The Week Magazine June 2, 2023

On Aug. 2, 2016, Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort conducted a secret meeting with Russian intelligence agent Konstantin Kilimnik at a ritzy cigar bar in New York City. The two men had done business in Ukraine, where Manafort, a globe-trotting, slick political operative, had made $60 million advising Kremlin-allied oligarchs. Kilimnik had flown to New York to give Manafort a “peace” plan for Ukraine that called for cleaving off the eastern part of the country as a Russia-controlled “autonomous” state; Trump’s support for that plan, he suggested, would be helpful. In return, Manafort handed Kilimnik internal campaign polling indicating Trump could pull an upset by winning swing states Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Russia soon targeted selected social media users in those states with messages portraying Hillary Clinton as deeply corrupt,…

What happened President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reported incremental progress in debt-limit talks this week, but remained far from an agreement ahead of a looming June 1 default deadline and the possibility of economic catastrophe. The two sides are “nowhere near a deal,” McCarthy told GOP lawmakers in a closed-door meeting early this week. Spending cuts remain the biggest point of contention. Biden has agreed to cap 2024 spending at 2023 levels, but Republicans demand actual cuts to social safety-net spending and an agreement to set spending caps for the next six years. Biden wants to reduce the deficit by including the defense budget in the freeze, raising taxes on the wealthy, and closing some corporate tax loopholes—measures Republicans adamantly oppose. Republicans have proposed stricter work requirements for…

What happened Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky got a promise of F-16 fighter jets and much of what he asked for in a surprise visit to the Group of Seven summit, which concluded this week in Hiroshima, Japan. After refusing for more than a year to supply Kyiv with U.S.-made fighter jets, President Biden reversed course and agreed to allow allies to send their surplus F-16s. But while at least five European countries have said they might be able to provide F-16s or help train Ukrainian pilots, no country has yet committed a single jet, and deployment and training will take months. In the meantime, the G-7—a group including the U.S., U.K., Italy, France, Germany, Canada, and Japan, plus the EU—also pledged nearly $20 billion in additional aid to Ukraine.…

The famous Gateway Arch in St. Louis turned off its lights in May to provide a secure transit for migrating birds. Some 60 percent of North American songbirds and 40 percent of waterfowl migrate during the spring and fall. St. Louis sits right on a migration route known as the Mississippi flyway, and artificial lights can disorient birds at night. Turning off the lights helps 325 separate species of birds. For more than a decade, the lights went dark for two weeks, but migration patterns have changed, and this year they’ll be kept off the whole month to aid the birds’ journey. Rocky, a 72-pound Akita, climbed Scafell Pike, England’s highest peak, on May 13 only to refuse to come down. After reaching the 3,209 feet summit, Rocky had a…

Ron DeSantis finally launched his presidential campaign this week, said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post, but “unless he evolves, it could be brief.” Establishment Republicans still have high hopes for the culture-warring Florida governor, seeing in him a youthful, can-do conservative who “models Donald Trump’s pugnacity” without the “mountain of baggage.” Polls of Republicans continue to show DeSantis has the best chance in a growing field of beating Trump for the nomination. But those same polls show DeSantis’ “prospects rapidly heading in the wrong direction.” Despite his strenuous efforts to brand himself the anti-woke candidate, he now trails Trump in the RealClearPolitics aggregate poll by a daunting 37 points—up from just 13 points in February. There’s no single reason why DeSantis has hemorrhaged momentum, said Matt Lewis in…

Good week for: Freak flags, after blues musician Otis Taylor, 74, of Denver finally received the high school diploma he was denied in 1966 because school officials insisted he cut his bushy Afro. Taylor said he used to wear “fringed leather jackets and beaded moccasins” in addition to his long hair, “so I always sort of stood out.” Resilience, after Florida man Jordan Rivera went out to pee outside a bar, fell into a pond, and had his arm bitten off by an alligator. “I lost an arm, it’s not the end of the world,” Rivera said. True love, with reports that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the world’s third-richest person, gave a 30-carat engagement ring to girlfriend Lauren Sánchez. The smitten Bezos also put Sánchez’s face on the buxom wooden…