◼ By agreeing to meet Vladimir Putin in Alaska, Trump is betting on his self-proclaimed skills as a master negotiator. But to negotiate what? The White House has been downplaying the possibility of a dramatic breakthrough. Our Europeans allies and the Ukrainians are understandably concerned that Trump could agree to a deal with Kyiv absent from the table. Putin hopes that weapons-grade presidential flattery and economic inducements could move the United States into neutrality. Trump wants a cease-fire, both for the short-term political benefits the headlines would bring and for humanitarian reasons. But the president must remember his own dictum: The willingness to walk away from a bad deal is the key to getting a good one.

◼ Inflation remains above 2 percent, with the latest consumer price index report registering 2.7 percent over the previous year and 3.1 percent when excluding food and energy. The latest producer price index report also came in much higher than expected. Polling shows that Trump is now underwater on inflation, an issue that propelled him to victory last year. The voters’ instincts aren’t wrong. Though tariffs may not cause economy-wide inflation, they do raise prices for goods to which they apply, and voters are unlikely to parse the difference in economic definitions. This makes the administration’s constant call for interest rate cuts even more puzzling. Unless Modern Monetary Theory is now regnant in the White House, it should know that lower rates would contribute to higher inflation. What is Trump’s plan to lower prices? We have an idea: Call off the trade war and the Fed war and continue to deregulate while the fruits of the tax law ripen.

◼ For Trump to suggest that Goldman Sachs’ CEO should “go out and get himself a new economist” would raise some eyebrows at the best of times. But, coming so shortly after the firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, it compounded the perception that the president not only cannot deal with bad news, but would prefer that bad news be somehow made to vanish. This perception could prove pricey for Uncle Sam in the bond markets. Trump never gave the name of the individual he wanted to see replaced, but it can safely be assumed to have been Jan Hatzius, Goldman’s chief economist. Hatzius and his team recently concluded that U.S. consumers had so far “only” borne the cost of about 22 percent of the Trump tariff hikes but that, based on precedent, their share of the tab would eventually rise to two-thirds. Hatzius works for a private company, not the government, a distinction the White House would do well to respect, and not just when it comes to investment banks.

◼ Trump has nominated Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Stephen Miran for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors seat being vacated by Adriana Kugler. The term lasts only until January 31, at which point Miran or someone else will need to be nominated again. Miran has proved adept at winning Trump’s favor, writing a contrived case for tariffs in November 2024 that he has since said is not the administration’s policy. (In the same paper, Miran advanced a dubious rationale for a weaker dollar.) Miran earned a Ph.D. in economics under the legendary Martin Feldstein at Harvard, so he knows better when he says things such as “I think the President’s correct” that reducing the trade deficit means saving money, as he did in a New York Times interview earlier this year. The Senate should examine whether “I think the President’s correct” is Miran’s personal motto, since it is not suitable for anyone who must be willing to say “no” to the president’s incessant demands for enormous interest rate cuts.

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◼ As if New Jersey couldn’t get any worse. This summer, residents of the Garden State have seen their power bills surge as demand for electricity has outstripped supply. New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities was forced to approve a 17 to 20 percent increase in rates as wholesale prices spiked. Such price hikes are the predictable consequence of prioritizing fanciful green energy goals over proven sources of reliable power. As New Jersey policymakers retired natural gas plants and phased out coal-fired power entirely, they promised that new renewable projects would fill the gap. But that plan hasn’t panned out. Electricity generation capacity has fallen by 12 percent since 2016, and New Jersey has become increasingly dependent on power from outside the state. Unfortunately, it shares a transmission system with other blue states that boast similarly stringent climate policies. The region’s grid operator, PJM Interconnection, has added new generating capacity at a glacial pace, costing customers $7 billion this year, according to one report. Even before its most recent rate increase, New Jersey suffered the twelfth-highest electricity costs in the nation. The rest of the Northeast isn’t faring much better. In this year’s gubernatorial race, Republican Jack Ciattarelli has made growing the electricity supply a top issue in his bid to replace Democratic incumbent Phil Murphy. Perhaps furious ratepayers will power him to victory.

◼ President Trump deployed federal manpower to Washington, D.C., this week to fight crime. Critics of Trump’s plan say that falling crime rates in the District make federal intervention unnecessary. Such rates have declined since their Covid-era spike, but D.C. is still rife with gang violence, juvenile delinquency, looters, and more. Just ask the group of protesters who gathered in Northwest D.C. on Monday night to “resist” Trump’s federal takeover of D.C.: A man was shot and killed blocks away from, and during, the protest. Democratic mayors in America’s major cities have decried Trump’s efforts to rid D.C. of crime; Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the crackdown a distraction; House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said that the White House is “the most damaging crime scene in D.C.” Trump’s federalization of D.C. was spurred by a series of recent and all-too common assaults. Bad as those are, D.C.’s crime problem is worst in the neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River, rarely frequented by tourists; any long-term, serious solution to D.C.’s crime problem will have to address it there—which it should, for the sake of those who live there. The nation’s capital could be a national treasure if properly policed.

◼ The good news is Scotland has backed off harassing a grandmother who stood outside abortion clinics with a sign reading: “Coercion is a crime, here to talk if you want.” The bad news is the U.K. has launched a third investigation into a pro-life activist and charity worker who silently prayed near abortion facilities—essentially, a thought crime. This, in a land that is slouching toward decriminalizing abortion and legalizing Medical Aid in Dying (to use the current preferred euphemism), suggests a suicide of life and liberty underway. So Scottish pro-life grandmothers: Still beware. Bravo to Alliance Defending Freedom for both drawing attention to these cases and representing those involved in them. But it’s a testament to Scotland’s moral decline that such action is even necessary.

◼ And speaking of harassment: The Little Sisters of the Poor this week lost in a federal district court. That’s right: Despite a 7–2 Supreme Court win five years ago, the Catholic nuns are back in court because the Democratic Party—in this case, in Pennsylvania and New Jersey—can’t help itself. The Becket Fund is defending the nuns on appeal, and there is no reason to believe they will lose if they must go another round at the Supreme Court. But infringements on religious liberty don’t get much more basic than this same-old Obamacare mandate for covering contraception and abortion-inducing drugs the Sisters have been fighting for 14 years now: a mandate that, by the way, Congress never enacted.

◼ It will surprise younger Americans to learn that, in the early days of the World Wide Web, the price of admission to the internet was 20 or so seconds of aural torture. Imagine, if you will, the most unpleasant noise you have ever heard: The screeching of a banshee, mixed with intermittent radio static, combined with the sound that one imagines R2-D2 would make if he were taken to a basement and hooked up to a car battery. For years, that was what one heard every time one went online. When, in the early 2000s, broadband came along, it felt like the guns falling silent on Armistice Day. The reason for the din was simple: Despite an explosion in demand for the internet and its services, most of the world did not yet have the ubiquitous cables that are necessary for it to work. And so, temporarily, its users utilized the ones they had. “Dial-up” was just that: the repurposing of old-fashioned telephone lines into data-transmission conduits. The noise, alas, was unavoidable. This week, AOL announced that it would finally be closing its dial-up service, more than 30 years since it debuted. In 2000, the company had 30 million dial-up customers; today, it has slightly more than 160,000. “Nothing ever happens,” say the declinists. Come now.

◼ Born in Cleveland, Jim Lovell built his first rocket at 16. After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1952 and service in the Pacific, he enrolled in a test pilot training course at the Naval Test Center. He finished at the top of his class. His experience made him a natural astronaut candidate; he participated in both the Gemini and Apollo programs. On the Apollo 8 mission, he was part of the first crew to orbit the moon, positioning the craft such that crew member William Anders could capture the iconic “Earthrise” photo of our planet floating above the lunar surface. Lovell preferred Apollo 8 to his harrowing experience on Apollo 13 in 1970. It was Lovell who reported back, upon discovering that the lunar module had been compromised (by an explosion from a damaged oxygen tank, it was later learned), to mission control in Houston that “we’ve had a problem.” The crew of Apollo 13, commanded by Lovell, went about solving it, miraculously returning safely to Earth. In 1973, he retired from the Navy and NASA (he briefly was in charge of Houston), then proceeded to have a fairly down-to-earth life for one of the select few to leave Earth. To provide for his wife, Marilyn, (who died in 2023) and their four children, he worked in the telecommunications industry and ran a Chicago-area restaurant. An ordinary life is itself a meaningful accomplishment. But Lovell’s extraordinary deeds shouldn’t—and won’t—be forgotten. Dead at 97. Mission complete.