Welcome to Stack the Week for Thursday, July 16
The daily experiment continues. Thank you for the subscriptions, the feedback, the emails, and the steady stream of notes. And the Apple podcast reviews are helpful. They introduce us to a wider audience.
Remember, this is a podcast too. Listen while you mow the lawn, debone a filet, or drive back from the urgent clinic after the rescue dog bites your hand. (I’m fine, but today’s stack is going to be a little short.)
Okay, let’s start.
Iran Expansion
The U.S. has been hitting Iran for five straight days, striking farther north towards Tehran while broadening the kinds of targets it is attacking.
Reuters reports that three U.S. officials describe the latest strikes as “shaping operations”—attacks intended not only to reopen the Strait of Hormuz but to destroy the military capabilities the United States would want removed before any larger campaign.
That helps explain why recent strikes have expanded beyond forces directly threatening shipping to include air defenses, command centers, surveillance sites, energy infrastructure and areas tied to Iran’s nuclear program.
But these hits don’t necessarily have to be softening the ground for more intervention. The New York Times reports attacks this week on Iran’s naval power, oil production and nuclear infrastructure are meant to degrade the systems that would allow Iran to sustain a longer war. In other words, make them cry uncle.
Here’s the daily count you’re used to: Before the war, more than 130 ships passed through the Strait of Hormuz on an average day. On Wednesday, only nine made it.
Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that Iran continues expressing interest in a deal. Iran reinforced that signal by releasing dual U.S.-Iranian citizen Dena Karari, whom President Trump called a goodwill gesture. Both governments continue to escalate militarily while leaving open the possibility of negotiations.
More Than 500 Rohingya Feared Dead
More than 500 people are feared dead after two crowded refugee boats disappeared in the Bay of Bengal.
The passengers were Rohingya, a Muslim minority from Myanmar, which sits between India and Thailand.
The Rohingya have lived there for generations, but Myanmar’s government says they are immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh rather than one of the country’s recognized ethnic groups.
Human rights organizations reject that claim. Instead, they say the Rohingya have long faced ethnic and religious discrimination in the predominantly Buddhist country.
In 2017, Myanmar’s military drove hundreds of thousands of Rohingya from their homes by burning villages, killing civilians, and forcing families to flee. Most escaped to refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh.
Life in those camps is difficult. People have few opportunities to work, little hope of building a permanent future, and almost no legal way to move to another country. Some decided to risk a dangerous sea voyage, hoping to reach Malaysia, where they believed they could find safety and jobs.
The boats left in late June. One disappeared almost immediately. The other is believed to have sunk off Myanmar’s coast on July 8. The United Nations is still trying to confirm exactly what happened, which is why officials say the passengers are “feared dead.”
If the number is confirmed, it would rank among the deadliest refugee boat disasters in recent years. More than 800 migrants died when an overcrowded boat sank off Libya in 2015, and more than 600 were believed lost when the Adriana sank off Greece in 2023.
Stops ICE Brings Back Vehicle Stops
The Atlantic reports that President Trump insisted ICE resume stopping suspects in their cars after some of his supporters criticized the agency’s brief pause, arguing it signaled a retreat from aggressive immigration enforcement.
ICE says it increasingly has little choice. Many migrants have learned that if they remain inside their homes, ICE often needs a judicial warrant to enter and arrest them. Catching someone after they leave in a vehicle avoids that problem.
But stopping moving cars creates a different danger. Unlike local police, ICE agents generally receive far less training in conducting high-risk traffic stops. Those encounters can unfold in seconds, forcing agents to decide whether a driver is trying to escape or whether the vehicle poses a deadly threat.
The law draws an important line. The Supreme Court has held that officers cannot use deadly force simply because a suspect is fleeing. Deadly force is allowed only if an officer has probable cause to believe the suspect poses an immediate threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or someone else.
Update: Court filings cited in recent reporting allege that Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the man shot and killed by ICE agents in Houston, had drugs in his vehicle. If that allegation proves true, it may describe what investigators found after the shooting. It does not answer the central question investigators must resolve: What did the agents know before they fired, and did they reasonably believe Salgado Araujo posed an immediate deadly threat? Evidence discovered afterward cannot, by itself, justify an earlier decision to use deadly force.
Beginning in September, immigration officials deciding whether to approve a green card can once again weigh an applicant’s use of some public benefits as evidence that the person may become financially dependent on the government.
Supporters say the rule helps ensure that people granted permanent residency are unlikely to depend on government assistance. They argue immigration policy should favor applicants who can support themselves without relying on public benefits.
Critics argue its biggest impact falls on families who are legally entitled to benefits but avoid medical care, food assistance, or other programs because they worry using them could hurt their chances of getting a green card.
Wildfire Smoke Spreads Across the East
Everyone east of the Rockies can see this story out the window. As I type this I feel like a ham hock. Hazy skies, a milky sun, and, in some places, the smell of smoke. All are the result of large wildfires burning in Canada and Minnesota.
The smoke has drifted hundreds of miles south and east. A large area of high pressure, sometimes called a heat dome, is trapping it close to the ground instead of allowing it to blow away. More than 115 million people could experience unhealthy air, and cities including Philadelphia have issued Code Red air quality alerts.
The smoke is expected to linger through at least Friday in parts of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. Conditions will improve only when the winds shift or the weather pattern trapping the smoke begins to break down. As long as the fires continue burning, smoky conditions could return.
Ebola Outbreak
Ebola is moving in opposite directions across central Africa.
In eastern Congo, confirmed infections have risen from roughly 1,926 to 2,073, while deaths climbed from 702 to 796.
Uganda, meanwhile, has discharged its last Ebola patient and begun the World Health Organization’s 42-day countdown toward declaring its outbreak over. Uganda’s outbreak remained comparatively small and occurred in a more stable security environment. Workers could identify cases, trace contacts and isolate patients before the virus spread widely. In eastern Congo, years of conflict have repeatedly interrupted that.
The Wall Street Journal reports one reason the outbreak continues to worsen in Congo: false claims spreading through WhatsApp voice notes have led people to hide deaths and attack health workers. Rumors circulated in Uganda as well, but they did not overwhelm the response. In Congo, misinformation has combined with armed conflict, displacement and distrust of authorities, making it much harder for health workers to find infected people before they infect others.
The United States has now imposed an unusual “do not board” policy, meaning Americans who have recently been in the outbreak zone cannot simply board a commercial flight home. Previously, they could travel if they met ordinary screening requirements.
Instead of relying mainly on screening after travelers begin their journey, the policy works by preventing potentially exposed passengers from boarding commercial flights in the first place, stopping them at the ticket counter rather than after they arrive in the United States.
Ukraine Fires the Minister Who Wanted to Modernize the War
Ukraine’s government has removed Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov (mih-KAI-loh fed-OR-ov), the 35-year-old architect of much of the country’s military innovation, after a reported clash with Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi (oh-lek-SAHN-der seer-SKEE).
Ukraine cannot match Russia soldier for soldier or shell for shell. Fedorov argued its best chance was to make every soldier more effective by using drones, software, artificial intelligence, and faster weapons development. Under his leadership, Ukraine dramatically expanded drone production, pushed to move supplies with unmanned ground vehicles instead of soldiers, and argued that technology—not manpower—would determine the future of the war.
His critics argued that winning today’s war still requires the basics: mobilizing troops, holding trenches, maintaining discipline, and running a large conventional army.
The argument isn’t really about whether technology matters. It’s about how quickly a country fighting for survival should bet the future of its army on it.
Meanwhile, the fighting has shifted to another battlefield: grain. Ukraine has stepped up drone attacks on Russian shipping in the Sea of Azov, disrupting routes that carry about a quarter of Russia’s grain exports. Russia has answered by intensifying strikes on Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, cutting Ukraine’s grain export capacity by roughly one-third. Together, Russia and Ukraine account for about a third of the world’s wheat exports, so when both sides target the other’s ability to ship grain, the effects reach far beyond the battlefield, driving up food prices around the world.
Oh, Those Epstein Victims
Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general may now depend on a meeting with Jeffrey Epstein’s victims. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican whose vote could determine whether Blanche advances out of committee, said Thursday he will not support the nomination unless Blanche meets with the survivors first. Within hours, the Justice Department said Blanche planned to do just that, after previously testifying that legal and procedural constraints had so far prevented such a meeting.
One survivor, Dani Bensky, testified that the group had spent months trying unsuccessfully to secure a meeting with Blanche.
Tillis also wants firm assurances that the Justice Department’s proposed $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund cannot be revived.
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas is another Republican holdout. He has raised broader concerns about the Trump tax settlement that created the fund and said Thursday he remains unconvinced Blanche’s assurances that it is “dead” are sufficient.
But the Blanche fight is bigger than Epstein and bigger than one confirmation vote. The Economist reports that the Justice Department itself has been profoundly degraded over the past 18 months. About a quarter of its lawyers have left. Divisions that once handled cryptocurrency fraud and public corruption have withered. Election fraud, which is not a real large-scale problem but is one of President Trump’s fixations, is consuming more of the department’s time and resources.
That means the question before the Senate is not simply whether Blanche will meet with Epstein’s victims or whether one settlement fund is really dead. It is whether Trump’s personal lawyer will be confirmed to run a Justice Department that is already being retooled around the president’s enemies, obsessions, and personal legal needs.
I should have explained yesterday why Blanche can still run the Justice Department as acting attorney general even if the Senate never confirms him. The key is the Attorney General Succession Act, 28 U.S.C. § 508, which says that when there’s a vacancy in the office of attorney general, the deputy attorney general may exercise all the duties of that office—and unlike the Federal Vacancies Reform Act (FVRA) it contains no time limit. Under the FVRA’s own terms, specific succession statutes like § 508 are exceptions to its usual time limits, which is why courts and the GAO have treated parallel provisions at other departments as allowing “forever nominees.” Blanche is effectively in the same posture Julie Su occupied at Labor: a deputy elevated by statute who can keep doing the job for as long as the president wants, whether or not the Senate ever confirms him.
China Pulls Ahead
China has now pulled ahead of the United States in global public opinion, and it’s not just one outlier survey. A new 36‑country study from the Pew Research Center finds that in most of the nations it polled, more people now have a favorable view of China than of the U.S. On average, Beijing’s favorability comes in a few points higher than Washington’s, a reversal from earlier in the decade when the U.S. held a clear edge. Pew’s findings line up with Gallup’s latest World Poll, which shows global approval of China’s leadership at 36 percent in 2025, compared with 31 percent for U.S. leadership.
This doesn’t mean the world has suddenly decided it prefers China’s political system. Pew still finds the U.S. rated more highly on respecting personal freedoms in many countries, especially among long‑time American allies, though that gap has narrowed. What’s changed is the risk calculus. Views of China have improved at the margins, while views of the United States have deteriorated more sharply, particularly since Donald Trump returned to office.
Countries look at Washington and Beijing and ask a simple, practical question: “Who is more likely to hit us with surprise tariffs, sudden sanctions, or public fights we can’t control?” If the United States feels jumpy and unpredictable, and China feels more steady or at least more consistent, some leaders decide they’d rather manage China’s downsides than America’s.
In other words, they’re not embracing China’s system. They’re just deciding which partner is less likely to give them a headache — and more of them are starting to think that working with Beijing may be the safer, more predictable bet than working with Washington right now.
Consumers Have Not Stopped Spending
June’s retail report shows a slowdown, not a stall. Government data for June put retail and food-service sales up 0.2 percent from May and 6.7 percent compared with a year earlier. The monthly increase is small enough to be within the survey’s margin of error, but the year‑over‑year gain confirms that overall spending is still rising, not rolling over. A big share of the strength came from auto dealers and online retailers, while categories like grocery stores, clothing, and health and personal‑care stores were weaker.
This isn’t a picture of a booming consumer, but it’s clearly not a collapse either. The headline number actually understates some of the underlying strength because lower gasoline prices pulled down receipts at gas stations, even as drivers may have bought similar amounts of fuel. At the same time, the growth we do see is uneven and may owe a lot to discounting, promotions, and timing of car purchases rather than across‑the‑board confidence on Main Street.
It’s also worth remembering what this report does and doesn’t capture. Retail sales measure dollars, not units, so higher prices can flatter the topline even if people aren’t buying more stuff. And the data are mostly about goods, not services, so they miss big pieces of consumer spending like rent, travel, health care, and entertainment. Consumers are still spending enough to keep the economy moving, but this report doesn’t say that every household—or every kind of store—is sharing equally in that resilience.
Pentagon Testosterone Screening
The Pentagon will begin annually screening service members age 30 and older for low testosterone and offering voluntary replacement therapy. The move grows out of a culture‑war frame—Fox host Pete Hegseth has talked about building a “High‑T Department of War”—but the department has not clearly explained how women service members fit into the new regime.
Testosterone isn’t a simple readiness gauge; levels fluctuate during the day and are heavily influenced by sleep, stress, weight, illness and medication. In ordinary practice, doctors diagnose low testosterone only when there are symptoms and repeated low readings, not just a single lab value below some target threshold.
There is a serious counterargument in favor of more testing. Military service puts unusual strain on people’s bodies, and hormonal deficiencies can affect bone density, muscle mass, mood and recovery, so systematic screening might catch treatable problems before they sideline troops. So more systematic hormone testing could be justified as a preventive, readiness-enhancing measure rather than just a political stunt or “vanity.”
Still, in the end this is probably a way to think about it: normal testosterone helps you function; more testosterone is not the same thing as more bravery; and making “high T” a goal for the whole force invites a lot of medical risk and red tape in the name of a slogan.
The President’s Election Speech
President Trump says newly released government material will show serious problems with U.S. elections. If he presents credible evidence that votes were altered or officials concealed a breach, it would be major news—not because he’s making the claim, but because it would be the first time he has backed such allegations with proof. President Trump has made unsupported claims of election interference or election fraud dating back to at least 2012. He’s made the claims related to his elections and those of others. In elections and caucuses. What has unified the claims is the whistling lack of proof.
Perseverance Runs a Marathon
On Mars, the Perseverance rover has just crossed a marathon’s distance: 26.2 miles in five years and four months. It’s now in a small off‑world distance club, chasing NASA’s old Opportunity rover, which holds the record after logging about 28 miles before a dust storm ended its mission. Spirit made it nearly five miles before getting stuck, Sojourner in the 1990s managed only a few hundred feet, and China’s Zhurong rover covered a little over a mile before it went silent.
A marathon at roughly the pace of a glacier, which on Mars counts as sprinting.
T Rex Crime Scene
A new fossil gives us a freeze‑frame of dinosaur violence instead of another educated guess. Paleontologists have found a Tyrannosaurus rex tooth embedded in the skull of an Edmontosaurus, unusually direct evidence of a face‑to‑face predator‑prey encounter rather than an inference from scattered bones and bite marks. Paleontology usually reconstructs behavior from what death left scattered; this fossil preserved one violent moment almost intact.
I decided to look up what other kinds of grisly finds archaeologists have stumbled upon and came up with these. In one Belgian cave, researchers uncovered Neanderthal bones with cut marks and smashed long bones mixed in with animal remains, strong evidence of cannibalism. In ancient Egypt, at a palace in Avaris, excavators found pits filled only with severed right hands, thought to be trophies taken from defeated enemies and traded to the king for rewards. And across parts of Eastern Europe, “vampire” burials have turned up: skeletons pinned down with stakes or sickles or buried with stones jammed in their mouths, apparently to keep the dead from rising.
And on that note we will put a stone in my mouth and conclude this episode. We’ll see you when we see you. I’m going to go try to make peace with Cujo.
