◼ President Donald Trump concluded his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping amicably, though they made little progress reconciling their nations’ strategic interests. China remains America’s chief adversary across several domains. Yet Trump treated Xi more like a troublesome friend than an enemy. Tariffs were discussed, but not revised. Trump reportedly raised the issue of Jimmy Lai’s imprisonment but failed to make headway. The technology executives who accompanied Trump retained their access to Chinese markets. Most alarmingly, Trump indicated that he had spoken with Xi about whether he would approve arms sales to Taiwan, calling his decision on the matter a “negotiating chip.” To give Beijing any say on security assistance to Taiwan would be a dangerous departure from long-standing U.S. policy. On the bright side, Trump refused to promise not to defend Taiwan when Xi asked, upholding strategic ambiguity. Unsurprisingly, just four days later, Russian President Vladimir Putin enjoyed an even warmer reception when he arrived in Beijing to meet with Xi. One friendly summit with each autocrat is enough for us.

◼ Crossing Trump remains profoundly dangerous for elected Republicans of any ideological profile. That’s the lesson of this primary season, from Louisiana Republicans dumping Senator Bill Cassidy to the mass purge of Indiana state senators who voted against a Trump-backed gerrymander. Cassidy, unforgiven for voting to convict Trump in the post–January 6 impeachment, received no credit for compromising his pro-vaccine and pro-life beliefs to throw crucial support behind the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Now, Trump is targeting a member of Senate leadership by backing scandal-plagued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in his runoff against incumbent John Cornyn. None of this will help Republicans this fall. But it does show that Trump’s grip on Republican primary voters remains as strong as ever.

◼ Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie had crossed Trump enough times for the president to make defeating him a priority. On some issues, such as his opposition to tariffs and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Massie’s stances could be defended on libertarian principles. But he also became a thorn in the side of Trump by pushing unfounded conspiracy theories revolving around Jeffrey Epstein. He led a push to force the Department of Justice to release files from its investigation of the deceased child sex offender, which unfairly tarnished people merely mentioned in the files while revealing nothing to support the representative’s lurid theories. Massie took it further by deliberately smearing innocent people. This disgraceful escapade alone meant he deserved to lose. Massie was also rabidly and obsessively anti-Israel. While it’s always dangerous to overinterpret the result of a single primary, Massie’s defeat certainly cuts against the idea that there is a large, real-world market for his brand of conspiratorial right-wing populism and isolationism.

◼ Trump, along with his elder sons and the Trump Organization, sued the Internal Revenue Service (which is controlled by Trump) over the leaking of his tax information. That misconduct was criminal but not worth anything near the $10 billion Trump claimed in damages. There were settlement negotiations with the Justice Department (which is also controlled by Trump) until an Obama-appointed judge questioned whether the suit’s collusive nature barred the court from approving any deal. At that point, the president and his DOJ pivoted. They claimed the matter was being dropped, with a settlement providing merely for an apology from the IRS but no financial compensation. But there was a wrinkle: The DOJ and IRS would approve a slush fund—labeled the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and endowed with $1.776 billion (in “honor” of America’s 250th anniversary)—to be doled out to Trump allies, such as the Capitol rioters whom the president has already pardoned, as compensation for the Biden DOJ’s politicized prosecutions. Then the fine print: Trump’s acting attorney general, Todd Blanche—his former private attorney, who should be recused from representing the government in legal matters involving his former client—quietly granted the Trumps immunity from future IRS audits and prosecutions for all past behavior. Potentially, that shields them from $100 million reportedly at issue over accounting irregularities related to losses in their private business. A staggering abuse of power.

◼ The Trump administration is at war with the media over coverage of the war in Iran. Ostensibly, it’s a leak investigation: Before Trump ordered the aerial bombardment that began on February 28, the Wall Street Journal, Axios, and the Washington Post reported on White House deliberations about whether to proceed, citing unnamed sources. Days later, the Justice Department issued subpoenas to the reporters. There is no “reporter’s privilege.” Under the First Amendment, the press may not be subject to prior restraints on publication. But journalists can be investigated, civilly sued, or even prosecuted if what they publish violates laws, including those criminalizing the dissemination of classified information. Efforts to enact a “shield law” protecting reporters from revealing sources have foundered. In part, that’s because the DOJ generally honors internal rules against coercing such information except as a last resort in crucial cases. Here, the DOJ issued subpoenas even though the risks of war with Iran were well known, the reporting revealed nothing new, and Trump himself on social media was threatening to attack. What evidently upsets the president is the reporters’ accounts of U.S. military officials’ pre-invasion warnings that Iran might retaliate by closing the Strait of Hormuz and bombing America’s Arab allies—probabilities that he discounted.

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◼ Long Island Rail Road workers in New York City went on strike as their union representatives demanded higher pay from the state’s transportation agency. They walked off the job for three days, leaving hundreds of thousands of daily commuters stranded. Governor Kathy Hochul folded quickly, giving the unions their raises to restore service. She didn’t suffer a great loss. For Hochul, a Democrat in New York, public sector union members are a core constituency. Paying them off should help her chances in this year’s election, especially if the unions spend some of their gains on her campaign. The cycle of union-backed politicians’ approving union pay bumps has already made members quite comfortable. Striking workers make more than $135,000 on average, and closer to $200,000 when their lavish benefits are included. This episode further demonstrates why public sector unions should not exist—and certainly should not be permitted to strike. They negotiate not against private shareholders constrained by market forces but against government officials who can spend the public’s money. Commuters and taxpayers are left with the bill.

◼ The Supreme Court has regrettably followed the Trump administration’s lead on the abortion pill mifepristone. In 2023, the FDA allowed the pill to be dispensed without requiring that patients consult their doctor in person. Since then, many women who have taken the pill unsupervised have been hospitalized, and some of them have died. In a lawsuit by Louisiana, the Fifth Circuit stayed the rule and restored the pre-2023 status quo, noting that the Trump FDA had essentially conceded that the Biden rule lacked an adequate basis in medical studies. The Court restored the rule while appeals are in progress. Only Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented. They observed that preventing Louisiana from enforcing its own laws is an offense to federalism. Thomas added that the FDA is also enabling federal crime, given that it is illegal to mail mifepristone. Their colleagues should have listened.

◼ Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 was the gloomiest of the four main scenarios prepared for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2014. Each “pathway” described what was thought would happen if greenhouse gases reached a certain concentration in the atmosphere. RCP8.5 projected a “likely” increase in mean global surface temperature by 2100 of 2.6–4.8°C, with a mean of 3.7°C, a large-scale increase. RCP8.5 was always posited as an extreme scenario, but alarmist advocates and journalists often portrayed it as a baseline. Now, this trajectory has been deemed “implausible” by the committee responsible for setting out the scenarios for the next IPCC assessment. There’s nothing wrong with finding that a forecast doesn’t measure up. But for years, the forecasts in RCP8.5 were described not as outliers but as the planet’s inevitable destination if humanity didn’t adopt a radical course correction. A vast horde of activists, rent-seekers, academics, journalists, and politicians seized on this out-of-date and flawed hypothetical to pursue an extreme climate agenda. If the downgrading of RCP8.5 changes that, we will be delighted, but we suspect that we will be disappointed. Apocalyptic climate scenarios are too useful to the left to be abandoned easily—whether what they call “the science” supports them or not.

◼ While alleged murderer Luigi Mangione appeared in a Manhattan court for a pretrial hearing, a trio of self-proclaimed “Mangionistas” gathered outside. The women—Abril Rios, Ashley Rojas, and Lena Weissbrot—who inexplicably had press credentials, defended Mangione and equated the late UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s work with terrorism. “I’m saying f*** Brian Thompson,” Rojas said. “I don’t give a flying f*** he died.” Weissbrot added, “His children are better off without him” and claimed that Thompson was responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden. Rios asked, “I mean, why do we protect the Second Amendment?” as if Mangione’s alleged actions constituted self-defense rather than murder. The progressive left is becoming increasingly comfortable with political violence—a nationwide problem that New York must do its part to reverse. Refusing to give a press pass to just about anyone would be a good start.

◼ Stephen Colbert hosted his final episode of The Late Show on CBS. Leaving aside Colbert’s humorlessness, it has become clear that the celebrity chit-chat and political sermonizing he specialized in is no longer in demand. His final show was a strangely sedate and lackluster affair, primarily featuring fading celebrities and musicians known for their long-standing progressive affiliations. It was always about politics for Colbert. He first achieved prominence as an actor playing a character: a parody of Bill O’Reilly–style populism. When he moved to CBS, he retained the same affect, forever in service to the progressive flavor of the week. He ceased to be a parody of the right and unwittingly became a parody of himself.

◼ Robert Woodson was a lifelong activist. As a young man, his experiences with segregation and social breakdown drew him to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a master’s degree in social work in 1965. He became a prominent figure in the civil rights movement, leading protests and organizing community development programs. He dedicated his life to uplifting struggling neighborhoods and communities. But his skepticism of progressive policies eventually led him to conservatism. He championed self-reliance over government dependence and local solutions over central planning. In the 1980s, his work helped shape Ronald Reagan’s social policy. In 2020, he founded 1776 Unites, a nonprofit that aimed to combat the historical dishonesty of the 1619 Project. Fiercely committed to principle, Woodson was a tireless advocate of human flourishing and American exceptionalism. Dead at 89. R.I.P.