Things That Will Go in a Museum Someday
A News Link Round-Up
Here is the latest weekly round-up of links, with a collection of interesting articles on: the ongoing debacle of the Iran War, the consequences of losing expertise and freedom of speech, the ongoing anti-immigrant pogrom, endemic public corruption, the circus of the imperial court, and a reasonable overview on data centers.
A reminder about this News Link Round-Up format: The main headlines are there to provide context and perhaps a little commentary, the headlines with the links are the original headlines from the articles, and the quotations beneath are extracts from the articles.
We’re Really Gonna Miss the Freedom of Navigation Now That It’s Gone
The Houthis’ Commandeering of a Red Sea Strait Is a Huge Deal
The Strait of Hormuz remains at a virtual standstill because of President Donald Trump’s foolish war, and now, in what represents a new global energy price nightmare, Houthi militants in Yemen have begun to block a separate corridor that is critical for global oil shipping….
Those Houthi militants, who are allied with and supported by Iran, announced Monday that they would were enacting a blockade in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait against Saudi Arabia. The Houthis said their blockade is retaliation for airstrikes against a Yemeni airport intended to prevent an Iranian aircraft from landing. (Yemen’s Saudi-backed government claimed credit for the attack.) On Thursday, the Houthis said they had attacked two Saudi oil tankers and successfully warned 10 more to turn back. (Saudi Arabia’s official news agency confirmed at least one tanker was hit.)
The Houthis’ blockade is a huge deal. Before the Iran war, about a fifth of the world’s oil passed through the Strait of Hormuz. Now it’s effectively closed. Saudi Arabia, which had transported the bulk of its oil through the Strait of Hormuz, started moving oil west through a pipeline. From there, Saudi Arabia was sending its oil out through the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which connects the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Thus, the Houthis’ blockade of the Bab al-Mandab Strait means they have foiled Saudi Arabia’s back-up plan. And it’s not just oil that’s at stake in the waterway. The Associated Press noted that “around 12% of the world’s trade, including a fourth of global container traffic, passes through [the strait], moving between Europe and Asia via Egypt’s Suez Canal.”
A Couple of Reasons Trump Keeps Making Bad Decisions
The Shallow, Centralized American State
The Trump administration’s attempt to exercise direct political control over all federal grant-making reveals some trends that go beyond that particular initiative. They include:
A rejection of any independent source of technical or professional expertise;
The vesting of decision-making authority entirely in political appointees regardless of their knowledge of the policy issue in question;
The elimination of any countervailing constraint or check on centralized decision-making among inner-circle appointees….
In theory—unitary executive theory if you want to be cute about it—there is a logic for this kind of streamlining and centralization. A populist would want government policy and government outputs to be the direct outcome of what elected officials and their political subordinates want to do. Centralizing authority and eliminating veto points on executive action enables governments to pivot more quickly towards the policy preferences of elected and appointed officials.
The problems are self-evident, however. Even if one assumes the best of intentions, disregarding professional expertise in the service of a shallow state is a recipe for making catastrophic error after catastrophic error.
After Trump’s Order, West Point Curbed Faculty Speech. One Professor Said No.
The longest-serving law professor at West Point rose to declare the school’s new rules unconstitutional. Within moments, a uniformed colonel stood to challenge him.
Tim Bakken, speaking to dozens of colleagues at a faculty meeting, argued that none of them should be forced to seek approval before publishing papers or giving speeches, as a policy unveiled that day would require. “This violates the First Amendment,” he said, predicting an end to West Point’s professed tolerance for opposing views.
Col. E. John Gregory, according to Bakken and three other people in attendance that day, didn’t want to hear it. “Stop talking,” Gregory, a deputy department head, said in a raised voice, “and sit down.”
Bakken, a 68-year-old who had never served in the military, did not sit down. He reminded the colonel that he had sworn an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution when he accepted his teaching job. “It’s like how military officers must not follow illegal orders—” he began to say.
“We’re a military institution,” Gregory interrupted, according to Bakken and the other attendees. “We follow orders.”
His confrontation with the colonel that day in March 2025 brought the clash to the US Military Academy at West Point, the emerald-green-and-granite campus on the Hudson River that trains the leaders of tomorrow’s Army. Since World War II, West Point had fostered academic openness, advancing the view that dissenting opinions are crucial in forming sound military judgments. But Trump and his top lieutenants, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, argue that West Point must prize patriotic obedience to authority above all else….
He had long argued that a military culture of unquestioning obedience, coupled with an aversion to criticism and a sense of superiority, had caused the US to lose every war it fought since 1945. “Inside America, the last seventy-five years of military intervention have unleashed a flood of incompetence, hubris, and denial,” he wrote in a 2020 book, “The Cost of Loyalty.” “I have been living at the headwaters.”
