“The term ‘Middle East’ reflects the region’s historical centrality to Western powers. Popularized in 1902 by the U.S. naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan, it described the lands between Arabia and India, specifically to underscore their strategic importance to British imperial interests. So it was no surprise that the transfer of global supremacy from Britain to the United States after World War II played out most consequentially in the Middle East, its geopolitical center shifting from London’s colonial mandates to Washington’s Cold War and oil-security interests. The Middle East was soon incorporated into a U.S.-led order in which Washington provided military protection and underwrote the political conditions for the region’s integration into the global economy. The United States secured maritime trade routes, guaranteed energy flows, and anchored the dollar-based oil market. Oil revenues cycled through Western financial markets, regional economies oriented themselves toward U.S.-led globalization, and U.S. military power served as the ultimate guarantor of stability. The coherence of that order rested on the fact that its economic and security dimensions were led by the same power. Today, that alignment is eroding as the redistribution of economic power toward China reshapes geopolitics. Whereas the United States now primarily extends influence through military power and security provision, China has expanded its reach through trade, infrastructure, economic statecraft, and increasingly by presenting itself as a predictable actor on the global stage. The current rebalancing will likely take decades to play out, but rarely have economic dependence and security provision been so visibly concentrated in different hands. For 70 years, the U.S.-led order endured because commerce and security moved together. The Middle East is the first major arena where this coherence is dissolving. Economic and security dependence point in different directions, and the result is not a clean handoff from one hegemon to another but a potential disaggregation of hegemony itself.” (Rabah Arezki and Tarik M. Yousef /Foreign Policy)

“‘There needs to be accountability for Elon Musk,’ Khanna said. ‘You know, they’re celebrating that he created 4,400 millionaires [with his SpaceX IPO], but they don’t talk about the 4.5 million children around the world who he possibly sentenced to death by dismantling USAID.’ In response, Musk called Khanna a liar, threatened to sue, and said he should be in prison. But Khanna is making a perfectly reasonable claim here. In that quote, he is (carefully) citing a peer-reviewed study that estimated the effects of dismantling USAID. It found that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will result in 14 million deaths overall by 2030, of which 4.5 million will be children under the age of 5. This is probably a high-end estimate, but even lower end projections with different methodologies sit between 670,000 and 1.6 million annual deaths compared to a fiscal year 2023 baseline. In other words, the toll from USAID cuts by 2030 seems to be at best around two-thirds of a million people; that’s about as many people as were killed during the Civil War. At worst, Musk is tied to the deaths of millions. If DOGE had managed to cut tens of billions of dollars from the federal budget, Musk and his defenders would certainly have taken credit. It’s bizarre then to disclaim responsibility for the tragic consequences of the cuts they did make. Yet Musk and his defenders insist that Khanna is somehow slandering him. There are a couple of interlocking issues worth separating here: one is the factual question of what actually happened to USAID, where Musk is now downplaying his actions. A second question is what is likely to happen out in the real world to real people without USAID. And the final issue is whether Musk should be subject to basic Congressional oversight for wrecking whole government agencies as an outside adviser to the president.” (Kobe Yank-Jacobs/The Argument Magazine)

“Around 34 million Sudanese are currently in need of humanitarian assistance—that’s 72 percent of the population. About 26 million people are facing food insecurity and imminent famine has been flagged in several areas of Darfur. More than eight million children are out of school—an entire generation deprived of education. Up to 90 percent of the health care facilities are shut down. One aid worker tells me that the number of dead and displaced is so high that organizations have stopped counting. To begin our journey, Lynsey and I meet up in the middle of the night at the airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and together we sleepily board a dawn flight to Juba. Both of us are experienced war reporters with many years working in Africa. But getting inside the country is not easy. We intend to begin our journey in Port Sudan, then move to Khartoum and on to Darfur. But after months of waiting, our permission to travel beyond Port Sudan without a military escort was denied, so we decide to head for the Sudan border instead, where we know that refugees from Darfur, the Nuba Mountains, and Kordofan are fleeing in large numbers. There we hope to capture the pain and the turmoil of a new wave of violence in a war that has spanned decades. It happens to be the start of Christian Holy Week. Our small plane flies along the White Nile from Juba to Ruweng in the north, about just a few miles from the border. We fly over wetlands and savannas, small villages with mud and thatched huts where herding and nomadic families live. The plane flies low and lands at a dirt airstrip littered with the carcasses of crashed planes—noses, tails, wings, a graveyard of corroded steel in the red soil. Someone says more than 16 planes have crash-landed in the past few years. The man next to me makes the sign of the cross on arrival. When we climb into a car, a tiny child, no more than five, runs to my window and pretends to vomit. ‘He wants sympathy, he’s pretending to be sick,’ the driver says. The child watches us pull away and leave, resigned to being ignored. I see him growing smaller and smaller as we drive on in the red dust.” (Janine Di Giovani/Vanity Fair)

“Researchers analyzed DNA from 111 people buried at 19 archaeological sites across Sicily. The remains date from the fifth to the fifteenth century CE, covering the Roman period, Islamic rule, Norman rule, and later medieval centuries. The study appears in PLOS One. Sicily occupied a key position in the Mediterranean. Trade routes linked the island with Europe, North Africa, and the Near East. Armies, merchants, and migrants passed through for centuries. Historians have long known Sicily hosted Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities. Less clear was how these shifts affected the population itself. The DNA results show a story far more complex than repeated waves of replacement. Several people who lived before the Islamic conquest already carried substantial North African ancestry. This finding points to movement across the Mediterranean long before Muslim rulers arrived on the island. Contacts between Sicily and North Africa were already shaping local populations. The team recovered mitochondrial DNA from 67 individuals and genome-wide DNA from 32 people. Those data revealed a mix of ancestries across many centuries. People buried in Islamic cemeteries between the ninth and eleventh centuries came from varied genetic backgrounds. Their ancestry linked to different populations around the Mediterranean basin. Many of those same ancestry patterns appeared in earlier Sicilian populations as well. The evidence suggests long-term connections between communities on opposite sides of the sea. The Islamic period brought signs of even wider contacts. Researchers identified individuals whose ancestry traced back to West Africa and northern Europe. These findings point to migration routes stretching across large parts of Europe and Africa. The Norman period did little to change this pattern. Christian and Muslim burial grounds continued to contain people with diverse ancestries. Religious identity and genetic ancestry did not form separate groups. Instead, people from different backgrounds lived within the same society for generations. By the Late Middle Ages, ancestry patterns began shifting toward those seen in modern European populations.” (Dario Radley/Archaeology)

“Polling in recent months has shown how deeply Trump has slipped with Hispanic voters. A March poll of 1,054 Latino adults by Florida International University’s Latino Public Opinion Forum showed 67 percent of those surveyed disapproved of Trump, with cost of living, immigration, and health care as respondents’ top issues. In April, the Pew Research Center showed that Trump had reached a second-term low approval rating among Latino voters who backed him in 2024, with a 27-point drop in approval since his inauguration. These numbers formed the backdrop for the event at which (Reuben) Gallego spoke: the inaugural Latino Vote Summit convened on Tuesday at the National Press Club. Speaking alongside the senator were Chuck Rocha and Mike Madrid, a duo from opposite sides of the aisle who have worked on campaigns for a couple decades and also host the Latino Vote podcast. They and others discussed how Trump’s problems with voters stemmed largely from their belief that he had misplaced priorities and that none included a laser-like focus on the state of the economy. Carlos Odio, co-founder of Equis Research, a Democratic-aligned group, said that Trump came into office with a grace period with Latinos, which ended thanks to a combination of flailing on the economy and over-aggressive immigration enforcement last summer … Trump may be a singular, disruptive presence in American politics. But someday some Republican will have to take his place. It’s not that Rubio is beloved—though Republicans like him a lot, and more than JD Vance. It’s that a bilingual, bicultural South Florida Cuban-American is by definition different from Trump. Gallego’s worry was that if Democrats stumbled on how they talk to persuadable Hispanics, Rubio could sell a story that recaptured them and their votes.” (Adrian Carrasquillo/The Bullwark)

“CBS Evening News has continued to struggle with declining ratings following Weiss’s decision to appoint Tony Dokoupil as anchor, its audience regularly dipping below 4 million viewers, an important industry benchmark. CBS Mornings has also struggled with ratings since Weiss’s appointment. In his book proposal, (former 60 Minutes executive producer Bill) Owens described Weiss as ‘an opinion writer who has made a name for herself by having a lot of opinions.’ ‘In her first week at the helm, she asked each journalist to do some homework. Write a note to her about everything you are working on - her version of - what did you do over summer break, children?’ he wrote. Owens also delves into Paramount’s agreement to pay President Donald Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit he filed against CBS over a 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, which the president claimed was misleadingly edited. ‘There wasn’t a lawyer alive who believed the case had merit, and I didn’t want to set a precedent by handing over all of our interviews to the candidate who was pointing a gun at us,’ Owens wrote in his book proposal, according to Breaker.” (Isabel van Brugen/The Daily Beast via Yahoo! News)

“In recent months, President Trump, upon advice from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, has relieved or forced the retirement of some of the finest officers that have ever served this nation. I have personally worked with most of them in combat. I can tell you from experience that Generals C. Q. Brown, Randy George, Jim Mingus, J. P. McGee, Dave Hodne, Jim Slife, and Joe Berger and Admirals Lisa Franchetti and Jamie Sands were war fighters through and through. And this week, in an egregious decision, the president forced General Chris Donahue to step down from his position in command of U.S. Army Europe. Donahue is without question one of the most brilliant officers I know. He is strategically focused, tactically aggressive, personally courageous, exceptionally thoughtful in his planning and execution, and compassionate with his troops. He has the respect of every man and woman who ever served with him—and you can put me at the top of that list. What is particularly concerning about these firings is the effect the dismissals will have on the officer ranks.” (William H. McRaven/The Atlantic)

“Two of the women openly emailed Epstein about recruiting for him. Both were young Russians and both received significant sums of money from – and spent considerable time with – Leon Black between 2009 and 2019, when Epstein was arrested. The women often refer to ‘Leon’ or ‘L,’ a designation that Sen. Wyden believes refers to Black, as do we. The first woman we identify as Irina Chernova. She is in the DOJ files, and Wyden has stated that Black made payments directly to her between 2009-12. That allowed us to confirm that emails to Epstein during this period referencing ‘Leon’ from ‘Irina’ were sent by Chernova. Chernova was born in 1984 in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, and worked in television journalism. Based on the files, she appears to have recruited dozens of women for Epstein, and in 2011, introduced him to Karyna Shuliak, the Russian model and eventual dental student to whom Epstein later bequeathed his estate. In one January 2011 email exchange, he pressures Chernova to bring him new girls. Chernova was also one of the largest recipients of Leon Black’s money. According to Sen. Wyden, she received ‘hundreds of thousands of dollars’ directly from Black’s Bank of America accounts between 2009 and 2012.” (Nina Burleigh/American Freakshow)

“Too bad he missed his crowning achievement. Which is the endless obituaries in today’s news media trumpeting him and his efforts. This is what Clive Davis wanted. Acknowledgement and immortality. And to achieve that, he was on an endless quest of personal myth-making. I’m not saying the guy was without talent. He could certainly pick a Top 40 hit. And he did sign all those acts coming out of the Monterey Pop Festival. But if you look closely at his career you’ll find an endless slew of evanescent acts singing meaningless songs. They might have had commercial success once upon a time, but they’ve got no legs. Now let’s be clear, Clive Davis was the first well-known executive of the rock and roll era. Before that… It was old men in suits, possibly chomping cigars, but they were ultimately faceless to those outside the business. And then Clive Davis got fired. Now starting a few years before this, the nascent rock press started to mention his name. Fans wanted to know who was responsible for their music, and Columbia Records was the biggest label in the land. With Warner/Reprise coming up close. But Mo Ostin had a different philosophy. Sure, he started off with momentary hits, but soon transitioned to career artists, who he took a hands-off policy towards. Whereas Clive famously meddled. He thought he knew more than the acts. Despite making his bones in the album rock world, he was really a throwback to the pre-Beatle, Tin Pan Alley era. If you’re in the know, the two greatest record executives of the modern era are Mo and Ahmet Ertegun.” (Bob lefsetz)

“DSA has existed since the 1980s, but has only mattered, in a political sense, since 2017, when the followers of the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign sought an outlet for their ambitions. Sanders had lost, but why abandon politics altogether? DSA boomed. After membership tailed off in the early 2020s, it ballooned again when Mamdani ran for mayor. They are at a new apogee, or still far away from a peak—we won’t know for a while. As long as they have a mayor who is willing to stump for them, anything is possible. Mamdani, notably, did not endorse the entire DSA slate. To appease Carl Heastie, the Assembly speaker, he remained neutral in races where DSA insurgents were directly challenging members of the Assembly. It was a move I questioned, but one that ultimately worked to Mamdani’s favor because he got everything he wanted: the insurgents, minus one, won anyway, and he got credit for delivering the victories of Valdez, Chevalier Avila, and (Brad) Lander. And it’s inarguable that his support was essential for the two women, who were in much tougher fights than Lander and had far less political experience. Espaillat does not get beaten without Mamdani. Valdez, with DSA, might have eked out a victory against Brooklyn Borough President Antontio Reynoso, but it’s hard to imagine she’s obliterating him by twenty points without the full-throated Mamdani endorsement. He cut ads for her, campaigned for her, and ensured every voter of his knew who he wanted for Congress. Mamdani brought her to the mountaintop.” (Ross Barkan/Political Currents)

“I love directing because you create the world. Sometimes, the scene could be off because of the hair or wardrobe. The devil is in the details. When I was a young actor, I was working on this educational show for PBS in Kentucky. I was in my 20s, but I was playing a 17-year-old kid that didn’t know his history and there was this older gentleman who was teaching me. We had a kitchen scene and when I got there, I saw this production design person turning the chairs over and throwing clothes on the floor. Then he took a piece of bread, ripped it apart and then did this [does a sprinkling motion] over the table. I asked what was going on and he said, ‘I’m making the ghetto.’ All the production people were white. All the other actors took their seats at the table and I just knew it wasn’t right. I went to the director and said, ‘I’m sorry, but I’m from the ghetto. We’re not nasty, we’re proud. How do I explain these crumbs to my mother, because she’s going to be watching this?’ The director saw how passionate I was and told them to clean everything up. I was shaking, but I thanked him. Afterwards, the other cast members were like, ‘That was good, man, because I felt the same way.’ At first I was like, ‘Well why didn’t you help me?’ But in that moment, I started to find my voice.” (Robert Townsend/NYT)

Welcome, Ladies and Gentlemen, fans of all ages, to the #Sportspocalypse. The month of June is sports hyper-saturated, even more so than usual for summers start. Behind us are the NBA Finals, the Women’s and Men’s Golf Open, the 24 Hours of Le Mans. In the foreground, FIFA World Cup 2026 is resolving itself. And on the horizon — through the haze of smoke and laser lights — Wimbledon. Global diplomacy and immigration activism coincide and collide. In this gladiatorial fundament, the inextricable connection between governance and sports could not be more evident. Or, as I like to call it: Sports Politics.

From the original Panhellenic Games to the 1936 Berlin Games or even the 1968 Mexico City Black Power salute of the 20th Century, sports acts as a massive geopolitical force -- for good or for ill. Woe be unto the Statesman — or Stateswoman — who ignores its cultural significance. In the 21st century, sport washing has become a phenomenon in places as diverse as Rwanda and Saudi Arabia, highlighting its power even across borders. Closer to home, President Trump won the 2024 election, in part, due to sports politics. While it is impossible to measure exactly how much sports politics — as opposed to, say, the assassination attempt — played in Trump’s victory, the Democrat party’s refusal to answer his appeals to enthusiasts of The Games certainly did not enhance their prospects.

We cannot fail to note here that Barack Obama, a centrist Democrat of Harvard Law, never took the importance of sports politics for granted. The former President’s March Madness bracket releases were a highly anticipated annual staple throughout his two terms in office. Obama’s track record was not entirely unsucky, but it connected him with sports fans, which is no small thing for a politician with an elite background. It is difficult to conjure in the imagination Al Gore, or even Hillary Clinton, sometimes Yankee, sometimes Cub enthusiast, stooping so low to conquer. Such a public show of sports politics aligned the first African-American President with rural, working class, male voters. Somewhat, at least. Millions viewed his dedicated annual segment on ESPN alongside reporter Andy Katz.

And while it is impossible to know precisely what this man-of-the-people sports approach had on his electoral destiny, it is interesting that Obama has continued the tradition, post-Presidency. This past March, Obama released his full men's and women's NCAA Tournament brackets via the Obama Foundation and Twitter. This is not insignificant. A national survey released this month by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute’s (RRPFI) Center on Civility and Democracy (CCD) found that: “When comparing athletics and politics, 63% of Americans say that athletics positively affects a person’s integrity, while only 28% believe political involvement positively affects one’s integrity.” It concluded, “Americans trust athletes nearly eight times more than they trust politicians.” So, there’s that.

While Trump was heavily courting the college, pro football, combat sports and golf vote, the Harris-Walz response ran tepid beyond a “sports-themed pep talk” in the lead-in to Election Day. Too little; too late. Trump, who has a long affiliation with the WWE and boxing promotion, always placed premium importance on sports brands. “On his first day back in office on January 20, 2025, Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders at a makeshift desk set up in the middle of the Capital One Arena, home to the Washington Wizards NBA team and the Washington Capitals hockey team,” Karim Zidan wrote for PlaytheGame.org. “With each executive action signed, Trump would pause for dramatic effect before holding up the signature before the estimated 20,000 supporters, who roared and cheered in approval.”

A Wall Street Journal Editorial noted this week the impact of our welcoming immigration system with the surprising success of the American soccer team. It said, in part:

“The U.S. team last week clinched a spot in the knockout round after defeating Australia. A quarter of its players were born outside of the U.S., including Gio Reyna, Antonee Robinson and Sebastian Berhalter (U.K.), Sergiño Dest (Netherlands), Malik Tillman (Germany) and Alejandro Zendejas (Mexico).

Many players are also first- or second-generation Americans of diverse descent.

Melissa Chen of The American Spectator, on X.com, sees all of this and comes to the almost Spenglerian conclusion:

Each traveling World Cup fan base showcases the full, unfiltered expression of its national identity, something that now feels discouraged back home.

Mass migration and a prevailing culture of self-loathing have made open pride in one’s heritage increasingly unfashionable.

From Swedish fans raising maypoles and weaving flower crowns, to Norwegians rowing in unison like their Viking ancestors, to Scots marching in tartan to the sound of bagpipes. These are living portraits of a people, distilled to their purest essence. They embody the particular inheritance of language, custom, landscape, and ancestral memory that shaped who they are.

OK, Gloomer! Her dying Western Civ takeaway from the World Cup boils down to: "(m)ass migration and a prevailing culture of self-loathing have made open pride in one’s heritage increasingly unfashionable." I realize Ms. Chen has a curious little side-hustle agitating against anything remotely “woke,” and it has been profitable to her bottom line, but this is a stretch. This is, to be frank, good tribalism.

By contrast, I see diverse, immigrant-rich teams fiercely (and JOYOUSLY) competing under universal rules. I see, if only briefly, closed borders and cultural homogeneity vanished. Trans-national fandom prevails! These immigrant-rich teams, which the Wall Street Journal already mentioned, compete with an open national pride, but a national pride devoid the gratuitous cruelty of right-wing nationalism. Why is Ms. Chen so openly pessimistic about national pride, global cooperation, universal rules, athletic excellence and — above all — Joy? The evidence on the field does not support her dark sepia portrait of isolationism.

I stress here the word: Joy. Because, again, it contrasts sharply against the monumental, epic joylessness of right-wing nationalism. And the instances of diversity, of progressive World Cup nationalism have gone viral. The Japanese in Mexico; the Tartan Army meets Boston; Ecuadorians celebrating on Philadelphia’s Rocky steps. There are countless such internationalist human interest stories circulating. There will no doubt be countless more, throwing light on the doom.

Progressive NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani — unlike his centrist counterparts — seems to get this. Mamdani, who, like me was born in Uganda, has soccer in his blood. Mamdani has embraced progressive policies, like affordable ticket initiatives, public viewing in Central Park, the “Game over Greed” campaign and even seeming minutiae like “hydration pushback.” This sort of sports politics are alien to centrist elites, though probably not to Trump, who, rather crudely, hosted the UFC at the White House, also in June. Say what you will about Trump — and far-rightists like his ideological predecessor, Silvio Berlusconi, who is one of the most influential figures in modern European football — he gets Sports Politics in his gut. Centrist John Kerry almost certainly does not.

In closing, it is instructive to note that today Pope Leo dedicated this month’s prayer intention to sports being “an instrument of peace, encounter, and dialogue among cultures and nations.” The Pope — a lifelong Chicago White Sox fan that he is — of course gets it. He concluded: “May sports promote values such as respect, solidarity, and personal growth.”

In the final arena, where 211 nations collide in a high-octane celebration of passion, global solidarity and national pride — Is it a stretch to call this thing of ours, this beautiful antidote to isolationism, Progressive World Cup Nationalism?

“As armed non-state actors adopt new technologies and operational techniques on the battlefield, African militaries are struggling to catch up. Consequently, the Continent currently accounts for more than half of global fatalities from terror attacks. The Sahel, where jihadists and other separatist groups are waging wars against communities and states, contributes the bulk of these figures … The wars in the Sahel aren’t just peripheral affairs that can be ignored by governments in capitals. For example, in late April of this year jihadists in Mali got very close to Bamako, a city of over 4m people which at the time had endured a blockade of sorts for months. The same jihadists and allies overrun several urban centers in the North before the assault on Bamako. This raises the question: What would it take to pacify the Sahel? And how can African militaries respond to the evolving technological and organizational landscape of the region’s battlefields? These may sound like absurd questions to most people, for two reasons. First, we have become conditioned to accept violence and disorder as core features of the Sahel; and so the absolute best we can do is to manage both. Second, the region’s weak states and current leadership don’t seem like the best candidates to execute on this mission even if we were to come up with a workable plan.” (Ken Opalo/Africanist Perspective)

“Yotam Marom has written a brave, necessary and ultimately confounding new book about life inside the contemporary left in America. Its title, For Louder Days, evokes his hope that someday the left will be less marginal and a bigger force in shaping the future, but the subtitle—’Reaching beyond a politics of powerlessness’—is really the heart of what concerns him. Indeed, if you are someone who has ever spent time anywhere on the left, either directly inside its movements and organizations, or indirectly in places infused and confused by left culture, you should read this book. Marom convincingly illustrates in graphic detail how much of the contemporary left is caught in a trap largely of its own making: too devoted to purity tests, too distrustful of leaders, too allergic to hierarchy in any form, and ultimately too unwilling to face hard truths, that it may never escape the cultural cul-de-sac it’s stuck in.” (Micah L. Sifry/The Connector)

"No conflict in the post-Cold War era illustrates the fast-follower dynamic as vividly as the war in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Both nations have fast followed each other, repeatedly, at the technical, tactical and institutional levels simultaneously. The imitation cycles that took months or years in the 20^th century have contracted to weeks and, in some domains, days. This acceleration reflects the proliferation of cheap sensors, open-source intelligence, commercial drone manufacturing and the unprecedented transparency of a war fought in front of the world’s cameras. This part examines the Ukraine-Russia adaptation spiral in depth, tracing fast following across drone warfare, electronic warfare, naval innovation and institutional design. It then draws from these cases a set of concrete recommendations for Western military institutions that wish to build a deliberate and systemic fast-following capability rather than relying on the sporadic and accidental emulation that has characterised much of their recent practice. The argument here is that fast following is not a niche skill or an emergency measure; it is a core competency for military institutions in an era of continuous and accelerating competitive pressure.” (Mick Ryan/Futura Doctrina)

“One of the lessons of Regime Change is how disastrous it was that Biden won the 2020 election. In Trump’s first term, he was, in many ways, a blundering novice held down by a revolving cast of institutional professionals. His comeback, after beating 52 legal charges and surviving the Pennsylvania assassination attempt, proved to himself that he was invincible. I recall how the hulking sight of Trump sitting with his back to the camera in courtroom after courtroom made me ponder what dreadful payback the flayed former president — and his followers — would extract from the liberal establishment for these humiliations. Sure enough, in the four years of exile, his rage metastasized into a scorched-earth plan of action underpinned by bloodless enforcer wonk Miller, who would be ready to go on day one of the second term. Steve Bannon called what we are now seeing, ‘pure Trump’ … The book has fun with a favorite Trump torment target: the succession rivalry between his ambitious chameleon VP JD Vance and the open-faced Iago Marco Rubio, now Secretary of State. Vance’s efforts to try to keep the MAGA base from splitting by urging for the release of the Epstein files and voicing concern that a Middle East war broke Trump’s campaign pledge irritated the president. (The MAGA base matters deeply to Vance, who needs to keep it together for a run in ‘28.) In Regime Change, it’s clear that Rubio, who pushed hard for the successful Venezuela raid and has held his cards close on Iran, seems ascendent. The authors write, ‘During Trump’s redecorating spree in the Oval Office, someone had asked him about the near certainty that the next president would remove what he had done, the president had replied, without missing a beat: ‘Cubans love gold.’” (Fresh Hell/Tina Brown)

“Robert Kagan’s May 2026 piece in the Atlantic clearly outlines the consequences of the war in Iran for the United States and the accelerating global adjustment to a post-American world as a result of this massive miscalculation. The supposition might be that Russia will take some advantage, but the war’s geopolitical impacts are a mixed bag for Moscow. The current oil crisis has strengthened Russia through a rush of petrodollars (more money for existing volumes) into state coffers and its Ukraine war chest. Yet these financial gains have come at a cost: the war has undermined many of the networks that Russia has depended on to resist Western pressure over the last several years. For example, Russia relies on the Persian Gulf for resources other than oil and gas. Gulf states provide a safe haven for Russian money, companies, top businessmen, politicians, offshore remote workers, and tourists pushed out of Europe and the United States by sanctions and other restrictions. The Gulf is also a major hub for Russian finance and trade, and a transportation node for flights to Moscow from around the world. Gulf leaders increasingly took care of diplomatic and other political affairs for Russia, hosting meetings and negotiations with both the Ukrainians and U.S. envoys. Iran itself has also been a stabilizing force for Russia’s domestic and regional strategy. It provided a Shia and largely disinterested religious counterweight to troublesome Sunni Muslim populations in Russia’s heartland and periphery. Crucially, at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Iran provided Shahed drones to combat Ukraine’s rapid adoption of unmanned combat aerial vehicles. Russia has since launched its own drone production, but Iran provided a vital service at a pivotal moment in the conflict. The war has also deprived Moscow of an important political partner. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was a valued and long-standing interlocutor for the entirety of Putin’s 25-year presidency … There are some structural similarities in the wars in Ukraine and the Persian Gulf. Russians think that Ukraine is home territory, but it has always been a contested space on the shifting frontier of the vast Russian empire. Similarly, the United States has been a major player in the Middle East for 80 years, but it is a region that does not necessarily advantage the United States, and the standoff with Iran has endured for half this time. The two conflicts are not identical. Ukraine was not a threat to Russia in the way that Iran was a threat to the United States and to larger global security through its vicious proxy wars, support for terrorism, and attacks on U.S. interests. Yet both conflicts have produced a similar outcome: a weaker power has trapped a stronger one in a costly confrontation.” (Fiona Hill/Brookings)

“The geopolitical disaster authored by U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done far more than squander the dominant position both nations were in just three and a half months ago. Their unprovoked and failed war against Iran has likely set in motion a sea change in global power balances—a shift that will leave both the United States and Israel relatively weaker in the months and years to come. Trump is now a seriously diminished figure at home and around the globe, his world-beating bluster turned to ash and empty threats. For the foreseeable future, the projection of U.S. power will no longer be as ominous as it once was—not just in the Middle East, but in the Indo-Pacific and Europe as well. The memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed this week is effectively a surrender document—for Washington, that is. Apparently, in exchange for doing nothing more than signing the MOU, agreeing to 60 days of talks, and opening up the Strait of Hormuz, the Iranians will gain financial concessions that would have been unthinkable a few months ago. These could include the release of at least some frozen or restricted Iranian funds and assets, as well as waivers available ‘immediately upon the signing of this MOU’ for ‘the export of Iranian crude oil, petroleum products and derivatives, and all associated services, including banking transactions, insurances, transportation, etc.,’ according to the MOU released by the Trump administration. To sum up: The U.S. president gained nothing at all in his war—far less than nothing, actually—in return for spending tens of billions of dollars and costing thousands of lives, including at least 13 Americans killed. To win vague promises from Tehran, Trump did major damage to the newly inflation-plagued U.S. economy; betrayed his political base at home; seriously depleted the U.S. critical weapons supply; empowered China and heightened its relative stature; alienated U.S. allies; and weakened the Gulf states. And all at the hands of a regime, the Islamic Republic of Iran, that only three and a half months ago was isolated and economically devastated. Thanks to the war, even a severely weakened Iran has now become a significant geopolitical player—one that will soon reap new financial windfalls.” (Michael Hirsch/FP)

“Public speculation about the state of the President’s physical and mental health erupts in regular bursts related to hand-bruises, weird sagging eye, weird rashes, cankles, public naps and unhinged rambles. But we pay less attention to his emotional health, even though he’s a lonely old man with millions of distant admirers and no real friends. His devoted wife is AWOL. When not in Florida, he lives alone in the White House residence except for the nightly apparition of Natalie Harp delivering a menu of obscene and racist social media memes, and the preternaturally discreet White House staff providing snacks and cleaning up after him. According to Swan and Haberman’s new book, the residence is an Augean stables of snack trash, with the old man tossing out White House silver along with the chip bags and empty ice cream containers. The only physical contact the old man has with anyone beyond his official hand shaking duties is likely a glam room attendant straightening the red tie and wielding the spray tan, hair spray, suit-steamer, lint-brush to make him TV-ready. Of all the memes circulated about the American President, the toddler in diapers or giant baby playing with toy bombers in the Iranian LEGO videos probably comes closest to the spectacle inside the gilded bunker. But Trump thinks of himself as a Builder not a warrior. He has spent his life trying to live up to the unmet expectations of Fred Trump, a man who knew foundations and concrete and actually had put hammer to nail. Donald grew up at that man’s side, costumed in hard hat but with hands destined to remain forever soft. He learned the profane patois of New York and New Jersey contractors but farmed out the rest of it. Trump’s second term is remarkable for more aberrances than we can track. But chief among them are the mysterious, unnecessary projects to demolish East Wing, re-coat the Reflecting Pool, affix gold decorations to the Oval Office with super glue and until stopped, tear down and re-do the Kennedy Center.” (Nina Burleigh/American Freakshow)

“In postwar Japan, where bombed-out cities gave way to frantic reconstruction, and fortunes rose overnight through black markets and backroom deals, one man built an empire through force, loyalty, and relentless ambition. Kazuo Taoka, later known as the ‘Godfather of Godfathers’ and the Bear of Kobe, did not inherit power or stumble into it through family privilege. He took it piece by piece, expanding a small dockside gang into the largest criminal syndicate Japan had ever seen and wrapping it in the outward appearance of legitimate business. For thirty-five years, he ruled the Yamaguchi-gumi with a mixture of discipline, violence, and calculation that reshaped organized crime in modern Japan. His rise mirrored Japan’s transformation. As the country rebuilt from war and rushed toward economic dominance, Taoka built his own parallel empire in the shadows, profiting from reconstruction, labor disputes, gambling, entertainment, and political connections that reached deep into the corridors of power. He survived prison, assassination attempts, and gang wars, emerging each time with his authority strengthened rather than diminished. By the time of his death in 1981, the Yamaguchi-gumi had become a national force with thousands of members spread across hundreds of affiliated groups. What followed his death was even more bloody. Rival factions battled for control in a conflict that turned the streets of Kansai into a war zone during Japan’s booming bubble economy, exposing how deeply the yakuza had embedded themselves into business, politics, and everyday life.” (Front Page Detectives/Michael East)

“Late in the afternoon of July 6, 2019, about a dozen F.B.I. agents and New York Police Department officers gathered at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, waiting out of view of the tarmac so as not to spook their quarry. The day before, they received an email informing them that a private jet would be arriving at 5:20 p.m. Attached to the email was an arrest warrant for its lone passenger, Jeffrey Epstein. Returning from Paris, Epstein was making plans on his phone: a trip to his private island in the Caribbean, a documentary interview with Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former adviser. When the plane touched down, customs agents boarded to check the passports of Epstein and the plane’s two pilots. Then they escorted Epstein into the terminal, where an F.B.I. agent and a detective told him he was under arrest. Epstein appeared shocked. He managed to send one last message to Bannon: ‘All canceled.’ Bannon wrote back immediately. ‘you r not coming in?’ There was no reply. As the F.B.I. agents drove Epstein to Manhattan, he asked two questions. ‘Is this sex trafficking?’ ‘Is this about underage?’ It was. The F.B.I. and federal prosecutors had quietly opened a new investigation eight months earlier into Epstein’s activities in New York, focusing on victims who had not been interviewed in his decade-old sex-crimes case in Florida. While Epstein was abroad, he was indicted under seal on charges of trafficking minors for sex. If found guilty, he faced up to 45 years in prison — a sentence far worse than the 13 months he had served in Palm Beach after a plea deal in 2008. ‘Oh, this is bad,’ he said aloud as he was booked into federal custody. ‘This is really bad.’” (Charles Homans, Steve Eder, Jan Ransom and Michael Rothfeld/NYT)

"North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District could be a key barometer in determining how big of a Democratic wave occurs in 2026. The district, wedged in the western corner of North Carolina, has not elected a Democrat since 2010, but it got a little less red between 2020 and 2024. Electoral trends, combined with the perceived strength of the challenger Jamie Ager (D) and potential weaknesses of the incumbent Chuck Edwards (R, NC-11), lead many Democrats to believe they have a chance in this unlikely district. The last three House majorities, in 2020, 2022, and 2024, were all very narrow, with the winning side getting only a few seats over the 218 required for a majority. The most recent House majority that was markedly bigger than that came in 2018, the last Democratic midterm wave year, when Democrats won 235 seats. The Democrats’ ability to match 2018, or maybe even surpass it, depends on their ability to expand the House playing field, particularly as Republicans have outperformed Democrats in redistricting. One of the places to watch for an expanded House playing field is North Carolina’s 11th District. Wedged into the corner of North Carolina against the borders of Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina, the district that gave us Republicans Madison Cawthorn and Mark Meadows is suddenly gaining attention from the Democratic Party—where Democrat Jamie Ager is attempting to unseat incumbent Republican Chuck Edwards. It may seem curious that the 11th is anything other than a foregone conclusion for the Republican Party. " (Christopher Cooper/Center for American Politics)

“Over the past four and a half years, I have observed and written about the war in Ukraine, as well as the wars in the Middle East, and explored how different nations and military institutions have learned and adapted. Nations like Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Iran and others learned how to learn and adapt better. At the same time, a global adaptation war has emerged, with an authoritarian learning and adaptation bloc of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea learning and sharing insights into tactics, technology and strategy faster than has ever been possible before. In a report last year, I characterised this new era global adaptation environment as one with significant concurrency, where intellectual rather than technological innovation is pre-eminent, and where new technologies like AI, social media and others have sped up and compressed learning cycles. And while all participants in this adaptation war have imperfect insight into their adversaries, and learning can be unevenly distributed between military services and nations, the modern adaptation environment is transforming force generation, force structures, the employment of military forces and the development of national security policy in peace and war. In his book Race to the Swift, Richard Simpkin inverted a passage from Ecclesiastes (‘the race is not to the swift’) with an argument that in modern war, the race is to the swift. This would be achieved through a focus on manoeuvre over attrition, momentum and tempo, application of the indirect approach and deep operations, and precision warfare. In modern war, particularly the ones we have observed in the past half decade, it has also been argued that strategic, operational and tactical advantage accrues to those who are fastest to learn and adapt.” (Mick Ryan/Futura Doctrina)

“An international investigation into Russia’s shadow fleet has revealed how mercenaries on ships transporting Russian oil are monitoring crews. Danish investigative unit Danwatch tracked how 83 Russians with military and intelligence backgrounds have sailed through Danish waters … In the territorial waters of Western nations, a covert security operation is underway aboard Russia’s shadow fleet — the tankers carrying sanctioned Russian oil. Working with a consortium of European media outlets headed by Follow the Money and Dossier Center, Danish investigative outlet Danwatch reported that Moscow is embedding armed minders on ships to keep tanker crews compliant and resistant to NATO inspections. Reporters reviewed more than 2,000 crew lists and drew on hidden camera interviews to identify dozens of mercenaries operating onboard. They then cross-referenced leaked passport numbers, pay stubs, and travel records with social media and Telegram activity to confirm that at least 83 Russians with military and intelligence backgrounds — including several with ties to the Wagner mercenary group — sailed undetected through Danish waters. Danwatch found that between May 2025 and February 2026, these men made nearly 140 voyages on 65 ships, 58 of which carried oil sold by Russian state company Rosneft.” (GIJN)

“After Bhinnata Piya’s mother was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 2020, Piya was determined to be a supportive caregiver. Her father had died of the same type of cancer only three years earlier, and the loss devastated the tight-knit Nepalese family. ‘When our dad died, I was just crying so much. We didn’t do enough,’ Piya told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. ‘But when my mom died, I really felt like we did all that we could.’ Piya had moved back to Nepal from Cleveland for six months while her husband, Dain Finke, an American physician, remained in the United States. There she cared for her 63-year-old mother, Sita Gurung, during the day and worked remotely as a project manager for a health care technology company at night, until she could no longer manage it all. Piya quit her job. She paid thousands of dollars toward Gurung’s more than $40,000 treatment. She accompanied her to India for medical scans. She even watched dutifully as Gurung, increasingly frail and eventually unable to eat, spent hours in the kitchen teaching her how to cook her favorite recipes. ‘She once told me that if it weren’t for me, she would have died a long time back,’ Piya, now 36, said. At the end of 2022, as Gurung’s health worsened, her doctor prescribed an expensive immunotherapy treatment called Keytruda. Following the doctor’s recommendation, they bought the medication from a hospital worker in India who ran a medical tourism business. Gurung was on the medication for two months, but it made no difference. On Feb. 9, 2023, after enduring 2½ years of grueling chemotherapy, radiation and immunotherapy, she died at home with her elder daughter and Piya by her side. ‘I took peace in knowing that we did everything,’ Piya said. But that feeling was short-lived. One year after Gurung’s death, Piya’s sister learned shocking news while visiting her in Ohio and told her, ‘You need to sit down for this.’ An Indian newspaper had reported that the man who sold them their mother’s cancer medication had been arrested. Police in New Delhi charged him and several others with selling adulterated drugs after allegedly finding they had filled vials labeled as Keytruda or other expensive oncology treatments with antifungal medicine, according to police records. Piya never tested her mother’s medication, never suspected it could be fake. But the news planted a terrible fear in her mind: that she had possibly given her mother fake drugs. ‘I just felt so numb,’ Piya said.” (Nichole Sadek and Isabella Cota/ICIJ)

“‘In Brazil, most cancer patients can’t afford Keytruda, and thousands turn to the courts to get it. In India, a month of Keytruda treatment can cost more than a year’s salary, forcing families into impossible choices between medical care and basic subsistence,’ according to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, one of 47 media partners involved in ICIJ’s Cancer Calculus investigation. The yearlong project featuring the work of 124 journalists across 37 countries reports that Merck’s Keytruda drug pricing and patent strategies drive up costs and limit patient access to the life-saving treatment … ICIJ’s findings show that annual treatment costs of Keytruda vary widely, with so-called ‘list prices’ for a typical treatment ranging from about US$80,000 a year in Germany to $208,000 in the US, US$93,000 in Lebanon, to about US$130,000 in Colombia. In South Africa, the same course of treatment would cost US$65,000, while in Croatia it’s US$116,000. ‘Keytruda is more expensive for median income earners in the US and poorer Eastern European countries, like Bulgaria and Hungary, than in some wealthy Western European countries,’ the ICIJ report noted … ICIJ’s reporting revealed that Merck has deployed the following strategies to keep prices up. While none of these practices is illegal, reporters said these tactics are designed to ‘build a fortress’ around the drug to keep its price high.

• Made at least 1,212 patent applications in 53 jurisdictions — to extend market exclusivity and stifle competition.

• Lack of pricing transparency.

• Distributed tens of millions of dollars in the US in consulting fees, travel costs, and other Keytruda-related payments to doctors and healthcare professionals.

• Gave nearly US$75 billion in dividends to shareholders and US$43 billion into share buybacks.

• Reduced its US taxes by recording profits in lower-tax jurisdictions, such as Switzerland.” (Alexa von Stickle/GIJN)

“Archaeologists working at Walīla, the medieval city built on the site of ancient Volubilis in Morocco, have identified a carved stone game board inside a public bathhouse dating to the early Islamic period. The find offers rare evidence of leisure activities in North Africa between the late eighth and tenth centuries CE. The board was carved into the upper step of a cold-water pool within a hammam constructed during the Idrisid period. Researchers believe the design matches a strategy game known today as tāb or sīg, which is still played in parts of North Africa and the Middle East. If this interpretation is correct, the board represents the earliest known evidence of the game in North Africa. Board games appear often in medieval Arabic literature, showing their place in daily life. Archaeological evidence for gaming in early Islamic societies has received far less attention. One reason is that most carved game boards are difficult to date. Many were etched onto buildings and pavements used for centuries, making their age uncertain. The Walīla example comes from a much clearer archaeological context. The bathhouse was built in the late eighth or early ninth century and was abandoned by the tenth or eleventh century. Coins, pottery, and radiocarbon dating from the site provide a reliable timeframe for the board’s use. The game board measures about 34 centimeters in length and 9.5 centimeters in width. Three rows of at least thirteen shallow holes were cut directly into the stone step using tools such as a hammer and chisel. Researchers note that the carving was uneven, suggesting the work of a non-professional rather than a trained stoneworker. Its position inside the bathhouse appears deliberate. The board sits at the entrance to the pool where bathers entering or leaving the water would have easily seen it. Two players could sit on opposite sides of the step while playing. Because of its central location, researchers believe the board formed part of normal activity within the building rather than an unauthorized carving. The team considered whether the board could have been used for mancala, a family of games played across Africa and Asia.” (Dario Radley/Archaeology News)

“We’re witnessing a ‘once in a generation confluence of incredible events,’ Fox analytics boss Michael Mulvihill says, calling this ‘the kind of week sports documentaries get made about.’ The World Cup is underway, with the US playing Paraguay in prime time tonight. Game 5 of the NBA Finals is tomorrow night. The UFC‘s highly controversial fight night at the White House is on Sunday, and so is Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final. If the World Cup seems like an even bigger spectacle than it was four years ago, that’s because it is. ‘The decision by FIFA to nearly double the size of the World Cup has not drawn universal praise, but it is an undeniable boost to U.S. media rights holders Fox and Telemundo,’ Deadline’s Dade Hayes writes. ‘The most recent men’s edition of the Cup, held in Qatar in 2022, featured 32 nations and 64 matches. This one, played in 16 cities across North America, will see 104 matches played by 48 nations.’ ‘For media partners, that extra inventory has been a significant boost,’ Hayes adds. ‘In what tends to be a sleepy time of year, the tournament will provide daily, ad-friendly programming with a larger footprint than the Olympics.’ Fox Sports exec Zac Kenworthy says it is ‘the biggest production Fox Sports has ever put on in our company’s history.’” (Brian Stelter/Reliable Sources)

“After taking office last year, President Trump unapologetically pushed a might-makes-right vision to remake the international order around a U.S. sphere of influence, a worldview not that dissimilar from Russia’s or China’s. The future seemed shaped by an oft-repeated line from ancient Greek historian Thucydides: ‘The strong do what they will, and the weak suffer as they must.’ The saying, originally uttered by invading Athenian forces to the doomed islanders of Melos in 416 B.C., featured prominently in Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech that sent ripples through the international conference in Davos in January, at the peak of Europe’s spat with Trump over his plans to seize the Danish island of Greenland. Yet now it seems that the weak aren’t as weak as many had believed. The strong can’t really do what they want, either. Despite spending a significant part of its long-range munitions and killing a large part of the Iranian leadership, the U.S. military hasn’t been able to secure a strategic victory over a middle power such as Iran. Tehran continues blockading the Strait of Hormuz. Its theocratic system is still in solid control and maintains the ability to lob missiles at Israel and Gulf states, with the latest exchange of salvos this week. Ukraine hasn’t crumbled, either. Trump cut off American aid more than a year ago and put a diplomatic squeeze on Kyiv to surrender its eastern region of Donetsk, as part of his understanding with Russia at August’s summit in Alaska. Despite that, Ukraine has managed to turn the tide of the war against Russia, holding the front line and inflicting increasingly painful strikes on the Russian heartland. These developments showed how much technological advances—such as drones and much cheaper precision missiles—have leveled the playing field between the smaller states and the great powers that are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on their armed forces.” (Yaroslav Trofimov/WSJ)

“RICK ROWLEY: So, Hell’s Army, I mean, I’ve been making films about war for most of my life, because war reveals us. At its moral extremities, our deepest sicknesses become visible not just as individuals, but as a culture. And so, the return of mercenary armies to the battlefield after centuries of absence is more than just a change in military tactics. Democracies don’t need mercenaries. They’re what states turn to when war has become a tool of private greed. They debase soldiers and turn them into murderers. They debase the entire nation by the thugs and the gangsters who run it. And that’s not only a problem in Russia, these processes, the rise of authoritarianism and oligarchy. We’re seeing them right here in the United States and around the world. So, this film is a warning sign of the horrors that lie ahead on this road. Authoritarianism and oligarchy are closing in all around us, but I still think that we can choose a kind of a different path. AMY GOODMAN: And remind us what the Wagner Group is, who Yevgeny Prigozhin was, and his fiery demise in 2023. RICK ROWLEY: Yeah. Well, so, I’ve been tracking mercenaries since 2004, when I first crossed paths with them in Iraq. And, you know, Blackwater there, which was exposed by the brilliant reporter named Jeremy Scahill, was an inspiration to the Russian Ministry of Defense to develop its own mercenary capability. But when Wagner emerged from the shadows first in Syria, it was clear that they’d realized an ideal, a terrifying ideal, that Blackwater and all of its descendants had failed to do. Wagner put 30,000 soldiers in the field at one time. They were larger than most of the armies in Europe. They’re the first private company to conquer a European city in 500 years. And, you know, as you saw in that clip, in countries like the Central African Republic, they’re propping up autocrats in order — while they seize oil fields and gold mines. I mean, when war is turned into a tool of private greed, I mean, it’s a — it’s a business that is always looking for areas to expand. And, you know, it’s a scourge that should have been banned from the battlefield centuries ago. So, Prigozhin’s story and Wagner’s story is incredible. It’s like — it’s like a parallel to the Hollywood film Scarface. Prigozhin was in a Soviet penal colony and was released into the chaos of post-Soviet St. Petersburg. He was a petty thug and a gangster who ran — probably ran money-laundering outfits, you know, casinos and restaurants, linked to other figures in the underworld in St. Petersburg, who happened to cross paths with a rising star there, a former KGB agent named Vladimir Putin. And when Putin became president, Prigozhin became a billionaire.” (Amy Goodman/Democracy Now)

“Dimension 1: Military — Russia’s ‘meat grinder’ and massed aerial attacks are consuming Russian resources for minimal return. The central premise of Putin’s military strategy since 2023 has been attritional: trade bodies and equipment for territory at a rate Ukraine and its supporters cannot sustain, while bringing Ukraine under sustained aerial attack, until Ukrainian resistance collapses or Western will fractures. That strategy requires Russia to absorb casualties at a rate it can replenish and for its aerial campaign to support battlefield gains with impacts on Ukraine’s defence industry and civilian morale. In 2026, the arithmetic of that calculation has turned against the Kremlin. Assessment: One of the most significant military data points of early 2026 is that Russia’s current offensive operations are yielding few gains. Indeed, over the past three months, territorial gains have favoured Ukraine and not Russia (see graph below from Russia Matters). For Russian commanders, given the enormous commitment of manpower along the front line, this is a very worrying trend as they progress into the summer months. This shortfall in territorial gains, contrary to recent comments by Putin who on 5 June claimed that Russia has seized territory four times the size of Ukraine, is exacerbated by combat losses. Now, for the first time since the invasion began, Russia is losing more troops than it is mobilising. Since the start of 2026, according to Ukrainian General Staff estimates, Russian forces lost over 160,000 personnel killed or seriously wounded. March 2026 alone produced 35,000 Russian casualties — a single-month record for the entire conflict. The Kremlin had targeted daily recruitment of between 1,100 and 1,150 personnel; the actual figure has fallen to approximately 940. For four consecutive months from December 2025, Russia’s losses have exceeded its intake.” (Mick Ryan/Futura Doctrina)

“The disgraced former president was back in Florida, licking his wounds after losing to Joe Biden, railing about election fraud as he plotted his return to power. (Jared) Kushner took a different tack. Instead of, say, spending more time with his young children or turning back to the New York real estate scene that had chewed him up and spit him out, he would try something new—something that didn’t require too much talent and hinged almost entirely on his proximity to power and wealth. He would be a private equity fund manager. And Affinity—which he launched the day after Biden was sworn in—would be Kushner’s vehicle to greater riches than he’d ever known before. But again, this was 2021. The world viewed Trump as little more than a twice-impeached former president who’d attempted a coup to remain in power. Kushner was tainted by association with his father-in-law, whose circle of contacts was increasingly worthless. Moreover, doing business with Kushner came with all sorts of hazards—not least the potential blowback from a Biden administration watching out for any foreign governments partnering with the Trump family. The Saudi officials tasked with screening investments had their answer. Affinity’s lack of clarity or strategy, the absence of other major investors, the ‘inexperience’ of its managers, and ‘public relations risks,’ as their report put it, all pointed to an unequivocal no. They would not back Affinity. They would not fund Kushner. But only one vote mattered. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman—architect of the grisly assassination of Saudi Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, lord of the Saudi kleptocracy, a leader opposed to extending women or minorities or gay people anything resembling equal rights—would have the final say. And as MBS saw it, Affinity wasn’t just some panhandling, fly-by-night investment group looking for a handout. It was a fund overseen by a fellow princeling whom the Saudi dictator had already befriended. MBS also knew that if America’s political tides were to turn, Kushner could prove an indispensable asset. So he overruled his experts. Kushner and Affinity would have their funding—$2 billion to start, with potentially much more down the road. And MBS would again have an American partner he could steer in whichever way he wanted. The Saudi investment proved fruitful. Despite Kushner’s insistence during the 2024 campaign that he would have little involvement in a second Trump term, he is once more at the center of almost every major geopolitical event.” (Casey Mitchel/Mother Jones)

“According to Zack Rosen, founder of California YIMBY and the Abundance Network, the problem with politics is Americans being too involved. Bemoaning the rise of small-dollar political donations in fundraising documents leaked to the Prospect, Rosen is blunt: ‘Small dollar internet fundraising makes politics dumber.’ Rosen misses what he considers to be a bygone era of elite dominance. Lamenting the current state of democratized influence, Rosen says ‘the old gatekeepers were political professionals who could count cards; small dollar donors today are amateurs yanking the handles of ActBlue slot machines.’ This sentiment is laid out in substantial detail, filling 31 pages across two separate documents obtained by the Prospect. In an email exchange, Rosen confirmed the documents’ legitimacy. Rosen and his allies have no need for small-dollar donations or mass-membership politics: They come to do political battle with $260 million annually (yes, each year!) from billionaire benefactors, one document asserts. This ‘Abundance Capital Stack’ is being deployed to organize in all 50 states and consists of a $120 million annual commitment from ex-hedge fund manager and current Meta board member John Arnold, $40 million from Facebook/Meta co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, and $100 million from Steve Ballmer, the L.A. Clippers owner and former Microsoft executive. Ballmer, who is currently embroiled in a scandal surrounding alleged off-book pay for NBA star Kawhi Leonard, was not previously known as a funder of the abundance movement.” (Dylan Gyauch-Lewis/American Prospect)

“Your Freakshow guide is just back from a weekend in San Antonio, soaking up the sights and sounds at Turning Point USA’s Women’s Leadership Summit – and yes, coincidentally watching the Knicks kick the Spurs. The word ‘leadership’ was perhaps an oxymoron among the thousands of young women who sat through speech after speech about submitting to God, husband and female biology. The lineup featured high profile conservative women including Erica Kirk, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kayleigh McEnany, and even Texas State Sen. Angela Paxton (Ken Paxton’s estranged and cheated-on wife), alongside a bouquet of hip and pretty right-wing Gen Z influencers all advocating early marriage and pregnancy and putting husband and hearth ahead of worldly pursuits. The TPUSA Women’s Leadership Summit is an annual, expensively produced and carefully packaged political propaganda product. This year, the organization occupied three floors of the San Antonio Marriott, plastering the hotel’s walls, doors, escalators and elevators with slick signage. The main co-sponsor was the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), whose founder said she flew in from Israel to encourage the gathered to repeat a Hebrew word offering themselves to God. To the naked eye, the event was more tent revival than political conference. The most reliable applause lines invoked the dangers of Muslims and ‘transgenders.’ No one needed a Trump button here. The politics of the participants was presumed … TPUSA’s project of selling Gen Z women on a submissive posture aligns with the Heritage Foundation’s latest manifesto. The overt push for submission – a concept that occupied white-nationalist fringe swamps merely a few years ago – has now become one of the ideological pillars enabling the predators’ ball assembled at the White House, headed by a convicted sex abuser and oft-accused serial sex pest.” (Nina Burleigh/American Freakshow)

“As Israeli warplanes pounded Beirut’s southern suburbs last March and residents fled in panic, one man found his opportunity. Amid the chaos, he slipped out of his imprisonment in a Hezbollah cell and made his way to the green hills overlooking the Lebanese capital. There, in the posh diplomatic quarter of Baabda, he disappeared inside the gates of the Ukrainian Embassy. Where he is now is a mystery, tangled up in an ongoing spy game as Hezbollah attempts to root out Israeli intelligence operatives that have infiltrated the militant group. The man identified by Lebanese officials as Khaled al-Aydi is said to be a Palestinian refugee from Syria who also holds Ukrainian citizenship. He had been detained by Hezbollah in the Beirut suburbs and accused by Lebanese officials of being part of a thwarted Israeli intelligence plot to carry out bombings and assassinations. Al-Aydi’s disappearance could have political implications for the Lebanese government, which has largely remained silent about the case. If evidence were to emerge that al-Aydi escaped Lebanon with help from the government, it could inflame tensions with Hezbollah’s largely Shiite Muslim base. The government already faces scrutiny for directly negotiating with Israel, which has been engaged in fierce fighting with Hezbollah since the early days of the Iran war. The Ukrainian Embassy asked Lebanese authorities in March to facilitate al-Aydi’s departure from the country after he escaped Hezbollah detention, according to a Lebanese government document obtained by The Associated Press.” (Abby Sewell and Sally Abbou Aljoud/AP)

“The normal display of African unity in the early stages of a football World Cup was notably absent from social media as many fans from across the continent backed Mexico in the tournament’s opening match against South Africa. The memes were light-hearted - including sombreros, mariachi bands and tacos - but they pointed to a dark underbelly. The banter reflected anger over the reports of xenophobic violence in South Africa. A poor South African performance on the pitch led to a 2-0 defeat against the World Cup co-hosts. As the final whistle blew, social media lit up with a flood of mocking posts. But some South Africans pushed back, praising the spirit of their team, nicknamed Bafana Bafana. South Africa is one of 10 African teams at this year’s expanded World Cup, with the US and Canada co-hosting along with Mexico. Ahead of the Thursday’s match, some African football fans justified their support for Mexico by linking it to the current tensions in South Africa over migration. ‘You want people to cheer for you when you play soccer just because we’re African?’ one X user asked citing reports of mistreatment of migrants. ‘We’re supporting Mexico so that South Africa can go back home early to protect their jobs,’ another user posted, playing on the unfounded accusation that foreigners were responsible for South Africa’s high unemployment rate.” (Wycliffe Muia/BBC)

“‘We have new elite scandals, raping women and children videos. We have two videos of famous singers – all for the low price of 10,000 Sudanese pounds ($2.30). We have a discount – 8,000 Sudanese Pounds ($1.86) for the first five subscribers.’ The horrific text above, advertising content as if selling everyday items, is not being promoted on the dark web or another sinister, cryptic network but openly via a common public platform. Telegram, a cloud-based, cross-platform instant messaging service, openly shares the post as an advertisement. This particular group boasts of having hundreds of subscribers, including a ‘luxury channel’ that includes ‘1,200 videos of kids, 1,000 harassment videos, 13,000 spying videos, and 1,600 videos of rape, all for 20,000 Sudanese Pounds ($4.60).’ It is not alone. An Ayin investigation has revealed a mass network selling pornography, including content involving minors and other content involving rape – all available through Telegram. These networks are expanding and are now posting more than ever. This ecosystem includes at least 100 Telegram networks. Dozens of ‘X’ (formerly ‘Twitter’) identities promote these hubs, guiding traffic and recruiting new users into private groups that monetise explicit content. ‘Visible’ is just a fragment. Ayin believes these 100+ channels make up fewer than 10% of the networks due to recurrent patterns, replicated structure, and constant revenue methods … The most alarming were the open advertisements for pornography involving children and others selling rape videos. One post even advertised child rape. After a data analysis using three separate platforms (see below), Ayin identified over 90 pieces of content involving children over a seven-month period along with two rape videos. In one case, the content claimed that members of the paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, were involved in the rape.” (Ayin Network)

“As Americans have grown tired of their global role, the track record and consequences of the U.S.-led order have been harshly and increasingly criticized from both sides of the political spectrum. The right, once internationalist but now dominated by Trump loyalists and ‘America first’ proponents, believes that American foreign policy elites have squandered vast amounts of blood and treasure in search of ‘permanent American domination of the entire world,’ as the 2025 National Security Strategy put it. In contrast to postwar American leaders such as President Harry Truman or Secretaries of State Dean Acheson and George Marshall, Trump sees the world in zero-sum terms. He has little appreciation for concepts such as public goods or the global commons. He sees alliances not as force multipliers but as mechanisms for allies to exploit the United States, and he harbors nothing but disdain for multilateral institutions, rules, laws, or norms. On the left is a different but overlapping critique: that the history of the U.S.-led world order has been one of an unnecessary quest for domination, excessive defense spending, failed military interventions, hypocrisy, and the neglect of human rights. Many progressives recognize the challenges posed by various U.S. adversaries but often blame American policies and provocations as much as the adversaries themselves. They note that high U.S. defense expenditures incentivized allies’ free-riding and came at the expense of American workers, and that U.S. bases abroad provided targets for Washington’s enemies as much as they deterred them. These critics question the United States’ capacity for responsible global leadership and oppose the defense spending that leadership requires. There are of course huge differences between (and within) these two schools of thought. But what they have in common is that neither believes the U.S.-led liberal order is in the United States’ continued interest. They also tend to take the benefits of U.S. leadership for granted and fail to recognize the dangers that would loom if Americans gave up on it. The biggest risk in a world without a strong United States committed to allies, rules, and norms would be a lower cost of aggression and a higher risk of major conflict as a result.” (Phillip H Gordon/Foreign Affairs)

“A U.S. citizen who leads a think-tank focused on Myanmar has been arrested in China on suspicion of spying, the Chinese government said on Friday. ‘Suspected of spying and endangering China’s national security, Min Zin has been placed under criminal coercive measures by the relevant authorities,’ China‘s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said at a regular press conference in Beijing … The detention of an American citizen on national security-related charges remains a rare occurrence in China. The arrest comes just weeks after President Donald Trump visited Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing, a high-profile summit aimed at stabilizing relations between the two global rivals … Min Zin is a Myanmar-born U.S. citizen who co-founded the Institute for Strategy and Policy-Myanmar (ISP-Myanmar) in 2016. According to a Reuters report citing sources familiar with the matter, he was detained two weeks ago in Kunming, the capital of China’s southwestern Yunnan province, which borders Myanmar. Min Zin participated in Myanmar’s 1988 democracy movement. He later went into exile in the U.S. to avoid arrest and became a naturalized citizen. He studied political science at the University of California, Berkeley … While China is by far the world’s largest producer of rare earths—a group of 17 minerals critical to technologies ranging from electric vehicle batteries to missile guidance systems—Myanmar ranks among its most important suppliers. The country provided roughly two-thirds of China’s rare earth imports between 2017 and 2024, according to ISP-Myanmar. The ISP-Myanmar administration, which likely includes work by Min Zin, has also written about Beijing’s policy reset toward Myanmar following its coup.” ( John Feng and Micah McCartney/Newsweek)

“The matchmaker Blaine Anderson, who runs the high-end dating service Dating by Blaine, receives a lot of hyper-specific requests from her wealthy male clients, many of which she documents on her popular social media accounts. But no one was more difficult than the man she refers to as Daniel. (Anderson uses pseudonyms when discussing her clients to protect their privacy.) Daniel was in his early forties and had never been married, but was looking to start a family, according to Anderson. Like most of her clients, he’s fabulously wealthy, a successful tech founder who’d sold his company a few years prior. (Anderson, who works exclusively with men, charges anywhere between $30,000 to $50,000 for her services; she says she charged this particular client $49,000.) But Daniel had, as Anderson recounts, ‘very, very, very specific requests.’ He wanted to date a younger woman who prioritized getting married and having children. He wanted a woman from the Midwest (even though he, himself, did not live in the Midwest) and who worked in a caregiving profession—but she couldn’t be a doctor, ‘because that would mean she was too focused on her career,’ Anderson says. And he wanted someone conventionally beautiful, even specifying the degree to which her eyes sloped, or how many centimeters her nose should be from her upper lip. Needless to say, Anderson says, Daniel did not end up finding a match. But although he was a singular case, the qualities he was looking for in an ideal partner were not singular at all. Anderson and other professional matchmakers tell WIRED that the men they work with are increasingly asking to be set up with traditional religious conservative women—regardless of whether they themselves self-identify as traditional, religious, or conservative.” (EJ Dickson/WIRED)

“Sensing that the Iranian regime was weakened by Israel’s 12-day war in June 2025 and a popular uprising in January 2026, Israel and the United States launched airstrikes on Iran on February 28. They expected a quick victory through targeted assassinations of Iran’s leadership. But decapitation did not produce regime collapse. Instead, it opened the door for a new generation to take over ... On the battlefield, Iran’s armed forces applied the lessons of the June 2025 war with precision. They responded to the U.S.-Israeli assault that began in February 2026 with systematic salvos of missiles and drones designed to deplete U.S. and Israeli interceptor stockpiles across the region. They had concluded that their adversaries expected to destroy Iran’s missile capability quickly and were not prepared for a prolonged campaign. During the 2025 war, Israel had targeted the entrances to Iran’s ‘missile cities,’ effectively sealing them and forcing Iran to launch mainly from eastern regions beyond Israel’s reach. Iran responded by dispersing its missile launchers across its vast geography and embedding engineers inside the missile cities, alongside military personnel, to repair damaged launchers and entrances in real time. This enabled Iran to continue firing longer than Israel and the United States had expected. The IRGC also deployed cheap drones to overwhelm U.S. radar systems and military positions across the Persian Gulf and Israel, impeding the bombing campaign and opening missile routes to targets all over the region. Drawing on the logic of asymmetric warfare—and on the experience of using human-wave attacks to overwhelm Iraqi positions in the 1980s—Iran dispatched swarms of Shahed drones. These cheap, expendable weapons degraded the air defenses protecting U.S. bases, as well as those of Washington’s Arab allies, and opened corridors for precision missiles to strike high-value targets. The Iranian military had learned not just to absorb punishment but also to win strategic advantage by frustrating its adversaries’ war aims.” (Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr/Foreign Affairs)

“A potential peace deal between the United States and Iran hinges on the Trump administration agreeing to release $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets, a top Iranian official told CNN on Friday, warning that the US would ‘enter into a dark corridor’ should it resume fighting. ‘The negotiations are at a deadlock and (US President Donald) Trump must break this deadlock,’ Mohsen Rezaei, military adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, told CNN in an exclusive interview in Tehran. ‘The ball is in Trump’s court.’ Iran has reportedly demanded the release of $12 billion in frozen funds as soon as once an interim agreement is signed with the US, and another $12 billion at a later stage. US officials are concerned that any unfreezing of funds at this stage could remove a key leverage point over the regime. Trump has demanded that any agreement appear far stronger than the nuclear deal struck in 2015, and to avoid anything that could be construed as handing over ‘pallets of cash,’ a phrase he has invoked to criticize then-President Barack Obama’s decision to give Tehran financial compensation.” (Frederik Pleitgen and Claudia Otto/CNN)

“On the second night of June 2026, several thousand Albanians took to the streets of Tirana, blocking traffic and chanting ‘Albania is not for sale.’ Their immediate target was Prime Minister Edi Rama. Their actual target was a $1.4 billion resort development on Sazan Island, a 1,400-hectare strip of land at the mouth of Vlorë Bay that was, until recently, a top-secret military zone studded with 3,600 nuclear bunkers and a half-century-old Soviet submarine base. The American developer behind the project is a firm called Atlantic Incubation Partners LLC, affiliated with Jared Kushner’s private equity vehicle Affinity Partners. Albania’s Special Prosecution Office Against Corruption and Organized Crime — known as SPAK — has opened a formal investigation into the land reclassifications that cleared the way. Most of the international coverage has focused on the optics: Ivanka Trump describing Sazan as a ‘private island’ the family had ‘discovered,’ the Aman Resorts branding, the flamingos and Mediterranean monk seals in the adjacent Vjosa-Narta wetlands, the ‘Trump Island’ jokes on The Daily Show. The optics are bad, but they’re also a distraction. The interesting questions are these: Why, of all the post-government opportunities available to a former White House adviser, did Jared Kushner choose a strategically located former military island honeycombed with Cold War tunnels? Who introduced him to it? Where is the money coming from? And — given who his introducer is, and who his introducer’s social circle is — should anyone be entirely comfortable taking the ‘luxury eco-resort’ pitch at face value? The answers, as far as they go, are documented. Kushner told the All-In Podcast that he discovered the island while on vacation aboard the yacht of his friend Nathaniel Rothschild, and that he later met privately with Edi Rama aboard the same yacht to begin discussions. Affinity Partners’ principal known investor is the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which wired Kushner $2 billion in 2021 over the objections of its own screening committee. And Nat Rothschild’s documented social network — the people he has worked with, sued, sailed with, and been photographed with for the last two decades — overlaps in non-trivial ways with the social network that ran Jeffrey Epstein’s last decade. This is not a piece arguing that Kushner is building Epstein’s island. It is a piece arguing that the network around Kushner is harder to dismiss than the press has so far been willing to dismiss it.” (Tom Elliott)

“The question of Epstein’s intelligence connections hangs over the entire story. Was he or wasn’t he? And if he was, who was he working for? CIA? Mossad? KGB? All of the above? It is the plutonium pit of the case, the box no one in authority has seemingly been able – or wanting – to crack open. So was he joking with the red sparrow ‘badges’ and jackets for ‘the girls’? Was he burnishing his reputation as Coney Island’s Bondstein? Or was he brazenly celebrating the success of a honeypot and kompromat operation? By 2018, at the very least, Epstein and his coterie were aware of his reputation as an international man of mystery, and he and his johns were secure in their impunity. Our discovery of Epstein’s red sparrow badges and clothing prompted us to take another, closer look at two Russian women in his orbit. They arrived not from the backwoods of Eurasian impoverishment – his preferred hunting grounds – but from the highest levels of post-Soviet Russian politics and power. One of them, Masha Drokova, was close enough to Putin to have worked with his top strategist. The other, Svetlana Pozhidaeva, is the daughter of a reputed Russian KGB officer and a brilliant, multilingual graduate of Russia’s top foreign service school. Both women sailed through Epstein-world during the height of his international trafficking operation. Both went on to successful careers in Silicon Valley. And both have denied being spies, despite numerous allegations.” (Nina Burleigh and Katie Chenoweth/American Freakshow)

“When government officials shut down major roads and highways in Southern California during a record storm in the winter of 2023, it seemed obvious to Johnathon Ervin that his delivery drivers should stay home. Ervin was the owner of Battle-Tested Strategies in Palmdale, one of thousands of small businesses Amazon.com Inc. has hired over the years to deliver its packages. Palmdale is on the north side of Los Angeles County, which was experiencing an unusual winter storm. Snow circled the Hollywood sign. The mountains near Palmdale received their first blizzard warning in 34 years, and other parts of the county were warned to expect flash floods. Flights to LAX were briefly grounded, beaches and parks shut down, and Disneyland’s ‘Magic Happens’ show didn’t go on. But the decision about whether to brave the storm wasn’t up to Ervin, he says — the manager of Amazon’s local warehouse ordered him to send his drivers out. ‘I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ recalls Ervin, a US Air Force veteran who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom. ‘The roads are closed.’ He sent the Amazon rep videos he’d shot on his phone that showed snowy roads blocked off by orange cones, with the flashing lights of a police cruiser standing guard. ‘He was like, ‘Well, we still have to attempt delivery,’ Ervin says. ‘Central Ops said we must attempt delivery.’ The manager wouldn’t refer Ervin to anyone at Central Ops, he says, and when he stressed that sending out his drivers would put them in danger, the rep kept repeating, ‘Delivery must be attempted.’ Ervin, who was in the middle of an escalating series of conflicts with Amazon, says he felt the company was leaving him no choice. If his drivers didn’t head out into the storm, Battle-Tested Strategies’ contract with Amazon, its sole customer, would be at risk. ‘We are still going to send your drivers,’ the manager had told him, according to a lawsuit he later filed in California state court. In the end, he says, his team ended up trying to follow the order. A couple of months later, Amazon informed him it was canceling the contract anyway, and Ervin’s business soon went kaput. ‘They control everything,’ he says. ‘You’re just a cog.’” (Josh Eidelson/Bloomberg BusinessWeek)

“Naked, hungry, raped and lying in her own urine, the woman said her captors after two days of misery handed her a phone. Call your friends and family, they said. Tell them to buy your freedom or you’ll be killed. The 38-year-old said she screamed on the calls as horrified loved ones listened to her being tortured in a remote village in western Sudan. Now safely in the capital, Khartoum, she looked through photos she took of her battered face and body after being freed in September. She wants them to serve as evidence to hold the attackers accountable. ‘I thought about seeking justice one day,’ she told The Associated Press. The AP does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted. The United Nations calls sexual violence one of the ‘most defining features’ of Sudan’s war, now in its fourth year. It says sexual assaults have soared since the war began but it did not have data on assaults by combatants. The U.N. says many women have been subject to sexual slavery and forced to pay ransoms for their release, sometimes up to $10,000. The AP met three women who said they were abducted, held as sex slaves and forced to buy their freedom. They were introduced by aid workers who said they were aware of what had happened. The AP could not verify the accounts by the women who spoke out in a country where discussing sexual assault remains deeply taboo.” (Sam Mednick/AP)

“Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces have had a long history of violations, going back to when they were known as the ‘Janjaweed’. Over the past few years, they have been trying to change their image and become influential political actors in Sudan, but will that work? Al Jazeera’s Hala Saadani looks back at the RSF’s history and where they may go from here.” (Al Jazeera)

“Live Science reports that scientists from the Institute of Culture of Barcelona have examined 25 skeletons discovered in eight graves at Barcelona’s Royal Monastery of Santa Maria Pedralbes, which was founded in the fourteenth century by Queen Elisenda of Montcada. She moved into a small palace next to the monastery after the death of her husband, James II. When Elisenda died in 1364, her remains were dressed in a monastic habit and placed in a narrow wooden coffin with a gold-embroidered silk textile and aromatic herbs. Analysis of the bones suggests she was about 70 years old at the time of death. The study also investigated the tombs said to have belonged to the monastery’s first two abbesses. The remains of a woman thought to represent Sobirana Olzet, the first abbess, indicate that she had suffered a knife wound to her face shortly before death. In the tomb of Francesca Saportella, the second abbess and the queen’s niece, the researchers recovered the remains of nine people that had been interred at different times, including four male skulls with stab wounds, and the mummified torso of a pregnant woman. In a third tomb, thought to belong to a knight, the bones of two women and three children were found. One of the women still had a long ponytail attached to her skull. The team members are now sequencing DNA samples taken from the remains in an effort to identify relationships among the dead and possible pathogens.” (Archaeology)

“Multiple sources with knowledge of CBS News’ hiring practices say the CEO of Paramount Skydance David Ellison was integrally involved not only in reviewing candidates, but also in meeting personally with at least two contenders — including (Nick) Bilton. (CBS News pushed back on that characterization.) … Bilton, a U.K.-born, Florida-reared contrarian had spent nearly two decades studying the ticks and psychology of billionaires. And it paid off. As we reported yesterday, Bilton is making $2.5 million for his new ‘60 Minutes’ gig. Sources tell us that salary is $1 million more than what ‘60 Minutes’ veteran Tanya Simon was pulling down for the same job before she was ousted by Weiss earlier this month. (CBS News did not comment.) … Like Weiss, it is hard to pin down exactly where Bilton falls on the political spectrum. The central tension is that Bilton, who regularly criticized Donald Trump during his first term in the pages of Vanity Fair, now finds himself inside a company that many see as friendly, if not subservient to the Trump Administration … One thing is certain: Despite coming up as a beat reporter grinding out stories first as a tech writer at the Times and then as a correspondent at Vanity Fair, Bilton was always comfortable walking the corridors of power and would soon find himself sitting at the table with some of the most powerful figures in the world. Like Weiss, he knows how to impress the wealthy and powerful. Also like Weiss, he arrives with a certain amount of personal baggage … ‘The Times crowd resented Nick. They thought he was too flashy and not a lot of substance,’ says one source who worked with Bilton. ‘I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if [he and Bari] bonded more over hating all the stuffed shirts at the Times than their shared politics.’ Bilton and Weiss also could commiserate about the risk of taking unpopular positions on social media. By Bilton’s own admission, ‘the digital mob’ was a scourge, something he knew firsthand. In 2013, in one of his earliest columns for the Times, he wrote: ‘I got into an argument with a group of people on Twitter about Trayvon Martin, which was the main news story of that time. I know, how could I be so stupid? To think that I could have a constructive conversation about something on social media. Luckily, my part in the Twitter fight didn’t last long. A friend saw my tweets and instantly sent me the text message: ‘ABORT! ABORT! ABORT!’ That and a few other of his columns prompted Gawker to pronounce Bilton ‘the New Worst Columnist at the New York Times.’” (P6Hollywood)

“Everyone is up in arms, and rightly so, about what Bari Weiss is doing to CBS News in general and 60 Minutes in particular. The firing of Scott Pelley will reverberate in American journalism history as a symbolic execution of the single most groundbreaking and successful news program in the annals of U.S. broadcast television. Two of the program’s other prominent on-air correspondents were fired, as well, and we’ve seen countless news stories this week about the chaos and turmoil that have resulted. Three of the show’s remaining correspondents—Bill Whitaker, Lesley Stahl, and Jon Wertheim—reportedly huddled this week to discuss their next move; Stahl is currently out of contract. This is a tempestuous time at one of the nation’s most staid journalistic institutions. But let’s back up a minute to appreciate how we got here. How did someone like Weiss, with no broadcast news experience, get put in charge of the network with the longest and proudest news tradition in the country? Well, we know the answer to that question. David Ellison, head of Paramount (which owned CBS), hired her last October, three months after the Trump administration approved the takeover of Paramount by Ellison’s company, Skydance. Before that, of course, Weiss had started up the very successful Free Press newsletter, devoted mainly to attacking left-wing wokery and cancel culture for dedicated subscribers. But the pivotal moment, or actually moments, in her career came before that. The first was her hiring, in April 2017, by The New York Times. The second was her famous departure from that same paper, which she cynically and shamelessly used to get a bevy of wealthy, angry, rich men to stake her to the Free Press. You know that saying about how sometimes liberals are so open-minded that their brains start falling out their ears? Weiss’s ascent provides a lesson in how liberal institutions can sometimes place such value on proving that they’re open-minded that other liberal values, like standing for actual liberal things in the world, get tossed aside.” (Michael Tomasky/TNR)

“Hunter (Biden) wrote in his memoir that his father, though broken by the 2015 death of the revered Beau (in which the subtext must inevitably have been the agony of comparison), always stood by his side. Biden often blamed the pressures of his political career for his troubled son’s difficulties and provided a refuge for Hunter’s young family during his spirals into chaos. During Hunter’s trial, Joe was tormented by the need to look legally neutral. I am told that guilt and anxiety about the ordeal of his prodigal son, finally sober and with a new marriage and baby, were the only things the president could think about, as he stumbled through D-Day commemorations in France, a G7 meeting in Italy, and a Hollywood fundraiser. Just two weeks before the high-wire debate with Trump, Hunter was convicted on three felony counts and faced up to 25 years behind bars. The president immediately flew to Wilmington to sustain Hunter with a father’s forgiving embrace. The thought of losing his only surviving son would have addled the brain of the most lucid parent, much less an 81-year-old candidate sparring with a MAGA minotaur on national television. The death of Beau and the conviction of Hunter were the slow-moving, degenerative agents of Joe Biden’s decline.” (Tina Brown/Fresh Hell)

“FRANCE 24 management and the FRANCE 24 editorial committee (SDJ) have denounced the pressure FRANCE 24 journalists Nina Masson and Yong Chim faced after asking a question about the anti-Bolloré letter as a ‘serious violation of press freedom’. Published on the eve of the Cannes Film Festival and signed by some 600 industry professionals, the open letter expressed alarm over rightwing French billionaire Vincent Bolloré’s growing control over French cinema through the UGC theatre chain and the Canal+ Group, where he is the majority shareholder. The petition, which deplored the tightening ‘grip of the far right’ on French cinema, prompted a quick response. Maxime Saada, president of the Canal+ Group – France’s biggest source of film financing – announced that the network would no longer work with the signatories. The latest incident occurred as Masson and Chim took part in an interview organised to promote Antonin Baudry’s feature film ‘La Bataille de Gaulle’.” (France24)

“For Hildegard of Bingen, the famous twelfth-century Benedictine abbess and mystic, the earth produces goods commensurate with every need of the human body. This conviction was rooted in her broader theological framework of viriditas, or ‘greening power,’ a divine life force that animates all creation and expresses itself in various ways, including in the healing properties of plants. In her encyclopedic book Physica, she sought to codify the natural world—plants, elements, trees, stones, fish, birds, animals, reptiles, and metals—according to each component’s effects on the four temperaments. Citrus trees (more ‘hot than cold’), signify chastity. When boiled in wine and consumed daily, their leaves alleviate daily fevers. Radishes cleanse the brain. Horseradish makes a lean person strong. Chamomile is calming to the intestines, and mullein is good for those who are sad. Wild lettuce, whose milky sap would later be studied in the nineteenth century for its mild sedative quality, extinguishes ‘uncontrollable lust.’ It can be made into a kind of lettuce soup, the liquid of which is to be poured upon hot stones in a sauna while placing the cooked leaves on one’s belly. The four temperaments, originally defined by the Greeks but interpreted by Hildegard in a more spiritually inflected way, are no longer reasonable medical categories, though I would be considered melancholic—the ‘iceberg temperament.’ If not careful, I might be brought down by poisoned daydreaming.” (Nicolette Pollek/The Paris Review)

“In 2001, Barbara Ehrenreich published her classic Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, in which she spent months working as a hotel maid, waitress, nursing home aide, and superstore clerk. The national minimum wage at the time was $5.15 an hour. In 2026, the national minimum wage is just $7.25. The highest state or local minimum wage, in Washington, D.C., is $17.95, all the better to serve our elected officials. More numbers to consider. The median annual income for a full-time worker in the United States is about $60,000. And a year’s forty-hour work week at the Washington, D.C., minimum wage totals $37,336, which means a full-time worker with a family of four is barely above the official poverty level of $33,000. Ehrenreich died in 2022, celebrated for her fierce understanding of American inequality. By every measure, the inequalities have gotten greater in recent years. One of these days, and probably in the not-too-distant future, one of the approximately one thousand individual billionaires in the United States will be worth a trillion dollars. So, here’s my imaginary challenge, imaginary only because I no longer commission new books, as I did for so long as a publisher. But if I still did, this would be at the top of my list: Find a billionaire willing to spend a year living on the national median income of $60,000, without access to all the splendor and resources that money provides the very rich. If there’s a literary agent involved, I’ll leave it to that person and the publisher to wrangle over the advance, to be paid at the successful conclusion of the year, plus, of course, full royalties on the books sold in print, ebook, and audio.” (Peter Osnos/Public Affairs Press)

“Colombian private military contractors, apparently hired by a United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based company, transited through UAE military bases before being deployed to Sudan to support the abusive Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. This is further evidence indicating that the UAE is assisting or otherwise substantially contributing to the Rapid Support Forces’ capacity to commit war crimes. The 83-page report, ‘From Bogotá to El Fasher: UAE’s Role in the Deployment of Colombian Fighters and Other Backing to the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan,’ presents evidence showing that, since 2024, the Abu Dhabi-based security company, Global Security Services Group (GSSG) hired hundreds of Colombian private military contractors who deployed to Sudan to fight alongside the RSF, which is battling the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). Human Rights Watch found evidence that private military contractors were in El Fasher, North Darfur’s capital, in October 2025, when the RSF took over the city and committed widespread killings and rape. The UN International Fact-Finding Mission on Sudan has said that these events bore ‘the hallmarks of genocide.’” (Human Rights Watch)

“In January, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned leaders gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos that states caught between Washington and Beijing needed to stop negotiating alone. ‘If we’re not at the table,’ he said, ‘we’re on the menu.’ The line captured the mood of the moment … Middle powers are not becoming more visible because they are more powerful. They are becoming more visible because they are more exposed. The conditions that allowed many of them to flourish in recent decades are eroding. For years, they could shelter under U.S. hegemony, exploit an expanding global economy, and trade with rival powers without choosing among them. They could reap the benefits of scale without possessing it themselves. That world is disappearing. Growth has slowed, globalization has become a contest over chokepoints, and great powers have grown more predatory. The United States is increasingly willing to use its dominance to extract concessions. China is using subsidies and export gluts to deindustrialize other countries, debt and infrastructure to make them dependent, and military harassment and economic sanctions to narrow their choices. The result is not a flatter world of ascendant middle powers but a harsher one in which the two top powers have more ways to bend others to their will. The danger is that middle powers will respond to this new reality with symbolism instead of strategy. Summits and partnerships can create the appearance of autonomy, but they cannot substitute for raw power, which increasingly depends on the ability to finance, build, and command large systems of technology, industry, intelligence, logistics, and force. Nor can most states simply float between the United States and China, buying security from one, goods from the other, and market access from both. As rivalry hardens, hedging will start to look like betrayal. Washington and Beijing will make states show where they stand by restricting technology, rerouting supply chains, withholding intelligence, blocking investment, raising tariffs, or threatening military reprisals. In an increasingly hierarchical world, the middle is not an open marketplace. It is a minefield.” (Michael Beckley/Foreign Affairs)

“If there is any message that crystalizes the 250th anniversary of the U.S., it is not that America has changed but that Trump has changed America. There will be no snapback when he’s gone. Even as his approval ratings tank and the country is hurting, it feels as if his base has become wider and deeper and represents a new national state of mind. Tuned out on our phones, mesmerized by money porn, high on the idolatry of the big flashy win, we are getting used to the erosion of the rule of law, the threats to free speech, the banishment of government watchdogs, and the chasm of inequality. After ten years of Trump bludgeoning the first principles of the American experiment (ten because I don’t count the disappearing ink of Biden’s lame tenure when every headline was a new Trump indictment, scandal, or toxic blast from exile in Mar-a-Lago), Trump has refashioned the country in his image.” (Tina Brown/Fresh Hell)

“Underscoring his belief in the country, Mr. (Peter) Thiel, 58, has temporarily relocated his family to Argentina and enrolled his children in a local school, two of the people said. The Argentine government has also explored offering the billionaire permanent residence or even citizenship, a person familiar with Mr. Thiel’s plans said, though it’s currently unclear whether he would accept. A spokesman for Mr. Milei denied such an offer had been considered. The Argentine government is currently working to establish a ‘golden passport’ program that would allow people who make large investments in the country to obtain citizenship. ‘All billionaires of the world who want to flee countries increasingly regulated, with higher taxes and governments that persecute their citizens, are welcome in the Argentine republic, the new land of freedom,’ Manuel Adorni, Mr. Milei’s cabinet chief, said last month before congress, answering a question about Mr. Thiel. Mr. Thiel, he added, was ‘interested in the deep reforms that we are bringing forward.’ Argentina may be an unlikely place for a billionaire looking for stability. The country has careened through nearly a century of instability, marred by military coups and spectacular financial collapses epitomized by triple-digit inflation. But in Mr. Milei, Mr. Thiel has an ideological ally. The two men share an aversion for taxes, socialism and ‘wokeness’ — a negative label critics use to describe progressive politics. Since becoming president in 2023, Mr. Milei has sought to overhaul Argentina’s economy, pushing sweeping deregulation and government spending cuts. He has sought to attract foreign investment in the country’s natural resources, including oil, lithium and rare earth minerals.” (Emma Bubola and Ryan Mac/NYT)

“The March 31, 2026 release of a World Bank policy research report sympathetic towards industrial policy caused quite the buzz in development circles. Such a report has been a long way coming since the infamous 1993 misreading of the core drivers of East Asian economic takeoff; as well as countless efforts to stifle ambitious context-based policymaking before that. As most commentators on the report have already noted, the intellectual and empirical justifications for industrial policy are decades old, and includes lots academic/policy giants that were previously ignored by the Bank and the broader international development community. Better late than never, I guess. This is post is not about the report itself (it’s a good primer on industrial policy for those unfamiliar with the concept), but mostly about what the World Bank (as well as donors and other multilaterals) might do with the recommendations in the report (and how policymakers in low-income countries should respond). So why now? A cynical read of the situation might be that this is yet another instance of the World Bank as an institution (as opposed to the actual authors of the report) externalizing the dominant intellectual/policy orthodoxy among its most powerful shareholders. Industrial policy was bad when low-income countries were dabbling in it to accelerate their processes of catch-up development; but it’s now fine because certain high-income countries have reasons to do it more aggressively and openly (they’ve always done it, anyway) to compete with China.” (Ken Opalo/Africanist Perspective)

“A collection of more than 100 gold, silver, and gemstone jewelry pieces stored in a ceramic jar was discovered in Diriyah, a settlement that was once a stop on the route that connected Basra in southern Iraq and Mecca on the west coast of Saudi Arabia more than 1,000 years ago, according to a Live Science report. Pilgrimage to Mecca, a trip known as the hajj, is considered a religious duty for adult Muslims who are physically capable of making the trip and financially able to do so. Excavations at the site of Diriyah, conducted by archaeologists from the Saudi Heritage Commission, have uncovered gypsum water basins and the remains of residential buildings. Inside the buildings, the researchers discovered fragments of pottery, glass, and the collection of jewelry. Organic remains from the settlement have been dated to between A.D. 743 and 753. The hoard is thought to have been buried during the Abbasid Caliphate, which was established in A.D. 750 and ended in 1258 with the evasion of the Mongols.” (Archaeology)

“Standing in front of the most powerful and well-known people in the television news business on Wednesday night, in a glitzy New York City ballroom, 18-year-old high school student Santiago Campos shocked – but also delighted – many in attendance when he called out the network that funded the scholarship he received: CBS News. Campos, a graduating senior at the District of Columbia international school who had traveled to New York for the 47th annual news and documentary Emmy awards with his mother and teacher, was awarded the Mike Wallace memorial scholarship, honoring the legendary television interviewer. Campos was given the award by veteran 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley, who said: ‘Mike would see something of himself in this year’s recipient.’ While Campos thanked CBS News for funding the $10,000 grant, he launched into a critique of the network’s direction under editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and owner David Ellison. ‘I want to also acknowledge how the recent direction of the outlet stains the legacy of Mike Wallace, the namesake of this scholarship,’ he told the crowd.” (Jeremy Barr/The Guardian)

“In 2013, then-Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi personally solicited a $25,000 political donation from the Donald J. Trump Foundation for her re-election PAC – and soon received it. Days later, Bondi’s office abandoned plans to join a New York lawsuit investigating fraud allegations against Trump University. It is against the law for charitable foundations to make political contributions. But in the universe of Trump corruption, $25,000 was laughable chump change. It just proved to him how cheaply Pam Bondi could be had. Fast forward a few years. Bondi, no longer in elected office, got serious about money as a $115,000-a-month lobbyist with the DC-based influence giant Ballard Partners. Her client list included deep-pocketed private prison corporations and the government of Qatar (for whom she was specifically registered under the Foreign Agent Registration Act for ‘dealing with matters pertaining to combating human trafficking’). When Trump nominated her to be his attorney general in early 2025, she didn’t bother mentioning those clients in her statement of potential conflicts of interest. So far so good: lies and omissions are standard operating practice in Trumpworld. His initial pick for attorney general was Matt Gaetz, who might have been a more fitting choice to oversee the Epstein cover-up, having himself been investigated for child sex trafficking and found to have violated Florida’s statutory rape laws according to the House Ethics Committee. Gaetz had skated on all of it, but was ultimately too tainted even for the slavish Senate Republican majority that would have to approve the nomination. Still, Bondi was something of an unusual choice for a Trump casting.” (Nina Burleigh/American Freakshow)

“The post-Trump era will not be a blank canvas for policy makers. To be clear, it will demand a great deal of legislating, bureaucratic deftness, technical knowhow, and creativity. Assembling a new government will need to be undertaken with an eye toward avoiding obvious pitfalls, which will of course place policy expertise at a premium. But the governing machinery all these operatives expect to be awaiting them will be broken. The challenge will be to get a new apparatus up and running quickly, which will in turn require blowing through obstacles—the procedural ones that have been there all along, and the landmines that will be strewn about by saboteurs. A hodgepodge of detailed policy objectives is not responsive to that challenge. Not even if the policies tick all the right interest-group and message-testing boxes.” (Brian Beutel/Off Message)

“The US Justice Department is seeking the names, addresses, and banking information of Reddit and X users, ratcheting up efforts to identify social media critics of government deportation efforts. The US Attorney’s Office for Washington, led by Jeanine Pirro, a close ally of President Donald Trump, has subpoenaed the social media companies as part of criminal investigations, asking for personal information on at least two anonymous posters behind accounts that have chided immigration enforcement efforts, according to records shared by attorneys for the users. The anonymous users, who learned of the subpoenas from the platforms and hired lawyers to challenge the government’s demands for information, haven’t been told what possible offenses are being probed. Their lawyers believe the investigations could relate to allegations of revealing a federal officer’s location data or other types of perceived threats, but dispute that their clients committed crimes. Even if no charges ultimately are filed, the attorneys contended in interviews that rooting out identities of dissenters is at the very least an intimidation tactic.” (Jimmy Jenkins and Zoe Tillman/Bloomberg)

“To understand why people are so miserable about the economy, look no further than Thursday’s report on gross domestic product. Not how much GDP grew, but how it was divvied up. Worker compensation—wages and benefits—grew 0.8% in the first quarter from the fourth, while domestic corporate profits jumped 2.7%. As a result, labor’s share of gross domestic income (conceptually similar to GDP) sank to 51%, the lowest since records began in 1947. Profits’ share climbed to 12.1%, the highest since 1950. It’s the latest milestone in a trend that became pronounced in the 2000s, then picked up speed after the pandemic. Adjusted for inflation, hourly wages are up 3% since the end of 2019 while profits are up 50%. That, in a nutshell, explains the chasm between an ebullient stock market and anxious public … There is no sign of those trends reversing. For instance, the recent surge in energy prices left after-tax disposable income, adjusted for inflation, lower in April than in December. Meanwhile, profits of energy companies in the S&P 500 are expected to double this quarter from a year earlier, according to FactSet. And the AI gold rush is still in full swing. In coming months three companies closely associated with AI—SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI—plan to go public. None are profitable (though Anthropic is close), but valuations of around $1 trillion each attest to the profits investors think await.” (Greg Ip/WSJ)

“On a low-pollution Sunday last December, the weekend before Christmas, I headed to People’s Park on Shanghai’s Nanjing Road to visit the city’s so-called marriage market: a cluster of footpaths and lawns in the park’s northwest corner, where hundreds of parents gather each weekend to matchmake their unmarried adult children. It was the winter solstice: a particularly auspicious occasion this year, as an aunt had written to our family’s thirty-one-person WeChat group—a day on which it was said that heaven and earth would reunite … I entered the park through a western gate, next to which a Starbucks played Mariah Carey and Willie Nelson. The market emerged suddenly: crops of middle-aged Chinese huddled around laminated advertisements that littered the ground or were clipped to trolley bags and music stands. The otherwise quiet grounds, within these few thousand square feet, were beginning to teem with brokers and visitors alike. Fleece-clad aunties lined the shrubbery; raincoated uncles smoked under the wutong trees. I slipped into the sparse flow of people that circled the gardens and moved through sheltered walkways … The first uncle I saw stood on the outskirts of the market, a few yards before a long archway that drove deeper into its heart. Bald and stocky, he wore sweatpants and hiking boots. One hand was tucked into his pocket. He used the other to nurse a cigarette. A dozen listings were spread at his feet. These were bare-text summations of vital information: gender; education level; age, via birth year; height, and sometimes weight; employment status and occupation; income; hukou status, which granted residence and access to health care, education, and housing within a given region; property holdings (owned or rented? number of bedrooms? car?); parent profiles (pensioned? healthy or ill?); debt, or lack thereof; vices (smoking, drinking), or lack thereof. A few listed hobbies or a Chinese zodiac sign. The faceless prospects on offer were probably playing video games at home or hanging out with their friends. It was common knowledge that the matches themselves were generally uninvolved and uninterested in their parents’ schemes, that young people in Shanghai were dating on their own in all sorts of ways, both online and in person.”(Becky Zhang/The Paris Review)