Weekly News Roundup - 5/23/25
Concerns grow over U.S. fiscal stability and reliability // Government grinds down on Harvard
This is the 21st Weekly News Roundup of 2025. The archive for all weekly news roundups is here.
These weekly dispatches are designed for those who may not have time to do more than glance at the headlines, or those who want to stay informed without becoming obsessed by politics and news. These roundups are a targeted way to get a sense of the shape of the past week on the national level. Without such a map, we can be disoriented, not knowing where we have been over the past several days, or where we may be going.
But by spending concentrated, limited time thinking about the big picture, we can devote more of our time to where “agency and justice begin and end,” as Karen Swallow Prior put it: “on the ground, bodily, in community and real relationships, in flesh and blood.”
Quotes of the Week
“It is easy to get uniformity in religion. All you have to do is to remove the mystery. But if you remove the mystery, you destroy religion at the same time.” - David Tracy
Why do we get angry about what we believe? Because we do not really believe it. Or else what we pretend to be defending as the "truth" is really our own self-esteem. A man of sincerity is less interested in defending the truth than in stating it clearly, for he thinks that if the truth be clearly seen it can very well take care of itself. - Thomas Merton
Among friends, and especially around the dinner table, he exhibited what the Romans called “hilaritas”—an almost giddy joyfulness in good conversation that issued, I’ve always felt, from his sheer love of learning and the deep pleasure it brought. - Kenneth L. Woodward
Every now and then something happens that puts generative AI’s propaganda capacity front and center. - Renee DiResta
The trust that nearly every elite institution in the West has put in our government has functioned as an immense invisible subsidy for American life for generations now—giving Americans special privileges we have not even noticed ... We have not begun to grasp what we will lose now that this confidence is ebbing away. - Yuval Levin
Big Stories This Week
The Trump administration canceled Harvard's ability to enroll foreign students, seeking to punish the university for standing up against the government's demands to change curriculum and governance. Harvard sued the next day and won an immediate restraining order of the government's action by a federal judge, but the move by the government cast a dark shadow over Harvard's student body, of which about a quarter are from outside the country. Many students may end up transferring because of the uncertainty around how the court cases may play out. "And for what purpose?" asked The Wall Street Journal editorial board, calling it "a short-sighted attack on one of America’s great competitive strengths: Its ability to attract the world’s best and brightest." Axios wrote that the move "could hurt America's economy by reducing the number of startup founders ... Trump is aiming at Harvard, but buckshot may hit the innovation engine that America needs to stay ahead of China ... Around 44% of U.S. unicorn companies — startups valued at $1 billion or more — are founded or cofounded by immigrants." Writer Yascha Mounk called it "an astonishing act of national self-sabotage." Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said, "This is the beginnings — it's not all the way there, it's wrong to compare this to Hitler and say some of the overheated things people say — but these are steps away from democracy and towards tyranny."
President Trump leaned back into tariffs, even as the bond market expressed growing unease with the level of debt being proposed in the Republican budget making its way through Congress. Republicans in the House passed the budget on to the Senate on Thursday that is projected to increase the deficit by $3.8 trillion over the next decade by cutting Medicaid benefits for millions.
A Palestinian activist shot and killed two members of the Israel Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Week in Review
Friday, May 16
Moody's Ratings, which had given the U.S. government a perfect credit rating since 1917, downgrades the U.S. debt, "joining Fitch Ratings and S&P, which lowered their credit ratings for US debt in 2023 and 2011, respectively," CNN reports. The downgrade is due to "large fiscal deficits and rising interest costs," the Wall Street Journal says.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis grows frustrated with Justice Department attorneys during a hearing over the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, indicating that she questions whether the Trump administration is acting in good faith.
Saturday, May 17
A bomb explodes outside a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, CA, killing one person and injuring another four. The FBI calls it "an intentional act of terrorism."
Sunday, May 18
Pope Leo XIV presides over his inaugural mass with 200,000 people in St. Peter's Square and emphasizes a message of unity within the church and peace in Ukraine and Gaza. The mass is attended by world leaders, including Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelensky, who meets later in the day with U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance.
Former President Biden's office announces that he has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has metastatized to the bone.
The death toll from violent storms across the Midwest, and including in the Washington D.C. area, reaches 25 people.
FBI Director Kash Patel and deputy Director Dan Bongino say that conspiracy theories about the 2019 death of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein are false. "I have seen the whole file. He killed himself," Bongino says on Fox News.
Monday, May 19
As stocks and the strength of the dollar fall, and the bond market shows signs of concern with U.S. fiscal health, due to Friday's credit downgrade because of rising debts, analysts warn that the Republican budget moving through Congress will "increase projected budget deficits by nearly $3 trillion through 2034, locking in tax cuts and spending increases that outweigh reductions in spending on Medicaid and nutrition assistance."
President Trump and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin hold a phone call to discuss peace talks in Ukraine.
Vice President Vance, a convert to Catholicism, meets with Pope Leo XIV in Vatican City, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others in a U.S. delegation. Vance was in Rome less than a month ago for Good Friday and Easter Sunday, and met briefly with Pope Francis the day before he died.
Tuesday, May 20
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem tells a Senate committee that she thinks habeas corpus is "a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their rights.” “That’s incorrect,” interjects Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-NH. Habeas corpus, Hassan says, is the "legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people ... the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea.”
The Justice Department opens a criminal investigation into former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, plunging the Trump administration into New York politics months after it pardoned current New York Mayor Eric Adams in exchange for Adams' support of the federal government's immigration policies.
Wednesday, May 21
Israeli strikes in Gaza kill at least 86 people.
Trump plays videos and displays news articles to the press during a meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, claiming that white farmers in the country are being targeted. Ramaphosa rejects the charge.
"A fire that severely damaged a historic Black church that served as the headquarters for a 1968 sanitation workers’ strike, which brought the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis, was intentionally set, investigators said Wednesday," the AP reports.
The Archdiocese of New Orleans agrees to pay $180 million to victims of sexual abuse by clergy.
A 31-year old Chicago native shoots and kills two young people leaving a Jewish museum in Washington, D.C. after an evening event. The shooter yells "Free Palestine."
Thursday, May 22
The Trump administration cancels Harvard's ability to enroll foreign students, seeking to punish the university for standing up against the government's demands to change curriculum and governance. Harvard says it will challenge the decision in court.
The House passes its massive reconciliation bill including a budget increasing the deficit by an estimated $3.8 trillion.
Trump hosts over 200 people who invested the most money in his digital currency meme coin for a dinner at his golf club in Virginia.
Friday, May 23
A federal judge issues a temporary restraining order against the government's suspension of foreign students ability to enroll at Harvard.
Trump threatens "a 50% tax on all imports from the European Union as well a 25% tariff on smartphones unless those products are made in America," the AP reports.
Interesting Reads
Long Drives and Short Homilies: How Father Bob Became Pope Leo, by Jason Horowitz, Julie Bosman, Elizabeth Dias, Ruth Graham, Simon Romero and Mitra Taj for The New York Times (gift link)
The Debt Is About to Matter Again, by Roge Karma for The Atlantic
America the Unreliable by Yuval Levin for The Free Press
Check In on the Authoritarians in Your Life, by Mark Hasman for Persuasion
We're all trying to find the guy who did this..., by Renee Diresta for Agents of Influence
Are white South Africans really refugees? A historian who grew up under apartheid explains, by Nicole Narea for Vox
The 4chan to Grok pipeline, by Melissa Ryan for CtrlAltRightDelete
More than a Theologian: Remembering David Tracy, by Kenneth L. Woodward for Commonweal
In Praise of Fragments: An Interview with David Tracy, by Kenneth L. Woodward for Commonweal
Time To Fix Social Security’s Age-Old Misunderstanding, by Charles Blahous for Discourse
Forty eight hours in Montreal, Logistics of Long Walks, Bad Delta, and Turtles, by Chris Arnade for Chris Arnade Walks the World
Why Silicon Valley’s Most Powerful People Are So Obsessed With Hobbits, by Michiko Kakutani for The New York Times