In 2019, Benjamin Netanyahu draped buildings with giant banners that depicted him shaking hands with a grinning Donald Trump. Captioned with the words Another League, the posters presented Netanyahu’s ties with the American president as an argument for the Israeli prime minister’s reelection. No one else, Netanyahu’s campaign implied, could deliver the mercurial man in the White House.
That was then.

Workers on the National Mall, desperate to turn the Reflecting Pool to President Trump’s preferred shade of blue, poured jug after jug of hydrogen peroxide into the water yesterday morning. As they did so, members of the National Guard, deployed to clean up crime, looked on. The water, at that moment, matched their mossy-green fatigues.
The Reflecting Pool now evokes the joy of a Green Bay Packers victory. Or a high-school prank. Or St. Patrick’s Day in Chicago.

An irony of the Iran war is that Donald Trump, whose patience for written texts and policy details is famously negligible, came to grasp the reality of the situation more quickly and clearly than his neoconservative supporters who spent years obsessing over the issue.

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Donald Trump arrived in France yesterday for this morning’s G7 summit and promptly confirmed America’s capitulation to Iran.

Several countries can claim some credit for the tentative memorandum of understanding to end the war between Iran and the United States, which officials from both countries plan to sign later this week. Pakistan had for some time led negotiations. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Oman were involved in elements of the talks. But to hear Donald Trump tell the story, the whole deal might not have materialized without the intervention of a crucial friend in the neighborhood.

“Ships of the World, start your engines,” Donald Trump declared on Truth Social on Sunday. “Let the oil flow!”
This was the president’s way of announcing that the United States and Iran had reached an agreement to end their war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Although the exact details have not been released, the deal reportedly includes a 60-day cease-fire during which the two sides will negotiate a more permanent settlement.

Late last month, I began to consider withdrawing some money from my savings account to buy gold. It’s the first time I’ve ever thought about panic-buying. For all of the firewalls and two-factor-authentication codes, the safety of the internet is starting to falter. Hackers are gaining the upper hand over organizations around the world—hospitals, energy grids, government agencies, and, yes, banks.

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The president of the United States announced last month that, in place of performances by Martina McBride, Young MC, the surviving members of the Commodores, one member of Poison, and other sought-after musicians who had dropped out after being recruited on apparently false pretenses, he would personally provide the entertainment for a 250th-anniversary celebration of American independence.