https://theweek.com/instant-opinion Thu, 30 Jul 2026 16:15:36 +0000 en https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-paramount-deal-bots-israel-trump tBLP3prcHqMpoCAesQ8XQN Thu, 30 Jul 2026 16:15:36 +0000 Thu, 30 Jul 2026 17:17:46 +0000 false false false

‘The Paramount deal is in trouble. It’s not about the movies.’

Sharon Waxman at The New York Times

Hollywood has been “thrown sideways by the news that 12 state attorneys general might have found a way to trip up the merger that almost nobody in the entertainment industry wanted,” says Sharon Waxman. For “months, the acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount Skydance has been an all-but-done deal,” but concerns “over the future of CNN” are “what is driving the forces against this deal.” Paramount “seems well aware of this narrative,” and there “will be legal arguments.”

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‘How bots took over our lives’

T.M. Brown at The New Yorker

During the “past decade, so-called bots, a slippery concept from the start, have gone from a conspiratorial curiosity to a familiar force in our daily lives,” says T.M. Brown. In the “popular imagination, they are suddenly everywhere and seem designed to annoy the hell out of people.” But the “impulse to treat bots like digital mosquitoes that need to be swatted away minimizes their role in making the internet work.” Bots are “most often used for mundane tasks.”

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‘Israel runs the Iran playbook on Turkey’

Mason Letteau Stallings at The American Conservative

One of the “stranger geopolitical developments in the Middle East of late (leaving aside the present war) has been the rupture between Israel and Turkey,” says Mason Letteau Stallings. Most “worrying, considering the conflict in which the United States currently finds itself embroiled, are Israeli comparisons of Turkey to Iran.” From a “historical perspective, this is surprising,” but it’s “important to ensure that Israeli (or Turkish) interests, to the extent these diverge from our own, do not shape American policymaking.”

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‘Donald Trump has turned the United States into an economic banana republic’

Richard Poplak at The Globe and Mail

The United States has become “perhaps the world’s first functioning Third World economy,” says Richard Poplak. While he “wouldn’t be caught dead articulating it this way, Trump’s vision is to turn the United States into a Third World economy.” While the “analogy is not perfect, it’s far from outlandish: however much the actual adults in the Oval Office may disapprove, the U.S. has reshaped revenue collection around the simple, regressive models preferred by Third World dictators.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-india-protest-housing--stress-trump 8z3fJL6hFvRfNt2QWZEy29 Wed, 29 Jul 2026 16:15:17 +0000 false false false

‘India’s Gen Z just made Modi blink’

Rana Ayyub at The Washington Post

What “began as outrage over dysfunction in India’s college exam system built into something much larger — the first sustained, youth-led movement in years to force India’s powerful central government actually to concede ground,” says Rana Ayyub. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “government has seemed to elevate itself beyond the reach of dissent,” but the “critical mass that formed last week was something new.” It managed to “turn Modi himself into a subject of derision and satire.”

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‘America’s housing boom risks creating tomorrow’s housing crisis’

Elizabeth Carmichael at Newsweek

America is “racing to build millions of new homes,” but in the “rush to solve today’s housing shortage, we’re creating neighborhoods that could become tomorrow’s financial and environmental liabilities,” says Elizabeth Carmichael. The “country needs new homes,” but “building faster won’t solve America’s housing crisis if we’re filling neighborhoods with developments that cost more to maintain, consume more energy, undermine residents’ health and require expensive retrofits.” Americans “should be treating every new development as infrastructure for the next century.”

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‘The hidden cost of stress at work’

Lilly Springer, David Slusky and Anupam Jena at Time

Americans “work more hours per year than those in similar countries. Working is, in a sense, an American pastime,” say Lilly Springer, David Slusky and Anupam Jena. Many “jobs are stressful or physically demanding, imposing a toll on both mental and physical health.” The “question of how work affects our health is incredibly important.” Workplace conditions “can impact the health of not only workers themselves, but also their children,” as the “effects of work may reach beyond an individual employee.”

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‘Trump’s Iran war casualty numbers don’t add up’

Renée Graham at The Boston Globe

After “four U.S. service members killed this month in the U.S./Israel war against Iran received a dignified transfer at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, their names disappeared from the Pentagon’s public tracker for military casualties,” says Renée Graham. President Donald Trump is “cooking the books again, this time with the numbers of Iran war dead.” Even in an “administration where mendacity is policy, reclassifying war deaths to manipulate public opinion for this deeply unpopular war is unconscionable.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-cracker-barrel-ticks-refugees-yale KjfftFUdhXkNocCWTza7ak Tue, 28 Jul 2026 17:31:57 +0000 Tue, 28 Jul 2026 20:56:02 +0000 false false false

‘Cracker Barrel’s CEO ouster surprised Wall Street but not women’

Beth Kowitt at Bloomberg

Though it “seemed like” Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino “saved her job,” her recent firing “left some analysts scratching their heads,” says Beth Kowitt. But “boards are moving much faster to fire the big boss when things go bad,” and the “phenomenon is even more acute for female CEOs, who have always been under more intense scrutiny than their male counterparts.” Masino’s “tenure at Cracker Barrel is a textbook example of how we’ve ended up with these statistics.”

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‘The great tick explosion: A tiny threat tests America’s love of nature.’

Patti Waldmeir at the Financial Times

It’s “easy to see why ticks loom so large in the American imagination,” says Patti Waldmeir. Headlines “portray them as a frightening new public health threat: Unfamiliar ticks turning up in unexpected places, bringing exotic new illnesses such as red meat allergies, debilitating infections and even death.” But “much can be done to reduce risk: Stick to the center of the trail, tuck socks into long trousers, check behind knees, groin and scalp after outings, wear insect repellent and use permethrin-treated clothing.”

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‘Refugee Convention at 75: The world must keep the promise that saved me.’

Yusra Mardini at Al Jazeera

This year “marks the 75th anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the international agreement created after one of history’s darkest chapters to ensure that people forced to flee persecution would never again be left without protection,” says Syrian ex-refugee Yusra Mardini. Too “often, however, refugees are discussed only as numbers, political problems or security challenges.” Rarely “are they recognized for who they are: people.” Every refugee “should have the opportunity to seek safety,” and “every refugee deserves dignity.”

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‘Yale loses the capitulation bowl’

Robert Kuttner at The American Prospect

Yale University’s president “got caught trying to make a deal with the Trump administration to change its admission procedures as a way to settle an administration investigation of Yale and the threat of sanctions,” says Robert Kuttner. But “instead of a deal, the secret negotiations have produced massive protests by faculty, students and alums.” Yale’s “efforts to give in to Trump blackmail are in striking contrast to the evolution of negotiations between the administration and Harvard.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-drug-policy-ai-europe-therapy Dvba7NAEVHmzVXtDTUhYog Mon, 27 Jul 2026 15:42:37 +0000 false false false

‘The drug policy debate’s common ground: better treatment and recovery’

Jim Crotty at The Hill

Few “public policy debates are as polarized as drug policy, which is often framed around two competing visions — prohibition and decriminalization,” says Jim Crotty. Both are “passionate about their positions, and both make valid arguments,” but they “frequently overlook the same prerequisite for success: a system capable of meeting the country’s growing demand for addiction treatment and recovery services.” The U.S. “must help promote careers in treatment and recovery through more competitive pay, streamlined education and licensing pathways.”

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‘AI can fuel biological weapons. We must harness its power for defense.’

Annie Jacobsen at The Guardian

AI can “help bad actors generate recipes for biological weapons” but also “track disease outbreaks and deliver critical public health information to millions of people,” says Annie Jacobsen. The “question is not whether AI can do catastrophic harm in the realm of biological sciences — it most certainly can — but whether public health officials can figure out how to deploy AI as a defensive tool faster than malicious actors deploy it as an offensive one.”

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‘Joint European response to wildfires is essential’

Le Monde editorial board

The “flames currently devastating much of Western Europe are the latest, and dramatic, manifestation of climate change driven by human activity,” says the Le Monde editorial board. Beyond France and Spain, fires are “raging across Germany, Italy, Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands,” and the “map clearly shows that any response must be coordinated at the European level.” The “increasing frequency of extreme weather events has forced both rapid adaptation and a global rethinking of how to respond.”

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‘We need more therapists. They need more power.’

Isabel M. Perera at USA Today

Americans “need therapy now more than ever before,” but if “you’ve tried to find a therapist recently, you know it’s tough,” says Isabel M. Perera. The “people we rely on to help us cope with life’s hardest moments are themselves unsupported.” Weak “union representation makes it difficult for them to negotiate fair pay” and “advocate for better working conditions.” From “rehab centers to school counselors, the entire mental health ecosystem suffers from underinvestment and fragmentation.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-alcohol-fossil-fuels-prisons-labor nCeUhTbdRZ8tXgChA434Hn Fri, 24 Jul 2026 18:06:53 +0000 Mon, 27 Jul 2026 19:21:28 +0000 false false false

‘Why the world still can’t agree about alcohol’

Tim Brinkhof at Time

De-normalizing “alcohol consumption seems like a logical next step after cracking down on smoking,” says Tim Brinkhof. But as “societies everywhere ramp up efforts to discourage drinking, a bigger, more difficult question arises. Are the increasingly thorough measures we take to protect our health worth what we give up?” This “dilemma is arguably more apparent with alcohol than with tobacco.” Alcohol is “used to honor, celebrate and connect,” and “these traditions are worth considering and preserving.”

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‘Smoky skies? Throw shade at the fossil fuel industry.’

Breena Holland at The Philadelphia Inquirer

The recent “air quality is brought to you by the fossil fuel industry,” says Breena Holland. To “quibble about how much of the Canadian fires are due to human-caused climate change as opposed to poor forest management or normal climatic changes is to not see the fire for the trees.” The “fossil fuel industry has created human-made climate change, and it has won the war against it.” Rather than “prioritize planet over profit, it chose to ‘manufacture uncertainty.’”

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‘Shooting by GEO Group employee adds to argument for congressional oversight’

Ja’han Jones at MS NOW

It’s “past time to place private prison firm GEO Group under a microscope,” says Ja’han Jones. The company “added to a growing list of controversies on Wednesday when one of its employees was charged with assault for allegedly shooting a woman in the foot while she was protesting.” The “relationship between the administration and for-profit prison firms, especially GEO Group, already warranted congressional scrutiny,” and the “shooting of a demonstrator by a GEO Group employee proves this scrutiny is urgently needed.”

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‘What will you regret? Studying sabbaticals taught me a hard truth.’

DJ DiDonna at The Washington Post

People who take sabbaticals “universally describe their time off in superlatives: as a peak life experience on par in importance with the birth of a child,” says DJ DiDonna. Given the “extended nature of their time off — a proper sabbatical is ideally between three and nine months — there’s ample time to check items off a bucket list.” But the “most transformative sabbaticals included periods of work-like experimentation during which people try out different ways to live their lives.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-college-sports-senate-smoke-russia Sj4HGQqKUMu4L6hZ4igMsk Thu, 23 Jul 2026 18:45:38 +0000 Thu, 23 Jul 2026 19:27:56 +0000 false false false

‘Big money is distorting college sports in too many ways to count’

The Dallas Morning News editorial board

College sports has been “known for its regional affiliation,” but “after the latest major conference realignment,” this has “become a distant memory,” says The Dallas Morning News editorial board. It has become “difficult for those competing to be both athletes and active students” because “conferences are no longer composed of teams in neighboring states but instead made up of schools that span the country.” Students “find themselves spending more time on the road or in the airport than they spend in class.”

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‘Just say “no” to nepo senators’

Nia-Malika Henderson at Bloomberg

Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.) “chose not to use her legal last name,” Nordone, “when she was sworn in as her brother’s replacement last week,” an “obvious clue that she was thinking as a candidate, not just a caretaker,” says Nia-Malika Henderson. Graham “wants the seat because her brother had the seat.” If she “wins it, it will be because of rank nepotism,” as she has “no real experience in politics, other than appearing in ads for her brother’s various campaigns.”

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‘Smoke-filled summers cannot become the norm’

Jill Burcum at The Minnesota Star Tribune

Canadian wildfire smoke is “blanketing Minnesota again and again, turning blue skies to apocalyptic yellow, with ash coating cars and windowsills,” says Jill Burcum. The “gloomy haze has made it challenging to enjoy our world-class natural resources during the season when they’re easiest to appreciate.” Canada has “already stepped up to help in a big way.” Combining U.S. and Canadian “resources, technology and expertise is our best shot at preventing and getting ahead of fires before they become a crisis.”

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‘Chaff can fool Russia’s radar’

Robert Brull at The Wall Street Journal

Ukraine “won’t always have the element of surprise,” and as “long-range drones become increasingly crucial to modern warfare, militaries must develop new ways to protect them,“ says Robert Brull. As “long-range drones get larger and carry heavier payloads, chaff is becoming more attractive as a low-cost way to confuse radar defense systems.” Ukraine’s “powerful long-range drones will meet increasingly sophisticated networks of air defenses.” To “prepare, the offense needs to invest in a new defense: improving chaff.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-central-banks-computer-science-hobbies-trump 3N9RoYfbDEXoLT6yRpGfP9 Wed, 22 Jul 2026 19:34:30 +0000 Wed, 22 Jul 2026 21:43:20 +0000 false false false

‘Structural shifts demand a new central banking mindset’

Vivekanand Jayakumar at The Hill

While the “primary objective of most central banks” is “unchanged, the post-pandemic economic landscape has evolved in ways that require policymakers to rethink how monetary policy is designed,” says Vivekanand Jayakumar. The “pandemic shock and its aftermath substantially altered underlying economic trends and gave rise to a new geopolitical reality.” Forces are “reshaping inflation dynamics, impacting economy’s growth potential, and altering monetary policy transmission mechanisms.” So “central bankers will need to exhibit greater flexibility, adaptability and forward-looking decision-making.”

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‘Where did all the computer science professors go?’

Lila Shroff and Rose Horowitch at The Atlantic

AI companies are “turning into something like mini-universities,” say Lila Shroff and Rose Horowitch. As AI has “taken center stage, Silicon Valley has intensified its efforts to recruit star researchers and looked beyond computer science departments.” While “plenty of research is still happening within universities,” the “result is a flywheel.” As “more academics get sucked up by industry, the center of AI research moves further from academia, thus increasing the incentive for remaining researchers to leave.”

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‘We are taking hobbies too far’

Meehika Barua at Time

Having hobbies shows that you “have the time, money and energy to spend on them,” says Meehika Barua. But we have “turned hobbies from optional leisure activities into a marker of identity.” Hobbies are “increasingly sold as a route to becoming a more interesting or successful person rather than simply a way to spend free time.” This can “leave people feeling guilty if they prefer quieter pursuits or if they discover they don’t enjoy the hobby that everyone else seems to love.”

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‘He may be Trump’s only real friend. He’s quietly transforming the world.’

Andrea Bernstein at Slate

Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff “seems like Trump, a New York real estate developer turned world dealmaker,” says Andrea Bernstein. But in an administration that “privileges snarling visages, Witkoff is nearly universally described as kind or nice, a quality he has used to good diplomatic effect.” As Witkoff “presided over a tenuous ceasefire deal with Hamas and Israel, he surrounded those talks with meetings with big-name Gulf leaders.” He is “unabashed about performing diplomacy through a business lens.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-cyclosporiasis-health-college-black-women-odyssey 3Sb5dN22N6StzhSmTSwfBP Tue, 21 Jul 2026 19:13:03 +0000 Tue, 21 Jul 2026 19:43:15 +0000 false false false

‘This is why our fresh produce keeps making us sick’

Timothy D. Lytton at The New York Times

While “cases of cyclosporiasis have reached a new high this year, the parasitic infection has spread in recent summers, too, abetted by warmer weather and higher consumption of fruits and vegetables,” says Timothy D. Lytton. To “break the cycle of infection, the fresh produce industry has to step up its efforts to prevent contamination on farms and better sanitize food.” The government also “needs to identify outbreaks more quickly so that contaminated food can be removed from store shelves.”

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‘The new college virtue isn’t about if you cheat, but how well’

Natalie Sandoval at USA Today

At colleges, AI “makes cheating easier, certainly,” says Natalie Sandoval. But its “rise is downstream from a cultural shift in higher education.” Americans are “witnessing a move away from a culture that valued honor and integrity (think of the social conditions that once made ‘a man of his word’ mean something) toward one where ambition and prestige are the only markers of worth.” To “be a striver is to be concerned with the appearance of prestige above all else.”

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‘The attack on workers begins and ends with Black women’

Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman and Ayanna Pressley at The Boston Globe

Black women have “always been the backbone of the American economy,” say Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.). In 2025, “thousands of Black women left or lost their jobs, with college-educated Black women and Black women in the federal workforce being disproportionately impacted.” What is “happening to Black women in the workforce is a harbinger for every worker and family in America,” a “perfect storm of this administration’s attacks on workers’ rights, equal pay and the workforce.”

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‘“The Odyssey” will overwhelm you — and not only with spectacle’

Will Leitch at The Washington Post

The “movie industry appears to have been turned entirely upside down this year” as big-budget films have “dramatically underperformed,” says Will Leitch. This is “why there remains, truly, no one like Christopher Nolan,” who has “more on his mind than just spectacle.” His new film “The Odyssey” is “about the hubris of man, about how the more we convince ourselves we have conquered nature and the gods, and believe that we no longer need to look to history.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-trump-journalists-spain-ai-congress ogmnXUG2btgupoNCVoN9w5 Mon, 20 Jul 2026 18:00:00 +0000 Mon, 20 Jul 2026 19:23:48 +0000 false false false

‘Trump’s war on journalists’

Ruth Marcus at The New Yorker

President Donald Trump “seized on another opportunity to threaten journalists,” as New York Times reporters “received subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury,” says Ruth Marcus. The Justice Department has “depicted the subpoenas as a benign move,” but “journalists’ access to information will evaporate if they cannot assure their sources of confidentiality.” This “risk is omnipresent, but it is heightened in the current moment, when reporting about the inner workings of government is more crucial than ever.”

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‘Vamos España? Why this World Cup victory for Spain feels so different from the others.’

María Ramírez at The Guardian

Spain’s FIFA World Cup victory “felt as though the success belonged to many more people around the world, from Gaza, where Spain has come to represent solidarity with the Palestinian cause, to Brazil,” says María Ramírez. The “country itself is in a better place despite the deep political polarization and widespread mood of dissatisfaction.” Spain’s “strength on the pitch lies not in individual brilliance but in a cohesiveness that becomes greater than the sum of its parts.”

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‘AI will shift “prestige careers” to talent, not pedigree’

Marcus Collins at Newsweek

Amid the “broader discourse about AI’s impact on jobs, there’s been a lot of chatter about AI obliterating what many think of as the ‘prestige’ career track,” says Marcus Collins. With “execution available at the touch of a button, the white-collar prestige career bargain is collapsing.” For “people who were counting on it, this may feel like the end of the world,” but “for the people who were never on that path, the future is as bright as ever.”

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‘Too many congressional races are over before they start. Here’s a remedy.’

Mark Z. Barabak at the Los Angeles Times

As “recently as the late 1990s, around four in 10 congressional districts were considered competitive,” but today “only 18 of 435 House districts are considered toss-ups,” says Mark Z. Barabak. This is “hardly an accident, as lawmakers have increasingly manipulated the election process to suit themselves, rejiggering congressional districts to sideline voters and boost their political parties.” Congress should “enact changes in time for the next scheduled round of redistricting, which is due to take place after the 2030 census.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-pentagon-congress-sports-ice-donald-trump 6gxSvCznA7ctUsczXwYbn8 Fri, 17 Jul 2026 17:40:55 +0000 Fri, 17 Jul 2026 18:33:36 +0000 false false false

‘America’s trillion-dollar failure’

Ro Khanna at Foreign Affairs

The media’s Department of Defense coverage has “focused on military parades, high-profile firings and lectures about haircuts,” says Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). A “less-acknowledged but just as worrisome development has been progressively undermining the U.S. military: Defense acquisition remains stubbornly slow and wildly over budget.” The Pentagon “needs to be as nimble as it is strong or it risks losing its ability to respond to global hot spots and to deter great-power conflict.”

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‘When did sports get so loud?’

Ellen Cushing at The Atlantic

Baseball is “wall-to-wall stimulation,” and “in this way, baseball is explicitly following other sports, which were earlier to invest in state-of-the-art multifactor sound systems, huge screens and sophisticated lighting schemas,” says Ellen Cushing. Many organizations are “focusing not on season-ticket-holding diehards but on more casual fans who want a big night out, are willing to pay for it and may need to be guided through a game with aural or visual cues about how to feel at any given moment.”

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‘I see my father in the fathers killed by ICE’

Ingrid Rojas Contreras at Time

“As a Latina, it is impossible for me not to see my father when I think of” the men killed by ICE, says Ingrid Rojas Contreras. “In them, I see men who wanted nothing but a better life for their children.” Families “like mine can’t help but feel their families’ pain.” To “grieve is to take stock of what we have lost, can lose and to spend time deconstructing the harmful narratives that cause our grief.”

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‘How the networks handled President Trump’s speech about election integrity’

Tom Jones at the Poynter Institute

In the “days leading up to Thursday night’s address, there were questions about just how factual Trump’s address would be,” and “because of all the discourse beforehand, there were questions about whether or not TV networks would air Trump’s address,” says Tom Jones. It was “another night of networks trying to figure out how to cover a president who often makes claims that simply are not true or, at the very least, are misleading.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-icc-court-yemen-ai-trump kw7iv2eoRtonaAYTwkvU9Z Thu, 16 Jul 2026 18:09:04 +0000 Thu, 16 Jul 2026 19:10:20 +0000 false false false

‘The International Criminal Court, an imperfect but essential safeguard against impunity’

Le Monde editorial board

International justice is “not perfect, and at times those who uphold it may undermine it,” says the Le Monde editorial board. This does “not justify the all-out offensive launched by United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio against the International Criminal Court (ICC).” Washington has “consistently campaigned against an institution established to limit the principle of national sovereignty — a principle often invoked by perpetrators of the gravest crimes, whether heads of state or political leaders, to escape prosecution.”

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‘Yemen is edging closer to renewed confrontation’

Ahmed al-Shalafi at Al Jazeera

Yemen is “slipping out of its fragile de-escalation and back into the heart of regional tensions,” says Ahmed al-Shalafi. An incident “involving the Iranian aircraft that entered Yemeni airspace was not merely a dispute over a flight.” It “exposed the extent to which the war in Yemen has become intertwined with the confrontation between the United States and Iran, and raised an old question in a new form: Can Yemen remain outside any broader regional escalation”?

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‘Brace yourself for the AI public relations blitz’

J.B. Branch at the Chicago Tribune

While “some AI products have proved fun or useful, Americans are increasingly suspicious of the technology as a whole,” says J.B. Branch. But the “tech bros see it as nothing more than a serious public relations problem. So get ready for the rehabilitation campaign.” Americans “shouldn’t buy that narrative,” as companies “cannot spend two decades building social media platforms that fuel misinformation, destabilize institutions and harm children, and then expect approval for a new technology that will hyperscale these problems.”

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‘Trump’s DOJ is now targeting The New York Times for basic reporting’

Shirin Ali at Slate

Donald Trump is “angry with The New York Times again and has deployed his usual tactics, weaponizing his position of power to take the newspaper to court,” says Shirin Ali. Journalists “often use anonymous sources in order to report on sensitive information, as well as to protect the identities of sources, who often risk their jobs and safety.” But the “Trump administration, though, has been one of the most aggressive and antagonistic in U.S. history against journalists.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-hawaii-maui-minneapolis-voters-kalshi N3KFycAGLgw4X8xEmjvWmc Wed, 15 Jul 2026 18:32:36 +0000 Wed, 15 Jul 2026 19:58:51 +0000 false false false

‘Maui residents are trying to rebuild. Let them.’

Jonathan Helton at The Washington Post

Almost “three years after wildfires engulfed Lahaina, Hawaii, rebuilding continues to move at a glacial pace,” says Jonathan Helton. Not a “single business destroyed in the fires has been rebuilt, and just two commercial permits have been issued.” Some “well-meaning state and county land-use, zoning, permitting and historic-preservation laws — passed over decades — have caused reconstruction to move at a crawl.” Lawmakers have “tried to cut through the most damaging regulatory strictures with piecemeal waivers.”

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‘Minneapolis residents don’t want police drones spying on us’

Meredith Aby, Sana Wazwaz and Michelle Rennie at The Minnesota Star Tribune

What “do you call an AI-powered drone in the hands of the government, with the power to be deployed upon complaints of any ‘suspicious person’ — a drone that records their data, and can be retained by our government”? say Meredith Aby, Sana Wazwaz and Michelle Rennie. It “sounds to us like the textbook definition of Orwellian surveillance — and it’s exactly what might happen in Minneapolis.” This is “not only politically naive but also tone deaf.”

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‘Tackling the annoyance economy is an easy way to win voters’

Neale Mahoney and Chad Maisel at Newsweek

Democrats “running for president will woo voters with sweeping policy plans — on housing, health care, corruption and more,” say Neale Mahoney and Chad Maisel. Those “problems are real, and big solutions are desperately needed.” But “ambitious leaders are missing something hiding in plain sight: All the everyday hassles that steal our time and make life harder than it should be.” What “started with airlines and banks has metastasized into nearly every corner of daily life.”

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‘The Supreme Court could eventually decide if Kalshi is just sports gambling’

Matt Stieb at Intelligencer

There is “good news for people who dislike the gambling-ification of seemingly everything in America: Kalshi could be in trouble,” says Matt Stieb. A federal judge “ruled against the leading prediction market, determining the State of New York has the authority to regulate sports betting on the website, even up to the point of banning it altogether.” Prohibition “would be a serious blow for Kalshi as it tries to expand amid the loose regulatory environment of the Trump administration.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-college-suicide-documents-lindsey-graham-mamdani DBgRNUQuh9gLUNriWGmnTK Tue, 14 Jul 2026 18:42:10 +0000 false false false

‘The importance of stemming campus suicides’

The Boston Globe editorial board

“Suicide is complex,” and “teenagers and young adults nationwide have struggled with mental health, although some data suggest that’s improving,” says The Boston Globe editorial board. It “wouldn’t be appropriate to blame an institution” like a university for student deaths. But “one death of a student by suicide is too many,” and it “should serve as a reminder for all colleges to take student mental health seriously.” Colleges should be “running campaigns to destigmatize mental healthcare.”

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‘Public agencies’ documents have moved to the chat. The law should, too.’

Jamie Nixon at The Seattle Times

When “disclosure exposes a problem, the solution is better conduct, not a more disposable communication system,” says Jamie Dixon. Public records officers “should not be treated as pests for producing records the public has a right to see.” Journalists “should not have to rely on lucky timing to learn how public power is exercised,” and government agencies “should not conduct substantive public business in systems designed to erase evidence before the public can ask for it.”

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‘Lindsey Graham’s hawkish ideology leaves a legacy of destruction’

Moustafa Bayoumi at The Guardian

The “sudden death over the weekend of the South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham is predictably inspiring a slew of tributes,” says Moustafa Bayoumi. But “through this thick, bipartisan forest of remembrances, however, lies Graham’s concrete legacy.” Nowhere has Graham’s “legacy been more consequential than in his constant push for a hawkish U.S. foreign policy.” His “desire to project U.S. and Israeli military might across the world, regardless of the cost, is an abject political and ethical failure.”

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‘Mamdani’s socialism has no answer for New York homelessness’

Stephen Eide at UnHerd

Is there a “socialist way to clean up homeless encampments?” asks Stephen Eide. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has “done this through promising and delivering a rent freeze and engaging in class warfare, all of which he thinks plays to his electoral strengths.” But “no politician can control the agenda forever.” New Yorkers “don’t want to wait decades for a solution to a problem cops and sanitation workers could clean up in hours.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-mental-health-e-bikes-constitution-binface ZdYDK8S75TrEKXiQiXMdgJ Mon, 13 Jul 2026 17:40:52 +0000 Mon, 13 Jul 2026 18:48:46 +0000 false false false

‘What’s really going on with mental health’

John Burn-Murdoch at the Financial Times

One of the “biggest stories of the past decade has been worsening mental health among young adults,” says John Burn-Murdoch. The “rise in young people’s psychological distress is certainly real — it shows up most unambiguously and alarmingly in sharply rising rates of hospitalization.” The “shift in how people conceptualize mental health could be seen as a positive,” but if it is “happening more among some groups than others, it will distort our sense of what is really getting worse.”

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‘Sure, e-bikes seem fun. Until you’re on my operating table.’

Blake Taylor at USA Today

What is “missing from the debates surrounding e-bike freedoms and regulation is the focus on the injuries that happen when youths crash their bikes,” says Blake Taylor. If kids “could see the internal injuries and what happens in my operating room, and in many trauma centers across the country, and what it takes to save these lives or prevent devastating disabilities, maybe they would rethink their priorities.” These “e-bike injuries are not like those associated with traditional bikes.”

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‘Dragging the Constitution into every political fight will kill it’

Clive Crook at Bloomberg

The United States Constitution has “endured, it has adapted and it has been the foundation for unsurpassed prosperity and material advance,” says Clive Crook. But “disagreements over policy are reflexively pitched as arguments about constitutional foundations,” and “as a result, rhetoric escalates and polarization intensifies.” Bringing the Constitution “into every political dispute also threatens the constitutional order — by framing the courts as unaccountable political players and lowering the electorate’s respect for their role.”

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‘Is democracy a joke? Count Binface says no.’

Scott Simon at NPR

The U.K. Reform Party’s Nigel Farage “does have one opponent who’s got a household name: Count Binface,” says Scott Simon. Count Binface has “already run and lost” previously. But he is “campaigning on hard, specific pledges,” and his “odds of being elected should not be discounted.” A decade ago, Britons “voted to name a polar research vehicle Boaty McBoatface,” so there is “some history of the British recognizing the value of a good laugh, perhaps especially in politics.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-job-flexibility-republicans-iraq-tech o4E62WumN3KS9haRj6S45h Fri, 10 Jul 2026 17:15:39 +0000 Fri, 10 Jul 2026 17:43:28 +0000 false false false

‘The dangerous myth of flexibility’

David Weil at The American Prospect

Schedule flexibility has become the “lynchpin of a well-traveled myth that corporations have spun to their employees, policymakers and the public,” says David Weil. But with AI being “explored as a replacement for many white-collar jobs, and the gig work model continuing its global expansion into new sectors like healthcare, information technology, staffing, hospitality and childcare, the flexibility myth now threatens the hard-won rights and protections afforded to tens of millions of working people.” While companies like “Uber and Lyft insist” that flexibility benefits their drivers, it actually “benefits Uber and Lyft.”

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‘Republicans lean into anti-Asian racism ahead of midterms’

Ja’han Jones at MS NOW

Some conservatives are “resorting to anti-Asian racism and anti-Chinese xenophobia as the Republican Party faces a potential shellacking in this year’s midterms,” says Ja’han Jones. The attacks “underscore the exploitative posture that some in the GOP have taken toward Asian Americans.” Polls have “shown Americans broadly oppose President Donald Trump and the GOP’s agenda,” so it “seems the party is leaning into voter suppression gambits and overt racism as it tries to maintain power.”

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‘Will Iraq’s new prime minister really take on corruption?’

Mina Al-Oraibi at Foreign Policy

Corruption has “continued to grow” in Iraq, and even “wide-ranging arrests do not represent a majority of those who have siphoned money from the Iraqi state,” says Mina Al-Oraibi. Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi is “personally overseeing the anti-corruption cases” and “needs to do this in part because he remains a weak candidate.” But a “wide-ranging and impartial effort to eliminate all corruption would take time,” and al-Zaidi has been in office for “less than two months.”

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‘The tech bro-ification of marketing’

Miranda Shanahan at Time

The “tech bro-ification of marketing is underway,” says Miranda Shanahan. Beneath this “trend lies a broader pattern around how work is named, coded and valued.” The “marketing industry is a broad church, but decades of cultural shorthand have flattened it into something quite specific.” The “first inkling of recalibration came when tech bros suddenly started emphasizing the importance of taste.” It “might not seem that deep, but marketing’s rebrand is part of a bigger pattern.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-photo-washington-billionaires-world-cup-lebanon prXczsPeGKVUnLZWfm6vJn Thu, 09 Jul 2026 18:29:12 +0000 Thu, 09 Jul 2026 21:10:49 +0000 false false false

‘What a viral photo of white supremacists on the Metro reveals’

Theodore R. Johnson at The Washington Post

A photo of “white supremacist group Patriot Front” members inside a “packed Metro subway car” in Washington, D.C., standing alongside a “young Black woman, perfectly alone,” was “evoking imagery from the civil rights era on the day the country marked its 250th anniversary,” says Theodore R. Johnson. Above ground, there were “celebrations of American exceptionalism; beneath the surface, though, there was evidence of a country regressing — or one that hasn’t changed as much as it thought.”

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‘Who wants to tax a billionaire?’

Soumaya Keynes at the Financial Times

Californians will “vote on a 5% tax on billionaires’ wealth,” and in “theory this is a marvelous opportunity for rich economic discussion,” says Soumaya Keynes. But some “worry the choice will be reduced to a grim question: Are you a jealous wealth-basher or a shameless shill for the rich?” Some billionaires themselves are “keeping quiet, perhaps hoping that if California’s version passes, it will at least quieten the demands for them to pay their fair share.”

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‘The World Cup is exposing the contradictions of national identity’

Mohamad Elmasry at Al Jazeera

The 2026 World Cup has “demonstrated, perhaps as clearly as any global event can, that modern national identity is complex, contested and far from straightforward,” says Mohamad Elmasry. Many of the “players on the national teams” come “from immigrant families.” In an “era of increasingly exclusionary nationalist politics in North America and Europe, some of the countries engaged in the most intense debates about national identity are being represented on the world’s biggest sporting stage by multicultural teams.”

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‘How Lebanon continues to confound the US’

Geoffrey Aronson at The American Conservative

The “recent memorandum of understanding between Israel and Lebanon is not the first time the U.S. has placed itself at the center of Lebanese affairs,” says Geoffrey Aronson. These “efforts attest to Lebanon’s outsized ability to engage Washington at the highest level, and highlight the at best limited, short-term effectiveness of that involvement.” Hezbollah’s “expansive role in Lebanon today reflects the political and military mobilization of Lebanon’s historically underserved Shia community, especially in the south.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-reading-immigrants-soccer-nato Q9SEaBs68EyxWYkgisc37e Wed, 08 Jul 2026 16:18:26 +0000 Wed, 08 Jul 2026 20:46:36 +0000 false false false

‘The end of reading is here’

Rose Horowitch at The Atlantic

“Americans, once members of a proudly literate society, read much less than they used to,” says Rose Horowitch. Even “demographics that traditionally read the most — retirees, women and college graduates — have seen a collapse,” and the “books that people do read are simpler than they used to be.” People are “losing the higher-order abilities of comprehension.” America “isn’t illiterate. It’s postliterate.” The “people who make a living from words are not the only ones who lose out in a postliterate age.”

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‘A tax too far: Don’t punish immigrants sending money to family’

Marcos Cruz at The Hill

Immigrants “want to know how to safely transfer money to relatives” overseas, as these remittances “create a massive flow of capital out of wealthy nations and into lower- and middle-income countries,” says Marcos Cruz. This year, a “new 1% excise tax was added on money sent abroad,” and “although a 1% tax appears small when expressed as a decimal, its implications are strategic.” By “taxing remittances and lowering incomes,” Washington will have “worsened the root cause of the immigration problem.”

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‘The US had the biggest opportunity in the history of American soccer. They wasted it.’

Alexander Abnos at The Guardian

What do people think “about what the U.S. produced on Monday night during their 4-1 defeat against Belgium?” says Alexander Abnos. What “inspiration was there to be found in the team’s disjointed moves forward, of the missed defensive assignments, of the lack of poise the team played with?” Millions were “tuning in on Monday night for their first U.S. men’s national team experience,” and “their first impression was a side that was not up to the task.”

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‘Stop mourning the old NATO. Build the new one.’

Galip Dalay at Time

This “must be the moment Europe stops mourning the alliance it once knew and begins building the one it actually needs,” says Galip Dalay. Europe should “strengthen the collective weight of European NATO members, not the European Union members or EU as an institution alone, within the alliance.” Europe “needs a continent-wide security architecture” and an “honest reckoning with an uncomfortable truth: any post-American security framework cannot simply replicate the existing NATO-centric order.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-police-immigration-platner-ai-fcc 85rstYxxeXcyM87wdGpQGe Tue, 07 Jul 2026 17:04:59 +0000 Tue, 07 Jul 2026 21:40:15 +0000 false false false

‘When law enforcement takes on immigration, our safety is the cost’

Amy L. Solomon at USA Today

The White House is “using federal money and incentives to push state and local agencies more deeply into immigration enforcement,” says Amy L. Solomon. The “question is not whether immigration laws should be enforced, but whether federal dollars are now driving police, sheriffs, prosecutors and other justice agencies toward a mission that could pull them away from their core responsibilities: preventing crime, solving serious cases, protecting victims and maintaining public trust.” This is a “distortion of mission.”

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‘Lessons from the Graham Platner disaster’

Michelle Goldberg at The New York Times

Graham Platner’s Senate campaign has “become a shameful catastrophe,” says Michelle Goldberg. What’s “left — besides finding a Democrat to run in his place — is figuring out what, if anything, can be learned.” Platner’s campaign “represented an electoral insurgency against the Democratic Party; now, there are going to be furious recriminations against those who launched it.” Democrats “went out on a limb for him, and he had every reason to know it was going to be sawed off.”

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‘Sam Altman offers a Trojan Horse to American taxpayers’

Gautam Mukunda at Bloomberg

Sam Altman believes “giving the government a 5% stake in the company he runs, OpenAI, is the best way to ensure that Americans shared in the promised bounty from artificial intelligence,” says Gautam Mukunda. But the White House “should organize a group trip to see Christopher Nolan’s new movie ‘The Odyssey,’ whose opening act is the most famous gift in Western literature: a giant wooden horse, wheeled through the gates of Troy.” The “lesson translates. Beware of CEOs bearing gifts.”

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‘Is the FCC’s investigation having a chilling effect on “The View”?’

Tom Jones at the Poynter Institute

Maybe “intimidation and threats work after all — even when it comes to important topics like a free press,” says Tom Jones. “Whether or not the show qualifies as a news program, the FCC investigation appears to have had a chilling effect on ‘The View,’” even as “newscasts, news interviews, news documentaries and on-the-spot news coverage are exempt from the equal-time rule.” But the “bar for having a political candidate on the show is high.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-time-execution-founding-fathers-art tHKkwvg8BELDAWqmBrnzkd Mon, 06 Jul 2026 16:40:13 +0000 Mon, 06 Jul 2026 21:14:39 +0000 false false false

‘Telling time is a complicated business’

Nishant Sahdev at The Wall Street Journal

Modern economies “depend on everyone not only knowing the correct time but agreeing to it,” says Nishant Sahdev. About 450 atomic clocks are “continuously compared and averaged into a single international standard known as Coordinated Universal Time,” a “surprisingly thin thread on which much of the global economy depends.” A “difference of a fraction of a second can cause a breakdown,” and the “private sector could move faster by treating precise time as an essential service that needs protection.”

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‘“Dignity” is a poor excuse for blocking press access to state executions’

Austin Sarat at The Hill

Indiana law says that the press has “no right to be present when the state carries out executions,” and the state “defends its limitations on access to executions by advancing the dignity argument,” says Austin Sarat. But there is “something odd about using the word ‘dignity’ to describe what happens when the state kills one of its citizens, and about allowing the state that seeks to do that deed to speak for a condemned person.”

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‘The Founding Father you’ve probably never heard of’

Abdallah Fayyad at The Boston Globe

Americans “all know the broad strokes of the story of America’s founding,” says Abdallah Fayyad. But “despite the well-documented record of the American Revolution, one of the Founders — arguably one of the most influential — has been almost lost to history.” James Wilson was a Scottish immigrant who “quickly became one of the most learned and successful men of his time, advocating for radical ideas about democracy and political equality,” and he “helped shape America’s founding principles.”

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‘S.F.’s recovery is missing one of the hardest things to bring back’

Allison Arieff at the San Francisco Chronicle

Everyone “thinks that San Francisco was perfect the day they arrived,” but many “can’t help but be nostalgic for a time when the arts felt core to the identity of the city,” says Allison Arieff. San Francisco “may be flush with private capital, but the culture of tech is largely one of metrics and results; few in this community seem inclined to support something with a hard-to-measure return on investment,” and “federal funding has, of course, all but dried up.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-venezuela-earthquake-democracy-iran-trump U7LYsG6cn9m3NHYRUvx9UN Thu, 02 Jul 2026 18:24:19 +0000 Thu, 02 Jul 2026 20:54:15 +0000 false false false

‘The vultures arrived before the rescue teams’

Gisela Salim-Peyer at The Atlantic

Following two earthquakes, Venezuela’s “man-made disasters didn’t take long to exacerbate the natural one,” says Gisela Salim-Peyer. For “28 years and counting, Venezuela’s rulers have stolen or squandered much of the oil revenue of the most oil-rich country in the world” as “oligarchs pocketed the petrodollars.” The “humanitarian consequences of this wastefulness were well documented,” but “now they have acquired a fresh urgency.” In the “crucial first 24 hours following the quakes, the government response was practically nonexistent.”

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‘250 years later, we must recommit to the ideals in the Declaration of Independence’

Willie Wilson at the Chicago Tribune

As Americans “celebrate 250 years of representative democracy, independence and freedom, consider recommitting to the ideals found in the Declaration of Independence,” says Willie Wilson. The declaration was “written by imperfect men. However, the message of freedom has endured and inspired others around the world.” Within, there are “suggestions to strengthen our democracy.” Congress “should amend the Constitution to establish for all Americans an affirmative right to vote,” and “every citizen should read the Declaration of Independence.”

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‘Iran has zero chance of honoring the MOU’

Mike Evans at The Jerusalem Post

There are “people in Washington who still believe the Iranian regime can be persuaded to change through diplomacy,” says Mike Evans. They “believe another agreement,” another version of the Memorandum of Understanding or “another round of negotiations will somehow convince the ayatollahs to abandon their nuclear ambitions.” But Iran has “repeatedly shown that it views negotiations as a strategic tool.” Every “concession allows Tehran to strengthen its military, rebuild its economy and continue pursuing the very objectives it promised to abandon.”

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‘How Trump plans to crush fast food workers’

Timothy Noah at The New Republic

Corporate America has “systematically shed low-wage workers, either by offshoring them, contracting out their work or designating them as independent contractors,” says Timothy Noah. The “consumer welfare standard is on its way out, but that transition is not happening quickly.” Today “fast food employees are mostly grown-ups, often with families, and their best recourse, if they can’t make ends meet, is to go on welfare.” President Donald Trump’s “proposed joint-employer rule will impoverish these workers even more.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-aging-europe-india-romania js5WF2LzMuMUn9M8KkT6PB Wed, 01 Jul 2026 16:55:24 +0000 false false false

‘Most people are thinking about aging all wrong’

Leana S. Wen at The Washington Post

Many people “believe that aging is synonymous with steadily losing cognitive and physical abilities,” but a recent study “offers a far more optimistic picture: Nearly half of older adults actually improve in later life,” says Leana S. Wen. A “strong predictor of such improvement is something everyone has control over: their own beliefs about aging.” Someone who “believes their best years are still ahead of them is more likely to engage in health-promoting behaviors.”

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‘Europe’s big bewildering AC debate’

Chas Danner at Intelligencer

Europe’s heat wave is “finally ending after the extreme weather broke temperature records and upended daily life for nearly two weeks across the continent,” says Chas Danner. While “you’d think Europe’s governments and people would be rushing to fully integrate ACs into their cooling arsenal, that’s no simple task for a variety of reasons.” The “latest heat wave has fueled a raging political debate, not to mention a feeding frenzy by bewildered critics here in the U.S.”

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‘India should stop panicking about Trump’

C. Raja Mohan at Foreign Policy

India’s “post-Cold War ties with the United States have been pronounced to be in crisis with remarkable regularity,” says C. Raja Mohan. Donald Trump has “created a sense in New Delhi that the relationship is now at a crossroads.” The “mood is in stark contrast to 2024, when Indian public opinion was broadly rooting for Trump’s return.” But even as “India’s irritation with Trump has grown, it has gone out of its way to deepen engagement with the U.S. government.”

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‘Undoing Stalin’s crime: Romania and Moldova should reunite’

John Gustavsson at the National Review

Romania has “adopted a bill authorizing its government to begin talks with neighboring Moldova with the aim of unifying the two countries,” and “while unification would of course require consent from both countries, there are good reasons for the West to support such a move,” says John Gustavsson. “Like Romania already is, unification would embed Moldova in the West.” While Moldova “has made progress in recent years, it is a small, poor country incessantly targeted by Russian information warfare.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-fireworks-peace-corps-arab-league-obesity TWduBmyHF2jxQNM5D7UiSM Tue, 30 Jun 2026 16:40:32 +0000 Tue, 30 Jun 2026 16:41:23 +0000 false false false

‘The case against fireworks’

Char Miller at Time

“This year’s Fourth of July fireworks promise to be especially explosive,” but they have “negative consequences for our environment and our health,” says Char Miller. Climate change is “making landscapes more vulnerable to fire,” and fireworks also “pose other life-threatening challenges.” They “can degrade air quality for hours or even days.” For “people with asthma, cardiovascular disease, or other respiratory conditions, the toxic air presents genuine health risks.” Drone displays “are an innovative alternative with far fewer risks.”

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‘Assailed by right and left, the Peace Corps continues to make an apolitical difference’

Jonathan Zimmerman at The Philadelphia Inquirer

Republicans have “proposed to eliminate funding for the Peace Corps,” but the organization “has also been the target of left-wing attacks,” says Jonathan Zimmerman. Neither side “believes that Americans can be a force for good in the world,” and that is “why the Peace Corps matters.” It is “based on the simple proposition that bringing different people together can help them thrive. And it’s a standing rebuke to cynics on the right and the left.”

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‘Why the Arab League could not stop Israel’s genocide’

Rami G. Khouri at Al Jazeera

“Arabs are perplexed by why their governments and the Arab League have been so docile in the face of the Israeli genocide in Gaza,” says Rami G. Khouri. But Arab states “have never been able to harness their natural, human and geographic resources to become powerful, confident states that are not constantly manipulated.” They “rely heavily on non-Arab powers for financial, military, technological and other assistance that is vital for their survival; this deep dependence has diluted their sovereignty.”

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‘The obesity curve finally bent. Now comes the hard part.’

Ashish K. Jha at The Boston Globe

GLP-1s “appear to have done what no public health effort could” for obesity, but “having a treatment is not the same as getting it to the people who need it,” says Ashish K. Jha. Obesity drugs “should be covered by health insurance.” Coverage “should be broad and clinically grounded. It currently is not.” Insurance companies can “build in lower-cost maintenance once a patient stabilizes, so the choice is not a $1,000 injection forever or watching the weight return.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-sugar-food-cyber-latin-america-iran bttcANDc9V7F9TseSTVZMn Mon, 29 Jun 2026 15:57:45 +0000 Mon, 29 Jun 2026 16:01:41 +0000 false false false

‘We're eating too much sugar. There are ways to change that.’

Priya Fielding-Singh at USA Today

Added sugar “isn't just in candy and soda,” says Priya Fielding-Singh. It is “pervasive, hiding in everyday staples families depend on — from bread and yogurt to tomato sauce.” The government “should set stricter standards around added sugar in the places where children learn and play, from childcare and schools to aftercare programs.” The USDA “should further reduce how much added sugar is allowed, while investing in kitchen infrastructure so schools can prepare more food on site.”

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‘Once, cyber attacks required great skill. AI is changing that.’

Bruce Schneier at The Guardian

“Cyber attacks — both large and small — have been a significant issue since long before the current crop of generative AI models,” says Bruce Schneier. What has been “changing over the decades, and what AI is changing even faster, is the gap between skill and ability.” These “models can, with little detailed direction, autonomously hack into networks, steal data, deploy ransomware and destroy systems.” To the “extent there is a solution, it’s going to involve harnessing AI for the defense.”

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‘What's really driving Latin America’s rightward elections’

Orlando J. Pérez at The Dallas Morning News

Latin American voters are “not embracing a coherent right-wing program any more than voters in 2018 and 2019 embraced a coherent left-wing one,” says Orlando J. Pérez. They are “doing what Latin American electorates have done for decades: punishing whoever holds office when crime rises and the economy stalls, and backing whoever promises to fix both.” Latin Americans are “exhausted with their governments and quick to replace them.” When “citizens feel unsafe, they back almost anyone who promises order.”

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‘The threat of force was a far more effective deterrent than Trump’s show of force in Iran’

Gilles Paris at Le Monde

Donald Trump “pledged to deliver results that would last for at least the next half-century, but the outcome was disappointing,” says Gilles Paris. The Iran memorandum’s “positions are especially difficult to hold today, notably the belief that Washington’s ‘trustworthiness’ will ‘continue to make us the global partner of first choice.’” The “war, which caught U.S. allies off guard and resulted in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, triggering a systemic global crisis, demonstrated the exact opposite.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-pentagon-name-party-asylum-summer-heat o8Bt6Y6krQbrCFyidRZWpJ Fri, 26 Jun 2026 16:48:05 +0000 Fri, 26 Jun 2026 16:53:56 +0000 false false false

‘Pentagon’s Indo-Pacific name change hurts the US and India’

James Stavridis at Bloomberg

The Pentagon will “change the name of its Indo-Pacific Command” by “reverting to its historical appellation of simply Pacific Command,” which “will ultimately be damaging to U.S. security,” says James Stavridis. The change “feels like a direct shot at India,” which is “sensitive to names and titles — this change will not sit well in New Delhi.” It will also “be unpopular with the other members” of the region who “may see the name change as devaluing the entire concept.”

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‘One-party rule is hiding in plain sight’

David French at The New York Times

If the “two parties aren’t equally corrupt, they do have a different common characteristic: They’re equally repulsive to the public,” says David French. But “many voters are voting against incumbents more than they’re endorsing their challengers,” so “what if our nation actually has two one-party systems, instead?” If the U.S. has “two one-party systems, then that means that each way they turn, voters are confronted with the arrogance, stagnation and corruption that almost always disfigures single-party rule.”

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‘Our clients fled dangerous regimes ― only to see similar tactics here’

Sonya Funna Evelyn at The Minnesota Star-Tribune

By 2025, asylum seekers “were already warning clinicians that what they were seeing with federal immigration enforcement — masked and armed agents taking people off the streets in unmarked vehicles — were the conditions they had seen back in the countries they fled,” says Sonya Funna Evelyn. The “tactics of the most dangerous regimes on Earth are being used on the streets in the U.S.” But there was “an extraordinary response from our communities across the country.”

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‘This summer’s heat is only the beginning’

Mark Hertsgaard at The Nation

A “brutal heat wave is shattering heat records in Europe,” but it’s “worth recalling that last summer the same thing happened in Asia,” says Mark Hertsgaard. As “global warming driven mainly by burning fossil fuels continues to intensify, scientists say that record-breaking heat will become increasingly frequent throughout the world.” Journalists “can help limit the suffering — by alerting the public to impending extreme weather and sharing tips for how to be safe.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-election-socialists-south-africa-animals-burnham faC7Mamnsdj4jfBiQMhX87 Thu, 25 Jun 2026 18:02:11 +0000 Thu, 25 Jun 2026 18:05:33 +0000 false false false

‘Don’t overestimate the pink tide’

Adam Serwer at The Atlantic

Candidates “endorsed by New York City’s democratic-socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, swept the city’s primary elections” creating “alarm in both conservative and centrist circles over the future of the Democratic Party,” says Adam Serwer. The “leftist trend goes beyond New York,” but the “boring reality may be that different places have different politics.” What is “happening in Brooklyn doesn’t necessarily tell us what will happen in Texas,” and the Democrats’ “moderate wing is not going extinct any time soon.”

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‘South Africa’s crises will not be solved by blaming migrants’

Zwelinzima Vavi at Al Jazeera

South Africa is “witnessing a dangerous escalation of anti-migrant sentiment,” says Zwelinzima Vavi. The “anger felt by many South Africans is real,” as “entire communities feel abandoned by political leaders who promised a better life but have failed to deliver.” But “while the anger is understandable, it is misdirected,” since migrants “did not create South Africa’s unemployment crisis” or “cause the collapse of local government.” The “roots of South Africa’s multiple crises run much deeper.”

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‘Animals are woven into the fabric of our American story’

Robin Ganzert at Newsweek

The American story is “often told through the lens of presidents, soldiers or titans of industry, but one chapter is commonly overlooked: The practical — and symbolic — role animals have played in the American epic,” says Robin Ganzert. Long “before America ran on electricity, gasoline or machines, the economy was largely agrarian.” From “farming in early settlements to hoofbeats on frontier trails,” animals “have been woven into the fabric of the American story since 1776.”

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‘If Andy Burnham becomes Britain’s next PM, he would just be a more popular version of familiar politics’

Doug Saunders at The Globe and Mail

Potential British Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s “actual policy would differ little in substance” from Keir Starmer’s, “only perhaps in a better articulated, better negotiated, more voter-pleasing form,” says Doug Saunders. The “big difference is not in ideology but in electoral competence.” During his “nine years in mayoral office, a period that included the pandemic and the post-Brexit economic crisis, Mr. Burnham’s popularity has remained sky-high and led him to win a popular vote majority in the by-election.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-soccer-supreme-court-age-china QXy5Cb4tv5tVSsDrDp9ndR Wed, 24 Jun 2026 18:43:10 +0000 false false false

‘If America wants soccer’s passion, it should start with soccer’s past’

Nedra Rhone at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“In the U.S., new soccer fans of the 21st century fit into two categories: immigrants and their direct descendants and the highly educated,” says Nedra Rhone. In “Europe, South America and Africa, soccer has historically been the primary national sport with influence on politics, social mobility, national identity and international reputation.” While Americans “will never have the deep history with soccer that fans from other countries have, we can learn from and respect the sport’s influence on human and civil rights.”

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‘Keep cameras out of the Supreme Court’

Ben Sasse at The Wall Street Journal

The Senate Judiciary Committee “unanimously advanced legislation last week that would require TV cameras in Supreme Court proceedings,” but “they shouldn’t turn the Supreme Court into a sister circus,” says former Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.). Cameras “turn conversations into performances.” It is “key to why Congress doesn’t work — and can’t be allowed to poison the judicial branch.” The Supreme Court “wasn’t designed to reflect the will of a majority or embrace the popular opinions of the day.”

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‘Old people run America. And that’s a problem.’

Samuel Moyn at The Boston Globe

Americans “live under gerontocracy — a form of government of, by and for the old people,” says Samuel Moyn. This era “has the most elderly presidents ever elected,” while “Congress and the judiciary are also old folks’ homes.” But the “problem is deeper than aged politicians.” Gerontocracy is “actually a story of elder civic power.” It “doesn’t much matter how old the politicians are if old people still control the system.” Voters “can enact a series of policies to limit that power.”

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‘Why “China First” will fail’

Patricia M. Kim at Foreign Affairs

As the United States “retreats from global leadership and challenges the norms it once fostered and the order it once upheld, the world is waiting to see whether Beijing steps up,” says Patricia M. Kim. But China is “not trying to replace Washington as a global leader or take on the burdens traditionally associated with superpower status.” Beijing “instead seeks global reach without entanglement, partnerships without binding obligations and great-power status without the burdens of leadership.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-solar-energy-newsom-jobs-attack RNztrB3i9sWKhxaitfw7hZ Tue, 23 Jun 2026 16:35:36 +0000 false false false

‘Energy independence is becoming solar’s strongest selling point’

Alexis Abramson at Time

Americans are “seeking out solar, batteries and electric vehicles at a pace unlike anything the clean energy movement has seen in fifty years,” says Alexis Abramson. This is defined “by a drive for control.” When people “feel external forces are governing their lives, they seek out whatever domains they can control.” Energy “has now become one of those domains,” as “rooftop solar, a home battery, an electric vehicle offer something the grid, the gas station and the utility bill cannot: certainty.”

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‘Federal probe of Newsom creates lots of smoke. Is there any fire?’

Mark Z. Barabak at the Los Angeles Times

The DOJ is “sniffing around Gavin Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom,” and this is “seen as a throw-me-in-the-briar-patch gift from President Trump,” says Mark Z. Barabak. The “presumed effort to cut down a political foe could instead boost Newsom’s chances of winning the Democratic nomination.” But it’s “too early to say how the investigation of Newsom and his wife plays out politically, not least because it’s unclear whether there’s merit to the probe or if it’s merely a fruitless search.”

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‘We are witnessing the slow death of the prestige career’

Alice Lassman at The Guardian

Skills that consulting firms “promise to build — synthesis, sharp analysis, crisp communication, client-readiness, hypothesis-driven thinking — have enticed every generation’s top graduates,” says Alice Lassman. But that “value proposition no longer holds in the age of AI.” The “kind of people these firms are recruiting is already changing.” Consulting’s “entry power used to be one of the only routes into such firms, but as roles dry up, the pathway has broken,” with “white-collar work at risk.”

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‘The White House was the target this time, but every outdoor stadium is at risk’

Michael J. Epstein at The Hill

The “first thing that crossed my mind when I read about the alleged drone plot targeting last week’s UFC event in Washington was not politics. It was MetLife Stadium,” says Michael J. Epstein. One “event took place on the South Lawn of the White House. The other is hosting World Cup matches.” But both “involve putting a very large number of people in a very public place.” Crowds “are not just crowds.” They “are concentrations of risk.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-us-russia-media-rape-politician-macedonia zuNsMkw8E7CitLHoehw7yb Mon, 22 Jun 2026 17:22:32 +0000 Mon, 22 Jun 2026 17:26:58 +0000 false false false

‘Russia was a cautionary tale. Now US risks becoming it.’

Tim Richardson and Anna Nemzer at USA Today

In the U.S., Russia’s “descent into autocracy has long been cited as a cautionary tale by those warning of democratic backsliding,” say Tim Richardson and Anna Nemzer. Now “we risk parts of that history becoming our own.” Russia “hollowed out the country’s once-diverse media landscape, leaving behind only state media.” Similar “dynamics are taking hold here in the United States: the exclusion and punishment of those who scrutinize power, the rewarding of compliant media and the consolidation of influence over government narratives.”

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‘California’s rape kit audit deadline is fast approaching. There’s reason to worry.’

Ilse Knecht and Kate Karpilow at the San Francisco Chronicle

When a “sexual assault survivor undergoes an invasive and time-consuming forensic examination to compile a rape kit, there’s an implicit promise that law enforcement will test any discovered DNA to identify a perpetrator,” say Ilse Knecht and Kate Karpilow. But “too often, those rape kits don’t get tested and languish in storage.” Getting a “thorough and accurate count of untested rape kits isn’t an exercise in bean counting or a bothersome bureaucratic demand.” It’s an “important crime-fighting tool.”

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‘Platner, Fetterman and the myth of the working-class politician’

Jonathan Zimmerman at The Philadelphia Inquirer

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) and Maine’s Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner are “pretending to be rough-hewn, working-class guys,” says Jonathan Zimmerman. But both “were born into significant family wealth. And so were almost all of America’s political leaders, past and present.” Americans “just don’t want to admit it.” People “want to believe that every American can become anything they wish — a senator, or even a president.” That’s “why we’re attracted to figures like Fetterman and Platner, who enact this dream for us.”

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‘My parents’ homeland might have a bright future — if its neighbors allow it’

Jordan Bitove at the Toronto Star

“My brothers, sister and I are proud of our Macedonian roots,” says Jordan Bitove. But North Macedonia “continues to be targeted by neighboring states, keen to frustrate its ambitions to take its rightful place on the global stage.” The country “has already changed its name, its flag and its Constitution under pressure from neighboring states.” North Macedonia “can’t stand still. While progress has been made, its living standard still significantly lags other European countries” and “brain drain is a threat.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-juneteenth-trump-iran-sports-nurses 3YJP9mjm76cHfUsjxsMyRn Thu, 18 Jun 2026 16:22:02 +0000 false false false

‘What a 150-year-old oak teaches about Juneteenth’

Theodore R. Johnson at The Washington Post

The “white oak in my backyard is living history,” as it has “been standing for about a century and a half, dating to the end of Reconstruction,” says Theodore R. Johnson. With “trees, as with history, what is measured matters as much as how.” Juneteenth “signifies both the end of slavery and the rebirth of a nation.” But the “majority of Americans don’t celebrate,” and that “makes it harder for the idea of a second founding to take root.”

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‘Trump and Vance’s spin on the Iran agreement is completely incoherent’

Michael A. Cohen at MS NOW

The White House agreed to a “ceasefire extension that met none of its prewar objectives while providing enormous financial concessions to Tehran” and “now, the administration is desperately trying to argue otherwise,” says Michael A. Cohen. Donald Trump “got played by the Iranians, and no one is buying his spin job.” The “most telling sign that the ceasefire deal is a dud is the White House waited until Wednesday to share the text.”

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‘The culture wars in pro sports go on — for now’

Michael Brendan Dougherty at the National Review

The San Francisco Giants “recently held a Pride Night” and “two Christian players wrote Bible verses on their caps,” says Michael Brendan Dougherty. This is “far from the first controversy about Pride celebrations and American sports, and probably far from the last.” The “major sports leagues are perhaps the last relics of 20th-century American mass culture.” There are “fights over the values expressed in these arenas precisely because there is an assumption that they reflect shared American values.”

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‘Federal cap on student aid will hurt nursing workforce’

Jinhee Jeong at The Seattle Times

Some states are “already experiencing a nursing faculty shortage, and the problem will only get worse with the U.S. Department of Education’s Reimagining and Improving Student Education, or RISE, rule,” says Jinhee Jeong. This “excludes post-baccalaureate nursing degrees from the ‘professional degree’ category, and sets nursing students’ loan limits at $20,500 annually.” With the “increasing cost of graduate school, fewer nurses will be able to obtain a graduate degree in nursing, which will significantly worsen the shortage.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-cables-tech-spain-looks-atlanta rnCheNFComtsaSf8ZFQf99 Wed, 17 Jun 2026 17:29:02 +0000 false false false

‘Tech’s private subsea cables are a threat to everyone else’

Elisabeth Braw at the Financial Times

For “decades, the world’s undersea cables have been owned by various companies,” but now U.S. “tech giants are installing their own cables — primarily for their own data traffic,” says Elisabeth Braw. This “risks creating a two-tier system on the seabed and dangerous dependencies on America.” Traditional “cable owners will continue to transport general traffic, while hyperscalers will transport their own.” It’s “like asking locals to look after a road open to all while a few rich citizens operate their own.”

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‘Pope Leo’s visit lays bare Spain’s tangled politics of faith and migration’

Santiago Zabala and Claudio Gallo at Al Jazeera

Pope Leo XIV’s visit to Spain “exposed the tension between” Spanish politics and the “Church’s own teaching on migrants, war and human dignity,” say Santiago Zabala and Claudio Gallo. Leo’s “speech to the Spanish parliament” summoned a “Catholic tradition that measured power by its treatment of the vulnerable.” In a “country now convulsed by the politics of immigration, no one could miss what kind of politics that history was meant to indict.”

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‘We are all looksmaxxers’

Renée Graham at The Boston Globe

“Famous or not, we are all, in our own ways, looksmaxxers,” says Renée Graham. The term “originated in the misogynistic bowels of social media, where young men believe that achieving their idea of physical perfection will attract more women.” But “even those who would never consider whacking their jawline or cheekbones with a metal tool still take what measures they deem necessary to look their best” such as “veneers for their teeth, hair transplants and weaves and increasingly available weight loss drugs.”

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‘What the proposed merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. means for Atlanta’

Jennifer Porst and Kate Fortmueller at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Paramount’s “proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery threatens to reverse Atlanta’s fortunes and prominent position in the media and cultural industry,” say Jennifer Porst and Kate Fortmueller. Beyond the “loss of corporate media jobs and the radical alteration of the physical spaces in Georgia,” consolidation “threatens the vibrant production culture and health of soundstages” that Atlanta “has been developing over the past 20 years.” It’s “time to pay more attention to monopolies, protect workers and challenge anti-consumer practices.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-obama-center-trump-fentanyl-knicks y3EvZ5cVoKfvuWsa3Yz64G Tue, 16 Jun 2026 17:26:40 +0000 Tue, 16 Jun 2026 17:32:27 +0000 false false false

‘Why Chicagoans should welcome, and care for, the Obama Presidential Center’

Chicago Tribune editorial board

There is an “absurd prejudgment” about the Obama Presidential Center that a “museum celebrating a presidency could not coexist with an institution also focused on offering art, basketball and a plethora of gathering spaces to a community that has suffered from disinvestment,” says the Chicago Tribune editorial board. The museum “will be a major new tourist attraction for Chicago” by “drawing people to a part of the city they likely would not have otherwise visited.”

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‘Trump celebrates while America capitulates’

Tom Nichols at The Atlantic

Trump “announced that the United States and Iran have reached a deal to end their war,” but the “U.S. has little to celebrate: Trump and his team, in record time, just lost a war to a militarily mediocre — but nonetheless extremely dangerous — adversary,” says Tom Nichols. Trump “failed to achieve every one of the goals he put forward for this war of choice, and now he is determined to sign, seal and deliver America’s capitulation.”

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‘Trump, Xi overlooked fentanyl in Beijing. It can't happen again.’

Rahul Gupta and Brandon P. Yoder at USA Today

Work “must start now on a key issue that received little attention in May: China’s role in the global fentanyl trade,” say Rahul Gupta and Brandon P. Yoder. The “problem is not that fentanyl was overlooked entirely.” But “based on the public readouts, Xi made only limited commitments to curb the flow of chemicals from Chinese firms that fuel illicit fentanyl production.” Americans “suffering from the opioid epidemic need the Trump administration to take immediate action.”

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‘What the Knicks’ championship means to New York’

Sean Gregory at Time

The New York Knicks’ NBA championship “means everything to New Yorkers because we play this game, hoops, everywhere,” says Sean Gregory. New Yorkers “take the lumps of a sweltering train stranded under the East River, and like these Knicks, come out on the other side.” Fans “love the Knicks, but especially these Knicks,” because “though they’re a big-market team with the second-highest payroll in the NBA, they fight like underdogs.” The Knicks “have formed a true brotherhood.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-vancouver-housing-aoc-food-ai-school cmRcmWEiTnSjtRRJ5eRGFd Mon, 15 Jun 2026 17:56:11 +0000 false false false

‘One city might have just cracked the housing crisis’

Binyamin Appelbaum at The New York Times

Vancouver is the “place that has failed most spectacularly in the basic work of building enough housing,” says Binyamin Appelbaum. But Canada has “returned 10 acres in the middle of Vancouver to the Squamish, the First Nation whose ancestors lived there” and “freed from Vancouver’s rules, the Squamish are providing the city’s residents with a chunk of the housing they so desperately need.” The area “will make a modest dent in Vancouver’s housing crisis,” but is a “rebuke to the surrounding city.”

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‘Ocasio-Cortez appears to be recreating Obama’s multi-racial voter coalition’

Juan Williams at The Hill

Turnout is “key to this year’s midterm fight for control of Congress,” and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is “ringing the bell for people to rush the polls,” says Juan Williams. Ocasio-Cortez “looks to be intent on recreating the energy of the last Democrat to build a multi-racial coalition of Democratic voters,” as she “echoed Barack Obama’s 2004 appeal to Democrats.” The Democratic Party is “listening to a promising Latin beat mixing with the Black gospel thanks to Ocasio-Cortez.”

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‘America’s charitable food system is missing a key ingredient’

Daniel Leckie at Newsweek

Many households have “turned to the charitable food system for assistance,” says Daniel Leckie. But “protein is missing,” and “many families receive diets built primarily around shelf-stable carbohydrates, which are cheaper.” This “should concern us all: As nutrition insecurity deepens, it fuels a parallel crisis in chronic disease.” As the “need for charitable food support grows, the system will have to evolve if it's to provide the nutrient most essential for satiety, muscle development, metabolic stability and healthy aging.”

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‘AI schools like Alpha promise efficiency, but can’t replicate the messy process that helps kids learn’

W. Ian O’Byrne at The Conversation

AI-powered “educational programs like Alpha School, a growing private network of schools, replace much of the school day with adaptive software that adjusts lessons to each student’s pace and abilities,” says W. Ian O’Byrne, the director of the Initiative for Literacy in a Digital Age. The “pitch is personalized learning” but the “deeper you look at how children learn, the clearer it becomes that this growing brand of alternative schools might remove the discomfort that often comes with learning — taking away what matters most as kids develop.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-desalination-california-georgia-teachers-birds smR6kq2bJSGNGZLSy677y Fri, 12 Jun 2026 16:38:02 +0000 false false false

‘San Diego’s big bet on salt water’

The Washington Post editorial board

While “cities across drought-stricken western states struggle to meet their water needs, San Diego has a surplus of the all-important resource,” says The Washington Post editorial board. This is “largely thanks to the county’s investment in desalination, which other localities would be wise to consider.” The “strategy has had plenty of critics, especially environmentalists who say desalination is not worth its hefty price tag.” But the “problem with the opposition to desalination is that there are few good alternatives.”

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‘Here in Georgia our festivals are full, but our poets are in prison — and now we feel abandoned by Europe’

Archil Kikodze at The Guardian

There are too few Georgians to “create communities and diasporas abroad,” says Archil Kikodze. Georgians “will simply dissolve, scatter across the world and disappear. Or rather, the part of us that loves thinking and is incapable of flattery will disappear.” For “those of us who remain here, literary festivals and similar cultural events are places where it is possible to breathe freely.” The “doors are open to everyone, but regime conformists have no need to meet foreign or Georgian authors.”

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‘America’s teachers can’t afford to teach’

Randi Weingarten at Time

Teachers’ salaries “have never fully reflected their passion or professionalism, but as America’s cost-of-living crisis persists, educators increasingly cannot afford even life’s basic necessities,” says Randi Weingarten. Educators “play a crucial role in our society, and the affordability crisis among America’s teachers can no longer be ignored.” The U.S. “has lionized teachers as ‘heroes’ and then turned around and underinvested in public education, chipping away at the wages that once made teaching a stable middle-class profession.”

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‘The bald eagle perfectly embodies America’s flaws’

Alexandra Tay at The Nation

The U.S. “has invested its identity in the bald eagle as a noble apex predator, but the eagle of our national imagination distorts the real bird along lines that parallel our country’s deepest flaws,” says Alexandra Tay. In “truth, the bald eagle is a larcenous opportunist that gets by on brute strength.” But Americans “have come to identify a set of virtues in the bald eagle that we claim for ourselves — when, in truth, they are virtues we both lack.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-argentina-world-cup-ai-navy Y5vkrqQqzsVUhKw74cWJw8 Thu, 11 Jun 2026 18:25:30 +0000 false false false

‘The myth of white Argentina still shapes the nation’

Federico Pita at Al Jazeera

While a “majority of countries acknowledged the need to address the contemporary consequences of slavery and colonialism,” Argentina’s “rejection of reparations is part of a state-sponsored tradition that has organized the nation, since its independence, based on specific racial hierarchies,” says Federico Pita. The “formation of the Argentinian state was marked by its elites’ explicit project of demographic and cultural whitening.” This “institutional architecture consolidated one of Latin America’s most enduring national narratives, that Argentina is a white and European society.”

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‘Can the World Cup transcend Donald Trump?’

Ishaan Tharoor at The New Yorker

Donald Trump “clearly sees” the 2026 FIFA World Cup as a “source of prestige to boost his flagging presidency,” says Ishaan Tharoor. Trump is “dominating the buildup to the World Cup for all the wrong reasons.” It is “difficult to look beyond the gloom surrounding this World Cup, whether because of the cringe-inducing bonhomie between Trump” and FIFA officials, the “disenchantment of foreign fans, or the frustrations of domestic supporters who are angry about exorbitant ticket prices.”

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‘High-tech seeks skilled tradesman’

Dina Powell McCormick and Mike Rowe at The Wall Street Journal

America has “claimed the lion’s share of the world’s greatest inventions,” but it was “generations of American workers who strung the telegraph wire, laid the railroad tracks and built the interstate highways and buried the fiber,” say Dina Powell McCormick and Mike Rowe. The “artificial intelligence revolution shows that America’s technological progress and skilled workforce are still inseparable.” To “maintain our technological edge, we need to build infrastructure at scale and with great speed.”

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‘The end of Pax Americana at sea’

Michael Hochberg at UnHerd

Ukrainians “have a lot to teach the United States and the Trump administration about naval warfare,” says Michael Hochberg. Unmanned naval warfare is “transforming everything we thought we knew about maritime military strategy.” How the U.S. “adapts — or fails to adapt — to this technological threat will have implications for years.” Some “assumed that only maritime powers could field the sort of navies that win wars” but “cheap autonomous craft are already falsifying that assumption.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-nashville-medicine-women-nancy-mace-california r9YGZBzKz3BcUpnfEhVCKg Wed, 10 Jun 2026 17:49:50 +0000 false false false

‘Nashville's a city on the rise. But can locals keep it real?’

Blake Fontenay at USA Today

While Nashville is “still the country music capital, it’s also a booming center for healthcare, technology businesses and, if you count the suburbs, car manufacturing,” says Blake Fontenay. But an “insurance company ranked Nashville as the fourth biggest ‘tourist trap’ in the world, with a vibe ‘more staged than real.’” When “your civic identity projects as being about as authentic as Las Vegas, that’s a problem.” Nashville is “much more than its music scene or its downtown party spots.”

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‘If we are to counter medical misogyny, women can no longer be treated as unreliable witnesses of their own experience’

Alison Downham Moore at The Guardian

The “struggles of people with endometriosis to access patient-centered and appropriate care continue in many countries,” says Alison Downham Moore. This is “part of a long pattern in which medicine has repeatedly treated women’s testimony as unreliable, women’s pain as less urgent and women’s reproductive bodies as peculiarly available for unwarranted surgical intervention.” Women are “often wronged not only in what is done to their bodies but in their status as the knowers of those bodies.”

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‘How Nancy Mace self-immolated’

Matthew X. Wilson at the National Review

Rep. Nancy Mace “built a reputation on Capitol Hill as someone who would say and do just about anything for attention — as someone who could be counted on to always make herself the story,” says Matthew X. Wilson. Mace “placed a distant fifth place in the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary,” but Trump’s “refusal to endorse Mace didn’t deliver the deathblow — her campaign was already in a downward spiral when the president stepped in.”

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‘With Becerra vs. Hilton, California gets the predictable governor race it deserves’

Jack Ohman at the San Francisco Chronicle

The “utterly unpredictable race for governor of California became utterly predictable late Tuesday” and “almost certainly means that barring some tectonic unforeseen event, Democrat Xavier Becerra will be elected governor in November,” says Jack Ohman. Becerra “probably won’t have to lift a finger against his, yes, charismatic but out-of-sync former Fox News host challenger.” The race “left progressives out in the cold” and a “golden opportunity to elect a truly progressive Golden State governor was missed.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-hunter-biden-tobacco-sex-haiti EorTEABn7shGySrmjdN8BE Tue, 09 Jun 2026 16:14:03 +0000 false false false

‘Hunter Biden is becoming a populist internet guy. I have questions.’

Zeeshan Aleem at MS NOW

Hunter Biden’s X account “marked the opening salvo of a deliberate bid to reinvent himself using the miraculous powers of the social internet,” says Zeeshan Aleem. The “reason Biden is breaking through is he’s making blunt, self-deprecating humor a significant part of his online persona.” But “there’s an aspect of his new identity that I find more troubling: his attempts at cross-partisan political populism.” Regardless of “what his intentions are, he’s exhibiting a naivete about noxious right-wing ideas.”

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‘Big Tobacco didn’t just sell cigarettes. It shaped what Americans eat.’

Leana S. Wen at The Washington Post

Junk food is “designed to be addictive,” and “much of it comes from the same people who made a living selling another highly addictive and harmful product: cigarettes,” says Leana S. Wen. In the 1980s, Big Tobacco “diversified their business holdings at a time of declining cigarette sales by aggressively expanding into the food industry.” Since “tobacco companies helped create the modern unhealthy food environment,” some of the “same approaches that proved successful in tobacco control may be worth considering.”

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‘What the latest judicial sex scandal tells us about a broken system’

Aliza Shatzman at Slate

Georgia Judge Eleanor Ross “received a ‘private reprimand’ for having sex with a law enforcement officer in chambers,” says Aliza Shatzman. But “more important are the larger issues this illustrates — an outrageous lack of transparency and accountability in the courts; the judiciary’s inability or unwillingness to “self-police”; and Congress’ refusal to conduct oversight, pass legislation or cut judiciary funding to check a lawless co-equal branch.” Judges “hold positions of public trust, yet they’re never held accountable.”

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‘Haiti is still a house on fire. Senate, extend Haitian TPS for three years.’

Thomas Wenski at the Miami Herald

The House “passed a bill that would extend TPS (Temporary Protective Status) protections for Haitians for three more years — a critical lifeline for those desperate to avoid returning to the chaos on the island nation,” says Thomas Wenski. It “would be an act of abject cruelty for the United States to send families back to such dangerous and unsafe conditions.” It is “up to the Senate now to vote ‘yes’ on extending TPS protections for Haitians.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-flu-vaccine-marijuana-starmer-ai URB6FJpR2bpZdb7n6KUuoC Mon, 08 Jun 2026 15:48:53 +0000 Mon, 08 Jun 2026 15:52:49 +0000 false false false

‘Flu vaccines should not be this hard’

Katherine J. Wu at The Atlantic

In a “typical year, the process of bringing a new seasonal flu shot to market is one of the United States’ most predictable vaccine routines,” but this is “not a typical year,” says Katherine J. Wu. The job would normally “fall to the CDC’s expert vaccine advisory panel, known as ACIP, which guides the agency’s recommendations,” but “currently, no functional ACIP exists to guide this autumn’s immunization campaigns.” This “could further undermine ACIP’s role as a key scientific check on government policy.”

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‘How women are shaping Minnesota’s cannabis industry’

Clemon Dabney at The Minnesota Star Tribune

Cannabis legalization “created a market in Minnesota. Women are helping create its culture,” says Clemon Dabney. While women are “still underrepresented in cannabis ownership,” the “women who are launching dispensaries across the state” are “doing far more than opening stores.” These women are “claiming space in an industry where they have too often been overlooked, underestimated or asked whether a man is really behind the business.” They “are setting the tone for what this market becomes.”

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‘Is Britain getting a new prime minister?’

Eliot Wilson at The Hill

In “America, changes of leaders are predictable,” but “in Britain, it is more nuanced,” says Eliot Wilson. It is “impossible to predict whether Sir Keir Starmer will still be prime minister at the end of this year, this month or perhaps even this week.” There is “no bar to a party in office changing its leader, who then becomes prime minister.” Will the United Kingdom “have a new prime minister by autumn? Yes. Or possibly no.”

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‘AI leaders are cosplaying James Bond villains’

Gautam Mukunda at Bloomberg

“Shark Tank impresario Kevin O’Leary wanted to build data centers on 40,000 acres in rural Box Elder County, Utah,” the “latest battle in the war that might determine the future of artificial intelligence,” says Gautum Mukunda. AI “might unleash miracles of productivity, cure cancer or make energy too cheap to meter,” but it “can’t do any of those things — or at least it can’t do them in the United States — if the public rejects the technology.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-sports-betting-texas-canada-healthcare TKCRghnBAGnwRPwsD67Jzf Fri, 05 Jun 2026 15:21:51 +0000 Fri, 05 Jun 2026 15:29:48 +0000 false false false

‘Why gambling won’t ruin sports’

David Bockino at The Boston Globe

Even the “most vocal critics of widespread legalization concede that gambling has always been part of American sports,” says David Bockino. Gambling “wasn’t an inconvenient intrusion upon the nascent American sports industry but rather an essential catalyst — perhaps the essential catalyst — for nearly every major American sport.” This “revelation also suggests that our current sports betting mania isn’t the result of a national attitudinal shift.” People “have always wanted to bet on stuff. Especially young people.”

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‘Texas is America Inc’s new center of gravity’

The Economist

Texas is “establishing itself as America Inc’s new center of gravity,” as “no state receives more business investment or is adding more people to its population,” says The Economist. The “state’s appeal to yuppies is also growing,” and it “seems there is no part of America with which Texas is not competing.” Texas’ cultural “ascendancy” is “making it easier for firms to convince workers to move there,” though “cultivating homegrown talent is a big part of Texas’s economic plan.”

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‘It’s time the US got serious about Canada’

Richard M. Sanders at Newsweek

One of the “more bizarre features of Donald Trump’s second term in office has been the enormous effort he and his senior officials have put into damaging relations with Canada,” says Richard M. Sanders. The U.S. “has some genuine trade issues with Canada,” but the “administration seems locked into a policy of taking shots.” What “seems clear is that diplomacy by insult and provocation, which has characterized the administration’s approach, has only led to suspicion and hostility.”

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‘What a week in the hospital showed me about our broken healthcare system’

Gregg Gonsalves at The Nation

A successful surgery happened “thanks to the miracles of modern medicine,” but it “was no thanks to modern American healthcare,” which is “fundamentally broken,” says Gregg Gonsalves. The “system is sclerotic, and trying to get appointments, even for things I have been told are urgent, is a challenge.” This is a “cry for help that goes unheard and unaddressed year after year.” The “rot deepens in the day-to-day foundation of American medicine, at the level of the physician-patient interface.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-india-modi-aids-july-4-negotiations t4gK4AqzrkeMQNYqPT47dS Thu, 04 Jun 2026 17:33:32 +0000 false false false

‘India is losing its economic edge’

Sadanand Dhume at The Wall Street Journal

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi “faces a painful reality check: his promise to modernize India’s economy hasn’t panned out,” says Sadanand Dhume. The country “faces a rapidly weakening rupee, dwindling net foreign investment and worries that artificial intelligence will take a wrecking ball to the information technology industry.” Instead of “assuming that the world wants to beat a path to India, the government should emulate countries like Vietnam that ruthlessly focus on being more business-friendly.”

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‘We’ve come too far to let AIDS win’

Elton John and Bill Frist at USA Today

Thanks to “American leadership and extraordinary global cooperation, despair has given way to hope and action,” as “we are closer than ever to ending AIDS,” say Elton John and former Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). The “bipartisan President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has saved more than 26 million lives,” but the U.S. State Department should “consider doubling their rollout plan so resources can reach more communities without delay and to reengage community health workers.”

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‘As we approach July 4, the capital is, fittingly, a mess’

Jackie Calmes at the Los Angeles Times

One month “out from America’s celebration of its 250th birthday, the national capital is a mess,” says Jackie Calmes. This includes “sites central to the pilgrimages that millions of Americans make each year to Washington.” It’s “all about Trump,” who “sees only a site for self-glorification.” This is “hardly the adulatory message appropriate to a people who, by the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago, renounced a king and went on to create a democratic republic.”

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‘To be a better negotiator, learn to live a little’

Attia Qureshi and John Richardson at Time

Negotiation is a “skill — one most of us haven’t learned or practiced. Most of us, most of the time, just aren’t very good at it,” say Attia Qureshi and John Richardson. There are a “lot of components that go into a successful negotiation. But before you can use most of those strategies, you need to get the other person’s attention.” Start by “pushing that reciprocity button and watching for any changes in the other person’s reactions.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-fertility-religion-muhammad-ali-countries-war Pem8xvPstBMnrM75EAXWBM Wed, 03 Jun 2026 15:03:30 +0000 false false false

‘Why people stopped having kids’

Shadi Hamid at The Washington Post

“Contrary to popular belief,” mothers “aren’t necessarily having fewer children compared with a decade or two ago,” says Shadi Hamid. It’s “that fewer women are becoming mothers in the first place.” A “fertility-rate crisis is a marriage crisis — and a marriage crisis is a dating crisis.” Houses of worship “have been a way for like-minded young people to partner up.” But the “catch is that even religiously conservative societies cannot fully escape the forces of secularization and modernization.”

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‘Remembering Muhammad Ali’s message of peace’

Amina J. Mohammed at Al Jazeera

“Ten years after the world said goodbye” to Muhammad Ali, his “voice still echoes,” says Amina J. Mohammed. Ali “wrote words that still stop me in my tracks: ‘Service to others is the rent we pay for our room here on Earth.’” People “are living in a moment when peace feels increasingly fragile,” but Ali “speaks to something disarmingly simple: Peace remains possible, but only if we are willing to make it our personal responsibility.”

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‘There are only four great powers’

Brendan Simms at Foreign Policy

In the “new era of great power competition, it’s important to identify the competitors,” but it has “always been easier to speak about the great powers than to define them,” says Brendan Simms. People can “distinguish the great powers by a set of common characteristics.” While the “United States and China are economically and militarily far ahead of Russia and the United Kingdom, all four states have attributes that mark them out from the next rung of major actors.”

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‘America’s warcraft are aging and often mismatched to the task’

Robert Jordan at The Dallas Morning News

The war in Iran has “exposed significant weaknesses in America’s military industrial base,” says Robert Jordan. Part of the “problem is our dependence upon sophisticated systems that rely on supply chains with uncertain availability, especially considering the Iran war.” If the United States is “going on a wartime footing we can expect pressure to spend more,” and “for a nation already $39 trillion in debt, that could lead to significant fiscal challenges.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-ai-language-turkey-spain-finland-schools yskPPBxpmn43wu2hApwvfJ Tue, 02 Jun 2026 17:50:00 +0000 false false false

‘AI chatbots have a Romance language problem’

Adam Aleksic at The Washington Post

People “use more Latin terms when we want to speak formally or authoritatively; we’ll use Germanic words to sound crass or casual,” and “AI chatbots have also inherited this proclivity,” says Adam Aleksic. AI researchers have “found consistent favoritism for words coming from Latin and French over those with Germanic etymologies.” People could therefore “be hoodwinked by prestige language, convinced that an AI model is saying something profound simply because it’s using French words like ‘profound.’”

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‘Turkey’s democratic crisis is becoming a security crisis’

Ozgur Ozel at Newsweek

For “years, discussions about Turkey’s democratic decline were largely confined to the language of human rights, constitutional law and domestic politics,” and “international observers viewed the erosion of democratic institutions as a troubling but primarily internal matter,” says Ozgur Ozel. Now, “Turkey’s democratic crisis has evolved into something much larger.” It is “becoming a security crisis with implications far beyond our borders.” The “reason is simple: Turkey is too strategically important to become politically unstable.”

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‘How did Spain’s unemployment rate converge with Finland’s?’

Sarah O’Connor at the Financial Times

A “decade ago, hardly anyone would have predicted that the unemployment rate in Spain — long plagued by chronically high joblessness — would converge with Finland’s,” says Sarah O’Connor. But “that is what has happened this year, with unemployment in both countries now roughly 10%.” Is “this a story of Spanish policymakers’ success or Finnish policymakers’ failure? Well, to some extent: both.” But it is “also a story about how much in economic policymaking depends on factors beyond governments’ control.”

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‘“Close reading” is a solution for students looking to live a good life’

Dan Sinykin at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Close reading is a “practice that turns details into evidence for arguments, beautifully made, about what a text means and how it works,” says Dan Sinykin. It “demands we recognize misunderstandings and correct them, because we must be accountable not only to ourselves, but to the text.” Teaching of skills is “directed toward an ultimate goal of economic growth,” but by “speaking instead of virtues we subordinate economic growth to the good life and human flourishing.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-white-house-lebanon-kash-patel-rideshare uMENs8DENa3BaTbEEDyRAX Mon, 01 Jun 2026 19:48:15 +0000 Mon, 01 Jun 2026 19:48:19 +0000 false false false

‘The White House is the new Green Zone’

Matt Viser at The Atlantic

The White House “can be thought of as the new Green Zone,” says Matt Viser, referring to Baghdad’s protected governmental area. The American capital’s centerpiece is “laced with fencing, sensors, jammers, cameras, armed guards, bunkers, drone interceptors, and surface-to-air missiles — all of which speak to how we now protect, and isolate, our leaders.” Iraq’s Green Zone “created a false sense of tranquility,” while the White House “still has a modicum of openness” but “only because of all the security protections that a visiting tourist can’t necessarily see.”

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‘A ceasefire alone won’t solve Lebanon’s mental health crisis’

Kelly Razzouk at Time

May was “Mental Health Awareness Month — and the Lebanese people have gone unnoticed,” says Kelly Razzouk. A “ceasefire would bring desperately needed peace and stability, but it will not heal the invisible wounds left behind or erase the trauma that so many in Lebanon now carry.” As in “all humanitarian crises, children pay the highest cost.” Governments “must ensure that people in conflict zones are not abandoned at the exact moment psychological trauma becomes most acute.”

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‘Kash Patel wrongly takes credit for falling crime rates’

John Pfaff at MS NOW

Falling crime rates “are unequivocally good news,” says John Pfaff. But FBI Director Kash Patel “found it necessary to include the overwrought self-aggrandizing commentary that characterizes announcements from this administration.” But the agency, no “matter its director or the presidential administration, has never been a major driver of crime trends.” The FBI “has never been large enough to exert a significant effect on crime rates, and under Trump and Patel, it has become smaller still and less focused on crime.”

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‘Rideshare win could bring big changes’

David Madland at The Progressive

Uber and Lyft drivers in Massachusetts “recently secured a major breakthrough in the struggle for union representation of rideshare drivers,” says David Madland. Similar laws “have spread to California and could soon be adopted in Illinois,” and “these laws would create a model of unionization that could improve other kinds of jobs and revive the labor movement.” While “rideshare companies have developed an industry in which it is particularly difficult to create good jobs, the new laws hold promise.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-ebola-health-gop-cuba-star-wars xbLgR7E8fcgVTFkhn9QYVg Fri, 29 May 2026 16:01:16 +0000 false false false

‘I witnessed our Ebola response in 2014. We are now seeing the costs of US aid withdrawal.’

Elizabeth Shackelford at the Chicago Tribune

As the “current Ebola epidemic unfolds,” the “withdrawal from the World Health Organization during the second administration of President Donald Trump” alongside “massive cuts to foreign aid” and the “gutting of global health staff” has “put us and the world at far greater risk from epidemics,” says Elizabeth Shackelford. By “withdrawing our funding, expertise and participation from the WHO, the United States also severely eroded the capacity of the global institution best positioned to respond to epidemics.”

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‘The GOP wants to tax your car’

Kimberley A. Strassel at The Wall Street Journal

“Campaign slogans can be catchy, clumsy or clever,” but “few are as crazy as the one Republicans are setting themselves up for this fall: ‘Vote GOP. The party that brought you a national car tax,’” says Kimberley A. Strassel. Republicans have “conjured up a new revenue stream: the first-ever federal ‘annual registration fee’ for vehicles,” and “such is the blindness that accompanies Washington’s lust for earmarking dollars for home-state pork.” This “idea is as short-sighted as they come.”

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‘Cuba’s only choice’

Michael J. Bustamante and Ricardo Herrero at Foreign Affairs

Donald Trump’s “de facto oil blockade” of Cuba has “pushed the country to the precipice: power blackouts are now daily and unpredictable, basic services have ground to a halt and citizens are growing desperate,” say Michael J. Bustamante and Ricardo Herrero. This is “not just a story about Washington’s choices, however,” as “for decades, the island’s government has prioritized internal control and external patrons over political and economic transformation.” Cuba “has long framed negotiating with Washington” as “incompatible with sovereignty.”

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‘Dear Disney, there’s such a thing as too much “Star Wars”’

Miles Surrey at Bloomberg

Disney “acquired ‘Star Wars’ with a strategy built around saturation when the franchise has historically thrived on scarcity,” says Miles Surrey. “Between 1977 and 2005, Lucasfilm released six ‘Star Wars’ films,” and this “turned out to be an economic asset.” Every “time a ‘Star Wars’ film arrived in theaters, it was a genuine cultural event.” But Disney’s “approach inverted that logic entirely,” so they must “restore the feeling that every theatrical release is an unmissable event.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-plant-viruses-peptides-voting-tokens GJ9uQdDmS9DquQH4mTqZ7U Thu, 28 May 2026 17:16:38 +0000 false false false

‘Plant viruses could threaten your coffee, chocolate and wine’

Anna E. Whitfield, Julie K. Pfeiffer and Terence S. Dermody at The Hill

Coffee, chocolate and wine are “woven into daily life and global economies,” say Anna E. Whitfield, Julie K. Pfeiffer and Terence S. Dermody. But the “plants that make these pleasures possible are increasingly under threat from plant viruses.” The “same forces driving viral outbreaks in coffee, cacao and grapes also threaten staple crops that underpin global food security.” Coffee, chocolate and wine’s “vulnerability is a reminder that plant health underlies far more of daily life than we tend to notice.”

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‘RFK Jr.’s move on peptides ignores serious risks’

Eli Thompson at USA Today

RFK Jr. “announced that he would force the Food and Drug Administration to reconsider a ban on peptides,” but as he “pushes to make these unregulated drugs easier to access, the trend is already here,” says Eli Thompson. These “substances, which were once only used by serious bodybuilders or in medical settings, are now part of everyday conversation.” This “shift is happening quickly,” and Americans “need to find a way to make peptides less attractive to young men.”

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‘As 2028 approaches, America needs ranked choice voting more than ever’

Jamie Raskin at The Guardian

Democrats “must act shrewdly to advance party rules of our own that promote majority rule, interracial political solidarity and the power of the voters,” says Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.). The “best tool to empower voters to make constructive choices among exciting new voices in such a crowded field is the mechanism of ranked choice voting.” Allowing “greater use of ranked choice voting in states where Democratic Party organizations choose it should be a slam dunk for DNC decision-makers.”

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‘Tokens are not the new billable hour (and confusing the two will be costly)’

Ravi Kumar S at Newsweek

For “decades, IT services companies were built on the simple production function of human effort, delivered through billable hours and the pyramid structure,” says Ravi Kumar S. But as AI “model interactions become more embedded into workflows, tokens emerge as the new production input reshaping the foundation of the services model.” If “token consumption continues to be treated as the primary metric, costs will scale linearly with demand without a corresponding return in business outcomes.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-steroids-olympics-mali-fear-ai NNT8XFZPZm7TfLoVognP2A Wed, 27 May 2026 18:08:25 +0000 false false false

‘The steroid Olympics fell short of its own finishing line’

Anjana Ahuja at the Financial Times

The Enhanced Games in Las Vegas “were informally billed as the ‘steroid Olympics’” and the “edgy experiment was meant to shatter world records and force a rethink of what it means to be the strongest or fastest human on Earth,” says Anjana Ahuja. But the “thing that was most pumped up was the marketing.” The games were “performance enhancement as a kind of DEI initiative — and one that mostly served to make current ‘non-enhanced’ Olympians look more superhuman.”

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‘The Mali crisis could have a dangerous spillover effect’

Mohamed El Hajj Mahmoud El Talib at Al Jazeera

It “has been almost nine months since rebel groups imposed a fuel blockade on Mali’s capital Bamako” and the “present crisis is compounded by the weakening of the Malian state following the 2021 coup and foreign intervention,” says Mohamed El Hajj Mahmoud El Talib. In the “absence of any serious effort to address it, instability could spill over across the whole Sahel region.” The “ongoing humanitarian crisis could trigger a major migration wave toward Europe and North America.”

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‘What if some fears can’t be conquered?’

Katie Arnold-Ratliff at The Cut

When “undertaken with the help of a clinician,” exposure therapy’s “success rate is well-known to be high — estimated at up to 90%,” says Katie Arnold-Ratliff. But “‘success’ in this context means feeling a reduction in fear upon completion of the program, a definition that belies a difficult and underpublicized reality of ET: its positive effects frequently wane with time.” Though “few therapists lead with this truth, many patients chip away at their phobia for years, not days or weeks.”

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‘There’s a simple reason why I’m sure AI won’t achieve consciousness’

Noah Giansiracusa at Slate

AI chatbots “provide a convincing illusion of consciousness, but we know they are just a sequence of lifeless math calculations,” says Noah Giansiracusa. These chatbots are “estimated to have trillions of parameters” but “they are mere formulas.” It is “safe to say that a math formula written on a sheet of paper is not a conscious entity.” There is “no consciousness to discover here when you break down what is inside the machine that is AI.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-cats-memorial-day-guns-europe pojeFo6QmeNT4iVvU5ysYQ Tue, 26 May 2026 15:26:58 +0000 false false false

‘America long ago solved its dog problem. But what about the cats?’

Bruce M. Beehler at The Washington Post

Cats are a “mass killer of North America’s native birds and mammals,” but “for anyone who cares about both cats and wildlife,” the “free-ranging felines raise tricky policy issues,” says Bruce M. Beehler. The “answer for house cats is clear: treat them like dogs.” The “more difficult challenge is unowned cats,” which “should be captured, vaccinated, neutered and either put up for adoption or relocated.” Even “with a more aggressive approach, a return to balance will take years.”

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‘Trump’s monument to nothing now a Memorial Day insult’

The Boston Globe editorial board

The “once unbroken vista across the Potomac River leading to Arlington National Cemetery” is now “something of a construction zone — as plans proceed apace for President Trump’s triumphal arch on Memorial Circle,” says The Boston Globe editorial board. The arch “will stand in the way of a president more obsessed with monuments than with honoring the fallen service members.” Could “there be a more stark contrast to the row upon row of simple white gravestones?”

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‘Long shot’

Aymann Ismail at Slate

The “stigma among Black women in particular about owning a firearm” comes “from a lack of awareness, but also an apparent systemic effort to keep guns out of the hands of Black and brown people,” says Aymann Ismail. Though “many gun stores and ranges have made recent strides in increasing the diversity of their staff, some ranges can feel intimidating when you don’t see someone who looks like you.” As the “debate gains more traction, much of it still unfolds at the margins.”

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‘Europe is slowly getting ready to ditch America’

Luke McGee at Foreign Policy

In his “second term, Trump had a real opportunity to shape the world in his image and restore the United States’ place as the undisputed leader of the free world,” says Luke McGee. But he “has continued to lash out at allies,” and “Europeans are responding in kind.” Europe “cannot replace the security infrastructure provided by Washington overnight,” but it “can slowly move away from U.S. overreliance by making long-term decisions that return strategic sovereignty to Europe.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-tax-wealthy-aboriginal-australia-india AbE6NSsqYAuB2okCH6EH2h Fri, 22 May 2026 15:17:20 +0000 false false false

‘Here’s the easy way to tax the rich’

Zachary Liscow at The New York Times

The U.S. is “seeing an increasing concentration of wealth,” and “for many Americans, taxing the rich more is an obvious move,” says Zachary Liscow. Ask “tax policy experts how to do this, and you will often hear novel proposals,” but Congress “has a simpler, tried-and-true tax policy to choose from: raising the rates.” The ultra-rich “mostly aren’t escaping the tax system through exotic loopholes,” so increasing rates “would generate hundreds of billions of dollars over a decade.”

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‘Aboriginal violence is Australia’s blind spot’

Julie Szego at UnHerd

An Aboriginal Australian girl’s murder has “reignited” the “fraught argument about Aboriginal disadvantage and collective guilt,” says Julie Szego. But it’s “apparently the hardest thing in the world to speak plainly about violence in Aboriginal communities — and how that violence too often endures under the cover of preserving Indigenous ‘culture.’” More “frustrating still is that these debates are increasingly engulfed in meta debates about the moral legitimacy of Australia — and indeed Western civilization more generally.”

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‘Why is it so hard to be ordinary?’

Joshua Rothman at The New Yorker

What is “true for Little League holds for the rest of life,” says Joshua Rothman. In “some contexts, at some times, we strive for excellence, pushing ourselves. Elsewhere, we shrug, accepting our own ordinariness or mediocrity.” The “excellent and the ordinary coexist, but have an uneasy relationship.” Society is “shaped by the relentless pursuit of excellence,” and “against the backdrop of constant progress, ordinariness feels like backsliding.” Without “improvement, we get nowhere; without excellence, we wallow.”

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‘India is being left to die in the heat’

Vidya Krishnan at Al Jazeera

India is “experiencing an extraordinary summer,” as extreme heat is “causing not just heart attacks, but also kidney injury, affecting sleep quality and exacerbating numerous chronic conditions,” says Vidya Krishnan. The “majority of heat-related deaths go unrecorded in India.” The heat is “reinforcing longstanding inequalities of caste, class and gender in poor and marginalized communities.” A “prime minister who does not believe in climate change will not be an ally in the fight against extreme weather events.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-mexico-drugs-schools-elections-conspiracies yipHADdsWKLXjYtEXXuRA3 Thu, 21 May 2026 17:45:05 +0000 false false false

‘Why Mexico’s cartels are so hard to defeat’

David Mora at Foreign Affairs

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum “has revamped the government’s campaign against criminal organizations,” says David Mora. This is “emblematic of Mexico’s standing in the fight against organized crime,” as “two decades of a military-led ‘war on drugs’ have brought the country no closer to peace.” Sheinbaum is “now trying to strike a difficult balance, still relying on the military as the state’s most effective bulwark against criminal groups but also strengthening the intelligence and investigative bodies.”

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‘iPads in kindergarten? No wonder our kids are falling behind.’

Nicole Russell at USA Today

Some “technology use in schools makes sense, but increasingly, schools seem overly dependent on it to teach subjects that can easily be taught — and learned — without a tablet,” says Nicole Russell. Educational decline “began around 2013,” and “not coincidentally, that’s roughly when iPads began making their way into classrooms.” Technology “isn’t the only reason students are falling behind, but it’s clearly playing a major role.” Technology “should be a tool that supports education, not the foundation.”

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‘MAGA still loves Trump. What does that mean for November?’

Anita Chabria at the Los Angeles Times

America “voted in primary elections and the big winner was President Trump,” as “his enemies — and by that I mean anyone who has ever done anything other than grovel — were defeated in elections across the country,” says Anita Chabria. Is it “now crystal clear that it is a party that will follow its leader, no matter the consequence — even personal ruin?” If Trump “wields this much power over his base, what does it mean for the November general election?”

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‘How an anti-immigrant and antisemitic conspiracy theory became US policy’

Luis F. Carrasco at The Philadelphia Inquirer

The “‘great replacement theory’ posits that a shady cabal of elites (read: Jews) is plotting to flood Western countries with immigrants, effectively ‘replacing’ the native (read: white) population,” says Luis F. Carrasco. That “this anti-immigrant and antisemitic conspiracy theory now undergirds U.S. policy is chilling and should never be normalized.” For “people who may have reasonable objections to unchecked immigration,” the U.S. is “very far from economic or law-and-order arguments here,” and “dangerously so.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-climate-bering-strait-ebola-addiction-movies 8FNfxnFLkq7bUDfoWCqE8Y Wed, 20 May 2026 18:08:08 +0000 false false false

‘Can geoengineering avert a climate catastrophe?’

Anjana Ahuja at the Financial Times

Researchers have “floated the idea of building a dam across the Bering Strait,” which “could help to stabilize ocean currents crucial for regulating the climate,” says Anjana Ahuja. The “proposal is not orders of magnitude adrift of other marine megaprojects,” but in “geopolitical terms, with its need for long-term American and Russian cooperation, it seems preposterous.” Still, the “speculative and politically impossible megaproject” can “remind us how vital it is to keep existing climate commitments afloat.”

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‘This Ebola outbreak will be hard to contain’

Katherine J. Wu and Hana Kiros at The Atlantic

Africa has “weathered dozens of Ebola outbreaks before,” say Katherine J. Wu and Hana Kiros. But the “global health backdrop is simply different in 2026, largely the result of a series of public health decisions made by the United States,” including “dismantling USAID, withdrawing from the WHO and ousting infectious disease experts en masse from the CDC.” The “world’s fractured global health community is now playing a lethal game of catch-up with an extremely dangerous virus.”

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‘Congress must not walk away from the addiction crisis’

Paul Tonko at Newsweek

Before Congress “found the will to act on the addiction crisis, the recovery community was already doing the hard work,” says Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.). They were “organizing, marching, testifying and demanding that their government see what they already knew: Addiction is a disease, and recovery is not only possible — it is happening every single day.” At a “time when the president’s fiscal 2027 budget again proposes large funding cuts,” don’t “cut addiction and mental health services.”

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‘Does it matter what Helen of Troy looked like?’

Rich Lowry at the National Review

Elon Musk has “kicked up a fuss by objecting to filmmaker Christopher Nolan casting the black actress Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy in his forthcoming movie version of ‘The Odyssey,’” says Rich Lowry. But “what the role most requires is luminous beauty, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with casting actors in roles that don’t match their ethnicity.” If Nolan “has done his job, this controversy will be overwhelmed by the power of Homer’s work.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-women-world-prices-trump-police cKKKENecTiuYJG3xiogeV7 Tue, 19 May 2026 18:40:12 +0000 Thu, 21 May 2026 13:44:10 +0000 false false false

‘The world cannot afford to fail women, children and adolescents’

Cyril Ramaphosa and Pedro Sánchez at Al Jazeera

In “too many parts of the world, giving birth still comes with more fear than hope,” say South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. The “true measure of global progress is not found in financial markets or summit declarations” but in “whether a woman survives pregnancy and childbirth, whether a child is vaccinated and nourished and whether an adolescent can grow up healthy.” No “woman or girl should be denied access to life-saving care.”

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‘Why everything feels more expensive’

Roland Fryer at The Wall Street Journal

A recent poll “found that 83% of Americans say it’s harder to buy a home than it was for previous generations,” and “they aren’t wrong,” says Roland Fryer. But the “explanation is more complicated than either side’s populists admit.” The “culprit is structural, not political.” Productivity gains “tend to concentrate in goods — cars, clothing, televisions, food — as technology steadily drives prices down.” Before “indicting the economy, consider what 50 years of growth actually delivered.”

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‘Why Trump’s stock trades are so exceptionally corrupt’

Michael A. Cohen at MS NOW

Donald Trump is the “most corrupt president in American history,” says Michael A. Cohen. In the “first quarter of the year,” he “made more than 3,700 financial trades,” and the “conflicts of interest and personal corruption are simply astonishing.” Even “if it’s true that Trump is not involved in these stock purchases, the mere appearance of a conflict of interest is why, in the past, presidents have avoided day trading.” With “Trump, there’s always a worse tale to tell.”

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‘During National Police Week and beyond, law enforcement officers merit respect’

Randy Robertson and Josh McKoon at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

During National Police Week, Americans “pause to honor the brave men and women who put on the badge and willingly place themselves in harm’s way to protect our communities,” say Randy Robertson and Josh McKoon. We “remember the officers who made the ultimate sacrifice,” but “today, law enforcement officers are being asked to do more with less.” We “also must recognize the burden carried by the families of law enforcement officers,” as “they make sacrifices, too.”

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