This Was a Great Week for American Diplomacy by Fred Kaplan

Writing for Slate, Fred Kaplan details the significant achievements of the Biden administration at the recent NATO summit. The real thrust of the article, however, is that the genuinely newsworthy agreements reached at the summit were of scant interest to the broader news media, which perversely seeks to emphasize conflict in every last story. Not everything that happens, particularly on the world stage, needs to be presented with the gloom of disagreement. That U.S. news reporting reflexively frames every act of governance as a matter of fraught political dispute is a major part of the reason our social progress is currently stifled by division.

As Politicians Cry ‘Crisis,’ Some Migrants Are Finding Their Way by Christopher Maag and Raúl Vilchis

The New York Times has generally done an admirable job of crafting thought, human-based stories as a follow up the cheap-stunt actions taken by hateful Republican governors to deceive refugees seeking asylum and ship them all over the country. Months after the villainous state officials completed their preening for toxic cable news networks, there are still human beings who were displaced and in need. Among other useful details in this piece, Christopher Maag and Raúl Vilchis share the consensus assessment of economists who have long known that its the continual influx of immigrants that keeps the U.S. economy working.

The Magic World’s 50-Year Grudge by David Segal

Writing for The New York Times, David Segal provides a highly entertaining survey of the career of Uri Geller, with special attention to his current attempt to burnish his legacy with a personal museum that is evidently curated haphazardly.