Innholdsfortegnelse for September 5/12, 2025 i The Week Magazine

As the United States descends into one-man, authoritarian rule, I sometimes wonder what Donald Trump’s collaborators really think. By collaborators, I do not mean the true MAGA cultists, who welcome his tyrannical intrusion into every aspect of American life, his military occupation of American cities, and his unrestrained use of government power to intimidate and punish opponents, critics, and immigrants. The collaborators are the once-principled Reaganites, the small-government libertarians, and the conservative commentariat who through fear or tribal allegiance are still defending or downplaying the Maximum Leader’s insistence that everyone—private companies, universities, museums, states, cities, the Fed, the Justice Department, other countries—must capitulate to his will or suffer his wrath. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is a useful example. In 2016, Rubio compared Trump to a “third-world strongman” and warned…

■ Delta and United Airlines are being sued by passengers who claim they were duped into paying up to $100 extra for window seats without windows. The two class action suits, which seek millions of dollars in damages, accuse the carriers of calling all seats along the sides of their planes “window” seats even though some are next to windowless blank walls. “When consumers [book] a window seat,” said attorney Carter Greenbaum, “they reasonably expect the seat will have a window.” ■ The Dallas Police Department has added cowboy hats to its official uniform in a bid to lure new recruits to the force. The department shared photos of officers wearing the headgear—which is black and shiny and resembles a Stetson—in an Instagram post captioned, “Fitted for duty and ready…

Minneapolis Catholic school shooting: A shooter killed at least two children at a Minneapolis Catholic school this week, firing through a stained-glass window at students who were celebrating the school year’s first Mass. The assailant, 23-year-old Robin Westman, the transgender child of a former Annunciation Catholic School employee, then committed suicide. The victims were 8 and 10 years old. The shooting also left at least 17 injured, including 14 children. The church said that the toll would have been worse but for the heroism of staff who moved children under the pews within seconds. Westman, who identified as female, registered a name change from Robert to Robin in 2020. Police were investigating a series of disturbing videos posted hours before the shooting. One showed gun magazines on which Westman appears…

Fran Lebowitz once described herself as “the designated New Yorker,” said Megan Nolan in The Observer (U.K.), and the writer’s sardonic observations about city life have made her famous. So much so that Lebowitz, 74, is often accosted on the streets by selfie-seeking fans. “It doesn’t bother me if I’m standing still,” she says. “Sometimes, I’ll be in the middle of Fifth Avenue and someone coming across stops and says, ‘Can I just ask you?’ ‘Yes, but you have to come on to the sidewalk. Because here come a million cars.’ And I don’t like it if I’m going down the stairs to get the subway as someone’s coming up, because then I’m going to miss the train.” Otherwise, she’ll engage with her fellow New Yorkers. “Lately, this kid comes…

Six years after his death, conspiracy theories still swirl around the sex trafficker. Why? What explains the fascination with Epstein? It’s a combination of factors. There’s the horrific nature of his crimes, his collection of famous friends, and the unanswered questions about how his abuse went unpunished for so long. The financier, who died by suicide in a jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, left a $578 million estate that included a palatial Manhattan townhouse; a mansion in Palm Beach, Fla.; and a private Caribbean island. Court documents detail how he trafficked girls as young as 11 to those properties and held them there in sexual servitude. Since Epstein’s social circle included Britain’s Prince Andrew, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, former President Bill Clinton, and now-President Trump—all…

Lisa Jarvis Bloomberg Can you still get a Covid shot this fall? “It’s complicated,” said Lisa Jarvis. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the agencies he controls “have created widespread confusion” through muddled, contradictory messaging—“not only about who’s eligible but also by casting doubt on whether the vaccines are safe or even necessary.” Kennedy and the Food and Drug Administration have restricted Covid shot recommendations—and thus the likelihood of insurance coverage for the $140 to $200 cost—to seniors 65 and over, and people who have health conditions such as diabetes, asthma, and obesity. Kennedy even tried to remove Covid shots from recommended early childhood vaccinations; the CDC later said parents should jointly decide with pediatricians whether kids get the shots. Most doctors and medical organizations say children under 2…

Waka Ikeda Nikkei Asia “Picture it,” said Waka Ikeda: “a room full of clipboard-wielding bureaucrats earnestly facilitating romance” for a handful of single 20-somethings. That was the scene at a recent “government-led matching event” that was so poorly attended, the matchmakers outnumbered the daters. Japan’s cripplingly low birth rate has prompted the government to attempt a slew of such interventions, creating a state-sanctioned dating app and holding official speed-dating events and marriage seminars. It’s both heavy-handed and entirely unnecessary. The problem isn’t that Japanese singletons don’t have chances to meet and fall in love. It’s that Japanese culture pushes “traditional 20th-century family models while failing to support young people’s economic independence.” Young women simply don’t want to stay home and raise children while their husband works extreme hours and doesn’t…

■ The White House has released a list of more than 20 Smithsonian exhibits it considers objectionable and “woke.” They include an LGBTQ pride flag, an artwork depicting migrants watching July 4 fireworks through an opening in the U.S.-Mexico border wall, and an animated portrait of infectious-disease expert Dr. Anthony S. Fauci. The New York Times ■ President Trump was photographed with a dark bruise on his right hand this week, just days after he appeared with a thick layer of makeup covering the apparent injury. He has been spotted multiple times this year with bruises on his hands, which the White House attributed to Trump’s prodigious shaking of hands. The president was diagnosed last month with chronic venous insufficiency, a circulatory disorder that can cause swelling in the legs…

Malaria is beginning to pop up in the U.S. among people who didn’t travel abroad, which indicates that it is once again spreading in homegrown mosquito populations. Each year, around 2,000 travelers come back to the U.S. with cases of the debilitating disease acquired abroad. But this summer, one person in Washington state and another in New Jersey appear to have contracted it stateside. Malaria was once common in the U.S.—George Washington famously suffered multiple bouts of the disease—but was effectively eliminated by 1951, thanks to a widespread campaign of pesticide use and the drainage of breeding sites. Now that climate change has made winters too short to kill off the Anopheles mosquitoes that carry it, domestic cases appear to be rising. “It’s all probabilities,” malaria researcher Photini Sinnis of…

“There are inklings of greatness in Kate Riley’s first novel,” said Dwight Garner in The New York Times. Potentially a future “underground classic of American folk wit,” Ruth follows its heroine’s life from youth into late middle age as a member of an Anabaptist Christian community in which property is shared; each outpost of the sect is known as a Dorf; and sports, mirrors, and dancing are discouraged. As mischievous Ruth matures into her ill-fitting role as an arranged-marriage wife and mother, Riley, who once lived for a year in a similar community, deftly depicts the pleasures and perils of cloistered life. Unfortunately, the novel never finds a deeper register, leaving readers “swimming in the same water” they entered on page one. “Riley’s great trick is to tap into the…

Putting Myself Together by Jamaica Kincaid (FSG, $30) You can read Jamaica Kincaid’s new book as “a kind of intellectual autobiography,” said Walton Muyumba in The Boston Globe. Though the Antigua-born writer is primarily known for her novels, she’s “a master of literary nonfiction’s multifarious forms,” including the essay. In these pieces, published across 50 years, she often focuses on mothers, families, colonialism, travel, and gardening. Though arranged chronologically, the collection is itself “a finely made garden: teeming, various, surprising.” You Have a New Memory by Aiden Arata (Grand Central, $28) Aiden Arata, “with her poetic wit and finger-on-the-pulse timing,” has become Instagram’s queen of wry mental-health-related memes, said Maggie Lange in The Washington Post. That has won her access to the world of other influencers, and her first essay…

“The emergence of Laufey is largely attributable to her abundant talent,” said Maura Johnston in Rolling Stone. But “Gen Z’s chief flag-waver for throwback pop” is also “a product of her time.” In the TikTok era, there are many ears seeking out singable period-style tunes, and Laufey has both a “full-bodied alto” and “a knack for marrying 21st-century problems with fishhook melodies that recall standards from previous centuries.” The L.A.-based 26-year-old Icelandic singer-songwriter opens her third album on a bright note with the carefree “ding-dong” refrain of “Clockwork.” But she’s also exploring modern love’s pitfalls, and by the time “Sabotage” closes the album with a touch of chaos, she’s calling herself her own worst enemy. “Lyrically, this album is as timely as it gets,” said Roisin O’Connor in The Independent…

(R) A happy union devolves into domestic warfare. “Is it funnier? Mostly no,” said David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter. But in this second screen adaptation of the 1981 novel The War of the Roses, co-stars Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch “put their own vinegary spin” on the divorce tale that Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas brought to theaters in 1989. If you admire Brits’ ability to engage in withering repartee, “you couldn’t ask for a more skilled demonstration.” Alas, the movie built around Colman and Cumberbatch proves “too broad and tonally erratic,” said Tim Grierson in Screen Daily. Despite the stars’ chemistry, their characters, British ex-pats Ivy and Theo Rose, remain “cartoonish ciphers.” She’s a chef intoxicated with her newfound fame at the same time that her alpha-male husband…

Evelyn A powerful story about coping with loss, this film follows the adult siblings of a 22-year-old who died by suicide as they reunite years later to hike the countryside their brother loved and to talk through the grief that had carved a hole in their lives. Netflix Folktales This poetic documentary follows teenagers who leave their hectic lives behind to enroll in a Norwegian “folk high school” where the curriculum features arctic survival skills, igloo building, and befriending a team of sled dogs. $17 on demand E.1027: Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea In the 1920s, architect Eileen Gray built a stunning modernist refuge on the French Riviera, naming it E.1027. This film mixes documentary with dramatizations of a painful interlude when famed rival architect Le Corbusier…

“International medication laws are murkier than most travelers expect,” said Lauren Dana Ellman in Travel + Leisure. The allergy drug Sudafed, for example, is banned in Japan and Mexico. Products containing codeine, such as certain pain relievers and cough suppressants, are prohibited or tightly controlled in the United Arab Emirates, Greece, Indonesia, and Japan. Stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin require advance approval to carry with you into Singapore, South Korea, the UAE, and Japan. To avoid trouble, including confiscation, detention, or arrest, research the rules in advance by visiting the relevant U.S. Embassy website. Keep any medication in its original packaging or pharmacy vial, and for further protection, ask your doctor for a letter or copy of your prescription that you can carry.…

Sandra Grimes’ final task for the CIA saved lives. In 1991, after nearly 25 years in U.S. intelligence, having risen to chief of Africa operations, she announced plans to retire. Higher-ups asked her to stay to investigate the 1988 exposure of Soviet Gen. Dmitri Polyakov, the CIA’s highest-ranking double agent and one of Grimes’ earliest mentors. She soon discovered the general had been outed to the Soviets by CIA officer Aldrich Ames, whose collusion led to the execution of 10 informants, including Polyakov. Grimes was appalled, as Ames was a longtime associate with whom she’d even carpooled for a time. “I never would have believed it,” she said. “Never in a million years.” Sandra Joyce Venable was a Cold War baby, said The New York Times, whose parents had met…

Love stories, after pop superstar Taylor Swift said yes to her boyfriend of two years, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married,” the couple posted on Instagram, with photos of Kelce getting down on one knee. Faking it, after a French Justin Bieber impersonator tricked a Las Vegas nightclub into letting him perform onstage while racking up a $10,000 tab. The Wynn hotel, where the XS Nightclub is located, banned Dylan Desclos from its properties for life and blamed “an elaborate and multistep ruse by him and his advance team.” Screen breaks, after the Japanese city of Toyoake proposed a health ordinance that would limit residents’ smartphone use to two hours a day outside work and school. “In two hours,…

London Protests over migration: The British government said this week it will speed up asylum appeals to ensure swift deportations, after protests broke out over the housing of asylum seekers in hotels. The government is currently housing some 30,000 asylum seekers in hotels, which have become flash points. Last week, a judge ruled that migrants must be evicted from one Epping hotel after an asylum seeker staying there was accused of assaulting a teenage girl. Nigel Farage, whose Reform UK party leads the governing Labour Party in polls 30% to 21%, said this week that if he were elected he would immediately “detain and deport” every migrant who arrived in the U.K. by small boat. Experts, though, said such a scheme would be illegal. Toronto No experiments on dogs: Ontario…

Roger Daltrey is very much feeling his age, said Will Hodgkinson in The Times (U.K.). The Who singer, 81, recently revealed that he’s going deaf. And his eyesight, he admits, is “not good. I’ve got an incurable macular degeneration.” That’s why Daltrey, unlike many of his rock peers, doesn’t use Autocue onstage. “There’s no point. Can’t f---ing see it!” he laughs. Now midway through The Who’s farewell U.S. tour with the band’s other original surviving member, Pete Townshend, Daltrey says he hasn’t yet gone “the full Tommy” because his voice “is still as good as ever. I’m still singing in the same keys and it’s still bloody loud, but I can’t tell you if it will still be there in October.” The rocker worries about being sidelined by the lingering…

Jonah Goldberg The Dispatch Right-wing culture warriors have been “losing their minds” over Cracker Barrel, said Jonah Goldberg. The highway pit stop, where customers can chow down on chicken-fried steak, dumplings, and floury white gravy, recently updated its decor, and removed the “old white guy in overalls sitting by a barrel” from its logo in favor of a text-only sign bearing the company’s name. Cue the outrage. The brand has gone “woke,” cried the critics; Federalist co-founder Sean Davis accused Cracker Barrel’s CEO of seeking to brainwash customers with “the principles of gay race communism.” After President Trump called on the company to bring back the old logo, the company quickly announced it would comply. Cracker Barrel was founded as a gas station eatery in 1969, and “is not some…

“None of us can imagine what it is like to be subjected to the unremitting physical, psychological, and social violence of chattel slavery. But museums bring us closer to being able to do so by sharing first-person accounts of those who lived through that terrible violence. We see their faces; we hear their voices. And yet the MAGA movement wants to tell a story about America that is disproportionately focused on what its proponents perceive to be the exceptionalism of this country. Having to look too closely at the disturbing parts of American history would mean having to look closely at the disturbing parts of themselves.” Clint Smith in The Atlantic…

Rathindra Kuruwita Sunday Observer Sri Lankans are getting fed up with “the visible and growing Israeli footprint” in the popular surfing town of Arugam Bay, said Rathindra Kuruwita. Downtown walls are plastered with stickers and posters in Hebrew, far outnumbering those written in Sinhala, Tamil, or English. One Australian blogger said he “wondered if he was in Tel Aviv.” When our country reopened to tourists in 2022, after the pandemic pause, the government tried to boost tourism by inviting an Israeli film crew to shoot a movie. Arugam Bay, about a group of surfers in the same Israeli military unit who come to Sri Lanka to heal their trauma, was a hit, and Israelis began flocking to the town. They quickly set up illegal expat firms, including “surf schools, photography…

John Rentoul The Independent The foundations of British political stability are crumbling around us, says John Rentoul. The “old duopoly” of Conservatives on the right and Labour on the left, dutifully alternating turns at the helm, is no more. On the far right, Reform UK overtook the Conservatives in the polls at the start of the year and kept climbing; it now commands the support of 30% of voters to the Conservatives’ 18%. And Labour is in danger of suffering a similar fate. Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, pushed out of his party last year over antisemitism allegations, has launched a new far-left outfit with another leftist MP, Zarah Sultana. They believe the new group, tentatively called Your Party, will become the biggest force on the left. And who’s to…

Ghislaine Maxwell wants to make it clear that the man who could pardon her never did anything wrong, said Dan Friedman in Mother Jones. That’s the big takeaway from the newly released transcripts of the Jeffrey Epstein associate’s prison interviews with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Now serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking minors, Maxwell, 63, told Blanche in July that she never saw President Trump “in any inappropriate setting” during his 15-year friendship with the pedophile Epstein—and indeed never saw “any man” act improperly. She called Trump “a gentleman in all respects,” adding that she admires his “extraordinary achievement” in becoming president. Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, was “unusually deferential” to Maxwell, said Chris Cameron in The New York Times. He didn’t follow up on or challenge the…

“It’s a no-brainer,” said John A. Torres in Florida Today. Banning phones in schools is “the right thing to do for our kids.” Florida is one of 17 states, plus Washington, D.C., enacting all-day phone bans as students head back to school. With 68% of parents supporting some phone limits, 35 states now restrict phone usage in public schools. Some states are imposing “bell-to-bell” prohibitions on using phones for the entire day, while others bar them during class time, with students granted access between classes and during lunch. Research shows smartphone usage increases children’s risk of mental health problems, “from depression to cyberbullying to an inability to focus and learn,” said Mary Ellen Klas in Bloomberg. This is one of the “few things most American politicians seem to agree upon,”…

The HMD Fuse smartphone, intended for teens, uses AI to block the viewing, sending, receiving, and creation of nude images, even on livestreams or video calls, said Jamie Richards in TechRadar. HMD, the Finnish maker of Nokia phones, uses an AI system from British company SafeToNet that “works across any app or content type” by scanning for nude imagery. “When such imagery is detected, the entire screen is blocked, and any communications apps are closed.” The software is embedded deep in the operating system, can’t be turned off or worked around, and works by taking “a snapshot of the screen rendering pipeline every six to seven seconds.” SafeToNet and HMD say that the phone is in essence “pornography incompatible.” For now, the phone is available exclusively in the U.K.…

Seth Harp’s new nonfiction best-seller is “the most depressing book I’ve read in a long time,” said Thomas E. Ricks in The New York Times. The Rolling Stone writer, an Army Reserve veteran and former lawyer, builds an indictment of today’s U.S. special operations forces by focusing on the criminal careers of two special ops veterans in Fayetteville, N.C. Billy Lavigne and Timothy Dumas were murdered near Fort Bragg in December 2020, their deaths the price they paid for their active roles in a multimillion-dollar drug-trafficking ring tied to the base. “These were not isolated cases, Harp makes clear.” Though Harp “can be tendentious,” he’s correct that there’s been a meltdown in the conduct of special ops forces at a time when they’re frequently the point of the spear in…

Raymond Antrobus would prefer not to become known as a deaf poet, said Sophia Stewart in The Atlantic. “I am a poet first,” he says. But the London native, who at 38 is beginning to pile up awards, decided it was time to write a memoir about growing up feeling caught between the worlds of the hearing and the unhearing. Though Antrobus first discovered he was deaf at age 6, he could hear enough and became good enough at lipreading and speaking that he could pass as hearing. When he was a teenager, his attempt to keep up the ruse cost him both a girlfriend and a job. But as he writes in The Quiet Ear, deafness, like all disability, is “an experience rather than a trauma.” At the risk…

“Against all odds,” Deftones now rank among rock’s elite, said Sadie Sartini Garner in Pitchfork. Once known as “nu-metal B-listers,” the Sacramento-born quartet are today “avant-rock heroes” with a sizable Gen Z following. And while the band’s 10th album is “unlikely to draw in unconvinced listeners,” it shows them “fully in control” of their menacing sound, “able to effortlessly bend it around whatever structures they put in place.” Still, the turnaround in Deftones’ reputation owes mostly to the rock audience, particularly “the evolution of how people feel about heaviness, romance, and the primacy of our emotional life.” A great Deftones song, as always, “can feel like an arduous hike to a stunning vista that reveals a violent storm on the horizon.” Private Music “should please all corners of their wide…

(R) A couple’s open marriage reaps chaos. Splitsville, this week’s other new comedy about marriages in tumult, “starts with what’s essentially a test,” said David Fear in Rolling Stone. In the movie’s first five minutes, which wrap together a front-seat sex act, a fatal crash, and talk of divorce, co-writers and co-stars Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin are “letting viewers know right away that things are about to get more than a little filthy and a wee bit darker than your average indie-cutesy quirkfest.” Spurned by his wife, Marvin’s Carey soon sleeps with his best friend’s wife after learning the couple has an open marriage, leading to a fight between the men that achieves a “Looney Tunes–style level of ridiculousness.” By comparison, the roles of Covino’s and Marvin’s more…

Elon Musk’s AI company took on Apple and OpenAI this week over “monopolistic” behavior, said Annie Palmer in CNBC.com. In a lawsuit, xAI accuses the two firms of colluding to “lock up markets” in smartphones and generative AI. The suit charges that Apple has been “deprioritizing” other AI apps in its App Store rankings, which lists xAI’s Grok chatbot as No. 5 among its “Top Free Apps” and ChatGPT as No. 1. “The lawsuit is the latest twist in an ongoing clash between Musk and Open AI CEO Sam Altman,” who in turn has accused Musk of efforts to “harm his competitors and people he doesn’t like.” Evergrande: Ending with a whimper, not a bang Property giant China Evergrande was officially delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange this week,…

■ Wall Street welcomes you back JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon was never a fan of work from home, and the bank’s new headquarters serves as a 60-story exclamation mark, said Alice Tecotzky in Business Insider. “With a gym, massive food hall, and 24/7 grab-and-go option, the building reinforces a long-standing law of Wall Street: Work and life are often indistinguishable.” JPMorgan called nearly all workers back to the office full-time earlier this year. “Don’t give me this shit that work-from-home-Friday works,” Dimon was heard saying in a town hall. “I call a lot of people on Fridays, and there’s not a goddamn person you can get ahold of.” But what goes for Wall Street may not apply widely. While New York City office workers are going to offices at a…

Jeff Horwitz Reuters Some Facebook users are confusing Meta’s chatbots with real people, said Jeff Horwitz—with devastating consequences. Thongbue Wongbandue, 76, died in March after injuring his head and neck in a fall near a parking lot on a Rutgers University campus in New Jersey. The reason for his collapse? He was “rushing in the dark with a roller-bag suitcase to catch a train” to meet a Meta AI chatbot. Wongbandue was in a diminished cognitive state after suffering a stroke years earlier, and Facebook had become “his main social outlet.” It’s there where he started messaging with “Big sis Billie,” one of thousands of chatbots that Meta has begun deploying across its platforms. Big sis Billie was created by Meta “in collaboration with reality TV star Kendall Jenner” to…

A Washington, D.C., lawyer wants more Americans to bet on elections and politics, said Nancy Scola in Washingtonian. Those wagers could result in better policymaking—or a weaker democracy. IT’S A SPRINGTIME Thursday night at Nanny O’Brien’s Irish Pub in Northwest D.C., and up on the TVs, the University of Maryland men’s basketball team is struggling against the University of Florida. The bar is stuffed with revelers eating chicken wings and drinking beer. Given that Americans will wager an estimated $3.1 billion on college basketball’s championship tournament this year, it’s a fair bet that at least some of them are fretting about what they have riding on the game. Pratik Chougule is thinking about wagers, too—just not on sports. “I don’t understand how we can have this quasi-national religion in which…

We now have a clear sign that Trump “intends to expand the U.S. military’s role in domestic law enforcement,” said Zachary Cohen in CNN.com. His National Guard executive order also calls for every state to create specialized units focused on “public order issues.” But questions remain “about how the order will work in practice.” The guard “already has reaction forces” in each state and territory, who are under the command and control of governors. Trump’s order doesn’t say what authority the new units would report to if they’re deployed over a governor’s objection. Nor does it say how such units would train “or whether there would be coordination between those units across the states.” Whatever the details, the alarming upshot is clear, said William Kristol in The Bulwark. The National…

Gavin Newsom has devised a new strategy to energize Democrats and infuriate Republicans, said Matt K. Lewis in the Los Angeles Times: Act like President Trump. In recent weeks, his social media accounts have shared posts that parody the kind of material that normally fills up Trump supporters’ feeds. There’s AI-generated images of Newsom with a cup labeled “MAGA tears”; Newsom on Mount Rushmore; and “my personal favorite,” Newsom getting prayed over by Kid Rock, Tucker Carlson, and an angelic Hulk Hogan. The Democrat has adopted Trump’s all-caps writing style as well, posting that his redistricting plan to counter the Texas GOP’s gerrymander has led “MANY” people to call him “GAVIN CHRISTOPHER ‘COLUMBUS’ NEWSOM (BECAUSE OF THE MAPS!)” He taunts the president on X with Trumpish insults (“DONALD IS FINISHED—HE…

Pentagon purge accelerates with firing of intelligence head Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week fired the head of the Pentagon’s main intelligence branch, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, just weeks after the agency drafted a report that contradicted President Trump’s claim that Iran’s nuclear program was “fully obliterated” in U.S. military strikes in June. A leaked preliminary assessment of that operation from the Defense Intelligence Agency estimated the bombing campaign had set back Iran’s nuclear capabilities only by a few months. The White House called the assessment “flat-out wrong.” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said Kruse’s firing was evidence that the administration treats intelligence as “a loyalty test” Hegseth has ousted numerous other Pentagon officials in recent months, and last week also fired Vice Adm. Nancy Lacore, chief of the Navy Reserve,…

For most of the 1980s, Ron Howard sported a thick mustache, said Bilge Ebiri in New York. He’d grown it after leaving the cast of Happy Days, in a bid to distance himself from the youthful Richie Cunningham character and to look older and more authoritative in his new career as a director. The facial hair intrigued Andy Warhol, who told Brian Grazer—co-founder of Howard’s Imagine Entertainment production company—that he’d like to paint two portraits of Howard, one with the mustache and one after Warhol had shaved it off. “I said, ‘You know Warhol’s a really interesting guy, but I’m not letting [him] shave my mustache,’” recalls Howard, 71. It was, he admits, a “pretty stupid” decision because “I could have a couple of original Warhols right now.” But “what…

■ Zoë Kravitz and Harry Styles were spotted arm in arm in Rome this week. A fan caught the Big Little Lies actress and the former One Direction singer taking a stroll in the Italian capital, sparking rumors of a potential romance. It wasn’t the pair’s first date: A source told The Sun (U.K.) that Styles, 31, and Kravitz, the 36-year-old daughter of rocker Lenny Kravitz and actress Lisa Bonet, were seen days earlier making out “like teenagers” in a London restaurant after the U.K. premiere of her new movie, Caught Stealing. Another source told the paper that Kravitz—who split from fiancé Channing Tatum late last year—and Styles are in the “very early days” of a relationship and “there are no labels. They’re having a lot of fun together.” ■…

Michael Scherer The Atlantic McCarthyism is back, said Michael Scherer, and its leader is a 32-year-old “extremist troll.” An anti-Muslim activist and self-described “unofficial adviser” to President Trump, Laura Loomer has become one of the country’s “most influential public figures.” Trump prizes loyalty above all, so he listens to her “despite the warnings, sneers, and eye rolls” from other advisers. He has fired dozens of federal employees Loomer has targeted for sins such as past statements in support of diversity or criticism of Trump. She claimed credit last week when Trump’s intelligence chief stripped security clearances from 37 national security officials, and she previously persuaded Trump to get rid of six members of his National Security Council, three leaders at the National Security Agency, a Homeland Security official, an assistant…

David McWilliams The Irish Times American tech money has warped Ireland’s economy, said David McWilliams. Ireland lured tech giants Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft to put their European bases of operations here, offering ultra-low corporate taxes and an English-speaking talent pool. The result was an economic boom. These multinationals “are akin to a resource find, a spigot that churns out tax revenue.” But as any country that strikes oil soon learns, it’s dangerous to rely so much on one bonanza industry. “Because there is so much money gushing out of the multinationals and going directly into the public sector,” spending in that sector soars. Special-interest groups with big lobbying arms rush to grab as much as they can, and they grow too powerful. It’s called Dutch Disease, after what happened…

“Donald Trump is a socialist, apparently,” said David M. Drucker in Bloomberg. That’s what the Republican Party circa 2008—which opposed the Obama administration’s auto sector bailouts—would have called a president who snared the U.S. government a 10% stake in struggling chipmaker Intel. Paid for with about $9 billion in grants from the Biden-era CHIPS Act, the deal was made at a White House meeting last week between Trump and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan. Notably, Trump had spent days calling for Tan’s resignation over his past business dealings with the Chinese military. “He walked in wanting to keep his job,” said Trump, “and he ended up giving us $10 billion for the United States.” This is just the beginning, said Ben Berkowitz in Axios. Trump’s top economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, said…

“The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.” George Orwell, quoted in The Washington Post “I not only use all the brains I have, but all that I can borrow.” Woodrow Wilson, quoted in The Times of Israel “Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade.” Marcel Proust, quoted in The Knowledge “There’s no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There are thousands of answers—at least.” Octavia Butler, quoted in The Stranger “The reason I will never hate anybody again is that it’s too demeaning a confession on your part if you need to hate somebody. It means you are afraid of the other thing, which is to love and be loved.” James Baldwin, quoted in the Boston Globe “What worries…

■ Big Tech’s power surge One tangible impact of artificial intelligence is its insatiable demand for electricity, said Ivan Penn and Karen Weise in The New York Times. “Large, rectangular buildings packed with servers consumed more than 4% of the nation’s electricity in 2023, and government analysts estimate that will increase to as much as 12% in just three years.” Data centers require expensive upgrades to the electrical grid, costs that will be shared with residents and smaller businesses unless tech companies are forced to cover expenses. Electrical rates, already rising sharply, could be turbocharged. In Ohio, the bill for a typical household increased at least $15 a month because of data centers, according to a utility and a grid monitor. Lawmakers worry that if the AI boom fizzles, residents…

Scientists at Stanford University have developed a pioneering brain implant that can detect and decode the thoughts of people with vocal paralysis. Researchers have previously succeeded in using implanted brain-computer interfaces to decode words when the subjects are attempting to speak them—when they are moving their mouths, tongues, and vocal cords. Now they are able to interpret signals in the brain’s motor cortex without the subject doing any physical movement. “This is the first time we’ve managed to understand what brain activity looks like when you just think about speaking,” electrical engineer Erin Kunz tells the Financial Times. In the new study, four severely paralyzed participants were asked to either attempt to speak or to silently imagine a set of words. The signals resulting from just thinking about the words…

Jessica Francis Kane’s new novel, Fonseca, fictionalizes an event in the life of British novelist Penelope Fitzgerald. It follows the future literary legend as she and her 6-year-old son travel to a small town in Mexico in 1952, hoping to claim an unexpected inheritance. The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald (1988). I’ve been steeped in everything by and about Fitzgerald for the better part of a decade, and this is my favorite of her novels. A city (Moscow), a landscape (winter giving way to spring), and a vanished time (pre-revolutionary Russia) are all mastered in less than 200 pages. The English printer Frank Reid—confused husband, loving but baffled father, patient friend—is one of her best creations. The Means of Escape by Penelope Fitzgerald (2000). Fitzgerald was preparing this book,…

Surrendering to the “weird logic” of Earl Sweatshirt’s sixth solo album is “an enrapturing way to spend 25 minutes,” said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. “This is music from deep within hip-hop’s ‘otherground,’ an area in which normal rules don’t apply.” The songs “unexpectedly short out or crash into each other.” On the sixth track, “Live,” the “bright-hued” synth backing starts glitching midway through before the beat and the rhythm of Earl’s rhymes shift entirely. Yet there are hooks and samples here, including the harpsichord loop on “Forge,” that “dig into your brain as they repeat.” Renowned for his bleak outlook, Earl seems to have lightened up, perhaps owing to the arrival of the children he pays tribute to on “Gamma (need the <3)” and “Tourmaline.” The quest for self-knowledge…

(R) An unlikely friendship takes surprising turns. “You’ll begin Twinless with basic expectations, and you’ll end it with your mouth agape,” said Johnny Oleksinski in the New York Post. James Sweeney’s “compulsively addictive” Sundance award-winner “begins innocently enough,” with Sweeney and former teen star Dylan O’Brien playing two men, one gay and one straight, who connect at a support group for adults whose twins have died. But this surprising dramedy, which hits theaters on Sept. 5, “soon transforms into something more psychologically sinister,” and even viewers who always know where a screenplay is headed “will find themselves refreshingly behind this filmmaker’s razor-sharp mind.” When the first big rug-pull arrives, it’s “delivered with such confidence and style” that we’re unsure what the writer-director may do next, said Benjamin Lee in The…

“There’s a new red-wine darling on the block,” said Lauren Buzzeo in Food & Wine. South Africa’s winemakers are doing great things with cinsault, once an uncelebrated key contributor to traditional “Cape blends.” Cinsaults are wonderfully adaptable, “all strawberries and spice” when served chilled in the summer but showing “subtle earthiness” on fall nights. The Blacksmith Barebones Cinsault Paarl ($25). This wine “bursts with flavors of crushed raspberries and wild strawberries dusted by baking spice.” Yet they’re tamed by “a silky palate of gentle tannins and earthy whispers.” Craven Cinsault Stellenbosch ($25). A “beautifully restrained” wine, this cinsault “highlights the grape’s pinot-like charm.” Fram Cinsault Citrusdal Mountain ($20). This adventurous red “brims with crunchy red-fruit character, while subtle accents of rooibos leaf and mentholated herbs add lift and intrigue.”…

Olde New York “More than whatever is flashy and new,” the businesses that make New York City a singular place are the ones with the longest histories, said Harrison Hill in Afar. On this 400th anniversary of the city’s founding, I’ve explored its five boroughs with that in mind. In Queens, I devoured a sundae at Eddie’s Sweet Shop, the city’s oldest ice cream parlor, now 100. I also enjoyed a lager among friendly families at Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden, the city’s oldest beer garden, at 115. The city’s oldest Black-owned restaurant turns out to be 63-year-old Sylvia’s, in Harlem, where the chicken and waffles are “as good as ever,” while the city’s oldest gay bar, Julius’ in Greenwich Village, is as comfortable as a living room and in…

Artificial intelligence paranoia is driving some believers to make radical life choices, said Rob Price in Business Insider. “For a certain class of Silicon Valley denizens,” preparing for an AI-driven doomsday isn’t just about buying bunkers and outfitting personal bio-shelters with “professional-grade HEPA filters,” although some tech worriers are doing just that. Others have begun “reshaping their social lives” to “treasure the time they have now.” A fitness craze is taking hold inspired by the idea that “being hot will become all the more essential to flourishing” within a society that has been subsumed (intellectually) by robots. People have also “transformed their approach to money” in differing ways. Thirty-three-year-old Daniel Kokotajlo, a former researcher at OpenAI, says he has “stopped saving for retirement” because why bother? Others are racing to…

In 1989, as the threat of habitat loss and poaching grew, the nonprofit International Rhino Foundation (rhinos.org) was founded to help conserve rhinos in captivity and the wild. Its one-of-a-kind, 250-acre sanctuary in Indonesia looks after 10 Sumatran rhinos, including Delilah, the first captive-born rhino of her species to give birth. Rhinos there live in maintained rainforest habitats and are central to breeding efforts to protect the dwindling species. Sumatrans are critically endangered: Fewer than 80 of them still live in the wild. Beyond on-the-ground conservation, the nonprofit also funds research on wild habitats, breeding programs, disease risks, and more. A recent grant was given to investigate the genetic profile of Javan rhinos, another critically endangered species. The foundation also works with local groups across Asia and Africa to directly…

Dean Seal The Wall Street Journal The weed business needs more than Miracle-Gro to return to its pandemic high, said Dean Seal. Jim Hagedorn, the chief executive of Scotts Miracle-Gro, attended dinner with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago in April “hoping to persuade the president to end the federal government’s hostility toward legal cannabis.” It might sound like a strange position for the head of a billion-dollar lawn-and-garden company. But Scotts has quietly been watering the weed industry since 2014, when Hagedorn formed a new subsidiary named the Hawthorne Gardening Co. to be “a corporate trailblazer in the cannabis industry.” Hawthorne initially “cast its business as selling products for hydroponics,” or indoor gardening. But a wave of legalizations across dozens of states eventually emboldened Scotts to embrace its pot business publicly.…