JOE KAHN, the executive editor of The New York Times, acknowledged in a recent interview with Semafor that "there's a very good chance" Donald Trump could win the presidential election with a majority of the popular vote this fall. But "it is not the job of the news media to prevent that from happening," Kahn declared, and the Times will not avoid covering issues like immigration and inflation just "because they're favorable to Trump." To do otherwise would mean to become "an instrument of the Biden campaign" — to publish a "stream of stuff that's very, very favorable to them and only write negative stories about the other side."

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

FOR MOST urban planners, it is an article of faith that mass transit is not only good but essential — and that more mass transit should be a priority. Total funding on public transit in 2022 (the most recent data available) soared past $84 billion nationwide, an increase of nearly $5.5 billion since 2019. Under the Biden administration, the Federal Transit Administration last year approved $21 billion in new federal subsidies to agencies around the country, touting it as a "record investment in American transit."

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

The 2024 Summer Olympics are scheduled to open in Paris in July. A lot of Parisians dread what's coming. In French public opinion polls, more than half of respondents say the City of Light will not be ready to host the event. Exactly how many residents plan to get out of town to avoid the chaos isn't known, but the number appears not to be negligible: According to the French market research firm Odoxa, 52 percent of adults in greater Paris said they planned to leave during the Olympics. Even if some of that is merely venting, it implies a high level of dismay. In the same survey, 44 percent said they consider the games a "bad thing" for their city.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

IN RETROSPECT, maybe Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota shouldn't have titled her new political memoir "No Going Back." Even before its official publication this week, the book's instantly notorious anecdote about Noem killing one of her family dogs for being "untrainable" ensured that the governor would indeed be going back — back to the end of the line of potential running mates for Donald Trump.

As if that weren't bad enough, another part of "No Going Back" is now being walked back.

Noem wrote that when she was in Congress and serving on the House Armed Services Committee, she'd encountered Kim Jong Un, the ruler of North Korea.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

HERE IS a puzzle: Why would the Libertarian Party, which will be nominating a presidential candidate at its national convention in Washington this month, invite former president Donald Trump — the Republican Party's presumptive 2024 nominee — to be its keynote speaker?

Four possible answers:

1. Libertarians are uninhibited by ordinary political rules and inviting a rival to address their convention is just the sort of eccentric move that appeals to them.

2. Party leaders, knowing Trump is more likely to be elected in November than their own nominee, want to encourage him to embrace libertarian ideals of shrinking government, expanding liberty, and curbing the welfare state.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles