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April 13, 2026

Ben Wiseman

Notable

Pete Hegseth’s gospel of carnage. “He brandishes assertions about God’s will with the exaggerated brio of an electronics merchant pressing fliers on pedestrians passing by his new megastore: Have I got a holy war for you.”

— Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer

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Oil companies want what gun manufacturers have. “It is rare for Congress to grant liability waivers to entire industries, and it should be.”

— Dave Jones, the director of the Climate Risk Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley

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We can’t beat the Chinese on A.I. So we must join them. “If a U.S. leader went to China and offered to scrap chip controls in exchange for collaboration on A.I. nonproliferation, there would be at least some chance of the proposal succeeding.”

— Sebastian Mallaby, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations

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Spotlight

Where Did All the Affordable Cars Go?

This is how cars got so ridiculously, forbiddingly expensive.

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ICYMI

Parents, consider underachieving. “I can recall my own mother setting foot in my elementary school approximately twice — once to bring in allergen-filled cupcakes for my birthday, and then again to bring in the family dog (also allergen-filled) for show and tell.”

— Rachel Feintzeig, a journalist

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More in Opinion

Guest Essay Trump’s ‘Deal Makers in Peace’ Are Anything But Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff thought they could broker peace like a business deal. The war in Iran proves how wrong they were. By Jonathan Guyer

Michelle Goldberg What Orban’s Defeat Means for the Rest of the World The Hungarian prime minister’s defeat demonstrates that opposition to his party was able to overwhelm all the structures Orban put in place to protect his rule. By Michelle Goldberg

Guest Essay The Iran War Has Made Clear the Old Arrangements Are Over For decades, the U.S.-Gulf relationship was based on oil for security. That framework is obsolete. By Badr Jafar

Ezra Klein This Is Why There’s No Liberal Joe Rogan Conversation is not a reward to be bestowed on those with whom we agree; it’s a base line practice. By Ezra Klein

Maureen Dowd The Sphinx Thinks It Stinks Melania creates another mystery with a surprise statement. By Maureen Dowd

Guest Essay ‘The Reason I’m Not an Atheist Is That I Think the Philosophical Arguments Against It Are Unanswerable’ The most monstrous pictures of God come from the Christian tradition just as the most radiant images of God come from what Christians believe. By Peter Wehner

Guest Essay High Gas Prices Won’t End Even if the War Does Why a cease-fire in Iran won’t bring gasoline prices down. By Mark Finley

In Your Words

Re: “The Trump Administration Is in a Psychotic State”

“This is far from normal.” That one sentence may just be the most low-key criticism of Trump I have ever read. — A comment by Noordinaryguy from Vancouver, British Columbia

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

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