The Week Magazine May 30, 2025

When he was running for president in 1999, George W. Bush coined a phrase in a speech to the Latin Business Association, one he would often repeat as he pushed his No Child Left Behind Act. “We need,” he’d say, “to challenge the soft bigotry of low expectations.” It’s a great line, one that gets at a pernicious double standard. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, what with all the revelations of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline over his presidential term (see Controversy, p.6). The voters who chose Biden in 2020 expected a president who would exhibit what they had seen from Biden’s Senate career: pugnacity, wit, a thorough grasp of policy nuance. Expectations for him were high. What they got instead, from the people around him, was…

What happened House Speaker Mike Johnson battled this week to secure the passage of President Trump’s so-called big, beautiful bill, attempting in a blitz of negotiating and arm-twisting to unite his fractious GOP caucus around the cornerstone of Trump’s legislative agenda. The bill would lock in Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which are due to expire at year’s end, while shrinking taxes on tips and overtime pay. It also allocates hundreds of billions of dollars toward immigration enforcement, the border wall, and defense. To offset tax cuts that would cost an estimated $3.8 trillion over a decade, the bill would cut federal funding for food stamps by $267 billion, scrap clean energy tax credits passed under former President Biden, and cut an estimated $625 billion from Medicaid, mainly by establishing…

■ When Miranda Gonzalez adopted her cat, Holly, in 2010, she promised to throw a quinceañera—a Latin American celebration marking a girl’s transition into adulthood—if the feline made it to 15. It was anybody’s guess whether Gonzalez, who had since gotten married and had two kids, would follow through. But in May she and 40 guests feted Holly with cake and a mariachi band. Gonzalez asked attendees to donate to a local pet adoption center; after the quinceañera went viral, the center raised $3,400. ■ A giant model railway with 3,500 feet of track was saved when a comedian stepped in to buy its home in Rocky Hill, N.J. A house in New Jersey has served as the meeting place for the Pacific Southern Railway Club since 1964, when…

What happened The Supreme Court gave the Trump administration a win this week and a loss last week, allowing it to revoke, for now, protected status for Venezuelan migrants but preventing it from deporting dozens of men held in Texas under the Alien Enemies Act. A judge had earlier halted the administration’s attempt to cancel the Biden-era extension of Temporary Protected Status for almost 350,000 Venezuelans; the Supreme Court has now lifted that injunction while an appeals court reviews the case. In a separate 7-2 ruling, though, the justices extended a pause on the Texas deportations and sent the case to an appeals court. That ruling criticized the government’s efforts to quickly remove the men, mostly Venezuelans the administration alleges are gang members, without allowing them time to contest…

What happened President Trump signaled this week that he was giving up on attempts to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine, following a two-hour call with Vladimir Putin in which the Russian president refused to agree to a cease-fire or to abandon his maximalist war aims. Trump claimed the talk “went very well” and presented Putin’s claims that he would negotiate with Ukraine as progress. Putin, however, showed little willingness to end the war, and Russian troops have been preparing for another eastern offensive. In the call, Putin reiterated demands for Ukrainian demilitarization and a ban on NATO membership; he also asked for a “memorandum” on a future agreement that appeared to introduce new delays. Trump, for his part, retreated from his recent statements, making no mention of a…

Joe Biden’s announcement this week that he has stage 4 prostate cancer, which has spread to his bones, is a “sad moment for the country,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. But the former president “owes the public more information, given that he left office only some 120 days ago.” That a cancer this advanced escaped White House doctors’ notice is confounding. Sure, blood tests for prostate cancer are not recommended after age 70; a spokesperson for Biden, now 82, said he was last tested in 2014. Yet Biden isn’t your average octogenarian. “He was president,” and had sought another four years in office. Many Americans are understandably “suspicious” about the announcement’s timing, said Robby Soave in Reason, since it came two days before the publication of…