Editorials from Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Guardian, and others

Editorials from Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Guardian, and many others

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May 17 – The Washington Post on Donald Trump’s unorthodox diplomacy

"I can settle anything," Donald Trump declared Thursday in Qatar. He was talking about the conflict between India and Pakistan. But his boast alluded to other global flash points, from the war in Ukraine to the conflict in Gaza to America's dispute with Iran over its nuclear ambitions.During a week of overseas diplomacy, the president made good progress on Iran and Syria and secured a series of commercial deals and investments. But his unconventional style was unable to bring Gaza or Ukraine closer to peace.

Trump's unswerving faith in his own abilities as a master dealmaker was on display during the first extended overseas foray of his second term - to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. At home, the trip might have been largely overshadowed by the Qatari government's offer to gift Trump a luxury Boeing 747 to use as Air Force One. But the week nonetheless showcased the possibilities in Trump's improvisational approach to diplomacy.

Coming after a ceasefire that averted an escalating clash between nuclear neighbors India and Pakistan - a pause for which Trump claimed credit (though India denied it) - his Middle East trip focused on securing commercial deals and investment. Plenty of deals were made, including Qatar's commitment to buy 160 new Boeing jets, a pledge from gulf nations to finance data centers for artificial intelligence, and sales of more advanced semiconductor chips to help make the Middle East an AI powerhouse.

There were also positive diplomatic shifts. Trump announced that the United States would lift all economic sanctions on Syria. This is a laudable move; the sanctions had been strangling the country's economy, making it harder for interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa to consolidate power after the December ouster of longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad. Trump even met with Sharaa, a man who was once considered a terrorist with links to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Trump called him a "young, attractive guy."

More pivotal still, on this trip, Trump changed his tone toward Iran. Just weeks after threatening the country with "bombing the likes of which they have never seen before," he extended an olive branch to the ayatollahs, remarking that America has no "permanent enemies."

To be sure, the past week also revealed certain pitfalls in Trump's unorthodox style of diplomacy - specifically his desire for quick wins, his seeming impatience with the long and often arduous work of negotiating complex agreements, and his preference for personal relations over grand policy.

He was, for instance, impatient with Iran. The 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which Trump abrogated, took 20 months to negotiate. Now, he wants a similar deal made in a hurry. Trump warned that the Iranians "know they have to move quickly or something bad is going to happen."

When his administration failed to achieve a breakthrough in negotiations to end the conflict in Ukraine - the first meeting between Ukrainian and Russian officials in Istanbul fizzled after less than two hours - Trump nevertheless touted his own dealmaking ability. He said on Air Force One, "Nothing is going to happen until Putin and I get together." Trump said he was eager for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin "as soon as we can set it up." This would reverse the Biden administration's policy of no high-level contact with Russia and upend the Europeans' push for higher sanctions on Russia, but it reflects Trump's preference for personal relations in diplomacy.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once was assumed to have a rapport with Trump. But on this trip, the president pointedly skipped the Jewish state. Trump officials negotiated directly with Hamas for a deal to release American Israeli hostage Edan Alexander from Gaza, leaving Netanyahu on the sidelines. Trump officials also spoke directly with the Houthis in Yemen about ceasing U.S. airstrikes in exchange for a halt in Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping. And now the United States is in direct talks with Tehran, despite Netanyahu's overtures for joint military strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.

Unlike the wealthy Gulf Arab states, Israel has little to offer the transactional president. What's more, Netanyahu's bellicose insistence on airstrikes against Iran runs counter to Trump's wariness about overseas military adventures.

And Netanyahu is unwilling to give Trump what he and his Gulf Arab hosts most want, which is an end to Israel's 1½-year-old war against Gaza. (While Trump was touring the Middle East, Israel was ramping up its airstrikes, killing more than 100 people on Thursday.)

Trump is a president who eschews carefully planned diplomacy. More often than not, he appears to be winging it, and this sometimes leads to progress. The past week has demonstrated the possibilities, as well as the pitfalls.

ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/05/17/trump-diplomacy-gulf-states-saudi-arabia-qatar-uae-ukraine-talks/

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May 18 – The Wall Street Journal on the coverup of Biden’s infirmity and its repercussions

Editor's note: This editorial was published before news broke of President Biden's cancer diagnosis. We wish him God speed on his recovery.

Democrats, in their despond over President Trump, are finally realizing they made a terrible mistake in covering for Joe Biden 's infirmity. Some might say the Biden coverup is old news, but it's important to record for future's sake how much damage the Bidens and their media and Democratic collaborators did. Above all, they denied the American people a better presidential choice.

The Biden dementia issue is surfacing again with the arrival of the book, "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again." The authors are journalists Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios, and our guess is that most Americans will look at the title and say: Now they tell us.

The killer anecdote is supposedly that Mr. Biden didn't recognize George Clooney at a June 2024 fundraiser co-hosted by the famous actor. Mr. Clooney and others at the event were reportedly aghast. But why only then?

Americans could see with their own eyes for years that Mr. Biden was going downhill fast. He often stumbled or fell. He couldn't remember names. He often looked lost in public appearances and had to be led offstage. The polls all said even most Democratic voters wanted a different nominee. Yet only after the June 27 debate meltdown did elite Democrats decide that old Joe had to go.

It wasn't as if it was impossible to speak up. Dean Phillips did. The Minnesota Congressman ran for the nomination saying openly that Mr. Biden couldn't win re-election, even against Mr. Trump, and wasn't up to serving another four years. He also said he would gladly drop out if more prominent Democrats entered the race. No one did, and for his honesty Mr. Phillips was deemed a traitor to his party, an opportunist, and a Republican cat's paw.

Democrats had another opportunity when special counsel Robert Hur published his report on Mr. Biden's handling of classified information in February 2024. Mr. Hur essentially said that, while Mr. Biden had broken the law, he couldn't be fairly tried because a jury would conclude he was a forgetful old man. Democrats denied this was true and attacked Mr. Hur as a partisan trying to help Donald Trump.

Now we learn, with the recent release of the audio of Mr. Hur's interview with Mr. Biden, that the special counsel was if anything too kind about the President's memory and rambling. Messrs. Phillips and Hur are owed an apology.

A few of the coverup culprits deserve to be called out. Mr. Biden walked away from his 2020 campaign vow to be a transitional President. Somehow he convinced himself that only he could defeat Mr. Trump. By running he made it unlikely any heavyweight Democrat would get in the race.

Heavy blame, too, goes to the Biden family and especially Jill Biden. She more than anyone could see his decline. Yet Democrats say the first lady was more determined than anyone that Joe run again.

The closer to the inner Biden circle Democrats were, the more they share the ignominy. Cabinet member Pete Buttigieg now says that "maybe" Mr. Biden shouldn't have run again, but he was among those saying the President was fit for duty.

Rep. Jim Clyburn, who helped Mr. Biden win the South Carolina primary in 2020, rigged the timing of that state's primary in 2024 to make it the first state to vote. This diminished the chance for a New Hampshire upset that might have encouraged other challengers. Mr. Phillips still won 19.7% of the vote in New Hampshire, and various write-ins won 8.3%, a warning that Democrats were headed for trouble.

The Biden senility coverup is also a media reckoning. Whenever someone dared to point out that Mr. Biden wasn't up to the job, a praetorian media guard assembled to deny it. We could quote chapter and verse from many media sources, but one example worth citing is none other than Mr. Tapper. Grabien, the TV clip service, has compiled a montage of the CNN host casting doubt on those who cast doubt on Mr. Biden's mental fitness.

The Wall Street Journal reported, in a detailed piece on June 4, 2024, that those who observed Mr. Biden in person were concerned about his decline. Mr. Tapper quoted a White House dismissal of the story, including a sneer that the Journal is "owned by News Corp, which is run by the Murdochs," as if that rebutted the story. He then interviewed a Democrat who dismissed it. A more curious journalist would have explored if it were true, and maybe even done some of his own reporting. Only now does he tacitly admit the Journal was right.

The coverup of Mr. Biden's mental decline will go down as one of the great scandals of modern politics. By refusing to admit what voters could so clearly see, Democrats denied their party an open primary. Once Mr. Biden imploded, they handed Kamala Harris the nomination without debate.

Had Mr. Biden bowed out in 2023, Republicans might also have been more open to nominees other than Mr. Trump. Instead, Democrats turned to lawfare in an attempt to disqualify Mr. Trump, which solidified his hold on GOP voters. Democrats and the press are now appalled by Mr. Trump's second term. They would do better to think upon, and seek contrition for, their own role in making it possible.

ONLINE: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/a-reckoning-for-the-biden-coverup-c2252093?mod=editorials_article_pos4

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May 16 – The Guardian on Trump’s impact on Russia-Ukraine talks

The first direct talks between Russia and Ukraine for three years should have been a momentous occasion. Since 2022, Russian war crimes have only deepened the chasm between them. Yet Donald Trump, who demanded this meeting, underlined that it was largely a charade when he told reporters: "Nothing's going to happen until Putin and I get together." It made plain that Russia felt no pressure to cooperate.

While difficult negotiations often begin on easier terrain, the agreement of a mass prisoner swap looked like a discrete achievement. The real significance of the Istanbul talks lay less in their substance than the messages sent by their existence and attendance list.

The hasty proposal for direct talks was Vladimir Putin's escape route after European leaders demanded Russia agree to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire, or face increased sanctions and weapons transfers. Ukraine and its backers said there should be no meetings without a ceasefire, but Kyiv was forced to concede when Mr Trump insisted it participate. Painful experience has taught it that it does not pay to defy the US president.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy turned the Russian president's proposal back on him by challenging him to attend the talks personally, vowing to wait for him in Turkey. This was, said a Ukrainian official, "a theatre performance for just one audience member", reinforcing the message that Mr Putin is the obstacle to peace.

Mr Putin snubbed the meeting. Russia was represented by the nationalist ideologue Vladimir Medinsky and Alexander Vasilyevich Fomin, a veteran military officer and diplomat who reportedly told Ukrainians in the last talks that if they refused to capitulate, "We will keep killing and slaughtering you." Moscow's approach did not appear much more diplomatic this time: Ukraine said that Russia voiced "unacceptable" things.

Mr Zelenskyy was deft in portraying the Russian leader's non-attendance as "disrespect for Trump". There is evidence of some frustration with Moscow in Washington. JD Vance said recently that it was "asking for too much", and Mr Trump had previously suggested he was "very angry, pissed off" with Mr Putin. Lindsey Graham, a key Trump ally, says he has sufficient senatorial support to pass "devastating" new sanctions. But he described his bill as part of the president's arsenal, and Mr Trump is unlikely to unleash it. That said, Mr Putin will need to ensure he does not overplay his hand, given Mr Trump's unpredictability. And while Mr Putin may think spinning out the conflict is currently in Russia's interests, the war is not cost‑free for his country.

The recent dizzying narrative twists have revealed greater coordination and resolve on Europe's part. (Germany this week announced that it would hit Mr Trump's demand for defence spending to reach 5% of GDP by 2032, albeit by including related infrastructure.) But US arms will run out long before Europe is fully ready to step into the breach. The key question surely remains not whether the US president can be coaxed and flattered into being more helpful, but whether he can be dissuaded from becoming actively obstructive - cutting off intelligence or Starlink, or preventing Europe from buying arms for Ukraine. Put that way, Mr Trump's observation that "nothing's going to happen" until he meets Mr Putin sounds more chilling. Meanwhile, off the diplomatic stage, the Russian attacks continued on Friday: further evidence of the urgent need for a ceasefire.

ONLINE: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/16/the-guardian-view-on-russia-ukraine-talks-a-performance-for-the-us-president

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May 14 – The Boston Globe on the GOP’s proposed endowment tax hike

If there were any doubt that US House Republicans support President Trump's attempts to devastate elite educational institutions, it was laid to rest Monday. The House Ways and Means Committee released its version of a tax bill that includes a massive hike to the university endowment tax that, if signed into law, could severely harm operations at some of the region's most prestigious schools.

In 2017, during Trump's first term, Congress passed a 1.4 percent tax on investment income from university endowments that have at least $500,000 per student and at least 500 students - which translates to a minimum endowment of $250 million, although the threshold is larger for bigger universities. In 2023, 56 institutions cumulatively paid $380 million in endowment taxes.

The House Ways and Means proposal would impose a graduated endowment tax. Institutions with endowments of $500,000 to $750,000 per student would still pay the 1.4 percent tax. As the size of the endowment grows, however, the investment income would be taxed at 7 percent, 14 percent, or as high as 21 percent for schools with endowments of at least $2 million per student.

What does that mean in real dollars? Wellesley College economics professor Phillip Levine, in a spreadsheet shared with the editorial board, calculated that nine schools would hit the top tax rate - including, in New England, Harvard University, Yale University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Amherst College. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, and MIT would each owe more than $410 million in taxes a year, with Harvard topping the list at $849 million.

The original endowment tax was modest enough that colleges could incorporate it into their budgets. The proposed tax hike would almost certainly require institutional cuts.

It's true that Harvard has a lot of money. There are legitimate disagreements over how much an elite institution like Harvard, which like other nonprofits is tax-exempt, should pay in taxes. But there's a reason Harvard is Harvard - a school that does groundbreaking research while training the next generation of leaders and entrepreneurs. That reason is money: Harvard has resources to invest in students, research, facilities, and technology. Harvard reported a $6.5 billion operating budget in fiscal 2024, of which $2.4 billion came from distributions from its $53.2 billion endowment. While Harvard's sticker price is a high $86,926, Harvard also offers enough financial aid that any student with family income below $200,000 can attend for free.

"The problem is you're taking the preeminent educational institution in the US and probably the world, which gets that way because they have the resources to be able to finance everything they do, and now you're undercutting that," Levine said. "That has significant losses not just for the Boston economy but for the country as a whole."

Similarly at MIT, income from the endowment and other investments accounts for 40 percent of the college's operating budget. MIT also offers free tuition to any student with family income below $200,000. MIT spokesperson Kimberly Allen said the endowment tax proposal is "basically a tax on national research and student aid." "A tax of this magnitude would seriously damage our ability to conduct research that strengthens our nation's security and economic competitiveness," Allen said. "It would make it harder for us to make a world-class college education affordable for all families, too."

To be sure, money is fungible, and colleges with large budgets have flexibility to choose which expenses to prioritize. But Levine's research, published by The Brookings Institution, suggests that institutions with large endowments do spend more money per student on academics and student services and offer more financial aid to lower- and middle-income students.

Republicans who have proposed endowment taxes argue that the schools are taking advantage of public money and hoarding wealth by claiming tax-exempt status while charging high tuition. There might be merit to a policy that moderately taxes the wealthiest endowments and dedicates the money to federal financial aid. But this proposal isn't it.

It's hard not to see the proposal as punitive, aimed at harming the Ivy League institutions that GOP lawmakers love to hate instead of solving a problem. If there were any example of the naked politics behind it, one only has to look at a proposed new tax exemption for religious colleges - a carveout that could save the University of Notre Dame from paying the endowment tax.

The proposed formula also bases its calculations on the number of domestic students attending a school, while the previous formula counted domestic and international students. This appears to be part of an attempt by some Republicans to convince schools to accept more American students. It would disadvantage schools like Columbia and Cornell universities, which have large student populations, including many international students. Today, some schools rely on international students who pay full tuition to offset the financial aid given to Americans.

Trump has already cut or threatened to cut billions of dollars from elite schools, including Harvard, citing antisemitism as well as racial discrimination and leftist bias in academia. But there are ways to address these legitimate problems that would reform rather than dismantle the world-class educational institutions that the president and his congressional allies seem hellbent on destroying.

ONLINE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/05/14/opinion/endowment-tax-mit-harvard/

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May 17 – The Dallas Morning News says AI can’t cure loneliness epidemic

Mark Zuckerberg is right that our nation is beset by an epidemic of loneliness.

People of every age now too often find themselves isolated from family, with too few friends and little to keep them company but the screens in their hands, on their desks and on their walls. But to Meta's chief executive, every problem in the world is a nail and more technology is the hammer.

Even by Zuckerberg's standards, his recent comments about AI and loneliness were striking for their deep misunderstanding of what humanity really needs, which is genuine care, intimacy and love from other human beings.

Zuckerberg's exact words on a podcast were these: "The average American I think has, it's fewer than three friends, three people they'd consider friends, and the average person has demand for meaningfully more, I think it's like 15 friends."

That's true. But where he took that thought was chilling. The idea was that artificial intelligence should or could fill the gap, and then people would have the sort of fulfillment that normally comes from having real connections with friends and family.

Zuckerberg has never really understood something vitally important about the contribution he and other social media magnates made to the internet. What had been an excellent tool for gathering and sorting information became the primary mode of individual entertainment and social interaction. We didn't know what we were really getting.

The screen has become a barrier to actual human connection while giving the illusion that connections are happening.

In 2023, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services concluded that from 2003-2020, the amount of time people spent alone increased by a full day per month. The number of close friendships declined. And in 2021, about half of Americans reported having three or fewer friends.

What spiked during this time period? Interaction with faux social networks online. Facebook might have begun as a fun app to reconnect with high school classmates. But it and similar social media networks have metastasized into something different, an almost addictive machine for mindless and often poisonous scrolling that has left people less fulfilled than when they opened the screen.

Zuckerberg's belief that a technological mimic of human interaction will be the solution strikes us as another mirage that will ultimately be unsatisfying. We are already seeing this in the stories coming out of people who become enchanted with AI boyfriends or girlfriends only to find that genuine satisfaction remains just out of reach even as their bot-friend consumes more and more of their lives.

Humans need other humans, and our focus should be on finding ways to make it easier for society to form and maintain deep connections. That includes everything from how we build our cities to the things we teach children are important.

If only our geniuses would devote their lives to those questions, we might be better off.

ONLINE: https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2025/05/17/no-mark-zuckerberg-artificial-intelligence-wont-cure-loneliness/