Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:<\/p>\n
Oct. 22<\/p>\n
The Washington Post says surging oil costs are spurring investments in renewables<\/p>\n
Despite continuing Iranian attacks in the Strait of Hormuz, oil shipments from the Middle East have now surpassed prewar levels. The might of the U.S. military is to thank for the recovery of oil flows through the strait itself. But the proliferation of alternative routes around the region, new production outside the Middle East and declining fuel consumption are thanks to the might of the free market.<\/p>\n
Oil flows throughout the Middle East averaged more than 24 million barrels a day last week, up from 23.3 million before the war, according to the ship tracker Kpler. Heavier reliance on Saudi and Emirati pipelines has allowed more crude to bypass the strait: 40 percent of non-Iranian Gulf crude is going through pipelines, up from 17 percent before the war.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the U.S. military has helped restore flows through the strait even as an American embargo has mostly choked off Iranian crude. Oil flows through the strait have rebounded to 82 percent of prewar levels, facilitated by a clever ship-to-ship transfer system in which the military escorts shuttle tankers through Hormuz to cargo ships in the Gulf of Oman.<\/p>\n
While the work-around has proved effective, oil flows cannot rely on costly military escorts in perpetuity. Attacks by Iranians and their proxies, combined with an expectation that hostilities will escalate following the midterm elections, keep prices elevated. These were foreseeable consequences of President Donald Trump\u2019s war of choice. Picking this fight in February all but guaranteed trouble in the strait.<\/p>\n
While the military can protect freedom of navigation, no central planner could replicate the decentralized adjustments being made because of higher prices. Producers outside the Middle East added 2.3 million barrels a day between February and August, led by the United States, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Venezuela and Nigeria, according to the International Energy Agency.<\/p>\n
Oil production across the Western Hemisphere is projected to surge in the next decade, as high prices justify investments in marginal projects. Chevron, for example, plans to put nearly $14 billion into Argentina over the next decade, tripling production there. Four out of five institutional investors say that disruptions in Middle Eastern markets make them more likely to invest in Canada, according to a recent survey by ATB Cormark Capital Markets.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham authorized a long-stalled offshore natural gas project in the North Sea while announcing major investments in renewable energy elsewhere. North Sea drilling has long been opposed by progressives in the Labour Party, but high prices and the worst inflation in a year created cover for Burnham to give the green light.<\/p>\n
Thanks to a freer, more diversified energy market, the Iran war has not re-created the crippling shortages Americans endured in the 1970s. While high gas prices are certainly a major political headache for the party in power, the U.S. has been relatively insulated.<\/p>\n
Over the past decade, the U.S. has expanded energy production through fracking and horizontal drilling, leading to record-high domestic crude output and growing exports. Before the war, Americans were already importing far more petroleum from Canada than the Middle East. Last year, only 8 percent of U.S. crude imports came from Gulf countries.<\/p>\n
President Richard M. Nixon instituted disastrous price controls on oil after a 1973 OPEC embargo. Whenever prices are artificially capped below the market equilibrium, demand outstrips supply, leading to the shortages and gas lines that endured through the decade. Trump floated a ban on diesel exports last month, but advisers convinced him that the idea would backfire by causing supply disruptions.<\/p>\n
Finally, high prices cause people to use less oil. Electric vehicles become more attractive. So does public transit. The IEA forecast in August that global oil demand would decline 1.6 million barrels per day this year.<\/p>\n
The lesson for long-term energy security is that government should welcome abundance, competition and trade. Let prices rise when oil gets scarce. Let producers profit by finding more of it. Let consumers decide when substitutes make sense. Free markets cannot prevent wars, but they can make their fallout much harder for adversaries to dictate.<\/p>\n
ONLINE: https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2026\/10\/22\/free-market-is-defeating-irans-oil-shock\/<\/a><\/p>\n Oct. 23<\/p>\n The New York Times says Trump Administration’s raid of Ilhan Omar’s home is a tool of authoritarianism<\/p>\n The revocation of a political opponent\u2019s citizenship has long been a tool of authoritarian repression.<\/p>\n The Soviet Union stripped Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the dissident author, of his citizenship in 1974 and deported him to West Germany. Czechoslovakia revoked the citizenship of Milan Kundera, another celebrated author, in 1979. East Germany and Romania, under Communist rule, took similar steps against critics, as did Chile under Augusto Pinochet, Greece under its military dictatorship, Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini. More recently, Nicaragua stripped more than 300 government critics of their citizenship.<\/p>\n Now comes a new effort to do so from President Trump\u2019s administration. Last week, federal agents searched the Washington home of Representative Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat and a Somali immigrant, apparently as part of a federal investigation of her citizenship. The search should disturb all Americans, regardless of whether they agree with Ms. Omar\u2019s political views.<\/p>\n The investigation of her is a chilling example of the federal government using its immense power to silence a critic. It is an affront to free speech, the rule of law and American ideals. It continues the Trump administration\u2019s use of denaturalization as a weapon. In May and early June alone, the government began proceedings to take citizenship from 33 people, more than in any other entire year since at least 2008.<\/p>\n Ms. Omar is by any definition a political opponent of Mr. Trump\u2019s. She is among the most progressive representatives in Congress, an original member of the so-called Squad, along with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and a frequent critic of the president. Mr. Trump, for his part, has repeatedly vilified her in public over the past seven years, often in ugly, racist ways that play into his broader fearmongering and lies about immigrants and Muslims. He has called her \u201cgarbage,\u201d \u201cscum,\u201d \u201ca disaster,\u201d \u201ca troublemaker\u201d and \u201ca terrible person.\u201d He has mocked the head scarf she wears. He has said she should return to Somalia, which he has derided as having \u201cnothing but crime, bedlam, filth.\u201d<\/p>\n In an interview with The New York Times in January, he called for her deportation. \u201cIlhan Omar is a woman that should be immediately thrown out of Congress and sent back to her, her country, from where she\u2019s always complaining about,\u201d he said. When Tyler Pager, a Times reporter, followed up to ask if she should lose her citizenship, Mr. Trump replied, \u201cOh, absolutely.\u201d Nine months later, federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security entered her home and seized her phone, computers, notebooks and passport. They did so in the final weeks of Ms. Omar\u2019s re-election campaign, violating a Justice Department standard against taking public action in an investigation of a candidate within 60 days of an election.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump\u2019s allies have claimed, among other things, that Ms. Omar\u2019s father misrepresented her age during her naturalization process 26 years ago by saying that she was 17 \u2014 and thus still a child \u2014 rather than 18. We do not pretend to know whether the allegations have merit. Yet as tempting as it may be to focus on them, they are not the main issue.<\/p>\n Sometimes, Mr. Trump makes claims about his perceived enemies that are simply false. Other times, his claims have some connection to reality. Repeatedly, though, he and his appointees use their law enforcement powers selectively and thus unjustly.<\/p>\n The list of critics whom they have targeted for investigation and prosecution includes John Bolton, E. Jean Carroll, James Comey, Lisa Cook, Cassidy Hutchinson, Gen. Mark Milley and Miles Taylor. At the same time, the Trump administration has failed to enforce the law against or has pardoned flagrant and violent criminals, so long as they are friendly to the president.<\/p>\n In the case of Ms. Omar, the administration has gone back more than a quarter-century to investigate a prominent critic. If her naturalization can be revisited, it suggests that no naturalized citizen is safe. It also indicates that the federal government can go searching for any decades-old problem to hound somebody who has criticized the White House. Those are the tactics of authoritarian societies.<\/p>\n They also evoke dark periods in American history. During the Red Scares of the early and mid-20th century, the federal government attempted to strip citizenship from labor leaders and others it accused of being radicals, often focusing on immigrants. At the time, officials like A. Mitchell Palmer, J. Edgar Hoover and Joseph McCarthy used the cases to whip up anti-Communist fervor and justify their efforts to undermine American democracy.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump is following a similar playbook with Ms. Omar. The investigation of her should end immediately.<\/p>\n ONLINE: https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/10\/23\/opinion\/ilhan-omar-trump-citizenship.html<\/a><\/p>\n Oct. 26<\/p>\n The Wall Street Journal on Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Starlink and Ukraine<\/p>\n Ukraine says its satellite access is finally back to full speed, but the throttling episode of recent weeks has mushroomed into a larger story about the Trump Administration and an indispensable battlefield technology. Elon Musk did himself no favors over the weekend with a credulous social-media outburst about the Russia-Ukraine war.<\/p>\n Nobody is stepping up to take credit for slowing down Ukraine\u2019s eyes and ears in the sky. Mr. Musk\u2019s odd explanation is that Ukraine violated the \u201cterms of service\u201d of Starlink, a commercial product, by using it for offensive military purposes. But that sounds like a dodge. Ukraine said the slowdown also hit Starshield, the military equivalent that helps Kyiv push the Russians out of its territory.<\/p>\n Mr. Musk has insisted that Starshield is under U.S. political control, as it should be. The Trump Administration has denied it is reducing such help to Ukraine. \u201cI\u2019ve heard it was fixed,\u201d President Trump said late last week. \u201cBut if it\u2019s not, I\u2019ll speak to him,\u201d meaning Mr. Musk. It\u2019s hard to escape the conclusion that the slowdown was a project between someone in the Administration and Mr. Musk.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, someone on the SpaceX board should be assigned to keep Mr. Musk away from his keyboard. \u201cThe endless slaughter of Ukrainian and Russians must stop,\u201d Mr. Musk posted, adding the public should have \u201csome sympathy for the poor Russian conscripts too. Those kids have no choice but to fight and die in drone strikes.\u201d Another installment: \u201cMay the bloodthirsty warmongers, who push for a war that never ends, burn in hell!\u201d<\/p>\n But who is responsible for the endless slaughter? That would be Vladimir Putin, who elected to roll tanks over the Ukrainian border in 2022 and continues to throw tens of thousands of men into the fight even as he gains almost no territory.<\/p>\n The practical effect of the SpaceX slowdown was to help Mr. Putin do more killing, and the Russian dictator is terrorizing Ukrainian schools, parks and grocery stores with missiles to force Ukraine\u2019s surrender. Mr. Musk can spare us his moral indignation, since throttling Ukraine is abetting the bloodletting.<\/p>\n The episode has managed to unite lawmakers in Congress who are otherwise tearing each other apart over the midterm election. Democrats are vowing investigations, and they\u2019re exploiting the affair to make the public more cynical about tech \u201coligarchs.\u201d Progressives are now talking about nationalizing Mr. Musk\u2019s technology, which would be a disaster on many levels but which Mr. Musk\u2019s Putin aid is inviting.<\/p>\n The irony is that the fastest route to ending the killing is extending Starshield\u2019s reach several hundred kilometers into Russia, to put pressure on Mr. Putin and eliminate more of his capacity to launch strikes on Ukraine. This is what Republican lawmakers visiting Ukraine recently proposed, in exchange for a Ukrainian pause on striking Russian energy assets.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s hope Mr. Trump has at least noticed the blowback he can expect if he ever shuts off U.S. intelligence support for Ukraine. What was supposed to be unsubtle coercion of Ukraine boomeranged into a strategic and political own goal for the U.S.<\/p>\n ONLINE: https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/opinion\/elon-musk-starlink-starshield-vladimir-putin-russia-ukraine-4c788b54?mod=editorials_article_pos1<\/a><\/p>\n Oct. 21<\/p>\n The Guardian says Americans, at the midterms, are wondering where economy is that Donald Trump promised<\/p>\n It is no great revelation that Donald Trump is enriching himself as president. He raked in $2.2bn in 2025, with his position and his personal interests frequently overlapping. Yet this week\u2019s poll finding that 34% of Republicans (and 66% of all American voters) think that he is using his position to make himself rich merits attention. Separately, voters in a Fox News poll last week put government corruption at the top of their list of concerns \u2013 just ahead of inflation and high prices.<\/p>\n Mr Trump pledged that people would be better off if they voted for him. Billionaires are; not the rest. He promised to lower grocery costs (they have risen) and to cut the price of gasoline to below $2 a gallon. It\u2019s more than double that, thanks to his illegal war on Iran. Tariffs haven\u2019t helped. Incumbents struggle when life feels unaffordable, and polling for the Guardian has shown the disenchantment of key voting groups. The gulf between his own prosperity and the lives of his base now looks less like an inspiration and more like an insult. Cash offers seem unlikely to help much.<\/p>\n The president\u2019s popularity rating sank to a record low of 36% in a poll on Wednesday. Mr Trump, of course, is not on the ballot. But he is touring red states as he seeks to shore up the vote in places where the idea of a Democratic victory looked laughable two years ago. Democrats are rightly cautious about their midterms prospects, having been burned too many times. But less than a fortnight from 3 November, with many votes already cast, polls suggest that they will take the House and could well claim the Senate too.<\/p>\n The party is still unpopular, though impressive candidates are performing far better than anyone expected in surprising places \u2013 notably Texas and Kansas. But they are now more trusted on economic issues. Independents are turning away from Mr Trump and his party, and many Republicans seem unenthused, for multiple reasons. The \u201cMaga-sympathetic\u201d pollster Rich Baris argues that \u201cDonald Trump did this to himself\u201d. His base believed Mr Trump was their champion. Now they suspect that he is \u201cjust another politician\u201d.<\/p>\n There is merited concern about how the president has already used his power to tilt the midterms, and more about what he may do if his party fares as badly as forecast. Republicans still hope to reclaim ground through traditional if unsavoury means, massively outspending Democrats.<\/p>\n Yet while some polls are tightening, culture war attacks and salacious lies about opponents such as James Talarico in Texas do not seem, at least so far, to be as powerful as Republicans hoped. That\u2019s not just because Democratic candidates are repositioning themselves. The toxic messaging of the presidential race \u2013 that Kamala Harris \u201cis for they\/them, President Trump is for you\u201d \u2013 doesn\u2019t land if voters believe that he\u2019s actually for himself and his friends.<\/p>\n Republicans now point to France\u2019s unrest and claim that a Democrat-dominated Congress would bring chaos and destruction to America. Their fearmongering has often motivated core voters. But while Democrats stick to the economic attack, Republicans are trying to change the subject instead of offering answers. Mr Trump\u2019s bread-and-circuses politics is floundering, cage fights on the South Lawn of the White House notwithstanding, as voters ask what happened to the bread.<\/p>\n