President Trump has announced his intent to nominate Jay Clayton as the director of National Intelligence, with the controversial Bill Pulte set to take the reins as acting director upon Tulsi Gabbard’s accelerated departure last week. While it remains to be seen how long Pulte will serve in the role, Trump has stated that he intends to have Pulte reduce the size of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), calling it “unnecessary and/or too big.”

Apparently not content with the reported 40 percent workforce reduction and declining morale inflicted by Gabbard, Trump is pushing for Clayton to lead a dramatically smaller and weaker office. This would be a massive mistake that undermines the necessary role ODNI plays in coordinating the 18 organizations comprising the intelligence community.

ODNI is not a perfect organization, and there are reforms to be made. Its mission and its staff size have grown over time, and careful study is warranted in order to right-size both. However, as Senate Intelligence Vice Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) stated, serious discussion is necessary before dismantling organizations created to address failures identified after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Reducing the office’s ability to deconflict intelligence collection resources and provide strategic guidance on national intelligence priorities would be a colossal step backward and would make America less safe.

Each day brings new proof that the old order is crumbling: sometimes a further violation of the international rules and norms that have governed the globalized world for half a century, sometimes an advance in artificial intelligence with no regard for citizens’ safety. Life in the mid-2020s feels like an accelerated collapse. In English, we would say that we are walking on  black ice  : that invisible ice that forms on the roads, snatches your feet without warning, and against which brakes are useless.

We are experiencing one of the great transformations of our societies, and the left, for the most part, has missed the boat. Incapable of seizing the pivotal moment to steer the change toward a fairer, more humane, and more sustainable order, it watches as the right holds sway on both sides of the Atlantic, despite a few notable electoral victories for the center-left. These victories are often narrow, snatched with meager votes or built on makeshift coalitions, governing against the tide while absorbing the domestic repercussions of global shocks. Every conquest for the center-left matters: it brings to power a government committed to fairness and progress, hostile to the extremism of national populists. The strengthened coordination between center-left parties worldwide is indeed producing tangible electoral results. But these victories often remain marginal, based too much on mobilization against the adversary rather than for a shared vision, which fails to generate lasting support. Beyond tactical successes, the center-left lacks a program capable of defeating nationalist populists for good. It is in this void that the politics of the “third left” can emerge: finally defining what the center-left is and for whom it fights, rather than defining itself by what it doesn’t.

The emerging post-identity “third left” is resolutely turning the page on the identity politics that has plagued a segment of the left and which the right now exploits to sow social and cultural discord. As Renaud Large explains in a collective report ^, this identity politics failed to provide the left with the intellectual framework necessary to adapt to the major transformations of the world; it distanced it from the class politics that fueled collective movements for greater equality. Blind to class, identity politics failed to forge the solidarity necessary for winning coalitions; it even severed ties with working-class communities, which are essential for any lasting electoral base. Advances in the rights of women, racial minorities, and LGBTQ+ people would never have occurred if the debate had remained confined to university campuses. Seeking common interests at the intersection of class and identity remains today a sine qua non condition for greater social equality and the re-establishment of the left as a decisive political force.

Read more in Fondation Jean Jaures

Fire Point CEO Iryna Terekh remembers the moment in February when long-range cruise missiles manufactured by her defense technology company struck a Russian arms factory in Votkinsk, nearly 900 miles from Ukraine. The Votkinsk plant manufactures the Kinzhal and Iskander ballistic missiles that Moscow regularly rains down on Kyiv and other cities. Three of Fire Point’s powerful Flamingo missiles hit the plant’s electroplating and stamping facility, and a Russian video captured a giant fireball burning on the horizon.

“We’re finally hitting the archer,” Terekh, a small, slender engineer with dark hair and aviator glasses, tells me with a smile. “That’s much more effective than stopping the arrows. Votkinsk was my first sense that something was really changing.”

The Votkinsk strike was just the beginning. Ukraine has been pounding Russia with long-range weapons—missiles and drones—all spring. After one startling mid-May assault on Moscow, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported intercepting 628 drones over 14 regions, destroying 120 above Moscow. Ukrainian strikes damaged critical infrastructure across Russia, including the Moscow Oil Refinery and a major semiconductor plant, killing three, injuring 18, and causing severe delays at the capital’s main international airport.

Particularly stunning and effective are the now almost daily Ukrainian drone and missile strikes on Russian oil facilities. Kyiv has doubled the tempo of attacks in recent months, boosting the effect with repeated hits on the same refinery—sometimes several in a single week. In late May, Reuters reported the attacks had stopped or scaled back operations at all major fuel refineries in central Russia, cutting 30 percent of Russia’s gasoline output and 25 percent of its diesel fuel production. What Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wryly calls “long-range sanctions” also target Russian pipelines and storage facilities. The campaign has forced the Kremlin to halt gasoline exports and dented the tax revenues Moscow relies on to finance its war machine.

Read more in Washington Monthly

Of the many standing ovations King Charles III received in Congress last week, few were more surprising than the response to his comments about the war in Ukraine. Britain and the United States have stood “shoulder to shoulder” for centuries, he declared, through two world wars, the Cold War, 9-11, and Afghanistan. “Today … that same, unyielding resolve is needed for the defense of Ukraine”—and with that, more than 400 U.S. Senators and Representatives, Democrats and Republicans, leapt to their feet in applause.

But President Donald Trump is determined to go his own way despite the consensus, and there were more signs last week that the U.S. has washed its hands of Kyiv’s four-year-old conflict with Moscow.

First, America’s acting ambassador in Kyiv resigned—the second envoy to quit in just 12 months—citing Washington’s dwindling support for its one-time ally. Then Trump had another friendly 90-minute phone call with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. Apparently forgetting that Moscow has been supplying Iran with intelligence about American targets in the Persian Gulf, the 47th president once again underlined their long friendship and praised the dictator for what Trump sees as his willingness to agree to a Ukraine ceasefire. Speaking later from the Oval Office, Trump reminded reporters that the United States is no longer giving Kyiv American weapons or ammunition, and he dumped responsibility for Ukraine’s future in Europe’s lap.

“We helped [Europe] with Ukraine, and they made a mess [of it],” the president maintained, twisting the historical record to serve his grudge of the moment. “Ukraine has nothing to do with [us]. We’re an ocean apart. It has to do with them.”

Read more in Washington Monthly

There is no shortage of uncertainties amid the fighting in the Persian Gulf: Is it over? Who won? Will Iran emerge stronger or weaker? How badly will the world economy be damaged? Yet two things are clear: The conflict dealt a deep, perhaps lasting blow to American global leadership, and it is straining an already troubled transatlantic relationship—to the detriment of both the U.S. and Europe.

But there may be one upside: The rift between the U.S. and Europe could accelerate continental efforts to prepare for a future in which America no longer provides a reliable security guarantee.

American supporters of the Iran War are furious with Europe. My email inbox is filled with messages from friends who see the continent’s refusal to join the fighting as a craven betrayal of the NATO alliance that has kept peace in Europe since the end of World War II. “Alienation,” “frustration,” “outrage,” “disgust”: the language grew sharper as the weeks wore on—and of course, no one was madder than President Donald Trump.

One Republican ally who spoke to the president in mid-March told the press he had “never heard him so angry.” “COWARDS,” Trump bellowed on social media. “You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself,” he warned Europeans, “the USA won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us.”

But there’s another way to see the widening divide between Europe and Washington.

Read more in Washington Monthly

Donald Trump has long sought to disguise his dislike of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. But his contempt showed through in mid-March when he rebuffed Kyiv’s offer to help defend the U.S. and its allies in the Persian Gulf. The “last person we need help from is Zelensky,” the 47th president said scornfully in two news interviews. “We know more about drones than anybody. We have the best drones in the world, actually.”

American allies in the Gulf see things differently. Nearly a dozen Middle Eastern countries have approached Kyiv in recent weeks seeking cooperation as they struggle to fend off Iranian drones and missiles. Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu has called Kyiv to initiate talks. Even traditionally pacifist Japan is considering buying Ukrainian drones, and Zelensky has sent some 230 drone experts—advisers and pilots—to the Gulf. Last week, he signed long-term security agreements with Saudi Arabia and Qatar and promised more were on the way.

What everyone but Trump seems to understand: After more than four years of fiercely competitive drone warfare, Ukraine is the world’s drone superpower with some of the best weaponry and an agile, innovative defense industrial base to back it up.

But the opening this creates—for Ukraine, the U.S., and its allies—will be squandered if the parties fail to seize the opportunity.

Read more in Washington Monthly

In today’s economy, what you know still matters, but who you know—and who knows you—matters just as much.

Young people from affluent, well-connected families often inherit a quiet advantage that includes access to mentors, family friends, alumni networks, and managers who can offer advice, open doors, and vouch for them. Their peers from low-income or first-generation immigrant families are more likely to graduate socially impoverished. They earn their diploma but lack the relationships that turn credentials into opportunity.

Call it America’s social wealth gap.

We talk endlessly about the deficits K–12 and college students have in learning, skills, and finances. We talk much less about the missing ingredient that converts credentials into a career: social capital. If education leaders and policymakers want to expand opportunity and strengthen the talent pipeline, they have to treat students’ relationships—not just their diplomas and resumes—as critical infrastructure.

Read more in EducationNext