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Tomorrow is Donald Trump’s deadline to agree to trade deals before he imposes tariffs, and he means it this time. Why are you laughing? (In fact, since saying that yesterday, he’s already chickened out with Mexico, putting the “taco” in, well, TACO.

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Early in the Civil War, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. announced in The Atlantic that the necessities of life had been reduced to two things: bread and the newspaper. Trying to keep up with what Holmes called the “excitements of the time,” civilians lived their days newspaper to newspaper, hanging on the latest reports. Reading anything else felt beside the point.

Vinay Prasad, until Tuesday one of the country’s top medical regulators, just got a bitter taste of what it means to have real power. In recent months, the academic hematologist-oncologist, medical contrarian, and polemic podcaster had become a central figure at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In May, he was chosen to lead its Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research—a position that gave him authority over vaccines and gene therapies.

This week, the world seems to be finally paying attention to the magnitude of the suffering in Gaza. The futile policies pursued by the Israeli government—prodded by the far-right cabinet ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir—have reduced the supply of humanitarian aid, food, and supplies in Gaza. Israel has unnecessarily reengineered the distribution of aid, failing to achieve its goal of separating the civilian population from Hamas while further constricting its supply.

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“I am not a writer. I’ve been fooling myself and other people,” wrote John Steinbeck in his private journal when he was working on The Grapes of Wrath, his 1939 epic novel about a family fleeing the Oklahoma Dust Bowl during the Depression to seek a better future in California.