◼ The blockage of the Strait of Hormuz continues to constrain the global oil supply. The gyrations in the price of oil since the opening of hostilities in the Persian Gulf have been bad enough, but more alarming is the fact that, however deep the dips, oil is still much more expensive than a year ago. The news may be about to get much worse. As American drivers and air travelers are already discovering, higher prices cannot be avoided. This will be grim news for the economy and, with midterm elections approaching, the GOP. As a major oil producer, however, the U.S. should mostly avoid any reruns of 1970s-style gas lines. There is a serious threat of oil shortages only in parts of the country, most notably California, which lack refining capacity largely due to absurdly stringent environmental regulation. They will receive a hard lesson, and not learn from it.

◼ President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would pull 5,000 troops out of Germany. The motive for doing so was to punish Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz for tactlessly remarking, to a group of high school students, that America is being “humiliated” by Iran. But that does not excuse Trump’s foolish response. Even if Trump doesn’t deliver on his threat, he has now chipped the credibility of the American deterrent just a little bit more. He should also keep in mind that the U.S. bases in Germany are useful whenever there’s trouble in the Middle East—such as now. With the Gulf in turmoil, plenty of recent or potential U.S. allies in that region will be watching very carefully to see how reliable a friend America can be. Meanwhile, Merz should consider reconciling with Trump by lending his support to the effort to take on Iran. And he should do so quickly.

◼ The Department of Homeland Security resumed full operations following the end of a 76-day funding lapse, the longest shutdown of a federal department in U.S. history. More than 100,000 DHS employees had either been furloughed or had to work without receiving timely pay. When asked on CNN whether there could be another shutdown and another lapse in pay for TSA workers, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, Bennie Thompson, responded, “Absolutely . . . we have to stand for democracy.” Democrats remain convinced that shutting down the government is smart politics because the public will always blame Republicans. There’s not much evidence that this shutdown hurt anyone other than select federal workers and the public.

◼ Last year, Trump’s allies spent months lobbying Indiana state legislators to support a new congressional map that would eliminate every Democratic seat in the state ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. But a considerable number of GOP lawmakers said voters in their districts saw the administration’s unusual mid-decade redistricting effort as unfair. Twenty-one Republican state senators joined all ten state legislative Democrats in voting against the new map, leaving the final tally at 31 opposed and only 19 Republicans in favor, a stunning rebuke to the president. Trump vowed revenge, and this week he got it. Trump-backed challengers handily defeated at least five of seven state senators who had opposed the redistricting. At this writing, the other two races are too close to call. The mentality of mid-decade redistricting for partisan advantage now resembles the mutually assured destruction doctrine of the Cold War: Texas Republicans did it, so California Democrats felt they had no choice but to respond. Virginia Democrats did it, so Florida Republicans felt they had no choice but to respond. Life is great if you’re an incumbent. As long as you don’t cross your party’s leaders.

◼ Governor Janet Mills dropped out of Maine’s Senate primary, effectively yielding the Democratic nomination to radical upstart Graham Platner. An activist, Marine veteran, and oyster farmer, Platner was barely known when he launched his campaign last August. He garnered national attention when it was revealed that he had a Nazi symbol tattooed on his chest. Platner claimed to be ignorant of its origins, but he had dabbled in antisemitism elsewhere. He supports a wealth tax, single-payer health care, and packing the Supreme Court. And his candidacy may be a sign of things to come. It’s a mistake to assume that by nominating Platner, Democrats are necessarily throwing away a Senate seat. Mills, a 78-year-old with a poor record as governor, wasn’t obviously a stronger general election candidate. The reality is that wave elections, which Republicans could be facing this year, often sweep in candidates once thought unelectable. Sometimes such candidates better channel an anti-incumbent mood than do more generic figures. Republicans can at least take comfort in the fact that their opponents are offering plenty of negative ad fodder.

◼ Baltimore recorded just four homicides in April, the lowest number since tracking began in 1970. This comes amid a broader decline of violence and criminality in the city. Homicides fell 61 percent between 2015 and 2025. Robberies decreased by 46 percent in the same time period after reaching a peak in 2017. As we’ve seen in other blue cities, dumping soft-on-crime prosecutors—in Baltimore’s case, Marilyn Mosby—and putting criminals behind bars gets results. In 2022, Baltimore initiated its “Group Violence Reduction Strategy” in collaboration with the state’s attorney general’s office. This program focuses on removing the worst repeat violent offenders from the streets and directing resources toward those most at risk of gun violence. This approach has not only proven effective; it has won support and cooperation from the communities most affected. Mayor Brandon Scott also deserves credit for reducing the number of vacant houses from 16,000 to fewer than 12,000 since his election. It all goes to show that progressive jurisdictions needn’t tolerate high levels of crime, if they are willing to jettison self-defeating permissiveness and lock up criminals.

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◼ One of the most indefatigable clichés in politics is that rich people don’t pay their “fair share.” Progressives are again arguing that justice requires confiscating wealth. The problem is that, however “fair share” is defined, the wealthiest Americans already pay it. In 2023, the top 1 percent earned 21 percent of adjusted gross income but paid 38 percent of federal income taxes. The bottom half paid just 3 percent. The average top 1 percent taxpayer paid $538,000, not only because the rich earn more, but because they pay higher effective rates: 26.3 percent, compared with 14 percent for all taxpayers and under 4 percent for the bottom half. This dependence on the wealthy has only grown. The lower 90 percent’s share of income-tax receipts has fallen from about half in the 1980s to 29 percent today. Including payroll and corporate taxes does not alter the picture: High earners still pay far more. Progressives’ complaint is not really about revenue, but the supposed illegitimacy of wealth itself. But lawful fortunes are made by creating value for others through talent, investment, and innovation, not stealing. In a free society, government should tax its citizens only as much as necessary. The rich already exceed that obligation.

◼ Trump ordered the Treasury Department to create a website marketing low-cost individual retirement accounts. The government would act as a broker of sorts, with accounts offered by private financial institutions. It’s unclear why the website is necessary. Any American can already open an IRA and make tax-deductible contributions. To sweeten the deal, Trump would have the government chip in $1,000 for enrollees making less than $35,000 per year via a tax credit enacted years ago. The aim is to encourage more workers to sign up for retirement accounts to build wealth, but most adults already have retirement plans sponsored by their employers. Fewer low-income workers have chosen to make retirement contributions in recent years, not because they lack the option but because inflation has strained their budgets. Trump’s new mini-entitlement is modest, for now, but progressives could expand it in the future to crowd out private savings arrangements and establish government oversight of investment decisions. A better path to encourage savings would be to consolidate tax-advantaged plans into a universal savings account, or to ease fiduciary regulations on sponsors—no taxpayer subsidies required.

◼ The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the New York Times for allegedly passing over a white male employee for a promotion and instead hiring a less qualified non-white female candidate. The publication rejects any assertion that it practices race-based hiring. The EEOC, however, cites a 2021 “Call to Action” policy of the Times, in which the paper announced its commitment to hiring more non-white and female employees. Perhaps the Times could have more convincingly disclaimed alleged discriminatory hiring practices if its editorial page hadn’t long endorsed them.

◼ The abortion pill is back at the Supreme Court. Two years ago, the Court threw out challenges to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the pill—and to successive Democratic administrations’ rules that watered down safeguards for dispensing it—on the grounds that pro-life doctors lacked standing to sue. Now, Louisiana is more narrowly challenging the Biden FDA’s 2023 decision to eliminate in-person doctor visits as a requirement for obtaining the pill, noting that the state’s Medicaid program spent $92,000 in 2025 on emergency care for women who had complications caused by out-of-state-supplied mifepristone. The Trump FDA admits that its Biden-era predecessor adopted the 2023 rule without studying its impact. Yet the Trump administration, eager to extricate itself from abortion issues, says the old rule should stay in place during an indefinite study period. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t buy this; it found the 2023 rule to be “a textbook example of arbitrary and capricious agency action.” The pill manufacturers went immediately to the Supreme Court. The Court should tell the FDA to do its homework before it exercises its powers—a step the administration should have had the courage to take.

◼ Amsterdam has banned advertising for meat, airlines, and combustion-engine cars. The justification for this censorship is—what a surprise—climate change. Advertising that encourages consumption responsible for high greenhouse gas emissions supposedly threatens the health of the planet. But while campaigns such as Amsterdam’s will do nothing for global temperatures, they do serve two useful functions. For one, they make clear that climate extremism and free speech are incompatible. Secondly, they highlight the direction that climate policy will take. One way or another, it will involve restricting the supply of the offending items. Eat your burgers while you can.

◼ Rudolph Giuliani, 81, was hospitalized with pneumonia. Fortunately, his condition has improved. A spokesman says that Giuliani’s respiratory trouble is related to his exposure to toxins at Ground Zero in 2001. The years since the 2020 election have been hard on Giuliani, in good part because of his own doing. He has faced financially ruinous lawsuits, pursuit by prosecutors and the bar, and damage to his once towering reputation. But none of that should eclipse his huge accomplishments as a federal prosecutor and mayor of New York. We extend our best wishes for his recovery.

◼ Media mogul Ted Turner was a pioneering figure in television. He amassed a regional network of stations during the ’70s in the South that would become the nucleus of the Turner Broadcasting System. But Turner’s ambitions were not confined to mere entertainment: he created CNN, the first 24-hour news channel, which revolutionized the media landscape. “Hurricane Ted” loomed large over the ’80s and ’90s, a man of many eccentricities, follies, and brilliant ideas. He bought the badly run Atlanta Braves franchise and turned them into a baseball powerhouse. He founded World Championship Wrestling and Turner Classic Movies. And while his environmental activism—via Captain Planet—may be responsible for traumatizing a generation of children, he is also the man who ensured that 1993’s Gettysburg was made. Dead at 87. R.I.P.