Welcome everyone to the Stack the Week experiment for May 4th through the 8th. It is available here in text and audio and available in your podcast player. Thank you to Annie Cohen for help preparing this delicious offering. The war became a project and then a trifle. Jobs are up, but not for Democratic lawmakers. So are gas prices and appliances, but the dollar is down. The gap between expectations and reality is squeezing the American Dream more than the aquifer in Mexico City. Rubio swaps gifts with the Pope. Lutnick endures the inquisition. The Pentagon releases info about UFOs, which are now easier to spot than some parts of the Epstein files. Tariffs are 0 for 5 in court and Sunday is for mothers, who really deserve more than a brunch. Let’s take it day by day. Monday, May 4 Monday was a day about the distance between the way things are and the way they’re supposed to be—the easy use of pepper spray in a system that isn’t supposed to punish, an exodus from a financial “safe haven,” the college students with too much faith and their parents without enough, a successful phone ban that didn’t score, a parade without tanks, and over-prescribing a heroin metaphor. “Project Freedom” On Monday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard launched cruise missiles, drones, and fast-attack speedboats against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. None succeeded. U.S. missiles shot down the incoming fire; Apache and Seahawk helicopters lifted off the deck of carriers and sank six speedboats threatening two American-flagged tankers. (Between Venezuella and Iran, the U.S. has been hell on speedboats.) The tankers made it through—the first since the ceasefire began on April 8. The operation was called “Project Freedom,” the administration’s attempt to reopen the strait without restarting the war. (For a little while I was calling it Project Freedom, which I also thinks works). “He wants action,” a senior official told Axios about the president. “He doesn’t want to sit still.” Trump had been presented different plans of action. Adm. Brad Cooper, head of Central Command, unfurled a plan to drive Navy ships through by force and destroy any Iranian battery or boat that responded. Trump chose the less aggressive path. U.S. destroyers and aircraft would loiter near merchant ships, share intelligence on mine locations, and intervene if Iran attacked—but wouldn’t formally escort anyone. The restraint was partly tactical and partly arithmetic. The U.S. doesn’t have enough destroyers to escort the more than 100 ships that transited the strait daily before the war through a channel where the usable lanes are about two miles wide and Iranian missiles can be fired from trucks and fishing boats. All Iran has to do is get enough through to make captains, shipping companies, and their insurers nervous. By the United States military’s estimation, about 1,550 marine vessels—oil tankers, bulk carriers, container ships, and more—idled in the Persian Gulf right on Monday. The crews weren’t planning for that which means they’re running out of supplies. The question wasn’t whether American warships can win a fight in the strait. It’s whether the Project Freedom umbrella was wide enough to bring commercial traffic back. Meanwhile the president’s poll numbers resemble those speed boats: sinking. A Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos poll in late April found 61 percent called the strikes on Iran a mistake—disapproval at the level Iraq hit in 2006, Vietnam in 1971. Ukrainian strike on Moscow swells The oligarchs aren’t safe. Early Monday a Ukrainian drone hit a luxury 54-story tower in southwestern Moscow in a neighborhood of foreign embassies and Russian elite. —about six kilometers from the Kremlin, three from the Defense Ministry. One floor was gutted; no one was killed. The target’s swank address was the point: even the most protected civilians in the capital are within reach, and Moscow’s tightened GPS jamming and internet restrictions failed to stop it. The attack comes five days before the Victory Day parade on Red Square, an annual World War II celebration Putin has used to cast the war in Ukraine as a continuation of the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany. This year’s parade will proceed without heavy military equipment for the first time since 2007—no tanks, no armored vehicles—and without military school cadets. Whether that reflects a critical shortage of display-ready hardware or a fear that stationary armor on Red Square would make easy targets for a drone swarm, the effect is the same: the showcase of Russian power has been hollowed out. The guest list tells its own story. In 2005, Bush, Chirac of France, and Schröder of Germany attended. In 2015, after Russia invaded Crimea, Xi Jinping and Modi still showed up. In 2026, the marquee foreign dignitary is Slovakia’s Robert Fico—who announced he will meet Putin and lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier but skip the parade itself, distancing himself from the optics of honoring a war against a neighboring European state. Merz penalty The alliance supposedly opposing Russia took a hit of its own. On Friday, the Pentagon announced it would withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany over the next six to twelve months — fulfilling a threat President Trump made after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said publicly that the United States was “being humiliated” by the Iranian leadership and criticized Washington’s lack of strategy in the war. Merz was saying what allied diplomats had been saying privately for weeks. Trump’s response was to punish the messenger. The withdrawal reverses part of the buildup President Biden ordered after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and will leave about 30,000 American troops in Germany. Spain and Italy were warned they could be next. ICE Use of Force The story of Donald Trump’s successful immigration crackdown is contained in the numbers. Border crossings have fallen 93 percent; deportations are running 85 percent above two years ago. There are other numbers too. Forty-seven people have died in ICE custody since January 2025—one every six days this year. Seventy-one percent of those detained have no criminal record, according to ICE’s own data, undermining the president’s claim that he would only round up “the worst of the worst.” A Washington Post investigation highlights another number: 1,460 use-of-force incidents across 98 detention facilities between January 2024 and February 2026. During the first year of Trump’s second term, those incidents rose 37 percent. The number of individuals subjected to force climbed even faster—54 percent, to 1,330 people—because guards increasingly used chemical agents and physical tactics on groups rather than individuals. The detained population grew 45 percent over the same period, which means force is outpacing even the surge in bodies. Detention is classified as non-punitive administrative custody—a system for making sure people show up for court, not a sentence. Yet the tools are indistinguishable from high-security corrections: Tasers, pepper spray, restraint chairs, takedown maneuvers, deployed in facilities often housed in former prisons and staffed by former corrections officers. In multiple incidents the Post documented, the triggering behavior was detainees asking for things they’re legally entitled to—food, water, medical care, personal belongings. The administration also shuttered two oversight offices responsible for investigating detention conditions, saying they added “bureaucratic hurdles.” What the emails describe is a system designed for administrative holding that, under the pressure of rapid expansion, has defaulted to the only model its operators know: crowd control. A Pew survey last week found that only 41 percent of Americans are confident Trump can make good decisions on immigration, down from 53 percent after his reelection—a 12-point drop on what was supposed to be his signature issue. An NBC poll found that 58 percent of Americans say they do not believe that “regular, law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear” from immigration agents. On Monday the Pulitzer board awarded the Chicago Tribune its prize for local reporting — for its coverage of ICE sweeps in Chicago. Mifepristone in Limbo The 5th Circuit blocked telehealth and mail prescription of mifepristone last Friday claiming that it threatened the safety of pregnant women and the sovereignty of Louisiana, which has banned abortion in almost all cases. Women can still get the pill, but only by going to a clinic in person. Telehealth lets a woman finish a medication abortion within a few days. In-person requirements stretch that into multiple clinic visits — time off work, gas, a babysitter, sometimes a hotel — which means more money and, more importantly, more time. Time matters because mifepristone is only approved for the first ten weeks of pregnancy. The longer the trip takes to arrange, the more women age out of the option. In states with abortion bans — thirteen of them — there is no clinic to go to. Those women had been getting pills by mail from providers in states with shield laws. The two manufacturers immediately asked the Supreme Court to stay the ruling. The Court issued a temporary administrative stay through May 11. Sixty percent of U.S. abortions now happen by medication; about 1 in 4 are by telehealth. Mifepristone is roughly as safe as ibuprofen. Carrying a pregnancy to term — any pregnancy — is about 14 times more likely to kill you than ending one with the drug. Voters have approved 14 of 17 abortion-rights ballot measures since Dobbs — the 2022 ruling that eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion and returned the question to the states — including in Republican-leaning Missouri, Montana, and Ohio. The FDA is conducting a parallel safety review, though mifepristone is o