TALKING POINTS

Too far left to win?

p.17

Abdul El-Sayed

MAIN STORIES

Upending childhood vaccines

p.5

PEOPLE

Odysseus' 4-foot-6 stunt double

p.10

Devyn Dalton

THE WEEK

THE BEST OF THE U.S. AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

AUGUST 21, 2026 VOLUME 26 ISSUE 1301

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The U.S.'s dangerous missile shortage

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Contents

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Iranian children play in the Strait of Hormuz. (p.5)

THE WEEK

Editor-in-chief: Theunis Bates

(theweekeditors@futurenet.com)

Editor-at-large: William Falk

Executive editor: Susan Caskie

Managing editor: Jay Wilkins

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Deputy editor/Business: Zach Schonbrun

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Maass, Scott Meslow, Brit Morse,

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FUTURE

PLC

Chief executive officer: Kevin Li Ying Vice executive chairman: Mark Bender Chief financial officer: Marjole Salman

NEWS

• 4 Main Stories
• 6 Controversy of the Week
• 7 U.S. at a Glance
• 8 World at a Glance
• 10 People
• 11 Briefing
• 12 Best U.S. Columns
• 14 Best International Columns
• 15 Best European Columns
• 16 Talking Points
• 18 Cartoons
• 20 Technology
• 21 Health & Science

ARTS

• 22 Books
• 23 Author of the Week
• 24 Art & Music
• 25 Film
• 26 Television

LEISURE

• 27 Food & Drink
• 28 Travel
• 30 Properties

BUSINESS

• 32 News at a Glance
• 33 Making Money
• 34 Best Columns

OTHER

• 35 Obituaries
• 36 The Last Word
• 38 Puzzle Page

Phil Collins (p.10)

Editor's letter

The other night, my wife and I were discussing what not to order for dinner. "No lettuce," she said, grimly. That eliminated most of the mid-week staples—Greek, Mexican, all-American slop bowls. "Can't go wrong with a diner omelet," I suggested, before she reminded me that I was quite wrong: There's an egg recall for salmonella. In fairness, it is getting hard to remember all the foods to avoid. I'd just gotten over the 2024 listeria outbreak and was starting to feel comfortable venturing to the deli counter again. Now comes word that the FDA is currently investigating 11 active outbreaks of parasites with unprintably long names implicating everything from cilantro to soft cheese. In addition to eggs, salmonella has recently tainted pecks of jalapeños in at least 27 states, hospitalizing dozens. In case you didn't realize it, there are jalapeños in everything today: salsa, guacamole, sausages, mayonnaise, even Spam has a jalapeño product. When you can't eat Spam, you know it's a problem. We've got a problem.

As millions of Americans stock up on Imodium and toilet paper, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has decided this is a good time to launch a cooking show based on fresh foods and "real" ingredients (see Talking Points, p.16). Viewers might be more receptive if they could trust a salad bar. What's also missing from the show is any recognition of what's currently contaminating the nation's food supply. It's been reported that, under Kennedy, FDA inspections of foreign facilities—which account for roughly 60% of the fresh fruit and 40% of the veggies we eat—have fallen to historic lows. Meanwhile, the CDC inexplicably decided last year to reduce the number of pathogens it would actively track. Evidently, it now prefers surprises. These issues have been compounded by a jumble of mixed messaging coming from public-health experts and the government—some warning about fresh produce, others blithely encouraging you to eat that same produce. The problem is you can't separate nutrition policy from food safety, just like you can't promote safer driving while removing speed limits. So in the end, we just ordered Chinese.

Zach Schonbrun

Deputy editor/Business

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THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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4 NEWS

The Main Stories...

Blanche officially takes over at DOJ

What happened

President Trump's former personal lawyer Todd Blanche was sworn in as U.S. attorney general this week, after a contentious confirmation fight focused on whether he would exert independence as the nation's top law officer or serve at the whim of a president who regards the Justice Department as a tool of political vengeance. Blanche—who has led the DOJ in an acting capacity since Trump's April firing of AG Pam Bondi—was approved by the Senate 50 to 49, with two Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, joining all Democrats in opposition. "The country needs an attorney general who will check the worst impulses of this administration," said Murkowski. But Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who cast a decisive yes vote after expressing doubts about Blanche, said the choice was "not between perfection and Mr. Blanche," but between Blanche and another acting AG "who may not run the department effectively."

Blanche faced particular scrutiny over his role in settling a lawsuit Trump brought against the IRS. Settlement terms included the creation of a $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund—widely derided as a slush fund for Trump allies, including pardoned Jan. 6 rioters—and an agreement giving Trump and family members immunity from tax audits. Two GOP senators, John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, held up Blanche's advancement in the Judiciary Committee over those measures, but voted yes after Blanche provided written assurances that the fund was "rescinded" and that tax immunity would not apply to future audits. Democrats excoriated their colleagues for approving Blanche. "We're surrendering any shred of integrity left," said Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.).

What the columnists said

Senate Republicans' rubber-stamping of Blanche is "shameful," said Ruth Marcus in The New Yorker. Sure, Trump could have kept him on as acting attorney general, "but the symbolism matters." Under Blanche's leadership, the DOJ has pursued "flimsy prosecutions of Trump's political adversaries" and purged its workforce of perceived enemies. Missteps and misstatements have cause numerous cases to flop in court, damaging the department's credibility with judges, and its botched handling of the Epstein files has even alienated members of the MAGA base. It's all "on Blanche," and a yes vote "represents a ratification" of his malfeasance.

A yes-man as attorney general?

Cornyn and Tillis were "played for fools," said Chris Brennan in USA Today. Blanche's written assurances on the weaponization fund and audits have "zero value" as legal documents—legal settlements can't be amended by one party. Trump clearly wants to resurrect his slush fund, and you can bet Blanche will do his bidding. Indeed, Blanche wasted no time showing his true colors, said Edith Olmsted in The New Republic. Just hours after he was sworn in, the DOJ's office of legal counsel argued Trump could claim executive privilege over his communications with "private advisers"—essentially anyone he's ever talked with—which could limit Democrats if they retake the House and start

investigating the president's corruption spree.

Blanche will soon take aim at abortion rights, said Rachel Rebouché in The Nation. In a recent call with religious leaders, he vowed to ensure that the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade "becomes permanent in every single state." His apparent goal is to use the "archaic" 1873 Comstock Act to "impose a blanket ban on mailing abortion medications"—drugs that today account for the majority of abortions in the U.S.

Blanche has a daunting job ahead, said Jeremy Roebuck in The Washington Post. In Trump's second term the DOJ has "been ravaged by firings, departures, and low morale." And he'll face "competing pressures" from congressional critics, "an attorney general's obligations to the rule of law," and "a president intent on seeing his enemies put on trial." Charging decisions loom in a number of "sensitive cases," including a months-long investigation into former Obama- and Biden-era officials, among them former CIA director John Brennan, who Trump allies claim violated Trump's civil rights by conspiring to undermine his presidency.

Blanche's confirmation drives home just how much Trump has "dismantled" long-standing norms, said Julian E. Zelizer in Foreign Policy. When President Nixon weaponized the Justice Department during Watergate, Americans woke up to the perils of "allowing the nation's chief law enforcement officer to serve as an agent of the president." A "firewall" has held since then, but with loyalist Blanche in charge, the DOJ is once again "a presidential instrument, wielded to target opponents and reward supporters." It's "a dangerous moment for a democracy that depends on the rule of law."

It wasn't all bad

■ An Alabama teenager with insomnia ended up saving the life of a 76-year-old stranger. Struggling to sleep, Johnson Thompson headed to his parents' workshop around 4:30 a.m. on June 30 to start his day early and noticed Fannie Garner trying to enter a closed business nearby. Johnson discovered she was in pain and disoriented. He called emergency services, who soon determined she had a small brain bleed. Doctors said it could have been fatal if Johnson hadn't intervened. "He's a guardian angel for sure," Garner said.

■ Anita LeBrun last week celebrated the first happy hour at her senior living center in Champlin, Minn., less than a month after her efforts helped overturn a state law restricting alcohol at retirement homes. For months, the 82-year-old had been the face of an anti-prohibition movement. She testified before the state legislature that she and her late husband of 59 years loved to share a glass of white wine and beer, and she simply wanted the same opportunity with her friends at their retirement home. Her hard work paid off after Gov. Tim Walz signed the "Grandparents' Happy Hour" bill into law in July. "You got to keep plugging along," she said, enjoying a long-awaited pinot grigio, "even if you're old."

■ A rare blue lobster is getting a new lease on life after it went on display at a New Hampshire science museum. Commercial fishermen recently caught the crustacean and sent it to Explore the Ocean World, a touch-tank museum full of other rare, colored lobsters with genetic mutations that alter the amount of pigment-producing proteins. The crustaceans will be returned to the Atlantic by Labor Day, fitted with tags to help researchers identify and save them if recaptured. "They kind of won the lottery," said museum curator Ellen Goethel.

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

Illustration by Jason Seiler. Cover photos from AP (2), Devyn Dalton

Reuters, Office of Governor Tom Walz

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...and How They Were Covered

NEWS 5

Administration aims to limit childhood vaccines

What happened

President Trump signed a nonbinding executive order this week recommending a radical overhaul of the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule, a policy proposal that health experts warned will only sow more mistrust and confusion about lifesaving immunizations. The order proposes reducing the number of recommended childhood vaccines from 18 to 11, downgrading vaccines for diseases such as Covid, hepatitis A and B, and RSV to optional for most children. It directs government health officials to plan for separating the doses in the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, which has been administered as a combined injection for 55 years. The order also authorizes the Justice Department to challenge state vaccine regulations deemed insufficiently respectful of parental objections. Trump claimed without evidence that the combined MMR vaccine can be “quite lethal” if given at once.

With Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. by his side, Trump made several other false claims. He said children were being pumped with “vats” of vaccine—the MMR shot is actually a fraction of a teaspoon—and revived the debunked theory that vaccines cause autism. Pediatricians were aghast. “As measles cases reach a 35-year high in the U.S.,” said American Academy of Pediatrics president Dr. Andrew Racine, Trump’s executive order is “not only disheartening but dangerous.” Several states, including New York and Illinois, declared they would keep current childhood immunization rules in place. “We will continue to be guided by the science,” said New York state Health Commissioner James McDonald.

Trump rewrites decades of health policy.

What the columnists said

Trump claimed “nothing bad can happen from what we’re doing,” said Jonathan Cohn in The Bulwark. But “bad things are happening already.” Nearly 2,500 people have contracted measles this year as anti-vax rhetoric has pushed MMR vaccination rates below the community protection threshold. At least two children have died from the disease. And now many more parents will wrongly believe that a proven protection is unsafe, all because “they heard it from the president.”

Trump insists he isn’t promoting “vaccine skepticism,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. He claims he’s merely aligning the U.S. with other “peer, developed nations” such as Denmark. But governments with “socialized health systems” have fewer vaccine recommendations because they don’t want to pay to cover rarer diseases, such as meningitis, and because problems like mother-to-child transmission of hepatitis B are “less common” there.

“Almost nothing Trump called for is practical or possible today,” said Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times. No American company even manufactures the individual components for separate measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines. Successive shots would leave kids vulnerable to the diseases for longer. But Trump and Kennedy “have been beating the anti-vaccination drum for years.” They long for the “good old days” before “excessive” immunizations. “They would expose millions of children to severe disease and death” in the name of misguided nostalgia. “In heaven’s name, why?”

Trump’s new ‘low-key’ strategy with Iran

What happened

Both Iran and the U.S. issued aggressive new demands for ending the war, with President Trump saying this week he’s “low-keying” negotiations in hopes that economic pressure from a U.S. blockade of Iranian ports would eventually force the regime to its knees. “We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money,” Trump said. But a defiant Iranian regime elevated a group of hard-liners in its national security leadership, while insisting that it will continue to severely limit traffic through the Strait of Hormuz unless the U.S. permanently ends the war, withdraws all troops from the Middle East, lifts the blockade and all sanctions, and unfreezes assets. Tehran also said it’s seeking billions of dollars in war reparations from the U.S. Trump mocked that demand and instead called for compensation from Iran for its decades-long support of terrorism and history of killing Iranian protesters.

A U.S. Navy helicopter struck and disabled a Panama-flagged ship in the Gulf of Oman that the military said was attempting to run its blockade. Yemen’s internationally recognized government said that six people were killed in the Bab el Mandeb Strait, the southern entryway into the Red Sea, when the Iran-backed Houthi militia hit a cargo ship. It would mark the first fatal strike by the Houthis on a vessel since the war broke out in February. Both Bab el Mandeb and Hormuz are vital chokepoints in the global oil trade, and their dwindling traffic has reduced availability and inflated prices.

What the columnists said

Trump has tried negotiations, said Jonathan Lemire in The Atlantic, and he’s tried “apocalyptic threats to wipe out Iran’s entire civilization.” Neither strategy has worked. So now he will “try doing nothing and see whether that works.” The White House is convinced economic pressure will force Iran to make a deal, but given that Iran “has repeatedly surprised U.S. officials with its economic resilience,” Trump will have to display a lot of patience, a virtue he doesn’t possess in great quantities.

For all its bluster, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial, Iran is indeed reeling economically. The American blockade is costing Iran “an estimated $435 million a day in lost economic activity.” Tehran’s industrial base is “devastated,” and “inflation and unemployment are soaring.” Trump won’t get a quick win this way, but it’s preferable to a bad deal that “hands control of the strait” to Tehran “and gives economic relief up front.”

Yes, economic pressure is “likely to prove more effective” than threats or more bombing, said Max Boot in The Washington Post. But with midterm elections nearing, Trump is asking already-angry American voters “to endure higher oil prices and higher inflation” indefinitely. Trump has created this debacle by “zigzagging between war and peace, threats and negotiations, bombastic rhetoric and unctuous outreach.” His “erratic approach” has put the nation on the road to “an endless and inconclusive conflict—a ‘forever war.’”

2

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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6 NEWS

Controversy of the Week

Iran: The dangerous U.S. missile shortage

The U.S. is clearly “out of ideas” for how to end the war in Iran, said Hafiz Rashid in The New Republic, and now we’re “out of long-range missiles,” too. The New York Times reported last week that the five-month-old war has burned through “virtually all” of the U.S.’s long-range surface-to-surface missiles, and roughly half of our ship-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles and THAAD interceptors. There are only 800 Patriot interceptors left to defend U.S. bases and allies in the region from Iranian drones and missiles, from a prewar stockpile of more than 2,300. President Trump, “as is his wont,” is simply denying reality, said Andreas Kluth in Bloomberg. He bragged that the U.S. still has “far more munitions than anyone in the world” and “far more than we need.” But in private he’s reportedly livid, both at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for hiding the shortage and at whoever leaked the story to the Times. The reality is that “the U.S. ammo crunch is a global disaster.” First to suffer will be the people of Ukraine, who had hoped to buy American interceptors through European intermediaries to withstand Russia’s stepped-up bombardment. With estimates that it will take at least three years to replenish our stockpiles of the intricate, sophisticated weapons, Trump has also let the world know we’re too “exhausted militarily” to defend Taiwan from China, or South Korea from North Korea, or Europe’s Baltic states from Vladimir Putin.

The origin of this shortage “predates the Trump administration,” said Nancy A. Youssef and Jonathan Lemire in The Atlantic. After the Cold War ended, successive Pentagons scaled back munitions spending, assuming the new cadence of engagement—“long bouts of peace between short, conclusive wars”—would allow plenty of

A Patriot missile: Will take years to restock

time to maintain supplies. We also prioritized the development of high-tech, high-cost missiles like the Patriot and the THAAD, which are ill-suited to the age of drone warfare. Firing a $4 million Patriot—of which we make only 600 a year—to take down a $40,000 drone that Iran can manufacture in near-limitless quantity, is how a superpower ends up “running out of missiles.”

The munitions “shortage is real,” said Park MacDougald in The Free Press, but it’s being “overstated” by Trump administration factions who want to de-escalate in Iran and cut off weapons to Ukraine. Does the U.S. have enough

missiles to deter China from taking Taiwan? No. But we never did. We do have all the conventional bombs and weapons needed to pulverize Iran, although delivering them would require warplanes to make bombing raids and “raise the risk” of U.S. casualties.

If U.S. planes and pilots are shot down over Iran, it would make this war even more disastrous, said Mark Hertling in The Bulwark. The purpose of all military technology, from the longbow to the ICBM, is to maximize “the distance between friendly forces and the enemy” and minimize your own casualties. Without missiles, that distance collapses, along with the military advantage that has made America a superpower. A competent president might rise to the challenge of regaining military advantage over Iran, said Noah Berlatsky in Public Notice. But Trump is instead focusing on finding the “treasonous” leakers who dared expose his ineptitude, while insisting the missile shortage isn’t real. Trump’s lies won’t fool anyone in Tehran, or Beijing, or Moscow, and they won’t “bring back the missiles spent on his useless war of choice.”

Only in America

■ Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to spend $20 million on electric gloves that can deliver painful shocks to uncooperative civilians. According to its manufacturer, Kentucky’s Compliant Technologies, the G.L.O.V.E. (Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter) is a “humane, low-optics, de-escalation” tool. As a bonus, Compliant says the G.L.O.V.E. leaves behind no inconvenient “burns, marks, or scars.”

■ Buc-ee’s, the Texas-based chain of highway rest stops, is suing yet another small business for trademark infringement. Its latest target is Beaver’s Mini Mart, in Beavercreek, Ohio, which is miles from any highway and featured a cartoon beaver on its signage years before Buc-ee’s, with its similar mascot, expanded beyond Texas in 2018. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine calls the lawsuit “ridiculous,” noting, “It is Beavercreek for heaven’s sake. You expect to find in Beavercreek things named ‘beaver.’”

Good week for:

Resting in peace, after a new $580 million undersea power line linking Wales and Ireland was rerouted to appease Harry Potter fans upset that its path crossed a beach used to film the burial of the fictional house elf Dobby. The new route passes “close to some real Bronze Age remains,” said project manager Simon Ludlam, “but we avoided Dobby’s grave.”

Bombs bursting in air, after Guinness World Records confirmed that the July 4 fireworks in Washington were, as President Trump promised, “the LARGEST FIREWORKS SHOW IN HISTORY.” Some 840,537 fireworks were detonated within 40 minutes, pushing air-quality readings in the capital into the Code Purple “very unhealthy” range for 12 hours.

Sucking it up, after Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, 92, posted online that his vacuum cleaner of 34 years, a tan Hoover named Beth, had died of electrical failure. “GOOD BYE BETH,” he wrote. “U I’ve been a real workhorse.”

Bad week for:

The new guy, after Politico reported that White House immigration hawks are agitating to oust Markwayne Mullin, Trump’s recently installed Homeland Security secretary, for his perceived lack of ruthlessness. “It takes a lot to unite this administration around a cohesive point of view,” said a senior official, but “everyone agrees he sucks donkey butt.”

Branding, after two motorists filed a lawsuit against Mercedes-AMG, claiming the metallic “AMG” on their driver’s seats got so hot that the lettering was scorched onto their skin. A dermatologist cited in the suit described the injuries as “AMG inscribed” first- and second-degree burns.

Authenticity, after the Colorado-founded Chipotle Mexican Grill opened a pilot restaurant in Monterrey, Mexico. Daniel Morales, a local construction worker, said he’s skeptical the American eatery will take off in the country, noting, “It’s gringo food for gringos.”

In other news

Trump’s East Wing ballroom blocked by appeals court An appeals court last week ordered the Trump administration to halt work on the White House’s new ballroom, ruling that the 90,000-square-foot project can’t proceed without congressional approval. In a split decision, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C., determined the president lacks the authority to build the East Wing ballroom. “Congress has exclusive authority to regulate the construction and demolition of White House structures,” Judges Patricia Millett and Bradley Garcia wrote. Trump called the decision “unjust” and vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court. The Washington Post reported this week that the Trump administration plans to spend at least $900 million on construction projects on the White House grounds, including a new helipad and visitor screening facility. Funding will come from donors and from federal agencies’ budgets.

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

18

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The U.S. at a Glance

NEWS 7

Decoy

out of Air Force One, hid him inside a food catering truck, and transferred him to an ordinary military aircraft as part of an elaborate ruse to fly him back from Turkey, The Washington Post reported this week. The press pool on Air Force One was told the president was on board, was not informed about the threat, and flew back as unwitting "decoys," critics of the clandestine operation said. Trump originally flew to Ankara for a July NATO summit on a newly refurbished jet given to him by Qatar. But in response to what officials said was a credible threat by Iran, the Secret Service urged the president not to use the jet because it lacked antimissile defenses and other security equipment. Trump boarded the legacy Air Force One in view of cameras, but sources told the Post he was secretly loaded from a

Washington, D.C.

Secret flight: In response to an Iranian terrorist threat, the Secret Service sneaked President Trump

side door into a catering container and transferred to a smaller plane, later joined by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. After landing at England's Mildenhall air base, he returned to the old Air Force One and disembarked as if he'd been aboard all along. Journalists and even some White House officials were unaware they traveled on a plane that the Secret Service believed was in danger of an Iranian attack.

While uncommon, Air Force One has been used as a decoy to protect previous presidents, including Bill Clinton. But the Clinton administration told the head of the White House Correspondents' Association, off the record, ahead of time. Trump continued to pretend he had flown on the older Air Force One long after the threat had ended, undermining future trust about Trump's whereabouts and safety, security experts say. Some ex-White House staffers also questioned the Trump team's decision to put civilians and Cabinet members, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, seemingly in harm's way on a decoy plane.

Madison, Wis.

Socialist defeated: Francesca Hong suffered a surprise loss in Wisconsin's Democratic gubernatorial primary this week, ending a streak of victories for the far left that has unnerved some establishment Democrats and energized Republicans. The Democratic socialist,

Hong

a 37-year-old state representative and part-time bartender, was defeated by moderate David Crowley by a razor-thin margin of just a few thousand votes, after most polls had her consistently ahead. She ran on a platform that included

universal health care and taxing the rich, but the nation's leading progressive voices, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, withheld endorsements as scrutiny mounted over some of her more extreme past positions, including defunding the police and canceling Thanksgiving. It wasn't a total setback for progressives this week, however, as left-wing Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan beat moderate Rep. Angie Craig in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in her home state in a race that mainly centered on the Trump administration's immigration crackdown and welfare fraud.

New York City

Tax troubles: A Staten Island judge this week ordered a temporary block on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's pied-à-terre tax, which targets owners of second homes worth $5 million or more or condos and co-ops worth $1 million or more. The emergency pause was issued in response to a lawsuit filed by three residents who allege that the city incorrectly flagged their primary residences as subject to the tax, forcing them to scramble to prove they live there. The Mamdani administration has filed a notice seeking to appeal. The pied-

Mamdani

à-terre tax went into effect July 1, but the rollout has been messy; some New Yorkers complained that they have been asked to pay taxes on primary residences that are owned through a trust, a common financial-planning strategy. President Trump, a longtime New York resident, has been among the most vocal in opposition to the tax. It "must be stopped, NOW!" the president wrote on Truth Social.

Columbia, S.C.

Graham advances: Darline Graham advanced to a runoff with Rep. Ralph Norman in South Carolina's Senate GOP primary this week, just 28 days after rising out of obscurity to complete the term of her late brother Sen. Lindsey Graham. Darline Graham, a political neophyte, was encouraged to run by President Trump. At a debate last week, the disability advocate said she supported abolishing the Senate filibuster, unlike her brother, and backed Trump's agenda "completely."

But Trump was noncommittal about campaigning with Graham for the runoff, maintaining he likes both candidates.

Graham and Norman

"They're all Trumpers," he said. He had been much more vocal in his support for MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, who he called "one of America's greatest" and who this week lost to Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth in the North Star State's GOP gubernatorial primary. Lindell, an election denier, refused to concede, despite trailing by 11 percentage points, and questioned "anomalies" in the vote count.

Brewster County, Texas

Bulldozed: Protesters gathered to try to stop government contractors from bulldozing sections of Texas' Big Bend National Park this week to make way for an expanded border wall. As part of the Trump administration's $46.5 billion effort to boost security along the U.S.-Mexico border, workers began constructing a patrol road that will span the length of the park. President Trump's plan also calls for erecting 4-to-6-foot-high barriers. The Department of Homeland Security exempted contractors from complying with the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, among other laws. A video captured a bulldozer crushing trees where migratory birds roost. The remote terrain has the lowest levels of illegal entry of anywhere along the border, and a bipartisan coalition of politicians, conservationists, and landowners condemned the project.

Getty (2) Reuters, Getty AP

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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8 NEWS

The World at a Glance

Pre-loaded with spyware?

London

Drones talk to China: A component in British naval drones sent messages to a Chinese web

address, U.K. authorities revealed this week, a potentially dangerous breach that raises question about the safety of sourcing military supplies from China. No sensitive information was shared in the signal, but this isn't the first such scare involving Chinese-made component and machinery. In the U.S., a congressional investigation revealed in 2024 that Chinese cargo cranes at U.S. ports contained technology that could give Beijing remote access. European companies have been seeking alternatives to Chinese tech for years. The U.S. banned Chinese drone components last year, but enforcing such a policy on every tiny part is challenging. "It is really, really hard to trace where the stuff comes from if you go all the way down the supply chain," manufacturing consultant Steve Wright told The Wall Street Journal.

Paris

Ban on spam calls: France imposed a ban on unsolicited telemarketing calls this week and backed it up with hefty fines for violators. While the country had a do-not-call registry that was blocking 38 million calls a day, authorities estimated that three-quarters of the country still received at least one unsolicited sales call a week, and some people were harassed with many such calls. Under the new system, companies may call customers only with consent or to follow up on existing contracts. Companies can be fined as much as $435,000 per call, and $578,000 if they're targeting vulnerable people. Telemarketers said the law would discourage legitimate outreach to customers and could eliminate 50,000 call-center jobs in Morocco. But consumer advocate Marie-Amandine Stévenin said, "Peace and quiet is a right."

Leipzig, Germany

Russian attack? Russia's simmering hybrid war on Europe crossed a new frontier last week after German police found an explosives-laden drone near a Ukrainian cargo jet in Leipzig. Germany didn't explicitly finger Russia, but U.S. intelligence did, saying the quadcopter carrying Semtex plastic explosives was clearly part of Russia's sabotage campaign against European countries that support Kyiv. Russia denied involvement. German authorities said the drone evaded air defenses to land on a runway and was spotted by an airport bus driver. Police defused it with a robot and said DNA at the scene matched a sample from a firebomb that detonated at the same airport in 2024. "We're not at war," said Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, "but we are the daily target of hybrid warfare."

Buildings collapsed into rum.

Cali, Colombia

Killer earthquake: A magnitude-7.4 earthquake struck western Colombia this week, demolishing dozens of buildings and killing more than 250 people. Crews scrambled to save hundreds of people trapped in the rubble in frantic rescues recalling recent scenes in neighboring Venezuela, where twin earthquakes killed

thousands in June. The quake was the strongest to hit Colombia in decades. Hundreds of buildings collapsed in Cali and Pereira, and Bogotá and Medellín experienced intense shaking. "It was like a scene from The Exorcist, the way the bed was moving," Medellín resident Gabriel Mónaco told CNN. The disaster was an immediate test for Colombia's pro-Trump President Abelardo De La Espriella, sworn in three days earlier, who declared a state of emergency to speed recovery funding.

Jameson Land, Greenland

Drilling dispute: Greenland last week issued a "strong warning" to a U.S. energy company loosely associated with President Trump after it imported oil-drilling equipment without a permit.

Texas-based Greenland Energy says it plans to spend $60 million to drill two wells in Greenland's remote and pristine Jameson Land region, which may be sitting on $1 trillion worth of crude. Trump has said the U.S. needs to take over Greenland, a semiautonomous Arctic territory of Denmark, to protect U.S. national security. This week, he posted an AI image showing him looming over a Greenlandic village, with the caption "Hello, Greenland!"

Hello, Greenland!

Looming large

Bomb squad on the scene

Ancient amphorae

Mazaro del Vallo, Italy

Roman shipwreck: A 2,000-year-old

Roman shipwreck loaded with cargo was discovered off the Sicilian coast, a find that Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli this week called "one of the most important underwater archaeological discoveries" in years. Authorities say it appears to date from between the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C. Two local fishermen first spotted the 69-foot-long wreck, and a team of police divers went down 150 feet below the surface to take photographs. Giacomo De Mola said he'd been spearfishing when he noticed what looked like a large rock and decided to dive down to investigate. "I get closer and my heart stops," he said. "It wasn't a rock." Instead, he saw ship timbers and about 500 amphorae—tall, two-handled clay jars used in ancient Rome to store goods, usually wine or olive oil. "We didn't just find a wreck," he said. "We found a piece of our history."

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

Reuters, Trade Social/Getty Images, Italian Ministry of Culture

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The World at a Glance

NEWS 9

Moscow

North Korea to the rescue: North Korea is ramping up its support for Russia's four-year-old war in Ukraine, surging troops, munitions, and missiles to the battlefield, Ukrainian military intelligence reported this week. A North Korean ballistic missile unit is being deployed to western Russia, according to Kyiv; Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said up to 50,000 North Korean soldiers are also expected to be sent to serve alongside Russia's depleted forces. The Financial Times reported that the Kremlin is reluctant to institute another round of the draft, so it has instead been raiding workplaces and snatching men off the streets. Russian officials are "trying to squeeze as much as they can from every category of men," said Artyom Klyga of Connection e.V., a Germany-based group supporting Russian deserters.

Russia needs recruits.

Almaty, Kazakhstan

Wildberries seeks safety: Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries is boosting its warehouse capacity in neighboring Kazakhstan in a bid to escape Ukrainian drone strikes. Wildberries has lost at least a dozen distribution centers to Ukrainian attacks in recent weeks, part of a Ukrainian attempt to bring the war home to ordinary Russians. The company now plans to open two massive logistics warehouses in Kazakhstan, with one located in the capital, Astana, and the other in Almaty, its largest city. Wildberries plays an even bigger role in the Russian economy than Amazon does in America's, accounting for nearly half of all online retail sales and employing 5% of the Russian workforce. Ukraine's campaign continued this week with a drone strike on a Wildberries logistics center in Russia's southwestern Voronezh region that killed one person, injured two, and ignited a massive fire.

A warehouse hit by Ukraine

Bangkok

School massacre: A 14-year-old student killed his grandparents last week, then took his grandfather's pistol to his Bangkok high school and shot dead five teachers and a 12-year-old girl. It was Thailand's deadliest school shooting in years. Police said the attacker, who fatally shot himself, had been stressed about his studies and learned to shoot from social media. A teacher had confiscated a BB gun from him last year. Thailand has Southeast Asia's highest rate of gun ownership. After the shooting, the government halted new gun permits, and Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul promised tighter firearms laws, repeating a pledge authorities made after an even deadlier attack four years ago. "It's too easy to buy weapons here," said taxi driver Surat Wannasee, 52. "Nowhere is safe."

Voronezh, Russia

American freed: Russia this week released U.S. Marine veteran Robert Gilman, imprisoned in Voronezh for four years, after his family and an advocacy group warned that his health was failing and he could die. Russia convicted Gilman, 32, of assaulting a police officer on a train, and his sentence was extended to 10 years after he was accused of assaulting a prison inspector and a guard—allegations his family disputed. President Trump said the release came about because he personally appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who agreed to send Gilman home for medical care. "We appreciate this decision," Trump posted, "and the fact that Russia asked for no one in return." Global Reach, a group that helps Americans wrongly imprisoned abroad, said Gilman appeared to have been abused in prison and was in a "dissociative stupor" before being flown home.

Damascus

Death to the old regime: Former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was sentenced to death in absentia by a Damascus court this week for crimes against humanity before and during Syria's 14-year civil war, in which half a million people died. Six other fugitive former regime leaders also were convicted, including Assad's brother Maher, who fled with him to Russia when the regime collapsed in 2024. One condemned defendant is in custody: Assad's cousin and former security chief, Atef Najib, who was captured last year. Najib oversaw the torture of a group of 15 young boys who graffit anti-Assad slogans on a wall in 2011. The incident helped trigger the anti-regime protests that spiraled into civil war, and a crowd outside the courthouse cheered when Najib's sentence was read.

Gilman

Jerusalem

No to Trump's plan: In a rare public break with President Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week flatly rejected the 15-point U.S.-backed plan to disarm Hamas.

Trump announced last month that his Board of Peace had negotiated an agreement for the Palestinian terrorist group to surrender its weapons in phases in exchange for an Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza, calling it a major breakthrough. Hamas said it backed the proposal, portraying Israel as the obstacle to peace. But Netanyahu said Israeli forces wouldn't leave the bombed-out Palestinian territory until Hamas was fully disarmed, saying that if the group was allowed to keep any weapons it would launch another attack like the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre that killed 1,200 Israelis. Netanyahu faces tough fall elections and does not want to alienate his far-right base. Israel knows "how to stand our ground," he said, "even against our best friends when necessary."

Getty / © Reuters 2023

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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10 NEWS

People

A stuntwoman's epic muscles

Devyn Dalton never expected to go viral because of her biceps, said Nono Shen in The Canadian Press. The stuntwoman was in New Zealand last month when she was woken at 4 a.m. by her phone's incessant buzzing. "I'm like, what is going on?" says Dalton, 35. Her friends were sending her clips of a Matt Damon interview in which he praised Dalton for having "the greatest arms ever."

The 4-foot-6 Dalton had doubled for the 5-foot-10 actor in a fight scene in The Odyssey, during which Damon's Odysseus battles a tribe of giants; the height difference helped create the illusion of the ginormous Laestrygonians. To get ready for the role, the Canadian stuntwoman "went into bodybuilding mode" and trained to ensure she carried her body weight differently than a woman might. "I had really sharp, clean, strong movements that were powerful versus being more, let's say, graceful or dancy. I wanted to keep it very 'warrior.'" It was a liberating experience for Dalton, who normally doubles for women and children. Preparing for those roles, she would sometimes think "Oh, I'm too muscular," or "I need to be tinier." But for The Odyssey, Dalton got to embrace her natural strength. "It gives you a kind of confidence inside. I've never felt more feminine and beautiful than I do with my muscles."

Turning a stroke into jokes

Cat Cohen was packing for a flight to Scotland in 2023 when her left arm stopped working, said Lindsay Gellman in The New York Times. The New York City-based comedian had been set to perform her signature mix of cabaret and stand-up at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe; instead, she took an Uber to the emergency room. She'd suffered a stroke, or a similar condition known as a transient ischemic attack, that was caused by a congenital heart defect. As she lay in a hospital bed, Cohen recalls thinking, "If my arm stopped moving, what does that mean for the rest of my body? Am I going to be able to be onstage again? The thought of losing that was terrifying." Then another idea took hold: "This is going to be great material." Cohen, 35, turned the experience into a one-woman show, which she got to perform in Edinburgh last summer. During one show in Scotland, paramedics had to be called—but not for Cohen. An audience member had fainted as she described her cardiac catheterization procedure, which involved a needle being inserted into a vein in her groin. Two more people collapsed during later performances. "I'm still trying to iron out the kinks of the show, and people are being wheeled off. Obviously, it kills the vibe."

Collins' lonely life

Phil Collins is single for the first time in his life, said Decca Aitkenhead in The Sunday Times (U.K.). Even as a kid growing up in suburban London, the drummer turned singer had plenty of girlfriends. He married one of them, Andrea Bertorelli, in his early 20s. They divorced in 1980, their marriage strained by his touring with Genesis. "I felt I had a duty to the guys not to be the one to say, I'm sorry, I can't go to America three times this year and Europe twice and Japan," says Collins, 75. He left his second wife, Jill Tavelman, in 1994, for a 21-year-old Swiss translator, Orianne Cevey. They married in 1999 but divorced seven years later; Cevey got a $46 million settlement and Collins descended into alcoholism. After getting sober, Collins reunited with Cevey in 2016. That romance ended after four years when it was revealed she'd secretly married another man. How did he find out about Cevey's new husband? "Because she introduced me to him. She's not in my best books." Collins now lives in Switzerland, alone but for a live-in nurse. He has type 2 diabetes, can walk only with crutches, and is unable to hold a drumstick because of nerve damage. Collins spends most of his time watching TV or YouTube videos about serial killers. "I'd love to be in love again. Kissing somebody. You know, pretty basic stuff." Could another relationship happen? "I think it's probably too late for that. I'm not a very social person. I don't, you know, I don't go out."

In the news

■ Former president Joe Biden's prostate cancer has spread to his bones and other parts of his body, his son Hunter Biden told the BBC last week, adding that the disease is "very painful and it's very debilitating." The elder Biden, 83, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer soon after leaving the White House last year; there is no cure when such a cancer metastasizes to the bones. The former president has made several public appearances since starting treatment and delivered a speech at a Democratic Party gala in Maryland last month in which he called President Trump "a loser" for all "his vanity projects." Hunter, 56, said his father is "still out there" and will keep fighting "as long as he's alive." But he said it's "really sad to

watch" his health decline, adding, "I wish he would complain more, because it's not good."

■ MAGA podcaster Katie Miller, the wife of top Trump aide Stephen Miller, once had a fling with disgraced Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell, a Washington gossip site reported last week. Sources Say claims Miller, 34, got involved with Swalwell when she was working as a congressional intern in her early 20s. She married Stephen Miller in 2020. Swalwell, 45, exited the California governor's race and resigned from the House earlier this year after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct and assault; he denies any wrongdoing. According to Sources Say, Swalwell threatened in March to go public with his past romance with Miller if the Justice Department released FBI files detailing his contacts with suspected Chinese spy Christine Fang; the files were

not made public. In an April social media post, Miller referred to one of Swalwell's accusers, writing, "I believe her," adding that his "behavior was the worst-kept secret on Capitol Hill."

■ Perez Hilton was hospitalized last week after he appeared to harm himself on camera during a TikTok livestream. Suffering a suspected mental health breakdown, the gossip blogger, 48, cut himself with a knife for about 15 minutes before his broadcast was finally interrupted. "Perez's condition remains serious but stable," his team said in a statement. "He experienced significant blood loss and sustained additional injuries that will require surgery in the coming days." Hilton has been on a years-long apology tour for his venomous takedowns of celebrities in the 2000s. "God has forgiven me," he said this spring, "and almost more importantly, I have forgiven myself."

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

Instagram 12.1

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Briefing

NEWS 11

When bots write books

Artificial intelligence is transforming the publishing industry. What does that mean for human authors?

How widespread is AI use in publishing?

It's almost impossible to gauge how many authors are using tools like ChatGPT. But it appears that generative AI, which can churn out a novel-length work with a few simple prompts, is driving a boom in book publishing. More than 4 million books were released in the U.S. in 2025, up a whopping 33% from the previous year. That jump was largely due to a spike in new self-published works, which rocketed 39% year on year to 3.5 million. While it is easier than ever to self-publish, research suggests many of those books were not written by humans. A National Bureau of Economic Research study found that about half the books published in 2025 and sold on Amazon contained AI-generated text, up from 23% in 2023. (ChatGPT was released in late 2022.) AI writing is most common in popular genres such as romance fiction, which tends toward formulaic plots, and in nonfiction, where major news events can trigger a flood of AI books within hours. Online influencers "have been spreading the word for some time: Use AI to write a book. If it sells, it's free money," said tech journalist Kashmir Hill, who recently discovered an AI-generated, error-riddled biography of herself on Amazon. The "author" of Hill's biography published nine other books the same week. But AI writing is not just confined to the self-publishing world: In recent months, at least two major publishing houses have withdrawn books over suspicions of AI use.

Which books were pulled?

Most recently, the hotly anticipated debut novel from Nigerian-born Jerry Falade. Fourteen publishers bid for the U.S. rights to Call Me, I'll Hide the Body; Falade, a grad student at Southern Methodist University, signed with a Macmillan imprint for more than $2 million. But the deal collapsed last month after Falade's agents told the publisher they could no longer support the "stunningly good" crime novel because of AI concerns. Falade says he used AI only for research "and not for writing the book itself" and argues the deal's cancellation was racially motivated. A few months earlier, Hachette nixed the U.S. release of Mia Ballard's horror novel Shy Girl over suspicions it was largely AI-generated. After the book was published in the U.K., readers pointed to linguistic tells of AI, including word repetition ("sharp" or "sharply" appears 159 times in 247 pages); the grouping of adjectives, phrases, and ideas into threes; and the frequency of "something x, something y" sentence construction, such as, "In his hands is a cake, gleaming, its pink frosting too smooth, like plastic dipped in sugar, like something that belongs on a screen." Ballard claims that an acquaintance who edited the book used AI, not her. "Everyone liked" the book, one publishing exec told the Financial Times. "After Shy Girl, every editor is nervous."

Are publishers trying to weed out AI?

Most publishers require writers to affirm that their work is "original," which is increasingly being interpreted as a ban on AI-created text and images. That's a sensible safeguard because AI-generated works are not protected

Authored by AI?

by copyright, the foundation of the $140 billion global publishing industry. But publishing houses are loath to entirely bar authors from using AI, because there are other ways it can usefully be deployed, such as to check grammar and conduct research—although there are risks in handing that latter job to a chatbot.

What kind of risks?

Media entrepreneur Steven Rosenbaum used AI tools to research and organize The Future of Truth, a non-fiction book about how AI reshapes reality. In May, The New York Times revealed the book contained numerous fabricated and misattributed quotations dreamed up by AI. Rosenbaum said that if the episode "serves as a warning about the risks of AI-assisted

research and verification, that is why I wrote the book." To avoid such embarrassments, a growing number of publishers are turning to AI detectors: software that promises to scan a text and accurately reveal how much of it was likely AI-generated.

Does the technology work?

That depends on whom you ask. One popular detector, GPTZero, claims to be 99% accurate. Pangram, another favored detector, claims a false positive rate of only 1 in 10,000. But critics argue that AI detectors are deeply flawed. After his sci-fi manuscript was rejected by numerous publishers, Antonio Bricio, an engineering consultant and aspiring author, ran the text through the AI detector Originality.ai. The program was 100% certain he'd used AI, but when he deleted just a few sentences, it declared the manuscript to be 100% human. "What if publishers or agents start running these AI tools on everybody?" asks Bricio. Thriller writer Andrea Bartz—a lead plaintiff in a copyright lawsuit against Anthropic that secured a $1.5 billion settlement for authors over the firm's use of pirated books to train its models—was enraged when a detector

labeled her writing as 82% AI-generated. "I guess that's what happens when your books were stolen to program AI," said fellow novelist Rene Denfeld, whose own work was also flagged as AI.

What do readers think of AI books?

Most want books "to come from the author's brain and heart and not a computer that's robbed the writer's brain," said author Laura Taylor Namey. And that argument is supported by the fact that book charts are still dominated by human authors. But the flood of AI works is making it harder for flesh-and-blood writers like Jess Michaels to grab attention and make a living in an increasingly crowded market. A historical romance author, Michaels has released 117 novels since 1999—most of them self-published—and has notched 10 USA Today best sellers. But she has recently seen sales drop so drastically, and the number of AI-powered imitators rise so rapidly, that she's considering giving up publishing. "You're talking about directly pirating my work, putting it into an engine so that you can produce a 'Jess Michaels-type book,' and then glutting the market with it," she said. "I cannot tell you how soul-crushing it is."

A romance novelist's love of AI

Coral Hart is an astonishingly prolific author, if you consider her an author at all. An established romance novelist who previously wrote 10 to 12 novels a year—"Coral Hart" is one of her more than 20 pen names—she decided last year to supercharge her writing process by generating entire novels with AI, inputting prompts and outlines and receiving a first-draft manuscript in as little as 45 minutes. Last year, the South Africa-based writer self-published more than 200 novels, selling more than 50,000 copies and earning a six-figure income. Hart also teaches a popular online course for aspiring AI authors, explaining, among other tricks, how she maneuvers around content filters that would otherwise bar chatbots from generating steamy sex scenes. To traditional authors who fret that their books will be lost in a sea of AI-generated slop, Hart is unapologetic. "If I can generate a book in a day, and you need six months to write a book," she said, "who's going to win the race?"

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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12 NEWS

Best Columns: The U.S.

It's time to declare war on ticks

Sarah Zhang The Atlantic

"Kill the ticks," said Sarah Zhang. The "many-legged menace" has "made the leap from nuisance to genuine public-health threat," sickening hundreds of thousands of Americans a year. Lyme disease cases have soared, and scientists have discovered eight new tick-borne diseases, including anaplasmosis, babesiosis, and alpha-gal syndrome, an allergy to red meat. These illnesses can be serious, and are making people afraid to hike or even use their yards. It's time to go on the offensive. Tick numbers have exploded because of a population boom in their primary host, deer, which are no longer culled by natural predators. One deer can feed enough ticks to produce up to 3 million tick eggs. New tools are being developed, such as deer vaccines, birth control, and pesticide sprays on their fur. But to reduce the tick population, we also need "the political will" to kill deer. Killing Bambi outrages animal-rights activists and makes "the general population squeamish." But people are now growing "desperate enough" to reconsider. With so many tick-borne diseases plaguing us, the solution is to "prevent Americans from getting sick in the first place—by making ticks less abundant across the land."

Birthright citizenship is the new Roe

Myah Ward Politico

Having successfully toppled Roe v. Wade, conservatives are plotting their next "long game," said Myah Ward: the end of birthright citizenship. The Supreme Court recently thwarted President Trump by affirming 150 years of precedent that the 14th Amendment clearly guarantees citizenship to virtually anyone born on U.S. soil. But the decision was "narrower than many expected," bringing a fringe legal interpretation into the mainstream. Trump showed his anger over the ruling by signing two executive orders last week cracking down on "birth tourism"—pregnant women who travel to the U.S. to give birth here. Meanwhile, conservative activists are treating their loss as "fuel for the movement" to end birthright citizenship, even if it takes decades to do it. At a Washington, D.C., gathering in late July, a group of anti-immigration hawks committed to waging a war against birthright citizenship that "may outlast some of those in the room." Their Roe-tested tactics include making the end of birthright citizenship a recurring topic at law schools and turning anti-birthright sentiments into a litmus test for future judicial nominees. "We need nine [Samuel] Alitos on the Supreme Court," said activist Mike Davis. He wasn't kidding. That really is the goal.

Say goodbye to historic preservation

Paul Goldberger The New York Times

President Trump's "wrecking ball" destruction of America's historic places is just beginning, said Paul Goldberger. His demolition of the White House's East Wing and proposed 250-foot gilded arch towering over Arlington National Cemetery have demonstrated his brazen "disregard for historic preservation." Now he's formally attempting to eviscerate Section 106 of the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act—which "would extend the autocratic decision-making of Trump's Washington fiascos to historic buildings and sites anywhere in the country." Section 106 requires any federally funded construction projects to undergo a public consultation period and be evaluated for potential harms to historic places. Trump appointees who've taken over an advisory council have proposed revising this law so that "federal agencies can do as they please." Reviews no longer would have to take place in the early stages of design or take into account natural historic sites, such as landscapes that are sacred to Native Americans. The federal government would unilaterally decide whether efforts to preserve historic buildings or land are "technically and economically feasible." If Trump and other presidents are given carte blanche to trample upon historic places nationwide, the damage "will be felt across the country for generations."

Viewpoint

"Most of the causes of America's economic dysfunction are the result of a capitalism that has mutated into a system run by and for large corporate interests. If you look

at America today and see a perfectly functioning free-market economy, a 'neoliberal' utopia guided by the invisible hand of Adam Smith, then you need to take off those rose-tinted spectacles and take a closer look: oligopoly-level industrial concentration in almost every sector; endemic cronyism; the application of regulation, legislation, and policy for the benefit of big companies; a ruinously expensive health-care system run principally for the benefit of insurers and pharmaceutical companies."

Gerard Baker in The Wall Street Journal

It must be true... I read it in the tabloids

■ A Texas man who kept a Civil War-era relic on his desk was shocked to learn it was a live artillery shell. Steve Martin put the 20-pound iron cylinder in his office years ago after his son found it while fishing. A recent visitor with military experience warned Martin that it might be "live ordnance." A specialist team from a local military base confirmed that the artillery shell was live and safely disposed of it. "All this time I had this antique bomb there that potentially could have exploded," said a chagrined Martin.

■ A New Jersey police department disguised an officer as a shrub to catch drivers using handheld phones. A cop for the Dunellen Police Department who was camouflaged inside scraggly branches spent six hours on a busy roadside with binoculars, radioing in violations. "Did you spot our 'shrub' today?" the department asked in a social media post. "If you had your head buried in your phone, probably not." In one six-hour shift, the cop snared 74 drivers looking at their phones.

■ An organ in a medieval church in Halberstadt, Germany, is playing a single composition in extreme slow motion in a concert designed to last 639 years. The performance of composer John Cage's "ORGAN/ASLSP (As SLow as Possible)" began on Sept. 5, 2001, and is scheduled to end Sept. 4, 2640. An electric blower sends wind into the organ to create continuous sound; chord changes, which come months apart, are done manually. The concert is 4% complete. Inheritable tickets for the finale are being sold for about $3,000.

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

Dunellen Police Department

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14 NEWS

Best Columns: International

LIBERIA

Our open door lets in scammers

S. Zohnjaty Joe FrontPage Africa

Adopting the U.S. dollar as our legal currency “was meant to be a blessing” for Liberia, said S. Zohnjaty Joe. We don’t have to fear that our savings could be rendered worthless by hyperinflation. But this currency is now attracting a criminal element. As Western countries tighten entry requirements, migrants who “cannot break through the walls of Europe or America” are coming here, where the borders are porous. Beyond the usual stream of workers from neighboring Guinea or Sierra Leone, we’re now seeing Middle Eastern refugees, Chinese contractors, even Americans. Most simply seek a better life, yet some are scammers or

traffickers. They choose Liberia because they don’t have to launder earnings “through three countries” to get hard currency: “The dollar is everywhere.” Criminals use our access to dollars to move drugs or “run romance scams and cyberfraud from rented apartments.” And our young people, often jobless and desperate, are easily recruited into their orbit. Some say our problem is the open border, but really it’s that we have “a currency of stability without a system of scrutiny. A welcome without a watchman.” We don’t need to slam the door shut. But we do need to better “govern who comes in and what they bring.”

SOUTH KOREA

Growing soft under U.S. wing

Choi Kyong-ae The Korea Times

South Korea’s military has one job: to defend against North Korea through coordination with our U.S. ally. So how is it that we almost shot down an unmanned U.S. aircraft? asked Choi Kyong-ae. A U.S. Marine Corps reconnaissance drone was recently participating in an exercise near the border that had been cleared by both allies well in advance. Yet somehow South Korean troops mistook the aircraft for a North Korean threat, issued an air-defense alert, and prepared to engage. This is “far more than an embarrassing mishap.” Communication is the most important element of command. “No modern military can function effectively if critical operational information fails

to reach those responsible for making life-and-death decisions.” And this was not the only egregious failure in recent weeks. Soldiers on guard duty along the Demilitarized Zone were recently instructed “to man heavy machine guns without live ammunition,” giving a mere pantomime of defense. Both incidents occurred under the command of Lt. Gen. Han Ki-sung, commander of the 1st Corps, and he has since been removed. But “the timing could hardly be worse.” The U.S.-South Korean alliance is in “a period of significant transition,” with the role of U.S. forces up in the air even as threats from North Korea and China grow. With our military so undisciplined, how can we feel safe?

Mecca accord: A NATO for the Muslim world?

Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan have sealed the “Holy Grail of military alliances,” said Ilker Sezer in Türkiye Today (Turkey). The Mecca accord that the three Sunni Muslim nations signed last week declares that “an armed attack against any one of the three states shall be regarded as an attack against them all.” That clause, the “Islamic equivalent of NATO’s Article 5,” is a game changer. Saudi Arabia signed a bilateral security partnership with Pakistan last year but has long balked at binding, multilateral pacts, instead relying on the United States for protection. But the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran changed the calculus. As Iran bombed its Gulf Arab neighbors and blocked the Strait of Hormuz, its Houthi proxies in Yemen attacked oil tankers, and the U.S. could not prevent any of it. This new alliance pools Saudi financial muscle—it spends $70 billion a year on advanced weapons, including F-15SA fighter jets—with NATO-member Turkey’s “battle-tested” military experience and Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. It’s not clear whether an attack on Turkey will be met with a Pakistani nuke, but it doesn’t need to be: The possibility “alters the strategic calculus of every adversary.”

Yet “this is not an Islamic NATO,” said Dawn (Pakistan) in an editorial. Alliance leaders—Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif—say it’s not intended as a “military axis” and not aimed against any particular country. Signed in Islam’s holiest city, it is mostly a symbol of Islamic solidarity. In that spirit, and even though the Saudis may have

Erdogan, Mohammed, and Sharif

joined explicitly to seek protection from Iran, we must ensure this alliance is not invoked “against any Muslim country.” The three should reach out to Iran and strike a deal with the Shiite nation to “refrain from aggression against one other.” This alliance lacks the cohesion of NATO, said Aashish Saxena in The Times of India (India). “It has no integrated military headquarters, no integrated command structure, and no joint force permanently assigned” for mutual defense. It also has no “common budget” or standing body to oversee it. What it offers is a framework for political and military cooperation, “rather than a fully integrated alliance.” Still, that makes it flexible. And it “could eventually evolve into something larger” if other countries like Egypt, Jordan, and other Gulf states jump on board.

For Israel, this alliance marks a dangerous “turning point,” said Oshrit Birvadker in Israel Hayom (Israel). Turkey has morphed from an ally into a “major threat to Israel, no less significant than Iran,” while Saudi Arabia has abandoned any intention of joining the Abraham Accords to recognize Israel. We will now seek to court Greece and Cyprus as “an essential counterweight to Turkish influence,” and strengthen our “strategic triangle” with the United Arab Emirates and India. The world is indeed getting more dangerous, said Fayez bin Abdullah Al-Shehri in Al-Riyadh (Saudi Arabia). “International crises are escalating,” even as the U.S. has grown unpredictable and unreliable. Of course we must seek other partners. “History, ultimately, is written by nations that choose to be masters of their own destiny.”

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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Best Columns: Europe

NEWS 15

U.K.: The academic imposter who fooled Cambridge

The downfall of Jason Arday, the youngest Black academic to be made professor at Cambridge University, “is so brilliantly illuminating of the rottenness of our establishment that it seems literally fabulous,” said Lara Brown in The Spectator. The 37-year-old sociologist was hired with “considerable fanfare” in 2023 even though he had “just a handful of publications to his name.” What he offered instead was an unbelievable backstory: a tale of overcoming disability (he says he was nonverbal until age 11) and vicious racism (he claimed someone once sent a pig’s head to his home). This was catnip to an elite institution desperate “to virtue-signal on race, disability, and hardship.” Yet now it’s become clear that practically nothing he said was true. There’s a pile of evidence that Arday may have plagiarized his 2015 dissertation for his education degree—he even appears to have lifted the title of his own Ph.D. from another academic. Arday resigned but hasn’t apologized. His defense seemed to be that details don’t matter. “Could I have ever guessed,” he asked The Times, “that somebody would literally comb through every single word I’ve ever said?”

Arday’s “remarkable life story” should have triggered alarms, said The Times in an editorial. Born and raised in London, he claimed he couldn’t read or write until age 18. Journalists have debunked a host of “seemingly fantastical” claims he made, including that he ran 30 marathons in 35 days, nine of them on a broken leg; that he single-handedly raised millions for charity; that he traveled to West Africa and South America to install water facilities for the poor; that he starred in a TV show that was on before he

Arday: Too good to be true

was born; and that he was a champion snooker player. Did he really defend his thesis while recovering from brain surgery? Who knows? The “real scandal isn’t Arday,” said Alex Edmans in The Telegraph. It’s a system, from Cambridge administrators to the Metropolitan Police, that desperately “wanted Jason Arday to be true.” An education writer looking into the plagiarism story says the police actually called him and told him to stop because Arday perceived it as harassment. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so damaging. Remember, “every appointment in which demographic optics outweigh merit” displaces somebody more deserving.

Arday has “gone from being the poster boy to being buried as the fall guy,” said Chris Blackhurst in The Independent. Cambridge, which initially called the allegations a “smear campaign,” is now investigating. But the university “should also be scrutinizing itself.” This scandal is a gift to racists furious over “DEI hires,” said Jason Okunday in The Guardian. It’s no accident that the academic who led the allegations against Arday, Nathan Cofnas, was booted from Cambridge “after making pseudoscientific claims that under a true meritocracy Black people would ‘disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment.’” Cambridge has real problems with discrimination against Black students and professors. But instead of addressing them, it made Arday “a mascot,” touting his amazing story rather than his actual work. If the university is to make the pursuit of diversity more than a “mere PR exercise,” it will have to invest in “excellent Black scholarship,” not tokenism.

ALBANIA

A revolution that just won’t quit

Agron Gjekmarkaj Panorama

FRANCE

We don’t have to let Putin have his say

Editorial Le Monde

Albanians are not giving up, said Agron Gjekmarkaj. As the Flamingo Revolution enters its third month, we are still protesting daily, with crowds swelling to the thousands on weekends. Coming out into the streets, using our physical presence as protest, is our “last hope” in the battle against “a government that has replaced freedom with submission.” The demonstrations began after Prime Minister Edi Rama agreed to let Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, develop an opulent resort on Albania’s island of Sazan in the Mediterranean. The site is a beloved nature preserve, with a nearby lagoon teeming with flamingos and sea turtles.

Free speech has its limits, said Le Monde. France, for example, is not required to disseminate Russian propaganda, which is why a French court last week upheld the government’s order to deport Xenia Fedorova, former head of the French arm of Kremlin mouthpiece RT. Fedorova, of course, called her expulsion “censorship,” and the far-right National Rally, which hopes to win next year’s presidential election, accused President Emmanuel Macron of crushing dissent like an autocrat. In reality, though, “if the French authorities can be faulted,” it’s for taking so long to expel Fedorova. She was a one-woman firehose of disinformation, constantly going on Cnews, France’s far-right, Fox

In truth, though, Rama’s gift to the Trump family simply lit the fuse on an anger already primed to explode. We are “a country taken hostage.” Rama has “cemented himself in power” by manipulating election rules. He “gives everything to a narrow caste,” doling out favors to those in his ruling Socialist Party like a 15th-century king. But now this great public “awakening is igniting great hope” that things can change. Since the fall of communism 34 years ago, we have yearned for an era of true “political freedom.” We are demanding a government “that serves the citizens, not a minority that considers the state its personal property.”

News-like channel, to parrot the lies of Russian President Vladimir Putin. She portrayed “Kyiv and its European allies as solely responsible for the bloodshed” in Ukraine, and Putin as a “man of peace.” Such mendacious nonsense got RT banned from French airwaves just days after Russia’s 2022 invasion, yet Fedorova still enjoyed “carte blanche” to stay here and spew her poisonous views. Doesn’t the National Rally realize that Moscow is waging hybrid warfare “on French soil” through its fake news and its sabotage activities? Fedorova can continue broadcasting her views once she’s back in Moscow. But it will finally be clear “where she’s speaking from.”

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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16 NEWS

Talking Points

Noted

■ There were 203 anti-semitic physical assaults on Jewish people in the U.S. in 2025, the most since 1979. Community Security Service, a nonprofit run by a former Israeli paratrooper, last year trained more than 20,000 members of American Jewish communities in self-defense and how to protect synagogues and events. Axios

■ Immigration agents have detained more than 50 parents and spouses of

active-duty U.S. military personnel during the second Trump administration and have deported at least six. "How can I even focus on my military career because I have to worry about how my wife is doing?" said Army Sgt. Heder Leonel Turcios Juarez (pictured), whose wife was detained outside a Walmart in front of their 6-year-old daughter in July. Associated Press

■ July was the hottest month in the U.S. since records began in 1895. The average temperature in the lower 48 states in July was 3.3 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average. Nearly 50% of the contiguous U.S. and over two-thirds of Puerto Rico was in drought. CNN.com

■ A Chinese businessman who has no visible access to wealth and is under investigation by U.K. authorities for money laundering bought $100 million worth of tokens last year from President Trump's cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial. Guren "Bobby" Zhou presided over the collapse of a U.K. flooring business and an Abu Dhabi-based crypto startup before buying the tokens. Trump collected $1.4 billion from his crypto firms last year. The New York Times

RFK Jr.: Let them eat fish cakes

The man whose "best-known culinary accomplishment is maintaining 'a freezer full' of roadkill" wants to teach you to cook, said Emily Heil in The Washington Post. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently debuted The Real Food Show, a government-funded YouTube series intended to help Americans "make healthful meals at home on a modest budget." In the first episode,

Kennedy and celebrity chef Andrew Gruel whip up crispy salmon cakes with a white bean, apple, and arugula salad. I followed the recipe and the dish was "quite good." But actual cooking is not the main focus of the show. Kennedy and Gruel spend far more time ranting about the evils of seed oils and the Biden administration's "war" on saturated fats than providing "meaningful culinary instruction." Under Kennedy's "grim glare," making a meal becomes "an exercise in airing grievances against the government and a food system hell-bent on keeping people addicted to processed foods." When he finally samples the finished meal, all he can muster is a muttered "amazing," a politician's thumbs-up, and a "pained grimace."

Kennedy's fish cakes are supposed to be budget-friendly, said River Page in The Free Press, but it's clear he has no idea "what it is like to go grocery shopping as a broke person." I spent nearly $100

Kennedy and Gruel: MAHA on the menu

buying the ingredients for four servings—including such luxuries as avocado mayo and nutritional yeast—that RFK Jr. claimed would cost a mere $20. This show is less concerned with delivering affordable meals than advancing conservative ideology, said Ashlie D. Stevens in Salon. Underpinning everything is the idea that "if Americans can be taught to eat cor-

rectly, perhaps they will require less care"—freeing the government to cut the safety net. Republicans already did that last year, slashing projected federal spending on Medicaid over the next decade by nearly $1 trillion and food benefits by $187 billion.

Of all the terrible things Kennedy is doing, hosting this show is "probably the least offensive," said Arwa Mahdawi in The Guardian. But shouldn't he be busy tackling the nation's more pressing health problems, like the more than 22,000 cases of explosive diarrhea caused by the parasite cyclospora? RFK Jr. is supposed to be heading the response to that lettuce-linked outbreak. Or perhaps he could focus on the raging measles crisis—this is the worst year for the disease in the U.S. since 1991—which he has fueled as the country's top anti-vaxxer. But that would mean doing the hard work of being a government official. He'd rather just "play one on TV."

The GOP: Why it's sticking with Max Miller

Rep. Max Miller is testing the "GOP's tolerance of terrible men," said Amanda Marcotte in Salon. The Ohio lawmaker this week blew past the deadline to drop out of his congressional race, despite facing numerous allegations of domestic abuse. His ex-wife, Emily Moreno, said he scalded her with boiling water, held a gun to her head, and may have broken their 2-year-old daughter's collarbone. Moreno and her father, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), claim Miller also tormented the girl by holding her beloved plush blue bunny "hostage" for days at a time. Other women say Miller has a long history of violence: One said Miller threw her down the stairs in high school after she rejected his advances. Miller denied all the allegations in a train-wreck interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, said Andrew Egger in The Bulwark. Insisting his accusers were liars, Miller was "strange and off-putting" and struggled "to speak in complete sentences." A normal person who went through such a humiliation "would go straight off the air and into monastic life"—but not Miller.

In a sign of Republicans' advancing "moral collapse," party leaders refused to condemn Miller, said Sarah Jones in New York. President Trump called him "a good person." Fellow Ohio Rep. Jim

Jordan backed his re-election. House Speaker Mike Johnson said it wasn't his "business to get engaged" in members' "domestic events" and that an ethics investigation—which won't be completed before the midterms—needs to play out. This is all to be expected from a party "rife with men" accused of sexual misconduct, including Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, both of whom deny any wrongdoing. Of course, the GOP has no "monopoly on abusive men"—see the recently ended careers of Eric Swalwell and Graham Platner. But in those cases, Democrats proved willing to "draw a line on misogynist abuse."

Republicans have made "a morally bankrupt political calculation" they "could come to regret," said Erika D. Smith in Bloomberg. Miller, who won in 2022 and 2024 despite allegations of violent behavior, insists he can prevail over Democrat Brian Poindexter, a progressive ironworker. But the Cook Political Report has shifted its midterms forecast of his district from "solid" Republican to "toss-up." Miller has cited Trump as a reason he won't quit, lauding him for staying "resilient" in 2016 while facing sexual misconduct allegations—and going on to win. The question is whether his "Trumpism will work without Trump."

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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Talking Points

NEWS 17

Grande: Should we talk about her thinness?

“Is Ariana Grande’s body any of our business?” asked Monica Hesse in The Washington Post. Facing a deluge of commentary about her apparent weight loss, the 33-year-old pop star and actress announced last week that she’s stepping away from public life after her current tour concludes. Her “emaciated” appearance in a new music video for her song “Petal” escalated years of speculation that she has an eating disorder. The camera shows sunken cheeks, a protruding clavicle, arms that look like “sinew on bone,” and spindly legs. A former child actress and superstar, she has “defined beauty standards” for young women for years. But Grande has experienced trauma even beyond the pressure cooker of youthful stardom: A suicide bomber killed 22 fans at one of her concerts in 2017. Should we explain to kids and teens that “this is a body born of deprivation?” Do we tell them that “most women’s bodies will not naturally look like this unless something is very wrong?”

“The images of Grande really are alarming,” said Emma Camp in The Wall Street Journal, but “all this concern starts to feel like rubbernecking.” Grande’s early celebrity and her various “romantic entanglements” have made her a hate object for some online critics, and her skeletal frame

Grande in her new video

enables them to portray her as a bad role model while enjoying “the thrill of watching someone self-immolate.” But “sharing another scary screenshot” of her bony body “won’t stop others from starving themselves”—and indeed, the public attention “might encourage those with eating disorders to keep going.”

As someone who suffered from an eating disorder, said Emma Madden

in The Guardian, I can tell you “there’s no right answer” about how to respond to Grande’s worrisome weight loss. The body positivity movement preached “don’t comment on women’s bodies” in reaction to “misogynistic tabloid treatment of celebrities in the aughts,” but perhaps that was “an overcorrection.” Eating disorders “thrive in secrecy and denial,” so we shouldn’t ignore “visible suffering.” Grande maintains she’s healthy, said Scaachi Koul in Slate, but it’s hard to avoid comparisons to Karen Carpenter, the 1970s pop singer who died of anorexia at 32. In this Ozempic/Wegovy era, our culture is strongly pushing women “toward winnowing,” and Grande is “seemingly suggesting the same” by example. We’re left with “an unsavory choice”: “the complicity of silence or the complicity of judgment.”

El-Sayed: Will he move toward the center?

Abdul El-Sayed has issued a “call for Democratic unity,” said Toluse Olorunnipa and Elaine Godfrey in The Atlantic. That’s a new message for Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, a charismatic left-wing populist who last week edged the establishment-backed Haley Stevens in a bitterly contested primary. During the campaign, El-Sayed—a former public health official who’s aligned with Sen. Bernie Sanders—denounced Democratic Party’s brand as “so bullshit.” Since then, he’s started making amends, and Stevens has endorsed him. El-Sayed will need moderate votes to defeat the Republican nominee, former Rep. Mike Rogers, in a crucial November race that could determine if Democrats gain control of the Senate. El-Sayed, who beat Stevens by only a point, advocates Medicare for all, ending unconditional military aid to Israel, and getting “money out of politics.” He hasn’t shown any signs of moderating his stances, even though his primary support in a purple state came mainly from highly educated whites and college students, not the working class or Black voters.

Republicans have already chosen their campaign strategy—“anti-Muslim bigotry,” said Paul Waldman in Public Notice. Republicans all refer to El-Sayed by his full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed,

as a way to make him “sound alien and threatening.” President Trump calls El-Sayed “a jihadist” and posted a photo of himself with Melania and El-Sayed with his wife, American-born psychiatrist Dr. Sarah Jukaku, to call attention to her hijab. It’s unwise for Republicans to focus so heavily on El-Sayed’s religion or to call him a radical socialist, said Abe Greenwald in Commentary. “When a candidate makes his opponent’s unfitness the central message of his campaign, he also makes the race all about his opponent.” Rogers needs to make a case for himself.

El-Sayed will do plenty of self-damage, said Dace Potas in USA Today. He still “holds the same arrogant attitude” he did during the primary, and he won’t ditch his pal Hasan Piker, an “antisemitic Twitch streamer” and far-left bomb thrower. El-Sayed won’t reach for “an ideological middle ground,” said Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times, because he doesn’t believe any reasonable person can disagree with his positions. He’s absolutely certain that “there’s a hidden reservoir of voters hungry for progressive populist policies” among the working class. In November, El-Sayed and other left-wing populists “may get a hard lesson on the necessity of pragmatism.”

Wit & Wisdom

“What is the point of being on this Earth if you are going to be like everyone else?” Arnold Schwarzenegger, quoted in The Times of India

“Many a time freedom has been rolled back, and always for the same sorry reason: fear.” Molly Ivins, quoted in the Greensboro News & Record

“Since every last one of us is a member of some vulnerable minority—whether it be by race, religion, national origin, political party, education, occupation, or other differences—none of us is safe once group-hate is unleashed.”

Jackie Robinson, quoted in The Wall Street Journal

“You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea.”

Victor Hugo, quoted in The Washington Post

“Everything has been said before; but since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”

André Gide, quoted in The Knowledge

“Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.”

John Dewey, quoted in the Idaho Business Review

“Life isn’t all diamonds and rose, but it should be.” Lisa Vanderpump, quoted in Today.com

Poll Watch

■ 54% of Americans believe they are free to express their political views today without government interference. 42% expect that to be true 10 years from now. Knight Foundation-SSRS

■ 90% of adults say extreme heat has had an impact on their lives, up from 83% in 2024. AP/NORC

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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18 NEWS

Pick of the Week's Cartoons

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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Pick of the Week's Cartoons

NEWS 19

For more political cartoons, visit:

theweek.com/cartoons

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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20 NEWS

Technology

Google: An exodus of AI talent

Google is hoping that an “organizational revolution” will put it back in the AI race, said Parmy Olson in Bloomberg. The search giant’s parent Alphabet last week “shocked Silicon Valley with news of a management shake-up.” Veteran DeepMind engineer Jeff Dean is leaving “to launch a startup with several top researchers,” introducing yet another competitor to the crowded AI scene. But the bigger news was that Demis Hassabis, who led Google DeepMind, would move on from his “day-to-day managerial role to become the chief scientist” of Alphabet. It’s not clear what happened, but people close to London-based DeepMind “suspect a fall-out between the top brass.” Hassabis was always a scientist at heart. For him, the company and its vast resources were mostly “a means to achieving a bigger dream” of building intelligent machines “that could solve intractable scientific problems.” But in an industry where execs “are notorious for feigning interest in science, he never seemed to escape the sense that he was a scientist paying lip service to the commercial imperative.”

Dean’s departure is also significant, said Cade Metz in The New York Times. He’s been with Google since 1999—he was the company’s 30th employee—and “played a key role in creating the global computer network powering its search business” as well as being “one of the company’s early leaders in AI.” But like many prominent AI researchers, he was lured away “by a deep

Hassabis: Part of a major AI shake-up

pool of venture funding and the chance to run his own company.” It seems Dean and the other researchers left on good terms—Alphabet has funded the company’s undisclosed seed round—but it raises questions about Google’s talent exodus. Dean was also “one of the few Silicon Valley executives to speak out” against the government’s immigration agenda, even as “Google has begun to work more closely with the Trump administration.”

Google needs to buckle down on business, said Arjun Kharpal in CNBC.com. The company “is planning to spend $205 bil-

billion this year at a time when investors are scrutinizing Big Tech’s capital expenditure.” It is also trying to secure an edge against “OpenAI, Anthropic, hyperscalers, and Chinese players.” Google remains “supportive of DeepMind’s scientific endeavors,” but the C-suite shuffle suggests it’s placing “more of a focus on commercialization and monetization of AI” and diverting attention away from moon shots. The situation is “less dire than it may seem,” said M.G. Siegler in Spyglass.org. DeepMind senior vice president Koray Kavukcuoglu has already taken over day-to-day operations from Hassabis. Making the shift official removes some corporate infighting and bureaucracy—which may be the reason Google has so many “half-baked” chat apps and coding projects. There were “too many cooks in the kitchen.” On his own, Kavukcuoglu can “get the meal prepped and plated.”

Innovation of the week

A British engineering company called DEEP just opened the “first privately funded undersea habitat installed in U.S. waters” in over 40 years, said Joe Wilkins in Futurism. The “wild new project,” called Vanguard, is anchored to the seabed five stories below the surface in the Florida Keys. The 35-by-8-foot tube is “basically a glorified camper van,” with a small living space outfitted with four bunk beds, a sofa, a tiny kitchen, and a “bathroom/science lab.” But DEEP says it’s not for tourists. The base is located near a coral garden that has struggled with rising sea temperatures, allowing research teams to closely monitor—and potentially restore—the reef. Florida’s government has committed $935,000 to support six teams of marine scientists to live aboard the base.

Bytes: What’s new in tech

■ A SpaceX rocket hit the moon

A 4-ton piece of a SpaceX rocket slammed into the moon last week, striking the lunar surface “while traveling at 5,400 mph,” said Mark Saunokonoko in The Guardian. Researchers were hoping to witness the event, which “could provide valuable data for future seismic experiments,” but no satellites were in the right place to be able to record it. Scientists are now carefully studying the plume of dust created by the impact to better understand the potential hazards of such space debris collisions—useful information for the astronauts who may one day inhabit NASA’s planned lunar base. The force of the crash “gouged out a massive new crater,” perhaps 65 feet in diameter, near the moon’s far side. The empty Falcon 9 rocket had been orbiting in space since launching two lunar landers in January 2025.

■ More AI models go rogue

Advanced AI models keep breaking free of their company’s constraints, said Mariella Moon in Engadget. According to U.S. cybersecurity startup Frontier, the recently debuted Chinese model Moonshot Kimi K3 last week escaped its testing environment—built by the U.K. government’s AI Security Institute—while its “defensive cybersecurity skills were being evaluated.” This means it “doesn’t have the internal guardrails to stop

itself from cheating or looking for the easiest way to accomplish a task instead of actually doing it.” It comes just weeks after both OpenAI and Anthropic said their newest models under development “exploited a security vulnerability in a third-party service” to access the open internet. Meta said last week that its AI model did the same. Unlike the others, “Kimi didn’t hack into a third-party website or service.”

■ Smartwatches are too easy to hack

Certain GPS-enabled gadgets, like smartwatches, are frighteningly simple to exploit, said Andy Greenberg in Wired. At a cybersecurity conference last week, researchers demonstrated how they eavesdropped on my commute to work by hacking into a pink plastic smartwatch designed for kids. “The watch’s GPS feature, intended to let a parent track their child,” enabled the researchers “to pinpoint my exact location as I walked down a particular Brooklyn block,” and even snap photos of me in the elevator and at my desk. They used “a different feature to pick up audio from the watch’s microphone,” listening in to my conversations. The watch, sold on Amazon, was made by an obscure Chinese manufacturer and costs less than $30. But the Chinese server that was so easy to hack “is used by dozens of other brands of smartwatches.”

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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Health & Science

NEWS 21

An ancient civilization in the Amazon

Archaeologists have found new evidence upending our understanding of an ancient Amazon rainforest society that thrived some 2,000 years ago, reports Smithsonian. Their study suggests that the Aquirry civilization was far larger than previously believed, supporting some 3 million people at its peak from 100 B.C. to A.D. 300 and stretching across a section of northern Brazil roughly the size of North Dakota. While the Romans were building temples of stone, the Aquirry people—who had no rock to work with—were carving huge geometric earthworks known as geoglyphs. The evidence was collected by an aircraft using lidar, a laser scanning technology,

ogy, which can peer beneath the forest canopy to map the ground below. Surveying a single patch of 1,740 square miles, researchers found nearly 400 previously unknown geoglyphs, including circles, squares, octagons, and stranger designs, ringed by ditches up to 40 feet wide and 16 feet deep. The largest sprawls across 123 acres. Researchers believe the Aquirry used the sites for feasts, ceremonies, sports, and political gatherings. Living in 300-person villages connected by roads, they farmed corn, squash, and manioc and tended trees producing peach palm fruits and Brazil nuts. The society flourished for some 1,500 years before abandoning the earthworks around A.D. 900 for reasons

Under the trees, lidar sees a shape.

unknown. It is “simply astonishing,” says lead author Martti Parssinen, an archaeologist at the University of Helsinki. “This cultural area alone contains as many earthworks as previously estimated for the whole of Amazonia.”

Every pound of a wave jolts the brain.

Brain injuries in the Coast Guard

Riding a rescue boat through crashing 25-foot waves for hours on end may be injuring the brains of U.S. Coast Guard crews, The New York Times reports. When rescuer Brett Bonner shot himself dead in early 2025, after years of unexplained headaches and violent mood swings, his teenage daughter Kayleigh suspected a connection to his service as a surfman. She mailed health questionnaires to other surfmen, and of the 77 who responded, most described the same torments as her father: headaches, memory lapses, anger. These are the hallmarks of brain injury. Each time a 40,000-pound boat slams into a wave, a jolt rips up the spine to the skull. A hit to the ship’s deck of six times the force of gravity can register as 60 Gs at the sailor’s head—as violent as a car crash, over and over. Last week, after Kayleigh’s high-school research was publicized, the Coast Guard acknowledged the danger for the first time and promised “decisive action” to prevent and treat the injuries. “We owe it to you,” Adm. Kevin Lunday told force members, “to protect your long-term health from the damage caused by relentless wave pounding.”

AI invents a brand-new virus

Scientists have used AI to create new viruses not found in nature, raising both hopes for

medical breakthroughs and fears of a human-engineered viral menace. The researchers at Stanford University trained an AI model called Evo on DNA from millions of species, including animals, plants, microbes, and viruses. To see if it could generate new genomes, they tried viruses first, because a virus has just a few thousand nucleotides while a complex animal like a mammal has billions. Of the some 700,000 possibilities Evo came up with, the scientists chose 285 to create DNA molecules, and 16 of those proved viable, replicating inside bacteria. The researchers say they’re aware that the science sounds terrifying, but a potential bioterrorist would have a much easier time modifying an existing pathogen than using Evo to make a new one. Many advanced drugs are already delivered by engineered viruses, and the researchers hope this tech could be used to stamp out antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which kills millions of people each year. “If we develop responsibly,” study author Brian Hie tells The Wall Street Journal, “I think it can lead to tremendous benefits in human health.”

Don’t feed babies sugar

Cutting back on sugar in a child’s earliest years may lower their risk of dementia decades later, a new study suggests. Researchers in China drew on U.K. Biobank records for 65,000 people born in the 1940s and ’50s, comparing those raised during wartime rationing—when sugar was capped at 8 ounces per person per week—with those born after rationing ended in 1953. Those exposed to less sugar before age 2 had a roughly 20% lower risk of dementia, and among those in that group who did develop it, onset was 2.5 years later. The protective effect held even for babies whose only low-sugar exposure came in the womb. The study, which shows correlation not causation, adds to mounting evidence that the first 1,000 days of life can be crucial for future health. “Further research is needed,” lead author Jiazhen Zheng of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology tells The Times (U.K.), “to better understand how these early exposures influence dementia risk and to guide public health strategies.”

The super-mosquito plaguing Africa

Could a single insect unravel decades of progress against malaria? A new genomic study has traced the alarming spread of Anopheles stephensi, a hardy, malaria-carrying mosquito, across Africa. Unlike Africa’s native species, this mosquito thrives in crowded cities and lives through the dry seasons that once helped keep the disease in check. By looking at the invaders’ DNA, reports Phys.org, researchers have mapped its relentless trek across the continent. The mosquito, originally from South Asia, gained a foothold in Djibouti around 2012, then fanned

out to Yemen, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Kenya. The species split into genetically distinct groups as it traveled, but all the varieties appear largely immune to the anti-mosquito chemicals that are typically used in netting and sprays. Given that a child under 5 dies of malaria nearly every minute, suppressing

A. stephensi is a matter of vital urgency. “This study is a powerful reminder that emerging public health threats do not respect geographic boundaries,” says study co-author Elfatih Malik, an epidemiologist at the University of Khartoum. “It highlights the urgent need for sustained surveillance.”

A. stephensi: Hard to kill

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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ARTS

Review of Reviews: Books

Book of the week

Biological War: A Scenario

by Annie Jacobsen (Dutton, $33)

Annie Jacobsen's new best seller "moves like a meteor," said Dwight Garner in The New York Times. The investigative reporter who previously reignited worries worldwide about nuclear war has this time unfurled a terrifyingly plausible scenario in which weaponized pathogens quickly wipe out humanity. To paraphrase a classic book-jacket blurb, "I paused in my reading only to wipe off the sweat." Though biological weapons are banned by international law, a handful of countries, including Russia, Syria, and North Korea, have developed and hoarded contagious pathogens. Jacobsen, after interrogating scientific and security experts around the world, has imagined an accident at a Siberian lab that launches a runaway outbreak. She gives her chapters headings such as "Day Two" or "Day Three." Unfortunately, "Day Six is about as far as civilization gets."

"The only recent book more disturbing than Jacobsen's previous one is her new one," said George F. Will in The Washington Post.

Police in hazmat suits during a 2004 drill

In 2024, she made nuclear apocalypse feel trigger-close. The potential of annihilation by genetically engineered pathogen seems closer, in part because of scientific advances of the past 25 years. In this book's scenario, an explosion at the Siberian lab sets loose a virus that has been designed to spread rapidly, deceive medical professionals, and produce a 100% fatality rate. A handful of people are infected, including a few who hop on planes. Soon, the horrifying virus is everywhere, and resulting scarcities of water, food, and medicine cause panic, which leads to false conspiracy theories, riots, and an utter collapse of social trust. The book is

a "summons to seriousness" that should rattle any reader thinking we need to send more pyromaniacs to Washington. "Jacobsen's message is: Cascading extinction-level events are possible, so sometimes government is a serious business." My takeaway: "Vote accordingly."

Though only a tiny fraction of the world's population survives Jacobsen's imagined Armageddon, said Gideon Lewis-Kraus in The New Yorker, the post-plague scene she sketches proves "strangely anticlimactic, almost consoling." She pictures the U.S. largely emptied of people except for survivors in biohazard suits sequestered in fortress-like military facilities. Maybe, though, she has sold the catastrophe short, tying her speculations too closely to historical precedents because she knows many readers will be skeptical about her end-of-days warning. Many of us hear talk of plague and think that humanity, as ever, will manage to muddle through. At least Jacobsen's book, because it takes account of how deadly a designer virus could be, is "a persuasive argument to the contrary." If nothing else, "it should destabilize those of us who are quick to sneer at any talk of extinction risk as mere Book of Revelations cosplay."

Novel of the week

Under the Falls

by Richard Russo (Knopf, $30)

Richard Russo's latest novel began life as a story for TV, "and it shows," said Mark Alistakis in the literary magazine On the Seawall. "Plotwise, the book is hokum." But Under the Falls is still a work by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls, Nobody's Fool, and several other great novels, and "tucked within all its plotty noise is a host of fine observations about home and place." Tyler Sinclair, a country-rock star in his mid-30s, tumbles into a heap of murderous trouble when he returns to the dopesick upstate New York hometown he's been writing about since fleeing for Nashville at age 18. Soon enough, there are unexpected deaths, clandestine sex, and a kidnapping. Even so, "the surprising, enduring parts of Falls are its quieter reckonings." Russo, fortunately, "still has his soft, satirical touch," said Jack Sullivan in Air Mail. That helps him sell the thriller action, because "every so often he cocks an eyebrow at the absurd scene he's created." Meanwhile, the deep unease Tyler experiences as a widely resented town celebrity is depicted so palpably that the book's strength is "less drama than vibe." In this case, "that's enough."

The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing

by Mark Solms (Pegasus, $32)

"Who today would dare attempt a rehabilitation of Sigmund Freud?" asked Scott Stossel in The Atlantic. The father of psychoanalysis has been persona non grata in psychiatric circles for decades. But the field's subsequent

focus on brain physiology and medicinal therapies has done little to reduce the toll of mental illness. Enter Mark Solms who, as a neuroscientist, practicing psychoanalyst, and seasoned Freud translator, represents "the Platonic ideal" of a 21st-century Freud champion. Solms' goals in his new book are "astonishingly ambitious—and contentious." While he believes that plenty of Freudian concepts, including penis envy, belong in permanent retirement, he argues that psychoanalysis is the only approach to curing emotional disorders that works.

"Freud can be safely credited with the concept of the unconscious. We'll give him that," said James McConnachie in

The Times (U.K.). Solms also makes a credible claim that Freud was right in speaking about a subconscious drive to seek pleasure. But while it's refreshing to see Freud given credit as a researcher, Solms "wants to rehabilitate Freud the clinician, too," even his belief in the efficacy of dream interpretation, and "that is a much harder case to make." He can, at times, "come across more like a disciple than a scientist."

"The story Solms tells seems extremely encouraging—unless, like me, you are obsessional enough to read the research papers to which he refers," said Raymond Tallis in The Guardian. He wants us to believe that psychoanalysis has been proved more effective than other therapies, particularly drugs, but he often misrepresents the studies he cites. Still, he's "a wonderfully witty and lucid writer," and he has filled this book with "deeply moving" case histories, including that of a patient of his who was suffering depression, seizures, and evidence of possible dementia before four years of psychoanalysis revealed that all the symptoms were tied either to prescribed medications or to resolvable emotional troubles rooted in childhood experiences. While "the jury is still out as to whether psychoanalysis is a cure, never mind the only cure," Solms "has nudged the attitude of this skeptic from scorn to agnosticism."

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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The Book List

ARTS 23

Best books...chosen by Sarah Pekkanen

In Sarah Pekkanen's new thriller, The Women in White, a young health-care aide probes how four female participants in a 1964 parapsychology experiment suddenly vanished. Below, the best-selling author names books that influenced her as she developed the story.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1966). In his masterwork, Capote delved deeply into the reporting of the murder of a Kansas family. The result is a nonfiction book that reads like a novel. I love building my novels on a layer of bedrock truth so I can dig into reporting, which is exactly what I did with The Women in White.

Watchers by Dean Koontz (1987). A crazy hitman, a secret lab, and a brilliant golden retriever? These unlikely ingredients turn into a powerhouse thriller, one of Koontz's best. Koontz, who is famously devoted to his dogs, delivers a book of nail-biting suspense that's packed with emotion, illustrating how an expert blends genres.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2012). Flynn delivers a knockout twist midway through this thriller about a picture-perfect young woman who has presumably been killed by her handsome husband. Aside from creating one of the best unreliable narrators in the genre, Flynn taught me a valuable lesson: Don't save the twists for the end. Sprinkle them throughout your novel, and you'll make it stronger.

The Anniversary by Alex Finlay (2026). The architecture of this book is one of its many strengths. The stories of two high schoolers, Jules and Quinn, entwine on May 1, the day a serial killer attacks one of them. Jules survives, and the book continues across a decade, with chapters telling of the first of May each year, relentlessly building toward a surprising conclusion.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938). A young woman marries a handsome, wealthy widower and becomes obsessed with his deceased first wife. Along with a gripping plot, this Gothic novel explores the danger of perception versus reality, and how our own minds can become the most dangerous terrain of all, which is a theme I love to build into my thrillers.

Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll (2023). Knoll shifts the spotlight away from a real-life serial killer and onto his victims, imagining the unfulfilled promise of their lives while creating a fictional framework, one that focuses on the lost women. It's brilliant, it's compulsively readable—and it's about time.

Also of interest...in outdoor living

In Defense of Sunlight

by Rowan Jacobsen (Scribner, $29)

Rowan Jacobsen could be the sun's biggest ally, said Matthew Rees in The Wall Street Journal. In his new book, the science writer argues that warnings about the dangers of sun exposure have gone too far, then "deftly marshals the evidence in support of his contrarian pose." With studies showing people are less likely to die from excessive UV exposure than from diseases related to underexposure, "the sun-deprived among us would surely profit from Jacobsen's straightforward recommendations."

Lifeguard

by Janet Fash (Simon & Schuster, $28)

"Janet Fash is great company," said Carolyn Kormann in The New York Times. A lifeguard at New York City's Rockaway Beach for more than 45 years, Fash has written a "salty and illuminating" memoir that details her coming of age in the '70s and decades-long run as the beach's chief lifeguard. But be prepared for drama: After a preventable 1990s drowning, the book transforms "from a fun beach read to a shocking saga of corruption and the author's crusade to stop it."

When the Forest Breathes

by Suzanne Simard (Knopf, $30)

"Few people can speak about trees with quite as much conviction as Suzanne Simard," said Mythili Rao in The Guardian. "One part Indiana Jones, one part Mister Rogers," the Canadian ecologist popularized the idea that trees converse with one another in her 2021 best seller Finding the Mother Tree. In this follow-up, she pushes back against critics while detailing her ongoing work in restoring forests. Hers has been a singular path, and you sense she's detailing it "so that more may follow it."

The Book of Birds by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris (Norton, $35)

This beautiful illustrated book "makes birds come alive in a way that more traditional field guides do not," said Heller McAlpin in The Christian Science Monitor. Writer Robert Macfarlane contributes "full-throated prose poems" to each of 49 species while Jackie Morris provides the detailed paintings on every page. Macfarlane calls attention to each bird's nests, eggs, song, and migration habits, and the tour proves bewitching. "I had never before read a field guide from cover to cover."

Author of the week

Paul Yoon

Novelist Paul Yoon isn't shy about admitting his deep love for his dog, Oscar, said Chris Knapp in Interview magazine. The 12-year-old lab mix has spent his whole life in the company of Yoon and his wife, but Yoon rarely even speaks to Oscar because they connect easily without language. "It's this silent communication, almost like telepathy," he says.

The author's latest novel, Etna, springs directly from his interest in how Oscar sees the world. "I was imagining his voice," he says. "I'm imagining us talking, and he's telling me a story." Etna knows a much different world, though, than Oscar's. A shepherd mix, he's pulled into war as a combat dog and afterward seeks his way home through the resulting devastation. Etna is the novel's narrator, and Yoon decided it was only a mild stretch to endow him with the power to understand the humans he encounters. "I deeply believe dogs have superpowers," he says.

War isn't a new topic for Yoon, said Pamela Newton in The New York Times. He's touched on it in much of his fiction and attributes his interest to family history: He grew up in the New York City area with few ties to past generations because so many family members died or were separated by the Korean War. Endurance in the face of suffering remains a particular obsession. "How do we not give up?" he asks. "How do we find little pockets of joy and optimism? And how do we heal and unite?" Yoon is pleased, but not surprised, that his new novel has gained so much attention. "There are a lot of us who love our dogs," he says. There also may be a lot of people who feel the way Yoon did when he started Etna. "I say this a little bit jokingly," he says, "but I think I just needed a break from humans."

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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24 ARTS

Review of Reviews: Art & Music

The 2027 Met Gala: A storm in the making

"The devil not only wears Prada; she issues public pardons," said Johnny Oleksinski in the New York Post. Anna Wintour, the Vogue editorial director and mastermind of the annual Met Gala, glossed over the antisemitism of British fashion designer John Galliano, 65, when she recently anointed him the gala's 2027 honoree and subject of an accompanying museum retrospective. In 2011, Galliano was fired by Dior after he was captured on video berating patrons of a Paris bar by praising Hitler and saying their ancestors would have been gassed. "Call me old-fashioned, but didn't 'I love Hitler' used to automatically disqualify people from receiving prestigious honors in Manhattan?" Galliano has claimed he was drunk and in the throes of addiction. But there's "a difference between forgiveness and celebration," and every star who'll walk the gala's red carpet in May will be glorifying this famed bigot at a moment when anti-Jewish violence is rising worldwide. "Haven't we spent the last six years being lectured about inclusion by the exact same elite attendees of this $100,000-per-person event?"

Knowing that Galliano is radioactive,

Wintour convened meetings earlier this year that were "unusual by any measure," said Vanessa Friedman in The New York Times. She, Galliano, and museum representatives sat down with prominent rabbis and other Jewish leaders, seeking feedback as well as support of the exhibition. Some of those Jewish leaders have since said the show could be useful if it presented Galliano's story sensitively, but others worried about being used as cover by Wintour, who has championed Galliano for years. Galliano at least can claim to being a changed man. He was accused of two other antisemitic outbursts and was eventually convicted in France on hate-speech charges. He also once got so drunk that he spent four hours naked in a hotel elevator growling at other guests and declaring himself a lion. Galliano eventually entered rehab and was tutored by a British rabbi and the head of the New York-based Anti-Defamation League, both of whom

Galliano with Wintour in 2010

have declared him reformed. With Wintour's help, Galliano resumed his career, though at less-exalted houses.

"There's no denying that Galliano is a creative genius," said Tania Leslau in The Jewish Chronicle, and "I have no desire to erase him from fashion history." But Wintour's decision to grant him one of the fashion world's greatest honors "has given antisemitism a hall pass to raise its ugly head once again, and as a Jewish fashion editor, I'm furious." A

different type of exhibition might be able to engage viewers in a conversation about his career—"the good, the bad, and the ugly." But choices like Wintour's silence the very people hurt by ethnic hatred. Already, Jews who've criticized the Met's pick online have been "bombarded with backlash." The Met Gala, unfortunately, is now an event that largely plays out online. At best, any attempt at meaningful conversation about antisemitism will be "lost among the tulle."

Phoebe Bridgers

Lost Weekend

★★★★★

"Phoebe in mourning, or Phoebe madly in love?" asked Chris Willman in Variety. With Phoebe Bridgers' first album in six years, listeners don't have to choose, because the alt-rock darling and recent

four-time Grammy winner gives us some of both, plus more. As she reflects on the 2023 death of her father, her breakup with actor Paul Mescal, and her current infatuation with comedian-musician Bo Burnham, Lost Weekend proves "alternately spooky, hilarious, mysterious, and sneakily moving." And though this may go without saying about any record made by Bridgers in the wake of her breakout with the supergroup Boygenius, "it's not to be missed." Bridgers remains "one of the most compelling songwriters in music today," said Angie Martoccio in Rolling Stone. She's been listening to a lot of ambient music lately, and "you can hear how that," along with Radiohead, "shaped Lost Weekend." But she also throws in "Haunted," a "country-tinged beauty," as well as "Bobby," a rocking tribute to Burnham that "basks in dizzying euphoria." On Punisher, Bridgers' last LP, numbness was a theme. Here, "she feels it all, encountering every spectrum of emotion."

Karol G

No Me Arrepiento de Sentir Tanto

★★★★★

"No Me Arrepiento is Karol G's version of a concept album, one stitched together by heartbreak," said Pedro Camacho in Consequence. The 35-year-old reggaeton star is exercising the power

er she has won by now drawing stadium-size crowds across the U.S. Why not ask Drake to sing in Spanish for the breezy "Ah!" or bring in Bruno Mars to duet in English on "Still"? And why not explore all the emotions stirred by a late 2025 breakup with fellow Colombian pop star Feid? "The lyrics are at times contradictory, shifting sharply between nostalgia and resentment from one song to another." The music is a roller-coaster ride too, as La Bichota, as she calls herself, "moves effortlessly from stripped-back ballads to glossy R&B, atmospheric alt-pop, acoustic confessionals, and good old-fashioned perreo," her signature reggaeton subgenre. Where last year's Tropicoqueta "envisioned a Latina-led utopia as a tropic floral paradise," said Andrea Flores in the Los Angeles Times, this album leans into sorrow and plays best when listened to alone. "So light up that candle, lock the doors, and bring the tissues if you have to. Just don't be ashamed to feel all the feels."

Ravyn Lenae

Blue Island

★★★★★

"Labels feel especially restrictive when applied to an artist like Ravyn Lenae," said Cassidy Sollazzo in Paste. The 27-year-old Chicago native "has always treated both identity and genre as

fluid, often shape-shifting between R&B, synth-wave dance pop, and self-baring folk." A year after her bouncy single "Love Me Not" became a Top 10 hit and inspired online chatter that she wasn't Black enough, she's doubled down with her new album, "weaving between indie-rock angst and 1980s power ballads, with pit stops in psychedelic funk and trappy electronic abstractions." She also happily lists the Cranberries alongside Santigold and Tracy Chapman as influences. "There's palpable glee in the album's sudden stylistic shifts," said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. The "sparky alt-rock" of "In & Out" rubs up against "90s R&B-infused" tracks like "Babygirl," which features the rapper Doechii. "Potential" begins as a pretty, up-tempo pop ballad, then "unexpectedly erupts into a squall of guitar noise." But Blue Island isn't jarring, "partly because of the unifying power of Lenae's lovely soprano" and also because the writing is "buffed to a state of pop perfection."

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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Review of Reviews: Film

ARTS 25

Tony

Directed by Matt Johnson (R)

Anthony Bourdain comes of age one fateful summer.

Though the new Anthony Bourdain biopic is merely an amuse-bouche, it's "a memorably tasty one," said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. The movie covers only early chapters in the celebrity chef's name-making memoir, Kitchen Confidential, and because it's mere prologue to Bourdain's New York City arrival and globe-hopping TV days, it's "a tad slight." Still, as it shows us a cocky but rudderless 19-year-old Bourdain falling hard for the rowdy life of the kitchen during a 1970s summer in Provincetown, Mass., "there's a spontaneity and genuineness to Tony," and its familiar coming-of-age story beats have an "endearing prickliness." Dominic Sessa is excellent in the lead role, said David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter. Making good on the promise

Sessa and Banderas: A seaside education

he showed in 2023's The Holdovers, the young actor "nails the contradictory aspects of a slippery character." When his broke Bourdain lucks into a job washing dishes at a seafood eatery, he's torn between the hard-partying ways of an oyster shucker played by a terrific Leo Woodall and the focus shown by Antonio Banderas as the operation's fatherly owner. The movie's

only weak link is an underdeveloped romantic subplot involving CODA's Emilia Jones. For compensation, we get the "quiet miracle" of Banderas' performance, said Dana Stevens in Slate. The older actor's chemistry with Sessa "makes this gentle, low-stakes story simmer along like a cauldron of chowder." Even if Tony weren't a biopic about a food-world god who died too soon, "it would be a movie worth watching."

Late Fame

Directed by Kent Jones (Not rated)

A former poet basks in belated recognition.

Though the new Willem Dafoe movie is a modest little drama, it's "also fairly heartbreaking," said Tim Grierson in The A.V. Club. Dafoe plays Ed, a Manhattan postal worker well past 60 whose one book of poetry, written when he was young, has been rediscovered by a group of dandy 20-somethings who welcome him into their fold and encourage him to write again.

While the movie "has its narrative stumbles, especially near the end," Dafoe "has rarely been so tender, playing a man allowing himself to dream again for the first time in forever." The aging star is well paired here with Greta Lee, who plays Gloria, the literary circle's only female member, said Bilge Ebiri in

Dafoe: More than a regular joe

NYMag.com. Gloria is a cabaret singer and Lee "gives the vampish and self-consciously artificial character a magnetic inner life." In fact, Lee and Dafoe are so good together that it's a shame the rest of the young poetry devotees are mostly treated as ludicrous poseurs. "They're ultimately too cartoonish for a film that otherwise feels so lived-in." But this isn't a mean movie, said

Alissa Wilkinson in The New York Times. It's an "affectionately told" story about "a certain sort of wistful foolishness," the kind that grips some groups of young people generation after generation. Dafoe's Ed just happens to be open-minded enough to enjoy being part of all that again.

One Night Only: Summer's most disturbing rom-com?

"If I turned my brain off, One Night Only would be a funny movie with heart," said Anna Iovine in Mashable. But the bizarre new rom-com, which after a week in theaters has been more talked about than watched, asks us to imagine a world in which the federal government has banned premarital sex except for one night a year, and it then plays such totalitarianism for laughs and presents its two protagonists as happily compliant with the erasure of a basic freedom. That's probably not what viewers expected, said Michael Boyle in The Daily Beast. "For a movie centered on the horniest night of the year," One Night Only is "oddly sexless." In fact, director Will Gluck admitted last week that he'd cut much of the sex he did shoot, claiming that today's audiences are no longer comfortable seeing sex in theaters and that test audiences complained that the sight of bystanders getting intimate in the movie's

Barbaro and Turner: Will they or won't they?

background distracted from the central couple's story.

One Night Only casts a spotlight on the decline in young Americans' sexual activity, but it "misunderstands today's sex recession as libidinal," said Rafaela Bassili in The Guardian. In reality, "it's not that

Zoomers aren't horny"; it's that they're the first generation to grow up "fully under the influence of the internet, with its attendant alienations," and many of them are simply not good at connecting in person with others in a way that encourages consensual sex. Unlike some of this summer's openly randy films, One Night Only doesn't honestly engage with these anxieties. It simply throws various obstacles, such as $2,000 condoms, in the way of the potential hookup of co-stars Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner. What's frightening, said Roxana Hadadi in NYMag.com, is the way that pair and almost everyone around them accepts that the government can erase their rights and Big Business will find a way to profit. "One Night Only spends nearly its entire run time scoffing at the idea that Americans would ever be principled enough to take a stand." That makes it "one of the darkest films of the year."

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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26 ARTS

Television

Streaming tips

New comedy specials

Mary Beth Barone:

Galaxy Brain

Barone's special is set up as an antidote to a comedy world still dominated by men, a crew she dismisses as "narcissists with depression." A trip through her "galaxy brain" is full of hilarious bits, from a call to reopen the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory to a movie pitch about her dog and boyfriend swapping places. Netflix

Hannah Berner: None

of My Business

From reality star to stand-up siren, Berner seems to slay every new challenge she undertakes. Her second comedy special is for the Millennial ladies, with unfiltered bits about the weirdness of "grinding" in dance clubs and what it means to be a "hot" comedian. Hulu

Whitmer Thomas:

Terminal Crew of Dudes

Whitmer Thomas' special, as indicated, is for the dudes, particularly those in a state of perpetual adolescence. With his "terminal crew," the buds he grew up with, Thomas performs songs and reflects on growing up a skater in Alabama. HBO Max

Wanda Sykes: Legacy

Sykes burnishes her comedy legacy with this rousingly funny special taped at her alma mater, Hampton University. Bits about nostalgia for New Edition and the return of old diseases in the RFK Jr. era get a boost from Sykes' polished, can't-miss delivery. Netflix

Ryan Hamilton:

This Just Hit Me

Hamilton's comedy career was ascending, and then he got hit by a bus. Naturally, he has turned the experience into jokes. The first half of his new stand-up special is a laugh-out-loud recounting of the experience. Netflix

Jeff Arcuri: Nice to Meet You

Arcuri is an outstanding crowdwork guy. His prepared stuff, which includes anecdotes about being married to Katie Thurston, a former Bachelorette, is just as winning. Netflix

The Week's guide to what's worth watching

Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing

Whistleblowing can take a toll. For John Barnett, it was likely the prime reason he died by gunshot in 2024. In this follow-up to the 2022 documentary Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, director Rory Kennedy revisits Barnett's story and canvases the many whistleblowers who've been inspired to come forth since his death, which was ruled a suicide and occurred while the former Boeing quality control manager was being deposed about the aircraft manufacturer's growing recklessness. Wednesday, Aug. 19, Netflix

Lion

It's The Lion King, but neither animated nor fiction. With this new docuseries, Hollywood director Jon Favreau pivots from Marvel and Star Wars features to present the dramas that unfolded within a single lion pride in Kenya across a four-year span. As we watch, a scrappy cub dubbed "Kio" takes his knocks, matures, and emerges as leader of the pride. Wednesday, Aug. 19, at 9 p.m., National Geographic

Resolve to Solve With Miles O'Brien

The first of two O'Briens who'll be sharing their world travels this week does so with serious purpose. Science journalist Miles O'Brien has made it a mission to find daring thinkers across the globe who've dedicated themselves to solving urgent climate-change challenges. In the series' first episode, he shares how seaweed is helping cows cut their methane emissions and shows how beavers are fighting wildfires. Wednesday, Aug. 19, at 10 p.m., PBS; check local listings

Conan O'Brien Must Go

In theory, he could still be trapped behind a late-night desk. Instead, Conan O'Brien continues bringing camera teams along on the globe-trotting adventures he began back in 2015 with Conan Without Borders. Season 3 of this series finds him once again forging humor-filled but meaningful connections with fans. Episode 1 sends him to India, with the Netherlands and Morocco on deck. Friday, Aug. 21, HBO Max

Kio, king-to-be of the new docuseries 'Lion'

9/11 Reunited

As the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks approaches, this docuseries checks in on some people who'll never forget that day because they were among the luckiest survivors. A quarter century after escaping death as New York City's Twin Towers burned and fell, they're reunited with the first responders or other strangers who saved their lives. Across three episodes, the survivors share their harrowing stories and tell of the profound relationships that developed in the wake of tragedy. Friday, Aug. 21, at 8 p.m., National Geographic

Other highlights

Outer Banks

The final season of this Carolina-set teen drama follows the working-class Pogues as they seek to avenge a death and procure a storied treasure. Thursday, Aug. 20, Netflix

The Dynasty: UConn Huskies

A three-part docuseries traces the ups and downs of the University of Connecticut's women's basketball team, led by tenacious coach Geno Auriemma. Friday, Aug. 21, Apple TV

The Vampire Lestat: One Night Only Live

A treat for fans of the current Lestat series: star Sam Reid, portraying the vampire in his rock-star phase, performing a live concert. Sunday, Aug. 23, AMC+

Show of the week

Novak Djokovic: The Wolf in Winter

He has won more Grand Slam titles than any other man in tennis history. Still, at 39, while continuing to compete at the game's highest level, Novak Djokovic has yet to be fully embraced by the world he's conquered. This rich documentary portrait reviews his life story, tracking his rise out of war-torn Serbia to the pro circuit and his history of dazzling and irritating observers with his competitive fire. Often cast as a villain and as the unwelcome disrupter of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal's elegant rivalry, he gets a chance here to explain how he's persevered. Thursday, Aug. 20, Prime

Djokovic: A singular champion

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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LEISURE

Food & Drink

27

Mom's albondigas: Tijuana-style home cooking

"It's your last day on earth; what dish do you want to eat?" asks Claudette Zepeda in her new book, Cooking the Borderlands (Clarkson Potter). For me, the answer to that question has always been my mom's albondigas, "the perfect storm of beef (or pork) with herbs, rice, and lots of seasoning, baked in a tomato and chipotle sauce."

I often stuff chopped hard-boiled egg into the middle of each meatball before cooking them, then serve them with rice, fresh corn tortillas, and roasted vegetables. They're wonderful paired with large chunks of carrots, potatoes, chayote, or zucchini.

My amá would tell you that the seasoning must include Knorr Suiza, aka Knorr Caldo de Pollo, aka Knorr chicken bouillon powder. But I'll allow this departure: You can use kosher salt instead.

Recipe of the week

Nancy's albondigas al chipotle (Mom's meatballs)

• ½ cup breadcrumbs
• ½ cup whole milk
• ½ cup jasmine rice, soaked in water for 1 hour
• 2 lb ground beef or pork
• 2 large eggs
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• ½ cup A.1 Sauce
• 2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 5 fresh mint leaves, minced
• 3 tbsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt or Knorr Suiza chicken bouillon
• 3 tbsp olive oil

A meatball as heart-warming as a hug

• ½ yellow onion, chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 14.5-oz cans crushed tomatoes
• 5 canned chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
• Leaves from 2 mint sprigs
• 2 tbsp fresh Mexican oregano leaves
• 2 cups beef or vegetable stock

In a small bowl, combine breadcrumbs and milk and let soak for 10 minutes. Transfer breadcrumbs to a large mixing

bowl, discarding excess milk. Strain soaked rice and add to bowl. Add ground meat, eggs, garlic, A.1 sauce, Worcestershire sauce, mint, and salt (or Knorr Suiza), and mix well until combined. Check seasoning of mixture by cooking a spoonful in a skillet. Adjust seasoning as needed.

Portion mixture into meatballs, each about the size of a lime.

In a large saucepan over medium heat, add oil. Once oil is hot, add onions and sauté for 5 minutes, until translucent. Then add garlic and sauté for another 3 minutes, until fragrant.

Add canned tomatoes, chipotles in adobo, mint, and oregano and bring to a simmer. Simmer for 15 minutes—the excess moisture will begin to evaporate.

Add stock, stir to incorporate, and season with salt (or Knorr Suiza) to taste. Remove sauce from heat, then use an immersion blender to puree sauce until smooth. Set pan of sauce over low heat. Carefully place albondigas in sauce, one by one, ensuring they're submerged completely. Do not move them after you set them in pot or you'll risk breaking them. Cover pot and simmer on low heat for 40 minutes. After 40 minutes, check for doneness by carefully removing an albondiga and cutting it open. Rice should be translucent all the way to the center, with no crunch or bite. If more time is needed, add 5 minutes and check for doneness again. Serves 6.

Dining out: The best of charming Santa Cruz

"Santa Cruz embodies in microcosm so much that is great about California," said David Farley in The New York Times. A quirky university town of 60,000 set on Monterey Bay, it's home to "renowned wineries, towering redwood forests, pristine beaches, an ingrained surfing culture, and excellent organic restaurants." The dining, in particular, keeps getting better.

Bad Animal Natural wine, 12,000 cool used and rare books, and bites prepared by Nick Hahn, formerly of Los Angeles' Michelin-starred n'naka? Yes, please. Peruse the titles and dig into Hahn's dishes, which lean Asian with "Parisian bistro flair." Highlights include pork and kimchi croquettes and tuna crudo in a chili-crisp-dotted Meyer lemon ponzu sauce. 1011 Cedar St.

Mentone Chef David Kinch earned three Michelin stars while running Manresa in Los Gatos. "Fortunately, he still has Mentone," located just outside Santa Cruz in Aptos. The place is "a love letter to western Liguria, with a little French influence thrown in." Simple dishes such as gnocchi in a Genovese pesto complement Neapolitan

Mentone: Primo coastal Italian

pies from a pizza oven adorned with a mosaic version of the Rolling Stones' logo. 174 Aptos Village Way, Aptos Mad Yolks A popular breakfast and lunch spot, Mad Yolks specializes in egg sandwiches. If egg, cheese, and caramelized onions aren't sufficient, "you can go wild" and opt to stack yours with fried chicken, Spam, or a burger patty. Two locations

Venus Spirits Cocktail & Kitchen This restaurant connected to a craft distillery is a great spot to nosh on mussels in saffron and blackened salmon topped with mango salsa. Wash it all down with a house cocktail such as an aged gin and tonic or an apricot-accented bourbon smash. 200 High Road

Wine: Jurançon sec

"Jurançon sec is having a moment," said Emma Terhaar in Vinepair. With prices of Sancerre and Chablis skyrocketing, sommeliers have been steering diners toward the little-known white blend because, at its price, it "frequently over-delivers on flavor and complexity." The wine is named for its region, a particularly pretty patch of the French Pyrenees.

2021 Clos Uroulat 'Cuvée Marie' ($25). A quality Jurançon sec that's easy to find, this one features the gros manseng grape and delivers "bright notes of green apple, lemon zest, and saline."

2024 Domaine Bellegarde 'La Pierre Blanche' ($30). This full-bodied wine is mostly petit manseng, and it's "ideal for food pairing," offering "delightful notes of lemon curd and roasted hazelnuts."

2021 Clos Guirouilh Jurançon Sec ($30). Gros manseng leads again in this wine, providing "concentrated notes of ripe apples, honey, green herbs, and guava."

David Alvarado

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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28 LEISURE

Travel

This week's dream: The islands that time forgot

"No one from the United States accidentally comes to São Tomé and Príncipe," said Christopher Muther in The Boston Globe. So if you yearn for a destination where you'll never hear another American accent, this West African island nation could be it. A former Portuguese colony composed of two lush volcanic islands about 150 miles off the coast of Gabon, it's one of the world's least visited nations. To reach it, I recently flew to Lisbon, then added an eight-plus-hour flight, including a stopover in Ghana, to reach the capital, São Tomé, which shares the name of the larger island. It's "a beautiful place," all jungle, stunning beaches, and waterfalls. I, however, was intent on spending a week on even-less-visited Príncipe.

"So this is what the world looked like before humans arrived," I said to my driver in Príncipe after completing a 90-mile flight by prop plane from São Tomé. The entire island is a UNESCO biosphere reserve, "nothing but dense green jungle so sweetly

Príncipe's Banana Beach: The definition of unspoiled

verdant—with broad leaves, thick trunks, and steaming vines—that the sky was nearly blocked." My plans for an active week required central lodgings, so I checked into the Sundy Praia, a luxury hotel where, I should note, a night's stay can equal six months of local wages. Outside the hotel, you'll see many locals living in shacks and carrying stacks of laundry to wash in a river. The hotels, at least, are working with

local residents to resist unwelcome changes to the unblemished landscape.

As I had hoped, Príncipe's beaches were pristine. At a prime snorkeling spot, the Bay of Needles, I spent an afternoon "floating in the preternatural turquoise sea, watching sea urchins and metallic fish below." Another adventure took me on the Oqué Pipi Waterfall Trail, where bird-watchers from around the world vie for a glimpse of the Príncipe scops owl, found only here. I dove into the water below the falls, awed by their height. Another waterfall trek, how-

ever, turned precarious. During a six-hour round-trip hike in Obó national park, the rainforest lived up to its name. "The rain only grew stronger and the steep trails slipper." Though I survived, I emerged bedraggled and bruised, and as I eased into a bath afterward, "I was eternally grateful to be staying in a five-star hotel."

■ At Sundy Praia (principecollection.com), doubles start at $1,078.

Hotel of the week

A 'cave' villa, ready for role-play

OutpostX

Beryl, Utah

Staying at OutpostX is "like stepping onto a science-fiction film set," said Jim Dobson in Forbes. Created by a movie set designer, the remote desert retreat west of Zion National Park offers a visitor experience that blends role-playing with glamping, all in a setting "designed to make guests feel like they have left Earth behind." Guests can choose between staying in cave-like or futuristic mirrored dwellings. They're assigned roles, told they now live on the planet Namaajin, and given "sand cruisers": costumed golf carts that "look like a cross between a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air and Luke Skywalker's desert vehicle." All meals are cooked communally, using Namaajin recipes, over an open fire. outpostx.com; villas from $338

Getting the flavor of...

Arkansas' world-class mountain biking

At less than 300 feet, the "mountain" at the brand-new Oz Trails Bike Park in Bella Vista, Ark., "isn't very big," said Graham Averill in Outside. But the 20 miles of gravity trails that vein the hill are "nothing short of amazing," and the park is now home to probably the only high-speed lift in the country dedicated to serving mountain bikers year-round, not just between ski seasons. The existence of this world-class Ozarks bike park owes largely to a $75 million investment in northwest Arkansas, already a national draw for singletrack enthusiasts, by the Walton family, owners of Walmart. But the state is chipping in, too, helping fund a bike park in the town of Mena with a lift that will serve 1,100 vertical feet. Some riders gripe about taking downhill runs if you didn't earn it with a grueling ascent; they don't like paying for lift tickets, either. But Arkansas is "poised to be a gravity destination," and at Oz, "every trail I rode was fun."

Maine's small-boat tourist fleet

To truly enjoy coastal Maine, get yourself out on the water, said Jen Rose Smith in The Wall Street Journal. The state's craggy coastline is "best experienced at sea level, aboard small boats run by locals," and visitors have plenty of options. Several mail boats take passengers during their daily runs to islands such as Isle au Haut, and many working lobster boats welcome occasional or regular fee-paying riders. Onboard the Lucky Catch, which sails

from Portland and encourages passengers to help with the haul, you may hear captain Tom Martin calling out, "Careful of the crabs! Grab from the front and they'll pinch you hard." Martin shows passengers how to pull traps and measure a lobster's carapace, and the keepers can be purchased at a discount. In nearby Bath, a shipbuilding town, you can sail on a faithful re-creation of the Virginia, a 51-foot two-masted pinnace built in 1607. Look up "Maine's First Ship" online and you can book a ride. Because the historical metal-free rigging is so quiet, you hear little out on the water but creaks from the white-oak hull—"the ancient sounds of a seafaring world that's all but lost."

Taking a 'girls trip' with strangers

As women lean into traveling solo, "the travel industry is leaning with them," said Qin Xie in National Geographic Traveller (U.K.). Because women often prefer to travel with other women, not alone, tour operators are offering an increasing number of women-only group tours. Outfitters such as Wild Women Expeditions have long offered such trips, but a host of start-ups, including Radiant Escapes, are catering to growing demand. Australia's Intrepid Travel reported a recent 59% increase in bookings for women's expeditions, including for destinations, such as Morocco, where social norms complicate mixed-gender travel. Carli Korik, a volunteer for the 90,000-member Facebook group Girls Who Travel, notes that women have to be more on guard when on group tours with men. Just as important, though: the chance to connect with other women.

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

© 2026 Natalie F. Fagopolis, Inc.

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HAS MET ITS MATCH. YOU.

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Be your own hero at DoIHavePrediabetes.org

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30

Best Properties on the Market

This week: Victorian homes

1◀ Denver In the historic Capitol Hill neighborhood, this 1892 Free Classic Queen Anne mansion spans three lots. The restored six-bedroom features hardwood floors, raised-panel wainscoting, a carved staircase, original built-ins, and coffered ceilings. The kitchen has wood beams, a marble island, a pressed-tin-style backsplash, and a windowed breakfast nook. A finished basement includes a private entry. Outside are a yard and patio; parks, museums, and dining are a short drive. $2,800,000. Rachel Simring, Milehimodern, (303) 910-5225

2▶ Beacon, N.Y. The Rombout House is a circa-1880 Second Empire Victorian about a block from Main Street in this Hudson Valley town. The three-story five-bedroom has high ceilings, white oak herringbone floors, pocket doors, large windows, a chef's kitchen, and a conservatory with views of Fishkill Creek and Mount Beacon. The property includes a deck, an attached garage, native landscaping, and access to hiking, dining, and shopping. $2,150,000. Jessica Brasseur, Houlihan Lawrence/Luxury Portfolio International, (850) 714-3045

3◀ Galveston, Texas Located in the East End Historic District, this 1891 Gulf Coast Victorian townhouse is featured in the Galveston Architecture Guidebook. The four-bedroom opens to parquet floors that connect to a recently renovated open-plan area with crown molding, an exposed brick fireplace, and a kitchen with a copper apron sink. Two verandas overlook palms and a restored tree sculpture. Stewart Beach, dining, and museums are nearby. $899,000. Martha Turner, Sotheby's International Realty—Central Houston Brokerage, (713) 870-4645

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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31

4 Cambridge, Mass. This 1886 six-bedroom Queen Anne with Colonial touches has been restored and updated with modern black and charcoal trim while retaining its original millwork, stained and leaded glass, pocket doors, and built-ins. An open-kitchen living area has a wall of steel-framed windows, pale wood floors, an eat-in waterfall island, and a glam butler's pantry. The landscaped lot includes a patio, mature trees, and a flat yard. $4,200,000. Gail Roberts, Ed Feijo & Team, Coldwell Banker Realty, (617) 844-2712

5 Richmond, Ill. The 1898 L.B. Covell house, a Queen Anne with Colonial Revival elements, is set on nearly 6 acres along Nippersink Creek near the Wisconsin border. The renovated four-bedroom has original maple and aspen floors, a spindle-work portiere arch, oversize windows, a kitchen with Viking appliances and marble counters, and a lower level with stone walls. The property also has a new garage barn with an office, plus a carriage house, chicken coop, woods, and gardens. $989,000. Michael Max, Compass, (847) 323-4619

Steal of the week

6 San Antonio This 1903 three-bedroom Queen Anne cottage in the Nathan Historic District is a short walk from the San Antonio River. A front porch opens to a foyer with a built-in window seat. The living room features wood-trimmed windows, stained glass, and 10-foot

ceilings. There is also a formal dining room and the original kitchen with stainless steel counters. A fenced yard and a garage complete the property. $519,000. Gina Candelario, Kuper Sotheby's International Realty, (210) 744-8265

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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32 NEWS

BUSINESS

The News at a Glance

The bottom line

■ Consumer prices rose 0.1% in July, largely meeting expectations, and putting the annual rate of inflation at 3.4%. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, inflation rose 0.2% and 2.5%, respectively. CNBC.com

■ Former Disney CEO Bob Iger and Josh Kushner are buying the Los Angeles Lakers for $12.5 billion. The sale comes just 14 months after billionaire financier Mark Walter purchased the team for $10 billion.

The Athletic

■ Roaring Social, a speakeasy in Atlanta, is selling a

$10,000 martini adorned with a 5-carat diamond tennis necklace and a large dollop of caviar.

According to Jaron Solomon, president of Solomon Brothers Jewelers, the cocktail is a bargain. The necklace is appraised at more than $11,000.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

■ As of June 30, private equity firms had 33,575 unsold companies in their portfolios, according to PitchBook, an industry data firm. That's up from 32,451 companies at the end of last year and 15,923 companies a decade ago. Despite the deal-making frenzy, it's the third consecutive year that private equity firms have been saddled with an increasing number of companies they can't sell or take public. The New York Times

■ At least 10 customers have signed up for early access to President Trump's Truth Social posts, a privilege for which Trump Media recently began charging up to $100,000 per month. Overall, the number of monthly visitors to Truth Social was down last month by 36% from a year ago. BBC.com

Meta: Addiction penalties start to add up

Meta vowed this week to appeal a pair of record fines totaling nearly $1 billion for social media harm and addiction, said Eli Tan in The New York Times. A New Mexico judge last week ruled that Meta must pay $567 million "and make changes to the way young people use its platforms." The ruling was

in addition to the $375 million that Meta "was ordered to pay" in March after a jury found "the company misled users about the safety of its products and enabled sexual exploitation of young people." The $567 million will go toward a fund to remedy damages caused by the company, and Meta has been barred from "sending nighttime or school-hour push notifications to

New Mexico ruling is the first of many.

underage users" in New Mexico. It also must cap their platform use at 90 hours a month.

The New Mexico ruling offers a blueprint for states and individuals seeking to "hold tech companies liable," said Hassan Ali Kanu in Politico. In addition to the hefty fine, it marks the first time a court has ordered a tech company

to make specific user-experience changes. New Mexico has likened social media platforms to a "polluting factory," and a judge and jury agreed. Meta is facing thousands of lawsuits across the country, including other landmark cases in Tennessee, Colorado, and California. It's starting to look as though Big Tech can finally be held "accountable for alleged child safety failures."

Paramount: Leaving L.A.?

David Ellison turned up the pressure on states suing to block the planned merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery this week by threatening to pull Paramount from California, said Todd Spangler in Variety. Paramount's chief executive said the iconic Hollywood studio would exit "as soon as October unless the merger is resolved through a settlement." California Attorney General Rob Bonta called it "blackmail." A federal judge last week delayed an anti-trust trial until March. Paramount has to pay Warner's shareholders $650 million for every quarter the deal doesn't close.

Fed: Trump restarts battle with Cook

President Trump is taking a second swing at Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, said Colby Smith and Maggie Haberman in The New York Times. White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino sent Cook a letter last week giving her until Aug. 25 to "respond to previous allegations that she had committed mortgage fraud." Trump tried to fire Cook for cause last year, alleging she lied on mortgage applications. But his effort was blocked by the Supreme Court, which said he can't proceed without airing evidence of wrongdoing. The White House said it is still "considering" ousting her.

Intel: Chipmaker holds massive stock sale

Intel raised $20 billion this week as it cashed in on a recent stock surge, said Anahata Rooprai in Reuters. The U.S. chipmaker first announced a $15 billion sale but upsized the offer in response to investor demand. Intel planned to use the money for "new facilities and advanced packaging capabilities." Before announcing the sale, Intel chief executive Lip-Bu Tan sought approval from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Semafor reported. The Trump administration acquired a 10% stake in Intel last year.

Nvidia: Engineering an exotic financing deal

Nvidia is tapping Wall Street to raise $500 billion for AI infrastructure, said Jack Pitcher in The Wall Street Journal. Many of Nvidia's customers "can't afford to buy" enough of "the company's coveted AI chips" to power their technological visions. So Nvidia has "teamed up with an array of Wall Street firms," including BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, to create "pools of capital" at "attractive rates." The public and private debt will be sold to "pension funds, insurers, and sovereign-wealth funds, among others," raising money that can "swing into action" to help finance AI chip deals.

Rushing a sorority? Consultants can help

"Rush coaches" are schooling families on the unwritten rules of Greek life, said Gabriel Baumgaertner in Bloomberg Businessweek. "The push by tens of thousands of young women to gain acceptance into sororities" at schools like the University of Mississippi and Auburn has spawned a cottage industry of consultants who can advise wannabe pledges on what to wear, say, and post to get in. And their advice is not cheap. One Atlanta sorority consultant charges $6,500 for a one-year program and $12,000 for a "two-year Legacy Mentorship package." Rush coaches have been around for years, but they've mostly existed in the South. That's changing as more students from the North apply to Southern schools. Some sororities there require potential new members to "record an introductory video for every chapter to view, prepare a résumé with a professional headshot, secure letters of recommendation from chapter alumnae, and detail their philanthropic goals."

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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Making Money

BUSINESS 33

‘Boomerang kids’: Why adult children are moving home

The nest isn’t as empty as it used to be, said Noam Scheiber in The New York Times. Sending a kid off to college usually meant an end to cohabiting with them under the same roof. Not anymore. Today, nearly half of adults under 30 are still living at home, according to the Federal Reserve, a level not seen since the pandemic. The prevalence of “boomerang kids” reflects a number of trouble spots in the economy, including the soaring cost of living, out-of-control home prices, and “persistent weakness in the job market for recent graduates.” Many young people are moving back with their parents to look for jobs “from the relative comfort” of home, where meals are guaranteed and rent is paid for. It’s becoming so common that the stigma is disappearing: People who live at home after graduating are perceived less as “rudderless” and more as “driven-but-thwarted.”

For parents, it can be a financial hit to let a grown son or daughter move in, said Jeff Green in Bloomberg. Most parents want to do all they can to help their child. But such caregiving isn’t free. Financial planners estimate it can add up to “roughly $1,500 a month, or $18,000 a year,” when you add up all the extra groceries, utilities, and other expenditures, which cuts into retirement savings. They recommend establishing “clear expectations along with a timeline and exit plan.” That could include charging

They’re baaaack...

increasing rent until it reaches market rate—at which point young adults may prefer to move out and share an apartment with roommates. There’s a difference between “providing a safety net and enabling financial immaturity,” said Michelle Singletary in The Washington Post. There needs to be accountability. If adult children are home because “they’re carrying massive student loans,” make sure you “monitor their progress reducing the debt.” If they’re unemployed or can’t contribute financially, there are other ways to ensure they can help, “such as cooking, cleaning, or maintaining the property.”

Having a boomerang kid is “probably less dire” than it seems, said Jay Caspian Kang in The New Yorker. There has actually been a “steady increase in young people living at home over the past 25 years.” Some of this is cultural—black, Asian, and Latino families usually have higher rates of intergenerational living—and some of it is social: “People are getting married later in life,” and thus not leaving the nest for love. “In reality, most young people are likely doing OK.” But it’s also “likely they’re not doing as well as they had hoped.” That’s why “the narrative of the downwardly mobile young person” has become so persuasive—as a rallying cry for the Left, and a cry for help from Mom and Dad.

What the experts say

The cost to insure a home is soaring, said Greg Iacurci in CNBC.com. From 2018 to 2024, homeowners’ insurance premiums “rose faster than inflation,” according to a new report from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. And it’s not only coastal or disaster-prone areas that are seeing the biggest hikes. On average, prices rose by 18% in the Northeast, 25% in the Midwest, 27% in the Southeast, and 43% in the West. Average premiums are today highest in the Southeast ($1,818 a year) and lowest in the Northeast ($1,396). The price hikes are a result of a mix of factors, including climate change and rising material expenses, and are contributing to the housing crisis. The National Association of Realtors estimates that the cost of owning a home would be “about 10% lower if insurance costs had remained stable since the late 1990s.”

More people are looking to nonprofit financial counselors to help manage their debt, said Ann Carns in The New York Times. Money Management International, a nonprofit credit-counseling firm based in Texas, said its client base has grown by 10% over the past year, driven largely by young adults in their teens

and 20s. Another nonprofit credit firm, GreenPath Financial Wellness, reported a 20% increase in people seeking assistance in the first half of 2026. Credit-counseling agencies help borrowers create a workable budget, “and, if needed, offer a formal debt management plan.” Clients can combine multiple loans into a single monthly payment “at a lower interest rate that the counselor negotiates with lenders.”

Some professionals aren’t saving for retirement. They’re saving up for “burnout,” said Joshua Nelken-Zitser in Business Insider. A so-called burnout fund is a pot of savings “designed to fund a recovery period,” rather than emergencies. With an emergency fund, the “unwritten rule” is to keep three to six months’ worth of living expenses stashed away. But “if someone is planning a break or exit because of burnout, they should consider building additional savings, ideally in a high-yield FDIC-insured savings account or short-term Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities.” The idea of stashing savings comes as “workplace and economic pressures are taking their toll on workers in different ways.” One workplace poll this winter found that “53% of workers felt burned out because of their jobs.”

Charity of the week

Teens in Soquel, Calif., are getting hands-on experience in the kitchen while preparing healthy meals for sick people in their community. That’s the focus of Teen Kitchen Project (teenkitchen project.org), founded by

Angela Farley in 2012. Farley was struggling to put nutritious evening meals on the table while her young son Charlie was undergoing cancer treatment. After Charlie successfully completed treatment, Farley looked into ways to rally the community to distribute meals to other families in similar situations. Unlike meals-on-wheels programs, Farley’s nonprofit also gives culinary training to teenage volunteers, who prepare plant-forward meals from scratch using medically tailored ingredients for patients living with chronic illnesses. Last year, 175 teen volunteers prepared more than 175,000 meals. Their impact is expected to grow after Teen Kitchen Project moves into a new, larger kitchen and headquarters, currently under construction.

Each charity we feature has earned a four-star overall rating from Charity Navigator, which rates not-for-profit organizations on the strength of their finances, their governance practices, and the transparency of their operations. Four stars is the group’s highest rating.

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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34 BUSINESS

Best Columns: Business

Economy: The labor market flashes a warning sign

President Trump might want to stop trumpeting the U.S. economy as “the best ever,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial, because the labor market suggests it’s anything but. This “best ever” economy actually lost 23,000 jobs in July, the Labor Department reported last week, undershooting economists’ forecasts of wide gains. Some industries, like construction and manufacturing, did register slight increases, but they were swamped by mass job losses in retail and government. Revisions of estimates from the prior two months also lowered average U.S. jobs gains to a paltry 20,000 since May. This “blah labor market may be one reason a mere 30% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy.” Only a third back his “whipsawing tariffs,” a great “self-inflicted policy wound” that has made employers reluctant to add jobs.

Another “worrying story” is unfolding behind the unemployment rate, which dipped from 4.2% to 4.1% in July, said Steve Thompson and Lauren Kaori Gurley in The Washington Post. That drop is a surprise, given that employers shed so many jobs, but it’s largely a result of there being “fewer workers in the labor market.” The share of adults working or looking for work slipped to 61.4% in July, the lowest since the pandemic, suggesting more people are “abandoning job searches” entirely. Men, in particular, have dropped out of the workforce at a rate “that’s concerning for both social and economic reasons.” The jobs data also brought depressing information about hourly earnings, said Jonathan Levin in Bloomberg, which aren’t rising fast enough to keep up with inflation. Since the Iran war sent energy prices

The economy lost 23,000 jobs last month.

soaring, there’s been on a “full-on backslide” in wages, rising only 3.2% year over year in July—below the June inflation rate and the weakest increase since May 2021. This “lost purchasing power” lands “like one more punch to the gut for workers.”

The ugly figures are more due to a demographic shift than a labor market problem, said Ramesh Ponnuru in National Review. Growth is bound to slow when birth rates decline and the workforce ages. “Does the job report really reflect sluggish hiring—or decent

levels of hiring in a country with a working-age population that is growing sluggishly?” Low job growth also “doesn’t mean the same thing it would have a few years ago,” said Paul Krugman in his Substack newsletter. Anti-immigrant policies have “drastically slowed the growth of the pool of potential workers.” The nation once needed “more than 100,000 jobs a month to keep up with the growing workforce.” Now it may be able to sustain itself with far fewer jobs a month “without a major rise in unemployment.”

The Federal Reserve’s job just got even harder, said Colby Smith in The New York Times. New chairman Kevin Warsh has made “delivering price stability the primary focus of his tenure,” and inflation is still well above the bank’s 2% target. Before last week, it seemed increasingly likely that the Fed would raise rates to cool prices in September. But the jobs picture has shifted that calculus. “It has not eliminated the possibility” of a rate hike. But “the economy is not on as strong a footing as many have perceived it to be.”

Congress isn’t where you should get rich

Brian Hamilton Barron’s

The surest way to become a millionaire isn’t starting a business. It’s running for Congress, said Brian Hamilton. “To date, more than 300 legislators have served for more than 30 years in Congress.” Why would they stick around for so long? Here’s a clue: A recent study found that the top 100 wealth gainers in Congress have seen an average “114% increase in net worth” while in office since 2004. At least 30% of senators are now estimated to be worth more than $10 million. How is this possible? “One obvious explanation is that politicians are privy to information that average Americans aren’t,” and they trade on it. A New York Times

investigation in 2022 found that nearly a fifth of lawmakers bought stocks that intersected with their work on congressional committees, and little is stopping them. The 2012 STOCK Act, for instance, “requires members of Congress to report stock trades,” but “does nothing to curb” them. The House passed a Republican-sponsored bill intended to restrict trading by lawmakers last month. But it has little chance of advancing in the Senate because House GOP members appended President Trump’s voter identification measure to the legislation. Working-class Americans “aren’t going to put up with this stuff” for much longer.

How the economy is like flying

Allison Schrager Bloomberg

Boarding an airplane has become “the perfect metaphor for life in America,” said Allison Schrager. Flying has gotten “cheaper and more accessible” while also “more stratified.” It’s perhaps never been easier to score inexpensive plane tickets through any number of online discount sites. The cost of a domestic flight has “fallen by more than half” over the past two decades, the result of “deregulation, better technology, more transparent price comparisons, and, not insignificantly, higher incomes.” But those $200 tickets often involve cramming into a smaller seat, fighting for coveted overhead bin space, or paying fees for things that used to be complimentary. And

“the meals are terrible, if they’re offered at all.” In all, flying coach is now a “less pleasant experience” than it was. It’s made even more infuriating by seeing more “people on the very same plane who don’t have to deal with” these indignities at all. Traveling first class “remains pretty great,” and it is extending to more people who “enter the upper middle class.” New fare categories are being introduced that offer passengers “the flat bed, but not the fancy lounge or the ability to pick their seat,” for cheaper than first class. Think of it as a perk for the 5%. Perhaps this latest aviation shift can explain why so many Americans are getting wealthier but not any happier.

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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Obituaries

35

The sculptor who turned caricature into art

Betye Saar 1926-2026

Betye Saar could make the humblest of objects sing and shout. The Los

Angeles-based artist, an early leader in the Black Arts Movement, repurposed trash, heirlooms, and flea market finds into provocative sculptures and dioramas that exploded stereotypes of Black women. Many have a searching, mystical quality, informed by her mixed African American, Irish, and Choctaw ancestry and her trips to Africa and Haiti. Her work is now featured in at least 80 museums worldwide, but the best known may be her landmark 1972 assemblage The Liberation of Aunt Jemima. It featured a plastic, thick-lipped, "mammy" figurine holding a broom in one hand and a rifle in the other. "I wanted to put a rifle and a grenade under her skirts," Saar said in 2016. "I wanted to empower her. I wanted to make her a warrior."

Born in L.A., Betye Irene Brown grew up in Pasadena, where the family moved after her insurance salesman father died. "Art was in the air" throughout her childhood, said the Los Angeles Times. Her seamstress mother encouraged her in crafting projects, and she graduated from UCLA with a design degree. Brown became an interior decorator, marrying ceramicist Richard Saar and

bringing up three children in Laurel Canyon, "a hotbed of hippiedom." Inspired by the radical politics around her, she started making prints and sculptures. "One of her most important" early works was a decorated windowpane called Black Girl's Window, said The New York Times. In it the silhouette of a girl with her palms pressed against the window shares space with celestial bodies, astrological symbols, and a

daguerreotype of her grandmother—a scene of "ancestral yearning." She gained a measure of early recognition, winning a 1974 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

But it wasn't until the 2010s, when she was in her 90s, that her fame reached "an international scale," said ArtNews. Scholarly attention focused on overlooked Black artists, and in 2019 Saar had simultaneous retrospectives at New York City's MoMA and the L.A. County Museum of Art. The artist was thrilled both by the new attention and by Quaker Oats' decision to scrap the Aunt Jemima logo in 2020. "She's liberated!" Saar posted online. She continued working until her death, days short of her 100th birthday. "Not everyone has a reason to get out of bed, something they love to do and that gives their life meaning," she said. "I am so lucky that I have that."

The Dublin busker who became an Oscar-winning star

Glen Hansard could always draw a crowd. When the Irishman would stroll up to Dublin's Grafton Street, guitar slung across his back, other street musicians would cede their territory, knowing they couldn't compete. Happy to share the spotlight, he re-

Glen Hansard 1970-2026

cruited fellow buskers to found the Frames in 1990. A year

later, he accompanied a friend to an audition, was asked to read, and landed a part in The Commitments, a 1991 film about an Irish soul band that won four BAFTAs. While the exposure helped the Frames become a major force in Irish indie rock, Hansard didn't want to be an actor. But he gave it another go in 2007, starring in Once, a Dublin-set romance between two musicians. The song he co-wrote for it, "Falling Slowly," netted an Oscar. "After the ceremony," said Hansard, "I was so floored and blown away by the whole thing that I went and took a 40-block walk."

The Hazzard actor who served in Congress

Ben Jones 1941-2026

Ben Jones played up his appeal as a quintessential good ol' boy. Raised in a Vir-

ginia shack without electricity or running water, his distinctive drawl and toothy smile earned him bit parts in Southern-fried films like Smokey and the Bandit before he was cast as Cooter Davenport, the mechanic and loyal ally to the Duke brothers on the hit CBS series The Dukes of Hazzard. But Jones' TV fame was just one chapter of a picaresque life that included five marriages, two terms in Congress, and a run as the unofficial head of Dukes of Hazzard fandom. "You never know where the road goes," Jones said in 2008. "And neither does anybody else."

The son of an alcoholic railroad man, Benjamin Lewis Jones started drinking at 15, said The New York Times. Though he began acting soon after enrolling at the University of North Carolina in 1961, he didn't get far, grappling for years with his own alcohol addiction. In 1977, he woke up after a five-week bender, prayed for God's help, and, he said, never drank again. A year later came The Dukes of Hazzard, which made him "a household name," said Entertainment Weekly. Over the show's seven seasons, "Crazy" Cooter appeared in nearly every episode, evolving from "a hell-raising,

uncouth wild man" to "the series' heart." After the show ended, Jones went into politics. Though he joked he had "more skeletons in his closet than the Smithsonian," he won his 1988 race to represent Georgia in the House in a landslide. A raconteur with perfect comic timing, he was popular with fellow lawmakers and the press.

In Congress, Jones "kept his aw-shucks personality, but took the issues seriously," said the Associated Press. Socially liberal and economically conservative, he served as Democratic whip but lost his seat to redistricting after two terms. Soon he turned Dukes of Hazzard booster, touring with Cooter's Garage Band, opening museums in Virginia and Tennessee and hosting an annual festival that drew as many as 100,000 fans. He drew controversy for defending the Confederate flag—painted on the roof of the show's famous car—as what he called a "symbol of non-racist Southern spirit," and he insisted that "in Hazzard County, there was never any racism." Even in the wake of the racially motivated Charleston church massacre, Jones refused to stop selling Confederate-themed merch. "I will fight these people until hell freezes over," he said in 2015, "and then I will fight them on the ice."

Glen James Hansard was born in suburban Dublin, his childhood "made difficult by his father's drinking and occasional bouts of violence," said The Irish Times (Ireland). He found refuge in the guitar, learning songs by Bob Dylan and Van Morrison, and he quit school when "a teacher suggested he try busking on the streets." He "quickly became the uncrowned king" of Dublin's music scene, and when he died at 56 in a single-vehicle motorcycle crash, the whole city mourned.

Despite his fame, Hansard "never forgot his early roots," said The Guardian (U.K.). Every Christmas Eve he hosted "the Big Busk," a charity event that brought together several of Ireland's top musicians to perform outside, "near where he once used to sing on Grafton Street." Busking, he later said, was "a great leveler" that "sits at the core of everything I've done since."

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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36

The Last Word

MAGA loses a safe haven

Pro-Trump intellectuals and celebrities found a champion in Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, said Marc Felix Serrao in Politico. Will their nationalist alliance survive his defeat?

BUDAPEST—Not too long ago, Balazs Orban was one of the most powerful men in Hungary. The 40-year-old lawyer worked in the former prime minister's government and helped oversee Hungary's courtship of the American right. MAGA celebrities like Tucker Carlson and JD Vance made appearances at events sponsored by the institute he chaired, in some cases more than once.

This morning, however, he arrives alone to meet me. His government power is gone, and the institution he once chaired is fighting for survival. The former prime minister, Viktor Orban (no relation), was defeated in a landslide in April elections. In the months since, pressure has built not only on his own Fidesz party but also on an extensive web of think tanks, talent programs, and conferences that turned Budapest into a hub for the international right, especially MAGA adherents and pro-Trump intellectuals. One of those hubs, arguably the most influential, was the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), and Balazs Orban was its chairman.

MCC and the rest of the network really took off when President Trump was out of office after his first term and Hungary offered American conservatives a political role model and a welcoming base abroad, and it remained one after Trump returned to the White House in 2025. Now the MAGA-Hungary relationship faces a test of reciprocity: Will MAGA continue to support the Hungarian partners who stood by it in the political wilderness?

Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party were in power for 16 years, and the loss was not a narrow one. Peter Magyar's Tisza party won 141 of parliament's 199 seats, securing the two-thirds majority needed to amend the constitution. Recently, his government raided Fidesz party offices as part of what appears to be a corruption investigation.

"Hungary remains important for conservatives everywhere because we have developed a language and a way of governing that offers an alternative to the supranational and hyper-liberal mainstream," Balazs Orban says.

Trump first received Viktor Orban at the White House in 2019. Two years later, Carlson—then one of the most influential hosts on Fox News and now an independent

Balazs Orban offered MAGA a base in Hungary during the Biden years.

dent media entrepreneur whose foreign-policy views have moved sharply against the GOP establishment—took his TV show to Budapest for a week. On the first evening, with the illuminated city behind him, Carlson told his audience: "If you care about Western civilization and democracy and families, and the ferocious assault on all three of those things by the leaders of our global institutions, you should know what is happening here right now."

In 2022, the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, held the first of five annual gatherings in Budapest. By then, the Hungarian capital had become a regular base for a MAGA movement then out of power in Washington.

The MAGA-Hungary axis was unusual for its asymmetry. Hungary has a population just under 10 million and, in terms of economic and military power, is a minor American ally. For America's right, however, Orban seemed to be living proof that conservatives could do more than merely slow down progressive change. They could reorder a nation's institutions and cultural norms in their own image.

How did it begin? Matt Schlapp, the man who chairs both the American Conservative Union and the CPAC Foundation, says the initiative came from Hungary. Until then, he said, American media coverage had portrayed Orban as "a dictator, a fascist, an antisemite." After hearing the Hungarian side and speaking with members of Congress, he concluded that much of the reporting was politically skewed to the left. Bringing CPAC to

Budapest in 2022, and then for the next four years, Schlapp said, "was the right thing to do."

Where will the American-Hungarian conservative alliance go next? Rod Dreher, a 59-year-old conservative writer, used to be director of the Danube Institute's Network Project, which tried to bring American and European conservatives into closer contact. Dreher lived in Hungary until this spring. After Orban's loss, fearing the institute could be eliminated, and with his elderly mother ill, he moved back to what he calls his "cultural homeland," the American South.

Dreher praises Viktor Orban as "a statesman of true civilizational vision," but acknowledges that his regime had weaknesses. Vision, he argues, did not help Hungarian voters struggling with a stagnant economy. Orban had tolerated "far too much corruption and mismanagement," Dreher wrote me, and this helped bring him down even "with all the good things that he and his party accomplished." He nevertheless credits Hungary's former prime minister with building something real. "Orban was the keystone in the bridge connecting Trumpist American conservatives with European nationalists and sovereignist parties and leaders," he wrote. "Nobody did more than Orban's government to make that connection real."

ACROSS EUROPE NOW, closeness to Trump is no longer an obvious asset. Since he returned for a second term, the U.S. president has unsettled allies again and again, and even conservative governments have found that ideological sympathy does not spare them from public humiliation. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, once eager to cultivate Trump, has moved visibly away from him. Jordan Bardella, a leader of France's far-right National Rally party, emphasizes European strategic independence rather than alignment with Washington. And in Germany's Alternative for Germany, or AfD, early enthusiasm for MAGA's culture war energy has given way to a noticeable chill.

In fact, Trump's unpredictability and his perceived lack of respect for other sovereign nations have revived an older anti-Americanism that never fully disappeared

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

James Rummer 20

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The Last Word

37

on Europe's right. In that sense, Orban was not a trendsetter, but rather an exception.

MAGA figures did their best to help Orban remain in power. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Budapest in mid-February and strongly endorsed the bilateral relationship. Vice President JD Vance followed in April, five days before the election. But while MAGA could bless a foreign ally, it seems it could not persuade foreign voters.

In Budapest, I found the new Hungarian government of Peter Magyar uninterested in discussing the future of the MAGA-Hungarian alliance; they declined an interview request. So did the State Department in Washington. But Fidesz politicians were willing to engage. Janos Boka, a 47-year-old Hungarian lawyer and former minister for European Union affairs under Orban, expressed optimism about the future of his party's alliance with MAGA, which he says is not synonymous with Trump but part of a broader strategic turn in American politics, reflecting a lasting American retreat from the post-Cold War international order.

Asked whom he would like to see in the White House next, Boka answered without hesitation: JD Vance. At the Munich Security Conference in February 2025, Vance had delivered a widely criticized and unusually blunt attack on Europe's liberal elites. For Boka, the speech "could have been the manifesto of Patriots for Europe," the far-right faction Fidesz belongs to in the European Parliament.

Gergely Gulyas is a different kind of Fidesz figure. The 44-year-old constitutional lawyer and former minister sounded less like a MAGA admirer than a Central European conservative carefully calculating what remains after defeat. American support matters, Gulyas said, but only up to a point. "For Hungary, it cannot replace European partnerships." For Gulyas, Fidesz's defeat also has a personal edge. He and Peter Magyar were once friends, before Magyar broke with his former political camp and led Tisza against his old party.

For years, Orban's critics had described Hungary as well short of a proper democracy. The European Parliament called it a "hybrid regime of electoral autocracy." Yet, in April, when Fidesz lost, the result stood, and power changed hands. Whatever else Orban's system had become, it still had one core democratic feature: It could lose.

WHAT HAPPENS TO the infrastructure Orban's defeat leaves behind, the infrastructure that once propped MAGA up? It leads, above all, to the Mathias Corvinus Collegium.

Bence Bauer, the 46-year-old head of MCC's German-Hungarian Institute, is a fast talker who is practiced at explaining

Hungary to foreigners. We meet in the college cafeteria one evening in early July. On this day, nothing suggests that the lights could soon go out.

Three months earlier, during his pre-election visit to Hungary, Vance had also stopped at the college, where Balazs Orban received him in his capacity as chairman. The vice president charmed his hosts by hailing MCC as a rare academic institution devoted to preserving and strengthening the values of Western civilization.

MCC was started in 1996 by a wealthy conservative family as a private talent-development institution and named after Matthias Corvinus, the 15th-century Renaissance king who remains one of Hungary's most celebrated national heroes. Under Viktor Orban, however, it grew into something much larger and more powerful, helped by Hungary's so-called KEKVA system: public-interest asset management foundations created under Orban and endowed with public assets.

The new government has moved to dismantle non-university KEKVA foundations. Under the timetable published by the government, the foundation behind MCC was to be dissolved at the end of July. That does not mean that the college will disappear altogether, but its political and international weight would be radically reduced.

The onetime right-wing hub now faces defunding.

To Fidesz, the dismantling of MCC and other Orban-era institutions looks less like reform than a campaign prepared in advance. During our conversation, Balazs Orban points to a May policy brief from the official think tank of the center-right European People's Party that describes MCC and similar institutions as part of a transnational illiberal infrastructure and argues that Hungary's change of government offers the "first opportunity to dismantle" parts of it.

Boris Kalnoky also considers the new government's move against institutions such as MCC a severe blow. The 65-year-

old journalist and former correspondent for the German news organization WELT runs MCC's media school. "A crucial ingredient in building the international network was Hungarian intellectual initiative, and money to support it," he says. Yet he does not think the larger movement is dead. "Hungary helped initiate something," he says. "But the forces behind national conservatism in the West do not depend on Budapest: migration, distrust of elites, public insecurity, cultural change, and the feeling among voters that their societies were transformed without their consent." Then he adds: "You do not need Hungary for that."

But who do you need in Washington? In Fidesz circles, when people talk about the future of the transatlantic nationalist alliance, one name comes up again and again: JD Vance. Rubio is also respected, but those in Washington who best understand Europe and its national-conservative movement, Orban argues, tend to be closer to the vice president.

An international right is an awkward thing to build and sustain. Nationalists think in borders and sovereignty. This particular alliance worked not only because of the power dynamic at its center: Trump set the tone, and Orban was willing to accept the hierarchy. But the Hungarian prime minister had also stood by Trump during the Biden years, when he was out of office and politically vulnerable. That loyalty may have earned Fidesz extra credit with its American partners. But in politics, loyalty rarely outweighs defeat.

There is another complication: What holds nationalists together is less a shared doctrine than common enemies—mass migration, progressive culture, supranational courts, liberal universities, and the "legacy media." On big strategic questions, they often disagree sharply—today, for example, over Russia, Ukraine, Israel, trade policy, and inevitably the limits of American influence whenever their own national interests are at stake.

For his part, Schlapp thinks the alliance will persist. "We developed real friendships within the Orban government. Winning and losing doesn't affect our friendships." CPAC, he added, had never been about "just associating with power" but about ideas. He sees no reason for its work in Budapest to end "unless it turns into a dangerous legal situation to exercise our political views."

American conservatives can continue inviting former Fidesz officials and appearing at their events. What they can't replace is the Hungarian state power and wealth that helped build the network in the first place.

Adapted from an article originally published in Politico. Used with permission.

THE WEEK August 21, 2026

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38

The Puzzle Page

Crossword No. 853: Enclave Conclave by Matt Gaffney

ACROSS

1 Some are compact 6 Prefix with normal 10 "Hamiltons" 14 -ish 15 Much more than usual 16 Get better 17 These two Spanish enclaves in North Africa are at the center of a recent political crisis in the region 20 Tennis star Nishikori 21 Financial reporter Moynihan 22 Think piece 23 £ e.g. 25 Slow internet connection 26 This 15-acre home to a famous statue is technically an exclave; it belongs to New York state but is surrounded by the territorial waters of New Jersey 32 Piece of beef or concrete 34 Former gas station brand 35 Besmirch 36 Taylor Swift's "Dancing With _ Hands Tied" 37 This country, completely surrounded by South Africa, is one of the three enclave nations, Italy-surrounded Vatican City and San Marino are the others 40 Simile center, often 41 Part of USNA, briefly 42 At any point 43 Use your teeth on

44 The U.S. government sends Cuba an annual check for $4,085 as payment for this military exclave; the Cubans refuse to cash them 49 "My Party" 50 Facing troubles, old-school style 53 Bring dishonor to 56 Actor's gigs 58 Middle name of Sean Lennon 59 This 1.5-million acre territory is a rare double-enclave, surrounded entirely by the Navajo Nation, which is itself surrounded by Arizona 62 Abbr. in many job titles 63 Suffix with mal or spy 64 Laverne & Shirley role 65 "I can't believe this!" 66 James Bond's alma mater 67 Heads of France

DOWN

1 Sets of 52 2 Medium's opening line 3 Future calamari 4 Shout on a movie set 5 Underwater habitat created by the U.S. Navy 6 Play to the lowest common denominator 7 Discount grocery chain 8 City south of Venezia 9 Gobbled up 10 "_ do the trick" 11 Slippery folks 12 Simba's wife

13 Destroy, as dragons 18 Serving unlimited portions, in shorthand 19 To an even smaller degree 24 Lie told so as not to hurt someone's feelings, say 25 Gossip 27 Birch in American Beauty 28 So far 29 Whenever 30 Rocket launchers 31 Get sketchy? 32 Number 33 Party on the sand 37 Mu or M, say 38 Noblezada and Mendes, for two 39 Either of a pair from each st. 43 Pedal on the right 45 Eponym of a class of U.S. aircraft carriers 46 Helen with four BAFTA awards 47 Being broadcast 48 Volcanic rock 51 Football huddle specification 52 Stage honors 53 Carpet type 54 Kiddie pool filler 55 Curved architectural feature 56 H.S. exam 57 Dynamic start? 60 She may have a little lamb 61 Casual shirt

The Week Contest

This week's question: A police officer in New Jersey disguised himself as a roadside shrub to catch people texting or calling on handheld phones while driving—and snared 74 errant motorists in a six-hour shift. If Hollywood were to make a movie about this leaf-clad cop's undercover operation, what would it be titled?

Last week's contest: An Italian fraudster has been jailed for building a fake Roman amphitheater out of materials including fiberglass and papier-mâché—and then charging tourists $45 to visit it. In seven words or fewer, come up with an advertising slogan that would encourage sightseers to keep visiting this admittedly bogus attraction.

THE WINNER: "Don't miss Rome's newest antiquity!" Vivian Coyne, Arlington, Va.

SECOND PLACE: "Coliseum Lite: All mystery, no history" Nancy Abbott, Sonora, Calif.

THIRD PLACE: "Visit original Roman amphitheater, built in MMXXVI" —John Camillone, New Rochelle, N.Y.

For runners-up and complete contest rules, please go to theweek.com/contest.

How to enter: Submissions should be emailed to contest@theweek.com. Please include your name, address, and daytime telephone number for verification; this week, type "Shrub cop" in the subject line. Entries are due by noon, Eastern Time,

Tuesday, Aug. 18. Winners will appear on the Puzzle Page next issue and at theweek.com/contest on Friday, Aug. 21. In the case of identical or similar entries, the first one received gets credit.

◄ The winner gets a one-year subscription to The Week.

Sudoku

Fill in all the boxes so that each row, column, and outlined square includes all the numbers from 1 through 9.

Difficulty: medium

Find the solutions to all The Week's puzzles online at theweek.com/solutions

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制度与权力批判深度研判：The Week US (2026-08-21)

▌ 本日全报思想与文化深思雷达 (Intellectual & Cultural Significance Radar)

在系统通盘梳理本期报纸所涉及的报道后，以下 2 个具体事件在制度伦理与公共治理层面最值得学者进一步深思：

1. 司法部总检察长布兰奇的任命与司法独立性的张力 [F3_35, F3_37]

   • 事件简述：托德·布兰奇（Todd Blanche）正式就任美国司法部（DOJ）总检察长。其任命过程伴随着关于他是否能保持独立，而非成为总统政治报复工具的激烈争论，且涉及一个争议性的 18 亿美元“反武器化”基金及税务审计豁免协议。
   • 思想文化深思切入点：探讨法治（Rule of Law）中“程序正义”与“政治忠诚”的冲突，以及制度化权力在面对个人意志时的脆弱性。

2. 食品供应监管失效与公共卫生治理的危机 [F2_31, F2_32]

   • 事件简述：美国食品药品监督管理局（FDA）目前正调查 11 起活跃的寄生虫爆发病例，且在卫生部长小罗伯特·F·肯尼迪（Robert F. Kennedy Jr.）领导下，FDA 对供应美国大量新鲜果蔬的外国设施检查量跌至历史低点。
   • 思想文化深思切入点：分析行政权力在推动“真实食材”话语的同时，如何因监管能力的退化而导致生物政治（Biopolitics）层面的实际风险增加。

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▌ 精选核心专题深度思想论证 (In-Depth Dialectical Monograph)

专题一：从“法律防火墙”到“权力代理”：司法独立性的本体论危机

在当代美国政治的制度图景中，司法部的独立性曾被视为一种旨在将法律的普遍适用性与行政首长的个人意志隔离开来的“防火墙”。然而，托德·布兰奇（Todd Blanche）的就任 [F3_35 🔍] 将这一制度张力推向了临界点。现实的困境在于，布兰奇作为特朗普的前私人律师，其身份的重叠使得司法部在功能上陷入了严重的合法性质疑：一方面是维持法治信誉的制度义务，另一方面是外界对其可能将司法部视为“政治报复工具”的担忧 [F3_36 🔍]。

更为深层的是，布兰奇在晋升过程中涉及的“反武器化”基金——该基金被广泛嘲讽为盟友的秘密资金——以及给予特朗普及其家属免于税务审计的协议 [F3_37 🔍]，揭示了一种权力拟态。尽管布兰奇提供了关于基金被“撤销”的书面保证以换取参议院的批准 [F3_37 🔍]，但这种通过个别承诺来弥合制度裂痕的做法，实际上触及了哈贝马斯（Jürgen Habermas）关于“系统殖民生活世界”的论述：法律这一旨在实现社会公正的媒介，在此时被纯粹的权力操纵逻辑所利用。当法律的执行者与被执行者之间存在深层的私人代理关系时，司法部便面临从公共权力机构异化为私人代理机构的风险。

专题二：生物政治的悖论：监管退化与“自然”话语的冲突

当前美国公共卫生治理呈现出一种深刻的矛盾：一方面是卫生部长小罗伯特·F·肯尼迪（Robert F. Kennedy Jr.）试图推广基于新鲜食品和“真实”食材的烹饪节目 [F2_32 🔍]，试图构建一种回归自然的健康话语；另一方面，支撑这一话语的底层监管体系却在迅速坍塌。FDA 对外国设施的检查量跌至历史低点 [F2_32 🔍]，而现实中却出现了 11 起活跃的寄生虫爆发病例，涉及从香菜到软奶等多种食品 [F2_31 🔍]。

这种现象精准地契合了福柯（Michel Foucault）关于生物权力（Biopower）的分析。权力不再仅仅是通过禁令来实施，而是通过定义什么是“健康”和“真实”来管理人口。然而，当行政权力通过操纵话语（如强调“真实食材”）来获取政治认同，却在实质性的生物安全监管（如 FDA 检查）上出现缺位时，一种危险的“认知脱节”便产生了。公众被引导去追求一种理想化的“自然状态”，但其实际消费的食品供应却处于历史最低的监管水平 [F2_32 🔍]。这揭示了后真相时代治理的一个核心危机：当政治话语对“健康”的定义脱离了科学监管的实操支撑，生物权力不仅无法保护公民，反而可能通过制造监管真空，将人口置于更深层的生物学脆弱之中。

---

▌ 面向学者的开放性思想追问与研究路标 (Open Horizons for Scholarly Inquiry)

1. 【制度韧性与权力拟态研究】：当一个民主制度中的关键监督机构在形式上维持所有法定程序（如参议院投票批准 [F3_36 🔍]），但在实质上被质疑由个人忠诚驱动时，我们应如何重新定义“制度崩溃”？
2. 【后真相时代的公共卫生治理】：在“自然/真实”话语与“监管退化”并存的背景下，国家如何平衡政治叙事与生物安全底线？当行政首长通过文化产品（如烹饪节目 [F2_32 🔍]）重塑健康认知时，这种软权力如何影响公众对实际公共卫生危机（如寄生虫爆发 [F2_31 🔍]）的感知？

理性与情感辩证深度研判：The Week US (2026-08-21)

▌ 本日全报生活世界痛感与情感政治深思雷达 (Lifeworld & Affective Significance Radar)

在系统通盘梳理本期报纸所涉及的所有报道后，以下 3 个具体事件在生活世界痛感、情感政治动员与制度理性冲突层面最值得学者进一步深思：

1. 【托德·布兰奇接管美国司法部（DOJ）】 [F3_35, F3_37]

   • 事件简述：特朗普前私人律师托德·布兰奇（Todd Blanche）宣誓就任总检察长。其任命过程伴随着关于司法独立性的激烈争论，且涉及一个被嘲讽为“秘密资金”的18亿美元“反武器化”基金及税务审计豁免协议。
   • 情感政治与伦理深思切入点：法治的“程序理性”与“忠诚政治”的正面冲突。当司法部被质疑为政治报复工具时，社会契约中的信任机制面临解构，揭示了权力依附逻辑如何试图取代法律中立逻辑。

2. 【美国食品供应安全与监管失效】 [F2_31, F2_32]

   • 事件简述：美国出现多起寄生虫爆发及沙门氏菌召回事件，而卫生部长小罗伯特·F·肯尼迪（Robert F. Kennedy Jr.）在FDA对外国设施检查跌至历史低点的情况下，推出基于新鲜食品的烹饪节目。
   • 情感政治与伦理深思切入点：制度端的“宣传理性”与生活世界的“肉身痛感”之间的断裂。政府通过推广“真实食材”的文化叙事，掩盖了监管缺失导致的公共卫生危机，形成了一种极具讽刺意味的认知失调。

3. 【坦桑石的稀缺性与商业叙事】 [F1_10, F1_11]

   • 事件简述：Stauer公司通过强调坦桑石比钻石稀有1,000倍、矿藏迅速枯竭以及其作为“世纪之石”的唯一性，推销高价值珠宝。
   • 情感政治与伦理深思切入点：地质时间的“有限性”被转化为商业层面的“紧迫感”。这是一种典型的将自然科学事实（地质稀缺）转化为消费主义情感（拥有欲与阶级认同）的理性操纵。

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▌ 精选核心专题理性与情感辩证论证 (The Dialectic of Logos and Pathos Monograph)

专题一：司法中立性的坍塌与“忠诚逻辑”对法治理性的替代

美国司法部（DOJ）的权力运作原本应基于一套严密的法律程序理性（Logos），其核心在于建立一道将政治意志与执法权力隔离开的防火墙。然而，托德·布兰奇的就任 [F3_35 🔍] 标志着这种理性架构的严重危机。从制度架构分析，布兰奇的任命并非简单的职能更替，而是一场关于“独立性”与“听命于总统”的权力博弈。一个极具讽刺意味的细节是，一个在修辞上被冠以“反武器化”之名的18亿美元基金 [F3_37 🔍]，在实际运作中被广泛嘲讽为奖励忠诚者的“秘密资金”，且伴随着给予特朗普及其家属免于税务审计的协议。这种将法律术语（如“和解条款”、“书面保证”）作为掩护的治理方式，实际上是将司法理性工具化，使其沦为政治意志的执行仪器。

在这种制度理性的异化之下，生活世界中产生的是一种深层的制度不安全感。当参议院以 50 比 49 的极窄差距批准任命 [F3_36 🔍]，且部分共和党人（如约翰·科宁和汤姆·蒂利斯）曾对此表示阻碍 [F3_37 🔍] 时，法律的预见性被政治的波动性所取代。这种 Logos 与 Pathos 的摩擦在于：制度端试图用“撤销基金”的书面保证来维持程序正义的表象，但公众感知到的是一种基于权力等级的“忠诚政治”对“法律面前人人平等”这一理性共识的侵蚀。司法部的异化不仅是人事变动，它标志着民主社会中最重要的理性锚点——司法独立——正在被一种排他性的政治认同所替代。

专题二：公共卫生监管的失能与“真实食材”叙事的认知掩盖

在当前的美国食品安全治理中，我们观察到一种危险的认知断裂：技术官僚的监管理性（Logos）在失效的同时，被一种基于生活方式的“情感叙事”所掩盖。从事实层面看，美国食品药品监督管理局（FDA）对供应美国大部分新鲜果蔬的外国设施检查已跌至历史低点 [F2_32 🔍]，而现实生活世界中则充斥着沙门氏菌召回、李斯特菌爆发以及11起活跃的寄生虫爆发病例 [F2_31 🔍]。这种监管理性的坍塌直接导致了民众在面对日常饮食时的焦虑与不信任。

然而，在这种肉身痛感（Pathos）的背景下，卫生部长小罗伯特·F·肯尼迪推出的基于新鲜食品和“真实”食材的烹饪节目 [F2_32 🔍]，构成了一种极具误导性的“伪理性”动员。该节目试图通过构建一种关于“纯净饮食”和“自然回归”的温情叙事，将公众的注意力从“监管失效”这一制度性问题，转移到“食材选择”这一个体行为问题上。这里存在着剧烈的辩证摩擦：政府在制度端削弱了确保食品安全的理性检查机制，却在文化端强化了对“新鲜食品”的情感推崇。

这种温度差揭示了当代治理的一种异化：权力不再通过提供实质性的安全保障来获得合法性，而是通过制造一种关于“健康生活”的幻象来对冲监管失败带来的社会不满。当民众在囤积易莫停（Imodium）以应对潜在感染时 [F2_32 🔍]，官方却在推销烹饪节目。这种认知失调导致了社会心理韧性的削弱，因为生活世界最底层的生存安全感被转化为一种政治表演的背景板。

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▌ 面向学者的伦理与社会心理开放性追问与研究路标 (Open Horizons for Ethical & Sociological Inquiry)

1. 【关于“叙事掩盖”机制的研究】：探讨政治权力如何通过推广某种“理想生活方式”（如真实食材饮食）来掩盖制度性监管失效（如FDA检查率下降）的认知心理机制。
2. 【司法工具化后的社会信任重建】：在司法部被视为“政治报复工具”的认知环境下，法律的权威性如何从“制度信任”转向“个体博弈”，以及这种转向对社会契约的长期影响。
3. 【稀缺性操纵与消费心理分析】：研究商业叙事如何将地质学上的稀缺事实（如坦桑石的单一产地 [F1_10 🔍]）转化为一种紧迫的消费焦虑，分析这种“科学事实 $\rightarrow$ 情感驱动 $\rightarrow$ 商业变现”的逻辑链条。