Author: nick

The best sign of a U.S.-Iranian compromise is both sides insisting that they aren’t giving anything up. On Friday morning, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he had reached a deal with Iran to give up its enriched uranium. “No money will exchange hands,” he claimed, and the “deal is in no way subject to Lebanon, either,” though he also declared that “Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer.” The lady doth protest too much. Axios reports that in Pakistani-brokered talks, the U.S. has offered to unfreeze several billion dollars of Iranian money in foreign banks in exchange for…

Trump says the U.S. already won the war Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University economist, said in an interview on Thursday that the Iranians have tried to negotiate with the U.S. in June 2025 and February 2026 to reach terms to avoid wars, and in both instances, they were hit with sneak attacks with the hope of killing the country’s leadership, and they now know they are in an existential fight. “They have tried repeatedly to negotiate and have been assassinated for their problems and attacked for their efforts,” he told Rachel Belvins. “And this time they’re fighting back because now it’s existential for…

Live Nation and Ticketmaster were found liable for monopolizing parts of the live entertainment market on Wednesday, after a panel of jurors concluded that concertgoers were overcharged a whopping $1.72 per ticket at certain venues.  Live Nation, a venue operator and concert promoter, acquired Ticketmaster, which facilitates primary and secondary ticket sales, in 2010. In 2024, Live Nation was sued by the Justice Department, states, and the District of Columbia for allegedly monopolizing primary ticketing services, concert venues, and promotional services. (The motivation for the suit was misdirected public outrage over resale ticket prices to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour exceeding…

Goldman Sachs HQ, NYC. My friend Jared Bernstein calls our attention to the rebirth of the inflation hawks. Apparently, there is a new craze among economists to say that we are in a period of structurally higher inflation. The basis for this is that we are looking at consistently higher inflation in the 20s than we saw in the quarter-century from 1995 to 2020. So, the question is whether there is a structural break or just a series of bad breaks for the economy and the country. Put me firmly in the series of bad breaks camp. First, the bad…

As the Trump administration and Pope Leo XIV publicly sparred over the Iran war, social media users claimed that both the pontiff and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cited fictional Bible verses to promote their messages. Leo has spoken against the Iran war and called for peace. Hegseth has justified the war by citing scripture and saying God is on his side.  On April 15, Hegseth led a Pentagon prayer service, prompting some social media users to say a prayer he read aloud sounded identical to dialogue from the 1994 movie “Pulp Fiction.”  Meanwhile, critics of the pope said an April…

Logo of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. (NA)   Earlier this week, Virginia Governor Abigal Spanberger signed into law a bill stripping property tax exemptions from various pro-Confederate nonprofit organizations: On Monday, Virginia’s governor, Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat and the state’s first female governor, signed into law a bill that eliminates tax exemptions for organizations connected to the Confederacy. HB167, passed by Democrats in the Virginia house and senate, specifically removes the Virginia division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Stonewall Jackson Memorial, the Virginia division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Confederate Memorial Literary Society,…

Last year, Yale University President Maurie McInnis formed a committee of Yale faculty members to “undertake a project of thorough self-examination.” She wanted to know: Why is the public losing trust in higher education institutions like Yale? This week, after a year of gathering input from students, faculty, journalists, and critics of higher education, the committee released its findings: The culprits for this erosion of trust, as The New York Times summarized, are “Schools like Yale.” The report identified several reasons Yale has lost public favor, including grade inflation, bureaucratic bloat, rising tuition costs, and controversial admissions practices. Notably, the…

Elowah Falls, Hatfield Wilderness, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair. Contrary to what is advocated for in a recent article by U.S. Forest Service research fellow Clare E. Boerigter about protecting Wilderness by purposefully “tending it,” the best approach to the overall stewardship of federally designated Wilderness managed in the United States is to do as the 1964 Wilderness Act dictates: leave it alone. As a retired Forest Service wilderness manager, reading this article really hit a nerve with me—or I should say several nerves. This approach of advocating for management of Wilderness is contradictory to the intent and letter of the…

News stories, social media users and fan blogs are fighting over whether Walt Disney World’s monorail system eliminated, and then brought back, its “ladies and gentlemen” greeting. “My favorite small win for sanity today: After a 5-year gender-neutral absence, Disney has restored ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ to the Magic Kingdom monorail greeting,” one user wrote on X April 15. “The world is healing,” the conservative social media account Libs of TikTok posted on X. The post included a Fox Business headline that said, “Disney World revives ‘ladies and gentlemen’ greeting after years of gender-neutral messages.” Besides Fox, other conservative news outlets…

Mark Kelly, a Democrat, is an American citizen and the senior U.S. senator representing Arizona. He serves on the Senate’s Armed Services Committee and Select Committee on Intelligence. But according to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Kelly’s status as a retired Navy captain constrains what he is allowed to say in those other capacities. Hegseth thinks he has the authority to punish Kelly, a legislator whose job includes oversight of Hegseth’s department, for criticizing his leadership of the Pentagon and the Trump administration’s military policies. In February, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, rejected that astonishing claim,…