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May 8, 2026

Ava Pom

Notable

Incentives, not just bans, can get kids off screens. “When the value of a product comes from collective participation, a mandate alone might not be enough to change behavior.”

— Leonardo Bursztyn, a professor at the University of Chicago, and Cass R. Sunstein, who teaches at Harvard

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The Iran war will cost trillions. “The Pentagon’s lowball $25 billion estimate gets a lot of attention, but it’s more of a headline than a real number.”

— Justin Wolfers, a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan

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The red tape strangling American progress. “Too often, today’s regulations fail to accomplish their mission of balancing the nation’s varied interests and arriving at the best collective solution.”

— The editorial board

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Spotlight

Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

Trump Used to Be the No. 1 China Hawk. What Happened?

Our contributing Opinion writer Oren Cass argues that the asymmetry of the two economic systems guarantees that any deal with China ends with the United States ripped off.

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ICYMI

Don’t fall for Trump’s retirement pitch. “If individuals have so much trouble parsing ordinary stocks, imagine them trying to untangle a private equity fund offering.”

— Steven Rattner, a contributing Opinion writer

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Listen (or Watch)

The New York Times The Ezra Klein Show We’re at the Dawn of the Ozempic Era — and It’s Really Weird One in eight American adults is taking GLP-1s. What does that mean for how we relate to our food, bodies and one another? 1 HR 14 MIN LISTEN

More in Opinion

Michelle Goldberg Graham Platner Is No Nazi Conservative attacks are premised on a deliberate misreading of both the candidate and his progressive fans. By Michelle Goldberg

Guest Essay Meta Is Dying Meta has commenced a long, slow slide into irrelevance. By Julia Angwin

Guest Essay Trump’s Architecture Rankles. But Why? What Trump’s monuments look like to a British architecture writer. By Owen Hatherley and John Guida

Guest Essay Here’s How Freaked Out You Should Be About the Hantavirus Cruise Ship An expert weighs in. By Caitlin Rivers

John McWhorter The Voting Rights Act Changed America. Now, It Can Change. Do we care when other groups can’t elect their favorite candidates? By John McWhorter

Guest Essay It’s Still Demoralizing to Teach a Classroom of Scrolling Students School phone bans aren’t magic. We still need them. By Emily Oster

In Your Words

Re: “This Merger Can, and Should, Be Stopped”

I don’t pretend to understand money on this scale or what will happen to Hollywood if this merger goes through. I do understand fear of reprisals for speaking out, which currently affects politics and governance all over our country. Half a dozen politicians in Indiana just got smacked down for objecting to cheating. — A comment by spud from North Carolina

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