The Week Magazine June 30, 2023

Is the U.S. economy a flaming disaster, or are we in the midst of a boom and a stunning recovery from the pandemic? It’s a question that can be examined through hard data and evidence, but your answer is likely to depend on your politics. Some data: Unemployment is near a historic low at 3.7 percent, down from 13 percent in 2020. A record 13 million jobs have been created since Joe Biden replaced Donald Trump during the depths of the pandemic in 2020. Inflation, which battered consumers for two years, is cooling, with consumer prices rising just 0.1 percent in May and 4 percent over the previous year. Average wages have risen by 4.3 percent over last year, and the infrastructure bill has boosted factory construction and manufacturing jobs.…

What happened The U.S. and China both hailed a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing this week as substantive and productive, but the slight thaw was marred when President Biden later offended Xi by calling him a “dictator.” Blinken’s two-day trip, the highest-level U.S. visit to China in five years, was an attempt to stabilize increasingly tense relations between the two superpowers, which hit a low after the U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon in February. Blinken’s 35-minute sit-down with Xi, which followed lengthy meetings with top diplomats, was “robust” and “important,” said Blinken, while Xi said “very good” progress was made. Still, there were no indicators either side had budged on a host of divisive issues, including U.S.…

Over 200 dogs came to celebrate the 100th birthday of Dr. Robert Moore, a San Jose community resident and a dog lover. Alison, Moore’s daughter, asked people through the Nextdoor app to dress their dogs in costumes and come over to celebrate the occasion. While she was expecting no more than 30 dogs, the community response moved her. Canines wore cowboy hats, tuxedos, and bow ties, while their owners brought Moore flowers and cupcakes. “Every person brought the dog up to him. It was so lovely,” Alison said. Hannah Neter’s mother, Laurence, died in 1995 when Hannah was just 11 years old, and her voice was painfully fading from Hannah’s memory. So, when Valerie Bradshaw contacted her on Facebook saying she had found a cassette tape with an interview of…

What happened Hunter Biden received a plea deal this week from the Justice Department that will likely result in two years’ probation for crimes relating to taxes and gun possession. Under the deal offered by U.S. Attorney David Weiss, a Trump appointee, the president’s son will plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges for failing to pay his 2017 and 2018 taxes on time. He has since paid back some $1.2 million. By entering an addiction-counseling program after his probation ends, Biden will also be able to avoid prosecution on a felony charge that he lied about his drug use when he bought a .38-caliber Colt revolver in 2018. To make the purchase, he had filled out a form saying he was not taking illegal drugs, but in his 2021…

What happened President Biden launched his campaign with a series of events on the East Coast and in California this week, saying that he’s “never been more optimistic” in his long years in politics. Last weekend, he had his first campaign rally with the AFL-CIO in Philadelphia. He also received endorsements from major labor and environmental groups. At campaign events, he highlighted his policy accomplishments, including the first gun-safety legislation passed in decades, and took credit for steering the country through inherited disasters like the pandemic and an economy in freefall. Already 80, he downplayed concerns about his age and skepticism from left-leaning Democrats. “I didn’t come into office with a theory, I came into office with a plan,” Biden told rallygoers. Two months after announcing his candidacy, Biden…

“You might think that commemorating an event like the abolition of slavery would be uncontroversial,” said Ilya Somin in Reason, but in America today, nothing escapes the “Left-Right culture war.” This week’s Juneteenth celebration, the annual commemoration of the freeing of the last U.S. slaves in Texas in 1865, was the third since President Biden made it an official national holiday in 2021. But in at least 20 states—mostly red—workers still don’t get a paid day off, and a recent University of Massachusetts poll found that while 69 percent of Democrats support the new holiday, only 13 percent of Republicans do. To many conservatives, the Black roots of Juneteenth make it a de facto celebration of “left-wing identity politics” designed to rub white America’s nose in the evils of…