The Weekly Matterboard, bad lettuce edition

We rate the importance of contaminated lettuce, "The Odyssey," and threats to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York.

The Matterboard is our weekly assessment of what’s worth your attention and what isn’t. Here’s last week’s edition, here’s an overview of the project, and here’s the full archive.

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This week’s Matterboard has ten new items, three modifications, and three items carried over from last week. Here’s what’s new:

WORTH PAYING ATTENTION TO:

The Iran war is hot again, with US and Iranian forces shooting at each other and Iran attacking the occasional tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. One new development: The Houthi militia in Yemen says it will block Saudi oil shipments from transiting the Red Sea, which creates another flashpoint. Oil is back up to $90 per barrel and gas is once again above $4 per gallon. Diesel is $5.14, which will raise the cost of food and other products. The Iran war is a mess and this on-and-off pattern could persist for months. The Council on Foreign Relations has this nice Iran war tracker.

More ICE controversy. A man started a gasoline fire at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in New York on July 20, apparently to protest ICE’s thuggish actions and at least two killings its agents have committed in recent weeks. We don’t condone violent protests. But ICE is a rogue police force that brings unwanted attention to itself. Cleaning it up is the best way to deter attacks on federal workers.

Russia’s energy crisis is becoming the world’s problem. Russia has stopped exporting diesel, because Ukrainian attacks on its energy infrastructure have created shortages at home. Russian motorists queue for hours and sometimes days to fuel their vehicles. The diesel export ban could cut global supplies by 6% or 7% at a time the US-Iran war is already straining supply. The energy crisis is far from over, and it will continue to fuel broader inflation.

[Check out the price of gasoline around the world]

Canadian wildfires are still burning, even though the smoke that hung over much of the United States in mid-July has dissipated. Global warming has made wildfires hotter, bigger and more destructive. The fire season also lasts longer. President Trump wants to punish Canada for its fires, but many are in inaccessible places where the only choice is to let them burn. Smoky summer air seems to be an unpleasant new fact of life. Here’s a web site you can bookmark showing where the wildfire smoke is.

MIGHT GET SPICY:

GOP midterm cheating will stress-test the US electoral system in November. Trump’s July 17 speech on election integrity was filled with falsehoods, and independent monitors consider the US election system very secure. What Trump is trying to do is raise public doubt about election security, because he’s planning — what, exactly? — in November. Maybe he just expects Republicans to lose, and is establishing an excuse. But it could be something more nefarious, like sending federal agents to seize ballots in close races.

[The double-haters’ guide to the midterm elections]

New York police might arrest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York City in September for the UN’s annual meeting, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said recently. That’s because Mamdani and many of his supporters consider Netanyahu a war criminal for Israeli military action in Gaza that has harmed Palestinians. This seems like a dumb idea that Mamdani won’t follow through on. Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is troubling, but it’s not a US mayor’s job to resolve it. Just fix the potholes, dude. And the rent.

Cheap AI products from China are the latest worry roiling the artificial-intelligence boom. Cheap AI models could undercut offerings from Google, Anthropic, OpenAI and the like, making it even harder for these “hyperscalers” to get a return on the hundreds of billions of dollars they’re investing in AI. On the plus side, cheaper AI would be good for consumers and the makers of chips and other equipment Chinese AI models need just as other models do.

[The Weekly WTF: President shouts, nobody listens]

$4 gas is irritating drivers anew and causing more midterm election problems for Trump and his fellow Republicans. Trump obviously wants gas prices closer to $3 as Americans prepare to vote in the fall. Iran gets a say and they’d love to punish Trump by keeping gas prices high as long as possible. Iran, for now, has the advantage.

RESULTS MAY VARY:

The Trump tariffs are returning. Trump rolled out new 50% tariffs on some Canadian imports and he’s planning broader tariffs on imports from many countries. There will be lawsuits. Meanwhile, the import taxes will stoke inflation and convince more voters that Trump is crazy to risk making inflation worse in the months before an election.

Trumpy MAGA Republicans are losing heart, according to Washington insider Sally Quinn. “The MAGA Republicans don’t seem to be having such a good time ransacking the place anymore,” Quinn wrote in the New York Times on July 19. She cites Trump’s garish cage matches on the White House lawn on June 14 as a jump-the-shark moment.

Elon Musk is no longer a trillionaire. That’s because the share price of his company SpaceX has dropped to $128, a 37% decline from its peak of $201 just a couple days after it went public in June. Musk owns nearly half of the company, and the drop in the share price has cut his net worth from a peak of $1.4 trillion in June to around $800 billion. Seems like enough.

SAFELY IGNORE:

“The Odyssey,” starring Matt Damon as one of the world’s first protagonists, is a welcome change in what has become a fairly gloomy Hollywood narrative. People are going to the theater to see a blockbuster instead of waiting for it to stream. Plus, people are talking about a 2,800-year-old literary epic and maybe even reading it. One movie won’t change America’s viewing habits, but it’s a refreshing effort.

[The new stock-market trade you should know about]

Contaminated lettuce has sickened thousands and made many others queasy just by thinking about it, since the cyclospora parasite probably got on the leaves from irrigation water contaminated with human feces. But it’s not as bad as salmonella or E. coli, which can be deadly. Most of the bad lettuce has probably been consumed or trashed, so this could be over soon.

Andy Burnham is Britain’s new prime minister, and we bet you can’t name the three PMs who preceded him (answer below¹). Some Europeans don’t understand why we have to wait four years for a chance to get rid of Donald Trump. Americans, meanwhile, wonder why parliamentary leaders in Europe come and go like the seasons. At least the royalty sticks around for a while.

1. Keir Starmer, Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss