The Week Magazine March 10, 2023

In its second year fighting for its survival, Ukraine says it urgently needs advanced fighter jets and longer-range missiles to repel Russia’s invaders from its soil. But President Biden insists that Ukraine “doesn’t need F-16s now,” and he’s resisting sending 190-mile range ATACMS missiles that could strike deep into Russian-held territory. Various rationales are offered, but the unstated reason for Biden’s reluctance to provide more advanced weaponry is not hard to discern: He and NATO allies still worry that if Putin is faced with total, humiliating defeat, he might made good on his threat to use battlefield nuclear weapons. The reluctance to give Ukraine’s valiant military what it truly needs raises a crucial question, says Julia Ioffe in Puck: Do the U.S. and NATO truly “want Ukraine to win on…

What happened President Biden’s plan to wipe out student debt for tens of millions of Americans appeared to be in jeopardy this week, as the Supreme Court’s conservative majority questioned its legality during oral arguments. The justices heard arguments in two cases challenging Biden’s plan, which would forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt for Americans making less than $125,000 a year. Since Biden issued an executive order last August, 26 million people have applied for debt relief, but the plan has been blocked pending the resolution of two lawsuits. The suits, one by six Republican state attorneys general and one by two debtors ineligible for relief, assert that the Biden administration overstepped its authority when it forgave the debt under a law that lets the education secretary…

American and Italian archaeologists have unearthed a 5,000-year-old tavern in southern Iraq. Scientists suspect that the site, in the fertile region between the Tigris and Euphrates, was once a public eatery that featured open-air seating, an oven, and a primitive refrigerator—a jar placed within a larger one to preserve beverages. Project director Holly Pittman says the ancient Sumerians preferred beer to water—a preference underlined by the primitive beer recipe found on a cuneiform tablet at a nearby temple. This February, Randy Carlson found himself looking for the perfect wave in what might seem like the unlikeliest of spots: Lake Superior, near Duluth, Minn. In fact, Carlson is part of a community of surfers who flock to isolated havens along the Great Lakes, including Duluth, Minn., Grand Haven, Mich., and Sheboygan,…

What happened Anticipating a surge of migrants at the southern border, the Biden administration announced new rules last week that will bar most migrants who show up there from claiming asylum. Nearly everyone who fails to first seek asylum in another country en route to the U.S., or who does not preregister with border authorities via mobile app before showing up, will be immediately turned away. The rules will replace Title 42, the pandemic measure that the Trump administration instituted to justify the immediate expulsion of migrants at the border. That measure is set to expire on May 11, and Biden officials feared that after that, attempted migrant crossings could spike to 13,000 a day. The new rules supplement an earlier White House initiative that has already cut migration…

What happened Fox News chairman Rupert Murdoch’s testimony in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network became public this week, divulging how the 91-year-old blurred the lines between the news organization and the Republican Party. The testimony shows that Murdoch allowed Fox hosts to promote the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, though he knew the claims were false. Murdoch’s deposition comes in a lawsuit brought by voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems, which argues that Fox executives and stars knowingly lied about the election and Dominion’s machines to satisfy viewers loyal to President Trump. Previously released messages between hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham showed that they, too, knew they were peddling a conspiracy theory. Murdoch said that Hannity, as well as Jeanine Pirro,…

“Marjorie Taylor Greene has a dream,” said Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times. The once-fringe Georgia congresswoman, now a close ally of Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and a rumored vice-presidential candidate, declared last week that it’s time for a “national divorce” between “red states and blue states,” to liberate conservatives from “disgusting woke culture” that forces “their ways on us and our children with no respect for our religion/faith, [and] traditional values.” Greene suggested the post-divorce Disunited States could share a military, but otherwise let states determine their own policies on guns, elections, LGBTQ rights, Drag Queen Story Hour, pronouns, and other vital issues. Maybe Greene was “just trolling,” said Bonnie Kristian in The Daily Beast, but the idea of a national divorce is “more popular than…