John Dickerson Field Notes

John Dickerson

This is where journalist John Dickerson experiments. Sometimes it contains stories, sometimes Stack the Week, a weekly review of the news — what mattered, what's coming, and why it all connects. With occasional acts of wonder. Or, it's where Stack the Week Daily lives. A daily version of the same. www.johndickerson.com

  1. قبل ٢٠ ساعة

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    The United States and Iran exchanged fresh missile barrages Thursday. Jordan’s air defenses intercepted five Iranian missiles Thursday without casualties. That was the second consecutive day that Jordan had to play whack-a-missile. Kuwait’s military said an Iranian strike hit a Chinese company’s building, killing a worker. Iran’s official news agency said an American strike on Qeshm (pronounced “GHESH-m”) Island killed three people and wounded two. Egyptian officials said drones caused fires aboard two natural-gas vessels. The war feels like it’s jumping the box despite months of bombs and boasts. Reuters reported that Tehran expects within weeks to receive the first part of an order for Chinese shoulder-fired air-defense launchers. These portable systems, commonly called MANPADS (man-portable air-defense system) allow small teams to fire at low-flying aircraft. They can force American pilots to fly higher, change routes or rely more heavily on long-range weapons. The sale would mark an unusually direct Chinese contribution to Iran’s war effort after Beijing had tried to support Tehran without becoming a combatant. Bloomberg placed that purchase inside what it called a “third missile age.” Nuclear missiles defined the first age and expensive precision weapons the second. Ukraine and Iran have demonstrated a third model: firing conventional missiles by the hundreds or thousands to overwhelm defenses, destroy infrastructure and exhaust interceptor supplies. Iran has fired about 2,000 missiles since February 28. Thursday’s reporting showed a widening difference between the allies over how to end the Iran war. Netanyahu urged Trump to intensify military and economic pressure. The administration still hopes negotiations can stop the fighting and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Netanyahu also confronted JD Vance, who had accused Israeli officials of undermining American diplomacy because it wanted to keep hitting Iran and warned that Israel was alienating Republicans. The Israeli PM said neither was true. The Commerce Department said the economy grew at a 1.5 percent annual rate from April through June, down from 2.1 percent and below forecasts. But the headline was weaker than the economy underneath it. Consumer spending accelerated to a 3.2 percent rate, and business investment excluding housing grew at an 8.4 percent rate. When economists removed volatile government, inventory and trade figures, spending by American households and businesses grew at a 3.9 percent rate. A lot of the expansion in this quarter came from spending on AI. That expansion is creating demand for workers. The New York Times reported that hundreds of electricians building OpenAI’s project in Saline Township, Michigan, are working 10-hour days, seven days a week. Michigan calls it the largest single investment in the state’s history. A separate $50 million program backed by Google plans to increase annual enrollment in electrician apprenticeships from 19,500 to 30,000 during each of the next three years—a 54 percent increase. The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure, the PCE price index, rose 3.7 percent from a year earlier—down from 4.1 percent but still well above the Fed’s 2 percent goal. The Fed declined to raise rates, although three officials wanted to do so. The weak GDP headline supports caution; strong private demand supports higher rates to restrain prices. The Fed confronts a weak headline, sturdy spending and too much inflation. None of the choices is clean. Investors are also making borrowing more expensive without waiting for the Fed. The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond reached 5.23 percent Thursday, its highest level since 2007. A Treasury yield is the return investors receive for lending money to the U.S. government. When the 30-year yield rises, investors are demanding more compensation to tie up their money for 30 years. That can reflect expectations of higher inflation, higher future interest rates, stronger growth, or weaker demand for long-term Treasuries; heavier government borrowing can also put upward pressure on yields, though it’s usually one factor among several. Rates on mortgages and other long-term loans commonly follow Treasury yields, so the increase means higher borrowing costs can spread through the economy even when the Fed leaves its own short-term rate unchanged. Two national polls delivered the same basic finding: most Americans oppose the Iran war, and they increasingly connect it to the cost of living. AP-NORC found that about two-thirds of adults said the war was not worth fighting. Only one person in five wanted the attacks to continue. Trump’s approval on Iran fell to 28 percent, six points below June. Quinnipiac found 60 percent of registered voters opposed American military action and 34 percent supported it. Americans considered preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon important, but ranked fuel prices and a ceasefire higher. A CNN poll found the political damage extending to November’s congressional elections. Democrats led Republicans by eight points among registered voters on the generic ballot, which asks which party a person would support for Congress without naming candidates. That measure is seen as a rough proxy of how the parties will fare across the most contested races. Among voters who said they were extremely motivated to vote, Democrats held a 20-point advantage. The president’s nominee for attorney general is in danger. Two Republicans, John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, have demanded that Todd Blanche confirm in writing that the approximately $1.8 billion fund created through Trump’s settlement with the IRS will not exist and that protections against future Trump family audits cannot be revived. Blanche has not provided those guarantees. The senators will not support him until he does, so the Judiciary Committee canceled Thursday’s vote. Trump later said he might withdraw the nomination for now. For now, the disputed fund has also stalled Blanche’s nomination. An update on Trump’s prime-time speech alleging Chinese interference in American elections: The Washington Post reported that officials in 12 of the 15 states named in administration intelligence reports said federal authorities never told them China had compromised their voter-registration systems, directly contradicting the White House’s public account. Major hospital systems reported a sharp increase in uninsured patients after enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies expired. Congressional Republicans allowed the larger premium tax credits to end on January 1, 2026. Hospitals told The New York Times that more patients were arriving without coverage and could not pay their bills. When the credits disappeared, some families dropped coverage they could no longer afford. They did not stop getting sick; many delayed treatment until they reached emergency rooms, which must stabilize them whether they can pay. Hospitals absorb the resulting unpaid bills or shift costs elsewhere, potentially raising premiums for people outside the ACA marketplaces. The National Urban League released its 50th annual “State of Black America” report Thursday and said Trump administration policies had pushed the American Dream farther away for Black Americans than at any point since the civil-rights movement. The organization cited the dismantling and redirection of parts of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, changes at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and administration-backed voting restrictions. The report also measured persistent material gaps: the median Black household income remains 37 percent below the median white household income. In Ukraine, Russian missiles and drones killed at least nine civilians and wounded more than 50 overnight. Poland said a Russian missile crossed deep into Polish territory and fell there, prompting NATO aircraft to scramble. France allowed 84,000 wildfire evacuees to return home Thursday after firefighters gained control of the southwestern blaze. Congolese authorities reported that the official Ebola death toll has passed 1,500, an increase of about 50 percent in one week. Authorities called it the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak on record. Thousands of migrants crossed from Morocco into Ceuta (SAY-oo-tah), Spain’s small territory on the North African coast, after border controls broke down Thursday. At least three people died trying to arrive by sea. Spain and Morocco agreed to cooperate in returning illegal entrants. In May 2021, more than 8,000 people entered Ceuta in two days. AP said the immediate trigger for Thursday’s mass crossing was not clear. Surveys of migrants using the western Mediterranean route found that 54 percent cited economic reasons, 33 percent war or conflict, 23 percent targeted personal violence and 14 percent gradual environmental change (respondents could name more than one reason.) Most people crossing Thursday appeared to be Moroccan, while others had traveled to Morocco from elsewhere in Africa. Ceuta matters because reaching it means reaching Spanish—and therefore European Union—territory without making the longer sea journey to mainland Europe. WIRED reported that American children are running faster than ever, a phenomenon the track world has dubbed “trackflation.” An Ohio high school senior ran the indoor two-mile in 9 minutes, 37.15 seconds, breaking a national record that had stood since 2013, while a Texas sophomore covered 100 meters in 9.92 seconds, only one-tenth of a second off the collegiate record. The most exuberant performance may have come from a 12-year-old Utah girl who ran a mile in 4:40.98, nearly six seconds faster than the age-group world record, despite performing the Scuba Dance just before reaching the finish line. “Nobody was even in the camera with her,” one astonished commentator said. WIRED traced part of the change to the spread of elite coaching methods o

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  2. قبل يوم واحد

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    Welcome to Stack Stories Daily for the 29th of July. We’re trying a little bit something different here today, so hang with us. You can read it or listen to it as a podcast. Let’s get to it. The Iran war moved again from background to foreground. Iran launched missiles at U.S. forces in Jordan; U.S. Central Command said the missiles were shot down. The systems doing this work are the same scarce air-defense systems the U.S. has been burning through in the Iran war. The Wall Street Journal called it a surprise missile attack; the point is that Iran fired after a brief lull and while de-escalation talks were still being floated. There was action in Iraq. The United States and Saudi Arabia hit Iran-backed militias in Iraq. AP reports at least 20 militia fighters were killed, along with six Iranian advisers. Iraq condemned the strikes as a violation of its sovereignty. Iraq and Saudi Arabia are now more directly engaged in the war. Ukraine said it hit two major Russian oil refineries overnight. That pushes forward the strategy we talked about before: Ukraine is not just fighting Russian troops; it is attacking the fuel and revenue that feed Putin’s war. Ukraine’s Zelenskyy was in Washington getting support from senators who advanced a Russia sanctions bill, 86-12. The bill would punish countries that keep buying Russian oil, gas and other exports. The bill would also let Trump impose tariffs of 500 percent on Russian imports and tariffs as high as 100 percent on the five largest importers of Russian oil and gas. At Trump’s request, senators added sanctions aimed at Iran too. In Congo, Ebola is now making hunger worse. The head of the U.N. World Food Program told AP that more than 2.7 million people in affected health zones face acute food insecurity. People are being told to isolate, but they also need food. That is the trap. In Japan, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said at least 13 people had died after a magnitude-7.1 earthquake struck Kumamoto. In Europe two firefighters were killed on Crete on July 29 while battling a wildfire driven by extreme heat and high winds. The Fed held interest rates steady, but three officials wanted to raise them. Trump wants lower rates, which would make borrowing cheaper. But the Iran war is pushing oil prices higher, and that increases the price for gas and goods that move by gas-powered vehicles. The president insists his new Fed chair wants to lower rates. The war Trump is directing is making the rate cut he wants harder to justify. A CNN/SSRS poll found a record 73 percent of Americans saying Trump has not paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems. His approval among Republicans fell to a new low of 78 percent, and the share of Republicans enthusiastic about the rest of his second term fell from 38 percent last spring to 19 percent. 19 percent? Wowza. A new filing in the James Comey case says Trump requested notes from the Secret Service interview of Comey “to use in his 6 p.m. press conference,” while repeated searches by federal investigators, including Secret Service agents, for evidence that “86” meant killing produced inconclusive or empty results. Today’s Washington spectacle was Anthony Fauci’s appearance before the Senate. Republicans, led by Rand Paul, are still investigating the origins of COVID and whether Fauci misled Congress about U.S.-funded research. Paul claims Fauci helped obscure or deny U.S. support for risky “gain-of-function” research in Wuhan, and he released parts of Fauci’s diary to argue that Fauci privately took the idea that the virus leaked from a lab more seriously than he admitted publicly. Fauci has said the NIH did not fund gain-of-function research as Paul defines it. Gain-of-function research means altering an organism, often a virus, to study whether it becomes more transmissible, more dangerous, or better able to evade defenses. Fauci said he had testified or briefed Congress “well over 200” times during nearly 40 years in government. Today, Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer more than 100 questions, saying the hearing was designed to trap him into criminal exposure. He said Paul wanted him to say “anything” that could fulfill Paul’s public pledges to put him “behind bars.” He also accused Paul of an “unhinged obsession” with him. Republicans now plan a contempt vote. So the fight is no longer only where COVID came from. It is whether Congress is investigating Fauci or trying to make him prosecutable. Todd Blanche’s nomination to become attorney general in full is wobbling. Politico reports Blanche skipped a scheduled meeting with Sen. John Cornyn, who then said he was still “not prepared” to support him. Cornyn’s issue is the Trump IRS settlement. He wants written assurance that a roughly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund is dead and that audit protections for Trump and his family cannot be revived or stretched forward. Blanche has said the fund is effectively gone, but Cornyn wants it in writing before he supplies the vote. The Senate Judiciary Committee is supposed to vote tomorrow, so the immediate question is whether Republicans have the votes to move Trump’s former lawyer into permanent control of the Justice Department. The morning after a federal judge ruled that no federal detention contract could override state law, ICE published proposed contracts for 5,500 beds declaring that state and local laws “shall not apply” to the facilities. The same proposed contracts would let detention centers operate indefinitely at 85 percent staffing, including medical staffing. A June inspection found one detainee’s health assessment was 22 days late and suicide-watch checks ran nearly 14 hours apart instead of the required eight. In Washington state, officials needed three years of litigation, after 10 refused inspections and 3,500 detainee complaints, to win a ruling allowing state health inspectors into the Tacoma detention center. Trump also denied $227 million in snow-disaster aid requests from four Democratic-led states even though FEMA or NOAA had found the requests met federal standards. Presidents since George W. Bush had approved 68 of the previous 69 qualifying snow-disaster requests. Last week it was disclosed that the administration had denied projects in states that did not vote for Trump. The United States also banned new foreign-made humanoid and four-legged robots, a move aimed mostly at China. The FCC says the issue is national security: robots can collect data, move through homes, schools and factories, and plug into American infrastructure. China dominates the humanoid robot market. It was generally a bad day for robots. In New York, a rural school district paused plans for a nearly $60,000 humanoid AI robot teacher named Sally. Sally has silicone skin, brown hair, facial expressions and “natural conversation,” and was supposed to help teach robotics and technology at Salamanca High School, on the Allegany territory of the Seneca Nation. Teachers, parents and state officials objected. They raised concerns about student privacy, replacing human judgment, and the fact that Realbotix acquired a company known for hyper-realistic sex dolls. One local substitute teacher put the deeper objection plainly: of all the schools to “test it out,” they chose Native American children again. U.S. job postings with “AI” in the title rose from 264 in the first quarter of 2022 to 822 in the first quarter of 2026, and Indeed found that AI titles are now more common outside the technology industry than inside it. Illinois has recorded 220 confirmed tornadoes through Monday, more than twice the total of any other state, along with nine significant weather events, the state’s highest number in a decade. There is not one tidy cause. The state climatologist has pointed to a year of repeated storm systems, warm and humid air, and Illinois sitting in the active zone where those ingredients kept meeting. There is also a reporting issue: better radar, storm-spotter networks and damage surveys can count weaker tornadoes that previous decades missed. But the record still points to a real year of repeated severe-weather setups over Illinois. College sports money kept accelerating. Ohio State reportedly agreed to a roughly $15 million-a-year JPMorgan jersey-patch deal, meaning the bank’s logo would appear on uniforms across Ohio State’s varsity sports, not just on signs around the stadium, only for Notre Dame to announce a roughly $20 million-a-year SoFi agreement hours later. Notre Dame’s deal would put SoFi’s logo on Irish jerseys and make the company an official financial-services partner. Schools can now share revenue directly with athletes; Ohio State plans to max out a roughly $21.3 million pool for 2026-27. Jersey patches are one way to pay for that new athlete payroll. In a Costa Rican forest, scientists have installed a 15-inch touchscreen to attract wild capuchin monkeys. AI-powered facial recognition identifies each animal, the screen presents a simple learning task, and a correct touch sends a dried banana slice sliding onto a tray. Which doesn’t happen around these offices, I tell ya, no matter how much I punch the screen. Ten of the sixteen monkeys that investigated the contraption eventually worked out the relationship between poking the glass and receiving their favorite treat. Eight remembered later. Researchers hope to add more sophisticated tests of memory and impulse control in the hopes of curing those of us who split off from the family tree 7 million years ago. In 2020, a visitor gave the New Bedford Whaling Museum one star for being the “Worst Aquarium Ever,” which was hard to dispute because it was not an aquarium. The museum put the review on T-shirts, sales jumped 250 percent, and now people are lining up to represent a place whose chief aquatic attractions are four enormous whale skeletons

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  3. قبل يومين

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    1. Netanyahu visits presses his advantage Benjamin Netanyahu met for 90-minutes with President Trump Tuesday. He declared near-total agreement on Iran and called the meeting one of their best. The administration was equally upbeat. The public display obscured consequential disagreements. Israel wants the United States to resume the war if Iran refuses to dismantle its nuclear program, including attacking the deeply buried Pickaxe Mountain complex. Washington has not explained how that could be accomplished, and the United States is consuming Patriot and THAAD interceptors faster than it can replace them. Trump acknowledged Netanyahu’s pressure about the danger of Pickaxe mountain before the meeting: “Bibi’s telling me that because he wants me to stay involved.” Politico reported that some of Trump’s America First allies fear the meeting will pull the US deeper into the war, alleging that Netanyahu had “sold” Trump on starting the conflict in the first place. His renewed pressure—and Trump’s slightly irritated acknowledgment of it—echoes all that. It was Netanyahu’s eighth Oval Office meeting since Trump returned to office — and RealClearWorld’s read on it was blunt: he arrived “weaker and less influential” than in any of the previous seven. The Telegraph reported the IRGC has fielded its deadliest kamikaze drone yet, a jet-powered upgrade explicitly framed as a message to Trump. The math here seems to be inescapable. Iran has not surrendered its nuclear program. American missiles have not eliminated it. US stockpiles are shrinking, while Iran has acquired new leverage by reducing commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. The current situation seems a long way off from checking off the boxes on Netanyahu’s to do list. The New York Times framed Tehran’s strategy bluntly: “Why Iran Is in No Rush to Return to Talks With United States.” Iranian leaders appear to be betting that they can endure greater economic and military pain than Trump—and that their control over passage through Hormuz gives them leverage Washington cannot ignore. You may remember that we framed this as a contest of pain thresholds in our digest on Friday. Inside Iran, the government is using the wartime environment to accelerate its repression. Authorities hanged two more men Tuesday for killing police during January’s protests. They were among 12 sentenced in closed, torture-tainted proceedings; four have now been executed, with eight on death row. These executions underscore the brutal aftermath of the government surviving the January uprising, which saw tens of thousands arrested and thousands killed. 2. Ebola update: Congo approaches a two-year toll in 10 weeks Congo’s Ebola outbreak reached 3,262 confirmed cases and 1,437 deaths Tuesday—nearly as many infections as the country’s worst previous outbreak recorded over two years. This epidemic has needed only 10 weeks to approach that total. The Bundibugyo (boon-dee-BOO-joh) strain has no approved vaccine or treatment, leaving responders dependent on isolation and contact tracing. Both are breaking down in eastern Congo: rebel violence has made communities unreachable, frightened residents have attacked treatment centers, and some health workers are striking because they have not been paid. Across the border, Uganda declared its outbreak over Tuesday. Its last Ebola patient was discharged June 16; authorities then waited the required 42 days—two complete incubation periods—without another infection. Uganda’s success shows that the virus can be stopped when officials identify every patient and monitor every contact. 3. Japan’s earthquake: a terrifying echo of 2016 The magnitude 7.1 earthquake that struck Kyushu on Tuesday produced Japan’s maximum level of local shaking—a force capable of throwing people to the floor, hurling unsecured furniture and collapsing some reinforced-concrete walls. The second floor of a shopping mall partially collapsed, leaving 20 to 30 employees missing. About 90 injured people were taken to hospitals. Japan experiences roughly a tenth of the world’s earthquakes because it sits where several tectonic plates collide. So preparedness is a part of daily life. Sensors automatically stop high-speed trains before the strongest shaking arrives. Department stores broadcast earthquake warnings in four languages. Some vending machines can switch to emergency power and dispense drinks for free. Children practice evacuation drills, families keep earthquake kits, and thousands of instruments report local shaking within seconds. This quake was only slightly smaller than the magnitude 7.3 shock that devastated the same region in 2016. That earlier earthquake released roughly twice as much energy, but both registered the maximum reading of 7 on Japan’s shindo scale, which measures what people and buildings actually experience at a particular location. The more alarming comparison is the sequence. In 2016, a magnitude 6.5 earthquake was followed 28 hours later by the larger 7.3 shock. That disaster ultimately killed 278 people—including deaths attributed to its aftermath—injured more than 2,800 and destroyed or badly damaged tens of thousands of homes. Japan’s weather agency is warning residents that another powerful earthquake remains possible during the next two or three days. The Aeon mall had been badly damaged in 2016 and later repaired and partly rebuilt with seismic upgrades. It completed another reconstruction and reopened in June—just one month ago—with the reopening promoted as a “fresh start” marking the region’s recovery from the 2016 disaster. Its failure Tuesday therefore destroyed both a building and a symbol of successful reconstruction. 4. Wildfire update: France expands evacuations as heat returns France evacuated nearly 4,000 more people Tuesday—on top of roughly 330,000 displaced across France and Spain—as renewed heat helped fresh flames break out near a popular Atlantic beach. Officials said the fire in Gironde (zhih-ROND) was “fixed,” meaning that its perimeter had stopped advancing—not that the fire was extinguished. Hours later, flames erupted near Grand Crohot beach and water-dropping aircraft returned to the air. “We are at a point of fragility,” French firefighters’ federation spokesman Eric Brocardi said. Crews would keep attacking the fire despite the forecast rise in temperatures. The Gironde fire has burned about 162 square miles—four times the area of Paris—and forced approximately 220,000 people from their homes and vacation sites. Across France and Spain, the fires have consumed more than 1,100 square miles, an area larger than Rhode Island. Spain allowed about 20,000 evacuees to return Tuesday, but temperatures in its fourth heat wave of the summer were again exceeding 104 degrees. Thirteen people have died. Surveying one burned valley, gardener David Gonzalez described the prevailing mood in two words: “anger and helplessness.” 5. Online scam compounds are trafficking workers from more than 80 countries Criminal networks are trafficking people from more than 80 countries into online scam compounds, the U.N. migration agency warned Tuesday. Fake advertisements lure educated, English-speaking applicants into overseas jobs; after arrival, their passports are confiscated and violence or manufactured debts force them to defraud strangers online. The compounds may hold hundreds of thousands of workers. Fraud losses in East Asia, Australia and New Zealand reached as much as $114 billion last year. The person sending a romance pitch or investment offer you get via text may therefore be both a criminal and a prisoner. 5. ICE uses migrant-child agency information to make 12,000 arrests ICE has arrested more than 12,000 children, sponsors and household members using information supplied by the federal agency responsible for caring for unaccompanied migrant children, according to internal government data reviewed by Reuters. Since January 2025, the Office of Refugee Resettlement has provided ICE with more than 460,000 leads involving children and the adults seeking to retrieve them from federal shelters. Sponsors are generally parents or other relatives. A 2008 law instructed the government to place children in the least restrictive setting and release them as quickly as safely possible, regardless of a sponsor’s immigration status. The data does not reveal how many of those arrested were children rather than sponsors. But it documents a fundamental reversal: information collected to reunite vulnerable children with their families is now being used to identify people for detention and deportation. 6. China landslide: Thirty more victims identified Chinese authorities identified 30 more victims of the July 17 landslide in Pengshui County on Tuesday, raising the confirmed death toll to 41. Twenty people remain missing. The landslide sent approximately 636,000 cubic feet of rock and earth down a steep slope, burying at least 10 residential buildings and a passenger minibus. The minibus wreckage was found Sunday. 7. Red Cross declares a national blood-supply crisis The American Red Cross declared only its second national blood-supply crisis today, after summer donations fell to their lowest level in four years. The organization, which supplies roughly 40 percent of donated blood in the United States, has begun rationing some products—sending hospitals blood for the most urgent cases while delaying less critical orders. Platelets are especially scarce because they generally expire after only five days. The shortage can force hospitals to postpone surgeries and complicate treatment for trauma patients, women suffering severe childbirth bleeding and people receiving cancer care. The Red Cross is asking eligible donors of every blood type to give immediately. 8. AI selloff: South Korea’s stock market plunges 10.8 percent South Korea’s stock mar

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  4. قبل ٣ أيام

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    Welcome to Stack the Week for Monday July 27th. Thank you to our paying subscribers and our Apple podcast reviewers. Food for the larder and the soul. This is also a podcast, so you can listen to it while you read along or while you slowly tap your summer bag of wine. Let’s start. 1. IRAN The United States paused strikes on Iran for a second night while Iran refrained from retaliation. Last week we kept count of the nights in a row that bombing was continuing. This week starts by keeping track of the nights there was no bombing. We’ll see what happens to the underlying tension that broke the ceasefire apart in the first place: Iran says it has the right to manage Hormuz; the United States treats the waterway as an international passage. What struck me over the weekend was reporting from the New York Times, matched today by the Wall Street Journal, that a shortage of Patriot interceptors constrained the president’s options. That was a principal reason his military advisers opposed a larger strike. The Times reported that Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine told Trump in a closed-door meeting that a bigger strike remained technically doable but would dangerously deplete the Patriot interceptor stocks CENTCOM needs to protect troops in Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE. We’ve been saying for weeks that missile depletion is a problem. Here we see what that problem looks like in practice. “If we need to negotiate with bombs, we’ll negotiate with bombs, and we’re very good at it,” said the Secretary of Defense. That line didn’t age well. The United States had not run out of targets or offensive weapons. It was running short of the defensive margin required to protect American troops from the retaliation that further bombing might produce. Another connected thought: when the war started, Secretary of State Rubio originally justified U.S. involvement in the war as an “anticipatory” strategy. He argued that the U.S. knew Israel was planning to strike Iran and that Iran would inevitably retaliate against American forces. Therefore, he claimed, joining the fight preemptively was the only way to “get ahead” of that retaliation and avoid higher casualties. In short, the administration framed its intervention as evidence of superior foresight. However, if the administration were truly capable of “anticipatory thinking,” they would have planned for the logistical realities of the conflict. Instead, we are seeing the opposite: a shortage of Patriot interceptors has limited military options. This depleted stockpile is only the latest evidence that the administration failed to anticipate the long-term consequences of their actions, undermining their claim of strategic competence. 2. 67 Boat Strikes, 221 Dead—and No Drop in Cocaine CNN and The Washington Post published separate investigations Monday reporting that Operation Southern Spear has carried out 67 lethal strikes against vessels the administration says were involved in drug trafficking, killing 221 people. Were those attacks effective? The investigations report that internal Pentagon and DEA assessments found no measurable reduction in the cocaine supply reaching the United States. President Donald Trump has claimed the operation virtually ended maritime drug trafficking. This is not so. The government’s own analysts reached the opposite conclusion. We still don’t know what evidence identified the people killed as lawful military targets. Now another question: What public purpose is served if the supply remains undiminished? The failure to reduce the cocaine supply does not itself establish that every strike was unlawful. It does, however, gravely undercut the administration’s stated justification for the operation. If the strikes merely push traffickers onto different routes, the United States assumes the costs of a lethal campaign without achieving its stated objective. In that sense, this operation feels like the Iran War. Many things are blowing up. People are dying. The goal is not achieved. 3. Wildfires Drive Mass Evacuations in France and Spain Thousands of firefighters, military personnel, volunteers, and European partners were battling major fires Monday across southwestern France and central and eastern Spain. Reuters reported about 220,000 evacuees in France and 100,000 displaced in Spain. The Bordeaux fire was approximately 104,000 acres–more than four times the acreage burned by the 2025 Palisades Fire in Los Angeles– and the Spanish fires at about 190,000 acres. The immediate danger was to the pine forests, neighborhoods, campgrounds, tourist properties, airport hotels, and other development between Bordeaux and the Atlantic coast. Flames were advancing toward the outskirts of Bordeaux, at the center of one of the world’s best-known wine regions. Smoke was visible and could be smelled in Bordeaux; emergency phone alerts ordered residents to leave; traffic was diverted from roads leading toward Atlantic beaches; campgrounds were evacuated; and authorities cleared the hotel district around Bordeaux Airport. 4. Haitians Face Roundups as TPS Ends More than 300,000 Haitians are losing permission to live and work in the United States as ICE prepares targeted arrests and rapid deportations to their come county. A country where armed gangs control large areas. The State Department tells Americans not to travel there. Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, has allowed Haitians already in the United States to work legally and avoid deportation because conditions in Haiti are extraordinarily dangerous. A Supreme Court decision allowed the Trump administration to end that protection. The administration can start moving on deportations as of Monday. The deadline changes legal status instantly, but life does not change that neatly. A nurse may lose work authorization while patients still need care. Parents may have U.S.-citizen children who cannot safely follow them. CBS News reported that internal ICE plans include operations in communities such as Springfield, Ohio. Officers would locate, arrest, detain, and place newly deportable Haitians on accelerated removal flights. TPS is not citizenship or a green card. Congress created it as an emergency shelter for people who are already here when war, disaster, or institutional collapse makes return unsafe. Haiti received the designation after the 2010 earthquake, and it continued as the country endured political assassination, hunger, displacement, and gang rule. Sixteen years is “temporary” in the statute, but it is also enough time to build a career, raise children, buy a home, and become essential to an employer. Springfield was singled out because thousands of Haitians settled there under TPS and other lawful programs, filling jobs in manufacturing, health care, and other local industries. After Trump and Vance amplified the false claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were eating residents’ pets, Vance defended the tactic by telling CNN, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” He subsequently said that by “creating a story” he meant creating media attention—not admitting that he had fabricated the underlying allegation. But to be clear. Then Senator Vance knew that the story was fabricated. Springfield’s city manager reportedly told Vance’s staff on September 9 that the pet-eating allegations lacked evidence, before Vance continued amplifying them. The administration argues that a temporary program cannot become permanent through repeated extensions; affected families and advocates answer that ending the legal designation does not make Haiti safe. 5. Changing Casualty Ledger This story was reported by CNN: The authoritative Pentagon system for counting casualties was revised over the weekend. The reported total casualties for the Iran war increased by more than 140 wounded personnel. Four soldiers killed during renewed fighting, after disappearing from the Iran-war category, reappeared under a new category labeled “Overseas Operations.” That category also listed 207 wounded, but the Pentagon did not explain whether those 207 were entirely new cases, partly reclassified cases, or already included in the increase of more than 140. The Pentagon’s current overall figures show 18 service members killed and 624 wounded since the war began. Casualty accounting can sound bureaucratic. Ghoulish. But every row represents a person and a family who have sacrificed for their country. It also tells the country not directly experiencing that sacrifice what a war is costing. Some database corrections are ordinary. Reports arrive late, injuries are reclassified, and clerical systems fail. What makes this episode serious is the combination of large revisions, disappearing deaths, a newly created category, all of it encompassed by an administration that has committed itself to limited public explanation during an active war. 6. Two Wars Collide This story was reported by the Associated Press. A Russian ballistic missile strike near Kyiv killed at least 10 people and wounded nearly 100. In a separate development with potentially broader consequences, Ukraine struck an Iranian vessel that it said was connected to military cargo and Iranian support for Russia in Ukraine. In case you missed that while you were re-tiling your bathtub. The Ukrainians attacked the Iranians. On Monday, Zelenskyy visited Britain’s new prime minister Andy Burnham as Britain offered additional electronic-warfare support, principally a drone-jamming system. The immediate question is whether Iran treats the Caspian strike as an isolated loss or a reason to intervene more directly. You’d think they’d be busy enough. 7. Senate Issues A man dining at a vegan restaurant who berates the waiter for not quickly producing a porterhouse steak will not be the hero of a Chri

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  5. قبل ٦ أيام

    Stack the Week

    Welcome to Stack the Week for Friday, July 23 The daily experiment continues. Thank you for the subscriptions, notes and Apple podcast reviews which spread the word about how this product can also be listened to as you pass the time cleaning your gutters, updating your terms of service or engaging in musketry before the setting sun. Okay, let’s start. More Is Creating More Iran’s retaliation is spreading across the American military network in the Middle East. Explosive drones targeted Irbil in northern Iraq, where U.S. troops are based. Sirens sounded in Bahrain, the location of the 5th fleet. Iran also claimed attacks against American facilities in Jordan. The United States does not project power into the region from one enormous base. It relies on a distributed network of airfields, ports, command centers and partnerships. That allows American forces to operate close to a crisis, detect threats earlier and respond without first moving an entire military presence into position. The network gives the United States reach. It also gives an adversary a lot of targets. The United States completed its thirteenth consecutive night of strikes against Iran. The emerging cycle is easy to see: The United States strikes Iran. Iran attacks American facilities around the region. Sun Tzu described the underlying problem more than two thousand years ago: “If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak.” CBS reported yesterday that the Pentagon has begun moving interceptors into the Middle East from stockpiles previously positioned for the Indo-Pacific. That is especially revealing: The Iran war is not simply consuming ammunition; it is changing what is available for deterring China. The New York Times reports that the Pentagon reduced its public death toll from 18 to 14 by removing four soldiers killed in Jordan and Iraq after President Trump declared a cease-fire—even though the military’s own releases described their deaths as related to Iranian aggression. This is reminiscent of the Covid period when President Trump said he didn’t want to test for new cases because it would make the numbers look bad. Yesterday’s news was that the Houthis had opened another front in the Red Sea. Reuters today has the receipts connecting the rebels with their benefactors, reporting that Tehran sent Revolutionary Guard commanders and missile equipment to the Houthis in Yemen. Iran rejected the latest American cease-fire proposal. No functioning diplomatic process is evident. No mechanism for pausing the attacks, resolving disputed incidents or preventing one retaliation from producing the next. Also, thirteen nights into this latest round, nobody has said what winning is. Until the leadership quits, until the nuclear program is gone, until the government falls. Which one is being fought? Some final questions: Can a bombing campaign intended to make Iran’s leaders cry uncle succeed against a government with such a high tolerance for suffering—particularly when much of that suffering is borne by its people? Has the war become a contest of pain thresholds: how much destruction Iran’s leaders are willing to absorb, versus how much political and economic damage President Trump is willing to endure? And what has restrained Trump from ordering the “massive attack” he keeps threatening? If he believes such an attack would be decisive, the costs holding him back must be substantial—perhaps further damage to the world economy, perhaps a larger Iranian retaliation, perhaps something else we cannot yet see. Knowing what that constraint is would help everyone judge how seriously to take his next threat, or how worried we should all be for the retaliation if he makes good on that threat. Battling Production Lines During the war’s first year, Ukrainian drone incursions into Russia were isolated events, usually involving one or two aircraft. By summer 2023, nearly 200 suspected attacks over eight months represented a major escalation. Now, Russia says it intercepted 571 Ukrainian drones in a single night. Ukraine said its weapons struck an oil facility roughly 1,350 kilometers from the border and a factory producing aircraft and missile components. Russian officials said the factory attack killed six people and wounded 26. Near Kyiv, a Russian ballistic missile struck a military training site hosting defense-industry representatives, killing at least 10 people and wounding nearly 100. Russia is exploiting Ukraine’s shortage of Patriot interceptors by launching ballistic missiles that travel at several times the speed of sound and are difficult for other systems to stop. In one major July attack, Ukraine said it intercepted none of 29 ballistic missiles. The war is increasingly a contest of industrial capacity: Ukrainian drone production against Russian missile stockpiles, and against Ukraine’s supply of the interceptors that stop them. Which is where this connects to the war above it. The interceptors the Pentagon is moving toward the Gulf and the interceptors Ukraine cannot get are the same interceptors, off the same small number of production lines, running at roughly 600 a year now, with plans to reach about 2,000 a year by 2030, against a backlog measured in years. One line is being asked to underwrite three deterrents — Kyiv’s, the Gulf’s, and the one that was sitting in the Pacific for Taiwan. Wait, Did We do That? The Trump administration has admitted that it canceled hundreds of clean-energy grants because of how the affected states voted. This is not merely a dispute over climate policy or government spending. It is evidence that the federal purse was used to punish political opponents. In October 2025, the Energy Department announced the termination of $7.56 billion in awards, claiming an individualized review found the projects economically unsound. But filings in Thakur v. Trump tell a different story. The class-action lawsuit was brought by University of California researchers who alleged that federal agencies canceled grants for politically disfavored reasons rather than poor performance or violations of grant terms. The government’s admission substantially validates that central allegation. Officials acknowledged terminating 283 grants in states won by Kamala Harris while sparing 340 grants recommended for cancellation in states won by Donald Trump. The selection was based solely on the states’ political identity—not cost, performance, statutory requirements or project merits. The canceled awards supported electrical-grid upgrades, methane-leak reduction, manufacturing and hydrogen production. In related litigation, Judge Amit Mehta ruled that selectively canceling comparable grants in Democratic states violated the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. His order restored only the grants held by the plaintiffs before him, however. It did not resolve every cancellation in Thakur. Congress, not the president, holds the constitutional power of the purse. Treating awarded public funds as presidential patronage—money for friendly states, cancellation for hostile ones—undermines congressional authority and equal government under law. If that seems like jargon, what I’m describing is the American system that we celebrated this year at its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. The admission also contradicts Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s congressional assurance that politics played no role. (If the majority in Congress were jealous guardians of their power, they might be upset about this.) By the way, if you’re gauging how the various branches of government are doing, note how the admission surfaced. In the judicial branch– because someone sued. During the Trump years it has been the only branch to seek to maintain standards. If future presidents can redirect appropriated money according to electoral support, what remains of the power of the purse? The question is not confined to grants. Elsewhere in today’s issue: a tax on nearly every import in the country, imposed without a vote, and a thirteen-night bombing campaign, prosecuted without one. Three of the day’s largest stories involve powers the Constitution assigns to Congress being exercised by the president, and in none of them is Congress audibly objecting. This is a particularly stark abdication in an election year where voters are supposed to evaluate the work being done in their name and either affirm or punish the lawmakers responsible for it. But a member who does not vote on a war never has to defend a war. A member who does not vote on a tariff never has to explain a price. The Republican leaders in Congress are behaving as if their authority is also a liability. Tariffs, now more than ever. President Trump has found a tariff workaround. He’s now rebuilt most of the tariff wall the Supreme Court knocked down in February. Trump first imposed sweeping tariffs in April 2025 under a law granting presidents emergency economic powers. The Supreme Court ruled that the law did not authorize tariffs. The administration responded with a temporary measure that kept most in place. They have now found a permanent one under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act. That statute permits retaliation against foreign practices that burden American commerce. The alleged offense is that the targeted countries are using forced labor. American officials say the targeted economies fail to block goods made under coercion from entering their markets, allowing abusive producers to directly undercut American workers. Supporters say market access should require trading partners to enforce comparable labor standards. But the remedy is not a ban on proven forced-labor goods. It is a tax on lawful imports. Imports from 60 economies—representing 99.4 percent of everything the United States buys abroad—now face duties of 10 or 12.5 percent. Because the European Union is counted as one economy, the policy reaches more than

    Stack the Week

  6. ٢٣ يوليو

    Stack the Week Daily

    Welcome to Stack the Week for Thursday, July 23 The daily experiment continues. Thank you for the subscriptions, notes and Apple podcast reviews which spread the word about how this product can also be listened to as you negotiate a durable peace, update your look for fall or simply look for a way to free and extend your emotional life. Okay, let’s start. The Other Exit Is Closing Brent crude, the international benchmark price for oil, crossed $100 a barrel Thursday for the first time since May. It had traded near $71 earlier in July, when investors still hoped a temporary understanding between the United States and Iran might hold. Part of the spike reflects Houthi attacks on Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, threatening the route Saudi Arabia has relied on to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia built its East-West Pipeline during the Iran-Iraq War for exactly this danger. The pipeline does not replace Hormuz, but it gives the kingdom a way to preserve millions of barrels of exports when the eastern route becomes unusable. Once that oil reaches reaches the end of the pipe, much of it still has to pass through the 18 miles between Yemen and the Horn of Africa at the southern entrance to the Red Sea. If that passage becomes too dangerous because of Houthi attacks or threats of same, tankers must sail the long way around Africa. That detour can add several weeks to a voyage and ties up the same tanker for longer, reducing the number of ships available to carry everyone else’s oil. The Houthi attacks also complicate President Trump’s announced formula for retaliation. He has said the United States will destroy an Iranian bridge or power plant whenever Iran attacks a ship in the Strait of Hormuz. But the Houthis attacked from Yemen, not Iran. They receive weapons and support from Tehran, but that does not establish that Iranian officials selected these particular tankers or ordered these particular launches. So do the Iranian people get punished anyway? The war now threatens both doors through which Gulf oil reaches the world. The Strait of Hormuz was the front entrance. The Red Sea was the fire exit. The fire exit is now under fire, too. Also of note on the Iran front: The New York Times has a fact check. The administration has claimed that the Iranian missile capability is caput. But the Times found visible damage at nine American military and intelligence sites across the region from recent Iranian attacks, suggesting Iran retains a more capable missile force than some public statements have implied. At the same time, The Wall Street Journal reports the United States is moving additional forces, medical units and weapons into the region after a twelfth consecutive night of strikes to give president Trump more options if he wants to escalate. They Died Where They Were Sent to Recover On March 16, Pakistani aircraft bombed a sprawling compound in Kabul known as the Omid Rehabilitation and Treatment Centre during Pakistan’s campaign against militants it says operate from Afghanistan. The Taliban has made drug addiction a national priority. Afghanistan has one of the world’s highest rates of opioid addiction, fueled in part by decades as the world’s largest producer of opium. Taliban authorities have repeatedly rounded up people addicted to drugs and sent many of them into compulsory rehabilitation centers like Omid. The strike killed at least 269 civilians and wounded at least 122, according to figures independently verified by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. Amnesty International has now called for the bombing to be investigated as a possible war crime. Pakistan said the compound contained technical-support facilities, weapons and ammunition used by militants attacking Pakistan. Amnesty reviewed dozens of photos and videos, satellite images, interviews with witnesses and workers, and bomb fragments from the site. Weapons experts concluded that at least one munition was a Pakistani-made Takbir precision-guided bomb, evidence that the facility had been deliberately selected rather than struck accidentally. Under the rules of war, armies may attack military objectives, but must distinguish them from civilians, homes, hospitals and other civilian facilities. Medical facilities receive special protection. Even if Pakistan possessed reliable evidence that militants had stored weapons somewhere in the compound—something Amnesty says it found no evidence to support—commanders still had to consider the people living around those weapons. The principle of proportionality prohibits an attack when the expected civilian harm would be excessive in relation to the concrete military advantage anticipated. The principle of precaution requires commanders to do everything feasible to verify the target, select weapons and timing that reduce civilian deaths, and warn people when circumstances permit. Amnesty cannot prosecute; its report is evidence, not a verdict. A war-crimes case would require an independent investigation, something Pakistan rejects. Still, the report preserves evidence while witnesses and documents remain, which matters because such cases often begin years later. 23 Million Frozen in Place Health insurance is trapping nearly one in four U.S. workers in jobs they want to leave. New West Health–Gallup research estimates that 24 percent—about 23 million adults—remain because they fear losing employer-sponsored coverage, up eight percentage points since 2021. The burden is especially acute among women, workers with chronic conditions and people facing medical debt. The consequences of this “job lock” extend beyond unhappy jobs. Workers pass up promotions, delay starting businesses, postpone retirement or stay in positions they no longer want because a gap in health coverage could expose them or their families to catastrophic medical bills. Across the economy, that reduces job mobility, slows new business formation and makes wages less responsive to competition. A Fine That Cannot Be Paid The New York Times reports that the Trump administration is using another tool to pressure undocumented immigrants to leave the country: enormous daily civil fines. The Department of Homeland Security has sent more than 100,000 people letters saying they owe the federal government $998 for every day they remained in the United States after an immigration judge issued a final order requiring them to leave. One week costs $6,986. Thirty days cost $29,940. One year produces a bill of $364,270. A final removal order means an immigration judge has concluded that a person may be expelled from the United States. It does not necessarily mean the person can leave immediately. Practical, legal or humanitarian barriers may prevent departure. For example, a person’s home country may refuse to issue the travel documents needed for deportation, or a court may temporarily block removal while an asylum or other legal claim is resolved. The administration presents the fines as part of its campaign to encourage what it calls “self-deportation.” Yesterday we discussed The Washington Post’s reporting on overcrowded detention facilities. Last week we looked at how the drive to increase deportation numbers led to lower hiring standards and more reported use-of-force incidents. Those were about detention and arrests. This is about financial pressure. Taken together, they describe an immigration system expanding its enforcement tools faster than the institutions meant to support and oversee them and the humans at the end of these policies. One Referral for a National Force In a related story, House Homeland Security Democrats said an ICE briefing showed that the agency has received 56 excessive-force complaints since President Trump returned to office. Thirty-two have been closed. One officer has been referred for possible discipline, and no discipline has yet been imposed. Most of the remaining cases are still under investigation. At least 10 people have died in encounters with immigration agents since the crackdown began including Renée Good and Alex Pretti, the subject of a special report yesterday on CNN by Jake Tappe and the two immigrants shot and killed by ICE officers during attempted arrests in Maine and Houston within the span of a week. The Nuclear Exception Is Now an Agreement Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman signed an agreement establishing the legal framework allowing the United States and Saudi Arabia to cooperate on civilian nuclear power. Without such an agreement, American companies generally cannot sell Saudi Arabia nuclear reactors, major reactor components, fuel or other sensitive nuclear technology. Saudi Arabia wants nuclear reactors partly so it can generate electricity without burning as much oil at home, leaving more petroleum available for export. The United States wants American reactor builders and fuel companies—not Russian or Chinese competitors—to win the work. The pact creates an opening for contracts worth billions of dollars. President Trump’s family also has significant financial ties to Saudi Arabia. Since leaving the White House, Jared Kushner’s investment firm, Affinity Partners, has received a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and has pursued additional business in the kingdom. So President Trump’s son-in-law has a very strong financial interest in seeing the world the way the Saudi government sees it. President Trump is the man who approved the agreement. Successive Israeli governments have opposed the spread of uranium-enrichment capability elsewhere in the Middle East, arguing that civilian enrichment shortens the technological distance to a potential weapons program which takes advantage of the same expertise and technology. Under the terms of the agreement, Saudi Arabia cannot enrich uranium supplied directly under the American agreement but might retain a

    Stack the Week Daily

  7. ٢٢ يوليو

    Stack the Week Daily

    Welcome to Stack the Week for July 22, 2026. The daily experiment continues. Thank you for the subscriptions, the feedback, the emails, and the notes. And the Apple podcast reviews help keep us from hiding under a bushel. (They introduce us to a wider audience.) Remember, this is a podcast too. Listen while you sail through Copenhagen, reorder your holy cards or plan your ascent, vaulting on the bones of your enemies. So here we go: 1. One Bridge at a Time Did you ever play sandlot football as a kid? The quarterback would call everyone into a huddle, then draw the play on his chest with his finger. “Joey, you go left at the fire hydrant. Billy, you go long toward Mrs. Mcgillicuddy’s house.” Watching the administration’s rapidly evolving strategy for the Iran war Wednesday feels a little like that. The play keeps getting redrawn in public as the war unfolds. President Trump announced that every time Iran attacks a ship in the Strait of Hormuz, the United States will destroy one Iranian bridge or power plant. Some of the targets he identified lie near Tehran. That moves the threatened retaliation closer to Iran’s largest population center and appears intended to make ordinary Iranians—and therefore their leaders—feel a greater price for attacks in the strait. It would also put civilians at risk when electricity, transportation, water and medical systems depend on the infrastructure being struck. The announcement raises immediate practical questions. What happens if a proxy group acts on its own, a local commander ignores orders or American intelligence gets it wrong? Under the president’s formula, any of those events could lead to the destruction of infrastructure that millions of civilians depend on. On the other hand, if there is an attack and the president does not respond as promised, he suffers a loss of credibility. The policy could also give Iran additional leverage. Tehran already has the ability to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. If every attack automatically triggers a larger American response, Iran—or groups acting in its name—would gain more influence over the pace of escalation. Is this a standing policy or a negotiating tactic? International law prohibits deliberately attacking civilian objects unless they have become military objectives, and any attack must avoid disproportionate civilian harm. If bridges and power plants are now legitimate targets, what prevents Iran from broadening its own target list? And how does this policy reopen the Strait of Hormuz? 2. The cost of France’s heat wave. Extreme heat can sound like an inconvenience: uncomfortable sleep, crowded beaches, another photograph of children running through a fountain. It can also be deadly. During the heat wave from June 17 to July 2, the affected parts of France recorded 21,674 deaths. Based on previous years, public-health officials would ordinarily have expected 15,910. The difference—5,764 people—is what epidemiologists call “excess deaths”: people who probably would not have died during those weeks under normal conditions. That does not mean every death certificate will say “heat.” Extreme temperatures can cause dehydration or heatstroke. They can also place additional stress on the heart, lungs and kidneys. An older person with heart disease may die of a heart attack brought on by the heat, but the certificate may record only the heart attack. France recorded 36 percent more deaths than expected during the heat wave—the country’s highest excess mortality during a heat wave since 2003. Funeral directors struggled to find room for the bodies. Some mortuaries filled and began turning them away. About one-third of the people who died across the affected regions died at home. About two-thirds of the excess deaths were among people 75 or older. 3. Saudi Arabia Gets What Iran Can’t Have Saudi Arabia wants nuclear power. It also wants permission to make the fuel itself. The Trump administration may let it. President Trump has now approved a proposed 30-year civil-nuclear agreement with the kingdom, according to officials familiar with the negotiations. It has not yet been signed, published or reviewed by Congress. Nuclear reactors use uranium as fuel. Before uranium can go into a reactor, centrifuges enrich it. At low levels, enriched uranium can produce electricity. At much higher levels, it can help produce a nuclear bomb. Getting from one to the other is not simple, but the same machines and much of the same knowledge are involved. A country that can enrich uranium for a reactor is closer to making bomb material than a country that has to buy its fuel from someone else. The United States and Israel have justified the war in large part as an attempt to keep Iran from turning its uranium-enrichment program into a nuclear weapon. Now Washington may allow another country in the same region to acquire the underlying technology. When the United Arab Emirates signed a nuclear agreement with Washington in 2009, it promised never to enrich uranium or reprocess used reactor fuel at home. Instead of banning Saudi enrichment, the agreement would reportedly create a two-year American-Saudi study of whether an enrichment plant should be built inside the kingdom. No plant has been approved. But the United States would be moving from “Saudi Arabia cannot have this” to “let’s decide under what conditions Saudi Arabia can have this.” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Norah O’Donnell in a 2018 interview broadcast on *60 Minutes* that Saudi Arabia did not want a nuclear bomb. Then he named the exception: “If Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.” Iran will notice the unequal treatment. Washington is trying to eliminate or sharply restrict Iran’s enrichment program while considering domestic enrichment for Iran’s principal regional rival. That gives Tehran another reason to resist American demands at the negotiating table: Iranian officials can ask why enrichment is unacceptable in Iran but potentially manageable in Saudi Arabia. The Associated Press reports that the agreement is not expected to require the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Additional Protocol—the stronger inspection system that gives international monitors more information and access, including tools for looking for nuclear work a country has not declared. Why accept that risk? Saudi Arabia has refused to renounce enrichment, and Washington wants American companies—not Russian or Chinese companies—to build a nuclear industry worth tens of billions of dollars. The administration also wants to preserve a strategic relationship strained by the Iran war. Earlier American negotiations treated nuclear cooperation as part of a larger bargain in which Saudi Arabia would establish relations with Israel. The agreement reportedly does not require Saudi recognition of Israel. Israeli officials and security experts have reacted with alarm. A Saudi enrichment program could begin a regional competition in which Turkey and Egypt demand the same capability. It could also leave Israel facing two regional rivals with the industrial foundation for producing weapons material. 4. ICE Kept Filling Unsafe Rooms “Covid man.” “A guy with monkeypox.” “Cardiac lady.” Those were the names ICE officials used in text messages while deciding which sick people most urgently needed the limited medical care available inside a dangerously overcrowded Manhattan holding facility, according to an exhaustively reported Washington Post piece. An ICE holding room is supposed to be a place where someone waits for a few hours after being arrested. The rooms have no beds or showers, and generally no full-time medical staff, because nobody is supposed to live in them. At 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, people lived in them anyway. One room was approximately 30 feet by 30 feet, with a hard floor, concrete benches and three toilets. It ordinarily held a handful of people. Last summer, ICE packed as many as 86 inside. At the worst point, each person had approximately ten square feet—the floor space of an old-fashioned telephone booth. These conditions were not separate from the administration’s deportation policy. They were one of its results. President Trump promised to remove the “worst of the worst.” But the administration also ordered ICE to make thousands of arrests a day. At 26 Federal Plaza, agents began arresting people immediately after their immigration-court hearings. Internal government data covering Trump’s first year found that fewer than 14 percent of ICE arrestees had been charged with or convicted of violent offenses; 42 percent had no previous criminal charge or conviction. Those being held, according to the Post reporting, went days without showers. The room smelled of sweat, urine and feces. More than 60 people were held in the building for over a week, although the government’s original limit was 12 hours. The facility accepted people with heart disease, diabetes, kidney failure, tuberculosis, dementia and other serious conditions. There was no doctor on site; one detainee was taken to a hospital with breathing problems. Officials repeatedly warned one another. “This is insane,” an assistant field-office director wrote in June. The Washington Post identified 177 facilities nationwide that ICE classifies as temporary holding rooms. Since last August, eight other facilities have held more than 200 people at once. In Mesa, Arizona, ICE placed more than 700 people in a facility with a stated maximum capacity of 203. The Department of Homeland Security says temporary rooms are necessary because it lacks sufficient detention space to carry out the president’s order. DHS’s defense amounts to: We were ordered to arrest at this pace, and we had nowhere to put people. That is an honest math problem. It is also a choice—holding the arrest rate fixed while capacity

    Stack the Week Daily

  8. ٢١ يوليو

    Stack the Week Daily

    The daily experiment continues. Thank you for the subscriptions, the feedback, the emails, and the notes. And the Apple podcast reviews are helpful. They introduce us to a wider audience. Remember, this is a podcast too. Listen while you sand down that one drawer that never closes, deadhead the roses or re-caulk the tub. So here we go: The Strait Stayed Closed Ten weeks ago, The New York Times’ David Sanger asked President Trump what would be gained by increasing the bombing when the previous 38 days had failed to produce “the political changes in Iran” Washington wanted. The president suggested the question was “treasonous.” Ten weeks later, there is an answer. The United States reported striking more than 13,000 targets during the war’s first 38 days, and the stepped-up campaign has added hundreds more strikes. Since the latest cease-fire collapsed, the United States has bombed Iran every night. Yet Iran still threatened commercial shipping. A tanker came under attack Tuesday and normal commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remained largely stalled. Ten days of an intensified campaign hasn’t changed Iran’s behavior. And threats to send it to its room without any dinner aren’t doing much better. President Trump banged the gong harder, announcing an attack near Pickaxe Mountain, a fortified underground complex associated with one of Iran’s principal nuclear-enrichment sites. Iran doesn’t have to defeat the United States militarily. It only has to keep the Strait dangerous while other pressures accumulate. Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan all showed that casualties, costs and domestic politics can become as decisive as the battlefield. Some of those pressures surfaced Tuesday. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told senators On the appropriations committee the war has cost $37.5 billion and warned of “critical shortfalls” without more funding. When senators pressed military leaders about reopening Hormuz, they received no clear answer. “Guys, we need straight answers,” Republican Sen. John Kennedy said. Oil traded above $90 a barrel. A July poll found that 59 percent of Americans had already cut back or delayed spending because of higher gasoline prices. Houthi warnings reportedly caused six ships to change course, threatening the Red Sea route Saudi Arabia has used to bypass Hormuz. A stepped-up campaign intended to reopen one strategic waterway now risks destabilizing another. Ten weeks ago, David Sanger asked why more bombing would produce a different outcome than the bombing that came before it. Perhaps if the question hadn’t been dismissed as “treasonous,” the strategy would have been subjected to the scrutiny it deserved. Canadian Trade Tariff Imagine you’re running Ford—or any company that builds products in North America. You don’t decide where to build a factory based on next month’s politics. You decide based on the next twenty years. When President Trump negotiated and signed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement during his first term, companies reorganized supply chains around those rules. A car might cross the U.S.-Canadian border several times before reaching a dealer. Companies invested billions of dollars assuming those tariff rules would remain in place. On Monday, President Trump showed those assumptions no longer apply. He imposed a new 50 percent tariff on specified Canadian imports under three proclamations addressing disputes over motor vehicles, alcohol and dairy. The covered goods range from wine and hockey sticks to cement. The new duties take effect August 19. The administration argues Canada unfairly protects industries such as dairy and alcoholic beverages. And who among us doesn’t enjoy a little dairy in their alcoholic beverages? Canada says the new tariffs violate the trade agreement. Instead of withdrawing from the agreement, Trump invoked Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a law allowing tariffs against countries found to discriminate against American commerce. It is the first time the United States has actually imposed tariffs under that law. The move also attempts to avoid the legal problem that doomed Trump’s earlier tariffs. Rather than relying on emergency powers the Supreme Court ruled did not authorize tariffs, the administration turned to a different law that expressly allows them. Part of a larger pattern: a president responding to an adverse ruling by finding another delegation of power and testing its outer boundary. The first people paying these tariffs are American importers when Canadian goods cross the border. Those companies then decide whether to absorb the cost, negotiate lower prices from Canadian suppliers, cancel orders or pass the increase to customers. For consumers, the result is straightforward: some Canadian products will cost more, some may disappear from store shelves, and American-made products that rely on Canadian parts may become more expensive as well. The winners and losers won’t divide neatly by nationality. American companies competing against Canadian imports may benefit. American companies that rely on Canadian parts may pay more. Consumers could end up paying higher prices either way. The Billion-Dollar Medicaid Hold The Trump administration has frozen more than $1 billion in federal Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota, accusing both states of failing to document claims that federal officials say “smell like fraud.” That is the phrase Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz used while announcing the action. The money can be released, officials say, once the states prove the questioned services were legitimate. The administration describes this as a pause, not a cut. California’s dispute centers largely on in-home care for seniors and people with disabilities. Spending on those services has risen 24 percent in two years—twice the growth rate elsewhere, according to Oz. California Medicaid Director Tyler Sadwith offers a different explanation: the state deliberately expanded home-based care because treating people at home costs less than placing them in nursing homes. Minnesota’s deferral covers 14 categories considered especially vulnerable to fraud, many involving personal and in-home care. Home-care programs have documented fraud vulnerabilities. Services are scattered among thousands of providers, difficult to monitor and historically attractive to fraudsters. The dispute is not whether fraud exists. It is whether the administration has shown enough evidence to justify freezing more than $1 billion before completing its investigation. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Oz cite unusual billing patterns, eligibility questions and missing documentation. But, as Reuters reported, they have not publicly documented how much of the withheld money is tied to proven fraudulent claims. The order places the evidentiary burden on the states before the money is released. This approach may prevent federal dollars from reaching criminals and encourage states to scrutinize claims more aggressively. It may also delay payments to legitimate providers while officials argue over documentation. Governors Gavin Newsom and Tim Walz call the freezes political retaliation against Democratic states. Administration officials deny targeting political opponents and note that Florida has also received a request for program-integrity information. Yet California and Minnesota remain the only states subjected to publicly announced payment deferrals. The General After the Minister Last week, President Volodymyr Zelensky fired Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov after siding with Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi in a dispute over how Ukraine should fight the war. Fedorov had become the public face of Ukraine’s military modernization, pushing drones, digital systems, procurement reform and more authority for frontline commanders. Many Ukrainians saw him as one of the government’s most effective wartime leaders. Instead of ending the dispute, the dismissal ignited the largest street protests since Russia’s full-scale invasion. Demonstrators demanded not only Fedorov’s return but increasingly turned their anger toward Syrskyi, whom many blamed for resisting the reforms Fedorov championed. On Tuesday, Zelensky fired Syrskyi too. Zelensky did not say he was responding to the protests. Publicly, he presented the change as part of strengthening Ukraine’s war effort. But the timing is difficult to ignore. Days after the biggest wartime demonstrations of his presidency, Zelensky removed the commander he had defended only a week earlier. Whether or not the protests caused the dismissal, they showed that wartime democracy in Ukraine remains something more than symbolic. Public pressure appears capable of changing the political calculation. The next commander inherits the same unanswered questions: how quickly to reorganize around drones, how much authority to push to frontline units, how to recruit and rotate exhausted troops, and how to balance rapid innovation with the discipline needed to command an army at war. The Food Stamp Time Tax Congress recently changed the rules for food assistance in a way that also changed the incentives for states. Under the new law, if a state approves benefits for someone who later turns out not to qualify, the state—not just the federal government—can end up paying part of the bill. That creates a difficult incentive. A mistaken approval can cost the state money. States therefore have a financial reason to demand more documentation and close questionable cases quickly. That can reduce improper payments, but it can also remove eligible families whose paperwork is incomplete or whose cases cannot be reconciled by an automated system. Food banks and charities pick up the slack. Annie Lowrey of The Atlantic has written about what she calls the “Time Tax”—the hours people spend completing paperwork, waiting on

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This is where journalist John Dickerson experiments. Sometimes it contains stories, sometimes Stack the Week, a weekly review of the news — what mattered, what's coming, and why it all connects. With occasional acts of wonder. Or, it's where Stack the Week Daily lives. A daily version of the same. www.johndickerson.com

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