Indholdsfortegnelse for May 16, 2025 i The Week Magazine

Donald Trump is far from the first president to ask the American people to make painful sacrifices in a time of crisis. In 1942, five months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt called on the nation to embrace a package of tough economic measures needed to secure victory in World War II. This patriotic program of “self-denial,” he explained, would require business owners to accept profits “cut down to a reasonably low level by taxation,” workers to “forgo higher wages,” and everyone to go without “things that we want, things, however, which are not absolutely essential.” Other leaders would follow this template of shared sacrifice. At the height of the Cold War, John F. Kennedy urged Americans to “ask not what your country can do…

■ A Shedeur Sanders fan is suing the NFL for $100 million, claiming “emotional distress and trauma” because the quarterback wasn’t picked until the draft’s fifth round. “John Doe,” 55, claims he closely followed Sanders’ two-year college career, witnessing the QB’s “exceptional talent” firsthand. To watch Sanders then fall to the draft’s 144th pick—a clear victim of league collusion, Doe alleges—was so “mentally frustrating” as to warrant damages in the nine figures. ■ An Alabama lawmaker has introduced a bill that would let state inmates be sent to foreign prisons. GOP Rep. Chris Sells said he knows the measure won’t pass, and would be blocked by the courts if it did, but he wants to send a message nonetheless. Sells said the Trump administration’s deportation of migrants to the…

Chicago Self-deportation: In an effort to boost migrant departures, the Trump administration this week began offering $1,000 plus the cost of a flight to undocumented immigrants who willingly leave the U.S. “We’re going to get them a beautiful flight back to where they came from,” said President Trump. At least one Honduran migrant already accepted the offer, flying home from Chicago. Meanwhile, a federal judge in Baltimore this week ruled that 20-year-old Daniel Lozano-Camargo was improperly deported to a Salvadoran prison in March—the second Venezuelan, after Kilmar Abrego Garcia, deported despite court orders blocking their removal. Lozano-Camargo entered the U.S. at 17 and was covered by a 2024 settlement barring the deportation of people who arrived as unaccompanied minors until their asylum claims are adjudicated. The administration argued he…

Michael Smuss is a messenger, said Zev Stub in The Times of Israel. The 99-year-old is the last known living Jewish resistance fighter from the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and believes God “pulled me out of there so I could tell people what happened.” Smuss was 13 when the Nazis invaded Poland, and he was soon forcibly relocated from Lodz to the Warsaw Ghetto, where more than 400,000 Jews were imprisoned before being transported to death camps. There, Smuss worked in a shop repairing Nazi helmets taken from dead soldiers. “To clean the blood out, I needed a thinner that was also good for making Molotov cocktails. I would ask for as much as I could get.” He also gathered weapons from Italian soldiers sent to the ghetto as…

Editorial The Washington Post Attorney General Pam Bondi has “fired a warning shot at the free press” not to print leaks that embarrass her boss, said The Washington Post. Bondi last week rescinded a “thoughtful” Justice Department policy implemented by her predecessor, Merrick Garland, that limited “the government’s ability to seek phone or email records and compel testimony from journalists.” That policy was a welcome change after both the Obama administration and the first Trump administration aggressively spied on journalists’ electronic records to identify in-house leakers. The House last year unanimously passed a bill “which effectively would have codified” Garland’s guidelines, but after his November election victory, Trump called on Senate Republicans to kill it. “The president has long been fixated on hunting leakers who make him look bad.”…

Enrique Anaya El Diario de Hoy Nayib Bukele is “selling El Salvador to serve as a human dunghill,” said Enrique Anaya. The president who styles himself a dictator has turned “human trafficking and forced disappearances” into the nation’s side hustle. When he first built the giant CECOT prison camp, it was in the name of ending the gang violence that had blighted the country—and it’s true that he brought the murder rate way down. But he did it by rounding up tens of thousands of young men and giving them mere show trials before locking them away in his “dictator’s dungeons” to endure torture. Many of these men were innocent. Now he is taking American money to warehouse deported migrants for Donald Trump. That is patently illegal, because our…

■ At least 216 children died from influenza this flu season, according to the CDC—the highest toll since the swine flu pandemic 15 years ago. While this season’s shots were effective at preventing deaths and hospitalizations from the most common flu strains, the flu vaccination rate for children has sunk from 64 percent to 49 percent over the past five years. Associated Press ■ Global military spending hit a record $2.72 trillion in 2024, up 9.4 percent year over year. That’s the biggest increase since 1988, just before the end of the Cold War. The U.S. was last year’s top spender, with nearly $1 trillion allocated to the military, followed by China, which spent an estimated $314 billion. CNN.com ■ Days after joking that he’d “like to be pope,”…

Drinking champagne and eating strawberries might help ward off heart attacks, reports The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). Millions of people around the world die every year from sudden cardiac arrest caused by an irregular heart rhythm. To delve into potential causes, scientists at Fudan University in China looked at U.K. Biobank data on more than 500,000 people, of whom 3,147 had suffered a heart attack. The researchers identified 56 risk factors and determined that more than half of such heart attacks might be avoidable through easy lifestyle changes. Protective behaviors included eating fruit, having a consistently positive mood, maintaining a healthy weight, keeping blood pressure under control, getting enough sleep, and doing regular exercise. One of the most intriguing findings, the researchers said, was the apparent cardioprotective effect of champagne…

(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28) Though set in 16th-century Florence and populated by known figures, Laurent Binet’s latest novel “wears its history lightly,” said Chelsea Leu in The New York Times. The playfully plotted novel opens with the stabbing death of mannerist painter Jacopo da Pontormo, who in real life died of natural causes. A noted actual contemporary, author and painter Giorgio Vasari, is tasked with solving the case, and Michelangelo is among the suspects. Many voices get their say here. As translated from Binet’s French, each of the 176 letters that comprise the novel “comes across as a small achievement of style and tone.” But as clever and entertaining as Perspective(s) is, it “doesn’t seem much concerned with articulating a deeper message.” That can be said of this…

Matriarch by Tina Knowles (One World, $35) With her best-selling new memoir, the mother of Beyoncé and Solange Knowles “finally becomes the star of her own story,” said Stephanie Phillips in The Washington Post. “She delves deeper into her own backstory than ever before,” sharing her journey from teenage girl-group member to mother to beauty salon proprietor to informal manager of her daughters’ rise. Parts of her story “have been conspicuously excised,” but her descriptions of her upbringing “conjure a fully realized world.” Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata (Grove, $28) The latest from the Japanese author of Convenience Store Girl is “like The Handmaid’s Tale on acid,” said Madeleine Feeny in The New York Times. In a “disquieting” alternate reality in which virtually all human reproduction occurs via artificial…

Eric Church’s “dazzling” new album “upends the idea of what country music is, or at least the type of country that made him a Nashville star,” said Joseph Hudak in Rolling Stone. Though it consists of only eight songs, “it is also a masterwork.” Doubling down on the stir he caused last year when he performed with a gospel choir at a California festival, he adds orchestral strings and horns to the mix here, and by embracing his voice’s upper register, reveals himself to be, at 48, a man who’s “in touch with his nakedly vulnerable side.” Evangeline vs. the Machine “cements his legacy as a try-anything artist, one with more in common with David Bowie than with his peers.” But “the beauty of country music is in…

Conclave As a real-life conclave meets to select a successor to Pope Francis, this recent Best Picture–nominated potboiler is essential viewing. Ralph Fiennes leads a tremendous cast as a sad-eyed British cardinal presiding over the secretive process’s political intrigue. $6 on demand The Two Popes The remarkable transfer of the papal throne from Pope Benedict XVI to the far more progressive Francis is dramatized in this excellent 2019 film built around imagined conversations between the two holy men. Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins give inspired performances as the two church leaders. Netflix The Young Pope In a world that’s taken a hard right turn, it’s not hard to imagine a Machiavellian like Lenny Belardo emerging from the conclave. Jude Law is terrific in this 2016 limited series as Belardo,…

■ Access your search data. When you use Google, or Gmail, or Chrome, or YouTube, Google is keeping tabs, and you can access those records. From your Google Account page in a desktop browser, click Data & Privacy, then Web & App Activity. You can view your activities by category and erase those records. ■ Establish auto-delete settings. While in Web & App Activity, open the auto-delete option. You can choose to have data on your activities wiped every 3, 18, or 36 months. ■ Customize ads. Though you can’t escape Google ads, “you can tweak the ads you see.” Under Data & Privacy, click My Ad Center to turn off personalized ads or change the assumptions Google is making about you. ■ Enable two-factor authentication. Google can be…

What happened House Republicans this week voiced doubt they could pass a massive domestic policy bill before Memorial Day, as GOP moderates and fiscal hawks clashed over spending cuts, safety net program overhauls, and tax reforms. Republican lawmakers settled on measures that would increase national security spending by $350 billion but have found themselves at loggerheads on offsetting cuts. A House committee agreed to raise money through oil and gas leases and public land sales. But House Speaker Mike Johnson retreated from a plan to reduce federal Medicaid payments after a dozen moderates rebelled. Blue-state representatives also insisted on lifting the cap on deductions for state and local taxes. GOP lawmakers haggled over how to fit in President Trump’s promises to extend the 2017 tax cuts and introduce tax…

Pretty much everyone, after Attorney General Pam Bondi praised President Trump’s vigorous action to keep fentanyl out of America for having saved “258 million lives” in the first 100 days of his second term. That figure was a 117 percent increase over the 119 million lives Bondi had credited Trump with saving only a day earlier. Passion, after Columbia University researchers concluded that celiac sufferers can safely kiss—even deeply, with tongue—people who just ate bread or other gluten-containing food. Only a trivial amount of gluten, they found, is transferred from mouth to mouth in a French kiss. Alternative facts, after Trump Media’s newly launched streaming service, Truth+, quickly filled up with conspiracy-heavy content. One popular film on the platform claims Jesus and Buddha were aliens; another, Lizard People, suggests…

Berlin Crackdown on far-right party: Germany classified the Alternative for Germany party as an extremist group last week, after concluding it was racist and anti-Muslim. The designation will give the domestic spy agency broad powers to conduct surveillance on members and leaders of the party, the second largest in the Bundestag, and German states could decide to bar members from holding public service jobs such as judge, police officer, or teacher. AfD leaders sued to block the designation, calling it a “severe blow to German democracy,” and the Trump administration, which met with AfD leaders in February, denounced it as “tyranny in disguise.” The extremist label could increase pressure on Chancellor Friedrich Merz to ban the party altogether. Merz, whose center-right Christian Democrats won the February election, finally became…

Bella Ramsey was not a typical teenager, said Tim Lewis in The Observer (U.K.). The British actor struggled to make friends with other children growing up but fit right in with the adult cast of Game of Thrones, which they joined at age 11 in 2013. “Immediately it felt like a place where I belonged, which I’d never felt anywhere else in my life,” says the actor. “I feel like I went from kid to adult. I had to show up on set every day and be responsible and have this very adult job.” Now 21 and the star of HBO’s The Last of Us, Ramsey has moved into a London apartment and has “a small group of friends who are my age—for the first time.” Being diagnosed as…

Greg Sargent The New Republic President Trump has managed to “badly sabotage” his own legal argument for not bringing Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the U.S., said Greg Sargent. For weeks, Trump and other administration officials pretended they could not retrieve the undocumented migrant from a harsh prison in El Salvador, where he was sent without a hearing in March in violation of a previous court order. But Trump admitted in interviews over the last week that he could just pick up the phone and ask El Salvador to return Abrego Garcia—it’s just that “we have lawyers who don’t want to do this.” That admission will no doubt interest federal judge Paula Xinis, who has ordered the administration to explain why it defied her order to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s…

“Out: the sanctimonious EV or hybrid owner. In: the very, very sorry Tesla driver. With Elon Musk now anathema and anti-Elon vigilantes prowling the twilight for Teslas to vandalize, variations of an ‘I Bought This Before We Knew Elon Was Crazy’ bumper sticker are starting to show up. Online marketplaces also sell one with the message ‘This Tesla Does Not Endorse Fascists.’ Those who recently observed Passover are familiar with the strategy. I hate Elon too is the Tesla driver’s blood on the doorpost, a signal to the hooligans to pass over this Cybertruck and go find yourself a real Egyptian to smite.” Judson Berger in National Review…

Elvis Mboya The Namibian Namibia is rich in uranium and diamonds. But we’re still stuck in “South Africa’s economic orbit,” said Elvis Mboya. First colonized by Germany, we were then occupied by South Africa for 75 years. And even though we gained independence in 1990, our dollar is still pegged to the rand and our tariff policy set by Pretoria. If South Africa raises interest rates, “Namibians experience inflation and higher borrowing costs.” And now, we could suffer from South Africa’s foreign policy moves, too. The U.S. is upset over South Africa’s “perceived alignment with Russia”—as evidenced in its refusal to condemn the Ukraine war and its hosting of Russian war games—and if the U.S. were to impose sanctions on it, we would suffer, too. This is simply not…

Dorian Lynskey The Guardian The Northern Irish rap trio Kneecap is being treated like an enemy of the state, said Dorian Lynskey. The band “touched the third rail of Gaza” last month at Coachella when it accused Israel of genocide. The British press promptly “combed through old videos” of the Belfast band and found two even more incendiary clips, in which the rappers say, “The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP!” and “Up Hamas, up Hezbollah!” British police are now investigating the three, and Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch wants them prosecuted for incitement. That’s a ridiculous overreaction. Certainly the pro-violence remarks “are hard to defend on their merits.” While outrage over Israel’s killings of civilians is understandable, calling for assassination or “celebrating proscribed terrorist…

President Trump “surged back to power on a promise to mount a mass deportation campaign,” said Kyle Cheney in Politico. But three months into his second term, much of that effort has been blocked by federal judges who’ve dealt the administration “an astonishing string of initial legal losses” in more than 100 rulings. The courts are showing “increasingly fierce resistance” to his efforts to strip migrants of temporary legal status and deport people without due process. They’ve issued restraining orders to halt his efforts to block refugee admissions and end birthright citizenship, and last week a federal judge in Texas—a Trump appointee—ruled he’d unlawfully invoked wartime powers to deport migrants, and blocked further deportations under the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act. These rulings will be appealed and may wind up…

A newly discovered species of caterpillar has figured out how to live in a spider’s web without getting eaten, reports The Washington Post. The “bone collector” caterpillar of Hawaii covers itself in a silk case and adorns it with the discarded body parts of other insects so the spider mistakes it for unwanted leftovers. This costume can be extremely elaborate. Researchers spotted one decorated with a weevil head, an ant head, spider legs, parts of fly wing, and bits of beetle wing and abdomen. The caterpillar lugs the case around with its legs sticking out of the front but retreats fully inside when faced with danger, as a turtle does. While nearly all other caterpillars are herbivores, the bone collector eats bugs—albeit mostly scavenged rather than hunted down—and it…

(Knopf, $32) Joan Didion may not have wanted the material in Notes to John published, said James Wolcott in Air Mail. “But here it is—ready or not.” When the revered author died in 2021, she left behind a file of 150 unnumbered pages, all addressed to her husband, that summarize therapy sessions she attended from 1999 to 2002 when she was worried about her adult daughter’s alcoholism and depression. “It would be misleading to give the impression that Notes to John is a writerly performance akin to The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights,” the related memoirs Didion would subsequently write. But these collected notes are a gift to Didion fans, because they present “a more sympathetic self-portrait” than the polished books do. She’s simply a mother, doing…

Eamon Dolan wants to change how we think about families, said Alison Stewart in WNYC.org. “We have this ingrained notion, supported by everything from religion to the law to pop psychology to TV shows, that tells us that we need to stick with our family under all circumstances,” he says. He strongly disagrees. Dolan rejected his mother’s scorn when he went into publishing, and he’s now an executive editor at Simon & Schuster. Growing up with her had been hell. She was physically and psychologically abusive, and a decade ago, after he established three simple behavioral rules that she broke hundreds of times, he cut ties with her. Guilt troubled him for about a year, and he admits that full closure came even later. When she died in 2020,…

Sabrina Teitelbaum has been hailed as an alt-rock revivalist, and on her second album recording as Blondshell, “she proves her bona fides,” said Eric R. Danton in Paste. The New York City native has grown gutsier musically and lyrically, and “the dozen songs here are stick-in-your-head catchy.” Both “T&A” and “What’s Fair” employ a loud-quiet-loud structure, conveying the “roiling emotions” of, in the first case, interrogating a male friend who wants to sleep with the singer and, in the second, a mother who was never around. “A songwriter of rare ferocity and wit,” Teitelbaum had previously displayed her ability to transform bruised confessions into “roaring, tightly honed anthems,” said Andy von Pip in Under the Radar. Capturing even more of life, her new songs “feel alive to every…

“This substantial salad is weeknight-easy, thanks to canned chickpeas,” said Felisia Tan in Milk Street magazine. By warming the chickpeas before tossing them with the dressing, you’ll help them absorb more flavor. Use panko, not standard, breadcrumbs, for a better texture. And though we like the salad best when warm, it can be served at room temperature if you add the panko mixture and parsley at the last minute. Warm chickpea salad with tomatoes, capers, and toasted breadcrumbs 1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes, halved • ¼ cup drained capers • 2 tbsp lemon juice • kosher salt • 6 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil, divided, plus more to serve • 2 medium garlic cloves, thinly sliced • ½ cup panko breadcrumbs • 2 15½-oz cans chickpeas, rinsed and drained…

An Abu Dhabi investment firm announced last week that it would use Trump-backed cryptocurrency to make a $2 billion investment in the Binance exchange, said David Yaffe-Bellany in The New York Times. Zach Witkoff, a co-founder of the Trump family crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, made the announcement with President Trump’s son Eric at a crypto conference in Dubai. “Virtually every detail contained a conflict of interest.” The Abu Dhabi state-backed firm would need to buy World Liberty’s so-called stablecoin USD1 in order to pay Binance, handing Trump’s company “$2 billion in deposits to invest.” The Fed: Central bank holds rates steady The Federal Reserve remains in “wait-and-see mode,” said Hamza Shaban in Yahoo Finance. Officials at the central bank held interest rates steady at 4.25 percent to 4.5…

■ Tech rally reverses market plunge A surge in tech shares led by Microsoft restored stocks to levels last seen before President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement, said Ryan Dezember and Caitlin McCabe in The Wall Street Journal. Microsoft shares rose more than 7 percent after a strong earnings report and a 35 percent year-to-year jump in its cloud services revenue, showing that despite tariff-induced jitters “big corporate clients aren’t slashing technology budgets just yet.” Meta also reported strong sales and predicted that “growth would remain steady.” The results showed the “resilience of the Magnificent Seven tech giants” amid trade uncertainty. The tech gains helped drive a nine-day winning streak for the S&P 500, the longest uninterrupted advance since 2004. ■ Having a will is not enough Your estate…

Joe Nocera The Free Press The first time I thought I might be wrong about unlimited free trade was when my brother-in-law’s factory shut down, said Joe Nocera. It was back in 2006. He was “forced to close his small costume jewelry factory in Providence, Rhode Island, because Chinese manufacturers were stealing his designs and selling them for a third of the price.” Until then I’d been sure that globalization was creating wealth for all. At the time, questioning unfettered trade was seen as the province of “barbarians” or fools. Economists assumed that “people who saw their factories close would just move and find a job somewhere else.” That didn’t happen. Experts in New York and Washington saw the benefits of “cheap goods.” What they missed was how the…

David Horowitz had the zeal of the convert. Born into a family of card-carrying communists, he started out a leftist but evolved into a far-right pundit. At first, he was a neocon, denouncing political correctness and adopting the Bush Doctrine of interventionism. Eventually, though, he became more extreme, railing against Muslims and Democrats and advocating a muscular, even bellicose approach to politics. An early MAGA supporter, he wrote a 2017 best-seller on President Trump’s “plan to save America” and echoed false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Conservatives, Horowitz wrote, “must begin every confrontation by punching progressives in the mouth.” Horowitz “was raised in a crucible of radicalism,” said the Washington Examiner. Though his parents, both New York City teachers, left the American Communist Party in the late…

This week’s question: Wellness maven Gwyneth Paltrow recently confessed that she’s eating dairy and carbs again after growing “a little sick of” her strict yearslong paleo diet. If Hollywood were to make a movie about an actress who gets a new lease on life after rediscovering the joys of bread and cheese, what would it be titled? Last week’s contest: Wild chimpanzees have for the first time been filmed getting drunk together on fermented breadfruit, suggesting humans aren’t the only primates who use alcohol to aid social bonding. If David Attenborough were to make a wildlife documentary about these booze-loving simians, what would it be titled? THE WINNER: Brew Planet Benjamin Winter, Richmond, Va. SECOND PLACE: Stumble in the Jungle Moe Cougher, Olathe, Kan. THIRD PLACE: The Missing ClinkLarry…

Supreme Court reinstates ban on transgender troops The Supreme Court ruled this week that the Trump administration can enforce its ban on transgender troops in the military, overturning a lower court’s order. The high court’s three liberal justices dissented to the unsigned ruling, which will remain in place while litigation continues. President Trump issued an executive order barring transgender people from serving in the military on his first day in office, reversing a Biden-era policy allowing them to serve openly. The Defense Department implemented the order in February, but a group of active service members, a person looking to enlist, and an advocacy group sued, arguing the order violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause. A federal judge blocked the ban in March, ruling it was not needed for “unit…

Ryan Coogler isn’t too young to think about his legacy, said Jelani Cobb in The New Yorker. The director of box office smashes Creed, Black Panther, and Sinners says he “did not see a whole lot of old Black men” while growing up in Oakland. Coogler’s maternal grandfather died before he was born; one of his Bay Area idols, rapper Tupac Shakur, was murdered at age 25 in 1996; and his mentor, the Boyz n the Hood filmmaker John Singleton, died of complications from a stroke at 51 in 2019. Singleton’s death hit hard for Coogler, now 38, and for years he says he struggled to imagine a career for himself that was both productive and lengthy. But he’s started to think about white artists who continue to create…

■ Prince Harry said last week that he doesn’t know how long his cancer-stricken father has left to live because King Charles III won’t speak to him. In a BBC interview, Harry blamed Charles for having his publicly funded police protection reduced in the U.K. and said he could no longer bring his wife, Meghan Markle, and their two children from California to visit “my homeland” because of threats to their safety. “Ultimately, this whole thing could be resolved through [Charles],” he said. “It’s really quite sad.” Harry admitted some members of his family “will never forgive” him for writing a tell-all memoir, Spare, but said he “would love reconciliation” with his royal clan. “There’s no point continuing to fight any more,” Harry, 40, told the BBC. “Life is…

Ben Terris New York magazine Several of Sen. John Fetterman’s current and former staffers say the Pennsylvania Democrat’s mental health has deteriorated and are questioning “his fitness to be a senator,” said Ben Terris. A gruff, 6-foot-8 advocate for the working class, Fetterman gained national prominence when he ran for the Senate. He won despite suffering a stroke during the campaign that limits his ability to process spoken words. After getting psychiatric help for emotional problems related to the stroke, he had an energetic start in office. But staffers say he soon stopped taking medication and consulting with his doctors, and his behavior became “bizarre.” Fetterman was alternately manic and deeply withdrawn, and has been videoed yelling at a constituent and arguing with airline staff about wearing a seatbelt.…

■ A climber who had to be airlifted from high on Mount Fuji needed rescue again when he returned four days later to retrieve his cellphone. The unidentified 27-year-old, a Chinese student living in Japan, suffered altitude sickness while climbing on a trail at 10,000 feet above sea level, and summoned a rescue helicopter with an emergency call. After he climbed back up to fetch the phone, another climber found him on the ground, shaking. This time authorities took him down in a stretcher. ■ A speedboat racing at 200 mph on an Arizona lake became airborne, flying 60 feet into the air into a backward flip in front of stunned spectators. Two racers inside the boat, who were protected by harnesses and helmets, suffered fractured ribs and a…

Mikkel Neiiendam Information Welcome to the surveillance state, said Mikkel Neiiendam. Danes are already watched everywhere we go, with more than 1.5 million security cameras trained on the doings of just 6 million inhabitants. The police use a platform called Gotham—developed by Palantir, a company with ties to the Trump administration—that scours local and international databases. The technology helps them “prevent crime through so-called predictive policing, in which algorithms identify possible future perpetrators and hot spots for crime.” The names alone are creepy: Palantir after Tolkien’s “magical and corrupting” crystal ball, Gotham after the crime-ridden, authoritarian city in the Batman universe. Now it’s about to get even worse. A new bill would let police sift through data from the health care system, social services, and other public sources, so…

The Supreme Court appears ready to “bury what remains of church-state separation,” said Mark Joseph Stern in Slate. During oral arguments last week, the court’s conservative majority signaled sympathy toward a bid by two Catholic dioceses in Oklahoma to create the nation’s first taxpayer-funded religious charter school. Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, sued to block the opening of St. Isidore of Seville, arguing a religious public school would violate state law and the First Amendment’s prohibition of government establishment of religion. But to the conservative justices, those arguments amount to little more than “anti-religious bigotry.” Justice Brett Kavanaugh complained that Oklahoma’s charter program was “open to all comers”—including schools focused on science and Chinese language—“except religion.” If, as seems likely, the court compels Oklahoma to fund St. Isidore,…

“Riches should come as a reward for hard work, preferably by one’s forebears.” Historian Steven Runciman, quoted in The Knowledge “The majority always has its way in the end. So does the undertaker. But neither gains in pleasantness by the fact.” H.L. Mencken, quoted in The Free Press “More is more and less is a bore.” Iris Apfel, quoted in The Paris Review “One may live at peace even in a dungeon—is that enough to feel at ease there?” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, quoted in The New Yorker “Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.” St. Francis of Assisi, quoted in the Oak Park, Ill., Wednesday Journal “A centenarian has told me that memory protects one from the burden of experience. Whole segments of time dropped out, she…

■ Apple faces order to ease competition An infuriated federal judge rebuked Apple and accused the company of undermining her order to open iPhone in-app payments to more companies, said Tripp Mickle in The New York Times. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ demand that Apple ease its grip on app payments caps “a five-year antitrust case brought by Epic Games,” the maker of Fortnite, “to change the power that Apple wields” over app developers. She had already “ordered Apple to allow apps to provide users with external links” to avoid paying the 30 percent “Apple tax” on in-app sales. “Instead, Rogers said, Apple created a new system that forced apps to pay a 27 percent commission,” as well as using pop-up screens to “discourage customers” from using external links. Rogers…

The sharp rise in colon cancer among young people may be caused by a childhood infection, reports NBCNews.com. The culprit is a toxin called colibactin, which is produced by E. coli and other harmful bacteria and causes DNA damage to colon cells. A new study of nearly 1,000 cancer patients from 11 countries has found that colibactin damage was present in about half the patients who developed colon cancer before age 40. Such patients were 3.3 times more likely to exhibit colibactin damage than those diagnosed after age 70. And most of them appear to have been infected before age 10, since most of the DNA mutations had already occurred by that age. The researchers believe an increase in colibactin infections could be partly to blame for the surge…

Film writer Marya E. Gates is the author of the book Cinema Her Way: Visionary Film Directors in Their Own Words, in which interviews are paired with a history of women filmmakers. Below, Gates names six of her favorite books about such artists. Without Lying Down by Cari Beauchamp (1998). This essential text focuses on the life of pioneering screenwriter Frances Marion, once the highest-paid professional in her field, while seamlessly weaving in the careers of other women in early Hollywood, including stars Marie Dressler and Mary Pickford. The book serves as a business primer, using Marion’s career as a lens to track the industry’s growing pains. Universal Women by Mark Garrett Cooper (2010). Cooper’s book traces the history of 11 remarkable women who worked as directors at Universal…

On its sophomore album, the Brooklyn indie-rock band Model/Actriz steps away from the “raucous and eruptive” sound of its debut in favor of music that’s “icy, clipped, and clean,” said Sasha Geffen in Pitchfork. As the foursome leans further into influences such as Circus-era Britney Spears and lo-fi electronica duo Crystal Castles, the result “still has teeth,” but now those teeth are “oh-so-white.” Once again, singer Cole Haden explores the challenges presented by his queerness, with songs about the clash between self-consciousness and the open pursuit of desire. On the harrowing “Cinderella,” he recounts how, at age 5, he wanted a Disney-princess birthday party but stopped himself from asking and wound up feeling devastated. Pirouette “thrives on thrilling contrasts,” said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. The band has…

In the lovely French border region of Alsace, “there’s a quiet revolution happening,” said Aleks Zecevic in Wine Enthusiast. Though Alsace continues to produce world-class rieslings and pinot noirs, its winemakers are also “going biodynamic, experimenting with skin contact, playing around with amphora aging.” Exciting wines such as these are “pushing the edges of what Alsace can be.” 2022 Domaine Charles Frey Frankenstein ($37). This “rich and layered” biodynamic white offers “a lovely mesh of dried papaya, mint, clementine peel, and currant flavors.” 2021 Domaine Pfister Macération Pinot Gris ($49). In this “minerally” pinot gris—another low-intervention wine—a touch of thyme leads to “finely meshed raspberry, rose, pastry, and lemon curd notes.” 2022 Domaine Geschickt Obi Wine Keno Bulle ($45). Say hello to “a supple, vibrant sparkler, with great aromas…

■ The U.S. economy added 177,000 jobs in April, making another solid month of employment gains. Despite cuts in federal jobs, the government sector overall, including state and local, was up 10,000 jobs. CNN.com ■ The value of announced stock buybacks in the U.S. reached $233.8 billion in April, the second-highest monthly tally in records going back to 1984, according to data compiled by Birinyi Associates. Apple, Visa, Wells Fargo, Delta, and 3M all announced share repurchase plans. Bloomberg ■ New orders from U.S. factories hit $618.8 billion in March, up 4.3 percent from a month earlier. There was an especially sharp 27 percent month-over-month increase for orders of transportation equipment. The Wall Street Journal ■ Tariffs could add $900 million to Apple’s costs this quarter, CEO Tim Cook…

The world’s richest man now has a city he can call his own, said Madlin Mekelburg in Bloomberg. Residents of a small patch of Texas voted 212 to 6 to incorporate a new city, called Starbase, home to Elon Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, and its employees. “Virtually all the inhabitants within the 1.45-square-mile territory” along the coast at the southern tip of Texas “are Musk’s employees at the massive manufacturing facility that dominates the beachfront town.” In seven years, SpaceX has transformed “the once sleepy retirement community” known as Boca Chica “into a thriving production site” for space-bound rockets, complete with a “massive bronze bust of Musk.” He first floated the idea of incorporating his company town in 2021, after efforts to expand housing for his employees were rejected…

Nearly 13 percent of U.S. veterans experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at some point in their lives. Since 2007, the nonprofit Guitars for Vets (guitars4vets.org) has provided veterans with new acoustic guitars, guitar accessories, and guitar lessons for free. Funded by local medical centers and the Department of Veterans Affairs, the organization has directly supported 9,000 veterans across the country through local chapters in all 50 states. The lessons are designed in a way that students can progress at their own pace. Program students have seen their PTSD symptoms improve and depression symptoms resolve. Community is at the forefront of the G4V mission: Group events are held every month for veterans to talk and play music with one another. Graduates have stayed connected with the program, performing at local…

Javier Blas Bloomberg Why is Saudi Arabia driving down the price of oil? asked Javier Blas. Oil is currently at roughly $62 a barrel, far from the $100 a barrel the Saudis once tried to sustain. Yet Riyadh last week led the eight producers of OPEC+ to vote to increase production for the second straight month. “Ostensibly, the kingdom is trying to re-establish discipline among its rogue producers”—Kazakhstan, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates—via a price war. But it’s worried about a price war with the United States, too. “In 2014–16, Saudi Arabia flooded the market to crush U.S. shale producers.” It doesn’t want to be forced into that gambit again with President Trump—who campaigned on a revival of U.S. energy—heading to Riyadh in mid-May for talks on defense…

A Ukrainian journalist tried to expose Russia’s brutal detention system, said Cate Brown in The Washington Post. She ended up dying in its most notorious prison. VIKTORIIA ROSHCHYNA SET out to report on claims that Russia was operating a network of unofficial detention centers in occupied Ukraine. But in August 2023 she disappeared into one herself. For months, her whereabouts remained unknown. The body bag was delivered to Kyiv on a flatbed truck. There was an alphanumeric code stamped across the white shroud, followed by four Cyrillic letters: СПАС—a Russian abbreviation denoting “extensive damage to the coronary arteries.” For most of the 757 Ukrainian bodies exchanged for Russian dead on Feb. 14, the Russian authorities had provided their counterparts in Kyiv with names of the deceased, nearly all male…