Innholdsfortegnelse for December 5, 2025 i The Week Magazine

President Trump was gifted a “Get Out of Jail Free” card last year by the Supreme Court. How lovely for him. But as he wields the military and Justice Department as personal tools, his immunity does not protect those who carry out possibly illegal orders. For good reason, service members in the U.S. Southern Command are reportedly deeply concerned as they assassinate more than 80 alleged drug smugglers without congressional authorization or solid legal justification. In fact, NBC News reported last week, a senior military lawyer concluded that these extrajudicial executions would be illegal and could expose service members to later prosecution. The military lawyer was overruled by Trump’s Justice Department, leaving service members feeling “profound legal confusion,” says David French in The New York Times. (See Talking Points, p.17.)…

■ A Missouri judge resigned after a state oversight commission found he’d repeatedly worn an Elvis Presley wig in court, quoted Presley’s lyrics during proceedings, and allowed witnesses be sworn in to the late singer’s music. In a resignation letter, Judge Matthew Thornhill admitted to using “levity” to try to “help relax litigants,” but said he now understands that he had jeopardized the “integrity and solemnity of the proceedings.” ■ Buc-ee’s, the Texas-based gas-station chain, is suing an Oklahoma underwear firm for trademark infringement. Jarrad Hewett, owner of Nut Huggers apparel, said he’s perplexed by the complaint, because Buc-ee’s logo features a cartoon beaver, while his own is of a squirrel holding a pair of acorns. Having failed to mollify Buc-ee’s with design changes, Hewett says he’s ready for court…

When Stephen Fry disappeared to Belgium for several days in 1995, said Rebecca Mead in The New Yorker, his friends in London feared he’d taken his own life. The entertainer had left a note for his agent saying he felt like he’d failed as an actor following a tepidly reviewed new play. Fry, now 68, eventually returned home and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. After that, he says, “all kinds of things fell into place.” He now understands why he “was more transgressive” than his older brother, Roger. As a teenager, Fry spent three months in prison after going on a shopping spree with stolen credit cards. If you’re 15 and have mood swings that are “greater and more extreme than most people, you do something to stabilize your mood.”…

Catherine Rampell The Bulwark “How do you eradicate hunger, STDs, illiteracy, poverty?” asked Catherine Rampell. Simple: “You stop measuring them.” The Trump administration has imposed a “data blackout” on many government statistics used to measure how well we’re doing as a nation—and how he’s doing as president. The Department of Government Efficiency’s cuts have been winnowing the ranks of government number crunchers and “quietly snuffing out thousands of other data series, particularly those that might produce politically inconvenient results.” President Trump fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in August because of anemic job-creation data; the rest of the agency has been “Swiss-cheesed,” with many regional offices shut down. The Bureau of Economic Analysis, which measures GDP, consumer spending, and inflation, is cutting staff by 20%. The administration…

Editorial The Asahi Shimbun Our new prime minister wasted no time picking a fight with China, said The Asahi Shimbun. Sanae Takaichi started out with admirable diplomacy, shaking hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping and agreeing to build a “stable bilateral relationship.” Yet right after that, when lawmakers asked her what might trigger Japanese military action, she named the use of force by China against Taiwan. That would be a red line, she said, because it would be a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, too. Beijing, of course, blew its top, accusing Takaichi of at best meddling and at worst threatening war, and it ordered Chinese citizens not to travel to Japan. Look, it’s not a terrible thing to be a China hawk. “Japan cannot simply stand by and do nothing…

Want to stay young? Learn a second language—or preferably a third. That’s the conclusion of a major new study, reports The Times (U.K.), which found that speaking more than one tongue may help slow “accelerated aging.” An international team of researchers analyzed data from more than 86,000 adults across 27 European countries, comparing each person’s chronological age with a calculated “biological age” based on cognitive performance, physical function, activity level, sleep quality, and medical history. Those who spoke only one language were more than twice as likely to have a biological age older than their real age, a sign that they were aging faster. Those who were bilingual showed a modest advantage of youthfulness, and each additional language spoken conferred a greater likelihood of a younger biological age than the…

Oyinkan Braithwaite’s second novel “kicks off with a stunning set piece,” said Kashana Cauley in The New York Times. It is nighttime on a Lagos beach when a young woman named Monife willfully ends her life by wading into the ocean. In this modern fable from the author of My Sister, the Serial Killer, the women in Monife’s family believe that a curse has doomed them to never hold on to a man, and though the men in the story prove “charming but thinly drawn,” they’re “not the point.” Shortly after Monife’s death, her cousin gives birth to a daughter who looks just like Monife, and it’s the intertwined stories of these three richly drawn female characters that hold us. “Elements of magical realism are skillfully woven into the narrative,”…

The Uncool by Cameron Crowe (Avid, $35) “Cameron Crowe’s charming new memoir is an elegy for a lost time,” said Marc Weingarten in the Los Angeles Times. Returning to his adventures as a teenage Rolling Stone writer in the mid-1970s, the director of Almost Famous again and again “pulls the reader in with his keenly observant eye that would serve him so well in his second career.” And many of the insights he shares about the era’s rock stars are “far more interesting” than those he’s shared before. Insomnia by Robbie Robertson (Crown, $32) This posthumous memoir captures a special friendship, said Grayson Haver Currin in Mojo. In 1977, while separated from his wife and done with The Band, rocker Robbie Robertson moved into Martin Scorsese’s Beverly Hills home, and…

Longacre Theatre, New York City “Smallness can be a great thing in a musical,” said Jackson McHenry in NYMag.com. And in its best moments, Two Strangers “does achieve something magical.” Both members of its two-person cast are little-known but charming musical-theater actors, and they’re eventually given space to develop compelling character arcs. But the pitch for the show is better than the execution. Sam Tutty plays a wide-eyed young man from Britain who has just landed in New York City for his estranged father’s nuptials when the bride’s jaded Brooklyn-bred sister, played by Christiani Pitts, meets him at the airport and enlists him on a cross-borough trek to pick up the wedding cake. Unfortunately, the show’s contemporary-pop score “lacks distinctiveness,” its otherwise promising British co-writers don’t know enough about New…

Directed by Rian Johnson (PG-13) Knives Out’s flamboyant sleuth heads to church. Rian Johnson’s latest Knives Out entry “maintains the franchise’s undefeated record,” said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. “Another intricate, rousing whodunit,” Wake Up Dead Man hands detective Benoit Blanc his toughest case yet: a homicide that brings the existence of God into play. At a Catholic church in upstate New York, a domineering monsignor played by Josh Brolin is killed moments after stepping off the altar, and the primary suspect is an assistant priest played by Josh O’Connor. But the suspect list is long and as star-packed as usual, this time including Andrew Scott, Kerry Washington, Thomas Haden Church, and a “scene-stealing” Glenn Close. Daniel Craig, returning as Benoit, “reins in his urge to chew scenery, and instead…

Eli Lilly last week became the first pharmaceutical company with a $1 trillion valuation, said Peter Loftus in The Wall Street Journal. “The market-cap milestone marks a striking turnaround” for the Indianapolis-based drugmaker, which has moved on from Prozac and Zyprexa to newfound success with weight-loss drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound. Their prescription volume has now “surpassed that of Novo Nordisk’s competing GLP-1 drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy.” Lilly’s shares have risen 37% so far this year, making its market value “more than twice as big as its next closest rival,” Johnson & Johnson. Instagram: Former safety head says Meta ignored risks “Sex trafficking on Meta platforms was both difficult to report and widely tolerated, according to a court filing unsealed” last week, said Charlotte Alter in Time. In a brief from…

■ The ‘ATM’ is open for meme stocks More companies are quietly “dribbling out” stock to raise needed cash, said Bethany McLean in The Washington Post. ATM, or “at the market,” stock sales have raised $335 billion since 2020—an “immense amount of money” considering that these are not like the structured sales led by an investment bank. Rather, ATM issuances are small amounts that function “just as you get cash at the automated teller machine.” Disclosures of these transactions are “only in the financial statements after the fact,” making it “harder to stay on top of the dilution.” Perhaps it’s no surprise that “when I looked at 30 companies that are often called meme stocks, such as GameStop and Virgin Galactic,” all have been relying on ATMs for cash infusions.…

What happened President Trump’s retribution campaign against his political foes suffered a major loss this week, after a federal judge dismissed criminal charges against former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Comey, who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, was indicted in September for allegedly lying to Congress, and James, who brought a civil fraud case against Trump in 2022, was indicted in October for alleged mortgage fraud. Both have pleaded not guilty. But Judge Cameron McGowan Currie ruled that the prosecutor who brought the charges, Lindsey Halligan, was illegally appointed to her role as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Because of “Halligan’s defective appointment,” said Currie, a Bill Clinton appointee, all of her prosecutions “must be set aside.”…

Owning the means of production, after Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok described the tech magnate as “strikingly handsome,” with a “lean, athletic physique” and a “genius-level intellect…rivaling polymaths like da Vinci or Newton.” Musk later claimed that Grok had been “manipulated by adversarial prompting into saying absurdly positive things about me.” Adolf Hitler, who was set to secure a fifth term as district administrator in the Namibian region of Ompunda. Adolf Hitler Uunona has disowned the Nazi leader’s beliefs, and says his father, who gave him the name, was unclear on “what Adolf Hitler stood for” but liked the sound of his name. The arts, after Semafor reported that President Trump is pressuring Paramount owner Larry Ellison to revive the 1990s Rush Hour buddy-cop movie franchise, which starred Jackie Chan…

London Russian mouthpiece: A former leader of the right-wing Reform UK party was sentenced last week to 10 and a half years in prison for taking bribes to make pro-Russia statements in the European Parliament. Nathan Gill, who left the anti-immigration party in 2021 after losing a Welsh parliamentary election, admitted that a Moscow-backed Ukrainian politician paid him at least $52,000 between 2018 and 2019 to give scripted speeches and media appearances in support of the Kremlin and to “co-opt” fellow politicians. Security minister Dan Jarvis called the scheme a “betrayal of our country.” Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, whose party leads Labour and the Conservatives in polls, has said he was “shocked” and called Gill a “bad apple.” Port-au-Prince, Haiti Soccer triumph: Thousands of Haitians poured into the streets…

Ethan Hawke’s mother is his greatest champion, said Hadley Freeman in The Times (U.K.), and his greatest critic. The actor’s mom, Leslie, always had artistic ambitions for her son—she named him Ethan because she thought it would look good on a book jacket—but made sure he stayed grounded after Dead Poets Society (1989) turned him into a teen pinup. “She just [verbally] beat up on me relentlessly,” says Hawke, 55. “Like, ‘You didn’t deserve that’ and ‘They’re only saying that because you’re famous.’” When he released a semi-autobiographical novel in 1996, “she said, ‘Well, it doesn’t deserve to be published and they’re only doing it because you’re a famous actor. But I think you should publish it, because you’re going to learn a lot from it, and that has a…

Sarah Wildman The New York Times Jemmy Jimenez Rosa was returning from vacation when a Border Patrol officer at Boston’s Logan Airport took her into a back room and told her to bid her daughters farewell, said Sarah Wildman. “I keep thinking this is a nightmare,” she said, as the agent separated her from her three kids and husband, all of whom are citizens. Rosa, 43, has been a legal permanent resident since she was 9, but was held in airport detention for five days without a shower. Panic attacks sent her to the hospital twice, once in shackles. She was briefly transferred to a rat-infested Maine detention facility before ICE finally released her on a rainy street in Massachusetts without money or a phone. Rosa is one of the…

“I am an advocate of the legalization of marijuana, [but] the results have been really quite irritating, haven’t they? The U.S. has some of the greatest and most interesting cities in the world—New York, Chicago, San Francisco—and, over the last five or so years, almost all of them have become unpleasant to walk around in thanks to the ubiquitous smell of weed. Truly, it is everywhere—including, most distressingly, wafting through open-air restaurants and sidewalk cafés. There is a reason that the colloquial name for marijuana is ‘skunk,’ and there is a reason that one tries to avoid skunks: They are not, in any circumstance, nice to be around.” Charles C.W. Cooke in National Review…

Nomi Claire Lazar and Dean Vuletic Toronto Star Now that the U.S. has turned on us, Canada is reaching out to other allies, said Nomi Claire Lazar and Dean Vuletic. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new budget includes funding earmarked for possibly entering the Eurovision Song Contest. Eurovision is, of course, “raucous fun,” a campy, “over-the-top” annual competition that sees countries select one local band or artist to perform an original song on live television as viewers across the world vote for their favorite. The songs tend to be more than just pop anthems; they stand for something. When the bearded Austrian drag queen Conchita Wurst won the Eurovision title in 2014, it was seen as a win for gay rights, while the victory of a Ukrainian folk hip-hop group in…

Michal Szuldrzynski Rzeczpospolita Russia’s “hybrid war” on Europe is growing openly violent, said Michal Szuldrzynski. “This is not a classic war; we are not being attacked by tanks, warplanes, or infantry.” Yet we are under attack. For months, Russian drones have been disrupting European air traffic by buzzing airports, and hundreds have penetrated Polish airspace. Russian agents have set fires, spied on our roadways, and showered our social media with disinformation. Now Polish intelligence says Russia was behind last week’s explosion on the Deblin-Warsaw railway line, a track that is used to deliver aid to Ukraine. Fortunately, the crew of a passenger train spotted the damage in time, so nobody was hurt. But bombing a railway track is a significant escalation, a hostile act that “could have resulted in numerous…

“Trump is unraveling,” said Brian Karem in Salon. The president last week posted an unhinged rant in which he called a group of six Democratic legislators “traitors” and accused them of engaging in “seditious behavior punishable by DEATH.” The legislators, who each served in the U.S. military or the intelligence community, had released a video reminding military officials they had an obligation to “refuse illegal orders” from the commander in chief. In their statement, Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin (a former CIA officer), Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly (a retired Navy fighter pilot and NASA astronaut), and four House members said the administration was “pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens,” and reminded these officials they had taken an “oath to protect and defend this Constitution,” not the…

“Sid Caesar did not look like a comic,” said David Denby in The New Yorker. In the early 1950s, when his fame peaked, the TV pioneer “might have passed for a lawyer or a department store manager.” But unlike other funnymen of the era, who told jokes and did shtick, Caesar “could become almost anything, throwing himself into roles with shattering power.” David Margolick’s new book about Caesar and the early days of television captures the performer’s special talent and lasting influence, yet Margolick distinguishes himself as “an ideal cultural historian” because he’s “curious and loving enough to incorporate every telling detail but too wary of nostalgia to slip into ballyhoo.” The Sid Caesar who emerges in this telling is “both funny and tragic”—“a revolutionary talent whose particular success may…

Solvej Balle is now almost four decades into her own version of Groundhog Day, said Philip Oltermann in The Guardian. Every day, the Danish novelist rises from bed to plug away once more at a planned seven-book opus about a woman named Tara Selter who keeps repeating the same day over and over again. But Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume, now at six volumes with one to go, isn’t a personal albatross. The 63-year-old Balle is still happily exploring the same idea that long ago inspired her to begin the novel. “The thing that fascinated me most was the question: How can one day be so voluminous?” she says. It didn’t even bother her when Bill Murray’s classic comedy appeared in 1993—four years after she had settled on a…

Just maybe, said Nate Freeman in Vanity Fair, “the spark has returned to the art market.” The big news out of last week’s fall auctions was the sale of Gustav Klimt’s full-length Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer for $236 million. That set a new auction record for a work of modern art and puts the circa-1915 masterpiece second overall only to the portrait of Jesus sold as a lost Leonardo da Vinci in 2017. A Frida Kahlo painting set a record for a work by a female artist, fetching $54.7 million, and rival houses Christie’s and Phillips scored upticks of their own over 2024’s sales. But until Sotheby’s reveals the buyer of the Klimt, skepticism is in order. Several signs indicate that it could be a wealth-fund-backed arm of the government…

Directed by David Freyne (PG-13) A long-married couple faces a postmortem quandary. “Are we finally arriving in the promised land, where stand-alone commercial works of wit and invention can exist again?” asked Richard Lawson in The Hollywood Reporter. This new romantic comedy feels like a throwback, because it rests on a clever original idea. Elizabeth Olsen and Miles Teller play a husband and wife of 65 years who have recently died separately and discovered that they will spend eternity in their youthful prime. The catch: Olsen’s Joan must choose whether her forever will be spent with Teller’s Larry or her more dashing first husband, who had died in the Korean War and is portrayed here by Callum Turner. The script gives Teller and Olsen “a relatively complex acting challenge,” said Benjamin…

“A Bloody Mary is the ideal savory cocktail,” but building one can be a hassle, said Lucy Simon in Food & Wine. “To make brunch a bit easier,” we taste-tested eight widely available mixes in search of just-right texture, “bright tomato notes,” and “a balance of acidity, sweetness, and savoriness.” Below are the panel’s top three. The Real Dill Original Bloody Mary Mix ($13). Our No. 1 finisher “wowed our tasters with its balance of fresh tomato acidity, herbaceous complexity, peppery heat, and pickle-y tang.” Tabasco Brand Classic Bloody Mary Mix ($10). Our surprise runner-up offers “subtle pepper notes,” a “warming backbone of spice, fruit-forward tomato notes,” and “a kick of celery savoriness.” Zing Zang Bloody Mary Mix ($6). This salty, savory tomato-vegetable mix is pleasantly heavy on Worcestershire sauce…

A musical Route 66 road trip If you ever decide to drive the full length of the old Route 66, “there’s only one song to start your drive with,” said Justin Goldman in Afar. You’ll be in downtown Chicago after a night at a blues club and a tour of Chess Records when you hop in your car, turn south, and crank up Nat King Cole’s “Route 66.” In St. Louis, you’ll stop at the National Blues Museum; in Tulsa, the Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan centers. It’s all westward from there. In Amarillo, Texas, where you’ll stop to catch some live music at the GoldenLight Café & Cantina, you’ll also pass Cadillac Ranch, a 10-car art installation that inspired a Bruce Springsteen song. At Standin’ on the Corner Park…

■ More than 1.9 million Americans ages 25 and over who have at least a bachelor’s degree were unemployed in September, accounting for 25% of total unemployment. In data going back to 1992, the share has never been so high. Bloomberg ■ Mexico purchased $226.4 billion worth of U.S. goods between January and August, edging Canada to become the top buyer of American exports for the first time in nearly 30 years. Mexico also sells more goods to the U.S. than any other country, including China. The New York Times ■ An original copy of the first Superman comic from 1939 sold for $9 million at an auction last week, the highest price paid for a comic book. The “pinnacle of comic collecting” was discovered in a box in an…

“What would you do if the federal government wanted you in jail and Jamie Dimon was paying your legal bills?” asked Ron Lieber in The New York Times. Ask Charlie Javice. The convicted fraudster, who tricked JPMorgan Chase into a $175 million investment in her financial-aid startup by faking its user count, has spent like she was given a “blank check” after a court ruled the bank had to pony up for her defense. According to JPMorgan, “Javice engaged five separate law firms,” including one attorney who charges $2,025 an hour. That’s only the beginning. Her $60 million “defense” bill included “luxury hotel upgrades, extravagant meals, and cellulite butter,” a skin-care treatment. The bank has asked a judge to review the questionable expenses in an effort to get off the…

One-third of all food in the United States goes uneaten. Since 2020, the nonprofit Last Mile Food Rescue (lastmilefood.org) has been trying to change that. It diverts millions of pounds of excess, good-quality food away from landfills and toward communities in the Cincinnati area. Volunteers pick up food donations from restaurants, hotels, schools, farms, and even individuals, and then deliver them directly to food pantries, shelters, places of worship, and community-based grocery stores. About half the food they collect is highly perishable, but an app connecting volunteers with donors helps ensure that “food rescues” are completed within 90 minutes, and meals gathered in the morning are frequently used the same day. A weekly, mobile farmers market—also volunteer-run—serves local communities, distributing some 30,000 pounds of food every month. Each charity we…

Marc Lamber USA Today Don’t let the tragedy of “KitKat” knock driverless vehicles off course, said Marc Lamber. The death of a beloved San Francisco bodega cat named KitKat, who was killed last month by a self-driving Waymo, is being used as a symbol of the callousness of the robotaxi revolution. A city supervisor, Jackie Fielder, is now urging the California legislature to give counties the ability to vote robotaxis “in or out.” However, some perspective is needed. When an autonomous vehicle (AV) makes a mistake, “it often becomes national news. When a human driver kills someone, which happens constantly, it rarely makes the local news.” I know, having spent 34 years in Phoenix as a plaintiff personal injury lawyer. Car crashes, including fatal pedestrian collisions, “have surged over a…

Pauline Collins had a second-act rebirth, much like that of her most famous character. Having worked solidly for years onstage and on television in the U.K., she was nearly 50 when she was propelled to worldwide fame by the success of the film Shirley Valentine (1989), about a frustrated Liverpool housewife who escapes her humdrum life by hopping on a plane to Greece. Collins had originated the role on the London stage in a one-woman play and took it to Broadway, winning a Tony Award. When Hollywood came calling, the film’s producers had wanted to cast Cher as Shirley, but playwright Willy Russell loyally insisted that only Collins would do. She received critical plaudits, an Oscar nomination, and an unexpected new legion of fans. “Even last week,” she said in…

In 1973, an AP photographer immortalized the moment Air Force pilot Robert L. Stirm reunited with his wife and kids, who were running toward him with obvious delight. The Pulitzer Prize–winning photo, Burst of Joy, became the iconic symbol of the return of nearly 600 prisoners of war from Vietnam. Stirm had been shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 and spent nearly six years in prison camps, including the notorious “Hanoi Hilton.” He was starved and tortured, but thoughts of his family sustained him through solitary confinement and mock executions. What the photo didn’t show, though, was that shortly before his homecoming, his wife had sent him a letter confessing an affair and asking for a divorce. The image “brought a lot of notoriety and publicity to me and,…

Trump admin to review Biden-era refugees The Trump administration this week revealed plans to conduct a review of all refugees admitted to the U.S. under President Biden, threatening the legal status of nearly 200,000 people. The U.S. has long welcomed refugees fleeing persecution and violence, many of whom wait years to enter. But a memo from Citizenship and Immigration Services accused the Biden administration of prioritizing “quantity” and “expediency” over “detailed screening and vetting.” The agency expects to reinterview every refugee who entered the U.S. from Jan. 20, 2021, to Feb. 20, 2025, including green card holders. Anyone deemed unqualified for refugee status won’t have the right to appeal. “USCIS is ready to ensure the refugee program is not abused,” wrote agency leader Joseph Edlow. The administration has already paused…

Boris Becker’s first nights inside a British prison were terrifying, said Donald McRae in The Guardian (U.K.). Sentenced in 2022 to two and a half years behind bars for hiding assets during bankruptcy proceedings, the tennis great was shocked by the screams of fellow inmates. “Were people trying to kill themselves?” Becker, 58, recalls thinking. “Or [had] they lost their minds already?” He doubted he would survive his sentence. “It’s 22 hours a day inside a tiny cell and that’s hard.” But those hours alone forced the six-time Grand Slam champion to reckon with how hubris and many bad financial decisions had dragged him so low. “You have to take real accountability, and cell life gives you that opportunity.” Becker, who served eight months, said there were moments of joy…

■ Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are spending big to make the pop star’s “teenage dream of marrying in a sea of flowers come true,” a source told The U.S. Sun last week. The “Anti-Hero” singer and Kansas City Chiefs tight end are planning to exchange vows at Swift’s $32 million Rhode Island mansion and could end up splashing some $1.2 million on landscaping for the big day, the insider said. A new garden will be created “months in advance” of the ceremony, and security will be hired to make sure nobody sees the upgrades before the wedding. Swift, the source said, “wants the entire celebration to feel like a wave of flowers, with arrangements of white, purple, and pink orchids, plus blue, white, and pink hydrangeas, and peonies in…

Susan B. Glasser The New Yorker “I got a hug from Rachel Maddow at Dick Cheney’s funeral,” said Susan B. Glasser. In a surreal scene, the crowd that gathered to say goodbye to the divisive former Republican vice president last week included the progressive cable TV host and Democrats Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Al Gore, Kamala Harris, and Joe Biden. Not there: Republican President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, or House Speaker Mike Johnson. As vice president, Cheney’s insistent promotion of the Iraq War and unchecked American power made him “the most divisive figure in public life until Trump himself.” But he followed his daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney, out the door of the GOP after it “chose Trump’s lies about the election of 2020 over the plain truth…

Andrea Dugo Politico In the late 1400s, Italy “was the jewel of Europe,” said Andrea Dugo. It ruled the seas and dominated art, finance, trade, and technology. Yet within decades, it had lost any semblance of primacy. And the same descent into irrelevance seems to be the fate of the EU today. “Once the envy of the world, the bloc’s lead has eroded,” and it’s “falling behind in industries that will define the rest of this century.” As its young talent flees to the U.S. and Asia, its economy “increasingly resembles an open-air museum of past achievements.” Since 2008, the EU’s GDP has expanded by just 18%, while America’s has doubled and China’s has nearly tripled. Just as it did in Renaissance Italy, this stagnation reflects a deep technology gap.…

President Trump is slumping in the polls, said Joshua Green in Bloomberg, and he may drag the GOP down with him. The “most stinging” numbers came last week in a Fox News survey, in which only 41% of respondents approved of Trump’s job performance—his lowest rating in the poll since October 2017. The survey had plenty of other bad news for Trump, including career-high disapproval from men, white voters, and those without a college degree. More than three-quarters of all respondents viewed the economy negatively, and “in a rebuke to a president who routinely blames economic woes on former president Joe Biden,” voters by a 2 to 1 margin blame Trump. Democrats would likely “win big” if the midterms were held tomorrow, said Douglas E. Schoen and Carly Cooperman in…

“The new is not desirable in itself. Crack cocaine is relatively new, and so is failing to notice the murder of a fellow train passenger because you are too busy fiddling with your smartphone.” Critic Terry Eagleton, quoted in The Wall Street Journal “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.” John Kenneth Galbraith, quoted in Unherd “Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they are finished.” Psychologist Dan Gilbert, quoted in The Salt Lake Tribune “That’s what fiction is for. It’s for getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth.” Tim O’Brien, quoted in GoodReads “Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for them.” Charlie Sykes, quoted in The Knowledge “I am malicious because I am…

■ China retakes control of Nexperia The Dutch government handed back control of Netherlands-based chipmaker Nexperia to its Chinese parent company last week after it got “caught in a tussle between Washington and Beijing over electronic supply chains,” said Matthew Mpoke Bigg in The New York Times. The Netherlands took over Nexperia, a key supplier of older chips for autos and electronics, on Sept. 30 “after the United States expanded a trade blacklist” that included Wingtech, Nexperia’s Chinese owner. This prompted China to stop exporting chips that are packaged at Nexperia’s factories, worrying automakers who use the processors to power systems like brakes and windshield wipers. Nissan, for instance, had warned earlier this month it would need to “cut production at two plants because of a lack of the chips.”…

A New Jersey man is believed to be the first documented death from alpha-gal syndrome, the unusual meat allergy triggered by tick bites. The previously healthy 47-year-old airline pilot became badly sick after eating a steak last summer, but his symptoms subsided, reports ABCNews.com. Two weeks later, after eating a hamburger, he was found unconscious in the bathroom and paramedics were unable to revive him. An initial autopsy listed the case as “sudden unexplained death,” but blood tests revealed extremely high levels of antibodies linked to alpha-gal, consistent with fatal anaphylaxis. His wife said he’d had multiple chigger bites earlier in the summer, but what many people mistakenly believe to be chiggers can actually be larvae of the lone star tick, the species that most often spreads alpha-gal. The Centers…

Sarah Weinman’s new book, Without Consent, focuses on a landmark 1978 trial to explore the struggle to make marital rape a crime in the U.S. Below, the author of Scoundrel and The Real Lolita recommends six other books that explore critical women’s issues. Against Our Will by Susan Brownmiller (1975). When this book was published, only one state had made spousal rape a crime—and it repealed that law within 18 months. Brownmiller opened the country’s eyes to the systemic nature of sexual assault. Her book, despite its many flaws, remains a landmark ancestor for decades of feminist works exploring what constitutes consent and what does not. Down Girl by Kate Manne (2017). Manne, a Cornell professor, has spent her entire career exploring the subtle (and not so subtle) ways that…

Directed by Chloé Zhao (PG-13) Grief inspires Shakespeare’s greatest play. The “violent beauty” of Chloé Zhao’s new film “rips your soul out of your chest,” said David Ehrlich in IndieWire. An adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, Hamnet proposes that Shakespeare’s Hamlet was a response to the death from bubonic plague of the playwright’s similarly named young son, and the grief the movie conjures is so emotionally overwhelming that it “feels like falling in love.” Paul Mescal proves “transcendent” as Shakespeare, but the film is anchored by Jessie Buckley’s astonishing performance as the dramatist’s wife, Agnes (pronounced Ann-yis), who doesn’t write but comes across as “an even more powerful creative force than her husband.” For Zhao, who made a superhero flick after Nomadland won 2021’s Best Picture Oscar, Hamnet is “not…

Orwell: 2+2=5 Director Raoul Peck has given the life and work of George Orwell the kind of penetrating treatment he gave to James Baldwin in I Am Not Your Negro. This film is less focused, but it’s still a fine primer on Orwell’s dissection of totalitarianism. $6 on demand High Horse: The Black Cowboy This three-part series produced by Jordan Peele celebrates the cultural and economic contributions of Black cowboys and calls out the whitewashing of the history of the American West. Peacock Capturing Kennedy Jacques Lowe was a Holocaust survivor who emigrated to the U.S. and eventually became President Kennedy’s official photographer. His arresting images of Camelot enliven this account of his life and of the tragic loss of much of his work. $10 on demand The Merchants of…

As this year’s busy holiday travel season began, digital passports appeared “poised to change the Transportation Security Administration’s screening experience,” said Claire Fahy in The New York Times. In November, Apple joined Google in introducing a digital passport feature on its smartphones, providing an easy way for users to be cleared for takeoff for domestic flights. To set up your passport on an iPhone, open the Wallet app, click Digital ID, scan the photo page and chip of your physical passport, and snap a couple selfies. On an Android device, open Wallet, scan the passport’s chip, and record a quick selfie video. No passport? Check if your state is one that offers digital driver’s licenses or similar identification. Whatever digital pass you obtain, know that it’s still wise to carry…

The Trump administration is taking aim at some of the biggest watchdogs on Wall Street, said Andrew Ross Sorkin in The New York Times. “For years, two little-known firms, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis, have been the bane of many business leaders over the power they wield in corporate elections,” which help decide everything from executive pay to board composition. If Glass Lewis or ISS recommends that shareholders vote a certain way, a proxy outcome will quite often go in that direction. But now, the Federal Trade Commission is looking into whether their dominance—they collectively control between 90% and 97% of the U.S. proxy advice market—violates antitrust law. The White House is also exploring an executive order aimed at curbing their influence, after Republicans criticized their recommendations on…

Beth Kowitt Bloomberg A decade ago, few would have imagined Walmart becoming a “literal case study in what happens when you invest in people,” said Beth Kowitt. Walmart was known for “shrinking every possible cost,” including what it paid frontline workers. But after arriving in 2014, chief executive Doug McMillon “decided to try something different.” Sensing that Walmart’s employer reputation “was turning people off its stores and hurting the business,” he invested $2.7 billion toward raising wages and strengthening Walmart’s workforce-development path. The minimum base pay for a Walmart manager is now $160,000, but some regional managers can make up to $620,000. As a result, “retention has improved more than 10% since 2015,” and 75% of the company’s field management roles are now filled by employees who started as hourly…

Burt Meyer created some of the most popular and enduring playthings of the postwar era, a distinction summed up by his license plate, which read TOYKING. Among the toy designer’s best-loved inventions was Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots, in which players use joysticks to control two plastic pugilists who exchange lefts and rights until one bot’s head pops up. The game premiered in 1964 and is still being produced. Another winner was Lite-Brite, which let children make glowing pictures by pushing translucent multicolor plastic pegs into a backlit, paper-covered grid. More than 20 million Lite-Brites have been sold since 1967. Other successes included Mouse Trap, one of the first three-dimensional board games, and Toss Across, a beanbag-throwing spin on tic-tac-toe. To be a toy inventor, said Meyer, “you need to…