The Week Magazine June 20, 2025

If you zoom in on Nevada’s notorious Area 51 on Google Maps, you will see a couple of runways and a collection of ordinary buildings on the edge of a great salt flat. That salt flat, Groom Lake, shows up as an almost featureless block, making you wonder if it might somehow be shielded from satellites until you realize it is just reflecting the light that falls on it. And that’s exactly what the long saga of Area 51 does, too: It reflects back every wish and suspicion thrown at it. In this week’s torrent of news, the revelations about Area 51 (see The U.S. at a Glance, p.7) can easily get lost. That’s too bad, because thanks to excellent reporting from The Wall Street Journal we now have…

What happened California Gov. Gavin Newsom warned this week that “democracy is under assault” after President Trump sent 4,000 National Guardsmen and 700 Marines to Los Angeles to quell anti-ICE protests—and described the deployment as a preview of what he’d do in other cities if unrest spread. The demonstrations erupted late last week after federal agents arrested undocumented migrant workers in L.A.’s Fashion District, a Home Depot parking lot, and several other locations across the city. Protests that began downtown outside a federal detention center soon spread to heavily Latino areas in Compton and the suburb of Paramount, where demonstrators shouted anti-ICE slogans while waving Mexican flags. Some threw bottles, rocks, and Molotov cocktails at police and torched self-driving Waymo taxis; police dispersed the crowds with pepper spray, flash-bangs,…

The Trump administration is entering “a new phase” in its immigration crackdown, said Lydia DePillis and Ernesto Londoño in The New York Times. The operation that swept up garment workers and day laborers in Los Angeles was “not an isolated incident” but part of a strategy to hit a quota of at least 3,000 migrant arrests a day. Enforcement “will increasingly focus on workplaces,” a shift from the administration’s earlier decision to “prioritize detaining hardened criminals.” Last week, federal agents raided a construction site in Tallahassee, a flood control project in New Orleans, and a restaurant in San Diego. “You’re going to see more worksite enforcement than you’ve ever seen in the history of this nation,” vowed border czar Tom Homan. As citizens recoil, we’ll see more protests like…

What happened Elon Musk waved the white flag in his feud with President Trump this week, just days after writing a series of social media posts in which he denigrated the Republican spending bill, threatened to deny NASA use of SpaceX spacecraft, and linked the president to the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. After Vice President JD Vance and chief of staff Susie Wiles urged the Tesla and SpaceX CEO to make peace, Musk deleted several of his posts, including the one about Epstein, and called Trump to apologize. He then posted a public retraction, saying he “regrets some” of the barbs he hurled because “they went too far.” Trump, who had threatened to cut “billions and billions” in federal subsidies and contracts with Musk’s companies, was magnanimous, if aloof.…

■ A zebra named Ed was finally caught in Rutherford County, Tennessee, after spending a week on the lam. The African equine arrived in the state as a pet at the end of May but escaped less than a day later. He ran through residential neighborhoods and darted into highway traffic before disappearing in the woods. Ed was finally sighted by a helicopter and airlifted back to his owners. “This is the first zebra to escape in Rutherford County in the 43 years I lived here,” said police spokeswoman Lisa Marchesoni. ■ Unlike athletes chasing endorphins, Jill Walker completes triathlons to pet dogs along the way. Since 2007, the 57-year-old has completed 99 Ironman triathlons, each race consisting of a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile…

Finally, a “win for the rule of law,” said the New York Daily News in an editorial. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced last week that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland father of three who was shipped to a prison in his native El Salvador in March, is now back on U.S. soil. The undocumented migrant’s deportation was clearly illegal: A 2019 court order barred his removal to El Salvador due to fear of persecution. But for three months, the Trump administration defied judicial orders to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return—including one from the Supreme Court—coyly claiming the U.S. was powerless to interfere in El Salvador’s custodial system. It eventually backed down amid warnings of a constitutional crisis. “But this being the Trump administration,” Abrego Garcia, 29, is not a free…