IdeasThe Table in Mecca
Three nations signed a mutual defense pact in the world's holiest city on Friday. Washington wasn't at the table. Bob Whitfield on what it looks like when the geometry of power shifts without you.
The Long View
Ideas
IdeasThe Backup Route
Oil crossed $100 a barrel on Friday. For the first time in the modern era, both of the world's critical shipping corridors are under simultaneous military threat.
IdeasThe Old Question
The Senate voted 50-48 to limit the president's war powers. One day later, two senators changed their votes. That pattern has a longer history than the current war.
IdeasThe Verdict Stands
Two courts found genocide was committed at Srebrenica. The men convicted of ordering it are serving life sentences. On the 31st anniversary, the president of Republika Srpska held a news conference to say it never happened.
IdeasNot Yet a Disaster
More than 185 million Americans were under heat alerts on July 4. At least twenty-five people died in New Jersey alone. Extreme heat has never once received a federal disaster declaration.
IdeasWithout a Vote
Five million people dropped ACA marketplace coverage this year. Nobody voted on it. The subsidies just expired.
IdeasEighty-Four to Eight
The Senate voted 84-8 to advance a bill banning institutional investors from buying single-family homes. In this Senate, that number means something.
IdeasNo One Came Back
Section 702 lapsed Friday at midnight while the House was on recess. The intelligence community says nothing changed. That part is probably true. But the reason it lapsed isn't nothing.
IdeasThe Word He Used
Scott Pelley chose the most precise word he had. What I keep thinking about is the story nobody will pursue because someone in that room heard it.
IdeasThe Fear in the Lesson Plan
More than half of America's civics teachers are afraid to teach the subject wrong. The fear is working.
IdeasWhat an Hour Tells You
The Supreme Court rewrote the Voting Rights Act. One hour later, Florida had a new map.
IdeasWhat Nine Dollars Buys
A Planned Parenthood clinic in Sacramento started offering Botox at nine dollars a unit. The story isn't about Botox.
IdeasTwo Numbers, One Country
The S&P 500 hit a record high the same week consumer sentiment hit a 74-year low. Both numbers were accurate. That might be the problem.
IdeasThe Station That Went Dark
A federal judge said the government can't defund public media to punish speech. Congress had already done it anyway.
IdeasWhat Showing Up Looks Like
Three thousand one hundred events in all fifty states. But the number that matters is fifty-three.