“There is no longer any possible way to understand or interpret Putinism that could make China comfortable with a close ideological pairing or even comparison.” (Howard French/Foreign Policy)
“Ultimately Beijing’s calculus as to what it gets out of the relationship with Russia remains the same as it did prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Under Xi the core objective has been the ‘struggle’ to attain the ‘China Dream’ of ‘great national rejuvenation.’ The primary obstacle that China sees standing in the way of that objective is a truculent and declining U.S. hegemon.” (Michael Clark/The Diplomat)
“Caravaggio invented a new kind of light. He replaced the universal, platonic light of the Renaissance with a quotidian and dramatic one. Caravaggio invented both this new kind of light and new kinds of people and things because he had seen them in reality.” (Pier Paolo Pasolini/The Paris Review)
How a conspiracy-spewing literal Kennedy posing as a populist outsider jolted the Democratic Party (Rebecca Traister)
“The meeting would prove a turning point for (Bill) Gates’ relationship with Epstein, the people familiar with the matter say, as Melinda told friends after the encounter how uncomfortable she was in the company of the wealthy sex offender and how she wanted nothing to do with him.” (Lachlan Cartwright/TDB)
"In the United States, we have this myth that our democracy is a solid ship, the ‘arc of history’ and progress moving in the right direction. But the Supreme Court decision to strike down affirmative action in college admissions is yet another sign that certain Americans are intent on torpedoing hard-earned progress — specifically, Black progress." (Karen Attiah/WashPost)
"For the entirety of my writing life, Cormac McCarthy has been a mountain. Some of the novelists of my generation found the mountain beautiful; others found it oppressive. But virtually all of us, whatever our position or attitude, existed in its shade." (John Wray/LAT)
“As his recent book A Lynching at Port Jervis: Race and Reckoning in the Gilded Age (2022) recounts, author Philip Dray came across this little-known incident while in the archives of Tuskegee University and, after digging deeper, arrived at the terrible truth that “lynching was not a series of random, aberrational incidents but an institutionalized form of white terror.’” (Adolf Alzuphar/LAReviewofBooks)
“‘The white supremacist agendas behind these lawsuits use the small number of Asian Americans against affirmative action as pawns in their efforts — weaponizing the model minority myth to divide our communities,’ the nonprofit Georgia-based group Asian American Advocacy Fund said in a news release.” (NBC News)
"Walking down 125th Street the day after taking a commanding lead in the race for a City Council seat in Central Harlem, Yusef Salaam couldn’t make it half a block without someone congratulating him on his likely victory." (NYT)
“Few accounts of Abdullah’s legacy mentioned his four imprisoned daughters. By the time their father died, Princesses Sahar, Maha, Hala, and Jawaher had been held in captivity for approaching fifteen years, according to several people who stayed in touch with them via a cell-phone connection. The princesses had apparently been locked up soon after their mother, one of the King’s wives, fled to London to escape his control.” (Heidi Blake/The New Yorker)
“Two of Africa’s biggest fintech players are expanding their operations in Rwanda, which is pushing to position itself as a strategically important hub for the fintech sector by revamping its business laws and tax code. Chipper Cash, the pan-African money transfer company, opened in Kigali last week with a launch party on the sidelines of a three-day government-organized fintech conference. Chipper's opening came two months after Flutterwave, the online payments processor, said it received two new licenses to offer cross-border money transfers in Rwanda. Flutterwave first launched there in 2019.” (Alexander Onukwue/semafor)
“Still, critics like (Senator Ron) Wyden see it as ‘sportswashing,’ the process by which a government uses beloved athletic institutions to launder its reputation. ‘The Saudis are working to lubricate this deal with blood and oil money,’ Wyden said. ‘It’s textbook sportswashing.’” (Tom Kludt/VF)
"With the best job creation record at this point in his presidency since either Franklin Roosevelt (by raw numbers) or Ronald Reagan in his first term (by percentage growth), unemployment steadily below 4 percent, inflation falling, and real wage growth turning positive, there is a lot to boast about. ‘His plan—Bidenomics—is rooted in the recognition that the best way to grow the economy is from the middle out and the bottom up,' says a White House press release.” (Ryan Cooper/TAP)
"A French police officer was charged with voluntary homicide and placed under arrest on Thursday ahead of trial over the killing of a teenager at point-blank range, an incident that sparked nationwide protests. Thousands gathered to honour the victim in his Paris-area neighbourhood, and clashes erupted between some protesters and police, with officers using tear gas. French authorities were expecting more protests in the nights to come." (France24)
"The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts himself, who ruled that affirmative action violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment was, of course, written explicitly to revoke the racism practiced by whites against Blacks through their slaver’s Constitution, but Roberts doesn’t care about all that" (Elie Mystal/The Nation)
“I personally have whiplash from witnessing a tepid auction season, only to be followed by a knockout edition of Art Basel, where financial woes were left behind in America as a multimillion dollar works by Picasso, Bourgeois, and Baselitz sold with ease. So where does that leave my dear friends down on Henry Street? Inquiring minds wanted to know, so I checked in this week to hear how business is going for the scrappy young entrepreneurs.” (Annie Armstrong/Artnet)
“The United States and the Netherlands are set to deliver a one-two punch to China's chipmakers this summer by further restricting sales of chipmaking equipment, part of the countries' ongoing effort to prevent their technology from being used to strengthen China's military.” (Reuters)
"Prince Harry’s lawyer put a price tag Friday on the prince’s lawsuit accusing the publisher of the Daily Mirror of hacking his phone and using other unlawful means to dig up dirt on the early years of his royal life: 320,000 pounds ($406,000)." (AP)
“You can see why (Quentin) Tarantino begins with this story, for everything is there: the transgressive delight in being the only white face in an all-Black audience, the fetishization of masculine codes, the heartbreak of a young boy who attached himself ‘like a tick’ to the nearest available father figure. ‘To one degree or another I’ve spent my entire life since both attending movies and making them, trying to recreate the experience,’ he writes.” (Tom Shone/NYTBR)
“Let's be blunt about the obvious outcomes of these two cases. LGBTQ people have less protection today than yesterday. Experience says there will be fewer Black students on selective college campuses, even as educators hope to find other means within the law to promote diversity and inclusion in student bodies. But if this Court had its way, we would have a whiter, straighter America.” (Dennis Aftergut/Salon)