Talks, Bombs, and Bibi’s Qualms

Plus: Rubio swipes Chinese visas, Gov. Whitmer’s intended kidnappers might walk free & MAHA invents science.

May 29, 2025

Nuclear negotiations are back on the table, and they are about as complicated as starting Severance halfway through the season or literal rocket science. What’s happening is a standoff between the Trump administration’s pursuit of a diplomatic solution and Netanyahu’s push for military action. Here is what struck me about the negotiations:

What Israel wants: Knock out the Iranian nuclear sites.
What Iran wants: Evade sanctions and still be able to make a bomb quickly.
What Trump wants: Announce a deal. A good deal? That depends. Israel worries he just wants to announce any deal, call it good, take the credit and not care if we actually thwart Iran’s nuclear threat.
The BIG unknown: Will Trump ever authorize Israeli strikes if he can't get a deal? Many in the Vance side of the administration seem MUCH less eager to allow a strike than to allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon.
The little unknown: Will Israel strike Iran alone, without U.S. assistance? It's a little unknown because they keep saying they will, but so far, it has been a bluff. They'd be in an enormously better position if it were a joint US/Israel operation.

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Welcome to the Gist List—a news roundup, interesting things you should know, and my thoughts leading up to today’s podcast episode.

Here’s what’s on my mind:

🧧 The state department is planning to “aggressively” revoke Chinese visas.

🥸 Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s intended kidnappers might receive a get out of jail free card.

💰 A court strikes down Trump’s across-the-board tariffs.

🪄 A MAHA report includes magical, disappearing research.

✈️ Pilots get the message to seal the airlock on their feelings.

The Gist List

Rubio Says U.S. Will 'Aggressively' Revoke Visas for Many Chinese Students (NPR)

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is saying they will “aggressively” revoke visas for Chinese students studying in America. On its surface, this is one of those headlines that easily riles people up, but a lot is lurking beneath the surface.

Harvard has 1,282 Chinese students currently enrolled. As of 2024, Columbia had 7,054 Chinese students enrolled, with 6,629 of those being graduate students. That’s almost 20% of the total student body. I’m not opposed to people coming over here to get a quality education—good for them—but I do question the wisdom of using the schools we created to educate tomorrow’s leaders to educate the leaders of other countries.

It's possible that we're using some good old-fashioned soft power to bring American-style democracy to repressive countries, but it doesn’t seem like we are. An elite Western education does not guarantee liberal governance or democratic values—just take Viktor Orbán and Bashar al-Assad for example. And now with these massive numbers of Chinese students coming over, it is a cause for concern when they will be the future leaders of an adversarial country, we’re using public funds for those schools, and they won’t necessarily take the values of liberté, egalité and fraternité to heart once they go home.

But also, when did Rubio’s ears get so big?

Trump's Clemency Spree Extends to Ex-Gangster, Artist, Former Congressmen (Washington Post)

President Donald Trump is back on his pardoning spree, this time including some rappers, reality show stars and people who have otherwise rubbed shoulders with him. What’s notable is that he’s also considering pardons for individuals involved in the attempted kidnapping of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

I have some complicated feelings about this, and if you listened to my episodes (here and here) with Ken Bensinger, you know that these chumps who tried to kidnap Whitmer were effectively talked into it by the FBI. To hear the New York Times tell it, you would have thought they were high-level terrorists. Bensinger, who was a Times reporter, could not report it otherwise.

Obviously, if someone approaches you suggesting that you should kidnap the governor, your answer should be “no.” Even if you are a pawn (or maybe just a melted gumdrop) on a political chessboard with weighted pieces, the regular rules and common sense still apply.

Court Strikes Down Most of Trump's Tariffs, Ruling Them Illegal (CBS)

A panel from the U.S. Court of International Trade froze Trump’s 10% “Liberation Day” tariffs and blocked additional levies on China, Canada, and Mexico. The judges—who interestingly enough were appointed by Reagan, Obama, and Trump himself—argued it would be unconstitutional for Congress to grant the president unlimited tariff-setting power and that according to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), he’ll need more of an emergency to set a random 50% tariff on Lesotho.

Of course, Trump might pull a TACO (Trump Always Backs Off) and finally take the tariff talk down a notch.

The MAHA Report Cites Studies That Don't Exist (NOTUS)

Health Secretary RFK Jr.'s much-touted MAHA Commission has hit a snag with a report that claims to be rooted in “gold-standard” science, citing over 500 studies. But according to NOTUS the report is riddled with inaccuracies, including non-existent studies, misrepresented findings, and even broken or false citations. (Almost as if a one-armed man wrote it.)

Some of this reads as if it was thrown together by people who didn’t go back to check if all the links worked. Other parts of it appear to have been fabricated out of thin air.

Epidemiologist Katherine Keyes is listed in the MAHA report as the first author of a study on anxiety in adolescents. When NOTUS reached out to her this week, she was surprised to hear of the citation. She does study mental health and substance use, she said. But she didn’t write the paper listed.
“The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,” Keyes told NOTUS via email. “We’ve certainly done research on this topic, but did not publish a paper in JAMA Pediatrics on this topic with that co-author group, or with that title.”

Why Pilots Don't Get Therapy (The Atlantic)🔒

Nathan—this is for YOU! With all the scrutiny over the FAA, notable news stories about outages at major airports and staffing issues in the air (pun intended), you might be wondering how the people in charge of getting your plane safely from LAX to JFK are feeling. Not well.

In fact, the systems in place to get pilots’ mental healthcare might be sending the message, “Hey, buddy. Maybe you should talk about it. You’ll lose your job, but still!” Unlike most professionals, pilots who seek therapy or take antidepressants must report it to the FAA. Disclosing treatment can lead to being grounded, months or years of medical review, and out-of-pocket costs of tens of thousands of dollars.

Yesterday on the show: Diagnosing The 2025 New York City Mayor’s Race

Political strategist and author Bradley Tusk joins to diagnose the 2025 New York City mayor’s race—why voters seem fine with Andrew Cuomo’s refusal to reckon with past scandals, and why the race feels like it’s happening in a parallel city, where only 3% of residents live.

There’s more where that came from. Listen to The Gist, and upgrade to Pesca Plus for the ad-free version.

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