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

‘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

‘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

‘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

‘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

‘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

‘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

‘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

‘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

‘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

‘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

‘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

‘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

‘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

‘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

‘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

‘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

‘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

‘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

‘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

‘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

‘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

‘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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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-work-labor-cuba-covid-ai 7NXE8gpQKv5Xx4RF2GYY4j Mon, 18 May 2026 19:07:30 +0000

‘Class warfare is smoldering in America — and it’s about to catch fire’

Austin Sarat at The Hill

In April, an arsonist “set fire to a warehouse used by a major corporation in Los Angeles,” which “should be a wake-up call to political leaders that they urgently need to address the growing despair felt by many Americans,” says Austin Sarat. Some “seem to have gotten the message. But at the national level, unfortunately, all signs are pointing in the opposite direction.” The arsonist “channeled the feelings of millions of Americans who have been mistreated.”

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‘Trump says he can do “anything I want” to the island. It doesn’t belong to him.’

The Guardian editorial board

In Cuba, the U.S. “wants economic reform, the closure of Chinese and Russian intelligence posts, and reportedly the removal of President Miguel Díaz‑Canel,” which “would reinforce the administration’s message that it controls the Americas,” says The Guardian editorial board. Cuba’s “highly educated population is ripe for change that would allow older generations dignity, and give younger ones opportunity.” Instead, they “appear to face ongoing collapse.” Donald Trump “talks of ‘taking’ Cuba. But it belongs to the Cuban people.”

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‘Why aren’t there more Covid-19 memorials?’

Miles Howard at The Boston Globe

Finding a “Covid memorial felt like finding a rare heron in a nearby marsh. Why aren’t there more of them?” says Miles Howard. The pandemic “deprived millions of Americans of their loved ones and robbed millions more of their long-term health.” In the “aftermath of tragedy, remembering those we lost and the sacrifices of those who lived can help us find meaning and closure.” More “cities and towns could step up,” as memorials “give our grief somewhere to go.”

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‘The meme-stock economy is coming for your 401(k)’

Nitish Pahwa at Slate

If Americans “already thought the stock market’s booming reactions to this geopolitically chaotic economic moment were irrational — well, it’s about to get much more surreal,” says Nitish Pahwa. Investors are “looking to what may become the biggest IPOs in history, courtesy of artificial intelligence.” The “incoming IPO wave is rewriting stock market rules in real time so that companies can attract massive public investment with fewer safeguards, less transparency and more risk pushed onto ordinary investors.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-masculinity-far-right-hong-kong-ukraine-food rRwZLZX4Tj5zp9DwyD4wk7 Fri, 15 May 2026 18:00:04 +0000

‘The men who want women to be quiet’

Helen Lewis at The Atlantic

Pastor Doug Wilson is a “prominent voice in what is sometimes called ‘masculinism’: a movement to fight back against the advances of feminism and reassert the primacy of men,” says Helen Lewis. “Woman-bashing plays well on social media and sells lots of ads,” but this “isn’t just a movement of grifters exploiting a quirk.” In the “past decade, one of the New Right’s major challenges has been to retrofit a consistent ideology onto the electoral power of Donald Trump.”

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‘Cut off Hong Kong’s support for Iran’

Mark Clifford at The Wall Street Journal

The U.S. “imposed sanctions on four Hong Kong oil-trading companies,” which “tells Beijing that Washington is serious about shutting down Iranian oil sales and the much-needed cash they provide Tehran,” says Mark Clifford. The “same attributes that made Hong Kong an attractive place for business under British colonial rule now make it a hub for terror financing.” If the U.S. “wants to halt the flow of cash to the Iranian regime, Hong Kong is an excellent place to start.”

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‘Forty years after Chernobyl, war threatens a new nuclear disaster in Ukraine’

Daniel Hryhorczuk at the Chicago Tribune

Russia’s “war on Ukraine has increased the risk of another nuclear power plant disaster” at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, says Daniel Hryhorczuk. Ukrainian “plant operators are working under stressful occupation conditions,” and in a “worst-case scenario, a prolonged loss of power would lead to a Fukushima-like accident releasing a plume of radiation.” The “safety systems at nuclear power plants are not designed for war,“ and “nuclear power plant catastrophes are not just local events.”

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‘Who decides what greatness tastes like?’

Vikas Khanna at Time

A “gastronomic hierarchy has emerged, with some traditions seen as refined while others are labeled ‘ethnic,’” says Vikas Khanna. Global “culinary standards have evolved within specific histories,” elevating “technique, precision and consistency, and for that, they deserve respect.” But “they do not always capture cuisines shaped by memory and lived experience.” Cuisines “like Indian food are layered, diverse and deeply rooted in context.” To “measure them through a single lens risks missing what makes them meaningful.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-spain-trump-colleges-remote-work-wind 46xKi8de4rsv9tcSQPZyfg Thu, 14 May 2026 19:40:52 +0000

‘Why Spain is standing up to Donald Trump’

Ishaan Tharoor at The New Yorker

Spain has “denied the U.S. access to its military bases for operations linked to Iran,” and Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez “seemed to revel in the clash,” says Ishaan Tharoor. Sánchez’s “criticism of the war has set him up as a conspicuous foil to Trump” and Spain’s “stand is a matter of principle, consistency and adherence to the importance of international law.” The nation “has a distinctly different relationship with the United States than countries such as Britain, France and Germany do.”

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‘The real reason why people are losing trust in universities’

Elizabeth Bradley at USA Today

The “recent and widely discussed Yale report on the loss of public trust in higher education offers a sophisticated reflection” but the “study — and the broader national discourse it represents — suffers from a significant case of tunnel vision,” says Elizabeth Bradley. By “centering the debate on the selective few, we are effectively ignoring the heart of the trust problem.” The media “attention on higher education too often focuses on a critique of the most selective institutions.”

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‘Remote work made life easier. It also made us rusty.’

Renée Loth at The Boston Globe

Supporters of a “return to office — mostly business interests, of course — cite improved productivity,” but “another argument for dragging ourselves back to the office gets far less attention: the need to reboot the workplace social skills that have atrophied,” says Renée Loth. The “office is a petri dish of human interaction,” and the “grit, wisdom and compassion it takes to thrive in an office environment are virtues that protect and enrich experiences throughout a whole lifetime.”

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‘Trump’s “weird war” on wind power will jeopardize our energy future and cost Americans billions’

Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times

Donald Trump’s “weird war against wind is full-blown,” and on “some level, this crusade resembles Trump’s misguided effort to revive the American coal industry,” says Michael Hiltzik. Trump is “waging an explicitly partisan and ideological battle,” and his “anti-wind program is part of his campaign to dismantle U.S. renewables policy because of its roots in the Biden administration.” What’s “especially wasteful about Trump’s crusade against wind power is that it’s almost certain to be time-limited.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-hantavirus-sudan-ai-food-stamps EupaMgoVan2UJDuD7yrZbk Wed, 13 May 2026 17:28:31 +0000

‘11 hantavirus deaths in Argentina were a warning’

Abraar Karan at The Washington Post

The “recent Andes hantavirus outbreak on the Hondius cruise ship has seized international attention after three passengers died” and the incident is a “warning sign of where the world’s pandemic prevention system still has weaknesses,” says Abraar Karan. While “there is no way to avoid outbreaks, proactive approaches could reduce risk.” More “detailed predeparture screening could help shipboard doctors diagnose sick patients better,” although “this approach is only as foolproof as the people who are reporting their exposures.”

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‘The crisis in Sudan is much worse than what is acknowledged’

Zia Salik at Al Jazeera

In the “streets of Sudan’s capital, the destruction was apocalyptic,” says Zia Salik. The “difficulty in accessing many areas, and the sense that this is a complicated war in a faraway place, means the crisis has not received anywhere near the international attention it needs.” For “many people, the greatest fear now is that the unending war in the west of the country will result in Sudan, one of the largest countries in Africa, splitting in two.”

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‘What leaders get wrong about the ROI of AI’

Katy George at Time

“If you ask most executives about AI right now, the conversation quickly turns to one question: where is the return?” says Katy George. That is “not because AI isn’t delivering value. It’s because many organizations are still looking for value in the wrong places.” AI’s impact “shows up in greater insight, more predictive power, in-task skill building and the ability to evaluate more scenarios before acting.” But “those gains don’t fit neatly into traditional metrics.”

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‘States need to come clean on SNAP fraud’

Gov. Larry Rhoden at Newsweek

One “practical example of a resource that should be managed with care is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP),” says Gov. Larry Rhoden (R-S.D.). Americans “should take great pride that such a program exists, but that should inspire diligence in its oversight.” States with “higher error rates — in the double digits in many cases — warrant attention and accountability to ensure program integrity is upheld nationwide.” The “solution starts with bringing greater transparency to the issue.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/tech/instant-opinion-china-ai-spencer-pratt-hantavirus-lgbtq-kids RTGaumpgUe2AVuG2bbs7Rm Tue, 12 May 2026 16:28:40 +0000 Tue, 12 May 2026 20:09:34 +0000

‘America’s AI is futuristic. China is just making it work.’

Jacob Dreyer at The New York Times

“Many American leaders believe the United States cannot overcome its adversary China unless it beats the country in the AI race,” says Jacob Dreyer. But the “two countries conceptualize AI very differently. Americans want to create the most powerful technology humans have ever known,” while China aims to advance a “government-directed strategy” that “treats AI as if it were infrastructure. This includes government-coordinated plans, local subsidies and national computing-power programs to diffuse cheap, capable AI tools into every public service.”

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‘Spencer Pratt and the temptations of populism’

Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic

Spencer Pratt, the former reality star candidate for Los Angeles mayor, is a “registered Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, and he has zero experience in government,” says Conor Friedersdorf. “Yet last week he was one of just three candidates to qualify for a televised debate,” which “could hardly have gone better for him.” While current Mayor Karen Bass and LA City Councilmember Nithya Raman highlighted “each other’s failures to remedy the city’s problems,” Pratt was the “only option onstage for voters seeking change.”

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‘Hantavirus anxiety reveals America never left Covid crisis mode’

Holland Haynie at Newsweek

A “virus outbreak on a cruise ship should not instantly make Americans wonder whether ordinary life is about to unravel again,” says Holland Haynie. However, “social media quickly filled with quarantine imagery, speculation and emotional rehearsal of another global disruption.” Human beings are “remarkably good at adapting to prolonged uncertainty,” but “adaptation has consequences.” Covid “did not simply disrupt American life temporarily. It changed many Americans psychologically in ways we still do not fully acknowledge.”

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‘Trump, Republicans know how they’re hurting LGBTQ+ kids’

Sara Pequeño at USA Today

“The kids aren’t all right,” and the “political landscape created” by Trump is “at least partly to blame,” says Sara Pequeño. According to a 2025 survey from The Trevor Project, “10% of LGBTQ+ youth attempted suicide in the past year, and 36% considered it.” And “90% said recent laws and debates over their existence have caused them stress or anxiety.” The “more you decry something as wrong or evil, the more young people will internalize that to mean that they are wrong or evil.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-mental-health-pope-judaism-weddings-bosnia ZcABigmvGCgaXERSJtRYEN Mon, 11 May 2026 16:51:19 +0000

‘We’re thinking about mental health diagnoses all wrong’

Awais Aftab at The New York Times

For “decades, the public conversation about mental health has been routed through the categories in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM,” says Awais Aftab. These “have been convenient for professional communication, insurance billing and conducting clinical trials, but they have given the false impression that each mental disorder is a relatively distinct problem with clear boundaries.” They “can capture something useful and inform treatment options, but none of them do justice” to the “nature of mental illness.”

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‘What Jews can learn from the pope’

Kenneth Seeskin at the Chicago Tribune

Pope Leo XIV is a “distinguished proponent of peace, human dignity and concern for disadvantaged people,” says Kenneth Seeskin. While “there is no one in Judaism who speaks with the authority of a pope, as people of God, Jews also face the question of how to make sense of an ancient and not always consistent tradition.” The “Jewish community is deeply divided over Israel’s actions in Gaza,” and “Jews must ask the same questions of their religion.”

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‘Here comes the slop’

Heather Schwedel at Slate

Many “photos of wedding dresses” have “either been designed or enhanced by AI,” says Heather Schwedel. If “you’re shopping for a wedding dress in 2026, you’re almost guaranteed to encounter at least a little slop.” As AI’s “popularity with everyday consumers has grown over the past few years, it’s taken hold in seemingly every medium,” and “even knitters are having to learn to separate real patterns from the AI-generated ones. Of course wedding dresses aren’t immune.”

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‘Rethinking transitional justice in Bosnia’

Jared O. Bell at Foreign Policy

The U.S. and EU “have treated constitutional reform and war crimes accountability as the primary metrics of progress in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” says Jared O. Bell. If Bosnia “has not unified its narratives of the past or produced visibly contrite leaders, Western logic goes, then it has ‘failed.’” But Bosnia’s “most consequential peace process” is “unfolding in factories, logistics hubs, municipal utilities and cross-entity supply chains — in the daily economic life that keeps the country running.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-ncaa-sports-immigration-gaza-planned-parenthood 6HAEsNEaZKgpYFiwrXAPDa Fri, 08 May 2026 17:38:40 +0000

‘Congress must secure the future of college sports’

Charlie Baker at The Hill

College sports “represent a way for talented high school athletes to reach a new level of athletic competition, while also pursuing a degree,” says NCAA President Charlie Baker. But “no internal reform — no matter how fast it moves — can on its own provide the permanent legal foundation required to stabilize the student-athlete experience.” The SCORE Act “would address the most pressing legal challenges in a narrow manner, while also securing essential student-athlete protections into federal law.”

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‘When children’s rights become revenue for profiteers’

Jim Sandman and Michael Lukens at The Philadelphia Inquirer

For-profit companies “have already turned immigrant detention into a profit center despite public outrage,” say Jim Sandman and Michael Lukens. Now “they’re setting their sights on a new way to fatten their wallets: immigrant children.” Companies “are eyeing this” as a “source of enrichment for themselves. If we allow the ‘profitization’ of legal aid, the outcome is clear: children will be harmed.” The “implications of letting profit drive how legal services are delivered to kids will ripple for many years.”

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‘The Guardian view on ceasefires that aren’t: Israel never stopped killing in Gaza — allies must reject any escalation’

The Guardian editorial board

“In Gaza, the Israeli military has killed more than 800 people since the truce there was declared in October,” so this is “not a true ceasefire but a de-escalation,” says The Guardian editorial board. There is a “bizarre and chilling contrast between Israel’s swift investigation and punishment of soldiers who showed disrespect to statues of Jesus in Lebanon and the lack of even basic accountability — never mind justice — when Palestinians are abused, killed or disappear.”

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‘Will Planned Parenthood stay defunded?’ 

John Gerardi at the National Review

On July 4, the “one-year provision that defunded Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers via the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is set to expire,” and Republicans will “need to answer some difficult questions about their political and policy priorities as they face a stark choice: fight to extend this defunding, or abandon the issue for the foreseeable future,” says John Gerardi. But “continuing to defund abortion providers might be stuck behind other GOP legislative priorities.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-babies-cameras-gaza-health-doctors xdbYiVuXmn2GCDTPBVhReU Thu, 07 May 2026 16:08:28 +0000

‘Why so few babies? We might have overlooked the biggest reason of all.’

Anna Louie Sussman at The New York Times

Having kids is “not simply a matter of affordability, the buzzword so often invoked to explain why people are choosing to have smaller families,” says Anna Louie Sussman. Overall, people are “having fewer children both in countries that offer very little and in those renowned for their generous family benefits.” What “unites these disparate cultures, policy environments and demographics” is people’s “inescapable and crushing sense that the future is too uncertain for the lifelong commitment of parenthood.”

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‘Nothing to fear, much to gain from Flock cameras’

Jason Riggs at The Minnesota Star Tribune

A “common misconception when discussing license plate reader cameras is that ‘each camera records passing vehicles and compiles the license plates into a time-stamped database,’” says Jason Riggs. Police “are not here to monitor your every move.” The cameras “are designed to notify law enforcement only when a license plate connected with a crime crosses their path.” Using them “can make all the difference when searching for a vehicle,” and “throughout the country, this technology has proven to be lifesaving.”

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‘The immeasurable endurance of the women of Gaza’

Huda Skaik at The Nation

“Even in the face of such brutality, Gazan women persist,” says Huda Skaik. They “carry their communities, serving as pillars of endurance amid the ruins of a society that has been all but erased.” Women in Gaza “have become both the primary caretakers and providers, responsible for securing food, water and shelter, caring for the injured, and sustaining their families.” Their “suffering is both physical and psychological, yet they continue to care for the next generation.”

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‘I’m not a pundit, I just play one on TV’

Christian Schneider at the National Review

When “physicians get political, they damage the medical profession’s reputation,” says Christian Schneider. In “recent years, the medical profession has endured a thorough battering, with doctors exposing themselves as just as misinformed and politically motivated as the general public.” Nowhere “has this provided more comedy than in President Donald Trump’s attempt to fill the spot of U.S. surgeon general in his administration.” The “diminishment of the medical profession by a wannabe political physician class has real-world consequences.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-asia-airlines-secret-service-iran-florida CjLdddRHBfb96kQ8oGqbwg Wed, 06 May 2026 17:32:36 +0000

‘Asian budget carriers need help to avoid Spirit’s fate’

Juliana Liu at Bloomberg

The “jet fuel crunch is hitting Asia’s low-cost airlines much harder than their full-service counterparts,” says Juliana Liu. Asian governments “should be preparing financial or operational support to avoid further flight cancellations during the busy summer travel season — as well as outright shutdowns like the collapse of America’s Spirit Airlines.” Policymakers “must consider targeted measures in the form of loans, grants or fuel price relief,” and they “should differ by country and reflect conditions on the ground.”

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‘The rush to point fingers at the Secret Service’

Mitch Price at The Wall Street Journal

After an “incident involving presidential security, a predictable cycle begins,” says Mitch Price. Media outlets “elevate instant analysis from so-called ‘experts’ eager to diagnose Secret Service failures.” In the “immediate aftermath, there’s rarely enough verified information to support meaningful conclusions,” but “confident claims emerge anyway, often from people with little experience in presidential protection.” Risk “can’t be eliminated, only managed.” Safety plans “must balance threats, resources, public access and the president’s need to remain visible.”

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‘Iran’s survival is not victory’

Menahem Merhavy at Foreign Policy

Iran previously “defined victory in expansive terms: exporting revolution, rolling back U.S. power and ultimately eliminating Israel,” says Menahem Merhavy. But “today, under sustained military pressure, its leaders are advancing a far narrower claim,” as “survival itself — withstanding strikes, avoiding surrender, remaining intact — is increasingly presented as victory.” This is “more than mere wartime rhetoric. It marks a shift in how the regime understands power, success and its own purpose.” The “language of Iran’s leadership reflects this shift.”

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‘Miami’s drought wake-up call: Everglades restoration is our water insurance’

Michael Berkowitz and Meenakshi Chabba at the Miami Herald

For a “region that receives nearly 60 inches of rain annually, scarcity” in Miami “felt like someone else’s problem,” say Michael Berkowitz and Meenakshi Chabba. But a “drought has shattered that sense of abundance and revealed the vulnerability of South Florida’s water supply.” Most Miami residents “think of resilience mainly as flood adaptation, leaving water security as an under-acknowledged pillar.” Florida “cannot build a truly resilient Miami without bringing its most consequential resilience plan to the finish line.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-everest-amsterdam-data-center-cars QmLXdZFwSP9oarMGgRorNj Tue, 05 May 2026 18:29:15 +0000

‘How Everest has changed since “Into Thin Air”’

Jon Krakauer at The Atlantic

When the “first edition of ‘Into Thin Air’ was published not long after the 1996 Mount Everest calamity,” many “assumed that the disturbing events I described in my book would convince amateur climbers that paying a lot of money to be guided up the highest mountain on Earth was a bad idea,” says Jon Krakauer. But Nepali workers “deserve much of the credit for making Everest a less dangerous mountain than it used to be.”

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‘Amsterdam’s ban on advertising hamburgers won’t stop climate change’

The Washington Post editorial board

Amsterdam “just banned all advertisements for meat in public spaces. Its justification: Eating meat contributes to climate change,” says The Washington Post editorial board. But “censoring ads for beef, pork, chicken and even fish won’t reduce carbon emissions. Nor will it make people less hungry for protein and other nutrients essential to a healthy diet.” Humanity “will have an easier time innovating out of the challenges posed by climate change if it’s not working on an empty stomach.”

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‘The fight over data centers is a distraction’

Abdallah Fayyad at The Boston Globe

Despite the “threats posed by AI — ranging from environmental to economic to privacy concerns — there’s little to no appetite in Washington to meaningfully regulate the industry,” says Abdallah Fayyad. America has “fixated on the one part of the story it can’t ignore, the part that is having a tangible impact on community after community: the proliferation of data centers.” While “opposing data center construction may make for good politics, it isn’t moving the needle when it comes to regulating AI.”

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‘How inequality killed the affordable American car’

Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect

For “middle-class and working-class Americans, most new cars” are “now out of reach,” says Harold Meyerson. The “economists at GM and virtually every corporation clearly believe” that “focusing on selling more costly goods and services to the investment-enriched sector of the public will net their companies more money than the kind of ‘product for every purse’ marketing that thrived in that long-ago postwar economy.” The “gaps between the wealthy and everyone else are widening and accelerating.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-homes-navy-food-gaza-cars bKDgScGDoP9kgh5vjS2TT6 Mon, 04 May 2026 18:14:06 +0000 Mon, 04 May 2026 19:56:18 +0000

‘Tens of millions of Americans will never own a home — consequences will be severe’

John Mac Ghlionn at The Hill

Real estate “has been crushed for a second consecutive year — this time by a war in Iran that has sent mortgage rates soaring,” says John Mac Ghlionn. The market has “become a staring contest where nobody blinks, nobody moves, and the country suffers.” Homeownership has “long been the primary vehicle through which middle class Americans build wealth.” Take it “away, and you remove the single largest source of generational stability for tens of millions of households.”

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‘We lend military our loved ones. Least they can do is feed them.’

Rebekah Gleaves Sanderlin at USA Today

There’s an “unspoken contract the U.S. military makes with military families: Lend us your loved ones, and we’ll meet their basic needs,” says Rebekah Gleaves Sanderlin. But upon seeing photos of “meager and unappetizing meals purportedly being served to sailors deployed to the Middle East, people took notice.” The “mere fact that military family members suspect their loved ones’ basic needs aren’t being met is an indicator.” It “tells us they don’t trust leadership to care for their people.”

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‘The dark side of Gaza’s new fancy cafes and restaurants’

Eman Abu Zayed at Al Jazeera

Social media is “full of posts showing off photos and videos of fancy-looking cafes and restaurants in Gaza” but “these new establishments do not prove that normality is coming back to Gaza,” says Eman Abu Zayed. They are a “testament to its continuing genocidal abnormality.” The war “made some people in Gaza rich, especially those who engaged in illicit activities,” and “this wealth is now coming out in various forms, including luxury cafes and restaurants.”

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‘Trump’s ridiculous ballroom is no place for journalists’

Ana Marie Cox at The Nation

Trump has “been pushing for future White House Correspondents’ Association dinners to be held on his turf, at the still-mythical ballroom that the president tore down part of the White House to build,” says Ana Marie Cox. But “this is a solution to a problem that does not exist.” The “metaphor of watchful hospitality should be on everyone’s mind every time Trump or his cronies bleat about moving the correspondents’ dinner to his metastasizing monstrosity.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-us-navy-architecture-voting-space 9WiQeh4rP7KnCHGCttPUrj Fri, 01 May 2026 16:41:44 +0000 Fri, 01 May 2026 16:46:14 +0000

‘The tragic decline of the American Navy’

Robert D. Kaplan at The New York Times

The U.S. Navy is “in decline relative to its own history and to the growth of the Chinese Navy, and has surrendered the control of the world’s vital choke points,” says Robert D. Kaplan. If the Navy “doesn’t grow significantly in size, the outcome could be disastrous for the whole world,” as “free trade, global capital flows and migration — the root of America’s worldwide power — would be impossible without a great U.S. Navy.”

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‘What has gone wrong with architecture’

Arthur Kay at Time

Architecture “sits between capital, politics, infrastructure, climate, design, engineering, art, psychology and economics,” says Arthur Kay. The job “has been one of great influence.” Architects “can cross over domains, lead public debate on the most pressing issues of the day and work with the greatest power in the land to shape the future of our cities.” But in “responding to wider trends in professional services, architecture embraced specialization,” and “has lost influence by steadily narrowing its scope.”

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‘SCOTUS ruling on voting rights is the Trump administration’s latest attempt to decimate Black political power’

Solomon Jones at The Philadelphia Inquirer

A “6-3 U.S. Supreme Court decision has gutted a key element of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, leaving Black voters twisting in the proverbial wind,” says Solomon Jones. The Voting Rights Act “was meant to protect Black voters, the very people who are now disenfranchised by this decision.” The “destruction of Black power was always the point. But demolishing Black power requires bolstering white supremacy.” This administration “has sought to target African American voting power at every turn.”

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‘Space is critical infrastructure — it needs an alliance to guard it’

Kathleen Curlee and Brian Golden at Newsweek

Space systems “are increasingly vulnerable to collisions and interference that can shut down critical systems such as navigation and communications in an instant,” say Kathleen Curlee and Brian Golden. Robust “policy and international coordination should support the advancement of space infrastructure and protection of the capabilities that already exist. What is needed is a military-backed alliance in space: an Artemis Alliance.” The “value of space goes well beyond the satellites we use each day.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-e-bikes-ai-global-affairs-liberals i44PhsyWnA9kgmhqcJDCtn Thu, 30 Apr 2026 16:47:24 +0000

‘California should reconsider its rush to regulate e-bikes’

Stephen Zoepf at the San Francisco Chronicle

Because e-bikes “fall into a convoluted mix of transportation policies, they remain contentious and unable to fulfill their potential,” says Stephen Zoepf. Americans “have treated small, powered two-wheelers as recreational devices for far too long,” and making them “illegal altogether means that e-bike commuters, merely acting in self-preservation, can find themselves treated like hooligans.” While “cars and trucks continue to get bigger and more powerful, those outside them are being killed at nearly record-high rates.”

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‘AI companies are just companies’

Robert Armstrong at the Financial Times

AI proponents “wave off the notion that the technology will lead to mass unemployment,” while “doomers respond that, in the case of AI, we’re not the drivers; we’re the horses,” says Robert Armstrong. This “back-and-forth highlights the idea that AI is unlike all the technologies that went before, with greater complexity, greater upsides and greater risks — for labor, cyber security, national defense, mental health and so on.” So “those controlling it have special responsibilities.”

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‘Hedging is the new normal’

Suzanne Nossel at Foreign Policy

We are “living in a new world of hedgers,” says Suzanne Nossel. The “shocks of the last several years” have “upended how nations approach international affairs.” The “smooth flows of a globalized and rules-based world have clotted into uncertainty, forcing states to find new pathways for trade, diplomacy, resource extraction and defense cooperation.” Countries are “no longer hedging within a system that is episodically volatile but out of a recognition that there no longer is much of a system at all.”

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‘“Microlooting”: The left’s latest language deception’

Christian Schneider at the National Review

Progressives “keep trying to invent new words,“ says Christian Schneider. Hasan Piker “introduced the term ‘microlooting’ into the American vocabulary,” and the “innocuous prefix ‘micro’ was affixed to ‘looting,’ a crime, to make stealing from retail stores somewhat more palatable.” Picking a “new word or phrase to explain something people already experience is similar to stand-up comics doing observational humor.” But “what once was the purview of comedians has been crowdsourced to the feral mob on social media.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-psychedelics-iran-ukraine-ozempic-religion KFDXsHKsH8ZYHQAy7kP8vF Wed, 29 Apr 2026 17:05:28 +0000

‘Turn on, tune in, cash out … the US right used to fear psychedelics. Now it wants to sell them.’

Kojo Koram at The Guardian

Trump “signed a new presidential executive order to accelerate mainstream access to medical treatment based on psychedelic drugs,” but “this executive order has not come out of the blue,” says Kojo Koram. Long “caricatured as a marker of countercultural decadence, psychedelics have been rebranded by recent clinical research as potentially transformative mental-health treatments.” It’s a “worldview that has found a comfortable new home” in an “administration that is, against all odds, transforming America’s relationship with drugs.”

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‘How Putin and Zelenskyy view the war in Iran’

Sudarsan Raghavan at The New Yorker

Nearly “two months into Iran’s war, its ripple effects are being felt around the world,” says Sudarsan Raghavan. The “war is also having a less visible, yet potentially more consequential, impact on some of the world’s other conflicts and crises.” The war in Ukraine is “increasingly connected to the Middle East conflict.” It is “in Russia’s favor to prolong the war in Iran” because the “longer it lasts, the longer Washington’s attention is not on Ukraine.”

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‘Could Ozempic save families from addiction and foster care?’

Naomi Schaefer Riley at The Boston Globe

GLP-1 drugs “like Ozempic and Wegovy are often called miraculous for their ability to promote weight loss, reduce the risk of diabetes and even lower the likelihood of dementia,” says Naomi Schaefer Riley. But “what if they can help combat drug and alcohol addiction by tempering cravings and ultimately prevent parents from losing their children to foster care?” This “class of drugs has wide-ranging health benefits and few side effects compared to other medically assisted treatments.”

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‘Religions all over the world are being blasphemed and perverted’

Janice Kennedy at the Toronto Star

Religion is “having a moment. And not in a good way,” says Janice Kennedy. No “matter its name, religion usually embraces three elements: faith in a divinity, rites and rituals honoring that faith and an inviolable moral code.” But this is “abased and abused by con artists twisting religion to fit insufferable egos and despicable political ends.” Committing “terrible deeds in the name of an almighty god is abhorrent to all people of good will.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-school-grades-africa-newspapers 5aLZnFJqccE3hrq8iQeA9m Tue, 28 Apr 2026 14:53:29 +0000 Tue, 28 Apr 2026 14:53:33 +0000

‘Report cards are sending parents the wrong signals’

Bloomberg editorial board

Most “students in the U.S. aren’t proficient in reading or math — but you wouldn’t know it by looking at their report cards,” says the Bloomberg editorial board. Grade inflation “has been seeping through the nation’s education system for decades and worsened during the pandemic,” and “today, more than half of schools use at least one ‘alternative grading’ strategy, including ‘no zeros.’” It “isn’t hard to see how such measures might obscure academic weaknesses and mislead parents.”

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‘Why we should agree to agree’

Lisa Sherman at Time

At a “time when many of our most important conversations feel increasingly polarized, it’s easy to fall into patterns,” says Lisa Sherman. When a “conversation begins to feel too complex or emotionally charged, we often reach for a common refrain: ‘agree to disagree.’” But “building on the common ground that already exists is the key to bridging what divides us.” What “matters more than perfect agreement is what we do with disagreement once we’ve chosen to move forward.”

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‘African governments need to take urgent action on fertilizer shortages’

Martin Fregene and Chakib Jenane at Al Jazeera

The “conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran is disrupting global fertilizer trade flows — and this stands to leave millions of African farmers without the ammonia, urea, phosphate, sulphur and other fertilizer inputs vital to growing more food in sub-Saharan Africa,” say Martin Fregene and Chakib Jenane. When “global supply falters, Africa’s farmers often feel the economic shocks the hardest.” Fertilizer security is “tied to food security, which, in turn, is linked to economic and social stability.”

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‘Newspapers face tight supply as mills cut newsprint production’

Brier Dudley at The Seattle Times

As if “they didn’t have enough to deal with, America’s newspaper publishers are facing a tight supply of newsprint that’s driving up prices,” says Brier Dudley. The “crunch may be temporary but it highlights the uncertainty and cost pressures straining a local news industry that’s largely online nowadays but still heavily dependent on printed newspapers.” There is “little consolation” for “some local publishers scrambling for enough paper to print the next week’s newspapers.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-anthropology-college-medicaid-sexual-assault-lawyers g8oKs7g4KUFFrx5UAKJYRQ Mon, 27 Apr 2026 15:27:09 +0000

‘This degree changed my life. And it’s essential to a changing America.’

Thurka Sangaramoorthy at The Washington Post

Anthropology is a “discipline that teaches students to do something remarkably difficult and remarkably rare: to move between close attention to individual lives and systemic analysis of the structures that shape them,” says Thurka Sangaramoorthy. Americans are “living in what is called the age of big data,” but the “hardest problems facing institutions, governments and companies right now are not technical ones. They are human ones.” Anthropology is an “essential skill in the age of big data.”

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‘Don’t look to my patients for Medicaid fraud. Look at Dr. Oz.’

Tyler Evans at USA Today

Dr. Mehmet Oz “posted a video accusing New York state of running a fraud-ridden Medicaid program,” but the “people being targeted by these claims are not fraudsters,” says Tyler Evans. The “personal care services Oz attacked in New York are the clinical alternative to nursing home placement.” Oz is “constructing a caricature to make the public comfortable with cutting their care.” This is the “person now running the largest health care financing program in the United States.”

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‘Millions of clicks on sexual assault — where’s the outrage?’ 

Jodi Bondi Norgaard at Newsweek

According to “CNN’s reporting, one porn site, Motherless.com, hosts 20,000 videos of so-called ‘sleep content,’” with “men logging on to learn how to drug and violate their wives, their partners, the women sleeping beside them, the people who trust them most,” says Jodi Bondi Norgaard. This is “not a niche crime or a fringe corner of the internet. This is a global network that teaches men how to drug and rape women, and it is met with near silence.”

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‘The ABA is a joke. So why is it still accrediting law schools?’ 

Sarah Parshall Perry at the National Review

The American Bar Association’s “monopoly over the accreditation of U.S. law schools has long been defended as essential to maintaining excellence in the legal profession,” says Sarah Parshall Perry. But this “authority rests on an implicit premise of institutional neutrality, a premise that no longer holds — if it ever did at all.” The ABA “doesn’t represent a majority — or even a plurality — of American lawyers.” The “profession, the academy and the public deserve better.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-gerrymandering-texas-cuba-hospitals-tech ZFJq5ZXDc5fk9v3w5TB92i Fri, 24 Apr 2026 17:21:45 +0000

‘Texas is to blame for nation’s redistricting disaster’

The Dallas Morning News editorial board

The “redistricting power grab that President Donald Trump launched in Texas has ended in a stalemate for the parties and a huge loss for our nation,” says The Dallas Morning News editorial board. After “10 months of out-of-cycle, coast-to-coast congressional redistricting, Democrats and Republicans control about the same number of seats as they did before the mess began,” but “democracy and good government, meanwhile, are in negative territory.” This “has squandered public resources by requiring frivolous elections.”

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‘I’m one of Cuba’s political prisoners. When will I go free?’

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara at The New York Times

Amid “mounting U.S. pressure, the Cuban government announced that it was releasing over 2,000 prisoners in what the Cuban Embassy in Washington called a ‘humanitarian and sovereign gesture,’” says Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. But amnesty “would not extend to those who had committed ‘crimes against authority,’ a term generally applied to political dissidents.” Cuba’s government “has denied holding political prisoners,” but is “still scared of people like me, who have not been afraid to challenge the state’s authority.”

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‘A “barbaric” problem in American hospitals is only getting bigger’

Elisabeth Rosenthal at The Atlantic

If you “need admission to the hospital, you can remain in the emergency department — in the hallway or a curtained bay on a hard stretcher or in a makeshift holding area — for more than 24 hours,” says Elisabeth Rosenthal. In this “limbo state,“ the “rules governing acceptable care and safety measures become much less clear.” If an “ED boarder has a medical complaint that needs quick attention, it’s easy for them to fall through the cracks.”

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‘How the tech world turned evil’

Timothy Noah at The New Republic

Even “in its more innocent days, Silicon Valley inclined toward grandiosity, heralding not just a new technology but a new advancement in human consciousness,” says Timothy Noah. But “now a prince of the technocratic elite,” Peter Thiel, is “framing tech’s future prosperity quite literally as a battle against agents of Satan.” And his “was merely the most literal expression of a millenarian sentiment about the coming of AI that’s now conventional wisdom among tech barons.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-schools-vouchers-crime-masculinity-china 9gxbMUh3xqW9dTXgT4SeFn Thu, 23 Apr 2026 15:46:41 +0000

‘History tells us that school vouchers segregate and alienate’

Erykah Nava at the Chicago Tribune

Since the “beginning of America’s education system, Black and Latino students and their families have been excluded from building a vision for their schools,” says Erykah Nava. Americans “need superintendents, school leaders and all lawmakers to unequivocally denounce school vouchers because they harm public schools by diverting critical public funds away from neighborhood public schools that Black and Latino students rely on.” If “we don’t listen to those families, history tells us that we will regret that decision.”

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‘The most deadly place for women and children: a family home’

Renée Graham at The Boston Globe

There is “no more deadly place for women and children than in a family home,” says Renée Graham. When “acts of fatal domestic violence occur, especially mass shootings, law enforcement officials often call that crime ‘an isolated incident’ to reassure the public that there is no ongoing threat.” But laws are “not enough to stop this gun-fueled misogyny so long as we cling to the false belief that what angry men do to women and children is isolated.”

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‘“Petro-masculinity” is destroying the planet. Can eco-masculinity help save it?’

Andrew Boyd at The Guardian

It “won’t come as news to most that, compared with women, men litter more, recycle less and leave a bigger carbon footprint,” says Andrew Boyd. What “connects the dots here is something more unhinged and tangled: a hyper-aggressive, oil-soaked version of toxic masculinity known as ‘petro-masculinity.’” This “suggests that fighting climate change is not just a technological or economic or political challenge, but also a cultural and psychic struggle against an entrenched and very gendered ‘petroculture.’”

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‘What if China succeeds?’

Matthew Kroenig at Foreign Policy

China’s “success would likely result in a more dangerous, impoverished, and tyrannical world for everyone else,” says Matthew Kroenig. Chinese President Xi Jinping has “railed against U.S. alliances in Asia as relics of the Cold War that should be replaced,” which means “removing the U.S. military presence in the region, and leaving regional states, such as Australia, Japan, the Philippines and South Korea, vulnerable to Chinese military coercion.” This “likely means a major war in Asia.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-police-government-service-abortion-health DQ2MHnigei6kVtdb2rbQVh Wed, 22 Apr 2026 16:39:02 +0000 Wed, 22 Apr 2026 18:48:56 +0000

‘The Constitution doesn’t make an exception for misusing police powers’

George F. Will at The Washington Post

Policing is an “indispensable and demanding craft requiring skills acquired through repetitions of good judgment in bad situations,” says George F. Will. So “litigation arising from law enforcement excesses acknowledges the craft’s exacting standards,” and “sometimes reluctant courts should provide remedies that affirm those standards.” The “militarization of law enforcement has been dramatized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents operating with too little training,” and courts may “eventually acknowledge the absence of a police-power exception.”

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‘Honoring America’s 250th through service’

Mike Lawler and Bonnie Watson Coleman at Newsweek

There is “no other nation on earth, past or present, that can pride itself on citizens dedicating as much personal time and resources to causes dear to them,” say Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.). Every American “has a definition of ‘service’ — and that is something worth celebrating.” In “choosing service, we progress beyond division to action, helping write the next chapter of American history as one grounded in unity.”

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‘The terrifying convergence of fetal personhood laws and abortion bans’

Melissa Gira Grant at The New Republic

“Fetal personhood laws and abortion bans are often intertwined,” says Melissa Gira Grant. But the “direct harm caused by the abortion bans has typically overshadowed the more abstract and punitive laws defining fetal personhood.” These laws “may not mention abortion at all. But fetal personhood laws are layered onto existing laws and emerging legal trends.” These are “not just legal or rhetorical strategies; they also shape how patients make health care decisions.” People’s “fears are not unfounded.”

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‘Trump showers health care crooks with love’

Whitney Curry Wimbish at The American Prospect

Donald Trump has “hit on a new role as a crusader against fraud,” but a new report “shows that Trump appears to support medical fraud, as long as corporate executives and other elites are the ones committing it,” says Whitney Curry Wimbish. Republicans “stump for Trump’s pet project to punish blue states under the guise of protecting taxpayers from medical fraud” but “those talking points are a smokescreen for Trump’s real aim: justifying his destruction of the American health care system.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-social-media-smoking-women-china-environment NTfHnLgZGNqJDFdBptS22C Tue, 21 Apr 2026 15:43:02 +0000

‘Will social media addiction go the way of cigarettes?’

Sarah O’Connor at the Financial Times

It is “easy to see why social media’s critics would hope for a tipping point akin to what happened with smoking,” says Sarah O’Connor. But the “story of smoking’s decline had a sting in the tail: many of society’s poorest stayed hooked. Might the same be true for social media consumption?” Breaking “powerfully addictive habits — or not developing them in the first place — is harder if you have less access to education, supportive peers and health care.”

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‘Republicans want to ban drag. It could land women in jail.’

Dan Kobil at USA Today

Ohio politicians “are attempting to enact a vague and ill-conceived law prohibiting public drag shows and regulating women’s clothing in an unprecedented manner,” says Dan Kobil. Drag shows are “forms of artistic expression that is squarely protected by the U.S. Constitution,” and it is a “basic precept of constitutional law that the government cannot dictate what viewpoints Americans are allowed to express surrounding gender.” It is “not just drag shows that are placed at risk by these politicians.”

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‘The China model falters’

National Review senior editorial staff

As “sour as Americans are about the current economy, they should be profoundly grateful they don’t have China’s instead,” say the National Review editors. China “saw explosive growth over the last several decades,” and it “became conventional wisdom in the economics profession that China would overtake the U.S. economy by 2030.” That “dogma is now undone,” and China’s “economic slump appears to be caused by structural forces.”

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‘Powerful states are trying to sabotage decarbonization of shipping’

Ralph Regenvanu at Al Jazeera

The “fallout of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz may create the impression that the world cannot function without fossil fuels,” but “nothing could be further from the truth,” says Ralph Regenvanu. Every “single industry can and must decarbonize.” For “global shipping, this process would be relatively easy because technological solutions exist and a single United Nations agency can set legally binding rules for all ships.” But poorer countries “need more action and more ambition in the framework.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-robotics-space-trump-schools-labor Ze7F4JtDYuVNe4rjEp9GsN Mon, 20 Apr 2026 16:13:19 +0000

‘AI and robotics will aid, not end, human space exploration’

Mark R. Whittington at The Hill

Some people “contend that advances in AI, robotics and electronics will allow Earth to explore and even commercially exploit other worlds such as the moon and Mars with just machines,” says Mark R. Whittington. But “humans will not be replaced either on Earth or in space” and robotics “will actually enhance human capacity.” While robots can “take over tasks that involve pattern optimization,” humans “will still retain tasks that require creativity, emotional intelligence and determining why actions need to be undertaken.”

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‘Trump’s presidency is what evil looks like: absurd, frightening, cruel’

Nesrine Malik at The Guardian

Trump “defies attempts to make his actions cohere,” says Nesrine Malik. His “lack of vision or ideology are misread as attributes that make him somehow less dangerous than the authoritarians of the past who have become the template for what evil looks like.” But Trump’s “constant self-aggrandizement, his grudges against political adversaries, the fury at being challenged by the press, the revenge he promises to wreak” are “ways to erase and avoid what is a permanent terror of humiliation.”

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‘How American schools can address political polarization’

Deborah Kenny at Time

Polarization “has become one of the defining threats to American democracy,” says Deborah Kenny. To “address these issues, some schools have turned to civics content, media literacy and dialogue initiatives.” But these efforts “misunderstand the problem. Polarization is more than a knowledge deficit. It is a self-government deficit.” Students “should be exposed to competing views and learn to articulate multiple sides of an issue,” and schools “must defend free inquiry, reject dogma and privilege the unencumbered search for truth.”

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‘Why are workers stuck? Not enough employers.’

Kathryn Anne Edwards at Bloomberg

What “makes recessions so harmful to workers is the freezing of movement,” says Kathryn Anne Edwards. The “gears of the labor market — gears that are constantly shuffling workers from job to job to unemployment to job again — slow to a crawl.” This is “what is making today’s labor market so damaging.” The “market has been heading toward a situation like this — with recession-like conditions of slow gears even when the market should be tight — for a while.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-technology-history-vaccines-war tGSsqGJbx46rGLP8CnYGcE Fri, 17 Apr 2026 15:54:22 +0000

‘Our longing for inconvenience’

Hanif Abdurraqib at The New Yorker

Longing for “Walkmans and VCRs is, of course, an offshoot of a larger obsession with the not-so-distant past,” says Hanif Abdurraqib. There is a “longing for some previous era, if not actually a desire to return to it.” The “yearning for the past often lands us on the somewhat hollow nostalgia of ephemera: if we can’t have the nineties back, we can build a life of things that might feel transportative,” and “convenience and inaction are often bedfellows.”

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‘History is running backwards’

David Brooks at The Atlantic

Many “thought that the world would get more democratic as it modernized, but for the past quarter century, we have seen a reversion to authoritarian strongmen,” says David Brooks. People “used to have a clear idea of where modernity was heading — toward greater autonomy and equality, secularism, stronger individual rights, cultural openness and liberal democracy.” Science and reason “would prosper while superstition and conspiracy-mongering would wither away.” But it “turns out that was yesterday’s vision of the future.”

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‘Yes, of course war settles things’

Rich Lowry at the National Review

There are “many things that can be said about the tragedy of warfare without crediting the blatantly ahistorical cliché that it is never the answer, or doesn’t solve disputed questions, often with a terrible finality,” says Rich Lowry. War can “determine international boundaries and the nature of governments.” It “might be pointless, or fought for prestige, revenge or territorial aggrandizement. That’s all true, but it doesn’t change the fact that military conflict is, at times, necessary.”

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‘Polio has no cure. The vaccine is the only way to save lives.’

Simone Blaser at USA Today

Making polio vaccines “optional is a bad idea. It’s also a dangerous one,” says Simone Blaser. There is “no cure for polio, but there is a way to prevent this terrible illness.” If the “polio vaccine becomes optional,” it “becomes a mathematical certainty that we will see a resurgence.” You “may believe your choice doesn’t affect others, but there is no way to know who in a community is unvaccinated, whose immune system is shoddy, or who is particularly vulnerable.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-surveillance-search-jackie-robinson-health-food-stamps czobrpKn9c82oGXZRnXw53 Thu, 16 Apr 2026 17:16:11 +0000 Thu, 16 Apr 2026 20:35:05 +0000

‘Congress has a rare chance to stop warrantless searches’

Noah Feldman at Bloomberg

As Americans “worry about total government surveillance in the age of AI and ICE, Congress has a rare opportunity to protect them from warrantless government searches,” says Noah Feldman. FISA Section 702 is “set to expire,” and the law “effectively permits the government to collect the private information of Americans indirectly.” A bipartisan bill “would close the most important loopholes in the current law.” Congress “can turn the public’s distrust of government surveillance” into “something productive.”

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‘Jackie Robinson’s legacy is more than a symbol. It’s a responsibility.’

Scott Reich at the San Francisco Chronicle

Jackie Robinson Day is “one of the most powerful traditions in American sports,” says Scott Reich. For “one day, the number is the same.” Jackie Robinson’s number, 42, “becomes everyone’s number.” But “while it’s easy to honor a number, it’s harder to fully appreciate what it signifies.” Robinson “did not simply break baseball’s color barrier,” he also “stepped into a country that had not yet decided whether it was ready for him.” His uniform “gave him a platform; he chose to use it.”

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‘Massachusetts health reform at 20: a model for what government can do’

Maura Healey and Mitt Romney at The Boston Globe

In 2006, Massachusetts politicians “came together to answer a question that long seemed unthinkable in Washington: Could we make health care coverage a reality for all?” say Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R). Massachusetts “proved to the nation that the answer was a resounding yes.” The “lessons of that day went well beyond the policy.” It was a “demonstration of what is possible when leaders of all perspectives come together, set aside partisanship and focus on solving real problems.”

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‘GOP food stamp work requirements hit just as jobs dry up’

Whitney Curry Wimbish at The American Prospect

Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill, trade wars and actual wars are coming together to maximize hunger in America,” says Whitney Curry Wimbish. The GOP’s “new work requirements for food stamps began in February, forcing more people to work at least 80 hours a month to get the benefit.” At the “same time, jobs are harder to find,” especially “low-wage jobs that food stamp beneficiaries should be able to turn to for the new requirement.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-battle-creek-university-pregnancy-vance 9bj3AZXGh244qXhWyK9y6G Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:05:23 +0000

‘Battle Creek, a Rust Belt icon, battles back as American manufacturing jobs decline’

Chicago Tribune editorial board

For “generations, the Kellogg food company and Battle Creek, Michigan, went together like corn flakes and milk,” but “after decades as an independent public company, Kellogg split in two,” says the Chicago Tribune editorial board. Like “many other small industrial cities across the Midwest, Battle Creek is diversifying beyond its roots,” and its “resilience in the face of change shows that, under pressure, the Rust Belt’s factory towns can carve out a future based on their long-time strengths.”

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‘Universities must reinvent themselves for the intelligent age’

Klaus Schwab at Time

For “more than a century, universities have been among humanity’s most transformative institutions,” but the “world they helped create is now changing at unprecedented speed,” says Klaus Schwab. In the “‘Intelligent Age’ defined by the rise of artificial intelligence and quantum computing, education cannot remain preparation for life.” It “must become a continuous condition of life,” as “our culture is moving irreversibly from learning for life to lifelong learning.” This “demands systemic change across national education systems.”

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‘Why aren’t Republicans thrilled by the fall in teen pregnancies?’

Arwa Mahdawi at The Guardian

The “teenage birth rate in the U.S. fell by 7% in 2025,” and “while this might seem like a positive development, it has been a cause of dismay among the MAGA-adjacent crowd,” says Arwa Mahdawi. Republicans “aren’t just content with overturning the right to a safe and legal abortion; they’re also quietly undercutting access to contraception.” What’s “next? The party of ‘family values’ rallying behind child marriage? Oh, wait, they’ve already ticked that one off.”

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‘The ever-shrinking JD Vance’

Edward Luce at the Financial Times

The vice presidency “was not designed to be fun,” says Edward Luce. But “being Trump’s number two brings unique discomfort.” Defending “policies that often turn 180 degrees overnight — from vowing to destroy a civilization, say, to announcing a new golden age — requires pure acrobatics.” JD Vance “is flailing,” and “he is thus no longer Trump’s obvious successor.” Even “were Vance to regain his place in the Trumpian firmament, there is no such thing as a Vance base.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-swalwell-congress-fema-filibuster-lebanon czwDrDMczvtySi4QoU8ef5 Tue, 14 Apr 2026 16:14:06 +0000

‘Have these people learned nothing?’

Michelle Cottle at The New York Times

Eric Swalwell “had his political career blown up by allegations of degeneracy and abject stupidity,” says Michelle Cottle. Many lawmakers “fail to learn from the ruined careers of the past in part because those around them too often shrug off the whispers, red flags and glaringly bad behavior until some line gets crossed.” The “problem is less a ‘boys will be boys’ tolerance than a sense of resignation among politicians, staff and other members of official Washington.”

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‘Deportations are putting US disaster response at risk’

Yvette D. Clarke and Michael Shank at Newsweek

This year the U.S. “will be less equipped than in previous years to prevent, prepare for and respond to increasingly extreme weather,” say Yvette D. Clark and Michael Shank. The Trump administration made FEMA “less effective, less funded and less capable of helping Americans before, during and after a storm.” At the “same time, the administration’s immigration policies are shrinking the very workforce we rely on for disaster preparation, response and recovery.” The government “cannot operate in silos.”

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‘Debating busting the filibuster’

Dan McLaughlin at the National Review

Some are “not against the idea of using the levers of the congressional rules to create theatrical confrontations that can move the public to apply pressure to members of Congress,” says Dan McLaughlin. But this is “undermined by senators believing that their votes are not necessary to passage.” The Senate “is dysfunctional, and it should debate and engage publicly more.” The filibuster is “more destructive than the benefits to be gained by any particular public debate.”

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‘Lebanon’s resilience is celebrated, as if survival were admirable rather than imposed’

Tayma Saliba at Le Monde

In Lebanon, “staying informed is both a dependency and a necessity,” says Tayma Saliba. Between “international media, local journalists, rumors and content generated by artificial intelligence, young people become informal analysts, cross-referencing sources and explaining the situation to relatives abroad.” A “recurring discourse celebrates Lebanese resilience, as if survival were admirable rather than imposed.” This is “meant to recognize endurance but ends up normalizing suffering, suggesting that the situation is manageable.” But “survival is not acceptance.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-taxes-election-democrats-kalshi-women BEmDjGsqaim98wYEnmBr2G Mon, 13 Apr 2026 15:52:48 +0000

‘Hardly anyone checks this little box on their tax return. Why keep it?’

Adam Lashinsky at The Washington Post

There “was a time when nearly a third of U.S. taxpayers checked that little box on their income-tax returns authorizing the Internal Revenue Service to allocate $3 of their taxes” to “help pay for presidential campaigns,” says Adam Lashinsky. But now Americans “are — quite rationally — unwilling to fork over the cost of a Snickers bar to help elect the leader of their country.” Congress “ought to simply junk the checkoff as the relic it is.”

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‘Democrats need to start planning now for a return to power’

Symone D. Sanders Townsend at MS NOW

Democrats “are already talking about a wave election,” and “people are starting to ask: What would Democrats do with that power?” says Symone D. Sanders Townsend. It’s a “more important question now than ever because, this time, winning will come with more risk and more responsibility.” A Democratic win “will not just be a rejection of President Donald Trump. It will be an expectation that they can use power in a way that actually changes people’s lives.”

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‘Kalshi is half right about prediction markets and gambling’

Aaron Brown at Bloomberg

Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour “has an argument why prediction markets shouldn't be regulated as gambling,” says Aaron Brown. Sportsbooks “profit from customer losses, making them structurally predatory. Kalshi, by contrast, operates as a peer-to-peer exchange.” He is “right about the business model distinction. He’s wrong that it answers the regulatory question.” What Mansour is “describing — a balanced book, fees on both sides, no house risk on outcomes — has been the operating model of sports betting, both legal and illegal.”

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‘Women’s brains are a $1 trillion opportunity’

Lisa Mosconi and George Vradenburg at Time

Nowhere is the “cost of ignoring women’s health more visible or more correctable than in the brain,” say Lisa Mosconi and George Vradenburg. Closing the “women’s health gap could add $1 trillion in annual incremental GDP to the global economy.” This should “reframe how every boardroom and budget office thinks about women’s health.” Researchers “need to mandate sex-disaggregated data and fund women-focused trials for brain disease,” and policymakers “need to recognize women’s brain health as a core input to labor force productivity.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-olympics-transgender-nuclear-africa-ai-newsroom zy3dCcWRPjdGAjEts4oio3 Fri, 10 Apr 2026 15:47:49 +0000

‘I’m a WNBA player. Don’t use athletes like me to exclude trans women.’

Brianna Turner at USA Today

The IOC “recently announced a binding policy requiring every woman who seeks to compete in the Olympics to undergo sex verification testing,” but the “final hurdle to represent your country should not be proving to a panel of strangers that you are the woman you say you are,” says Brianna Turner. This mandate “ignores established medical and human-rights guidance, and rejects the science that says physical appearance, chromosomes or individual traits do not determine athletic performance.”

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‘New England considers the nuclear option’

Andrew Fowler at The Wall Street Journal

A “bipartisan coalition of all six New England governors has reached a conclusion that until recently would have been politically unthinkable: renewable energy alone can’t deliver the affordable, reliable power the region needs,” says Andrew Fowler. Against “this backdrop, nuclear energy is re-emerging as a practical solution.” New England’s “nuclear facilities such as Connecticut’s Millstone Power Station help maintain grid stability,” but “regulatory barriers have long limited the development of new nuclear capacity.” That is “beginning to change.”

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‘Power, minerals and the AI race — America must win in Africa’

John Giordano at Newsweek

The United States “must secure the critical mineral and energy supply chains that advance economic prosperity,” says John Giordano. One “such jurisdiction, and potentially one of the most consequential on the African continent, is Namibia.” The country is a “model for governance and stability on the continent, operating with regulatory frameworks capable of supporting large-scale development.” It “holds an outsized position on the global minerals and energy map,” but “supply security ultimately rests on infrastructure.”

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‘The ethics of using AI in newsrooms: a work in progress’

Jim Boren at The Seattle Times

The public is “looking for clear guidance on how newsrooms are using AI to report the news,” but “most news organizations are still developing their policies, and few have fully resolved these complex questions,” says Jim Boren. AI “can free journalists to focus more on investigation, verification and storytelling,” but “most newsrooms draw a firm line: AI should not be used to write stories.” This “reflects a broader concern that AI systems can produce convincing but inaccurate or misleading information.”

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]]> https://theweek.com/politics/instant-opinion-meta-google-texas-hungary-smoking YmLWEkzhRLWECXhLNhVtgE Thu, 09 Apr 2026 18:57:04 +0000

‘What the verdict against Meta and Google says about the way we live now’

Jeannie Suk Gersen at The New Yorker

For “decades, the understanding was that social media companies were essentially immune from legal liability,” says Jeannie Suk Gersen. If parents “have in the past felt they were competing with bad influences on children — questionable friends, shady neighbors or profanity-laced music among them — the core anxiety in this era is that algorithms have made it so that there is no competition at all, undermining parents’ opportunity to steer their children right.”

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‘In Texas and beyond, a political impulse: If you don’t like it, leave.’

Mark Z. Barabak at the Los Angeles Times

There is “no end of hurdles” that “would have to be surmounted for a partial Texas-New Mexico merger to occur,” says Mark Z. Barabak. But the “impulse to bust up, break away and move on is as old as America itself and, at the same time, as fresh as the latest provocation to pass the lips of the nation’s frothing commander-in-chief.” Secession “has long been the dream of dissenters, of the discontented and those who feel put upon.”

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‘Freedom itself is at stake in Hungary’

Martin Wolf at the Financial Times

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is “not a man of small influence,” and “for many so-called ‘national conservatives,’ notably in the U.S., he defines a successful and admirable form of right-wing politics,” says Martin Wolf. That “makes the parliamentary elections on Sunday far more important than the modest size of Hungary would suggest.” The “defeat of the man who embraced the notion of ‘illiberal democracy’ might mean a great deal for the survival of the threatened ‘liberal’ version.”

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‘Less than 10% now smoke, but we’re still far from finished’

Mario Danek at The Hill

The U.S. “crossed a milestone that sounds like the beginning of the end for cigarette smoking: Fewer than 10% of American adults now smoke,” says Mario Danek. But “percentages can obscure as much as they reveal.” Even at “9.9%, that still represents tens of millions of Americans who continue to smoke.” The “progress is real and should be applauded. But the harder question is what it will take to reach those still smoking and whether we’re ready for that.”

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