The Week Magazine July 25, 2025

Another week, another very British scandal. As the U.S. lurches from crisis to crisis, with immigration agents swarming workplaces and FEMA plumbing new levels of ineptitude, across the Atlantic we can see the U.K.’s own brand of political dysfunction—with some lessons for us. This week, a U.K. government report detailed how thousands of postal workers were accused of stealing money, with some 1,000 convicted and at least 13 driven to suicide (see Best European Columns, p.15). Through both Labour and Conservative governments, bureaucrats misled the public and prosecutors pursued charges despite plentiful evidence that the only culprit in the supposed thefts was a glitch in the accounting software. The very same week, the British got another scandal, as a court revealed that a data breach exposed the names of Afghans…

What happened As recovery workers continued scouring a devastated Guadalupe River valley in central Texas for bodies, the Trump administration denied reports that its steep cost-cutting measures hampered the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to the flooding that killed at least 134 people, including 23 girls at Camp Mystic. Before the flood, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem issued a rule that any FEMA expenditure over $100,000 required her personal sign-off, and The New York Times reported that this led to serious delays and disruptions in the disaster response. Urban search-and-rescue teams were not deployed until more than 72 hours after flooding began, and because of contractor layoffs, FEMA reportedly failed to answer nearly two-thirds of the 21,000-plus calls to its disaster hotline. Noem, who last week repeated her call for…

■ Denver’s Museum of Nature and Science, known for its dinosaur displays, struck pay dirt while drilling 750 feet underneath its own parking lot for geothermal heating potential. The core, only several inches wide, contained a hockey-puck-shaped dinosaur vertebrae—only the third time in the world that a core found a dinosaur fossil, according to the museum. It likely belonged to a small herbivore that lived some 68 million years ago. “It’s like hitting a hole in one from the moon,” said curator James Hagadorn. ■ Twenty years ago, Dr. Purva Merchant, a dentist in Seattle, made up an innocuous email for dental school applications that included her nickname, “the Tooth Fairy.” But in 2007, she received an odd email: A mother had forgotten to leave money under their child’s pillow…

What happened In a surprise turnaround on the Ukraine war, President Trump said this week that the U.S. would continue supplying weapons to Ukraine and would inflict economic pain on Russia if it failed to make a peace deal. After an Oval Office meeting with NATO chief Mark Rutte, Trump said NATO allies had agreed to buy “a full complement” of U.S. weapons—including Patriot missile batteries—to give to Ukraine, portraying the deal as lucrative for the U.S. And he said that if Russia did not agree to a cease-fire within 50 days, he would apply tariffs of 100% on countries, like China and India, that import Russian oil and other goods. Trump has increasingly expressed frustration with the duplicity of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “My conversations with him are always…

What happened President Trump reignited his trade war this week, threatening the European Union and Mexico with 30% tariffs and Canada with 35% tariffs, even as a Labor Department report showed existing levies are boosting inflation. Trump began sending letters last week to dozens of trading partners setting tariffs ranging from 20% to 50% starting Aug. 1. After pausing his April 2 “Liberation Day” tariffs, Trump and his economic advisers promised to have deals with trading partners by July 9. Now, though, Trump has shifted gears: “We can’t meet with 200 countries,” he said. “A letter means a deal.” EU trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic, who traveled to Washington to meet with administration officials, has said that 30% tariffs would make it “almost impossible to continue” current trade. Trump sent mixed…

Having “nurtured conspiracy theories for his entire political career,” Donald Trump is suddenly in danger of “being consumed by one,” said Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times. His MAGA movement is “in revolt” this week over the insistence by Trump, his Justice Department, and the FBI that there are no “incriminating client lists” or scandalous new documents to be revealed regarding Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier found dead in his jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking underage girls. The statement sparked immediate “fury and disappointment” on the Right, where MAGA influencers—including now FBI director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino—have insisted for years that Epstein was murdered by the Deep State and that the release of a client list would expose a sprawling…