Mike Forsythe 傅才德

Senate Republicans are livid with Trump. Just now, Sen. Wicker remained stone-faced (appeared to be intentional) for about 20 seconds as he walked into lunch and we asked him for his reaction Sen. Murkowski says TX is all but lost to Dems now

BLANCHE: "The United States...is hereby FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing...examinations or similar or related reviews" against Trump "or related or affiliated individuals," including family members or related companies and trusts.

1. What I found in Trump's new 113-page financial disclosure report. It doesn't look good.

"Without the deadweight of the MAGA tax, in other words, America might be rocketing ahead at nearly 5% annualised growth." economist.com/finance-and-ec…

Former U.S. Ambassador to China @RNicholasBurns tells me that if President Trump does not move forward with the congressionally-approved Taiwan arms package, it would be “a major strategic move” and “the greatest mistake of Trump’s foreign policy in this second term.”

Every taxpayer needs to read this DoJ produced document that signs off on this unprecedented “settlement.” Just stunning how the political appointees at DoJ conspired with Trump to create this $1.7B slush fund which literally can be used to pay anyone Trump desires. justice.gov/opa/media/1441…

Trump withdraws his lawsuit against the IRS demanding at least $10 billion in an effort to skirt oversight by the judge in the case as he moves toward arranging a fund to funnel taxpayer money to his allies and supporters. @aduehren @alanfeuer nytimes.com/2026/05/18/us/…

After 31 years as a pedestrianized plaza, the famous car-free stretch in front of the White House has been converted into a parking lot.

@biannagolodryga One must view this report with appropriate journalistic skepticism. Can it be verified?

Cuba has acquired more than 300 military drones and recently began discussing plans to use them to attack the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, U.S. military vessels and possibly Key West, Fla., according to classified intel shared with Axios. axios.com/2026/05/17/us-…

One of my favorite data journalists is @jburnmurdoch and he is cooking once again with this piece: “In country after country the birth rate plunged after the introduction of smartphones, no matter what the previous trend was…the modern digital media environment has had profound effects on society that have led to a decline in romantic coupling”. Read here: ft.com/content/fba35e…

Having spent the past few weeks in Beijing giving talks and attending meetings, here are some quick observations as I wait for my flight to NYC to board: 1. The talk of the town has, of course, been the Xi-Trump meeting, but no one (not even usually well informed elite circle insiders) seems to know what it actually accomplished, other than a continuation of the detente that’s been in place for the past several months. That’s about as good an outcome as one could realistically expect, I suppose, but clearly a real “grand bargain” is not in the cards anytime soon. 2. The Chinese economy seems to be in a steady state, neither improving much nor visibly deteriorating like it was in 24-25. In that sense the government’s stimulus policies have had a positive effect, but the vast majority of industry people I talked to remain very pessimistic about domestic profits and consumption. The dominant sentiment is that the only way for major firms to generate profit growth is through direct overseas expansion. 3. That said, technological advancement is of course very real and quite impressive (although it’s not quite as visible in Beijing as it is in, say, Shenzhen). One interesting and very pleasant side effect of the EV revolution (paired with infrastructure investment) has been that Beijing is now a bike-able city again, given the sharp reduction in exhaust fumes on city streets and the expansion of bike lanes. Armed with a new bike, I could almost explore the city like I used to back in 2000. Hugely nostalgic feeling. 4. Academia is, in general, in a pretty dour mood. STEM subjects and the social sciences/humanities alike have seen very significant funding reductions over the past 2 years, but the latter have of course gotten the worst end of the deal. Political censorship also seems to be visibly ramping up again, with the sheer scale of perceived “red lines” snowballing to levels unprecedented since the early 1990s. As the recent Yang Nianqun incident suggests, administrative regulation of faculty members’ personal affairs has also expanded (i.e., consensual extramarital relationships between adults who were not in a direct teacher-student relationship would almost certainly have gone unpunished as recently as 5 years ago). 5. In general, it’s hard not to notice the steady increase in government presence in everyday life—in both positive and negative ways. The city feels safer and cleaner than it ever has been, and yet the layers of administrative review needed for just about any kind of professional activity have clearly proliferated on a vast scale (made less painful by the digitization of most government services and more uniform law abidance, but still more onerous than it used to be despite all that). 6. The most alarming thing, I suppose, is that general optimism (personal or socioeconomic) seems to be in particularly short supply among the younger generations. This is obvious even among the most intellectually gifted kids at Tsinghua and PKU, where the level of career anxiety seems to be at a level that I have never encountered before. Unsurprisingly, willingness to form families or plan ahead in general at the personal level is very low. All in all, it was, as always, a very informative couple of weeks. The stay was also made much more pleasant by the fact that I managed to do it before Beijing becomes brutally hot. I look forward to being back more often in the near future.

@ZhangTaisu @donaldcclarke Thank you.

Oh boy. In March, as we prepared an article about the political influence of billionaires, @TimSheehyMT preemptively attacked my reporting. Numerous influencers then amplified the senator’s post, including Trump Jr., Riley Gaines, and DC_Draino. But there's a twist... 1/5

Trump called the children waving flags at his Beijing welcome "amazing."Many Chinese saw sth else: an image they recognized from the Mao era—and from North Korea. My column on what Chinese social media users made of the Xi-Trump summit. So many good jokes! nytimes.com/2026/05/15/bus…

"The Times subscribers are way down." Fact check: Times subscribers are way up, higher than ever in the paper's history.

In Texas yesterday, solar provided >50% of the power to the grid for much of the day. If solar is such a bad energy source, why is Texas investing so much in it? They have the most competitive electricity marketplace in the country, and solar is winning more and more.

NYT: In a dispute over vapes, the president sided with tobacco companies that filled his groups’ coffers over his own F.D.A. commissioner, who resigned in protest. nytimes.com/2026/05/13/us/…

Notable words from Rubio on Taiwan: US policy on Taiwan is “unchanged,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said following a meeting between US and Chinese officials. “From our perspective, any forced change in the status quo in the situation would be bad for both countries,” Rubio said in an interview with NBC News. “One of the things that Chinese emphasize, which we agree, is strategic stability in our relationship.”

Reading scores have plummeted in school districts around the country. Over the past decade, 1 out of 3 districts have seen scores drop by an ENTIRE GRADE LEVEL. The only states to see improvement: • Hawaii • Mississippi • Louisiana

Teachers and parents in the comments of this news: It's the screens