Matthew Crawford, via Damon Linker
Capital is concentrated to the point that it operates in quasi-governmental ways, abetted by ever more powerful information technology. Arguably, one of the most important functions of the (actual, elected) government, now, is precisely to restrain and regulate the explosion of unaccountable governmentality in our dealings with outsized commercial enterprises.
Ah! If only…
The pope tried to put an end to this craziness several times. He insisted that he did not speak on world affairs as a politician (and still less a global umpire) but as a witness to gospel truths. He made quite clear that he would not be cowed by the Trump administration, even as he reminded the scribes and influencers that he did not pick a fight with the president. And in doing so, he suggested, if subtly, that there was something a bit awry about the endless media obsession with the president. Did everything and everyone in the world have to be parsed by reference to Donald J. Trump?
George Weigel, “The First Leonine Year” - Dispatch Faith newsletter, May 3, 2026
Before, the Straits of Hormuz were open to international shipping. A good thing, generally speaking. Now President Trump has successfully given Iran sovereignty over the Straits and they’re closed. Unequivocally, not good. The Art of the Deal!
This, from Adam Liptak and Jodi Kantor, strikes me as unwarrantedly high-strung. Read the SCOTUS memos: they’re pretty standard legal back-and-forth based on reasonable arguments on both sides. Nor does the Times show how this led to the Supremes’ “Shadow Docket.”
Chill, kids.
Robert Pape, University of Chicago:
Iran is not a palace dictatorship resting on a handful of men. It is a state of roughly 92 million people, with governing institutions embedded across society…. Roughly one in eight Iranians works for the state or in state-linked institutions. The regime’s authority is threaded through provincial administrations, economic networks, and local security structures. Removing several dozen senior leaders — even highly placed ones — touches only a small fraction of that governing apparatus. It does not dismantle the structure; it activates it.
There are moral and legal cases against Trump’s Iran attacks. But a purely practical one is that heavy bombing doesn’t drive the other side to surrender, as history has shown again and again: The Blitz, “bombing North Vietnam back to the Stone Age,” Shock and Awe in Iraq …
Letters from children held in detention by the United States government in Dilley, Texas.
Michael Wear, The Dispatch, February 8, 2026,
This last decade of American politics cannot become the new standard. If it does, few of our institutions will survive… This is the danger, of course. That everything will orient around this man [Trump]. That he will succeed in making everything subject to his interests and his whims. He’s willing to do it with God, and he’s certainly willing to do it with the country. Our nation’s choice about whether to elect him is in the past, but the choice we have to make about whether we will become like him is ongoing.
