to tears.

Politics: Texas

Only 7.4 percent of Texas’s registered voters participated in the Republican Senate runoff. That small slice of the electorate is what made Ken Paxton the Republican nominee for Senate.

Increasingly, that is how American politics works: in many places, the voters who decide elections are not the broad public in November but a narrow, highly motivated minority in low-turnout primaries.

Paxton, indicted on securities fraud charges and impeached by his own party’s legislature, defeated Senator John Cornyn. Cornyn voted with Donald Trump 99.2 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight’s historical tracking.

A party that rejects a 99-percent loyalist over the other one percent is sending a signal. Cornyn’s greatest offenses were not policy disagreements. He certified Joe Biden’s 2020 victory rather than challenge the result based on unproven allegations. After the Uvalde school shooting, he helped negotiate the first federal gun-safety legislation in three decades with Democrats. In both cases, he chose the institution over the movement.

When a general election becomes noncompetitive, power migrates to the primary. When power migrates to the primary, it migrates to the most motivated voters. Politicians adapt accordingly. They become trained in resisting compromise and engaging in showy acts of loyalty, which usually means attacking the other party, further eroding the chances for the compromise necessary to pass actual legislation.

It was the most expensive Senate primary in American history, with more than $120 million spent on advertising and campaigning. Cornyn spent the closing weeks of the race trying to prove he could be every bit as loyal as his challenger. It did not work.

The party establishment understood the risk. For more than a year, the National Republican Senatorial Committee ran advertisements calling Paxton “Crooked Ken” and warning he could hand the seat to Democrats. Within hours of his victory, those attacks disappeared.

Republicans currently hold the Senate 53-47. Texas was supposed to be a safe Republican seat. The day Paxton won, the Cook Political Report shifted the race from “Likely Republican” to “Lean Republican” — not because Texas changed, but because Republicans selected a nominee many analysts consider weaker in a general election. Democrats hope to capitalize on that opening with State Representative James Talarico.

South Carolina and Alabama Gerrymanders blocked

The mid-cycle redistricting frenzy of 2026 — a partisan land grab sparked by the president and accelerated by recent court rulings — just ran into something stronger than party loyalty: self-preservation.

Wait, didn’t we just spend the last item talking about how Republicans are increasingly required to be loyal to Donald Trump? Yes. But politics is a competition among incentives, and this week some Republicans decided that keeping their seats mattered more than pleasing the president — deciding the Democratic anger about removing all districts that represented Black voters would be greater than the retributive anger of Donald Trump for not following his wishes.

In South Carolina, Governor Henry McMaster called a special legislative session under pressure from Trump and the White House to redraw the state’s congressional map and eliminate the lone Democratic district held by Representative James Clyburn. Early momentum suggested Republicans might succeed.

Then the math kicked in.

The problem was that Democrats removed from Clyburn’s district would have to go somewhere. That somewhere was neighboring Republican districts. A plan designed to create a cleaner 7-0 Republican delegation could instead weaken surrounding GOP seats and turn a stable 6-1 map into a more vulnerable 5-2 map in a bad election year where Black voters were newly infuriated by being railroaded by the political process. There was also a practical complication: overseas absentee ballots had already been printed.

Alabama produced a different kind of resistance. A three-judge federal panel blocked an attempt to revive a disputed congressional map, writing that it could not require voters to cast ballots under a plan “tainted by intentional race-based discrimination.” The judges concluded that state lawmakers had deliberately defied earlier court orders requiring a second district in which Black voters could elect their preferred candidate.

The court also invoked the Purcell principle, the doctrine holding that election rules should not be changed too close to an election because doing so risks voter confusion and undermines confidence in the process.

Together the decisions slowed what had become a nationwide redistricting arms race. Eight states have already adopted new congressional maps. Three others remain in active litigation. President Trump hopes the redraws will create a Republican bulwark against a potential Democratic wave fueled by his low approval ratings.

President to Walter Reed

President Donald Trump visited Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Tuesday for a routine medical and dental checkup, according to a White House official. While the President routinely asserts that he remains in “excellent health”—most recently declaring on Truth Social after his last physical that “Everything checked out PERFECTLY”—the checkup arrived amid persistent public rumors regarding visible symptoms, including swollen ankles and consistent bruising on his hands.

It marked the president’s third visit to Walter Reed in just thirteen months, a frequency that breaks from the standard modern presidential precedent of a single, comprehensive annual physical at the facility. For a typical individual turning eighty next month, medical guidelines recommend at least one to two primary care checkups a year to monitor age-related risks, though frequent visits are common when managing chronic issues like the chronic venous insufficiency the White House previously confirmed. Ultimately, the visit draws heightened national attention as Trump prepares to enter his ninth decade, on his way to becoming the oldest person ever to occupy the presidency.

NDAs for Federal Workers

Have you ever tried to get a straight answer out of a massive corporate bureaucracy? Everyone is terrified of public relations problems, nobody wants to speak on the record, and every answer seems to pass through three lawyers before it reaches you.

Now imagine applying that model to the federal government.

The Office of Personnel Management has proposed requiring current and future federal employees to sign broad non-disclosure agreements intended to reduce leaks to the press. The draft policy takes an expansive view of what counts as confidential, covering internal operations, personnel matters, procurement decisions, and a wide range of non-public deliberations.

Supporters argue the government has a legitimate interest in protecting sensitive information and ensuring employees work through proper channels. Critics respond that many important stories about waste, incompetence, misconduct, and corruption reach the public only because someone inside government was willing to speak.

The president of the American Federation of Government Employees argues that public servants do not surrender their First Amendment rights in exchange for a government paycheck. The broader concern is that the proposal could discourage employees from sharing even unclassified information that might embarrass an agency or administration.

The debate reaches beyond one personnel policy. Modern governments generate enormous amounts of information, much of it hidden from public view. Citizens depend on inspectors general, whistleblowers, watchdog groups, congressional oversight and journalists to understand what is happening inside institutions they cannot directly observe.

Every administration dislikes leaks but those who serve in administrations seeking to maintain democratic norms understand that a press that investigates what is being done on the people’s behalf is a necessary part of a democracy.

American Airlines Goes Starlink

Do you purchase Wi-Fi when you’re flying?

I’m sorry, it’s not working. Try it again. Oh, there it is working. Nope, it’s not working again. They’ve reset the system. You can load it on your phone, but not on your computer. Oh great, it’s working. Unfortunately, it’s working at the baud rate of a 1985 computer.

The airlines are in a race to improve your experience. That’s why when you fly Delta, they will tell you that Delta is on a Wi-Fi journey to improve its service, which sounds like something that requires a team of therapists.

The amenity wars among airlines have moved from seatback screens and legroom to something more basic: whether passengers remain connected to the rest of the world. Airlines are desperate to capture high-margin business travelers and premium leisure travelers who refuse to be offline for even one quivering desperate clutching moment. Business travelers want to work. Leisure travelers want to stream. Parents want to text their children. Increasingly, people regard six hours without internet access the way earlier generations regarded six hours without electricity.

That is why American Airlines’ announcement Tuesday that it will install SpaceX’s Starlink service on roughly 500 narrow-body Airbus aircraft matters. High-speed, gate-to-gate connectivity is rapidly moving from luxury perk to baseline expectation.

The technology behind that shift is a constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites that can deliver dramatically faster speeds and lower latency than the older geostationary systems that have long frustrated airline passengers. By signing major carriers one after another—first United, now American—Starlink is positioning itself as the connective tissue not only for remote farms, ships at sea and rural communities, but increasingly for the ordinary routines of modern life.

Tyops

Humans of the earth untie. I mean unite. I may have just proved I am human. Both because of a typo and a dad joke.

A report Tuesday by The Atlantic highlights the growing role typos play in establishing humanity in an age increasingly flooded with polished, AI-generated content. Tyops are not sloppy. They’re authentic. Though try making that joke in Google Docs. The software keeps correcting “tyops” to “typos.” The machines are ever vigilant, and so too must we be.

Some job applicants are now intentionally planting spelling mistakes in cover letters to prove a machine did not write them. Corporate executives and celebrities receive praise for sending messages that appear unedited. Researchers studying dating apps have found that minor mistakes can make a profile seem more genuine because they suggest an actual human being sat down and typed the words.

The strange consequence is that some of the qualities we once tried hardest to eliminate are becoming valuable again. For decades technology promised a future free of mistakes. Now mistakes themselves are becoming evidence that a person was involved.

We’re all figuring out personal watermarks.

You can imagine this spreading beyond typos. Instead of showing up at the door with six-pack abs and a professionally optimized dating profile, future Romeos may prepare for their date by wrinkling their shirt. Perhaps mash a handful of crushed potato chips under the arms to create that authentic “I’ve been on the couch for three days contemplating existence” look.

Wednesday May 27

A war looks different when you calculate how long it takes to replace the missiles. An economy looks different when you ask who received the gains. Fun looks different when you ask whether people are really talking about meaning. Even a guitar becomes a different object after seventy years of imitation.

Iran

On Wednesday the Iran conflict looked less like a military campaign than a public argument about leverage.

President Trump told his cabinet that Iran had misjudged him.

“They thought they were going to outwait me. You know, ‘we’ll outwait him. He’s got the midterms.’ I don’t care about the midterms.”

The statement was aimed at Iran, but it also carried an implicit claim about public support. Trump appeared to cite the previous night’s political results as evidence of strength. Yet the election he was referring to was a Republican primary in Texas decided by fewer than ten percent of registered voters. National polling paints a different picture. Multiple surveys now show majorities of Americans disapprove of the conflict and would prefer the United States disengage rather than remain involved in a prolonged war.

Still, the point of the statement was not really polling. It was signaling. Trump wanted Iran to believe he is willing to stay in the fight.

Iran spent the day sending signals of its own.

State television published what it described as the outlines of a preliminary agreement with the United States. The reported framework discussed shipping lanes, sanctions and military withdrawals. Missing from the proposal was any meaningful discussion of Iran’s nuclear program—the issue that led to the conflict in the first place. The White House dismissed the report as a fabrication.

Whether the proposal was real is almost beside the point. Like Trump’s comments, it was an attempt to shape perceptions about who has leverage and who needs a deal.

That dynamic appeared again later Wednesday when Trump threatened military action against Oman if it participated in a joint arrangement to manage shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. For those of you keeping score, Oman is a US ally. According to CNN’s tally, Oman becomes the 15th country Trump has either threatened to attack, left open the possibility of attacking, or actually attacked during his two terms. Those countries are home to roughly one out of every eleven people on Earth.

Missile Gap

In the 1960 presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy warned of a “missile gap” between the Soviet Union and the United States. The war with Iran has revealed a different kind of missile gap: the gap between how quickly America can fire missiles and how quickly it can replace them.

A new analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates it will take roughly three years for the United States to replenish the munitions stockpiles depleted so far in the war. The problem is not money. Congress has already appropriated replacement funds. The problem is time.

Modern missiles require specialized factories, trained workers, complex supply chains and long production schedules. A Tomahawk cruise missile can be launched in seconds. Replacing it can take years.

The United States has expended more than 1,000 Tomahawks during the conflict. Over the past decade, the Navy purchased an average of just 86 per year. Raytheon recently produced fewer than 200 annually. The Navy now wants 785 Tomahawks in its 2027 budget request, but according to Defense Department projections those missiles will not begin arriving until 2030. CSIS estimates the inventory expended during the war will not be fully restored until late that year.

That creates what military planners call a window of vulnerability. America still possesses overwhelming military power, but some of its most sophisticated weapons now exist primarily as purchase orders and production schedules rather than inventory sitting in warehouses, launch tubes and magazines.

CEO Pay

Imagine starting your career today and working continuously until the year 2226. For workers at half the companies in the S&P 500, you still would not have earned what their CEO made this year. In a single year.

According to an Associated Press analysis, the typical CEO compensation package rose nearly 6 percent in 2025 to $17.7 million. The median employee earned $89,744, a 4.7 percent increase that technically outpaced inflation but did little to relieve the financial pressure many households continue to face.

The result is a widening gap. At the median company surveyed, it now takes a typical worker 200 years to earn what the chief executive earns in one year. Twelve months ago the figure was 192 years.

Supporters of high executive compensation argue that running a large corporation requires rare skills and that boards must compete for talent. Critics respond that modern compensation packages increasingly reward executives for rising stock prices while leaving most workers dependent on wages that grow far more slowly. (And you’ll remember from one of our earlier Stack the Week stories that though productivity is up, the share of productivity going towards worker wages is as low as it has ever been.)

The debate is ultimately about who benefits from economic growth. Corporate profits, stock prices and executive compensation have all risen sharply over the last generation. Workers have not benefited at anything close to the same pace.

Food Insecurity

Food insecurity is a sterile phrase for a very human experience. It means parents skipping meals so their children can eat. It means relying on food banks. It means standing in a grocery store calculating whether the last item rolling down the conveyor belt will last until the next paycheck.

According to the USDA, 13.7 percent of American households now experience food insecurity, up from 10.2 percent in 2021. Among families with children, the figure rises to 18.4 percent—nearly one in five households and the highest level seen since the years surrounding the Great Recession.

What makes these numbers notable is that the country is not in a recession.

So if you’re gardening while listening to this and all of those percentages just blew past you, here’s the simple version: gas prices, rent, utilities and groceries have hit lower-income families particularly hard, and many of those families are hungry. Little of that shows up in the pretty graphs on the business shows or in the pronouncements from podiums about the strength of the economy.

Unemployment remains relatively low. Economic growth continues. The disconnect helps explain one of the central puzzles of contemporary American life: why so many people feel economically strained even when headline indicators appear undismal.

The problem is that necessities consume most of the budget for lower-income households. When rent, groceries, utilities and insurance rise, there are few places left to cut. A wealthier family may postpone a vacation or eat out less often. A poorer family is already spending most of its income on the basics.

At the same time, pandemic-era assistance programs expired, savings accumulated during the pandemic dwindled, and many households turned to credit cards to bridge the gap. Once those options disappear, even a small setback—a missed shift, a car repair, an unexpected medical bill—can become a crisis.

The psychological toll is beginning to show up in surveys. According to the New York Fed, families that regularly run out of food have become dramatically more pessimistic about their financial futures. The share expecting to be better off a year from now has fallen sharply since 2020.

Are You Having Fun?

Those data might explain this next item.

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

That observation by E.B. White came to mind after reading a new survey on fun.

When asked whether they were having enough fun, 48 percent of Americans said no. Twelve percent said they could not remember the last time they had an entire free day to enjoy themselves. Half said they wished they could do something fun and social every day—or at least several times a week. On average, those who felt deprived said an additional 17 hours of free time each week would make a meaningful difference.

What counts as fun? Mostly familiar activities. Americans reported spending leisure time watching television (77 percent), seeing family and friends (69 percent), dining out (59 percent), enjoying outdoor activities (50 percent), pursuing hobbies (49 percent), and playing games (48 percent).

But before we go any further, it is worth asking what fun actually means.

I find Stack the Week fun. It is also a tremendous amount of work. A great play is fun. So is a long conversation with a friend. Watching television may be enjoyable, but it feels like a different category. Fun seems to imply something more than pleasure. It suggests engagement. Novelty. Play. The feeling that, for a little while, you are more alive than usual. Time passes slowly.

Whatever fun is, Americans appear to think they need more of it. More than seven in ten respondents said it reduces stress. Others said it improves motivation and helps them feel closer to family and friends.

Perhaps what people are really saying is not that they lack fun. Perhaps they lack the freedom to pursue the things that make life feel larger than the obligations that fill most days.

The survey asked about fun. The answers may have been describing meaning.

Guitar Drama

If you close your eyes and imagine an electric guitar, there’s a very good chance you’re picturing a Fender Stratocaster.

That’s remarkable because Fender no longer owns the shape.

Leo Fender, who was not a musician himself, designed the Stratocaster in 1954 by asking working guitarists what they wanted and then building it. The result proved so influential, and so widely copied, that a U.S. trademark board ruled in 2009 that the design had become generic. Too many companies had been making Strat-style guitars for too long. The silhouette had entered the culture.

Now Fender wants it back.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Fender recently sent cease-and-desist letters to guitar makers demanding they stop producing Strat-shaped instruments, recall unsold inventory and destroy remaining stock. The company is relying on a German court ruling that declared the Stratocaster a copyrightable work of art under German and European law.

The maneuver is clever. Fender lost the trademark fight in the United States. So it found a different legal path in a different country and is now attempting to use that ruling against companies selling guitars elsewhere.

The dispute turns on a surprisingly difficult question: when does an idea stop belonging to its creator?

We usually think of success as ownership. But some creations become so successful they escape ownership entirely. Nobody asks permission to build a rocking chair. Nobody pays royalties to write a sonnet. The Stratocaster may have crossed the same threshold. It became less a product than a category.

That question feels especially contemporary. Artists, authors and musicians are all wrestling with it in the age of artificial intelligence. How much originality deserves protection? How much imitation is permissible? And when does something become so woven into the culture that it belongs to everyone?

Fender’s argument is that the Stratocaster remains a work of art. Its critics argue it has become something rarer: a work of art so influential that it turned into a common language.

Counting Sheep in China

Here’s a fun item. In China many office workers are daydreaming about counting sheep. Late last month a job post for a position looking after 3,000 sheep in Mongolia went viral on Chinese social media and attracted white-collar applicants.

More than 700 people applied, including office workers from Shanghai and Chongqing, factory workers, and university graduates. The posting generated 59 million views within hours and became one of the country’s most discussed topics online.

The frenzy comes at a difficult moment for Chinese workers. Underemployment is rising, wages have struggled to keep pace with economic growth, and many employees complain about the country’s notorious “996” work culture—9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.

Analysts expect conditions to become more challenging as factories face higher costs from the war in Iran, artificial intelligence reshapes parts of the labor market, and a record 12.7 million university graduates begin looking for work this summer.

The appeal wasn’t entirely romantic. The job paid 8,000 yuan a month—about $1,100—well above the average salary at many private companies, and included housing and groceries.

The farm owner ultimately hired two couples, all born in the 1980s and all with prior farming experience. He kept another 40 couples on a waiting list but ruled out singles and young city dwellers. His reason was simple. “In our place, you might not see people for a whole year,” he said. “Whether someone can endure such loneliness, I don’t know.”

Thursday May 28

It was a day of negotiations: over peace, over money, over political identity and over perception. Nations negotiated to end a war. Families negotiated with dwindling savings. Political parties negotiated between ideology and electability. And millions of people around the world negotiated whether the story America tells about itself is still worth buying a ticket to experience.

Iran: Negotiating in Public

David French captured the strange moment in the Iran war this way: “At the moment, the United States is negotiating with a regime that President Trump claimed we had already changed, to open a strait that was supposed to be open last month, and to end a nuclear program that we said we had obliterated.”

That paradox sits at the center of a potentially significant diplomatic breakthrough. According to Axios on Thursday, U.S. and Iranian negotiators have reached a 60-day memorandum of understanding that would extend the ceasefire and create a framework for talks over Iran’s nuclear program. The deal still requires President Trump’s approval, and Iran has not yet formally accepted it.

Under the proposed agreement, shipping through the Strait of Hormuz would become unrestricted, Iran would remove mines from the waterway within 30 days, and the United States would gradually lift its naval blockade and issue sanctions waivers allowing Iran to resume oil exports. Iran, in turn, would commit not to pursue a nuclear weapon and begin negotiations over the disposal of its highly enriched uranium and the future of its enrichment program. The United States would also agree to discuss sanctions relief, the release of frozen Iranian funds, and mechanisms for delivering humanitarian aid and commercial goods.

The proposed framework highlights the gap between military objectives and political outcomes. Some of the issues under negotiation—Iran’s nuclear program, sanctions relief and regional security arrangements—predated the war. Others exist only because of the war. The Strait of Hormuz was open before the fighting began. The naval blockade did not exist. The mines were not in the water. Part of what is now being hailed as a breakthrough consists of restoring conditions that existed before the conflict began.

And, of course, even as diplomats worked on the framework, the war continued. Overnight Wednesday, Iran fired a ballistic missile at a U.S. base in Kuwait, which was intercepted, while U.S. forces shot down four Iranian drones and struck a drone-control facility inside Iran.

The exchange served as a reminder that the parties are still negotiating over objectives that President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have repeatedly declared were already achieved.

American’s Savings Rate Decline

Americans are dipping deeper into their savings.

The Commerce Department reported that the personal saving rate fell to 2.6 percent in April, down from 4.3 percent at the beginning of the year and the lowest level since June 2022.

Part of the explanation is straightforward: prices continue to rise and consumers have not yet meaningfully pulled back on spending. Roughly half of April’s spending increase went toward necessities such as gasoline, utilities, housing and food. But Americans also spent more on recreation and restaurants, suggesting many households are still trying to maintain familiar routines even as their financial cushions shrink.

The more revealing economic news came from a revision to first-quarter growth. The Commerce Department lowered its estimate of economic growth from 2.0 percent to 1.6 percent after finding that consumer spending and investment were weaker than initially reported.

That matters because the first quarter largely predates the economic effects of the Iran war.

The administration argues that rising energy prices and economic anxiety stem from the conflict and from the determination to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. But the revised data suggest some of the weakness was already present. Consumers were spending less than previously believed. Economic growth was slower than previously believed and a great deal less than the 5% boasts that the administration once promised. Americans were already drawing down savings before the war added new pressures.

The story here is not simply that prices are higher. It is that many households were already losing their financial cushion before the latest shock arrived. Savings are what absorb the unexpected car repair, the medical bill or the missed week of work. When that cushion shrinks, the next problem hurts more than the last one.

Tony Blair Has Advice

When we last looked at British politics two weeks ago, Prime Minister Keir Starmer was barely holding his job. Labour MPs were calling for him to step down. Cabinet ministers were resigning, some to position themselves to replace him.

Now a former prime minister has put his oar in.

Tony Blair published a 5,700-word broadside against his own party, arguing that what ails Labour is not the leader but the absence of a plan. He called the destination the “radical centre” — policy first, politics last.

His prescriptions all run the same direction: toward business and away from the party’s left wing. Cut welfare, which he says the country can no longer afford. Drop the planned wind-down of North Sea oil and gas, a green measure he blames for raising energy costs and driving away jobs. Stop being squeamish about artificial intelligence and treat it as the central project of governing. Mend relations with Donald Trump, not out of affection but because Britain’s economy is too weak to pick fights with Washington. Cheaper energy over cleaner. Business over the base.

Blair wrote that Labour has “an almost infinite capacity for self-delusion,” and that it won in 2024 not by acclaim but by being the acceptable default to a Conservative government the country could no longer stomach. That’s a bit thick, critics would say. Blair was the cheerleader of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, the decision many on the left regard as Blair’s own great act of self-delusion.

Forcing Starmer out before anyone knows what would replace him, Blair wrote, is not serious.

Labour did not take it warmly. Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, who may challenge Starmer, named the flaw directly: Blair is diagnosing the wrong disease. The essay never mentions inequality, and a party that cannot see voters being priced out of ordinary lives—where roughly one in five Britons lives in poverty after housing costs are taken into account—does not understand the moment.

That argument will sound familiar to American ears. It is the same fight increasingly bubbling up among Democrats: whether parties win by moving toward the center to capture growth and opportunity, or by focusing on the economic pressures that make many voters feel growth has passed them by. Also similar: the fight over whether ideological purity costs you the power to do anything at all.

E. Jean Carroll

The Justice Department has opened a criminal perjury investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the writer who successfully sued Donald Trump for sexual abuse and defamation. Prosecutors are reportedly examining whether Carroll lied during a 2022 deposition when she said she had not received outside funding for her lawsuit. It was later disclosed that billionaire Reid Hoffman helped cover some legal fees and expenses.

A jury found Trump liable in 2023 for sexually abusing Carroll and awarded her $5 million. A second jury awarded her $83.3 million in 2024 after concluding Trump had defamed her by repeatedly attacking her claims. Trump has long denied the allegations, calling them a “made-up scam.”

Carroll joins a growing list of former officials, investigators, prosecutors and critics who have faced criminal investigations, lawsuits or other legal scrutiny during Trump’s second term. It also demonstrates the President’s ironclad law that you go after those who have come after you, even though in this case it risks reminding voters in an election year of the considerable number of sexual assault claims leveled against him. Supporters argue these cases reflect a willingness to pursue wrongdoing regardless of politics. Critics see something else: the use of governmental power against people who have challenged the president personally or politically.

CEO Confidence

The people paid to be optimistic are getting less optimistic.

The people who decide whether to build the factory, hire the workers, buy the equipment or expand the business are getting more nervous.

A new survey from The Conference Board and The Business Council found CEO confidence fell 12 points in the second quarter to 47, pushing it back into negative territory after a burst of optimism earlier this year. Nearly half of chief executives now say economic conditions are worse than they were six months ago, up from just 8 percent in the previous quarter.

The reversal is striking because it comes after the initial enthusiasm that greeted President Trump’s return to office. Earlier this year many business leaders expected faster growth, lighter regulation and stronger investment. Now they are looking at the same economy and reaching a different conclusion. As Conference Board chief economist Dana Peterson summarized it, CEOs believe conditions are materially worse than they were six months ago and expect further deterioration over the next six months.

Often the White House responds to warnings about the economy by questioning the judgment of the people making them. That argument is harder to make here. These are not commentators or forecasters. They are the people making many of the decisions that determine whether the economy grows.

The good news is that their caution has not yet translated into retreat. Most companies have not reduced planned capital spending, and a growing share expects to increase investment over the coming year.

What has changed is their list of worries. Cybersecurity now ranks among the top concerns for nearly two-thirds of CEOs. Geopolitical instability, artificial intelligence, supply-chain disruptions and energy risks have all moved higher as well.

Confidence measures tell us how people feel. Investment plans tell us what they are doing. At the moment, America’s business leaders are acting more confidently than they are talking.

The question is how long that gap lasts.

Ukraine’s Patriot Problem

The war in Iran is now affecting another battlefield entirely.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he is urgently pressing the United States for more Patriot missile interceptors, warning that supplies are running short as American stockpiles are depleted. “I believe the U.S. must act quicker,” he said during a visit to Sweden. A reminder that military power is not infinite. Every missile fired in one conflict is unavailable for another.

At the same time, Ukraine is looking elsewhere. Zelenskyy announced plans to purchase Swedish Gripen fighter jets. The purchase will be financed through the European Union’s new €90 billion loan package for Ukraine.

Jill Biden

Ahead of the release of her memoir View from the East Wing, Jill Biden is offering a striking new account of Joe Biden’s disastrous 2024 debate performance.

“I was frightened, because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never,” she told CBS News. “I don’t know what happened. As I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.”

As a reminder, if you think someone is having a stroke, time matters. Medical experts emphasize the acronym FAST: facial drooping, arm weakness, speech difficulty, time to call emergency services. Every minute without treatment increases the risk of permanent brain damage.

The political significance of the quote is not the medical speculation but the contradiction it revives. The morning after the debate, Jill Biden publicly praised her husband, telling a rally crowd, “Joe, you did such a great job.” She was also widely reported to be among the strongest voices urging him to remain in the race.

Which brings us back to one of the central questions of the 2024 campaign. If those closest to the president found his debate performance alarming enough to wonder whether he was suffering a medical emergency, why were they simultaneously assuring the public that nothing was wrong and encouraging him to continue his reelection bid?

Jill Biden’s explanation attempts to portray the debate as a singular event. The difficulty is that many voters, journalists, donors and Democratic officials spent months debating whether it was singular. The debate became such a political earthquake precisely because it appeared to confirm concerns that had already been circulating for years which is an indictment of all those who covered up the obvious.

France Finally Repeals a Slave Code

France’s National Assembly voted unanimously this week to repeal the Code Noir, the 1685 law that governed slavery in France’s colonial empire. The measure passed 254-0, formally removing from French law a decree that treated enslaved people as property and authorized their sale, punishment, and exploitation.

France abolished slavery in 1848, but the legal framework underpinning slavery was never formally repealed. For nearly 180 years after emancipation, the law remained.

The vote is largely symbolic. Nobody was enforcing a seventeenth-century slave code. But symbols matter. France operated the world’s third-largest slave trade, transporting roughly 1.4 million Africans to colonies whose sugar wealth helped build cities such as Nantes and Bordeaux. The repeal serves as a reminder that ending an institution and fully reckoning with its legacy are often separated by generations.

French Open Heat Wave

When workers water the clay courts at the French Open between sets—a routine necessary to keep the crushed brick from drying out and blowing away—they have taken to directing their hoses at spectators begging to be cooled off, too.

Temperatures during the opening days of the tournament have reached 33°C (91°F), unusually hot for late May in Paris. Players drape bags of ice around their necks during changeovers. Fans crowd around sprinklers.

The heat is changing the game.

Clay courts traditionally favor patient defenders. The surface slows the ball and rewards long rallies. Extreme heat alters those conditions. Warmer, thinner air creates less drag. Pressurized tennis balls become livelier. Serves arrive faster. Topspin jumps higher. Power hitters gain an advantage.

It’s not just France. Britain is experiencing unusual heat as well. Firefighters battled a grass fire on Arthur’s Seat, the hill overlooking Edinburgh. Several drownings were reported in Britain and France as people sought relief from the temperatures.

Tourism in America Declines

A country exports many things: products, movies, ideas, culture.

It also exports itself.

Last year, fewer people bought American.

International tourism to the United States fell by 5.5 percent in 2025, a loss of roughly four million foreign visitors and more than $8 billion in spending. Outside of the pandemic, it was the sharpest annual decline in foreign tourism to America in roughly two decades.

Global tourism moved in the opposite direction. International travel grew worldwide. America was one of the few major destinations moving backward.

The reasons appear to be both practical and political. Travel groups cite rising costs, a proposed $250 visa integrity fee, higher airfares driven in part by fuel prices, and a sharp drop in visitors from Canada. The dismantling of Brand USA, the country’s primary international tourism marketing organization, has not helped.

But there may be something harder to measure at work as well.

Tourism is one of the few industries where perception is the product.

Visitors do not come to America because they need America. They come because they want America. They are buying a feeling, an experience, a story about the country they are about to visit.

When fewer people choose that story, the consequences show up first in hotel occupancy rates, restaurant receipts and theme-park admissions.

Friday May 29

A peace deal that wasn’t a deal. A fund that couldn’t pay anyone. An attorney general turned bus driver. A company worth Switzerland and a country worth less. An agent caught telling stories. And Louisiana, squeezed down to one. Floppy disks holding the planes apart is less frightening than eight kids flat on their backs a hundred feet up.

Iran

Friday, the Iran war negotiations were happening out in public again.

President Trump laid out what he described as the terms for ending the Iran war. Iran must permanently abandon any nuclear weapons ambitions. The Strait of Hormuz must immediately reopen to unrestricted shipping. Remaining naval mines must be removed. The U.S. naval blockade would end. Buried enriched uranium would be excavated and destroyed in cooperation with Iran and international inspectors. “Other items, of far less importance, have been agreed to,” Trump wrote, before announcing he was headed to the Situation Room to make a “final determination.”

Within hours, Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency called Trump’s account a “mixture of truth and lies.” Iranian officials disputed his claim that Tehran had agreed to free passage through the Strait of Hormuz without tolls. They also rejected his assertion that the United States and Iran would jointly excavate and destroy buried enriched uranium, saying no such provision appears in the draft framework currently under discussion.

According to diplomatic leaks, the actual agreement on the table is more modest: a 60-day extension of the ceasefire, a phased reopening of shipping traffic, a gradual reduction of the U.S. naval blockade, and temporary sanctions relief while negotiators attempt to tackle the much harder questions surrounding Iran’s nuclear program.

For the last several weeks, nearly every Friday has arrived bearing what appears to be a major breakthrough, only for the apparent breakthrough to dissolve by Monday morning. At this point, if your preferred foreign-policy doctrine is “wake me when something actually happens,” the recent news cycle has done little to challenge that view.

“Anti-Weaponization” Blocked

President Trump’s $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” ran into a problem Friday.

A federal judge in Virginia temporarily blocked the administration from creating, funding or operating the program while legal challenges proceed. The fund was designed to compensate Trump allies and others who believe they were unfairly targeted by government investigations, prosecutions or administrative actions.

The lawsuit that triggered the injunction was filed by a coalition including former federal prosecutor Andrew Floyd, who investigated the January 6 Capitol attack, and California professor Jonathan Caravello, who was arrested during an immigration protest; they argue the administration’s arbitrary definition of “weaponization” unconstitutionally excludes victims of political retaliation who do not align with the current White House.

Their challenge is not simply that they want access to the fund. They argue the government cannot create a compensation program for victims of political targeting while limiting eligibility in a way that favors one political viewpoint over another.

That argument gets at the central legal difficulty. If the government is compensating people harmed by politically motivated actions, what standards will it use to determine who qualifies? And can those standards be applied without regard to politics?

Bondi Bus Driver

Pam Bondi spent Friday defending the Trump administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files while refusing to answer questions about President Trump’s role in the process.

Appearing before the House Oversight Committee, the former attorney general acknowledged that the Justice Department made redaction errors when releasing the files but insisted the department had been committed to “accountability and transparency” throughout the process.

She said oversight of the release had been delegated to then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who now serves as acting attorney general.

This, in Washington, is called under-bussing. I.e. throwing someone under the bus. It was notable that Bondi could be as precise as a diamond drill when she wanted to be, when it came to Blanche. When it came to the president she was less so.

Democrats emerged from the closed-door interview saying Bondi refused to answer questions Friday on President Donald Trump’s involvement in the release of the Jeffrey Epstein case files. This is not exactly under-bussing, but because Bondi did not say that the President had no involvement at all, she leaves interpretations open.

At her testimony, Bondi wore a bandage from surgery for thyroid cancer which she underwent several weeks ago.

Anthropic Most Valuable AI Firm

A valuation is not a pile of money. It is a prediction about the future.

Imagine you own a lemonade stand. An investor buys 10 percent of it for $100.

Only $100 changes hands. If 10 percent of the lemonade stand is worth $100, then simple math suggests 100 percent would be worth $1,000. That’s what a valuation is: an estimate of what the whole enterprise would be worth based on the price paid for a small piece of it.

That is essentially what happened to Anthropic this week.

The artificial intelligence company became the most valuable AI start-up in the world after raising $65 billion from investors. The amount those investors were willing to pay implies that Anthropic is worth roughly $965 billion, surpassing OpenAI’s last reported valuation of $730 billion.

Three months ago Anthropic was valued at $380 billion. Investors have effectively added more than half a trillion dollars of expected future value in about ninety days.

To put that in perspective, Anthropic is now valued at roughly what Switzerland produces in a year, more than the combined market value of every U.S. airline, and more than the entire annual U.S. defense budget.

Why?

Partly because businesses are adopting Anthropic’s products at extraordinary speed. The company’s annualized revenue run rate has climbed from $4 billion last summer to $47 billion today. Its Claude models have become particularly popular among software developers, and its newest systems are considered among the industry’s strongest at generating computer code from ordinary English instructions—a practice known as “vibe coding.”

The question investors are trying to answer is whether artificial intelligence resembles electricity, automobiles, or the internet—or whether it resembles one of the many technological booms where expectations arrived long before profits did.

At the moment, nearly a trillion dollars is betting it’s the former.

Japan Shrinks by 3 million

A country can lose three million people and never fire a shot, suffer a plague, or endure a natural disaster.

It just has fewer babies than funerals.

That is what happened in Japan.

New census figures released Friday show Japan’s population fell by more than 3 million people over the past five years, dropping from 126.1 million to 123 million. It is the largest decline since the country began keeping census records in 1920.

For every baby born in Japan, roughly two people die. The country has one of the world’s lowest birth rates and, unlike many developed countries facing similar problems, has remained reluctant to offset the decline through large-scale immigration.

Why are birth rates falling?

There is no single accepted explanation, but researchers point to a combination of forces. People are marrying later or not at all. Raising children has become more expensive, especially in large cities. Many young adults face economic uncertainty, making it harder to commit to starting families. Women have gained greater educational and career opportunities, which often leads to having children later in life. And once birth rates fall, they can become self-reinforcing: smaller generations produce fewer potential parents in the next generation.

Japan appears to be an extreme version of a trend visible across much of the developed world. South Korea, Italy, Spain, and several other countries have fertility rates well below the level needed to maintain their populations without immigration.

The consequences show up first in the countryside.

Young people leave for Tokyo, Osaka and other large cities. Villages age. Schools close. Some are converted into nursing homes. Hospitals shrink. Train lines disappear. Millions of homes sit vacant because nobody wants to live in them.

Japan’s population peaked at 128 million in 2008. Government projections suggest it could fall to 87 million by 2070.

The reason the rest of the world watches Japan so closely is that it is living in the future.

Just a few months ago, the United States recorded its lowest fertility rate ever. American birth rates have fallen roughly 23 percent since 2007. Much of Europe faces similar trends.

A shrinking population creates unusual economic problems. Labor shortages make it harder to fill jobs. Fewer workers must support more retirees. Health-care systems strain under the weight of aging populations. Economic growth slows because there are simply fewer people producing, consuming and paying taxes.

ICE Agent Charged

Can a state prosecutor charge a federal immigration agent with a crime committed during a federal immigration operation?

Minnesota is testing that proposition.

Federal immigration agent Christian Castro was arrested Friday in Texas and faces four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime stemming from a January immigration sweep in Minneapolis.

According to state prosecutors, Castro chased a man to an apartment duplex and then fired his weapon through the front door, striking another resident in the thigh. The bullet continued through the home and lodged in the wall of a child’s bedroom.

The shooting itself might have remained a disputed law-enforcement encounter. What transformed the case was what allegedly happened afterward.

Castro and another agent reportedly claimed they had been attacked with a broom handle and a snow shovel. Federal authorities initially charged two Venezuelan men with assaulting federal officers. Those charges collapsed after security-camera footage appeared to contradict the agents’ account. A federal judge dismissed the case, and ICE Director Todd Lyons later acknowledged that agents had lied about key aspects of the encounter.

The arrest deepens a growing confrontation between Minnesota officials and the Trump administration.

Minnesota prosecutors argue that federal employees are not above state criminal law. ICE has called the prosecution a political stunt. Behind the rhetoric sits a fundamental question: when federal officers operate inside a state, who ultimately holds them accountable if they break the law?

Louisiana Approves Map

Louisiana just demonstrated the practical consequences of one of the Supreme Court’s most important recent voting-rights decisions.

On Friday, the Louisiana Legislature approved a new congressional map that eliminates one of the state’s two majority-Black districts and is expected to shift the state’s congressional delegation from 4 Republicans and 2 Democrats back to 5 Republicans and 1 Democrat.

The immediate trigger was the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais earlier this year.

Just a few years ago, the Court required Alabama to create a second majority-Black congressional district under the Voting Rights Act. Louisiana followed suit, drawing a second majority-Black district stretching roughly 200 miles from Baton Rouge to Shreveport.

This year the Court reversed course, ruling that Louisiana’s map relied too heavily on race and amounted to an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

That ruling exposed a tension that has been building in American election law for years.

The Court has repeatedly said racial gerrymandering is unconstitutional. It has also repeatedly said partisan gerrymandering is generally permissible.

In theory those are different things.

In Louisiana they often look remarkably similar.

Black voters make up roughly one-third of the state’s population and vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Republicans openly acknowledged that the new map was drawn for partisan advantage rather than racial purposes. Democrats and civil-rights groups argue that targeting Democratic voters in Louisiana inevitably means diminishing Black political representation.

The result is a map with one majority-Black district instead of two.

The state’s new map is the first major redistricting effort to emerge from the Court’s new framework. Voting-rights advocates fear it provides a roadmap for similar challenges elsewhere across the South, which will inevitably lead to decreased representation for Black voters.

Air Traffic Control Time Warp

The last place you want to engage in forced nostalgia with the seventies and eighties would be when you’re thirty thousand feet in the air.

As the summer travel season begins, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford told CBS this week that hundreds of air traffic control facilities still rely on technology from the 1970s and 1980s. Some systems still use floppy disks. Others run on aging Compaq computers, a brand that disappeared in 2002. Presumably the technology that requires burning charcoal briquettes has been updated, however.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy recently compared parts of the system to something out of Apollo 13—a movie from the 1990s about technology from 1970.

Fortunately, air traffic control is not like your laptop. Reliability often matters more than novelty. The challenge is that every year it becomes harder to find replacement parts, maintain aging systems and recruit people who know how to repair them.

The FAA is now spending more than $12 billion to modernize the system by 2028, replacing copper wires with fiber optics and upgrading radios, radar and communications networks. Another $10 billion phase would eventually bring artificial intelligence, drones and air taxis into the same airspace.

Roller Coaster Rescue

Life can be a roller coaster. Sometimes a roller coaster can be a roller coaster.

Eight students on a field trip in Galveston, Texas spent four hours Thursday staring at the sky from 100 feet in the air after a roller coaster called Iron Shark stopped during its climb.

There were several warning signs that mayhem was aborning. First, it was a roller coaster. Second, it was called Iron Shark. Had it been called Iron Teddy Bear, riders might reasonably have expected a different outcome.

The students, from Energized for STEM Academy Middle School and STEM Academy High School, received an unplanned lesson in physics.

Photographs from the rescue show a giant cherry picker inching upward toward the stranded car. Because the ride stopped during its ascent, the passengers spent the entire ordeal on their backs, facing upward toward an uninterrupted blue Texas sky.

Spelling Bee Wisdom

A year ago, Shrey Parikh didn’t even make it to the National Spelling Bee.

He misspelled a word at his middle school’s qualifying competition and was eliminated before regionals, before nationals, before any of the stages where future champions are supposed to appear.

“I was really dejected and just very upset,” he later said.

On Thursday, he won the whole thing.

The 14-year-old from Rancho Cucamonga, California, outlasted 246 competitors to claim the Scripps National Spelling Bee championship and a $50,000 prize. In the final spell-off — a controversial speed-round tiebreaker that many spelling traditionalists dislike because it involves throwing stars — no, it doesn’t involve throwing stars — he correctly spelled a record 32 words in 90 seconds.

His championship word was bromocriptine, a medication used to treat conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and certain hormone disorders.

“Once I get the word,” Shrey said, “I’m not really nervous anymore, because then it’s all in my control.”

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