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Border-Stalkers · Jun 5, 2026

Weekly News Roundup(s) - 5/29/26 & 6/5/26

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Jon Ward · Border-Stalkers

This is the 21st Weekly News Roundup of 2026. The archive for all weekly news roundups is here, which goes back to the beginning of 2024.
These weekly dispatches are designed for those who may not have time to do more than glance at the headlines, or those who want to stay informed without becoming obsessed by politics and news. These roundups are a targeted way to get a sense of the shape of the past week on the national level. Without such a map, we can be disoriented, not knowing where we have been over the past several days, or where we may be going.
But by spending concentrated, limited time thinking about the big picture, we can devote more of our time to where “agency and justice begin and end,” as Karen Swallow Prior put it: “on the ground, bodily, in community and real relationships, in flesh and blood.”

This anniversary year is not something to hand off to big, splashy, national events planned by politicians. It belongs to communities. It belongs to congregations. It belongs to the people who will still be here, doing the slow work of democracy, long after the speeches are over. - Michael G. Holzman

The barriers to entering politics have fallen so low that it no longer requires Trump-sized talent to crash a big campaign. - Alexander Burns

The more we learn to diminish our egos, the more we can become signposts to the source of ‘gentleness and goodness.’ But that, of course, means a patient lifetime of struggle with the demon of modern times: narcissism, egomania, various forms of which we ingest willy-nilly from the climate of contemporary society. - Tomas Halik

I’m not saying the goal is to renounce accomplishments, but rather to metabolize them. If you carry your victories lightly, other qualities — kindness, originality, courage, humor, and humanity — have room to emerge. - Conan O’Brien

We are trying to touch the heavens and become as God. But Jesus came to tell us the essential news: that God is also agape — unconditional love. And of those two huge central elements of Godness — all-knowing and all-loving — one is missing in AI. A god-like super intelligence without love? If you’re looking for the anti-Christ, Mr. Thiel, you could be creating him. - Andrew Sullivan

Saturday, May 23

  • The U.S. Justice Department acknowledges it has removed all information about criminal cases against those who took part in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, claiming that press releases “documenting criminal charges, convictions and sentencings” are “partisan propaganda.”

  • A 21-year old man with a history of trying to trespass onto the White House grounds opens fire on Secret Service officers on the security perimeter. The officers return fire and kill the man. A bystander is struck by a bullet.

Sunday, May 24

  • U.S. officials claim that a deal to end the war in Iran is close to being finalized.

Monday, May 25

  • Pope Leo XIV releases his anticipated encyclical on artificial intelligence, Magnifica Humanitas. The new pope’s first major publication argues that humanity faces a major challenge from AI and that it must prioritize protection of individual conscience, liberty, and employment by making technology subservient to human flourishing, through government regulation in particular. In the 42,300 word document, Leo also issues the first apology by a Catholic prelate for the role the church has played in “giving European sovereigns explicit authority to subjugate and enslave.”

  • The U.S. military conducts missile strikes in southern Iran, despite a tentative ceasefire. Trump says talks over a permanent end to the conflict are “proceeding nicely.”

Tuesday, May 26

  • Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton defeats incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the state’s Republican primary runoff, placing scandal-ridden Paxton in a fall showdown with Democrat James Talarico, one of the opposition party’s top recruits in the fall elections. Polling has shown a Paxton candidacy would place the Republican party’s control of Texas in peril, but Trump endorsed Paxton a week before the runoff.

Wednesday, May 27

  • The Trump administration says it will send Americans exposed to Ebola abroad to a medical facility in Kenya, rather than bringing them to the U.S. for treatment as has been done in the past.

  • Democratic lawmakers visit an immigration detention facility in New Jersey and allege that detainees there are being treated inhumanely.

Thursday, May 28

  • Inflation ticks up again for U.S. consumers, to the highest level in three years.

  • The U.S. and Iran tentatively agree to extend their ceasefire by 60 days.

  • A federal judge blocks Trump’s $1.8 billion fund.

  • Aid supplies and medical equipment reach the center of Congo’s ebola outbreak.

  • Israel says it is going to occupy 70% of the Gaza Strip, violating a fragile ceasefire agreement.

Friday, May 29

  • A federal immigration officer accused of improperly shooting a Minneapolis man in January is arrested in Texas by state law enforcement.

Saturday, May 30

  • Protesters outside an ICE facility in Newark clash with police.

  • Paris police arrest 130 people when celebrations of Paris Saint-Germain’s second straight Champions League title victory get out of hand.

Sunday, May 31

  • Secretary of State Marco Rubio tries to guide Israel and Lebanon back to the negotiating table.

  • The New York Times reports that the U.S. Navy has guided roughly 70 ships through the Strait of Hormuz over the last three weeks.

Monday, June 1

  • The U.S. and Iran exchange missile strikes as fighting between Israel and Lebanon escalates once again. Iran threatens to walk away from ceasefire talks.

  • “The world is getting more uptight about lending money to President Donald Trump’s government — causing interest rates to climb in ways that are worsening affordability pressures, hampering economic growth and creating a new risk for Republicans in November’s midterm elections,” the AP reports.

Tuesday, June 2

  • Trump drops his plans to take $1.8 billion in taxpayer money for a slush fund he would have been able to use to reward allies, after intense opposition and criticism from members of the Republican party. “We are not moving forward with the fund, period,” Attorney General Todd Blanche says.

  • Trump names Bill Pulte, who oversees the nation’s federal housing financing agency, to be Director of National Intelligence. Pulte has no national security background or qualifications and his time at FHFA has been marked by his use of the office to send “criminal referrals to the Justice Department alleging mortgage fraud by a number of Mr. Trump’s political foes.”

Wednesday, June 3

  • The House votes to limit the president’s war powers in Iran, as a handful of Republicans join with Democrats.

  • Trump acknowledges he called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “crazy” and is frustrated with Israel’s combat operations in Lebanon, but says they are still working together.

  • CBS News fires Scott Pelley, veteran correspondent for “60 Minutes,” after Pelley said the new editor-in-chief of the network is “murdering” the program.

  • Only 37% of Republicans support gay marriage, down from 55% in 2022, a new Gallup poll shows. Democrats support by 87%.

Thursday, June 4

  • Leading AI company Anthropic proposes “a global pause on building the most powerful AI systems as the latest models are beginning to show signs they could escape human control,” AFP reports.

  • Former Trump national security advisor John Bolton plans to plead guilty to one count of mishandling classified information, according to press reports. Bolton “plans to plead guilty to a single count of illegal retention of classified information and pay a fine, facing anywhere from no prison time to five years of incarceration when he is sentenced, according to the people familiar with the negotiations,” the Times reports.

Friday, June 5

  • The World Health Organization announces a $518 million six-month joint plan to fight Ebola.

  • CNBC reports that “job growth unexpectedly surged in May as the U.S. labor market continued a solid year of expansion,” according to new government data.

  • The Senate passes legislation “to fund President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement agencies ... after weeks of delays and fierce backlash to an unrelated $1.776 billion settlement fund that threatened to derail the bill.”

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