The Week Magazine June 13, 2025

Do humans still need such big brains? Sure, parts of our cranial gloop continue to do useful work, like instructing our lungs to expand and contract, jaws to chew, fingers to swipe on touch screens. But everything beyond that basic stuff, it seems, could now be outsourced to AI. Students are already using the tech to glide through high school and college, getting chatbots to write papers that would once have exercised their developing gray matter (see Technology, p.20). Grooms, best men, and maids of honor are turning to AI to craft wedding speeches that previously would have required them to search through their mental catalog of memories for poignant and funny personal tales. Tech companies are laying off software engineers, the professional class that once defined brainwork, and…

What happened President Trump doubled down on his tariff agenda this week and hiked import taxes on steel and aluminum from 25% to 50%, after a court found that many of his “Liberation Day” levies had been imposed illegally. The Court of International Trade—a panel of three federal judges, one a Trump appointee—ruled unanimously last week that the president had exceeded his authority by claiming emergency powers to tax imports from nearly every country. Hours later, a federal judge in a separate case ruled that Trump lacked the power to impose tariffs “to reorder the global economy.” The trade court decision briefly halted Trump’s 30% tariffs on China, 25% tariffs on some goods from Mexico and Canada, and blanket 10% tariffs on most imports, but an appellate court stayed…

■ Metal scrapper Nathan Barlow knew he had something more than “backyard art” when he bought 3,000 pounds of tarnished bronze busts from a fellow dealer. The Chalmette, La., business owner contacted artist Kate Garr, who realized the busts were made by the late Bill Ludwig, creator of New Orleans’ statue of Ignatius Reilly, the protagonist of A Confederacy of Dunces. Garr cleaned the sculptures, and organized a show. “My business is destroying things,” Barlow said, but Ludwig’s “was creating.” ■ Faizan Zaki, 13, won this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee—a victory he savored after coming in second last year in a lightning-round spell-off. Faizan first made the national bee when he was 7. He was considered the favorite last year, but lost in a tiebreaker in which competitors…

What happened Ukrainian drones rained down on Russian planes parked at airfields deep inside Russian territory this week, destroying or damaging a third of the country’s nuclear-capable bombers in a stunning humiliation for Moscow. In a covert op 18 months in the planning, 117 drones in wooden containers were loaded onto commercial trucks and ferried across the border. Once they reached spots within range of five Russian air bases—including one above the Arctic Circle and one far east in Siberia—Ukrainian agents opened the lids of the containers all at once via remote control, allowing the drones to fly out and hit the Russian bombers as they sat parked. Ukraine said 41 planes were hit, causing $7 billion in damage. Video taken by the drones and by gobsmacked Russian bystanders…

What happened A man accused of yelling “Free Palestine” as he threw Molotov cocktails at a Boulder demonstration in support of Israeli hostages was charged this week with a federal hate crime and 16 counts of attempted murder—the latest in a string of antisemitic attacks across the U.S. Police said the suspect, Egyptian-born Mohamed Sabry Soliman, told them that he wanted “to kill all Zionist people.” Soliman, 45, allegedly planned the attack for a year, waiting until his daughter graduated from high school to act. Fifteen people, including an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor, were injured in the attack, which took place at a weekly event called Run for Their Lives, intended to keep attention on Israeli hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. Two victims had to be airlifted…

Elon Musk says it was X Æ A-Xii, his 5-year-old son, who gave him the black eye he sported during last week’s farewell Oval Office meeting with President Trump. But that bruise was “an unmistakable metaphor for his tumultuous government service,” said Jonathan Allen and Zoë Richards in NBCNews.com. From the start of his 130-day stint as a “special government employee,” the Department of Government Efficiency boss waged open war on the federal bureaucracy, firing workers by the thousands and gutting entire agencies—most notably USAID—with the stated goal of slashing $2 trillion from the federal budget. Musk never came close. By DOGE’s own dubious figures, it saved a mere $175 billion, and Musk’s “haphazard, inhumane, and counterproductive” cuts could end up costing taxpayers $135 billion this year alone, by…