Editorial Roundup: United States

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

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Oct. 15

The Wall Street Journal says investors in AI will demand a return sooner or later

It’s too soon to call what happened this week to artificial intelligence stocks a correction. Call it instead a reminder: Hype about new technologies is an inevitable human temptation, and sometimes it pays off, but eventually investors demand returns on capital.

That’s the way to think about the disconcerting market swings of recent days. Many tech shares have taken a dive, sometimes by large percentages. That has dragged down the NASDAQ and the S&P 500 index, which has come to be dominated by those companies. Our advice is to go for a relaxing walk this weekend instead of checking your 401(k) balance.

This seems counterintuitive in the face of encouraging earnings reports from some big AI-related companies, and in some cases the good earnings news arrested the decline in the company’s stock price. But stock prices are forward rather than backward looking, and investors still are grappling with big questions about the AI future.

AI will have a profound effect on the global economy. It remains impossible to say what those effects might be or who will profit from them, and how. Estimates of global AI-related investments regularly top $1 trillion per year and probably are undercounts after including other forms of investment such as the companies that adopt AI in their own businesses.

This implies that AI would need to substantially boost business productivity and generate unprecedented returns eventually. One recent academic study calculated that American data-center hyperscalers alone would need to earn revenue equal to roughly 9% of gross domestic product per year by 2032 to break even on their investments.

America’s ability to raise and allocate this private capital—the institutional investors and entrepreneurs, the legal system and market structure—is the envy of the world. But unforgiving market discipline on the way down is a not-so-secret ingredient in the special sauce.

As AI continues to evolve, the challenge will be to reevaluate the risks and do so relative to other bets. It’s a continuous process that plays out every second markets are open.

Investors this week didn’t abandon equities entirely, even if they did pour some capital back into the bond market. Instead, they pivoted into recently overlooked industries such as consumer goods. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had a decent week.

None of this is to downplay the potential dangers. The sheer quantity of capital that has flowed into tech suggests that if and when investors decide a large-scale reappraisal is required, it is likely to be bloody. All the more so since much of this investment has been financed with debt, especially via opaque private-credit markets. Credit can turn a technological reappraisal into a financial panic or worse.

All of this poses challenges for politicians and policy makers, even as they enjoy the equity ride up. One is monetary: Loose money tends to encourage the kind of credit mania that’s especially dangerous when it coincides with a technological revolution. On this score, it’s a welcome development if tech investors are acting in part on a growing conviction that Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh intends to pour less rum into the punchbowl.

Another is regulatory, as officials must stay alert to the corners of the financial system where potential risks may lurk. The goal here isn’t to shield everyone everywhere from any loss. It is rather to ensure that markets will be able to operate effectively even in a correction and without recourse to public bailouts. Hey, we can dream.

AI as a technology is a winner and so far has been a boon to the economy without the feared job losses. Whether all the companies currently developing AI will be winners is a different question. Now, time for that walk.

ONLINE: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/ai-market-selloff-tech-stocks-988964d2?mod=editorials_article_pos10

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Oct. 15

The Dallas Morning News says social media is hazardous to the US political landscape

If you’re unlucky enough to be required to spend any time on Elon Musk’s X, as we journalists are, you might well have been dragged through the bombshell investigative report — pardon us, idiotic conspiracy theory — that state Rep. James Talarico was seeking mental health assistance at a hospital in Ohio.

Talarico had the flu. His campaign told everyone, including us, he had the flu. It’s flu season. People all over are getting the flu. He shakes hands with lots of people. The story seemed very believable.

Alas, his explanation was too pedestrian for the MAGAsphere and its Musk-powered amplifier. Talarico’s opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, insinuated in a post on X that the Democrat had had a nervous breakdown.

That was all X needed. Then the algorithms did their work. The claim was shared and reposted and embellished. One right-wing influencer posted that he had PROOF! in the form of a heavily edited recording of a phone call that Talarico had checked into the mental health hospital. (The facility was bombarded with calls and took the highly unusual step of issuing a statement that Talarico had not been a patient there.)

American social media users helped that story go viral. Russian trolls got in on the game too, though they joined too late to make much difference, according to a researcher who analyzes online disinformation. Nor does the story seem to have influenced the race, except by damaging Paxton’s tattered reputation even more.

But the larger lesson is clear: Social media as it now exists has become hazardous to our body politic. Simply posting a falsehood on X is relatively quaint compared to the high-quality deep fake videos now circulating online, which can be made to say or do almost anything. Such videoclips may even include the logo of a recognized news organization, such as CNN, and appear to be part of a legitimate interview, but they’re imposters. We’re somewhat surprised a deepfake of Talarico at the facility didn’t emerge.

For average people, it is time-consuming and difficult to determine who or what entity is really behind a social media post and whether the claim involved is true. Social media companies have little financial incentive to verify posts, especially because outrageous ones drive up engagement. The companies rarely face legal consequences for allowing harmful content. Musk seems to revel in it. Congress has not yet accepted its responsibility to better police social media platforms.

Voters are not powerless. They can ignore items shared on social media and search for reliable information directly from well-established news organizations. And there’s a highly effective way to hold politicians who promote falsehoods accountable: Don’t elect them.

ONLINE: https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/article/talarico-paxton-flu-disinformation-mental-hospital-22478625.php

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Oct. 17

The Washington Post on Donald Trump’s Ukraine policy

Weakening Ukraine’s defenses while Russia batters its cities is a disgraceful way for the Trump administration to pursue peace. You can almost feel the glee emanating from the Kremlin.

The origin of the restrictions on Ukraine’s satellite communications remains murky, but the reality of the disruptions is not. Connectivity has improved in recent days, but limits remain in place. Ukrainian drones risk falling out of the sky if they travel faster than 100 mph.

The throttling came in recent days as President Donald Trump pressured Ukraine to stop attacking Russia’s oil infrastructure, but the restrictions didn’t directly limit Ukraine’s ability to conduct the deep strikes Trump objects to.

Starshield, SpaceX’s military-grade version of its commercial Starlink service, does not operate inside Russia, and the drones targeting Russian refineries use other communications systems. Instead, the restrictions disrupted missions against Russian military positions and supply lines inside Ukraine’s territory. Worse, they hobbled interceptor drones protecting Ukrainian population centers.

Without warning, the Ukrainian military began experiencing serious disruptions to Starshield. Reuters reported that the order to limit access came from inside the White House, citing two U.S. officials and another official in the West. The Telegraph reported that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk first proposed the restrictions to Trump, and he agreed to them. But Trump denied responsibility. “It wasn’t me, and I don’t think it was Elon,” the president told reporters on Friday. “I don’t know if it was anybody.”

Somebody gave the order, and Ukrainian civilians paid the price. An overnight barrage on Tuesday, into Wednesday, left at least 600,000 people without electricity. All three of the combined heat and power plants in the capital of Kyiv came under attack, and water supplies were disrupted in parts of the city.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said early in the week that he would abide by Trump’s wishes and halt attacks against Russian oil infrastructure, provided Moscow reciprocated. By Thursday, after Russia hammered his power plants, Zelensky announced that Ukraine would no longer hold back. It’s hard to fault him. Ukraine should not be forced to choose between defending its citizens and placating an American president who demands restraint from the country being bombed while failing to extract anything from the aggressor.

To the contrary, Trump is rewarding Russia with sanctions relief and letting its diesel back onto the global market. Late Friday, the president signed an executive order to stop sanctions passed by Congress— and signed by Trump last month — from taking effect on Russian exports and leaders. He cited unspecified “national interests.”

A bipartisan group of nine senators has called for an investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general into other apparent disruptions to intelligence sharing and early-warning capabilities in Ukraine. They say U.S. diplomatic, military and security personnel were unable to reach designated shelters during Russian air raids and want to know if that’s connected to the limits on Starshield. The American people deserve answers about who ordered the restrictions, why they were imposed and whether Americans’ lives were endangered.

Beyond the immediate ugliness of this episode, there’s also the strategic myopia of throttling Starshield to consider. Europe was already seeking to expedite approval of a satellite manufacturing venture intended to challenge SpaceX. Those efforts will no doubt accelerate. The White House could hardly have supplied a better argument for friendly governments to prioritize standing up competitors to U.S. firms.

ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/10/17/starshield-throttling-undermines-ukraine-scares-allies/

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Oct. 17

The New York Times on how to end gerrymandering and bring back congressional diversity

Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the number of Black members of the House of Representatives has grown every decade. Today, about 60 representatives are Black, which means that the share who are Black has at long last nearly equaled the Black share of the nation’s population (both roughly 14 percent). Yet this progress is now on the verge of being reversed.

In this year’s midterms, six Black members of Congress could lose their seats, mostly because Republican state legislators redrew their districts for partisan advantage. After more states gerrymander their congressional maps in 2027 and 2028, another five to 14 Black members may lose their seats. By 2029, the number of Black members of Congress could fall by a quarter or even a third. America is on the cusp of an evisceration of Black political power.

The Voting Rights Act was a monumental achievement partly because it ensured that many Black Americans would live in districts where they were numerous enough to wield democratic power. Republican legislators are now diluting that power by dispersing Black citizens, most of whom vote Democratic, across several districts to maximize the chances that a Republican can win each one.

The result will be a Congress in which Black Americans will again be badly underrepresented. Not every group in a diverse country will be represented in proportion to its numbers, of course. Latino and Asian Americans are significantly underrepresented in Congress today, as are women. Still, Black Americans occupy a distinct place in American political life.

The nation’s founding documents were written to accommodate their enslavement. For a century after Emancipation, millions of Black Southerners could not vote because of a racial caste system based on laws and violence. That violence was often horrific by design, including lynchings, beatings and strategic terror campaigns to crush any attempt at Black political participation. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 attempted to stop this exclusion, and it ensured that voters who had lived in areas with a history of voter suppression could elect representatives who would speak for them in Washington.

The current gerrymandering campaign undermines that principle. It disproportionately robs Black Americans of the ability to vote for their preferred candidates. Those candidates are not always Black, but they often are, much as white, Asian and Latino voters often support candidates who share their own background. Race, after all, still matters in American life, as is clear from the large Black-white gaps in income, wealth, educational attainment and life expectancy.

The decline of Black members of Congress in the late 2020s is likely to be the largest since the decades after Reconstruction. Between 1870 and 1901, when the federal government enforced voting rights and Black political participation in the South, 22 Black members served in Congress. Then came racial disenfranchisement laws across the South and resurgent campaigns of terror by the Ku Klux Klan. From 1902 through 1928, Congress did not include a single Black member.

For the past 60 years, slow progress has been the norm, until now.

Two forces are driving the changes: a Supreme Court that has weakened the Voting Rights Act and a state-by-state gerrymandering campaign driven by President Trump.

Seven years ago, the court ruled that partisan gerrymandering was none of the judiciary’s business, in Rucho v. Common Cause. If legislators wanted to draw districts to maximize their party’s number of seats, no matter how blatant the effort or how serpentine the districts, they could. The decision reversed years of judicial skepticism about partisan gerrymandering. In April of this year, in Louisiana v. Callais, the court went further and removed the biggest remaining obstacle to gerrymandering. In a 6-to-3 decision, with all the Republican-appointed justices in the majority and all the Democratic appointees in dissent, the court effectively overturned the Voting Rights Act’s safeguards for districts in the South where Black voters could elect their candidates of choice. That ruling gutted a protection that had preserved those districts for decades.

Mr. Trump has tried to take advantage. Last year, he began pressuring Republican legislators to redraw their states’ congressional maps to add Republican-leaning seats. Between 1970 and 2025, only two states had voluntarily redrawn their congressional maps in the middle of a 10-year census cycle. Nine states have now done so since the 2024 election, with several expected to follow next year.

The Republican redistricting campaign targets Democrats generally, but its effect on Black members is disproportionate. Black voters lean heavily Democratic, and many live near one another, which is partly a legacy of slavery and segregation. The compactness of Black communities makes their districts targets for dilution. The gerrymandering campaigns in Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina and Texas all relied on cracking open heavily Black districts and sprinkling their voters into whiter districts. In each of those states, at least one Black member of Congress is likely to be out of office come January. Referring to the legislators who are redrawing the lines, Representative James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat, told us, “They know exactly what they’re doing.”

The gerrymandering campaign will also leave the country with fewer competitive House elections, aggravating political polarization and discouraging the compromise that is necessary to legislating.

What can be done? A lot. As wrongheaded as the Supreme Court’s recent decisions have been, the justices have at least made clear that Congress has the authority under Article I of the Constitution to set rules for how its own elections are run. That authority would allow Congress to restrict partisan gerrymandering. It could pass a law, for instance, requiring each state to appoint a bipartisan commission charged with drawing geographically compact districts, as some already do.

A crucial fact is that common-sense districts would probably lead to many more Black members of Congress than there will be after the current gerrymandering wave ends. A recent paper by researchers at Harvard, Princeton and the University of Michigan estimated that “race-blind nonpartisan redistricting” would produce similar levels of minority representation as exist now. A separate analysis, by Nate Cohn and Eve Washington of The Times, came to the same conclusion.

To put it another way, a ban on extreme partisan gerrymandering, one that ensured fair, nonpartisan maps, could restore much of the congressional diversity that the Voting Rights Act initially made possible.

Instead, the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court and Republican legislators around the country are creating a system that will probably lead to a House of Representatives that is even more disproportionately white. What is being lost is not only Black political power. It is the promise made and remade across two centuries, that the country’s institutions can be shaped by the people they claim to represent. Future Americans will inherit either the country that finally kept this promise or the country that let it be broken. Congress will make that choice.

ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/17/opinion/gerrymandering-congress-black-voting.html

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Oct. 19

The Guardian says Trump and Putin have no right to bargain away Ukraine’s future

Does Vladimir Putin know exactly how to play Donald Trump? The history of chummy phone calls, high-profile meetings and attempts to bring Russia in from the cold certainly suggests that Moscow’s thuggish ruler has a hold on this American president. If Mr Trump agrees to negotiate Ukraine’s future with Mr Putin and China’s Xi Jinping without Ukraine at the table, he will have handed the Russian leader a victory before talks begin. The message will be that strongmen are ruling the world and determining the fate of weaker nations.

Ukraine has the right to determine its future. That right cannot be waved away by a self-serving Russian proposal, however much it indulges Mr Trump’s belief that world affairs should be settled by powerful men. The scales are falling from European eyes. Trumpian America is raising doubts about whether it will help deter aggression or even honour its Nato commitments. If Washington now rewards Moscow and pressures Ukraine to accept a raw deal, it would be a betrayal. European governments would wonder where America might be in the future when their own security is threatened.

The Wall Street Journal laid out how Mr Putin is hoping to secure a diplomatic prize that dwarfs any US benefits. Mr Trump needs to bring down diesel prices before crucial midterm elections. So the Russian president has offered him a deal that helps the White House claim it is addressing such costs, despite most analysts saying that it won’t. In the same conversation, Mr Putin suggested a summit to end the war in Ukraine that would elevate Moscow and exclude Kyiv. China could also gain recognition as a diplomatic mediator, while Europe would be left out of discussions about ending a war on its continent. Reports suggest that the three leaders could meet at next month’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in China.

American presidential power is meant to be constrained by law and democratic institutions. Mr Trump’s diesel deal appears to violate US law barring imports of Russian ‌energy until Moscow ends its aggression against Ukraine. More Republicans should find the courage to stand up to their bullying president. While doing so, they might also ask why the order to limit a satellite system used by Ukraine ​for battlefield communications and drone operations reportedly came from the White House. Heated denials from the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, are no substitute for answers.

A transatlantic breakdown in relations between European powers and the US is not inevitable. Mr Trump’s national security strategy last year called Europe “strategically and culturally vital”. But it also demanded that the continent take responsibility for its own defence. European governments must prepare to meet that challenge.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Were Mr Trump to embrace Mr Putin’s trilateral summit, it would echo the Three Emperors’ League that brought together Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia in 1873. Germany sought to isolate defeated France and contain Austro-Russian rivalry, while monarchies sought to defend themselves against revolution. The original arrangement quickly unravelled. Revived in 1881, the league collapsed in 1887 as Vienna and Moscow failed to reconcile their Balkan ambitions. Agreement between powerful rulers provides no guarantee of a lasting settlement. Ukraine’s future cannot hang on bargains struck to stroke the egos of powerful men.

ONLINE: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/oct/19/the-guardian-view-on-trump-and-putin-ukraines-future-is-not-theirs-to-bargain-away