Trump's Ennui

Benjamin Netanyahu listened, kinda sorta: The Israeli military has stopped striking Beirut, seemingly buckling under pressure from President Donald Trump and others to deescalate lest a regional ceasefire be threatened. (Iran will not make a deal if Israel continues to strike allies.) Still, Israel’s prime minister has decided to maintain the military offensive against Hezbollah in the south of Lebanon, issuing new evacuation orders Tuesday for Nabatieh, one of the region’s largest cities, indicating that more strikes will follow.

“Trump later said on social media that Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to stop their attacks on each other,” reports The New York Times, “while the Lebanese government—which does not include or control Hezbollah—said a new truce was taking shape.”

“I spoke with President Trump tonight,” said Netanyahu yesterday, “and told him that if Hezbollah doesn’t cease its attacks on our cities and civilians—Israel will strike terror targets in Beirut. This position of ours remains.” Everything looks very tenuous right now, and so naturally Trump is…losing interest!

As for Iran: “I don’t care if they’re over, honestly,” said Trump, referring to peace talks with Iran. “I really don’t care. I couldn’t care less,” Trump told CNBC on Monday, saying the negotiations “started to get very boring.” (Reminds me of his wife’s iconic jacket that she wore to a…migrant detention center.)

“Iran really wants to make a deal, and it will be a good one for the U.S.A. and those that are with us,” wrote Trump on Truth Social yesterday. “But don’t the Dumocrats, and various seemingly unpatriotic Republicans, understand that it is MUCH tougher for me to properly do my job and negotiate, when political hacks keep negatively ‘chirping,’ at levels never seen before, over and over again, that I should move faster, or move slower, or go to war, or not go to war, or whatever. Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end – It always does!”

The White House is trying to make this a catchphrase:

TRUST IN TRUMP.

“Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end – It always does!” – President Donald J. Trump. pic.twitter.com/CAjU4jM8Jy

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 1, 2026

Nothing about the history of the Middle East lends credence to the idea that “it will all work out well in the end” but I’m glad Trump feels he can ~manifest~ his way into peace. He sounds like a Cali mystic with a dream catcher and some tarot cards and a low price for palm readings if you’ll just come down into her basement. Speaking of…

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Replacing Gavin Newsom: California’s primary for governor takes place today, with voters heading to their local polling places to cast their vote for who would be least bad (or best, if you’re less cynical). The top two vote-getters, regardless of party, will advance, but it’s not totally clear who is going to proceed: Possibly Tom Steyer—the billionaire Democrat who is running to the left of the rest of the field and wants to tax his buddies—or Xavier Becerra, who formerly served as California’s attorney general and helmed the Department of Health and Human Services during the Biden administration.

Steyer’s never held political office before, whereas Becerra is an insider who’s been preparing for primetime; it’ll be interesting to see whether voters want experience in their governor. Ditto with the Los Angeles mayoral race, which also gets decided today: reality TV star (and intense critic of L.A.’s leadership following the terrible Palisades fire last year) Spencer Pratt goes up against incumbent Karen Bass and City Councilmember Nithya Raman. It looks fairly tight.

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Scenes from New York: 

Photos of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the 1980s by Tria Giovan pic.twitter.com/UZ8S3PWnIj

— Andrew (@Dub__A) May 31, 2026

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QUICK HITS

• As a Texan, I’ve been following James Talarico vs. Ken Paxton pretty closely and am left wanting both of them to lose the Senate race. This New York Times piece on Talarico’s church is, uh, instructive as to what type of Christianity he practices (not a type that bears much resemblance to mine), and Paxton’s name-calling (“low-T Talarico” and “tofu Talarico,” along with “Six-Gender Jimmy”) is kind of pathetic, plus I didn’t really love much of what Paxton did as attorney general.
• How to not blow an inheritance, by The Wall Street Journal.
• “Nvidia Corp. is entering the PC market with a new chip aimed at loosening the stranglehold of Intel Corp. technology in that arena and modernizing the machines for the AI era,” reports Bloomberg. This is huge.
• “When Annual Mammogram Day came around, I was four weeks into what I called my AI year, weaving artificial intelligence into every corner of my existence. Not just at work—writing emails, doing research, testing AI vending machines. I’m talking 24-7 AI livin’. Robots helping around the house, on the roads, on the massage table, at the dinner table. If there was a decision to make or a task to do, I wanted to see what happened when I let AI go first. I tried to make AI my everything. Even when it came to my health decisions,” writes Joanna Stern at The Wall Street Journal. “Two factors make my breasts particularly challenging for radiologists. They’re structurally dense, meaning they contain more glandular and fibrous tissue than fat. Dense breast tissue appears white on a mammogram, the same color as tumors, making it more difficult to detect abnormalities. The second complicating factor: My mom is a three-time breast cancer survivor, which puts my risk higher than the average woman’s. Based on our family history—including two first cousins who’ve been through it—I have a 39% chance of developing the disease in my lifetime.” Read on for Stern’s thoughts on how AI is going to—and is already—changing the breast cancer detection game.
• Really good insight on how we’re getting better at reducing death before 80, but not better at life extension, per se:

I think we’re on the verge of a golden age in cardio-metabolic health (thanks GLP1s!) and oncology (CAR-T, daraxonrasib, checkpoint inhibitors).

But let’s be real about what average lifespans in the 100s would require.

The oldest documented person died 29 years ago. Jeanne… https://t.co/ztk8yy4P04

— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) June 1, 2026

The post Trump’s Ennui appeared first on Reason.com.

Source: https://reason.com/2026/06/02/trumps-ennui/