Latest Episode
May 6 Midday Brief
In the Middle East
Iran says ships can now pass safely through the Strait of Hormuz under unspecified procedures, as the Revolutionary Guard tries to calm one of the world’s most important shipping lanes. That comes amid reports that the U.S. and Iran are weighing a memorandum that could reopen the strait, lift the blockade on Iranian ports, and push nuclear talks down the road a bit, where they apparently feel more comfortable.
Oil prices fell on those reports, with Brent and West Texas Intermediate both sliding sharply. China has also stepped up diplomacy ahead of the Trump-Xi summit, as pressure builds to keep the war from widening further.
In U.S. politics and oversight
In Michigan, Democrats held the state Senate after a special election win, preserving control through the rest of Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s term. It is also an early read on the political mood heading toward the midterms, which is always reassuring, in the sense that everyone gets to argue about it for the next year.
Separately, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is set to face House questions over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, in a transcribed interview tied to the oversight committee’s broader inquiry. The issue is whether he kept corresponding with Epstein after Epstein’s conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor.
In Europe
Britons vote in a wide set of local elections that could shift control in Scotland and Wales and across much of England. The results are being watched as an early test of Keir Starmer, whose Labour government has been losing ground after policy missteps, tax hikes, and criticism over his appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States.
In Spain, Catalan minister Jaume Duch says the country has been more confident than the EU in confronting Washington, even as Brussels has taken a firmer line in recent months. European diplomacy, as ever, remains a lively seminar in who is talking toughest before everyone calls it coordination.
In health care and technology
The United States is heading toward a projected shortage of more than 113,000 physicians by 2028, according to the National Center for Health Workforce Analysis. The country has long depended on foreign-born doctors, but the Trump administration made it harder for some trainees and practicing physicians to work in the U.S., which is not exactly the sort of staffing plan hospitals were hoping for.
And a new study in Nature says TikTok’s algorithm systematically favored pro-Republican videos in New York, Texas, and Georgia before the 2024 election. So the app that already knows too much apparently also had political preferences.
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