‘What a viral photo of white supremacists on the Metro reveals’
Theodore R. Johnson at The Washington Post
A photo of “white supremacist group Patriot Front” members inside a “packed Metro subway car” in Washington, D.C., standing alongside a “young Black woman, perfectly alone,” was “evoking imagery from the civil rights era on the day the country marked its 250th anniversary,” says Theodore R. Johnson. Above ground, “there were celebrations of American exceptionalism; beneath the surface, though, there was evidence of a country regressing — or one that hasn’t changed as much as it thought.”
‘Who wants to tax a billionaire?’
Soumaya Keynes at the Financial Times
Californians will “vote on a 5% tax on billionaires’ wealth,” and “in theory this is a marvelous opportunity for rich economic discussion,” says Soumaya Keynes. But some “worry the choice will be reduced to a grim question: Are you a jealous wealth-basher or a shameless shill for the rich?” Some billionaires themselves are “keeping quiet, perhaps hoping that if California’s version passes, it will at least quieten the demands for them to pay their fair share.”
‘The World Cup is exposing the contradictions of national identity’
Mohamad Elmasry at Al Jazeera
The 2026 World Cup has “demonstrated, perhaps as clearly as any global event can, that modern national identity is complex, contested and far from straightforward,” says Mohamad Elmasry. Many of the “players on the national teams” come “from immigrant families.” In an “era of increasingly exclusionary nationalist politics in North America and Europe, some of the countries engaged in the most intense debates about national identity are being represented on the world’s biggest sporting stage by multicultural teams.”
‘How Lebanon continues to confound the US’
Geoffrey Aronson at The American Conservative
The “recent memorandum of understanding between Israel and Lebanon is not the first time the U.S. has placed itself at the center of Lebanese affairs,” says Geoffrey Aronson. These “efforts attest to Lebanon’s outsized ability to engage Washington at the highest level, and highlight the at best limited, short-term effectiveness of that involvement.” Hezbollah’s “expansive role in Lebanon today reflects the political and military mobilization of Lebanon’s historically underserved Shia community, especially in the south.”
Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
