What China Just Learned From the Iran War
What China Just Learned From the Iran War
China stands to learn a lot from the war in Iran. Red lines and deadlines imposed by the United States, even when backed by the threat of genocide, can turn out to be rather wobbly. The American military, despite its unrivaled power, has trouble swatting down swarms of cheap drones. But the most valuable lesson, at least for China’s ambitions to seize Taiwan, has more to do with the way the world’s supply chains, energy prices, and stock markets influence the U.S. willingness to fight.
It remains unclear what exactly led President Trump to step back from his ultimatum Tuesday that he would destroy Iran’s civilization without major concessions, agreeing hours later to a two-week cease-fire and settlement talks even though Iran didn’t appear to have given up significant ground. But the Iranian choke hold on the Strait of Hormuz evidently had a lot to do with it. By cutting off roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply over the past five weeks, Iran’s blockade of that narrow waterway ca…
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States Are Learning the Wrong Lesson From the ‘Mississippi Miracle’
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No story has caught the imagination of education reformers this decade quite like the “Mississippi miracle.” From 1998 to 2024, fourth-grade reading and math scores in my home state—the nation’s poorest—rose from among the worst in the country to among the best. When adjusting for demographic factors such as poverty, we’re in first place.
Other states are now trying to emulate what Mississippi did. Those efforts largely revolve around adopting what’s known as the “science of reading”— a set of principles and teaching techniques, including phonics, that are grounded in decades of empirical research. Last fall, for example, the Wall Street Journal editorial board marveled that “even California is now following Mississippi’s lead by returning to phonics” as Governor Gavin Newsom prepared to sign a major new reading bill into law. But what many outsiders fail to understand is that Mississippi changed f…
The State That Could Decide Trump’s Gerrymandering War
Democrats in Virginia desperately want permission from voters to gerrymander the state beyond recognition. They also want Virginians to know how profoundly sorry they are to have to ask. “I believe that people should choose their representatives. Representatives shouldn’t choose their people,” State Senator Creigh Deeds declared on Friday, as he stood flanked by a dozen young Democrats at the University of Virginia.
This is typically the main argument against gerrymandering, but for Deeds, it was just the windup to a pitch for his party to cast aside its highfalutin principles and start hurling spitballs back at Republicans. “We’ve been pushed,” he lamented, “into a situation not of our own choosing.”
The situation to which Deeds so gravely alluded is the all-out redistricting war that Republicans started last summer in Texas. At President Trump’s behest, state lawmakers redrew congressional lines to bolster the GOP’s narrow House majority. Democrats, initially aghast but quickly embold…
Trump Is Wishcasting Victory in Iran
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Early on Easter morning, President Trump went on a tirade about the ongoing war in Iran; the Iranian government had closed the Strait of Hormuz, and he wanted it reopened. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell!,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Trump had given Iran an ultimatum a few days earlier: make a deal or the United States and Israel would bomb Iran enough to “bring them back to the Stone Ages.” The American barrage he promised would target desalination plants, power plants, and bridges—i.e., civilian infrastructure.
As the deadline approached, the president’s posts somehow became more incendiary. On Tuesday, he threatened: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” rhetorical territory unseen among international leaders in an era of the United Nations and mutual assured destruction.
Hours before …
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