Plus: The EPA’s historic blow against intrusive regulation.

• We should have stopped Sydney Sweeney at Munich.

• President Trump, who is clearly growing frustrated and angry about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, spoke out forcefully against moves by the U.K., Canada, and France to reward Hamas by recognizing a Palestinian state. He pointed the finger where it belongs. On Thursday morning, with his envoy Steve Witkoff in Israel for talks about a cease-fire and the situation in Gaza, Trump posted on Truth Social: “The fastest way to end the Humanitarian Crises in Gaza is for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES!!!” If the rest of the world were to echo this statement, rather than criticize Israel, there’d be a better chance for a deal to end the war and allow more aid to reach the people of Gaza.

• Trump’s pressure campaign on Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell to cut interest rates, however, has so far failed: The Federal Open Market Committee has again voted to keep the federal funds rate the same. Governors Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman dissented, voting to cut it by 0.25 percentage points. These decisions are usually unanimous, but there’s no reason they have to be, and calling for a cut is defensible. Not defensible is Trump’s demand for a cut of three points, or his statement that a cut is warranted because economic growth is stronger than expected. Inflation remains stuck around 3 percent, and unemployment remains low. An already growing economy in those conditions does not need monetary stimulus. The question Trump is testing is whether voters elected him because they were irate about inflation or because they enjoy rule by his whim.

• Lee Zeldin, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, has rescinded the Obama EPA’s 2009 “Endangerment Finding,” which allowed the EPA to regulate fossil fuel emissions under the Clean Air Act. He hailed this move as “the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States.” If it sticks, it will be a major blow against intrusive regulation of the energy, automotive, and manufacturing sectors. The EPA was thrust into this area when the Supreme Court, in a dubious 5–4 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), ruled that Congress in 1970 meant to classify carbon dioxide as an “air pollutant” notwithstanding the fact that it is naturally present in the atmosphere and is exhaled by humans and animals. The Court required the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases or provide a “reasoned explanation” for its failure. The Obama and Biden administrations each rushed to pile regulations on the carmakers. Zeldin is challenging the legal basis of that decision (only three justices remain from the 2007 Court, all of whom dissented), but he’s also aiming to exercise the regulatory discretion to determine that such emissions do not “endanger public health or welfare.” The Court should uphold his decision — and reconsider its own.

• The trade deal with the EU, which lowered its tariffs while ours will remain higher than the pre-Trump rate, was a demonstration of how effective the combination of Trump’s personality and his fondness for brinkmanship can be, especially when dealing with a counterparty that, for all its preening, still relies heavily on American economic and military strength. The deals with Japan and South Korea were additional reminders that the U.S. remains the indispensable nation. Such victories, however, may prove more Pyrrhic than the president, or his party, would like. The higher cost of imports will hurt American consumers and many American companies well before the supposed benefits of a more autarkic economy will materialize. And we will wait to see how many of the promises of investment in the U.S. that accompanied the new deals become reality. But the tariffs were lower than once threatened. That merits one half-cheer. There is, however, a clear danger that some of the negotiations, perhaps most notably with India, and even the deals that may result from them could alienate countries the U.S. should want to bring close. The collateral damage inflicted by Trump’s tariffs will be geopolitical, too.

• Three weeks ago, in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Congress revoked federal Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood for one year. But for the third time since then, federal district Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee, has ruled that the funding must continue. Her decision is not just overreach but nonsense. Citing cases in which Congress tried to attach advocacy-related conditions to federal funding, she claims that Planned Parenthood was targeted for its political advocacy, rather than for what the law says disqualified it: its performance of abortions. She claims that defunding the group would not affect abortion rates, without considering what a large share of abortions Planned Parenthood does — yet at the same time claims that defunding would cause it to drastically reduce services and close clinics. She also argued that the law is a retroactive bill of attainder, even though Planned Parenthood could avoid its effect if it stopped performing abortions, and even though courts have allowed organizational defunding for groups ranging from ACORN to a Russian-linked cybersecurity firm. She refused to stay her own order or require Planned Parenthood to post more than a nominal $100 bond in case it loses on appeal. The Department of Justice has appealed to the First Circuit — and if that court doesn’t step in, the Supreme Court should.

• The Wall Street Journal’s most recent poll generated an eye-popping headline: “Democrats Get Lowest Rating From Voters in 35 Years.” The 2024 presidential election was nine months ago, and one might have thought that Democrats had figured out how to shake off the doldrums and start rebuilding their image in the eyes of the electorate. Even worse for Democrats is that voters are souring on Trump but aren’t preferring them as an alternative. The survey found that “on the whole, voters disapprove of the president’s handling of the economy, inflation, tariffs and foreign policy. . . . Disapproval of Trump’s handling of inflation outweighs approval by 11 points, and yet the GOP is trusted more than Democrats to handle inflation by 10 points. By 17 points, voters disapprove rather than approve of Trump’s handling of tariffs, and yet Republicans are trusted more than Democrats on the issue by 7 points.” Not everything is gloom and doom for Democrats. Their odds in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races look good. But the length of this postelection hangover suggests that broad swaths of the electorate no longer believe Democrats can govern well.

• Kamala Harris announced on Wednesday that she would not run for governor of California in 2026. This is not surprising, as her public comments so far this year — few and far between — focused almost exclusively on national issues, not state ones. Harris probably would have been favored to win the Democratic primary and general election just because of name recognition, but as one California reporter put it, “she was tempted to run for Governor but ultimately didn’t want to do the job.” (Much like her role as the border czar.) Instead, Harris announced on Thursday that her campaign memoir, titled 107 Days, will be published by Simon & Schuster on September 23. The title implies an excuse that the abbreviated campaign was the reason for her defeat, although there’s no indication in national polling or any of the swing state polls that she was gaining significant ground against Trump in the campaign’s final days. If anything, it was the opposite in most states. There may be some curiosity about whether Harris’s version of events aligns or contradicts the other recent high-profile books about the 2024 campaign — none of which made Harris look or sound like a gifted politician who was tragically impeded by the short campaign.

• Last Wednesday, Columbia University announced that it had reached an agreement with the Trump administration to restore $400 million in canceled federal funding. Columbia had already agreed to a series of concessions — among them a ban on wearing masks on campus, the empowerment of police to make arrests, and putting the Department of Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies under intellectual receivership. Columbia will now also pay $200 million to settle potential federal antidiscrimination claims and another $21 million to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and appoint a “jointly selected independent monitor” to oversee Columbia’s compliance. Progressive activists are already raising hue and cry over how Columbia has “bent the knee” to the Trump administration. But Columbia University brought this upon itself with years of racial discrimination and persecution of disfavored minorities. For decades, America’s elite academic institutions have, in fact, generally used their large government research grants as a shield from accountability: “How dare the government tell Harvard how to run itself when Harvard does such important work for the government,” their logic went. The Trump administration deserves credit for defying such arrogantly inverted reasoning.

• Even by the standards of America’s abysmal enforcement of its immigration laws, the story was jaw-dropping: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Jamaican citizen Jon Luke Evans, who overstayed his visa and was hired as a cop by the Old Orchard Beach Police Department in Maine. ICE official Patricia H. Hyde fumed, “The fact that a police department would hire an illegal alien and unlawfully issue him a firearm while on duty would be comical if it weren’t so tragic.” The police department insists it checked with E-Verify. “As part of the hiring process, the Town reviewed multiple forms of identification, including photo identification, and submitted Evans’ I-9 form to the Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify Program,” Old Orchard Beach’s police chief, Elise Chard, said. “The Department of Homeland Security then verified that Evans was authorized to work in the U.S.” The unnerving implication is that E-Verify, the primary tool for employers to know that their employees are in the country legally, isn’t as reliable as it ought to be.

• The actress and model Sydney Sweeney teamed up with the clothing brand American Eagle to make a commercial for jeans. The spot’s strapline featured a play on words: “Sydney Sweeney has good jeans.” Get it? The attractive woman modeling denim has good jeans. Because she’s pretty. Perhaps you don’t care for the pun, but, irrespective of your view, you likely do not react in the same manner as some on the identitarian left, who decided—wait for it!—that the advertisement was predicated upon Nazi eugenics. Before long, the commercial had been described as “provocative,” and then “controversial,” and then “white supremacist.” A bunch of TikTokers made videos. The Washington Post ran an explainer on how everything had “gone wrong.” A host on Good Morning America suggested that, like Hitler, Sweeney had “weaponized the idea of good genes” in order to “justify white supremacy.” Or, perhaps, clothing manufacturers around the world have noticed that displaying attractive people helps to sell their products. Sydney Sweeney is an attractive person. American Eagle want to sell more clothes. Sometimes, there is nothing more to the matter than that.

• After years of persistent rumors of his death (he once said he hoped that they would reduce the junk mail that came his way), Tom Lehrer, musician and mathematician, died at the grand old age of 97. A mathematical prodigy at Harvard, he started, seemingly effortlessly, to write songs distinguished by madly catchy tunes and remarkably clever wordplay, just for fun. In the early 1950s, a self-produced album went, as we now say, viral, a term that must have delighted a man with such a splendidly dark sense of humor. A star was born, for a while. He returned to academia a decade later, and that is, more or less, where he stayed. His politics—frequently reflected in his often sharply satirical lyrics—were those of an almost vanished left: witty, irreverent, and unashamed of erudition of a most traditional kind. Even when deeply misguided, his political sentiments do little or nothing to detract from his songs, which—judge for yourselves—he has left online for all to enjoy, for free. R.I.P.