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May 21, 2026

Notable

Did Trump just open a U.S. agency for corruption? “Forget the one-off deals or the handshakes at the 18th hole. This would make cronyism an official function of the federal government.”

— Noah Shachtman, contributing Opinion writer

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Hollywood says au revoir to Cannes. “Is this a Franco American breakup? Who walked out on whom? To some it feels like this is one more way that America, under President Trump, has turned its back on the rest of the world.”

— Sharon Waxman, contributing Opinion writer

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The faculty of Harvard just did something brave. “Grade inflation doesn’t just devalue an A; it also quietly hands more weight to factors other than what a student actually learned.”

— Jason Furman, contributing Opinion writer

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Spotlight

Damon Winter/The New York Times

How Democrats Lost the Plot

Our contributing writer Ben Rhodes argues that we need leaders who tell us hard truths, while insisting that the present state of our politics is not permanent.

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ICYMI

There has never been an example of presidential corruption like this. “Americans should be cleareyed about what the president is doing. He is taking their money and showering it on criminals.”

— Editorial Board

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Listen (or Watch)

The New York Times Interesting Times with Ross Douthat A Defense of a Liberal Arts Education in the Age of A.I. Making the case for a “useless” education. 1 HR 3 MIN LISTEN

More in Opinion

Guest Essay Trump Just Pardoned Himself and His Family Forever By issuing a prohibition on federal investigations that might threaten Trump’s finances, the Justice Department has placed the president and his family in a new category. By Jeffrey Toobin

David Wallace-Wells What Schools Are Forgetting in Their Race to Embrace A.I. A.I. is replicating the pattern followed by every ed-tech quick fix. By David Wallace-Wells

The Conversation There Are Scandals. There Is the Law. And Then There’s This. There are scandals. There is the law. And then there’s this. By Emily Bazelon and David French

In Your Words

Re: “What Silicon Valley Is Coming for Next”

This makes total sense to me. When using A.I. for creative work, the human acts more as a creative director. The output is the sum of the context, taste and choices of the person inputting the prompts. With A.I., it’s not “are you a good writer” or “can you draw.” It becomes more about what you want to say, how you want to say it and how it feels. It all comes down to taste.

That will be a hard thing to master. Taste is so very human. Even more so than ethics.

— A comment by Bob McBobbybob from Arizona

Read more comments on the story here and check out our Letters to the Editor.

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