What We’re Following
U.S. versus Iran: Donald Trump declared on Twitter that “anyone doing business with Iran will NOT be doing business with the United States,” ratcheting up diplomatic tensions between the U.S. and European countries that have remained in the Iran deal. The tweet came a day after new American sanctions on Iran went into effect, putting heavy pressure on an economy that’s already struggling. But what will that pressure achieve? Two scholars argue that America is using sanctions in the wrong way.
Tricks of the Trade: At the financial-crimes trial of his longtime boss, Paul Manafort, the former lobbyist Rick Gates revealed that he had defrauded Manafort even as Manafort was allegedly defrauding banks. His testimony points to deeply ingrained habits of thievery that could have spilled over into the Trump campaign, Franklin Foer writes. Elsewhere, to keep an eye on the atmosphere within their companies, some employers are turning to text analysis of internal emails—which, in monitoring signs of worker agitation, could point to corporate wrongdoing.
Speech and Debate: Facebook, along with several other online platforms, has announced it’s banning the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones from its site. Here’s what that means in practice. The CNN reporter Jim Acosta recently confronted White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders about her boss’s view of the press—but his approach will backfire, Todd S. Purdum argues. And a series of angry tweets about white people by the newly hired New York Times columnist Sarah Jeong has sparked a heated debate after some conservatives argued that the tweets were racist. Reihan Salam explains the purpose that “white bashing” rhetoric serves.
