Dear Weekend Jolter,
In one of the best children’s shows on television, delightful scamps Phineas and Ferb formulaically spend every day of summer vacation pursuing fantastical schemes and experiments with neighborhood friends, only for their mess to be wiped clean before their mom shows up and their sister can “bust” them.
President Trump plots his weeks similarly. His presidency this year, you may have noticed, has been episodic in nature. So much so that picking topics for this weekly newsletter is easy: Trump Captures Maduro; Trump Threatens to Invade Greenland; War with Minnesota; War with Iran. This week’s installment: War with the Pope. (Next up: the Fed!)
Every week is a new adventure, distinct from the one that preceded it. Every undertaking, impossible; every target, improbable, on paper.
Except. In Phineas and Ferb, the title characters hit reset: Other characters’ shenanigans end up eliminating any trace of their antics, and the next day, they start afresh. But imagine if the debris from every rocket ship, every roller coaster, every time machine were still in the boys’ backyard. This being real life, the consequences of Trump’s misadventures do accumulate. Growing tensions between America and NATO nations, even though the Greenland episode happened in January, are one example. In Trump’s battle with Pope Leo XIV, growing tensions between the president and parts of his base are another.
As it turns out, Pope Leo XIV is far more popular than Trump. Last summer, the pope ranked highest among 14 prominent figures, with 57 percent of Americans surveyed by Gallup viewing him favorably and 11 percent unfavorably. The percentage with a negative view of Trump was 57 percent. “It is sometimes genuinely fascinating to see what Trump can and will do to alienate his usual supporters,” Jim Geraghty writes. This, of course, is what happened after Trump’s papal screed, following the pope’s criticism of the Iran war. Not one to turn the other cheek, Trump posted an AI image portraying himself as a Jesus-like figure healing the sick, then removed it after supporters ranging from David Brody to Riley Gaines objected. The fight also drew in Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who called Trump’s comments “unacceptable.” Not one to confess, he then claimed the image showed him as a doctor or Red Cross worker “making people better.”
As Dan McLaughlin writes, there’s something futile about continuing to argue about Trump’s character, his flaws being well documented. Still, the incident served to further strain the president’s coalition and aggravate supporters. This is not to give the pope a pass. NR’s editorial explains how his comments on Jesus ignoring the prayers of those who wage war fail to consider those who serve in genuine wars of national interest; Rich Lowry has more on that point. Yet, as the editorial notes, “Trump, for his part, has descended to something close to deranged buffoonery.”
Back to Phineas and Ferb. The entertaining buffoon in that show is Heinz Doofenshmirtz. In parallel plotlines, Dr. Doof, too, cooks up a zany new scheme every episode, only to be foiled by the stepbrothers’ pet platypus, Perry, who is also a secret agent with well-honed fighting skills. Like all metaphors, this one’s imperfect, and the characters don’t precisely correlate (though I’m fairly sure the sister, Candace, is the media). Trump isn’t so hapless as the evil doctor. He isn’t so charmed as the boys to be able to disappear his mess every episode. But he wouldn’t be out of place in the cast, operating by the ethos that no enterprise is too far-fetched, no target too imposing, to consume his attention until he is almost busted, and pivots. The backyard is getting untidy, and summer’s not even here yet.
* * *
Well, I hope I was able to pull off that high-wire act of an opening. Because I’m about to ask for money. This is another brief reminder about our ongoing spring webathon. We’ve seen an encouraging response so far and hope to keep up the momentum. In the modern media landscape, the reality is that we rely on our readers, both in terms of subscriptions and their generous donations, to keep the NR ship steaming ahead. So if you can, please, chip in. Thank you.
Now stick with us, ’cause this newsletter’s gonna do it all.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
The Trump vs. Leo editorial, once more, is here: The Pope and the President
Step back from the brink: The Federal Reserve Standoff
On Hungary: Viktor Orbán’s Shellacking
ARTICLES
Noah Rothman: A False Dawn in the Strait of Hormuz
Charles C. W. Cooke: Eric Swalwell Reaps What He Sows
Jeffrey Blehar: Everybody Knew About Eric Swalwell. Except You and Me
Christian Schneider: The Male Feminism Con Job
Stanley Kurtz: How Progressives Stole Our Schools, and How to Take Them Back
Abigail Anthony: DEI Is Alive and Well at the University of Michigan. It Just Goes by a Different Name
Brittany Bernstein: Biden DOJ Relied on Cozy Relationship with Pro-Abortion Activists to Track and Prosecute Pro-Lifers, Emails Show
Brittany Bernstein: West Virginia Was Ravaged by the Opioid Crisis. Things Are Finally Turning Around
Mike Coté: Are There Really Alternatives to the Strait of Hormuz?
Henry Olsen: Orbán’s Total Defeat
Kathryn Jean Lopez: The Passion of Ben Sasse
Timothy Sandefur: If Jefferson Was Right
John Gustavsson: How European Conservatives Fought Back on Migration
CAPITAL MATTERS
Jamie Tronnes & Daniel Dorman, on Canada’s own turn toward protectionism: Canada’s Anti-American Defense Industrial Strategy
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Brian Allen observes something amiss at an American art show: The Good, the Awful, the Non-Art, and the Motherly at the Whitney Biennial
Armond White is not wishing a happy anniversary to this classic film: The Damage Done by All the President’s Men
FROM THE NEW, JUNE 2026 ISSUE OF NR
Andrew McCarthy: Trump’s Messy Courtroom Drama
David L. Bahnsen: The Next Supply-Side Battle
James Kirchick: Blaming the Jews, Again
Brian Stewart: Hezbollah: The Final Act
Andrew Stuttaford: Hitting the Mother Road: Rediscovering Route 66
Mark Helprin: Terror in a New York Minute
Audrey Fahlberg: Does the Filibuster Have a Future?
Daniel Buck: When Conservatives Win School Boards
Jessica Hornik: The Trouble with Trees
THESE EXCERPTS ARE TOLL-FREE
The new issue of National Review is out, and you can thumb through it here. But I’ll direct you first to an epic journey of an Our Spacious Skies, by Andrew Stuttaford, who gets his kicks:
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. It was my first day of driving on I-40 and remnants of Route 66 between Kingman, Ariz., and Shamrock, Texas, two cities separated by some 850 miles, about a third of the length of the old road, and there it was, a massive green head. Tiki? Moai? Hard to say.
Giganticus Headicus stared out from the former Kozy Corner Trailer Park at Antares, Ariz. Not so far away, there were dinosaurs. Unbothered by Jeff Goldblum and his precautionary principles, their owners were using them to entice visitors into, among other ports of call, rock outlets (geological, not vinyl), Meteor City, and the Grand Canyon Caverns Inn.
Cyrus Avery, the Oklahoma businessman who fathered the mother road, would not have been surprised. He died in 1963, having stuck around long enough to see Route 66 at its exuberant best. A Good Roads Movement man and a highway commissioner, he was also appointed to the federal government’s Joint Board of Interstate Highways in 1925. Up until that time, America’s highway system had not, in fact, been a system, merely a messy patchwork of messy roads, much less than the country needed if it were to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by the internal combustion engine.
Turning the patchwork into a network was not straightforward. Avery helped settle Route 66’s path and resolve something else too. A confusing collection of road names was to be replaced by a logically ordered set of numbers. What ended up as Route 66 was meant to be Route 60, but to Avery’s annoyance, crafty Kentuckians managed to grab the coveted zero-ending for the route that was to run through their state. Avery rejected one alternative, 62, because he and some colleagues got more kicks from 66. It sounded right (even more so preceded by “Route” rather than the more formal “U.S. Highway”), and in 1926, Route 66 was born. One hundred years later, its birthday celebrations are underway.
Abigail Anthony revisits the DEI madness at the University of Michigan, and finds not much has changed:
The University of Michigan (UM) announced in 2025 that it would shut down various offices and programs in response to the Trump administration’s crusade against DEI, but new research shows that a majority of its DEI staff remain employed, while the school’s DEI initiatives have simply been rebranded.
The University of Michigan “appears to have retained its commitment to DEI principles and programming, but through rebranding, repackaging, reimagining, and revised job titles,” Mark J. Perry, an economist and senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, writes in a report shared with National Review.
“Of the 248 paid (mostly full-time) UM DEI staff from my analysis last year for the 2024-2025 academic year, 208 of those employees (and approximately 84 percent) are still working full-time at UM, while 40 employees have left UM or retired,” the report reads. “That represents a staff turnover rate of 16 percent for UM’s DEI staff, which is consistent with the 13.4 percent turnover for faculty and staff at public universities nationwide in 2024. Therefore, the loss of 40 UM DEI-related employees was likely more the result of natural staff turnover, and not the result of any intentional downsizing of UM’s diversity-related headcount.”
National Review previously reported in 2024 that the University of Michigan declared it would “no longer solicit diversity statements as part of faculty hiring, promotion and tenure” because such statements limit free expression and intellectual diversity. However, when the university announced that policy, it reaffirmed its commitment to DEI: “Diversity, equity and inclusion are three of our core values at the university,” the provost said.
In March 2025, the University of Michigan announced it would shut down a range of DEI initiatives. In particular, the university announced that two offices focused on DEI would close, while the university-wide DEI strategic plan would be discontinued. Additionally, the university pledged to conduct a compliance review to ensure its policies, programs, and practices are legal. . . .
However, it appears that the university has expanded its commitment to DEI, increasing the amount spent on salaries for employees in DEI-related roles from $14.5 million across 158 employees in the 2024-2025 academic year to $15,305,508 across 162 employees the following year.
“[The analysis suggests] that there have been no staff layoffs of ‘diversicrats’ at UM, nor have there been associated cost savings resulting from a shrinking diversity bureaucracy,” the report reads. “Instead, most of the 13 Core and Non-Core DEI units at UM remain intact with no reductions in staff or salaries. Staff titles have changed, and some diversity programs and offices have been rebranded, but much of UM’s commitment to advance DEI campus-wide remains strong, perhaps just less visible to the public than before.”
As Iran begins to reopen the Strait of Hormuz for now, Mike Coté examines what to do about the waterway long-term:
There is one potential solution, built for the medium and long term, that is far more intriguing: expanding the regional pipeline network to shift energy exports elsewhere, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz and mitigating the Iranian threat.
The Middle East already boasts one of the world’s largest networks of energy pipelines, moving critical commodities across large distances for internal consumption and export. The biggest and most important is the East-West Crude Oil Pipeline in Saudi Arabia, which has been expanded to handle about 7 million barrels per day (bpd) since the start of the war in Iran. That pipeline cuts over 700 miles across the Arabian Peninsula, moving crude from the oil fields in the country’s east to export terminals along the Red Sea in the country’s west, bypassing the chokepoint at Hormuz. The Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline is much smaller, handling about 1.5 million bpd, and travels a shorter distance, moving crude from areas abutting the Persian Gulf to ports on the Gulf of Oman, allowing tankers to avoid transiting the strait. There are other pipelines, both for oil and natural gas, running from Iraq to Turkey, Qatar to the UAE and Oman, and Egypt to Jordan and Syria. These pipelines are not currently able to handle the massive volume transiting the Strait of Hormuz by sea, but they are already significant bypasses to that waterway. And they have room to grow.
Constructing new pipelines is certainly a good idea for the Gulf states, as it would reduce Iranian leverage over the medium and long term. There are several factors that make this a strong investment for nations seeking to avoid an Iranian stranglehold over their economies. The Gulf states are extremely dependent on revenues from energy exports and have seen Tehran attack them directly; they have every incentive to reduce Iran’s power over their countries. These nations are non-democratic regimes with little in the way of procedural roadblocks to building new infrastructure. They do not need to deal with the eminent domain claims, environmental review processes, property rights, or lawsuits that slow major infrastructure projects in America to a crawl. These nations also are flush with cash and usually control these projects at the national level, removing many typical roadblocks to speedy development and construction. New projects could expand on existing infrastructure, connecting current pipelines to one another or growing the network to new export nodes. We could see more pipelines heading to Red Sea ports, as well as potentially northward and directly to the Mediterranean via nations like Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and, if the Abraham Accords are expanded, perhaps even Israel.
Henry Olsen writes on the lessons from Hungary’s election:
The result should alarm President Trump and Vice President Vance. They committed American prestige to support Orbán and got annihilated. Their intervention did not help Orbán, but it certainly hurt Trump even more with the European leaders whose support he needs in the Middle East. They should resolve to never again do something so unnecessarily politically risky.
The Hungary results should also impel Trump and Vance to look the state of their own electoral prospects. Orbán kept trying to change the subject rather than deal with the issues voters actually cared about, like growth and inflation. Similarly, the economy consistently ranks as the most important issues among voters stateside. American polls have shown for over a year that the swing voters who made Trump president again in 2024 are dissatisfied with Trump’s handling of economic issues, yet the president keeps focusing on cultural issues and foreign affairs.
Trump, like Orbán, is governing to please his base rather than his swing voters. Orbán’s defeat showed that there’s only so long that someone can do that and retain office. A similar massive rebuke is facing Trump’s Republican Party if he doesn’t change course soon.
That realization may not come, though. Democrats in Reagan’s time had countless warnings that Americans had grown weary of the party’s emphasis on tax-and-spend and its inability to both bring down inflation or stop the Soviet Union’s rise. They were genuinely shocked when Reagan and the GOP won; even if things were bad, it could never come to this. But it did, and the rest is history.
Insular elites are always the last ones to see the tidal wave coming.
CODA
Did you know that Flea — yes, that Flea — just released a jazz album? He plays bass (of course) as well as trumpet on it, collaborating with dozens of other musicians. This one’s called “Traffic Lights,” and features Thom Yorke.
Thanks for reading. See you soon.
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