Welcome to Stack the Week for Friday, July 23
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More Is Creating More
Iran’s retaliation is spreading across the American military network in the Middle East.
Explosive drones targeted Irbil in northern Iraq, where U.S. troops are based. Sirens sounded in Bahrain, the location of the 5th fleet. Iran also claimed attacks against American facilities in Jordan.
The United States does not project power into the region from one enormous base. It relies on a distributed network of airfields, ports, command centers and partnerships. That allows American forces to operate close to a crisis, detect threats earlier and respond without first moving an entire military presence into position.
The network gives the United States reach. It also gives an adversary a lot of targets.
The United States completed its thirteenth consecutive night of strikes against Iran. The emerging cycle is easy to see: The United States strikes Iran. Iran attacks American facilities around the region.
Sun Tzu described the underlying problem more than two thousand years ago: “If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak.”
CBS reported yesterday that the Pentagon has begun moving interceptors into the Middle East from stockpiles previously positioned for the Indo-Pacific. That is especially revealing: The Iran war is not simply consuming ammunition; it is changing what is available for deterring China.
The New York Times reports that the Pentagon reduced its public death toll from 18 to 14 by removing four soldiers killed in Jordan and Iraq after President Trump declared a cease-fire—even though the military’s own releases described their deaths as related to Iranian aggression. This is reminiscent of the Covid period when President Trump said he didn’t want to test for new cases because it would make the numbers look bad.
Yesterday’s news was that the Houthis had opened another front in the Red Sea. Reuters today has the receipts connecting the rebels with their benefactors, reporting that Tehran sent Revolutionary Guard commanders and missile equipment to the Houthis in Yemen.
Iran rejected the latest American cease-fire proposal. No functioning diplomatic process is evident. No mechanism for pausing the attacks, resolving disputed incidents or preventing one retaliation from producing the next. Also, thirteen nights into this latest round, nobody has said what winning is. Until the leadership quits, until the nuclear program is gone, until the government falls. Which one is being fought?
Some final questions:
Can a bombing campaign intended to make Iran’s leaders cry uncle succeed against a government with such a high tolerance for suffering—particularly when much of that suffering is borne by its people?
Has the war become a contest of pain thresholds: how much destruction Iran’s leaders are willing to absorb, versus how much political and economic damage President Trump is willing to endure?
And what has restrained Trump from ordering the “massive attack” he keeps threatening? If he believes such an attack would be decisive, the costs holding him back must be substantial—perhaps further damage to the world economy, perhaps a larger Iranian retaliation, perhaps something else we cannot yet see. Knowing what that constraint is would help everyone judge how seriously to take his next threat, or how worried we should all be for the retaliation if he makes good on that threat.
Battling Production Lines
During the war’s first year, Ukrainian drone incursions into Russia were isolated events, usually involving one or two aircraft. By summer 2023, nearly 200 suspected attacks over eight months represented a major escalation. Now, Russia says it intercepted 571 Ukrainian drones in a single night.
Ukraine said its weapons struck an oil facility roughly 1,350 kilometers from the border and a factory producing aircraft and missile components. Russian officials said the factory attack killed six people and wounded 26.
Near Kyiv, a Russian ballistic missile struck a military training site hosting defense-industry representatives, killing at least 10 people and wounding nearly 100.
Russia is exploiting Ukraine’s shortage of Patriot interceptors by launching ballistic missiles that travel at several times the speed of sound and are difficult for other systems to stop. In one major July attack, Ukraine said it intercepted none of 29 ballistic missiles.
The war is increasingly a contest of industrial capacity: Ukrainian drone production against Russian missile stockpiles, and against Ukraine’s supply of the interceptors that stop them.
Which is where this connects to the war above it. The interceptors the Pentagon is moving toward the Gulf and the interceptors Ukraine cannot get are the same interceptors, off the same small number of production lines, running at roughly 600 a year now, with plans to reach about 2,000 a year by 2030, against a backlog measured in years. One line is being asked to underwrite three deterrents — Kyiv’s, the Gulf’s, and the one that was sitting in the Pacific for Taiwan.
Wait, Did We do That?
The Trump administration has admitted that it canceled hundreds of clean-energy grants because of how the affected states voted. This is not merely a dispute over climate policy or government spending. It is evidence that the federal purse was used to punish political opponents.
In October 2025, the Energy Department announced the termination of $7.56 billion in awards, claiming an individualized review found the projects economically unsound. But filings in Thakur v. Trump tell a different story. The class-action lawsuit was brought by University of California researchers who alleged that federal agencies canceled grants for politically disfavored reasons rather than poor performance or violations of grant terms.
The government’s admission substantially validates that central allegation. Officials acknowledged terminating 283 grants in states won by Kamala Harris while sparing 340 grants recommended for cancellation in states won by Donald Trump. The selection was based solely on the states’ political identity—not cost, performance, statutory requirements or project merits.
The canceled awards supported electrical-grid upgrades, methane-leak reduction, manufacturing and hydrogen production. In related litigation, Judge Amit Mehta ruled that selectively canceling comparable grants in Democratic states violated the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. His order restored only the grants held by the plaintiffs before him, however. It did not resolve every cancellation in Thakur.
Congress, not the president, holds the constitutional power of the purse. Treating awarded public funds as presidential patronage—money for friendly states, cancellation for hostile ones—undermines congressional authority and equal government under law. If that seems like jargon, what I’m describing is the American system that we celebrated this year at its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary.
The admission also contradicts Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s congressional assurance that politics played no role. (If the majority in Congress were jealous guardians of their power, they might be upset about this.)
By the way, if you’re gauging how the various branches of government are doing, note how the admission surfaced. In the judicial branch– because someone sued. During the Trump years it has been the only branch to seek to maintain standards.
If future presidents can redirect appropriated money according to electoral support, what remains of the power of the purse? The question is not confined to grants. Elsewhere in today’s issue: a tax on nearly every import in the country, imposed without a vote, and a thirteen-night bombing campaign, prosecuted without one. Three of the day’s largest stories involve powers the Constitution assigns to Congress being exercised by the president, and in none of them is Congress audibly objecting.
This is a particularly stark abdication in an election year where voters are supposed to evaluate the work being done in their name and either affirm or punish the lawmakers responsible for it. But a member who does not vote on a war never has to defend a war. A member who does not vote on a tariff never has to explain a price. The Republican leaders in Congress are behaving as if their authority is also a liability.
Tariffs, now more than ever.
President Trump has found a tariff workaround. He’s now rebuilt most of the tariff wall the Supreme Court knocked down in February.
Trump first imposed sweeping tariffs in April 2025 under a law granting presidents emergency economic powers. The Supreme Court ruled that the law did not authorize tariffs. The administration responded with a temporary measure that kept most in place. They have now found a permanent one under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act. That statute permits retaliation against foreign practices that burden American commerce.
The alleged offense is that the targeted countries are using forced labor. American officials say the targeted economies fail to block goods made under coercion from entering their markets, allowing abusive producers to directly undercut American workers. Supporters say market access should require trading partners to enforce comparable labor standards.
But the remedy is not a ban on proven forced-labor goods. It is a tax on lawful imports.
Imports from 60 economies—representing 99.4 percent of everything the United States buys abroad—now face duties of 10 or 12.5 percent. Because the European Union is counted as one economy, the policy reaches more than 80 countries.
These are a tax on American companies. Importers can absorb the charge, negotiate lower supplier prices or pass it to consumers. Because nearly every supplier is covered, businesses have few untaxed countries to switch to.
On who pays, the latest hard data say the burden falls overwhelmingly on U.S. firms and consumers, not foreign exporters: a February New York Fed study found nearly 90 percent of the economic burden from the 2025 tariffs was borne in the United States, with 94 percent through August 2025 and 86 percent by November; an NBER analysis estimated 2025 tariff pass-through at 94 percent, meaning importers bore most of the cost and foreign exporters generally did not cut prices.
Australia, Japan, China, Brazil and other trading partners dispute the administration’s findings. Brazil is considering a World Trade Organization challenge. The new legal foundation is sturdier than the one the Court rejected because Section 301 expressly authorizes tariffs after an investigation. Yet judges may still ask whether a near-global tax is reasonably connected to each country’s labor practices—or whether forced labor supplied a convenient route back to the policy Trump wanted.
MEASLES UPDATE
The record fell before August. The United States has recorded 2,318 measles cases this year, already exceeding the 2,289 reported during all of 2025. That makes 2026 the country’s worst measles year since 1991, with five months still remaining. The underlying story has not changed: vaccination coverage has fallen below the level needed to stop sustained transmission, while major outbreaks continue in Utah, Arizona and South Carolina. What changed today is the scale—and the consequence now coming into view. International health authorities will meet in November to determine whether the United States has lost the measles-elimination status it achieved in 2000.
Smoke detector Removed
Disparate impact sounds like an expression only a statistician could love. It describes a problem: a rule can treat everyone alike on paper while treating groups differently in practice.
In schools, disparate-impact analysis functioned as a smoke detector. Suppose Black students were suspended more often than White students under one policy. The disparity did not prove discrimination. It prompted investigators to ask whether the rule was necessary, applied consistently or replaceable with a less discriminatory alternative.
The method addressed a problem that became more important after explicit segregation—rules assigning Black and White students to different schools—became illegal. Institutions could instead adopt neutral barriers, such as admissions tests unrelated to the program or attendance boundaries that preserved segregation.
In 1971, the Supreme Court confronted this problem at a North Carolina power company. Black employees seeking better jobs had to possess diplomas and pass aptitude tests unnecessary for the work. The Court ruled that practices could be unlawful because of their effects, not only their stated intentions. Federal education officials later applied the principle to schools.
The Education Department has now abandoned disparate-impact enforcement under Title VI, which prohibits racial discrimination in federally funded programs. Instead of asking whether a neutral policy creates an unnecessary racial barrier, investigators will principally ask whether officials intended to discriminate.
The administration says unequal outcomes can have innocent causes. It argues that schools fearing investigation may soften discipline or alter admissions simply to make each racial group’s numbers look similar—even when the original rules were fair.
Families generally cannot bring their own Title VI lawsuits based solely on disparate impact. They may still report intentional discrimination, but proving it can require an incriminating message or evidence of deliberately different treatment. A family may see the pattern without possessing either—and has now lost the principal federal mechanism for challenging it.
The law can still punish whoever lights the match. What happens when everyone sees smoke but nobody can prove who struck it?
The Missing Hands in Elder Care
They bathe our grandparents. They help them from bed to wheelchair. They make sure medications are taken. They know Mr. Johnson won’t finish lunch unless someone remembers the extra pudding cup.
Those hands are becoming harder to find.
The New York Times reports that President Trump’s immigration enforcement campaign is removing workers from senior-living facilities and leaving others afraid to report for work because of immigration raids or uncertainty about their legal status. Many of the workers now leaving have been employed legally for years under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) or Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Delays in renewing work permits and recent court rulings allowing the administration to end some TPS protections are forcing nursing homes to lose experienced caregivers who have often cared for the same residents for years.
Immigrants make up about 28 percent of America’s long-term-care workforce and roughly 22 percent of nursing assistants. These are jobs that cannot be outsourced or postponed. Residents still need to be bathed, fed, lifted safely and monitored every day. More than half of nursing homes surveyed in 2023 reported turning away prospective residents because they already lacked enough staff, and nearly all said they were relying on overtime to cover shortages.
The shortage does not remain a staffing problem for long. One worker leaves. Remaining employees work overtime. Burnout rises. Facilities rely more heavily on temporary staff. Continuity suffers. Researchers have long found that nursing homes with more direct-care staffing provide better care. The concern is that fewer caregivers could eventually mean more falls, medication errors, hospitalizations and other preventable injuries.
America has quietly built much of its elder-care system around immigrant labor. As the administration targets those workers, immigration policy reveals a larger American challenge: how to provide enough caregivers for a rapidly aging population. The economics are already difficult. Nursing homes rely heavily on Medicaid, which reimburses facilities only about 82 cents for every dollar they spend on resident care, leaving little room to raise wages enough to attract more workers. The question is not just who will care for the patients immigrant caregivers once saw to, but whether the country has a realistic plan to provide the level of elder care Americans say they want as millions more people reach old age.
DOJ Drops Subpoena
The Justice Department withdrew subpoenas seeking testimony and phone records from New York Times journalists Thursday after a federal judge said prosecutors had treated an extraordinary, last-resort intrusion into newsgathering as an opening investigative move—and indicated he would otherwise quash the demands.
The subpoenas arose from a leak investigation following July 8 and 9 Times reports about security deficiencies aboard President Donald Trump’s new Qatari-donated Air Force One. FBI agents served three reporters at their homes on July 10 and attempted to serve two others. Prosecutors also sought telephone records associated with the five journalists.
During a heated hearing in Manhattan, U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian questioned why prosecutors had approached the reporters before exhausting alternative investigative avenues. Justice Department rules describe compulsory demands for journalists’ information as an extraordinary measure and require that subpoenas be narrowly tailored.
The hearing revealed several errors. Some subpoenas targeted numbers belonging to two reporters’ spouses and another reporter’s mother. At least two sought records dating to January, months before the articles appeared. Prosecutors also failed initially to notify the journalists about the demands to telecommunications providers.
In seeking a nondisclosure order, the government represented that disclosure could expose a nonpublic investigation, although the inquiry was already widely reported. One prosecutor called that an oversight. Another acknowledged that the family members’ numbers were included because investigators moved quickly and relied on database information.
After Subramanian said the errors were “piling up,” prosecutors requested a break and returned to announce the withdrawal. The judge subsequently declared the subpoenas null and void.
The Times called the outcome an affirmation of press freedom. Justice Department officials denied acting in bad faith and said the underlying investigation would continue. The withdrawal does not prevent prosecutors from issuing new subpoenas after pursuing other investigative steps and complying with applicable protections.
CYCLOSPORA UPDATE
One outbreak becomes two. The Taco Bell-linked outbreak has expanded from five states to nine, with 1,947 illnesses and 98 hospitalizations now connected to shredded iceberg lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms. That conclusion still rests on interviews and supply-chain tracing rather than a confirmed positive lettuce sample. Separately, the FDA is investigating another cluster of 72 illnesses whose source and location have not been disclosed. The second cluster matters because it suggests the record national surge cannot be explained by the Taco Bell lettuce outbreak alone.
Neanderthals are no Neanderthals
For generations, scientists have debated whether Neanderthals disappeared because modern humans were more intelligent. A new analysis challenges that familiar explanation, suggesting that Neanderthal cognitive abilities largely overlapped with those of Homo sapiens.
Researchers used deformation mapping, a technique that digitally reconstructs the inner surface of a skull. From these reconstructions, the team estimated the volumes of more than a dozen brain regions in Neanderthals and in modern people of European and Han Chinese ancestry. In several regions, the differences between the two living populations were greater than those separating modern humans from Neanderthals.
The results do not prove that Neanderthals thought exactly as we do. Skull shape is an imperfect guide to the brain’s internal anatomy, while the size of a brain region is only weakly connected to cognitive performance. Still, the findings suggest that any average intelligence gap was modest. Neanderthals may have occupied much the same broad spectrum of language, memory and executive abilities found among people today.
The study also reexamines earlier research reporting that Neanderthals had smaller cerebellums than early modern humans. Because the cerebellum contributes to language processing and memory, this difference had been proposed as a possible competitive disadvantage. Yet treating such anatomical variation as proof of inferior intelligence would require applying the same logic to differences among living human populations—an interpretation unsupported by current research.
If superior intelligence did not doom the Neanderthals, what did? Was it their pack-a-day smoking habit, or their refusal to wear bicycle helmets? More plausible theories suggest that they interbred with a much larger population of Homo sapiens and were gradually absorbed. Neanderthals therefore did not disappear entirely: their genetic legacy survives today. Many people, particularly those with ancestry outside sub-Saharan Africa, carry a small percentage of Neanderthal DNA in their own genomes.
