◼ Little progress has been made in converting the Trump administration’s memorandum of understanding with Iran into a framework for durable peace. Vice President JD Vance revealed that there is now a direct line between the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, and U.S. Central Command. Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted that Israel’s defensive operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon are “separate” from the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Rubio also claimed that the U.S. would not accept tolling at the Strait of Hormuz and that America would defer to its “long-standing allies in the region” when it comes to Iran’s ballistic missile stockpiles. Rubio’s remarks are only partially reassuring. After all, he’s describing a deal that doesn’t exist. Israel’s defensive operations are not “separate” according to the MOU. President Donald Trump and Vance insist that Israel is bound by the first article of a document that Israel did not sign. The MOU makes no mention of Iran’s missiles, which Trump himself now says that Tehran needs for its self-defense. And the MOU does not prohibit Iran from implementing tolling at the strait after an initial 60-day window. It’s good to know that someone close to Trump is still thinking clearly about the nature of the Iranian threat. Unfortunately, he’s neither setting nor describing the administration’s Iran policy.

◼ Radical-left candidates backed by Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America enjoyed significant victories in New York City’s Democratic primaries. Darializa Avila Chevalier toppled incumbent Representative Adriano Espaillat, the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Claire Valdez defeated Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, the handpicked successor of retiring Representative Nydia Velázquez, by 20 points. Brad Lander, a former DSA member, thrashed incumbent Representative Dan Goldman by 30 points after targeting Goldman’s support for Israel. Goldman warned in his concession speech against “antisemitic tropes and stereotypes—some of which I heard personally on this campaign.” The victory of candidates such as Chevalier and Valdez accelerates a shift in the Democratic coalition. Both won enough affluent and white voters to overcome their weakness with poor, working-class, black, and Hispanic voters. These candidates and their supporters reflect a social class that throughout history has been uniquely dangerous: people who come from wealth and have educational credentials but are underemployed, downwardly mobile, and resentful of a society that doesn’t give them the rewards they see as their due. Left-wing populism aims at the destruction of the existing order. It is traditionally driven by a vanguard of the young, idle, and discontented. Revolutions the world over remind us of how far those impulses can rage before they burn out.

◼ Congress agreed to a final version of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bundle of provisions aimed at reducing housing costs. The bill seeks to expand the supply of new homes but would do little to make a difference. At the federal level, lawmakers could only tweak permitting rules and subsidy programs. Most true barriers to construction come from local governments that impose onerous land-use restrictions to prop up existing residents’ home values. The House removed the worst part of the bill: a proposed effective ban on build-to-rent units. But the remaining limitation on institutional investors is a needless infringement on property rights that will merely redistribute homes from lower-income renters to wealthier buyers. Prohibiting large investors from buying houses was Trump’s idea, but now the president refuses to sign the bill until the Senate passes his favored voting legislation. Americans might be better off if Trump returns the housing bill to Congress.

◼ Canadian media attributed a deadly shooting in Montreal—in which a police officer, a civilian, and the perpetrator were killed—to the attacker’s association with the sexless and misogynistic “incel” movement. It is apparent from the shooter’s writings as well as his choice of targets, a neighborhood where Pornhub’s offices are located, that hostility toward women contributed to the killer’s mania. But Côte-des-Neiges is also a heavily Jewish area, and the killer’s demented manifesto exposes his hatred for Jews as capitalist caricatures. That’s a trope to which violent communists are inclined, and this killer was a violent communist. He called his targets the “filthy facets of the capitalist economy,” praised the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, called for the abolition of private property, and heralded his bloodshed as a moral and ethical expression of “revolutionary terror.” Presumably, in his deluded understanding, the communist revolution would produce a society in which even undesirable men could easily marry. Yes, this killer was disturbed, but his disturbance is becoming a terribly common one.

◼ The Department of Justice joined a lawsuit filed by the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, who are challenging a New York law that requires nursing facilities to affirm a patient’s self-professed “gender identity.” The law implements a laundry list of progressive rules: facilities must allow gender-dysphoric patients to use their preferred bathrooms, and caretakers must grant such patients the right to be housed in spaces otherwise reserved for the opposite sex. Failure to comply with the law can result in a $2,000 fine, for the first violation, and can increase up to a $10,000 fine and one year in prison. The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne have cared for poor, terminally ill patients at Rosary Hill Home, free of charge, for more than 120 years. New York should recognize and respect their service.

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◼ Blue states’ resistance to the Second Amendment can sometimes take comical proportions. Of course property owners can keep guns off their land if they choose: The right to exclude is what makes property private. Hawaii, however, tried to leverage that into a state law that would criminalize carrying guns on any private property unless the property owner explicitly permits doing so. The state supreme court argued that the Second Amendment doesn’t mean the same thing in Hawaii as it does in the rest of the country. The U.S. Supreme Court, in yet another 6–3 opinion written by Justice Alito, didn’t buy it. Absurdly, Hawaii tried to defend its law by invoking the Black Codes, which restricted the gun rights of black citizens in the South during Reconstruction. But the 14th Amendment, which has been read to extend the Bill of Rights (including the Second Amendment) to the states, was enacted in part because an outraged Congress wanted to stamp out the Black Codes. Alito was justly scornful: “Unless we put history entirely out of our minds, Hawaii’s claim that this tainted artifact illuminates the original understanding of the right to keep and bear arms cannot be taken seriously.”

◼ British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s decision to step down will come as a relief to many, including in the Labour Party. The government Starmer led was infected by authoritarianism, demonstrated most notoriously by its fondness for online censorship. Britain’s big government has grown bigger, free speech’s domain has grown smaller, private schools are fewer, the long march of the left through the institutions has continued, and multiculturalism and “net-zero” trundle destructively along. Even though a general election need not be called for another three years, Labour’s collapse in the polls has panicked its MPs. The best bet (for now) is that the party will entrust Andy Burnham, a smooth-talking Labour highflier, with that distinctly tricky task. The political honeymoon that he or any other new leader will enjoy is likely to be short-lived. In the meantime, Starmer remains at 10 Downing Street until the selection of his successor. This might take until September, leaving Britain in the care of the lamest of lame ducks at a treacherous time.

◼ An independent group of British MPs released the Rape Gang Inquiry Report, a damning collection of victim testimonies that vividly portray the sexual terrorism that “grooming gangs” in the United Kingdom perpetrated for decades. The girls, sometimes as young as eleven, told of being raped daily, drugged, beaten, burned, racially abused, trafficked throughout the country, forced to convert to Islam, and coerced into Islamic marriages. In some cases, the sexual abuse was filmed and distributed, then used as blackmail against the children. What’s more alarming still is that the British government was not clueless about these atrocities. Nearly every British institution—including the police, social services, and the health-care system—had been made aware of the gangs, yet they failed to appropriately intervene. Why? As the report puts it, Britain has succumbed to a dangerous ideology that emphasizes “diversity, inclusion, and non-judgementalism as supreme virtues.” Pursuing justice for the girls would have revealed uncomfortable demographic trends—namely, that South Asian men are vastly overrepresented among the perpetrators. The report cites a previous estimate that there have been 250,000 victims of rape gangs in Britain, but it emphasizes that this figure is a “bare minimum.” Unfortunately, it is unlikely that we will ever uncover the exact number of victims and identify every offender. As the report soberly concludes: “Until the country rejects the fear of being called ‘racist’ and restores the courage to name uncomfortable truths, the conditions that allowed these networks to thrive will remain.”

◼ Europeans are experiencing a heat wave that should send them reaching for their air conditioners, but only 20 percent of them have installed these wonder-workers, compared with about 90 percent of the U.S. population. This difference owes a great deal to historically more temperate climates in Europe, the practical and aesthetic difficulties posed by installing air-conditioning in venerable cities, and higher electricity prices, but something else is going on too. Heavy-handed regulations—concerned with the additional greenhouse gas emissions that widespread air-conditioning would cause—are putting necessary cooling relief beyond the reach of many. Madness. Some 24,000 Europeans died of heat-related causes last year, more than ten times the number in the whole U.S, a toll that owes more to stupidity than to climate change.

◼ World Cup tourists from around the world are falling in love with American culture. More than 1.24 million people flocked to major U.S. cities to watch the games, but many stayed for the food and hospitality. Videos on X show fans discovering America: Scots partying with bagpipes in Boston, Japanese fans bull-riding in Dallas, Brits ordering subs at a New Jersey deli. One German visitor amassed more than 700,000 followers on X with his American travelogue. One such adventure led to the discovery of Buc-ee’s; another to Waffle House at 1 a.m. Such posts tell a different story of the United States and its welcoming people than the one many foreigners get from their media or ours.

◼ Clive Davis, with no musical background but a diligently honed ear for what sells, had an outsized impact on the music business and the careers of dozens of storied singers and bands at labels such as CBS, RCA, and Arista. Davis signed Janis Joplin to her first major record deal and played a key role in launching such talents as Billy Joel, Barry Manilow, and Whitney Houston. Some artists, such as Bruce Springsteen, flourished when he was persuaded to give them creative freedom. But in most cases, Davis took a hands-on approach when directing musicians toward commercial appeal. Sometimes, he struck gold. But it also made Davis controversial with artistic critics and led to acrimonious public feuds with those who preferred to follow their own muse. The music business that Davis once embodied no longer exists, but it was quite a ride. Dead at 94. R.I.P.

◼ Alan Greenspan served as chairman of the Federal Reserve for more than 18 years, making the position a truly public role. Like his predecessor, Paul Volcker, Greenspan believed that low and stable inflation must be the Fed’s highest priority. Unlike Volcker, he was not immune to the allure of guiding the economy with expansive monetary policy. Greenspan defended the free market as the best mechanism for allocating capital, but he had little patience for market corrections. He became famous for the “Greenspan put,” an implicit promise to bail out investors with easy money whenever asset prices wobbled. His interventions softened a few financial crises but might have led to others. By keeping credit too loose for too long, the Fed, under Greenspan, helped inflate the dot-com and subprime-mortgage bubbles, inadvertently giving capitalism a bad rap. Dead at 100. R.I.P.