Welcome everyone to the Stack the Week1 experiment for May 4th through the 8th. It is available here in text and audio and available in your podcast player.
Thank you to Annie Cohen for help preparing this delicious offering.
The war became a project and then a trifle. Jobs are up, but not for Democratic lawmakers. So are gas prices and appliances, but the dollar is down. The gap between expectations and reality is squeezing the American Dream more than the aquifer in Mexico City. Rubio swaps gifts with the Pope. Lutnick endures the inquisition. The Pentagon releases info about UFOs, which are now easier to spot than some parts of the Epstein files. Tariffs are 0 for 5 in court and Sunday is for mothers, who really deserve more than a brunch.
Let’s take it day by day.
Monday, May 4
Monday was a day about the distance between the way things are and the way they’re supposed to be—the easy use of pepper spray in a system that isn’t supposed to punish, an exodus from a financial “safe haven,” the college students with too much faith and their parents without enough, a successful phone ban that didn’t score, a parade without tanks, and over-prescribing a heroin metaphor.
“Project Freedom”
On Monday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard launched cruise missiles, drones, and fast-attack speedboats against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. None succeeded. U.S. missiles shot down the incoming fire; Apache and Seahawk helicopters lifted off the deck of carriers and sank six speedboats threatening two American-flagged tankers. (Between Venezuella and Iran, the U.S. has been hell on speedboats.)
The tankers made it through—the first since the ceasefire began on April 8.
The operation was called “Project Freedom,” the administration’s attempt to reopen the strait without restarting the war. (For a little while I was calling it Project Freedom, which I also thinks works).
“He wants action,” a senior official told Axios about the president. “He doesn’t want to sit still.” Trump had been presented different plans of action. Adm. Brad Cooper, head of Central Command, unfurled a plan to drive Navy ships through by force and destroy any Iranian battery or boat that responded.
Trump chose the less aggressive path. U.S. destroyers and aircraft would loiter near merchant ships, share intelligence on mine locations, and intervene if Iran attacked—but wouldn’t formally escort anyone.
The restraint was partly tactical and partly arithmetic. The U.S. doesn’t have enough destroyers to escort the more than 100 ships that transited the strait daily before the war through a channel where the usable lanes are about two miles wide and Iranian missiles can be fired from trucks and fishing boats. All Iran has to do is get enough through to make captains, shipping companies, and their insurers nervous.
By the United States military’s estimation, about 1,550 marine vessels—oil tankers, bulk carriers, container ships, and more—idled in the Persian Gulf right on Monday. The crews weren’t planning for that which means they’re running out of supplies.
The question wasn’t whether American warships can win a fight in the strait. It’s whether the Project Freedom umbrella was wide enough to bring commercial traffic back.
Meanwhile the president’s poll numbers resemble those speed boats: sinking. A Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos poll in late April found 61 percent called the strikes on Iran a mistake—disapproval at the level Iraq hit in 2006, Vietnam in 1971.
Ukrainian strike on Moscow swells
The oligarchs aren’t safe. Early Monday a Ukrainian drone hit a luxury 54-story tower in southwestern Moscow in a neighborhood of foreign embassies and Russian elite. —about six kilometers from the Kremlin, three from the Defense Ministry. One floor was gutted; no one was killed. The target’s swank address was the point: even the most protected civilians in the capital are within reach, and Moscow’s tightened GPS jamming and internet restrictions failed to stop it.
The attack comes five days before the Victory Day parade on Red Square, an annual World War II celebration Putin has used to cast the war in Ukraine as a continuation of the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany. This year’s parade will proceed without heavy military equipment for the first time since 2007—no tanks, no armored vehicles—and without military school cadets.
Whether that reflects a critical shortage of display-ready hardware or a fear that stationary armor on Red Square would make easy targets for a drone swarm, the effect is the same: the showcase of Russian power has been hollowed out.
The guest list tells its own story. In 2005, Bush, Chirac of France, and Schröder of Germany attended. In 2015, after Russia invaded Crimea, Xi Jinping and Modi still showed up. In 2026, the marquee foreign dignitary is Slovakia’s Robert Fico—who announced he will meet Putin and lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier but skip the parade itself, distancing himself from the optics of honoring a war against a neighboring European state.
Merz penalty
The alliance supposedly opposing Russia took a hit of its own. On Friday, the Pentagon announced it would withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany over the next six to twelve months — fulfilling a threat President Trump made after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said publicly that the United States was “being humiliated” by the Iranian leadership and criticized Washington’s lack of strategy in the war. Merz was saying what allied diplomats had been saying privately for weeks. Trump’s response was to punish the messenger. The withdrawal reverses part of the buildup President Biden ordered after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and will leave about 30,000 American troops in Germany. Spain and Italy were warned they could be next.
ICE Use of Force
The story of Donald Trump’s successful immigration crackdown is contained in the numbers. Border crossings have fallen 93 percent; deportations are running 85 percent above two years ago. There are other numbers too. Forty-seven people have died in ICE custody since January 2025—one every six days this year. Seventy-one percent of those detained have no criminal record, according to ICE’s own data, undermining the president’s claim that he would only round up “the worst of the worst.” A Washington Post investigation highlights another number: 1,460 use-of-force incidents across 98 detention facilities between January 2024 and February 2026. During the first year of Trump’s second term, those incidents rose 37 percent. The number of individuals subjected to force climbed even faster—54 percent, to 1,330 people—because guards increasingly used chemical agents and physical tactics on groups rather than individuals.
The detained population grew 45 percent over the same period, which means force is outpacing even the surge in bodies.
Detention is classified as non-punitive administrative custody—a system for making sure people show up for court, not a sentence. Yet the tools are indistinguishable from high-security corrections: Tasers, pepper spray, restraint chairs, takedown maneuvers, deployed in facilities often housed in former prisons and staffed by former corrections officers.
In multiple incidents the Post documented, the triggering behavior was detainees asking for things they’re legally entitled to—food, water, medical care, personal belongings. The administration also shuttered two oversight offices responsible for investigating detention conditions, saying they added “bureaucratic hurdles.” What the emails describe is a system designed for administrative holding that, under the pressure of rapid expansion, has defaulted to the only model its operators know: crowd control.
A Pew survey last week found that only 41 percent of Americans are confident Trump can make good decisions on immigration, down from 53 percent after his reelection—a 12-point drop on what was supposed to be his signature issue. An NBC poll found that 58 percent of Americans say they do not believe that “regular, law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear” from immigration agents.
On Monday the Pulitzer board awarded the Chicago Tribune its prize for local reporting — for its coverage of ICE sweeps in Chicago.
Mifepristone in Limbo
The 5th Circuit blocked telehealth and mail prescription of mifepristone last Friday claiming that it threatened the safety of pregnant women and the sovereignty of Louisiana, which has banned abortion in almost all cases. Women can still get the pill, but only by going to a clinic in person.
Telehealth lets a woman finish a medication abortion within a few days. In-person requirements stretch that into multiple clinic visits — time off work, gas, a babysitter, sometimes a hotel — which means more money and, more importantly, more time. Time matters because mifepristone is only approved for the first ten weeks of pregnancy. The longer the trip takes to arrange, the more women age out of the option.
In states with abortion bans — thirteen of them — there is no clinic to go to. Those women had been getting pills by mail from providers in states with shield laws.
The two manufacturers immediately asked the Supreme Court to stay the ruling. The Court issued a temporary administrative stay through May 11. Sixty percent of U.S. abortions now happen by medication; about 1 in 4 are by telehealth. Mifepristone is roughly as safe as ibuprofen. Carrying a pregnancy to term — any pregnancy — is about 14 times more likely to kill you than ending one with the drug.
Voters have approved 14 of 17 abortion-rights ballot measures since Dobbs — the 2022 ruling that eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion and returned the question to the states — including in Republican-leaning Missouri, Montana, and Ohio.
The FDA is conducting a parallel safety review, though mifepristone is one of the most-studied drugs in the country — approved in September 2000, used safely for more than 26 years by over 7.5 million women in the United States, with more than 100 clinical studies supporting its safety and effectiveness.
Kennedy vs. the SSRIs
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the first concrete policy action in his “Make America Healthy Again” mental health agenda on Sunday: an HHS initiative to reduce the use of SSRIs, the antidepressants taken by one in six American adults.
SSRIs are Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor which always confuses me. Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) increase the levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that stabilizes mood, within the brain’s synaptic spaces. They achieve this by blocking the “reuptake” (or reabsorption) of serotonin by nerve cells, allowing more of this chemical to remain active for communication between neurons.
The plan centers on “deprescribing”—the clinical process of tapering patients off medications—with a particular focus on children and long-term users. The proposal would allow doctors to be reimbursed for time spent helping patients stop taking medications, an effort to counterbalance incentives to prescribe which are reimbursable. Federal agencies will provide information on transitioning patients to non-drug treatments like therapy, exercise, and nutrition. HHS is also pushing updated guidelines requiring clinicians to offer patients a “clear path off” medications before they start them.
Antidepressant dispensing rates for children and young adults rose 66 percent between 2016 and 2022, and the question of whether that reflects overmedicalization or a proportionate response to a worsening crisis is legitimate. Britain commissioned a major report on overprescribing and followed up with reforms including updated clinical guidelines and a national audit program.
But Kennedy repeated Monday that SSRIs can be “harder to quit than heroin,” a claim clinicians believe wildly overstates the real phenomenon known as SSRI discontinuation syndrome. More than hyperbole, it could scare patients into quitting abruptly, which risks severe relapse or suicidal ideation. Kennedy also continues to suggest a link between SSRIs and school shootings, a claim the American Psychiatric Association and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention have consistently refuted, citing studies showing the medications actually reduce the risk of violence and suicide. Neither the APA nor the American Academy of Pediatrics was present at the summit where the initiative was announced—an absence that underscores their concern that a fixation on overprescribing ignores the millions of Americans who still can’t access any mental health care at all.
The “Stock in America”
Imagine you could buy stock in America. The world can in various ways, through buying bonds, but also through buying/investing/trading in U.S. currency, the dollar. America’s security in the world—meaning its reputation as a place where the rules don’t change overnight and the government always pays its debts—has meant that the dollar was where you wanted to be.
But lately, as the Associated Press reported Monday, the dollar, stock in America, has been growing weaker.
The dollar has fallen about 10% against other major currencies since President Donald Trump returned to the White House. The U.S. Dollar Index, which measures the greenback against other major currencies, logged its steepest six-month drop in more than 50 years in the first half of 2025.
Greenback? Why that term.
In 1861, the U.S. government was running out of gold and silver to pay for the war. To solve this, Congress passed the Legal Tender Act of 1862, which allowed the Treasury to print paper money that wasn’t backed by physical gold.
To prevent counterfeiters from easily faking the bills, the government used a new, chemically stable green ink on the back of the notes. Since the front was printed with black ink and the back was solid green, people simply started calling them “black fronts.” No they didn’t: they called them greenbacks. Why is this more than a historical cul-de-sac, because it’s also a story about stability. Before then, people didn’t really trust paper money unless they could trade it in for a gold coin at a bank. These new greenbacks were the first time the government said, “This is money because we say it is.”
Back to the present. The dollar loses value when people worry the dollar might become even less valuable tomorrow. So, they all try to sell their dollars at the same time to trade them for something “safer.” Gold is one option—it’s up 41% over the last year, hitting record highs near $5,000. Or, they buy real assets—like data centers and warehouses—which are expected to see a 16% jump in investment this year as people look for things that have real-world value.
The immediate effect of this is that people who buy foreign goods or travel. It costs the store more to buy fruit from Mexico or electronics from Japan. To make up for that, they raise the price for you. If you go to Disneyland Paris, your dollars won’t buy as many crepes or berets as they used to. Everything in that country feels “extra expensive” to you.
The winners are domestic manufacturers. Their goods are cheaper and so consumers buy more of them. Hence Trump in 2025: “You make a hell of a lot more money with a weaker dollar.”
Why is this happening? Investors value stability above all else, and the current administration’s approach has been anything but stable. Trump’s erratic economic policy—broad tariffs that invite retaliation, public attacks on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, and the massive deficit spending from the “One Big Beautiful Bill”—has made investors more fearful of the dollar’s long term strength. And so they’ve done what economists call “hedging their bets”—moving their money into the Euro, the Swiss Franc, and even the Japanese Yen to avoid being over-exposed to the unpredictable swings of the U.S. government.
As the dollar loses its “safe-haven” status, the U.S. has to pay higher interest rates to convince people to keep lending us money, which could eventually push the country toward a fiscal crisis or a period of stagflation—where prices keep rising even as the job market starts to cool.
Outliving the money
More Americans are having existential nightmares about money. Two-thirds– 67 percent– now worry more about running out of money than they do about death. That’s up ten points from 2022, according to the 2026 Annual Retirement Study from the Allianz Center for the Future of Retirement — Allianz being an insurer that sells the products meant to fix this problem.
Gen Xers — in their 40s and 50s, a decade before retirement — are most fearful. Seventy-three percent say they worry more about money than death. Millennials, in their 30s and early 40s, come in at 69 percent. Boomers, the only cohort with a clearer view of their fixed income, worry least at 59 percent. Asked what’s driving the fear, respondents put inflation and market volatility at the top, tied at 57 percent. Healthcare costs follow at 53 percent.
The fear translates into action. One in seven retirees has skipped a medical appointment to preserve savings. One in eight has skipped a meal. And these are the better-off Americans. Allianz only surveyed people with at least $50,000 in single income, $75,000 married, or $150,000 in investable assets. The genuinely poor — for whom running out of money is not a fear but a current condition — weren’t asked.
The gap between what Americans say they need and what they have is large enough to fall through. Respondents now estimate they need $1.46 million to retire comfortably — about $200,000 more than they estimated a year ago, according to the 2026 Northwestern Mutual Planning & Progress Study. Meanwhile, the median household approaching retirement (ages 55 to 64) has significantly less, with Federal Reserve data suggesting a median closer to $185,000, while many middle-class benchmarks sit even lower.
When Congress added Section 401(k) to the tax code in 1978, the provision was meant to be a “side dish”—a way for workers to put a little extra away on top of their pension. The pension did the hard work: it pooled money from thousands of workers, paid out a check every month for life, and the company carried the risk if the math went wrong.
The pensions are mostly gone now, and the side dish is the whole meal. Only 15 percent of private sector workers have a pension now, so a worker in her forties is supposed to look at a screen, pick the right funds, ride out every recession without panicking, guess her own life expectancy, plan around a chronic illness she doesn’t have yet, and figure out how to pay for her mother’s nursing home. By herself. All the while trying to keep up with the fashion adventurism taking place at the Met Gala that evening in New York.
College graduate overshoot
While we’re in this neighborhood of the role imagination plays in our economy. Today’s college seniors expect to earn about $80,000 a year after graduation, according to a Clever Real Estate survey. The actual average starting salary: $56,153—a gap of nearly $24,000. The disconnect widens with time. Students project they’ll be making $144,889 a decade into their careers; the real midcareer average is $95,521, a 34 percent overshoot.
This matters because students borrow against the fantasy number, not the real one. When the first paycheck arrives roughly 30 percent lighter than planned, the debt-to-income math stops working, and the life milestones that were supposed to follow the degree—house, family, savings—slide further out of reach.
The gap is widest for graduates in the humanities and narrowest in computer science, which means the students who borrowed the most relative to earning power are also the ones most likely to have miscalculated. The cost of aspiration gets locked in at purchase, but the return gets determined by a market that never agreed to the terms.
The phone pouch verdict
We all suffer from cell phone distraction so surely making school kids lock them up during class time would improve things, right?
Not exactly. The first large independent study of strict bans, published Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, found a mixed set of results. Researchers at Stanford, Duke, Penn, and Michigan looked at more than 40,000 schools between 2019 and 2026, using GPS data, test scores, discipline records, and surveys of teachers and students. The schools they focused on use Yondr — magnetic locking pouches that hold a student’s phone for the school day — and were compared to demographically similar schools with looser policies.
The pouches did what they were supposed to do. Cellphone pings from school grounds dropped 30 percent in the first three years. The share of students using phones for non-academic reasons in class fell from 61 percent to 13.
But test scores barely budged — the effect was “close to zero,” according to the paper. Attendance didn’t improve. Perceptions of online bullying didn’t improve.
And in the first year after strict bans went into place, student suspensions jumped 16 percent. The authors don’t fully know why, but Stanford’s Thomas Dee, one of the researchers, offered a theory: some students were caught violating the bans, others were getting into more peer conflict because they were, in Dee’s phrase, “no longer self-anesthetizing” through their phones.
The discipline spike faded over the following years.
Two things did improve, both slowly. Teachers reported fewer classroom distractions and higher morale. And students themselves reported a greater sense of personal well-being over time — not in a test-score sense, but in the texture of the school day.
Seoul sleep contest
The Iced Americano is the unofficial drink of South Korea’s hustle class, consumed year-round, even in sub-zero temperatures. In a culture where workers routinely put in 54-plus hours a week, the “Ah-Ah” isn’t a treat — it’s a medical necessity. South Korea has one of the highest densities of coffee shops per capita in the world. The average Korean adult drinks over 400 cups a year, nearly double the global average.
Why? Because no one sleeps. South Koreans average 7 hours and 41 minutes a night, the lowest among OECD nations — though that sounds like a long sleeping beauty slumber to me.
So to encourage their people to kip down, South Korea this week held its third annual Power Nap Contest. Held on the banks of the Han River, the Seoul competition transforms a public park into a mass outdoor bedroom where hundreds of participants — students in sleeping beauty gowns, office workers in koala onesies — compete for the title of Best Sleeper.
Winners aren’t chosen by who looks the most asleep. Officials use wearable tech to track heart rate stability. The goal is to reach and maintain a deep parasympathetic state — the body’s “rest and digest” mode — while judges actively try to sabotage it. Distractors include feather tickling and the sound of a buzzing mosquito played directly into your ears. If your heart rate spikes, you’re out.
This year’s winner was an 80-year-old retiree, which tells you everything. The younger competitors brought the costumes. The elder brought the one thing the modern Korean economy lacks: a regulated nervous system.
Tuesday May 5
A war changed its name so it wouldn’t need permission, DOJ puts on the tinfoil hat and heads to Fulton county, Delta cuts the nuts and the oldest Tony nominee in history was honored for playing a woman desperate to remember, which is hard to do when they rename wars that aren’t even two months old.
Project Freedom Is Not Epic Fury
If you give a military operation a different name, does it make a sound? On Tuesday, the Defense Secretary argued that Operation Project Freedom—the effort to reopen the Strait of Hormuz—is legally distinct from Operation Epic Fury, the strikes on Iran’s nuclear program. Denying Iran nuclear weapons, in this telling, is not the same as protecting the strait, even though protecting the strait became necessary because of the war started to deny Iran nuclear weapons.
The logic is politically sound for domestic legal purposes. If the war hasn’t restarted, the president doesn’t need congressional approval under the War Powers Act, which requires it after 60 days—a clock that has now run out.
But geopolitically the distinction is fragile, because it assumes the United States can unilaterally decide when a war has ended while its ships are still being engaged by the same adversary in the same theater.
As a political matter, the president faces a challenge. His war with Iran has become all about opening the strait of Hormuz which was the state of affairs before the war started. In that case is this the hammer stopping war? Why are you hitting yourself in the head with a hammer? Because it feels good when I stop.
And by the end of the day Tuesday the Project was over. President Trump announced that he was pausing US activities in the Strait in the hopes a deal could be secured.
Russia strikes back
In advance of its celebration of its world war II history — Victory Day in Moscow — Russia bombed three Ukrainian cities on Tuesday, killing more than 20 people and wounding dozens. Zaporizhzhia took the worst of it: 12 dead, 37 wounded, one of the deadliest single strikes this year.
Every Claim Debunked, Every Worker Subpoenaed
Fulton County gets a lot of love from the conspiracy theorists. Election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss were accused of pulling “suitcases” of illegal ballots from under a table—state investigators confirmed they were standard ballot containers placed in full view of observers; both women won a $148 million defamation judgment against Rudy Giuliani. Thousands of “pristine” counterfeit ballots were supposedly injected into the count—Georgia conducted three separate tallies, including a full hand recount, all affirming the original result. Flash drives and scan files were allegedly missing—Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger verified the digital records and confirmed the certified totals.
Every claim investigated, every claim debunked. Now the Justice Department is back. On Monday, a federal grand jury subpoenaed the identities of every worker who staffed the 2020 election in the county—poll workers, election employees, likely thousands of names, addresses, and phone numbers. The Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections moved the same day to quash the subpoena, arguing it would “target and harass the president’s perceived political enemies,” chill future participation in elections, and interfere with Georgia’s authority to administer its own voting.
FDA blocked
The FDA blocked publication of several taxpayer-funded studies that found the Covid-19 and shingles vaccines to be safe, the New York Times reported Tuesday. The agency’s own scientists, working with outside data firms, reviewed millions of patient records and found serious side effects to be very rare. One of the suppressed studies examined 7.5 million Medicare beneficiaries and found no statistically significant safety concerns beyond an extremely rare allergic reaction affecting roughly one in a million people.
HHS said the studies “drew broad conclusions not supported by the underlying data” — a characterization independent experts at Johns Hopkins and Penn rejected after reviewing the work at the Times’ request. Meanwhile, the administration has applied no such rigor in the other direction: a memo by the former head of the FDA’s vaccine division claiming the Covid vaccine was linked to ten children’s deaths drew widespread coverage before the FDA’s career scientists significantly watered down the claim. Twelve former FDA commissioners published a joint rebuke in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Trade deficit
American trade is going through another undulation, according to the first U.S. trade snapshot since the Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s sweeping tariffs in late February on the grounds that he had exceeded his authority. The president responded by putting a temporary tariff in place —initially a 10 percent tariff, later raised on many products—which, under the law’s 150‑day limit, is scheduled to expire in July unless Congress acts to extend it.
In the interim, foreign goods have come back to the U.S. market: imports rose 2.3 percent in March to a record $381.2 billion. At the same time, war with Iran has made U.S. energy more attractive abroad, and the U.S. trade surplus in petroleum hit a record in March. Exports overall grew 2 percent in the month to a record, driven by higher shipments of oil, soybeans and other industrial supplies.
Those gains reflect a broader pattern: U.S. raw materials and agricultural staples have become more attractive to buyers trying to secure reliable supplies. The result of all of this: a 4.4 percent rise, as the gap between what the United States imports and what it exports widened despite the record‑breaking export performance.
Delta nuts
Does the middle seat get both arm rests? If not, which do they get? Window shade up or down? Recline or not? These matters of airplane etiquette can start a heated argument, settled only by the fact that we can all agree that anyone who listens to entertainment without headphones should be ejected into the white and fluffy.
But that’s not what happened on Tuesday. Tuesday, Delta changed its snack plan. On short flights you get nothing. Not even the weak-sauce Express Service water/coffee offerings. Why? Flights under 350 miles leave little time for flight attendants to get up, dish the grub and get seated again, now that Delta is asking them to lock in for longer due to turbulence issues. Plus, carts, ice and snacks make a plane heavier and therefore more expensive now that fuel costs are higher. A fully loaded galley for a narrow-body jet (like an A321 or Boeing 737) can weigh between 500 and 800 pounds.
But the airline will add full beverage and snack service for the Delta Comfort and Delta Main cabins on flights of 350 or more miles. The airline said this meant a larger total number of flights would ultimately have beverage and snack service.
One thing I don’t get. while the economy cabin loses the “weak-sauce” snacks, the First Class cabin on these exact same flights still gets full beverage service—meaning the weight/safety argument only applies to the back of the bus.
Character.AI won’t see you now
Pennsylvania became the first state to sue an AI company for practicing medicine without a license. Governor Josh Shapiro’s administration filed suit Tuesday against Character.AI after a state investigator created an account and, within minutes, was in conversation with a bot named “Emilie” who described herself as a psychiatrist, claimed a medical degree from Imperial College London, offered to assess whether medication might help, and — when asked — produced a Pennsylvania medical license number. The number was fake. Emilie had logged roughly 45,500 conversations with real users. Character.AI said its bots are fictional and clearly labeled as such. The state’s position is simpler: Pennsylvania law doesn’t care whether the entity claiming to be a licensed doctor is a person or a program. It just can’t do that.
Mexico City is sinking
The Angel of Independence in Mexico City, rises above the busy city streets in testament to the independence of the nation and the angel is rising…
…because Mexico City is sinking.
The golden monument has needed 14 steps added to its base as the ground beneath it sinks.
Think of the city sitting on a water-soaked sponge. When the aquifer is pumped, the water that once filled the microscopic spaces between soil particles is removed. The weight of the city then crushes those empty spaces, causing the ground to collapse inward.
Unlike some aquifers that can be “recharged” during a wet season, this clay structure is being permanently deformed. Once the “sponge” is crushed, it can never hold that volume of water again, meaning the sinking is largely permanent.
Sewer lines, which rely on gravity to move waste out of the valley, are now sloping in the wrong direction. The city has to rely on massive, high-energy pumping stations just to keep sewage from flowing backward into homes, as delightful as that might be.
Water pipes are also rupturing. It is estimated that nearly 40% of the city’s water is lost to leaks caused by the ground shifting from withdrawing water.
Because the local aquifer is failing and the ground is collapsing, the city must pump water from the Cutzamala (koots-ah-mell-uh) River system—nearly 1,100 vertical meters uphill and across mountains—making it one of the most energy-intensive water systems on Earth.
Also sinking in Mexico City? The American nightclub goers reputation. A nightclub in Mexico City’s Roma Norte has implemented a $300 cover charge for U.S. citizens. If you’re from another country, it’s $20 bucks. The club owner, Federico Crespo, stated the fee is a political response to years of insults against Mexico by Donald Trump and a protest against the “gentrification and touristification” of Mexico City by American remote workers and tourists.
China goes boom
An explosion at a fireworks factory in China’s Hunan province killed 21 people and injured 61, according to state media. People living within 3km of the blast were evacuated; two nearby gunpowder factories remained a risk, authorities said. President Xi Jinping said there would be a full investigation and that those responsible for the disaster would be held to account.
-China produces roughly 90% of the world’s fireworks, supplying displays from small-town celebrations to major national events.
-Much of the world’s fireworks are produced in a handful of Chinese provinces, where dense clusters of factories mean that when accidents happen, the risks can spread quickly.
Fireworks trace back more than a thousand years to Chinese alchemists searching for immortality, who instead discovered gunpowder… which is usually the way these things go in life.
Toxic bosses
Have you ever had a toxic boss? What does that term mean to you? Okay, now that you’ve had a think, walk with me. Harris Poll’s Thought Leadership Practice just conducted its Toxic Boss survey, which included online responses from 1,334 employed U.S. adults. The results came out Tuesday:
A staggering six out of 10 workers said they currently have a toxic boss. Meanwhile, 70% say they’ve had a toxic boss at some point in their career. This rises to 75% for LGBTQIA+ workers.
It defined a toxic boss as someone who “exhibits harmful workplace behaviors, including unfair preferential treatment, lack of recognition, blame-shifting, unnecessary micromanagement, unreasonable expectations, being unapproachable, taking credit for others’ ideas, acting unprofessionally, or discriminating against employees based on personal characteristics.”
Nearly half of workers say they have experienced increased stress, burnout, or a decline in mental health due to a toxic boss, while roughly one-third say they have lost a financial reward or seen their promotion chances reduced.
The majority of workers (66%) say they’ve responded to toxic bosses by wearing a hazmat suit until they got the message. But when that didn’t work, they genuinely tried to meet their demands — working on weekends and on days off. Not to editorialize, but this kind of response is only going to encourage the toxic boss. Two-thirds of workers also say they’ve changed jobs because of a toxic job. But either way, workers are seeking mental health care to cope with how they feel about the situation. More than half (53%) have gone to therapy over their toxic boss.
June Squibb
On Tuesday, June Squibb became the oldest Tony’s nominee in history at age 96! She’s nominated for best actress in a featured role in a play for Marjorie Prime, in which she plays the title character, an elderly woman battling dementia and memory loss, who uses an AI-generated “Prime” of her late husband, Walter, to help preserve and revisit memories from their life together.
Wednesday May 6
The administration tries to get Iran on the same one page. Hoosier Republicans find out what happens when you don’t stick to the script, which now includes a line item for a billion dollar ballroom. But even when it’s written down, the Commerce Secretary doesn’t know why he visited Epstein island, the only thing more unpopular than presidential Jesus cosplay. Anti Jewish violence is up and a Virginia Dem may go down. A busy day of news which Ted Turner knew before it happened.
Iran still cooking
Wednesday was another day with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake in the Iran war. On the one hand, the president heralded “Great Progress” toward a final diplomatic resolution. Reports suggest the U.S. and Iran are nearing a one-page memorandum of understanding (MoU) intended to serve as a bridge to a permanent treaty. Key terms include the U.S. ending its naval blockade of Iranian ports and the potential release of frozen assets. In return, Iran would reopen the Strait of Hormuz to all commercial traffic for at least 60 days and accept a temporary freeze on uranium enrichment.
It all sounded very fuzzy, particularly when Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking on NPR’s First Up, described the difficulty of pinning down the Iranian delegation. Rubio noted that while the broad strokes are being discussed, the technical specifics remain elusive. He told host Leila Fadel: “This is highly complex, and highly technical, but we have to have a diplomatic solution that is very clear... the Iranians have to agree about what they are going to put on paper, and so far we’re finding they’re much better at talking in the hallways than they are at committing to a signature.”
Simultaneously, the President warned that if a deal is not reached within the next 48 hours, the U.S. will launch a new wave of bombing at a “much higher level and intensity” than seen during the initial “Operation Epic Fury” in February. If you feel like we’ve been here before, we have—the cycle of “maximum pressure” and eleventh-hour diplomacy has become the hallmark of this conflict. Meanwhile, there was still skirmishing in the area:
A U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet from the USS Abraham Lincoln fired on and disabled the rudder of the Iranian-flagged tanker M/T Hasna in the Gulf of Oman after it reportedly ignored orders to turn back.
The UAE Ministry of Defense reported intercepting a barrage of Iranian missiles and drones for the second consecutive day, including an engagement that saw 15 missiles and four drones downed by Emirati air defenses near the Fujairah Oil Terminal.
This urgent focus on ending enrichment and securing stockpiles makes it clear that the nuclear program was not “obliterated” in the way the President and Secretary of Defense initially claimed. In June 2025, Secretary Pete Hegseth stated: “Based on everything we have seen—and I’ve seen it all—our bombing campaign obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons.” While the large-scale industrial ability to make bombs was indeed leveled, the underlying knowledge and the critical uranium stockpiles proved un-bombable.
The administration marketed the initial attacks as a “Total Kitchen Closure” for health violations. In reality, the building was demolished, but the chefs saved the starter dough and the recipes; they are currently sitting in the basement waiting for the inspectors to leave so they can start a “pop-up” shop.
The President’s characterization suggested Iran had been bombed back to the glass beads and abacus stage, but his 48-hour ultimatum is an admission that the “chefs” are still very much in business.
In other marketing news. The Washington Post reported that its analysis of Iranian attacks showed that Iran has hit far more U.S. military assets than reported, satellite images show - Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at U.S. military sites across the Middle East since the war began, hitting hangars, barracks, fuel depots, aircraft and key radar, communications and air defense equipment. The amount of destruction is far larger than what has been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government or previously reported.
Experts who reviewed The Post’s analysis said the damage at the sites suggested that the U.S. military had underestimated Iran’s targeting abilities, not adapted sufficiently to modern drone warfare and left some bases under-protected.
K-shaped at the pump
The New York Fed looked at how gas prices have affected Americans and like so much of what we’ve seen, there is a k shape to it.
Higher-income households are spending more on gas but buying the same amount — they don’t notice. Lower-income households are also spending more but buying less — they drive less, carpool, take the bus. Same price spike, two different economies.
The K shape is life for the wealthy going up and life for the rest going down. In case you were trying to get your head around the alphabet metaphor.
The numbers from March: households earning under $40,000 increased gas spending by 12 percent but cut actual consumption by 7 percent. Households earning above $125,000 increased spending by 19 percent and cut consumption by 1 percent.
The pattern matches 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent energy prices to similar levels — except the Fed researchers note the gap in consumption is now quantitatively larger. And the underlying economy is weaker. In 2022, wage growth among rank-and-file workers was strong enough that the Fed was actively trying to slow it down. Now Bank of America reports the widest wage gap since 2015: higher-income households seeing 5.6 percent annual wage growth, lower- and middle-income households getting 1 to 2 percent. The cushion that existed last time isn’t there.
Indiana muscle
Donald Trump may have a record high disapproval rating in the general electorate according to polls, but within his own party he still has plenty of power. In primaries in Indiana, Trump-backed candidates replaced incumbents in five of seven state Senate races by wide margins. One race is still too close to call.
For a little context, according to Elliot Morris of Strength in Numbers, the incumbent re-election rate is typically 95% or higher.
The trouncing was a bit of payback from the president who disapproved of Indiana Republicans who stood against his plan to redraw congressional maps to keep hold of the U.S. House of Representatives ahead of the 2026 midterms, just one of the states in what has become a nationwide tit for tat as the two parties seek advantage but has thus far fought to roughly a draw. The president’s allies spent millions in the usually sleepy races.
One of the great shifts in American politics over the last 50 years has been the power of the party primary. The most die-hard members of a party maintain discipline by punishing members who stray from party orthodoxy. This works to chill behavior before punishment is even necessary.
Lawmakers will not stand up against their party or president for fear of losing in a primary or even facing a challenger who will cause them to spend millions. This also explains why lawmakers will push for ballroom funding and not say boo about usurpation of Congressional power whether it’s for tariffs or the war in Iran.
That this fight requiring orthodoxy punishment took place over gerrymandering only exacerbates the purity based – rather than lawmaker’s conscience based– move in American politics. Both parties are working to build safe districts where their party is protected which means the only competition of ideas will be on either end of the political spectrum.
This creates a structure that rewards purity over compromise so that when they get to Washington these lawmakers are structurally built not to engage in the central requirement of lawmaking: compromise.
Lutnick testifies
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick met behind closed doors yesterday with the House Oversight and Accountability Committee. The billionaire New York financier has become a primary symbol of the administration’s ongoing difficulties surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein records. In a series of instances, Lutnick’s previous claims about his proximity to Epstein have been proven untrue. Specifically, while he previously maintained he had no contact with Epstein after 2005, newly released files include emails and calendar entries showing professional and social correspondence well into 2011 and 2012, including a documented visit to Epstein’s private island that Lutnick had not disclosed during his confirmation process.
The accounts of what Lutnick said behind closed doors largely mirror the partisanship of the members of Congress providing them, rendering the testimony’s ultimate value unclear.
However, the Secretary’s situation embodies a larger structural problem for the administration. Although forced by law to disclose all relevant information, the Department of Justice has been accused of failing to fully comply. Ultimately, the DOJ released millions of pages but withheld significant tranches of data on national security and privacy grounds—rationales that the Epstein Files Transparency Act expressly sought to limit or forbid in the interest of full public disclosure.
The document release also suffered a “double botch”: while some powerful figures remained shielded by redactions, the release disclosed the identities of several of Epstein’s victims, leading to a fresh wave of legal and ethical criticism.
Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie are now leading a bipartisan push to force the DOJ to allow congressional investigators to see the unredacted files. While the public files remain heavily obscured—ostensibly to protect those victims—Khanna and Massie are demanding the House Oversight Committee receive full, unredacted access. They argue that the administration is using “privacy” as a convenient shield to hide the names of high-profile political and financial figures who appear in the records.
Also Wednesday, a federal judge unsealed a 2019 suicide note from Epstein’s first attempt in which he wrote investigators had “FOUND NOTHING,” written in all capital letters, which might be interpreted as a boast of innocence or which, given all we now know, represents the last act of delusion and lying from a monster.
One of the reasons we know that Epstein was among the worst examples of human behavior is because of the dogged, lonely work of Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown, whose 2017–2018 investigation first cracked open the Epstein network. The Pulitzer board awarded her a special citation Monday.
The Easy Scenario
What’s your reaction when you hear that a deadly virus has killed three on a cruise ship? Don’t go on a cruise ship, sure, but do you think the authorities have been alerted and are on the case? Surely they are. We’re only a few years from a global pandemic.
And yet, there is deep murkiness.
Six Americans who left a hantavirus-stricken cruise ship on April 24 are back in the country and being monitored by three states. None have shown symptoms. The public learned this Wednesday not from the CDC or the State Department but from MedPage Today, a medical trade publication. The CDC issued its first statement about the outbreak more than four hours later — a single sentence about “technical assistance” that did not mention the returned Americans. The agency had only stood up a response team the day before, nearly a month after the first passenger died. The New York Times reports that public health experts say the virus itself is not the worry — hantavirus spreads rarely, and only through sustained close contact.
What concerns them is what the response reveals: an administration that gutted CDC staffing, withdrew from the World Health Organization, and eliminated pandemic preparedness offices is now struggling to manage an outbreak that one former biosecurity official called “a relatively easy scenario.” The WHO’s expert group on pandemic-potential viruses meets Monday to discuss the hantavirus findings. It does not include anyone from the CDC.
White House metaphor
If you were looking for a metaphor for the Trump presidency it would have to include these elements: Demolish the inherited structure. Build something far bigger than the occasion requires. Promise someone else will pay for it. When they don’t, redefine the expense as an emergency. If there’s fallout let others deal with it even if it’s toxic and dare anyone to complain. Replace the people who object. And when the courts intervene, keep digging — underground, where the judge’s order doesn’t reach.
Speaking of the White House ballroom, though its proposed design will be large enough to see from space, it snuck into the $70 billion Republican reconciliation bill on little cat feet. The bill funds a variety of measures — most notably Immigration and Customs Enforcement and border patrol through the end of President Trump’s term — but, we learned Wednesday, tucked inside is $1 billion proposed by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa for security work related to Mr. Trump’s East Wing renovation. The measure does not mention the president’s proposed new ballroom, which is being challenged in court, but Mr. Trump has insisted that a main reason for the project is to enhance security.
Trump last November: “And by the way, no government funds. These are all private individuals that put up a lot of money to build the ballroom. Not one penny is being used from the federal government.”
Religion on the sleeve
The Washington Post poll also shows that Americans are deeply uncomfortable with recent religion-related statements. Eighty-seven percent of Americans have a negative view of Trump’s social media post appearing to depict himself as Jesus. Sixty-nine percent dislike Hegseth praying at the Pentagon for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.” The root of this disappointment is that the Christian religion is formed around Jesus, who preached mercy and peace throughout his life and calls on his followers to follow both. So the Hegseth prayer is a little like asking a vegan chef to make steak tartar. More figures in footnote.2
Antisemitic violence
Anti-Jewish assaults in the U.S. hit their highest level since 1979, the ADL reported Wednesday. Physical attacks rose to 203, up from 196 in 2024, with 32 involving deadly weapons (up from 23). Three people were killed—the first antisemitic murders in the U.S. since 2019. Attacks included a shooting at the Capital Jewish Museum in D.C., a Molotov cocktail at a Colorado rally for Israeli hostages, a stabbing in New York, and a firebombing of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence while his family was inside. Overall antisemitic incidents fell 33% to 6,274—still the third-highest year on record—but the decline in harassment and vandalism didn’t extend to violence.
FBI VA raid
FBI agents on Wednesday served more than ten search warrants in a criminal investigation targeting L. Louise Lucas, the Democratic president pro tempore of the Virginia State Senate, who has served more than 30 years. Agents searched her office and a neighboring cannabis dispensary. The investigation, which dates back to the Biden administration, examines possible corruption and bribery related to marijuana dispensary businesses. Two people familiar with the case described it as financial in nature.
Lucas is not a minor figure in state politics. She played a central role in Virginia’s recent congressional redistricting, championing maps that gave Democrats the advantage in four seats. When Texas Sen. Ted Cruz called the maps a Democratic gerrymander, Lucas responded on X in February: “You all started it and we fucking finished it.”
Ted Turner, 87
Brian Stelter, of CNN, wrote about a day in the early history of CNN when a janitor walked right up to anchor Bernard Shaw’s desk and emptied his wastebasket while Shaw was on the air. The janitor didn’t realize he was on television. Nobody did. That was the thing about CNN in the beginning — nobody entirely believed it was real.
We learned this week that CNN’s founder, Ted Turner, died at age 87. I found myself groping into the past to explain just how big a change CNN represented in the world, and the trouble is this: we all live inside the change now.
Before June 1, 1980, when Turner launched CNN, the entire country’s appetite for televised news was supposed to fit inside three half-hour broadcasts — one each on ABC, NBC, and CBS. Ninety minutes a day. That was it. That was the window through which Americans watched the world.
Turner said: that’s not how any of this works. Who wants news at 2pm and 2am, the skeptics asked. Would there even be enough news to fill 24 hours? Whether there’s enough news to fill 24 hours is, of course, a question still up for grabs every time you see a chyron that says BREAKING NEWS about a story that has been breaking for the last several days with no new developments.
But what Turner grasped was that the demand wasn’t for more news — it was for access to the world as it unfolded. The old format treated reality as something that could be carved into tidy, equal-sized portions and served once a day at dinnertime. Life doesn’t work that way. Turner built a format that matched the mess.
Not to throw any shade on Stack the Week, the product toward which you are inclining your ear presently, which is vital to all right-thinking Americans and people of good conscience.
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders published its annual World Press Freedom Index this week, and the United States fell seven places to 64th out of 180 countries — its lowest ranking in the index’s 25-year history. In 2002, when the index launched, the U.S. sat at 17th. It now ranks between Botswana and Panama.
RSF cited the administration’s detention and deportation of journalists, politically motivated investigations targeting specific reporters and outlets, defunding of public broadcasters including NPR and PBS, the gutting of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, and political interference in media ownership. But RSF’s North America director, Clayton Weimers, cautioned against blaming the decline entirely on Trump. “We have structural deficiencies that are imperiling the future of press freedom in this country,” he said — pointing to the ongoing consolidation of media ownership, the collapse of local newsrooms, and a broader political culture in which attacking reporters has become bipartisan sport. Trump, in his telling, is “pouring gasoline on the fire.” The fire was already burning. Globally, the picture is worse. For the first time in the index’s history, more than half of all countries fall into the “difficult” or “very serious” categories. Only one in a hundred people on earth now lives in a country with what RSF considers a healthy, diverse media landscape. In 2002, it was one in five.
Thursday May 7
Project Freedom wasn’t free, washers are getting costly and so is living, for low income Americans. Rubio won’t write with the Pope’s pen. The Chief Justice says the court isn’t political and Tennessee Republicans say hold my beer. Texas is drowning in short-term thinking. Iranians won’t learn any of this from the internet.
Project Freedom's shelf life
On Thursday we learned why the U.S. military operation “Project Freedom” was not a very long project. After two days it could not survive the diplomatic wall it had hit. Reports, primarily from NBC, indicate that Saudi Arabia was angered by the Trump administration’s decision to announce the blockade-breaking effort via social media without prior consultation, leading the Kingdom to suspend U.S. access to critical airspace and the Prince Sultan Airbase. This lack of coordination from a highly improvisational president has not only forced a pause in the operation—leaving U.S. naval assets without their necessary land-based “defensive umbrella”—but has also created friction with a key ally who remains focused on Pakistani-led diplomatic negotiations to end the 60-day conflict.
The UN’s International Maritime Organization reported that approximately 1,500 ships and 20,000 crew members remain trapped in the Gulf due to the ongoing Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
President Trump struck a public note of optimism, telling reporters a deal was “very possible” after “very good talks.” The President claimed that there was an agreement for Iran to abandon nuclear ambitions.
However, Iranian officials downplayed these reports, calling the U.S. proposal an “American wish list” rather than a reality. If you feel like we’ve been here before, we have. It’s a signature move for the president to declare that the other side has agreed to terms it hasn’t as a way of trying to assert leverage. It hasn’t worked so far.
Iranians can’t follow this bounding ball with the intensity of you Stack Week listeners because on Thursday Iran’s nationwide internet blackout entered its 69th day.
That’s the longest and most severe in the country’s history. But “blackout” doesn’t mean no tiktok videos. Ordinary Iranians have zero access to the global internet — no Google, no WhatsApp, no Wikipedia. Military-grade jammers block Starlink signals. Authorities conduct house-to-house searches in Tehran to seize satellite dishes. What remains is the National Information Network — a controlled, domestic-only intranet where citizens can access state-run news and banking apps, but only with government-validated IDs, and only under surveillance.
Global internet access still exists for a select few: security forces, government officials, and businesses willing to pay for state-issued “Internet Pro” packages.
A new class of digital refugees — professionals who need a working connection to earn a living — has begun relocating to Turkey and Armenia just to get online. Families cannot reach relatives abroad. Students are severed from the global web. The blackout began as a tool for suppressing protest. It has become something else: a permanent restructuring of Iranian society around state-controlled digital isolation.
The Israeli military said on Thursday that it had killed a senior Hezbollah commander in a strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs a day earlier, the first attack near the Lebanese capital since a U.S.-mediated cease-fire took effect last month.
And Thursday the son of Hamas’ chief negotiator in U.S.-mediated talks over Gaza’s future died, the results of an Israeli airstrike, the day before. Leaders of the militant group are holding talks in Cairo regarding their truce with Israel.
Jonathan Pollard
Jonathan Pollard, an American who in 1985 sold suitcases of top-secret U.S. intelligence to Israel — reconnaissance photos, the NSA’s ten-volume manual on how the country gathers signal intelligence, the names of thousands of people who had cooperated with American agencies — announced this week that he’s running for the Israeli parliament. Pollard served 30 years in federal prison, moved to Israel in 2020, and is now campaigning on a platform that includes annexing Gaza, forcibly removing its entire Palestinian population, and repopulating the territory with Israelis.
Whirlpool and Iran
While the war in Iran seems like a whirlpool of confusion, for Whirlpool the swirl is not just metaphorical. (This lede brought to you by your Dad). The domestic manufacturer said in its earnings report Thursday, the disruptions from Iran are creating a “recession level industry decline.”
Big-ticket items like washers, dryers, and kitchen appliances are often the first purchases consumers postpone during periods of uncertainty. The war caused consumer confidence to hit record lows in April, leading to a sharp pullback in spending on durable goods.
Analysts at JPMorgan noted that Whirlpool is facing significant raw material inflation for metals like aluminum, which is critical for many appliance components, energy can account for up to 40% of production costs. When energy prices double, raw material prices follow almost immediately. Aluminum is often referred to by industry insiders as “congealed electricity” because the smelting process requires an immense, constant flow of electrical current to break the bond between aluminum and oxygen.
Consumers “running out of money”
Corporate earnings calls this week became a roll call of consumer distress. Kraft Heinz CEO Steve Cahillane said lower-income Americans are “literally running out of money at the end of the month,” dipping into savings to cover basics. McDonald’s reported “heightened anxiety” among its customers, with gas prices hitting low-income diners hardest. Dine Brands, which owns Applebee’s and IHOP, said its most price-sensitive guests are staying home — a pullback it isn’t seeing at higher income levels.
Warby Parker flagged younger shoppers squeezed by unemployment and student debt. The pattern is the same K-shape visible at the gas pump: one economy for people who don’t check the price, another for people who can’t stop checking it.
Rubio and the Pope
The Secretary of State visited me and all I got was this lousy football. The Pope didn’t say that and because he believes in Christian charity and is an all around grateful guy, he was no doubt thrilled to get the glass football with the Department of State seal. A bottle of the bourbon that FBI director Kash Patel gives with his name etched in it, that we learned about from The Atlantic this week, would certainly have been inappropriate.
In return, the Pope prayed for the eternal rest of Rubio’s soul, which is nice. And he gave him a pen made from olive wood. He noted that an olive branch is the symbol of peace.
As for the Director of the FBI, his behavior was more monastic this week, according to Carol Loenig and Ken Dilanian of MS Now. Patel walled himself off from some senior bureau leaders this week after multiple media reports raised red flags about his leadership, according to three people familiar with his recent actions. Patel has also ordered the polygraphing of more than two dozen former and current members of his security detail, as well as other staff, and has been described as being in panic mode to save his job and find leakers among his team, according to two people briefed on the development.
The Longest Serving and the Least Political
Clarence Thomas became the second longest-serving justice in Supreme Court history on Thursday. The first baby boomer on the Supreme Court is surpassed only by liberal justice William O. Douglas, who wrote the opinion for Griswold v. Connecticut protecting the right to contraception and joined the majority in Brown v. Board of Education, which declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional.
Thomas would overtake Douglas in 2028 if he remains on the court — and there’s no sign he plans to retire anytime soon.
Supreme Court justices are not “political actors,” Chief Justice John Roberts said, speaking before a conference of judges and lawyers from the 3rd U.S. Circuit in Pennsylvania. “I think, at a very basic level, people think we’re making policy decisions, we’re saying we think this is how things should be, as opposed to what the law provides,” he said. “I think they view us as purely political actors, which I don’t think is an accurate understanding of what we do.”
Memphis, Split Three Ways
In the wake of last week’s Supreme Court decision essentially voiding the Voting Rights Act — for which Roberts voted — the Tennessee Republican legislature moved to remove the one minority district in the state’s congressional delegation. By splitting the 9th district, which represents a predominantly Black portion of the state anchored in Memphis, into three districts, the majority power in the state makes it likely that the congressional delegation will have nine Republicans and zero Democrats.
Steve Cohen, the Democrat who holds the seat, has said he’ll sue. And Tennessee had to repeal its own ban on mid-decade redistricting before it could pass the map — all in the same special session.
Tariffs 0-5
The U.S. Court of International Trade ruled 2-1 Thursday that President Trump’s 10 percent global tariff is illegal — the fifth consecutive court loss for the president’s tariff agenda in his second term. Trump imposed the tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 as a fallback after the Supreme Court struck down his broader IEEPA tariffs in February. Section 122 allows a president to impose tariffs up to 15 percent for 150 days, but only in response to “large and serious balance-of-payments deficits.”
The court found the administration had no such deficit — it had simply relabeled the trade deficit, which is a different thing. The judges noted that accepting the government’s expansive reading would give the president virtually unlimited tariff power, a constitutional problem.
The tariffs remain in effect for importers who haven’t sued and were set to expire in July anyway unless Congress extended them, but the ruling strips the administration of its last functioning legal basis for broad unilateral tariffs. The administration is expected to appeal.
FOOTNOTE: The trade deficit measures just goods and services—what the U.S. buys from abroad minus what it sells. The balance of payments is the full ledger: it includes that trade deficit but also tracks investment flows, financial transfers, and other capital moving in and out of the country. Why does the distinction matter? Because a country can run a big trade deficit and still be financially healthy if foreign money is pouring in as investment—which is exactly what happens with the U.S. The trade deficit alone makes it look like America is losing; the balance of payments shows that foreigners are also buying U.S. Treasury bonds, real estate, and companies, which means dollars flow back in. The trade deficit is the scoreboard politicians yell about; the balance of payments is the actual financial picture.
Since 1973:
Over nearly 60 years, Texas lawmakers rejected more than five dozen bills that would have restricted construction in flood-prone areas, ProPublica and the Texas Tribune found. The majority of the 137 people who died in last July’s Hill Country flood were staying in places the federal government had already identified as dangerous — places where the state had a chance to ban building and chose not to.
The first such bill came in 1973, after a deadly flood in the same region. It would have prohibited all structures for human use in the most dangerous flood zones. A lawmaker gutted it before the first hearing.
A 1989 bill to ban youth camps near waterways died too; 28 children, counselors, and a camp director died on July 4 in exactly the locations it would have covered.
Texas has more buildings in flood-prone areas than any state except Florida, yet trails at least 29 states — including Florida — in requiring those buildings to be elevated.
After the deadliest flood in the state’s modern history, the legislature banned youth camps from flood zones and did nothing else. More than a hundred Kerr County residents have already received permits to rebuild in the same areas. The pattern is not unique to Texas or to floods: lawmakers decline to regulate because the cost of prevention is visible and immediate while the cost of inaction is diffuse and future — until it isn’t, at which point the disaster is called unforeseeable, the dead are mourned, and the cycle restarts.
Friday, May 8
Iran trifle
Was the war on or off? It depends what the meaning of war is.
The plain meaning of words has always been up for grabs in the Trump years, mercury running all over the stainless steel table refusing to sit still.
Sorry, I’ve been reading Ross MacDonald this morning and I’m a little dramatic.
The war wasn’t a war, the firing didn’t undo the cease-fire. Overnight the US and Iran had exchanged missiles. U.S. Central Command said that “unprovoked Iranian attacks” on three American destroyers had involved missiles, drones and small boats. In response, the U.S. military said it had “targeted Iranian military facilities responsible for attacking U.S. forces,” including missile and drone launch sites. Senior Iranian military officials said the U.S. “crossed the point of no return” with the attacks and they vowed to respond.
Nevertheless, when the day broke the president declared that the ceasefire had not been broken by all of this firing. A ‘trifle,” he called it. Sure, from the guy who called the war he started an “excursion.” From threatening an entire civilization to hurrying to circle bubble wrap around explosions to keep the peace, president Trump has been on a journey with this war.
Here’s one way to look at events. And I put it that way because so much of this war is opaque, a lot of our views should be provisional.
The US and Iran are discussing a peace proposal. It has these elements: the two sides would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and cease hostilities for 30 days as they negotiate a comprehensive deal.
The economic strain is heavy on Iran. They are militarily out-gunned too. But they’re not as bloodied as the administration claims, they’ve successfully seized the Strait and are using it as leverage and they might be able to limp along for longer than president Trump can stand.
The Washington Post reported that a confidential CIA assessment delivered to the White House this week concludes that Iran can survive the U.S. naval blockade for three to four months — and possibly longer — before facing severe economic hardship, undercutting the administration’s public insistence that Tehran is desperate to deal.
The assessment also found that Iran retains roughly 75 percent of its prewar mobile launchers and 70 percent of its missile stockpiles, has reopened nearly all of its underground storage facilities, and has even assembled new missiles from components that were near completion when the war began.
The president told reporters Wednesday that Iran’s missiles were “mostly decimated” and that perhaps 18 or 19 percent remained — a figure sharply at odds with his own intelligence community’s estimate.
Iran is also cushioning the blockade’s impact by storing oil aboard idle tankers and may be moving some crude overland by rail through Central Asia.
One U.S. official familiar with the analysis said Iran’s capacity to endure is likely even greater than the CIA projects, noting that the regime’s leadership has grown more radical and more confident it can outlast American political will. A former head of the Iran branch in Israeli military intelligence warned that a war launched to topple the regime and dismantle its nuclear and missile programs may instead leave Iran stronger — with sanctions relief, significant remaining arsenals, and uranium enrichment still on its own soil.
Israel arrested four people — one civilian and three soldiers — accused of spying for Iran since they were minors. The Shin Bet said the suspects had long-term contact with Iranian intelligence and carried out missions on its behalf, including documenting train stations, shopping centers, security cameras, and an Air Force technical school where some of them had studied.
April jobs up
A good jobs report in April. The economy added 115,000 jobs, up about twice what economists expected. There were revisions up and down, but the last three months have averaged 48,000 jobs.
Health care jobs were up, driven by the demographics of boomers aging, spending more on healthcare and creating more need for people who work in that industry.
Employment in manufacturing declined slightly, after posting a surprise gain in March. The centerpiece of the Trump economic agenda has been to rewrite global trade in order to build manufacturing jobs. This has not happened. Overall manufacturing employment has dropped 100,000 jobs since Trump’s second term began, even after brief monthly upticks.
The steady but unremarkable pace of the job market reflects two forces pulling in the same direction. On the supply side, the administration’s immigration crackdown has shrunk the available workforce just as the population ages out of it. On the demand side, employers have frozen in place — not expanding, not cutting — paralyzed by tariff uncertainty and the cost of borrowing.
The result is a labor market running on idle: tolerable if you already have a job, punishing if you’re looking for one. Recent college graduates are feeling it worst, entering what by several measures is the weakest hiring environment they’ve faced in years.
According to the New York Times: “Wages accelerated slightly on an annual basis, growing 3.6 percent from a year ago. The pace of average hourly earnings growth has been slowing gradually, and is getting uncomfortably close to the rate of inflation — when those two lines cross, workers in the aggregate are seeing their earnings decline in real terms.”
Eggs in one market basket
The stock market is never a good measure of broad economic health. It certainly doesn’t tell us how the average American is doing. At this point the stock market is an even less useful measure of what’s going on.
Before the war, something encouraging was happening in the stock market. The Equal Weight version of the S&P 500 — which treats all 500 companies the same rather than letting a handful of trillion-dollar tech giants dominate the index — was outperforming the headline number.
That mattered because when the equal-weight index leads, it means the gains are spreading: a regional bank in the Midwest is healthy enough to lend, a construction firm in the South has enough orders to hire.
The recovery was moving off the screen and onto the street. The war killed that. According to the Financial Times, Wall Street’s rebound since late March has been driven by the smallest number of stocks on record. UBS found that only 42 stocks are materially contributing to the index’s performance — far below the roughly 100 that has been typical in recent decades.
Just five tech companies — Alphabet, Nvidia, Amazon, Broadcom, and Apple — account for more than half the gains.
The equal-weight index, which was leading before the conflict, now trails. The energy shock from the Iran war crushed earnings in the sectors that had been broadening the rally — consumer goods, materials, industrials — while Big Tech’s earnings grew 40 percent in the first quarter. As one strategist at Citi put it, while the Strait of Hormuz is closed, broad-based earnings growth is off the table.
Virginia’s new old lines
The Virginia Supreme Court struck down the congressional redistricting that voters approved last month, ruling 4-3 that Democratic legislators botched the procedural steps required to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot. The decision restores the 2024 map and kills what would have been Democrats’ biggest counter in the nationwide gerrymandering fight Trump set off last year. Under the now-voided map, Democrats stood to flip four Republican-held House seats; without it, Republicans hold a clear advantage in the redistricting wars heading into November, with new maps already locked in or underway in Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Alabama—several of them made possible by last week’s Supreme Court decision gutting much of the Voting Rights Act.
School enrollment drops
America’s record-low birth rate is now showing up in the classroom. Public school enrollment has fallen in 30 states since the mid-2010s, hitting big urban districts like Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York—but suburban and smaller districts are shrinking just as fast.
Housing costs are pushing families out of cities, the immigration crackdown has cut off a stream of new students that had been propping up enrollment nationwide, and school choice—charters, homeschooling, virtual options—is siphoning off others.
But the dominant driver is demographic: the U.S. fertility rate peaked in 2007 and has dropped 24 percent since. Because school funding is tied to headcount, fewer students means less money, which means districts across the country are now staring at program cuts and school closures.
Guns in the mail
Handguns could soon travel through the U.S. mail for the first time in nearly a century. Congress banned the practice in 1927 to curb crime; the Trump Justice Department now calls that ban unconstitutional, arguing the Second Amendment requires the postal service to ship firearms to law-abiding citizens. Last month USPS proposed a rule allowing anyone—not just licensed dealers—to mail concealable weapons like pistols and revolvers. Two dozen Democratic attorneys general sent a letter opposing the change this week. Public comments closed Monday; a final rule could follow.
Pentagon looks up
The Pentagon has started releasing UFO files, posting 162 documents—old State Department cables, FBI records, NASA transcripts—on a new retro-styled website and promising more on a rolling basis. The effort spans the White House, the director of national intelligence, the Energy Department, NASA, and the FBI. The administration framed it as a break from predecessors, saying Trump is providing “maximum transparency” and that the public “can ultimately make up their own minds.” Among the files: a report from a drone pilot who says an object shone a bright light in the sky and vanished.
The administration’s commitment to maximum transparency has not yet extended to the financial dealings of the president, his Cabinet, or their families, where a number of unidentified anomalous phenomena also await disclosure.
Thanks Mom
Sunday is Mother’s Day. So thank you to all you mothers out there. And a particular prize for any mother who has listened this long, a chore possibly rivaling many of the most exhausting challenges of raising a human.
Some of you may remember the Face the Nation Diary. Same instinct, new form. I think it’s probably best experienced if you listen to me read the audio version. Please let me know what you think — and what you like and don’t like.
Both expressions drew criticism even from Republicans and Trump voters, unusual at a time of deep political tribalism. Eighty percent of 2024 Trump voters had a negative reaction to Trump’s Jesus post, as did 79 percent of Republicans. On Hegseth’s prayer, more than 40 percent of both groups reacted negatively.
Trump won the White Catholic vote by a more than 20-point margin in the 2024 presidential election. But his approval rating with that group is down in the new poll, at 49 percent, compared with 63 percent in February 2025. His approval rate stands at 38 percent for all Catholics, a 10-point drop since then.
